The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Education,
#451
Ann Sutherland Harris
#65733
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ann Birgitta Sutherland Harris is a British-American art historian specializing in Baroque art, Modern art, and in the history of women's art. Career Harris is an educator, having held her first position in 1965 as an assistant professor in the department of Art and Archeology, Columbia University. She was then appointed Assistant Professor of Art History at Hunter College, City University of New York . Harris was next hired as associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany. Following that she held the Arthur Kittridge Watson Chair for Academic Affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1977–1981.
Go to Profile#452
Barbara Vanderlinden
#113029
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Barbara Vanderlinden is a Belgian art historian, curator, and director. Early life and education Vanderlinden graduated with a MA in Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an MA Art and art History at the Hoger Instituut voor Beeldende Kunsten, St Lukas Brussels.
Go to Profile#453
Sue Knight
#112881
Overall Influence
Sue Knight is an Australian philosopher, educator and academic whose research focuses on teaching reasoning skills and embedding philosophy within school curricula. She is the author of the Primary Ethics curriculum, which has been offered as an alternative to Scripture in New South Wales public schools for students from Kindergarten to Year 6 since 2010.
Go to Profile#454
Yuko Hasegawa
#103310
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Yuko Hasegawa is the director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and professor of curatorial and art theory at Tokyo University of the Arts. Early life and education Hasegawa was born in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan and graduated from Kyoto University with a Bachelor of Arts in law, and from Tokyo University of the Arts with an Master of Fine Arts in art history.
Go to Profile#455
Franziska Lang
#151596
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Franziska Lang is an archaeologist and professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Education Lang got an M.A. from the Free University of Berlin in 1987, and a doctor of philosophy degree in 1991 from the Free University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#456
Erma Johnson Hadley
#112216
Overall Influence
1942 - 2015 (73 years)
Erma Johnson Hadley was an American educator, the first woman and first African-American to serve as chancellor of Tarrant County College. She was named to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 2010. Early life and education She grew up in Leggett, Texas and was the first black student there to graduate from college. She received a bachelor's degree from Prairie View A&M University and an MBA from Bowling Green State University.
Go to Profile#457
Paula Barrett
#74518
Overall Influence
Dr Paula Barrett is a clinician, scholar, researcher and professor in the field of child psychology. She has been recognised as being amongst the top 1 percent of publishers within the field of Psychology and Psychiatry at an international level.
Go to Profile#458
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein
#138014
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein was an American teacher of art and art history and an early innovator in the teaching of women-in-art history courses. She was born to Lillian Kaufman and Aaron Streifer in Harlem, New York, and moved to Brooklyn shortly thereafter.
Go to Profile#459
Erna Diez
#127152
Overall Influence
1913 - 2001 (88 years)
Erna Diez was an Austrian classical archaeologist who undertook significant work on Roman art and the archaeology of the provinces of Noricum and Pannonia. Early life and education Diez was born in Kaschau in 1913. Diez studied classical philology, archaeology, art history and history at the University of Vienna and graduated from the University of Graz. In 1937 she earned her doctorate, with a thesis entitled "Quomodo Valerius Maximus res in factorum and dictorum memorabilium libris IX narratas exornaverit".
Go to Profile#460
Gannit Ankori
#40484
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gannit Ankori is an Israeli art historian. She is Professor of Fine Arts and Chair in Israeli Art at the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. She was previously chair of the Department of Art History at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#461
Karsonya Wise Whitehead
#110790
Overall Influence
Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead is an American educator, author, radio host, speaker, and documentary filmmaker who is known as the #blackmommyactivist. She is the founding director of The Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice, a Professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland, and the host of Today With Dr. Kaye on WEAA. In 2022, Dr. Kaye received the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence from Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication for Outstanding Reporting on the Impact Racial Reckoni...
Go to Profile#462
Keva Bethel
#96195
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Keva Marie Bethel, CMG was a Bahamian educator and the first president of the College of the Bahamas. Early life Bethel was born Keva Marie Eldon on 18 August 1935 in Nassau, Bahamas to Rowena and Sidney Eldon.
Go to Profile#463
Margo Machida
#104924
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Margo Machida is an American art historian, curator, cultural critic, and artist. Machida is a Professor of Art History and Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Her book, Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary, was awarded the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2011. In 2003 she co-edited the book, Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art, published by the University of California Press. She was a co-founder of Godzilla, an arts advocacy organization for Asian American artists.
Go to Profile#464
Phoebe Stanton
#56673
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Phoebe Baroody Stanton was an American architectural historian, professor and urban planner. She taught at Johns Hopkins University, from 1955 until 1982. Stanton was outspoken about the architectural history and design for the city of Baltimore. She wrote and published three books.
