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 Political Science,
#551
Eileen Hunt Botting
#44872
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Eileen Margaret Hunt is an American political theorist and professor of political science. She works on political thought from the 17th century to the present. She is a professor at the University of Notre Dame and has published four solo-authored books and edited another five books. In 2021, she returned to publishing with the author name, Eileen M. Hunt, with the essay "Dracula's Daughter: the rediscovery of a love poem for George Orwell" in The TLS.
Go to Profile#552
Claire Jean Kim
#126024
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Claire Jean Kim is an American political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. She received her A.B. from Harvard College and an M. Phil and Ph.D. from Yale University. Her research interests are comparative race studies, human-animal studies, race and politics, and social movements.
Go to Profile#553
Margaret Ferguson
#106019
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Margaret Robertson Ferguson is an American political scientist specializing in state politics, governors, and Southern politics at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. Early life and education Ferguson was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the daughter of Jim Robertson, a one-time member of the Mississippi Legislature and political science professor from Liberty, Mississippi. She graduated with a BA in political science from the University of Southern Mississippi. She earned an MA and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#554
Lyndsey Stonebridge
#105759
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA FEA is an English scholar and professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham. Her work relates to refugee studies, human rights, and the effects of violence on the mind in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is also a regular radio and media commentator, writing for publications such as The New Statesman, Prospect Magazine, and New Humanist.
Go to Profile#555
Anna Triandafyllidou
#122453
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Anna Triandafyllidou is a sociologist. She holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair on Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University . She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. Her main areas of research and teaching are the governance of cultural diversity, migration, and nationalism from a European and international perspective.
Go to Profile#556
Adile Ayda
#47197
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Adile Ayda was the first woman career diplomat of Turkey, but is today better remembered as an Etruscologist. She became interested in Etruscan studies while stationed in Rome as the Minister-Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy, did research on the subject during her stay in Italy and wrote down her findings in a number of books, in Turkish and in French. What is spectacular about her texts on Etruscans and renders them of interest is that she posits the Etruscans as Turkic, a proposition that is as controversial today as it was during her lifetime.
Go to Profile#557
Kathryn Hendley
#94984
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Kathryn Hendley is an American professor of law and politics, and is currently the William Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Hendley received her Ph.D. the University of California - Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of California - Los Angeles. Hendley's research focuses on legal and economic reform in the former Soviet Union. She is currently engaged in an inter-disciplinary project aimed at understanding how business is conducted in Russia and the role of law in business transactions and corporate governance. This project h...
Go to Profile#558
Yeşim Arat
#121571
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Yeşim Arat , is a Turkish political scientist and author specialized in gender politics, Turkish politics, women in Turkish politics, and women's movements in Turkey. She is a professor in the department of political science and international relations at Boğaziçi University.
Go to Profile#559
Vasundhara Sirnate
#93532
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Vasundhara Sirnate is an Indian political scientist, journalist and writer, who co-founded The Polis Project. She is an alumnus of the Lady Shri Ram College and the Jawahar Lal Nehru University. She was the chief-coordinator of research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy from 2013 to 2017, and served The Polis Project as a director of research from November 2017 to November 2020. Her works include Passive Police: Institutional Learning Through Inquiry Commissions and Kashmir's Crossroads.
Go to Profile#560
Abby Lippman
#110999
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Abby Lippman was a Canadian feminist and epidemiologist who served as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. She was known for her advocacy for human rights and women's health, and for her research applying a feminist perspective to biotechnology and pharmaceutical drugs. Among her most notable works were her critiques of hormone replacement therapy, the pharmaceutical industry, the HPV vaccine, and the "geneticization" of reproductive technologies. In 2001, Lippmann helped the Center for Genetics and Society to continue the...
Go to Profile#561
Mariam Abou Zahab
#79575
Overall Influence
1952 - 2017 (65 years)
Mariam Abou Zahab was a French political scientist, sociologist, and scholar of Islamic studies. She was an expert in the Politics of the Middle East, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. She was also a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan.
