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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential female people in Political Science,
#251
Rita Klímová
#40415
Overall Influence
1931 - 1993 (62 years)
Rita Klímová, née Rita Budínová was a Czech economist and politician. She was Czechoslovakia's ambassador to the United States before that country's breakup in 1992. Early life Klímová was born in Romania. Her father was Stanislav Budín , a prominent Communist writer who used the pen name Batya Bat. Due to their Jewish ancestry, her family fled to the United States not long after Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939. She settled in New York City in 1939, returning to Czechoslovakia in 1946 to finish her education. As a result, for the rest of her life she spoke American English with an...
Go to Profile#252
Jytte Klausen
#42963
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Jytte Klausen is a Danish-born scholar of politics who teaches at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts as the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of International Cooperation in the Department of Politics. Klausen has also served as an affiliate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard, among other positions.
Go to Profile#253
Séverine Autesserre
#43706
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Séverine Autesserre is a French-American author and researcher. She writes about war and peace, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and African politics. Autesserre is a professor and Chair of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University , where she specializes in international relations and African studies. She previously worked for international humanitarian and development agencies.
Go to Profile#254
Hafsat Abiola
#63323
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Hafsat Olaronke Abiola-Costello, in Lagos, is a Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist, founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy , which seeks to strengthen civil society and promote democracy in Nigeria. She is President of Women in Africa Initiative , international platform for the economic development and support of African women entrepreneurs. She is also one of the founders of Connected Women Leaders .
Go to Profile#255
Rose McDermott
#30496
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Rose McDermott is an American political scientist who is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University. She has also taught at Cornell, UCSB, and Harvard. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. Her work is situated at the intersection of several disciplines including political science, psychology, biology, methods, development, and gender studies.
Go to Profile#256
Louise Chappell
#41609
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Louise A. Chappell is an Australian political scientist. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, where she is also the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She studies gender and politics, the politics of the International Criminal Court, and the politics of Australia in comparative perspective.
Go to Profile#257
Maggie Williams
#17052
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Margaret Ann Williams is a former director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and is a partner in Griffin Williams, a management-consulting firm. She was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Following Clinton's win in the New Hampshire primary in January 2008, Williams was brought onto the Clinton campaign staff as a senior adviser. On February 10, 2008, she replaced Patti Solis Doyle as the campaign's manager.
Go to Profile#258
Nadia Urbinati
#56458
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Nadia Urbinati is an Italian political theorist, the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. Personal life In 1989, she received her Ph.D. at European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She is also a naturalized US citizen.
Go to Profile#259
Roberta Wohlstetter
#16954
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Roberta Morgan Wohlstetter was an American historian of U.S. military intelligence. In 1962 she authored Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. The book was based on a several-year study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and is still considered the foundational study of military surprises. Winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan.
Go to Profile#260
Joni Lovenduski
#49893
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Joni Lovenduski, is Professor Emerita of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. She was previously Anniversary Professor of Politics at Birkbeck , Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton and Professor of Comparative Politics at Loughborough University . She was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007. In the same year she received the Special Recognition Award from the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom. She was presented with the Gender and Politics Award by the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Gender and Politics in 200...
Go to Profile#261
Martha Derthick
#39152
Overall Influence
1933 - 2015 (82 years)
Martha Ann Derthick was an American public administration scholar and academic. She is most known for her work on social security programs, deregulation and federalism. Biography Born in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, on June 20, 1933, she graduated from Hiram College in Ohio in 1954. In 1962, she earned a doctorate in political science from Radcliffe College.
Go to Profile#262
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
#35826
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
#263
Noura Erakat
#26717
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Noura Saleh Erakat is an American activist, university professor, legal scholar, and human rights attorney. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University, specializing in international studies. With her primary focus being the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, she is a vocal critic of the State of Israel.
Go to Profile#264
Bonnie Honig
#29383
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Bonnie Honig , is a political, feminist, and legal theorist specializing in democratic theory. In 2013-14, she became Nancy Duke Lewis Professor-Elect of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University, succeeding Anne Fausto-Sterling in the Chair in 2014–15. Honig was formerly Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.