Go to Profile#465
Naomi Zigmond
#177388
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Naomi Zigmond is an American education scholar, currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research involves child education and classroom education.
Go to Profile#466
Lena Liepe
#82274
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lena Liepe, born 1962, is a Swedish art historian, who since 2017 is professor in art history at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She has worked at the University of Lund, Sweden, University of Tromsø, Norway and University of Oslo, Norway. Her main research areas are medieval art history, art theory and method, genus perspective on medieval art, and icelandic medieval illuminated manuscripts. In her research she has focused on how museums in Sweden grew out of 19th century displays of medieval church art, and for the moment she completes a major work on the importance of relics in medieval church art.
Go to Profile#467
Susan Casteras
#70520
Overall Influence
Susan Paulette Casteras is an American art historian, educator, and curator. Casteras is Professor of Art History Emeritus from the University of Washington. She is a specialist on British art, particularly Victorian art and Pre-Raphaelitism.
Go to Profile#468
Nan Giese
#109137
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Nancy Giese was an Australian leader in education and the visual and performing arts, who pioneered tertiary education in the Northern Territory, leading the Darwin Community College which eventually became Charles Darwin University.
Go to Profile#469
Lisa Jackson Pulver
#99769
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Lisa Rae Jackson Pulver is an Aboriginal Australian epidemiologist and researcher in the area of Aboriginal health who has been Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Sydney since October 2018.
Go to Profile#470
Elizabeth McKinley
#176135
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Ann McKinley is a New Zealand academic and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Melbourne. Academic career After a 2003 PhD titled Brown Bodies, White Coats: Postcolonialism, Māori Women and Science at the University of Waikato, McKinley moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor and moving to the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#471
Patricia Jennings
#158165
Overall Influence
Patricia A. Jennings is a Professor of Education at the University of Virginia. Education and early career Patricia A. Jennings received a BA from Antioch College in 1977, an M.Ed. from Saint Mary's College in 1980, and a Ph.D. from the University of California Davis in 2004. Before her degrees in education and human development, Jennings also studied Buddhism at the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and later founded a Montessori school that taught meditation during the late 1980s.
Go to Profile#472
Ida Rodríguez Prampolini
#106651
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Ida Rodríguez Prampolini was a Mexican academic, art historian and cultural preservationist, who was heavily involved in the creation of organizations and institutions to preserve the artistic traditions of Mexico. To that end, she founded two art schools, eleven museums, twelve municipal archives, and over fifty houses of culture. She published over 400 articles and critiques of Mexican art and was honored with numerous awards over the course of her career. She was a member of the Mexican Academy of Arts, Mexican Academy of History and the Belgian International Union of Academies as well as a recipient of the , which recognizes excellence in teaching and academic research, in 1991.
Go to Profile#473
Jaynie Anderson
#146119
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jaynie Louise Anderson OSI is an Australian art historian, writer and curator of exhibitions, known for her publications and exhibitions on Giorgione and Venetian painting. Anderson is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. She was the Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne from 1997 until 2014, and was President of International Committee of the History of Art from 2008 to 2012.
Go to Profile#474
Elga Ruth Wasserman
#100952
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Elga Ruth Wasserman guided the transformation of Yale College from an all-male undergraduate college into a coeducational institution. She held the newly created position of special assistant to the president of Yale University on the education of women . She became a proponent of equal rights for women during Second-wave feminism and after. Later, Wasserman practiced law, specializing in family law, and advocated policies friendly to women and minorities in the workplace. She wrote The Door in the Dream , highlighting eminent female scientists through interviews and discussion.
Go to Profile#475
Carmen Robertson
#125733
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Carmen L. Robertson is a writer and scholar of art history and indigenous peoples. She was born in Balcarres, Saskatchewan, of Lakota and Scottish ancestry. She is Canada Research Chair in North American Art and Material Culture in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University. Before joining Carleton, Robertson was an associate professor in the Faculty of Media, Art & Performance at the University of Regina . She also served as the Indian Fine Arts department head at the First Nations University of Canada where she taught from 2000-2006. A number of Robertson's writings focus on the Aboriginal Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau.
Go to Profile#476
Estelle Ramey
#86117
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Estelle Rosemary Ramey was an American endocrinologist, physiologist and feminist who became internationally known for refuting surgeon and Democratic Party leader Edgar Berman, who stated that women were unfit to hold high public office because of "raging hormonal imbalances." Ramey's balanced approach to life was embodied in a later quote, "I have loved. And been loved. And all the rest is background music."