Go to Profile#562
Alice Palmer
#85347
Overall Influence
1939 - 2023 (84 years)
Alice J. Palmer was an American educator and politician who served as a member of the Illinois Senate. Known as a longtime progressive activist, Palmer represented the state's 13th Senate District from June 6, 1991, until January 8, 1997. At the time, the district spanned an economically diverse area and included the Chicago communities of Hyde Park, South Shore and Englewood.
Go to Profile#563
Rhoda Howard-Hassmann
#118611
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann is a Canadian social scientist who specializes in international human rights. Biography Howard-Hassmann was born Rhoda Howard in Scotland. Her mother was Scottish, her father was a refugee from Nazi Germany. She was brought to Canada at a young age and attended public schools in Quebec and southern Ontario. She is married and the mother of one son, born in 1981. In 1999 she changed her legal name from Rhoda E. Howard to Rhoda E. Hassmann, but she publishes her academic work as Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann. She has lived in Hamilton, Ontario since 1976.
Go to Profile#564
Susan Mendus
#71345
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Susan Lesley "Sue" Mendus, , FLSW is a Welsh academic specialising in political philosophy. She is currently Professor Emerita of Political Philosophy at the University of York. She was Vice-President of the British Academy between 2008 and 2012.
Go to Profile#565
Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox
#91848
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Caroline Anne Cox, Baroness Cox, is a cross-bench member of the British House of Lords. She is also the founder of an organisation called Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust . Cox was created a Life Peer in 1982 and was a deputy speaker of the House of Lords from 1985 to 2005, as well as being a minister in government. She was also a Baroness-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth II. She was Founder Chancellor of Bournemouth University, Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University from 2006 to 2013, and is an Hon. Vice President of the Royal College of Nursing. She was a founder Trustee of MERLIN Medical Emerg...
Go to Profile#566
Meritxell Batet
#83125
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Meritxell Batet Lamaña is a Spanish jurist, former politician, and member of the Socialists' Party of Catalonia , who served as President of the Congress of Deputies from 2019 to 2023. Prior to this, she served as Minister for Territorial Policy and Civil Service of the Government of Spain between June 2018 and May 2019.
Go to Profile#567
Jadwiga Emilewicz
#104405
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Jadwiga Katarzyna Emilewicz is a Polish politician and political scientist. In 2020, she was Deputy Prime Minister of Poland. In 2019, she became Minister of Development, upon her three-year service as an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Development, and from 2018 to 2019, she was Minister of Entrepreneurship and Technology in the government of Mateusz Morawiecki.
Go to Profile#568
Mahnaz Shirali
#102639
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Dr. Mahnaz Shirali is an Iranian author and political sociologist who is a professor at Science Po university in France. She graduated in architecture engineering from faculty of fine arts of Tehran University in 1992. She moved to France in 1994 where she obtained her PhD in sociology from School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris in 2000. Her PhD thesis was about crisis in youth Iranian generation.
Go to Profile#569
Doris Fuchs
#116012
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Doris Fuchs is a German Political Scientist and Professor of International Relations and Sustainable Development at the University of Münster. Fuchs received her Ph.D. in Political Science & Economics at Claremont Graduate University in California and completed her Habilitation at the University of Munich. She was a lecturer and researcher at the University of Michigan, Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management as well as the University of Stuttgart.
Go to Profile#570
Holli Semetko
#126761
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Holli Semetko, frequently published as Holli A. Semetko, is a comparative political scientist, currently serving as the Asa Griggs Candler professor of media and international affairs at Emory University. She served as Emory University's Vice Provost for International Affairs, Director of the Office of International Affairs, and the Director of the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning from 2003-13. In a 2019 study on the top 400 most-cited authors in political science, Semetko was named among the top 40 most cited women in political science. Semetko's current research focuses on socia...
Go to Profile#571
Kuniko Inoguchi
#106888
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Kuniko Inoguchi is a Japanese political scientist and politician. She served as Japan's first Minister of State for Gender Equality and Social Affairs from 2005 to 2006, and is currently a member of the House of Councillors representing Chiba Prefecture for the Liberal Democratic Party.