Go to Profile#265
Gertruda Uścińska
#22675
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Gertruda Uścińska is a Polish lawyer and political scientist. She is a Professor of Social Sciences at The University of Warsaw and the Polish Institute of Labor and Social Affairs in Warsaw . Since 2016, Uścińska has been the President of Poland's Social Insurance Institution, which is the Polish state organization responsible for social insurance. She has also been an elected Chairwoman at the International Social Security Association.
Go to Profile#266
Julia Azari
#59694
Overall Influence
Julia R. Azari is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Marquette University, where she is also the assistant chair of the Department of Political Science. Azari studies the American presidency and political parties in the United States, with particular attention to partisanship in the United States and how these systems have changed since the early 20th century. Azari also engages in public communication about political science, including as a frequent contributor to the politics coverage of the data journalism website FiveThirtyEight, a writer of the blo...
Go to Profile#267
Elizabeth Anne Reid
#43310
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Elizabeth Anne Reid AO, FASSA, is an Australian development practitioner, feminist and academic with a distinguished career in and significant contribution to national and international public service. She founded, established and worked with a number of pioneering and specialised United Nations institutions, government agencies and non-governmental organisations. Reid was appointed the world's first advisor on women's affairs to a head of government by the Australian Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1973.
Go to Profile#268
Kanchan Chandra
#43775
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Kanchan Chandra is a political scientist who is currently Professor of Politics at New York University. She has made significant research contributions on a range of subjects in political science including comparative ethnic politics, constructivism, democratic theory, intrastate conflict, patronage and clientelism, and South Asian politics.
Go to Profile#269
Marilyn Waring
#30644
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Dame Marilyn Joy Waring is a New Zealand public policy scholar, international development consultant, former politician, environmentalist, feminist and a principal founder of feminist economics. In 1975, aged 23, she became New Zealand's youngest member of parliament for the liberal-conservative New Zealand National Party. As a member of parliament she chaired the Public Expenditure Committee. Her support of the opposition Labour Party's proposed nuclear-free New Zealand policy was instrumental in precipitating the 1984 New Zealand general election, and she left parliament in 1984.
Go to Profile#270
Susan Eaton
#61834
Overall Influence
1957 - 2003 (46 years)
Susan Catharine Eaton was an American political scientist and workers' rights activist. Eaton was an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, who became a nursing home researcher at Harvard and workers' activist. She wrote about health care management, women's role in union leadership and work-family issues and gender equity in the workplace.
Go to Profile#271
Sarah Binder
#64387
Overall Influence
Sarah A. Binder is an American political scientist, author, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, and professor of political science at George Washington University's Columbian College of Arts and Science.
Go to Profile#272
Bell hooks
#63124
Overall Influence
1952 - 2021 (69 years)
Gloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She is best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures.
Go to Profile#273
V. Spike Peterson
#44148
Overall Influence
V. Spike Peterson is a professor of international relations in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, the Institute for LGBT Studies, International Studies, Human Rights Practice Program, and the Center for Latin American Studies. Her cross-disciplinary research and teaching are focused on international relations theory, gender and politics, global political economy, and contemporary social theory. Her recent publications examine the sex/gender and racial dynamics of global inequalities an...
Go to Profile#274
Ester Fuchs
#47144
Overall Influence
Ester Rachel Fuchs is an American academic. She is Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Fuchs studied at Queens College, CUNY, Brown University, and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#275
Norma M. Riccucci
#59441
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Norma Margherita Riccucci is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University in Newark. She is a scholar in the field of Public Administration. An authority on issues related to social equity, affirmative action and public management, Dr. Riccucci is widely known for her work in the area of diversity management in government employment.
Go to Profile#276
Elmira Bayrasli
#62217
Overall Influence
Elmira Bayrasli is the author of the book From The Other Side of The World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places , which looks at the rise of entrepreneurship on a global level, and the co-founder, of Foreign Policy Interrupted. From The Other Side of The World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, profiles seven entrepreneurs from seven countries overcoming seven obstacles. Those entrepreneurs and countries include: Turkey: Bulent Celebi, Airties; Nigeria: Tayo Oviosu, Paga; Pakistan: Monis Rahman, Rozee.pk; Mexico: Enrique Junco Gomez, Optima Energia; India: Shaffi Mather, 1...