Go to Profile#477
Moon Kyungwon
#127447
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Moon Kyungwon is a Seoul-based artist who received her Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and Ph.D in Visual Communication from Yonsei University, South Korea. Moon held her solo exhibition at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in 2004. Her recent exhibitions include Poiesis of Collective Intelligence at Yamaguchi Center Arts and Media in 2013 and A Different Similarity at BOCUM Museum, Germany in 2010. In 2012, Moon and a fellow artist, Jeon Joonho, participated in Documenta in Kassel, Germany and collectively received the 2012 Noon Award Grand Prize and 2012 Korea Artist Prize at Gwangju Biennale.
Go to Profile#478
Lisa Tickner
#37639
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lisa Tickner FBA is a British art historian. She has taught at Middlesex University , Northwestern University, and the Courtauld Institute of Art . In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Go to Profile#479
Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes
#108843
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes is a German-Irish art historian, who works as the Professor and Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Amsterdam. Lerm Hayes completed her PhD at the University of Cologne on Joseph Beuys in 2001. She was Zurich James Joyce Foundation Scholar and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the Irish Research Council at University College Dublin in 2001-03. She spent many years in Ireland and showed how artists have read and interpreted James Joyce in her book Joyce in art : visual art inspired by James Joyce.
Go to Profile#480
Sara Brownell
#175971
Overall Influence
Sara Elaine Brownell is an American biology education researcher who is a President's Professor at Arizona State University. Her research looks to make undergraduate science teaching more inclusive. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.
Go to Profile#481
Molly Nesbit
#73070
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Molly Nesbit is a contributing editor at Artforum and a Professor of Art at Vassar College, where she writes and teaches on modern and contemporary art, film, and photography. She graduated from Vassar College in 1974 with a B.A. in Art History, and went on to receive her Ph.D. from Yale University. She taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Barnard College, and Columbia University before returning to Vassar in 1993.
Go to Profile#482
Ashley C. Ford
#116839
Overall Influence
Ashley C. Ford is an American writer, podcaster and educator who discusses topics including race, sexuality, and body image. She is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Somebody's Daughter. She has been the host of five podcasts and has written or guest-edited for publications including The Guardian, Elle, BuzzFeed, and New York. In 2017, Forbes named her one of their "30 Under 30 in Media". In 2022, Ford won the Indiana Authors Award for a debut novel.
Go to Profile#483
Jeanette Zwingenberger
#116057
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jeanette Zwingenberger is a Paris-based independent art curator and art historical scholar. She is a member of the International Association of Art Critics and a UNESCO member of the Advisory Committee on Works of Art and teaches at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University. Originally a scholar of Renaissance Art, Dr. Zwingenberger generally specializes in contemporary art and is author of more than thirty books and exhibition catalogues, on it. She writes on art for Kunstmagazin, art press, L’œil and L'Observatoire de l'art contemporain. Zwingenberger has organized art exhibitions and interdiscipl...
Go to Profile#484
Grace E. Harris
#137012
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Grace E. Harris. , was an administrator from Virginia Commonwealth University. Harris was one of the first African American faculty members hired by Virginia Commonwealth University in 1967, which initially rejected her admission on the basis of race, when it was known as Richmond Professional Institute , when she was a graduate student in 1954. She would later rise through the ranks at the university to become Dean, Provost, and Acting President on two occasions, becoming the highest-ranking African American and highest-ranking woman in VCU's history.
Go to Profile#485
Nesta Devine
#174797
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Nesta Devine is a New Zealand education academic. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career Devine has a 2000 PhD titled 'An Investigation into 'Public Choice' Theory and its Implications for Education in New Zealand' from the University of Auckland. She has taught in schools, the University of Waikato and Auckland University of Technology, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#486
Joanna Frueh
#111208
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Joanna Frueh was an American artist, writer, and feminist scholar. Early life Frueh was born on January 18, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois to Erne Rene Frueh and Florence Frueh. Both parents were well educated; her father in visual arts and her mother in classical piano. Together they authored a book about stained glass in Chicago, which was published by Loyola University Press in 1983. Their two successive homes in Highland Park were designed by architects Crombie Taylor and Robert Bruce Tague.
Go to Profile#487
Rita Schober
#96202
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Rita Schober was a German scholar of Romance studies and literature. Early life and education Rita Tomaschek was born and grew up in Rumburg , a small manufacturing town near the northern tip of Bohemia, in what was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The town was overwhelmingly ethnically and linguistically German. Her father was a clerical worker. Her mother worked in garment manufacturing. Between 1928 and 1936 Rita Tomaschek attended the secondary school in Rumburg, before moving on to study at the German University in Prague between 1938 and 1940, and then again during 1944/45.
Go to Profile#488
Elan Closs Stephens
#27919
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dame Elan Closs Stephens is a non-executive director and member for Wales on the BBC Board since 2017, and became its Acting chairwoman from 27 June 2023. She specialises in cultural and broadcasting policy. She is also the Electoral Commissioner for Wales; Pro Chancellor of Aberystwyth University; and chair of the UNESCO’s International Prize for the Creative Economy jury.