Go to Profile#572
Birte Siim
#99888
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Birte Siim is a Danish political scientist specializing in gender studies. From 2004 to 2018, she was professor at the Institute for Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University where she managed FREIA, the Centre of Gender Research. Her numerous books and publications have addressed gender and politics from a European perspective. In addition to coordinating European Union projects, she has been active in the ECPR Standing Group on Gender and Politics.
Go to Profile#573
Sara Rosenbaum
#146693
Overall Influence
Sara Rosenbaum is an American lawyer. She is the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy and Founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#574
Sabine Carey
#92027
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Sabine C. Carey is a German political scientist. Sabine C. Carey is currently chair in Political Science IV at Universität Mannheim in Germany. She received master's degrees from the University of North Texas and Universität Konstanz and her Ph.D. from the University of Essex. She previously taught at the University of Nottingham and held a fellowship at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. She has led a Working Group on Human Rights, Governance, and Conflict at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Dr. Carey's research focuses primarily on the empirical analysis of various aspects of violent conflict, human rights violations and comparative democratization.
Go to Profile#575
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell
#120682
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell is an American political scientist and the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Political Science at University of Iowa. She is known for her expertise on international relations and political methodology.
Go to Profile#576
Karla Jay
#20247
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Karla Jay is a distinguished professor emerita at Pace University, where she taught English and directed the women's and gender studies program between 1974 and 2009. A pioneer in the field of lesbian and gay studies, she is widely published.
Go to Profile#577
Ada Finifter
#127453
Overall Influence
1938 - 2011 (73 years)
Ada Weintraub Finifter was an American political scientist. She specialized in American public opinion and voting behavior. Education and academic positions Finifter was born in Brooklyn on June 6, 1938. Finifter graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in political science in 1959, and then earned an MA at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#578
Lori Cox Han
#93665
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Lori Cox Han is a Professor of Political Science and Doy B. Henley Endowed Chair in American Presidential Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California. Her research interests include the American presidency, women and politics, media and politics, and political leadership.
Go to Profile#579
Teresa Bejan
#120310
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (41 years)
Teresa M. Bejan is an American political theorist and author. She is a professor of political theory in the department of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Oriel College.
Go to Profile#580
Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi
#122711
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi is a Moroccan political scientist, author and professor at the University of Lausanne. She published several works on activism, social media, youth issues and elections. Biography Mounia attended Paris Institute of Political Studies, where she earned her PhD in political science in 1993.
Go to Profile#581
Malinda S. Smith
#114999
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Malinda S. Smith is a Canadian political scientist. She is the inaugural Vice-Provost of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, an Associate Vice President Research and a full professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Previously, she was a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, where she also held a 2018 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellow and served as a Provost Fellow in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy in the Office of the Provost. She specializes in equity, social justice, diversity and intersectionality studies, particularly as they are pra...
Go to Profile#582
Denise Walsh
#135191
Overall Influence
#583
Tamar Meisels
#117489
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Tamar Meisels is a Professor of Government and Policy in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, and a political theorist. Biography Her father, Andrew Meisels, is a descendant of the Meisels family and was a foreign correspondent, author, and broadcaster. Her mother Martha Meisels, was a consumer affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post.
Go to Profile#584
Simona Sharoni
#91265
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Simona Sharoni is a feminist scholar and activist who is currently Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Merrimack College. Early life and education Sharoni was born in Romania in 1961. She immigrated with her parents to Israel in 1963. She earned an M.A. degree in Counseling from Haifa University. In 1989 she moved to the United States to pursue doctoral studies, and holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University.
Go to Profile#585
Amrita Basu
#114090
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Amrita Basu is an American academic and political scientist. She currently is a professor at Amherst College where she holds affiliations in the departments of Political Science, Sexuality, Women's, & Gender Studies, Asian Languages & Civilizations, and Black Studies.