Go to Profile#277
Laura Langbein
#61044
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Laura Irwin Langbein is a quantitative methodologist and professor of public administration and policy at American University in Washington, D.C. She teaches quantitative methods, program evaluation, policy analysis, and public choice. Her articles have appeared in journals on politics, economics, policy analysis and public administration.
Go to Profile#278
Yaprak Baltacioğlu
#49330
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Yaprak Baltacioğlu is a retired Canadian public servant, lawyer, and professor. She has held senior leadership positions in the Canadian public service, serving as Secretary of the Treasury Board from 2012 to 2018. Baltacioğlu retired from the public service in 2018, and was appointed as the twelfth Chancellor of Carleton University in 2018. She is also on the faculty at the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto where she teaches graduate courses.
Go to Profile#279
Katrina Swett
#49027
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Yvonne Katrina Swett is the President of the Lantos Foundation. She is also an American educator and the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2012 to 2013, and then in 2014 to 2015. She ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district during the 2002 United States midterm elections.
Go to Profile#280
Laleh Khalili
#40839
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Laleh Khalili is an Iranian American and Professor of Gulf Studies at University of Exeter. She was formerly a Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and a Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London.
Go to Profile#281
Hong Sook-ja
#56546
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (92 years)
Hong Sook-ja is a South Korean activist, politician, and writer. She was appointed South Korea's first female diplomat and later became the first female presidential candidate to enter the electoral foray, having done so in South Korea's first democratic elections in 1987.
Go to Profile#282
Bonnie Jenkins
#32104
Overall Influence
Bonnie Denise Jenkins is an expert on arms control and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and currently serves as the under secretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. During the Obama administration, she was the U.S. Department of State's coordinator for threat reduction programs in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.
Go to Profile#283
Brigitte L. Nacos
#58025
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Brigitte Lebens Nacos is an Adjunct Professor in political science at Columbia University. She has written on the news media, the politics of Germany, and terrorism. She is a joint author of a paper, "Prevention of Terrorism in Post-9/11 America" which was delivered at the Summer 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association; the paper addresses the correlation between increases in terrorism alert levels and the popularity of U.S. President George W. Bush. Referring to her study of terrorism alerts, media coverage, and Bush's popularity, journalist Matthew Stannard wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that "The media will repeat the president's remarks.
Go to Profile#284
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
#5733
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Mohanty, a postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist, has argued for the inclusion of a transnational approach in exploring women’s experiences across the world. She is author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity , and co-editor of Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism , Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures , Feminism and War: Confronting U.S.
Go to Profile#285
Mindy Finn
#27698
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Mindy Finn is an American digital media expert, political and technology consultant, and entrepreneur. She worked as a digital strategist for the Republican Party, most notably for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008, respectively, and became the vice presidential candidate for Evan McMullin's 2016 presidential campaign. She co-founded the organizations Stand Up Republic and Empowered Women, and works to make elections more inclusive.
Go to Profile#286
Dianne Pinderhughes
#36568
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Dianne Marie Pinderhughes is Full Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and former President of the American Political Science Association. Since 2021 she is the president of the International Political Science Association. She holds a B.A. from Albertus Magnus College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Pinderhughes sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. She was American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow of 2019.
Go to Profile#287
Chia-ying Yeh
#24828
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (101 years)
Florence Chia-ying Yeh , also known as Ye Jiaying , Jialing , and by her married name Chia-ying Yeh Chao, is a Chinese-born Canadian poet and sinologist. She was a scholar of classical Chinese poetry. She taught for twenty years at the University of British Columbia , and has been Professor Emerita since her retirement in 1989. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. After retiring from UBC, she has been teaching at Nankai University in Tianjin where she is the founding Director of the Institute of Chinese Classical Culture.
Go to Profile#288
Antonia Grunenberg
#55470
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Antonia Grunenberg is a German political scientist, totalitarianism researcher and an expert on the political thought of Hannah Arendt. She is professor emerita at the University of Oldenburg, where she taught as a full professor from 1998 until her 2009 retirement, and where she was director of the Hannah Arendt Centre. She is also editor of the book series Hannah Arendt Studies.