Go to Profile#489
Carolyn A. Maher
#73068
Overall Influence
Carolyn A. Maher is the Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education and Director of the Robert B. Davis Institute for Learning. She received the 2022 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Lifetime Achievement Award.
Go to Profile#490
Pearlie Craft Dove
#168662
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
Pearlie Craft Dove was an African-American educator. Dove taught at Clark College and helped to improve the college's Education Department. Under her leadership, Clark College became the first private Historically Black College in Georgia to be accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Later, she aided in the consolidation of Clark College with Atlanta University in order to begin Clark Atlanta University. She was also elected to work at the policy making level of the Association of Teacher Educators and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Educat...
Go to Profile#491
Rosemarie Haag Bletter
#118752
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Rosemarie Haag Bletter is a German-born American architectural historian, university professor, writer, and lecturer. Education Bletter was educated at Columbia University, where she received her BS, MA, and PhD. She completed a master’s thesis on the Catalan Modernista architect Josep Vilaseca and a doctoral dissertation on the work of Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart.
Go to Profile#492
Gail Levin
#61223
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Gail Levin is an American art historian, biographer, artist, and a Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, Women's Studies, and Liberal Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is a specialist in the work of Edward Hopper, feminist art, abstract expressionism, Eastern European Jewish influences on modernist art and American modernist art. Levin served as the first curator of the Hopper Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Go to Profile#493
Anna Marguerite McCann
#79606
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
Anna Marguerite McCann was an American art historian and archaeologist. She is known for being an early influencer—and the first American woman—in the field of underwater archaeology, beginning in the 1960s. McCann authored works pertaining to Roman art and Classical archaeology, and taught both art history and archaeology at various universities in the United States. McCann was an active member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and received its Gold Medal Award in 1998. She also published under the name Anna McCann Taggart.
Go to Profile#494
Mere Berryman
#172310
Overall Influence
Mere Anne Berryman is a New Zealand kaupapa Māori academic. She is Māori, of Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, and Ngāti Whare descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career Berryman attained a master's degree at the University of Waikato in 2001. After a 2008 PhD titled 'Repositioning within indigenous discourses of transformation and self-determination' at the same institution, Berryman rose to full professor at the university.
Go to Profile#495
Caroline M. Solomon
#90776
Overall Influence
Caroline M. Solomon is an American academic whose teaching focuses on bringing deaf and hard-of-hearing students into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Having experienced first-hand the problems for deaf students in classrooms without sign language interpreters, Solomon, who teaches biology at Gallaudet University, has designed databases to help students and teachers network with organizations and interpreters familiar with educational bridges for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. She is a co-creator of a database that formalizes the lexicon of signs used for scientific and technological terms in American Sign Language.
Go to Profile#496
Jenny Sampirisi
#157432
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Jenny Sampirisi is a Canadian poet, novelist, editor, and university instructor, living in Toronto. She is the author of the novel is/was and experimental poetry narrative Croak . Biography Sampirisi graduated with an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor in 2006 where she studied with poets Susan Holbrook, Di Brandt, Margaret Christakos and Marty Gervais. She collaborated with Margaret Christakos and Rachel Zolf for a polyvocal, multimedia staging of Christakos' polyvocal performance of Orphans Fan the Flames and Zolf's Masque. In 2007, she founded the ...
Go to Profile#497
Bettina Baumgärtel
#133385
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Bettina Baumgärtel is a German art historian who is head of the painting collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. She is a leading authority on the art of Angelica Kauffman and founded the Angelika Kauffmann Research Project , of which she is the director, in 1990.
Go to Profile#498
Ursula Hoff
#147754
Overall Influence
1909 - 2005 (96 years)
Ursula Hoff was an Australian scholar and prolific author on art. She enjoyed a long career at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, where she was deputy director from 1968 to 1973. Her involvement then continued when she was appointed London Adviser of the Felton Bequest , a major charitable foundation dedicated to the NGV.
Go to Profile#499
Whitney Chadwick
#118584
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Whitney Chadwick is an American art historian and educator, who has published on contemporary art, modernism, Surrealism, and gender and sexuality. Her book Women, Art and Society was first published by Thames and Hudson in 1990 and revised in 1997; it is now in its fifth edition. Chadwick is Professor Emerita at San Francisco State University from the School of Art.
Go to Profile#500
Rowena Arshad
#167185
Overall Influence
Rowena Arshad is Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh. Her doctorate was an interpretive study of teacher activism in equity and anti-discrimination in Scotland and her ongoing research is into equity and anti-discrimination issues in education and within educational policy.
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