Go to Profile#586
Susan Franceschet
#81081
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Susan Franceschet is a Canadian political scientist. She is a professor of political science at The University of Calgary. She studies the representation of women both in legislatures and government cabinets, gender quotas for the minimum representation of women in government, and the interaction of gender and public policy. She has written about women's participation in the politics of Chile.
Go to Profile#587
Ruth Linn
#67103
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Ruth Linn is a professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa. Specializing in moral psychology, she has focused on moral disobedience, including resistance to authority.
Go to Profile#588
Hilda Tadria
#89116
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Hilda M. Tadria is a Ugandan women's rights activist, a gender and social development specialist, and the executive director of the Mentoring and Empowerment Programme for Young Women in Uganda . She has advised NGOs worldwide on gender, institutional management and social development, and has been an associate professor at Makerere University.
Go to Profile#589
Kathy Cramer
#122609
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Katherine J. Cramer is an American political scientist. She is a professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service.
Go to Profile#590
Caroline Tolbert
#80816
Overall Influence
Caroline Tolbert is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Iowa. She studies elections, voting, and civic engagement in American politics. Much of her work deals with peoples' capacity to use internet technology, digital technology policy, and the relationship between technology use and social participation.
Go to Profile#591
Janelle Wong
#122243
Overall Influence
Janelle Staci Wong is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of American Studies, Government and Politics, and core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Go to Profile#592
Susie Bright
#55538
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Susannah Bright is an American feminist, author and journalist, often on the subject of politics and sexuality. She is the recipient of the 2017 Humanist Feminist Award, and is one of the early writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library along with the archives of On Our Backs.
Go to Profile#593
Joan Halifax
#12541
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Joan Jiko Halifax is an American Zen Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. Halifax-roshi has received Dharma transmission from both Bernard Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh, and previously studied with the Korean master Seung Sahn. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax.
Go to Profile#594
Dara Strolovitch
#133330
Overall Influence
Dara Strolovitch is an American political scientist, currently Professor of Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Political Science at Yale University. She studies the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of intersectional societal inequality, and the representation of those who are marginalized in multiple overlapping ways.
Go to Profile#595
Jolande Sap
#94008
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Johanna Catharina Maria "Jolande" Sap is a former Dutch politician and former educator and civil servant. A member of GroenLinks , she replaced Wijnand Duyvendak as a member of the House of Representatives on 3 September 2008, after his resignation. She had temporarily been replacing Mariko Peters from the previous day who was on parental leave. From 16 December 2010 to 5 October 2012 she was party leader as well as parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives, replacing Femke Halsema who announced her retirement from politics as of that date.
Go to Profile#596
Kelley Lee
#131842
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Kelley Lee is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance and Professor of Global Public Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She has studied the impact of globalisation on public health, with a particular focus on the tobacco industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic Lee initiated and led the Pandemics and Borders Project to understand effective ways to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 through the effective use of travel measures.
Go to Profile#597
Emilia Justyna Powell
#115450
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Emilia Justyna Powell is a Polish-American political scientist. She is Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and is known for her expertise on international dispute resolution, the Islamic legal tradition, Islamic international law, and Islamic constitutionalism.
Go to Profile#598
Laila Akhmetova
#98496
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Laila Seysembekovna Akhmetova is a Kazakh doctor of historical sciences, professor of politology of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, writer and research of participants in the World War II. Current activity Akhmetova is the Director of UNESCO centre of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.
Go to Profile#599
Virginia Gray
#155173
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Virginia Gray is an American political scientist, currently the Robert Watson Winston Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies public policy and interest groups with a particular focus on U.S. state politics. Her work on policy diffusion, which concerns how innovation in policies within one region can lead to adoptions of that policy by other regions, has been cited as foundational in developing that research topic.
Go to Profile#600
Jessica Valenti
#67966
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism , He's a Stud, She's a Slut , The Purity Myth , Why Have Kids? , and Sex Object: A Memoir . She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape , and Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World . Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She currently runs the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack. The Washington Post d...
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