Go to Profile#289
Karen O'Connor
#64136
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Karen Paula O'Connor is the Jonathan N. Helfat Distinguished Professor of Political Science and a Distinguished Professor of Government at American University in Washington, D.C., where she is also the Founder and Director Emerita of the Women & Politics Institute.
Go to Profile#290
Sharon Straus
#63212
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sharon Elizabeth Straus is a professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Toronto, and geriatrician and Squires-Chalmers Chair and physician-in-chief at Unity Health Toronto. Straus was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada in 2021.
Go to Profile#291
Laura Chinchilla
#38458
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Laura Chinchilla Miranda is a Costa Rican political scientist and politician who served as President of Costa Rica from 2010 to 2014. She was one of Óscar Arias Sánchez's two Vice-Presidents and his administration's Minister of Justice. She was the governing PLN candidate for president in the 2010 general election, where she won with 46.76% of the vote on 7 February. She was the eighth woman president of a Latin American country and the first woman to become President of Costa Rica. She was sworn in as President of Costa Rica on 8 May 2010.
Go to Profile#292
Kay Lehman Schlozman
#68710
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Kay Lehman Schlozman is an American political scientist, currently the J. Joseph Moakley Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Schlozman has made fundamental advancements to the study of participation in American politics, and was a pioneer in the field of gender and politics. Her contributions include the theory of civic voluntarism, several landmark studies on the relationship between access to resources and different types of political participation, and related investigations into the nature of civic culture. Schlozman has one of the highest citation counts of any political sc...
Go to Profile#293
Eva Kreisky
#55592
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Hannelore Eva Kreisky, née Zgraja is an Austrian political scientist and jurist. Biography She earned a doctorate in law at the University of Vienna in 1971, and studied political science at the Institut für Höhere Studien in Vienna, where she worked from 1972. She became head of department for the Department of Political Science in 1979, and earned her Habilitation in 1986–87. From 1989 to 1993, she was Professor of political science, in particular women's studies, at the Free University of Berlin. She was Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Vienna from 1993, and became Professor there in 1995.
Go to Profile#294
Leila Farsakh
#46025
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Leila Farsakh is a Palestinian political economist who was born in Jordan and is a Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Boston. Her area of expertise is Middle East Politics, Comparative Politics, and the Politics of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Farsakh holds a MPhil from the University of Cambridge, UK and a PhD from the University of London .
Go to Profile#295
Karen Weaver
#22681
Overall Influence
Karen Weaver is an American psychologist and politician who was the mayor of Flint, Michigan, from 2015 to 2019. She was the first female mayor of the city and the 5th African-American to hold the office.
Go to Profile#296
Cheryl Harris
#12511
Overall Influence
Cheryl I. Harris is a critical race theorist and professor of civil rights and civil liberties at the UCLA School of Law. Harris is widely known for "Whiteness as Property", published in the June 1993 edition of the Harvard Law Review. In the paper, Harris describes the white racial identity and the value it confers in a slave society.
Go to Profile#297
Alison Brysk
#40245
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Alison Brysk is an American political scientist who holds the Mellichamp Chair in Global Governance, Global and International Studies, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in international Human Rights.
Go to Profile#298
Évelyne Pisier
#31134
Overall Influence
1941 - 2017 (76 years)
Évelyne Pisier was a French writer and political scientist. Biography Pisier was born in Hanoi on October 18, 1941. She was the daughter of a French senior civil servant, Georges Pisier , who was a Maurrassien supporter of the Vichy regime and was stationed in Hanoi. Pisier was interned for four years in a Japanese concentration camp after the Japanese invasion of French Indochina. She then moved to Nouméa, where her father was transferred and where her brother Gilles Pisier was born. Her parents subsequently separated, so Évelyne Pisier settled in Nice with her mother and her sister, future actress and director Marie-France Pisier.
Go to Profile#299
Rosemary Hollis
#42129
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Rosemary Hollis was a British political scientist. Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at City University London until her retirement in 2018, Hollis was known for her expertise and scholarship on the relations between the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States with the Middle East. She was formerly the Research Director at Chatham House .
Go to Profile#300
Kshama Sawant
#17612
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Kshama Sawant is an Indian-American politician and economist who has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014. She is a member of Socialist Alternative, the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
Go to Profile