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,
#351
Dominique Schnapper
#34478
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (91 years)
Dominique Schnapper was a member of the Constitutional Council of France from 2001 to 2010. She is also a scholar and professor of sociology. Her sociological studies have been largely historical and have ranged from inquiries into minorities and labour to others on citizenship and nations. She has been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Go to Profile#352
Kristen Monroe
#59669
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Kristen Renwick Monroe is an American political scientist, specializing in political psychology and ethics. Her work on altruism and moral choice is presented in a trilogy of award-winning books in which Monroe argues that our sense of self in relation to others sets and delineates the range of choice options we find available, not just morally but cognitively.
Go to Profile#353
Vivienne Jabri
#44764
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Vivienne Jabri is a British academic and writer. She is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Affiliations Groundzero: Conflitti globali ISA's International Political Sociology section, elected member of the executive committeeBritish International Studies Association Executive CommitteeChair, ISA's International Political Sociology section.
Go to Profile#354
Flávia Biroli
#94559
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Flávia Biroli is a Brazilian political scientist. She is the author of several books about democracy, gender, and the media. She is a professor of political science at the University of Brasília and a specialist in feminist political theory.
Go to Profile#355
Judy Feder
#79368
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Judith M. Feder is a Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University and was Dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute from 1999 through 2007; she is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Feder is also a Democratic policy consultant and served in the Clinton administration. She ran unsuccessfully in 2006 and 2008 for the United States House of Representatives to represent Virginia's 10th congressional district.
Go to Profile#356
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
#51400
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is an American scholar of religion and politics. She is professor of political science and religious studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Academic career Hurd was educated at Wesleyan University , Yale University , and Johns Hopkins University . She has taught at Northwestern University since 2002. Hurd is known for her work on Religion and politics in the United States, religion and Foreign policy of the United States, and religion and international relations. She also studies relations between the United States and the Middle East, particularly Turkey and Iran.
Go to Profile#357
Carol Graham
#52475
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Carol Graham is the Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a College Park professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor , and the author of numerous books, papers and edited volume chapters.
Go to Profile#358
Yassamine Mather
#84021
Overall Influence
Yassamine Mather is an Iranian scholar and political activist. She is the acting editor of Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory. Her research on Iran is within the framework of the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford where she works She is the chair of the Hands Off the People of Iran .
Go to Profile#359
Zoya Hasan
#76711
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Zoya Hasan is an Indian academic and political scientist. Education and career She was Professor of Political Science and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She served as a member of the National Commission for Minorities from 2006 to 2009. She has been a Visiting Professor to the Universities of Zurich, Edinburgh, and Maison des Sciences de L'Homme, Paris, and held fellowships at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Rockefeller Centre, Bellagio, and Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. She has worked on research ...
Go to Profile#360
Anna Grzymala
#66568
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Anna Maria Grzymala-Busse is an American political scientist. She is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the department of political science at Stanford University. She is also a senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of The Europe Center at Stanford University. Grzymala-Busse is known for her research on state development and transformation, religion and politics, political parties, informal political institutions, and post-communist politics. Previously, she was the Ronald Eileen Weiser Professor at University of Mic...
Go to Profile#361
Susan Herbst
#76113
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Susan Herbst is an American political scientist and academic administrator who served as the 15th president of the University of Connecticut. She was named president on December 20, 2010, and took office on June 1, 2011. She succeeded Michael J. Hogan and was the first woman to be selected as the University of Connecticut's president since the school's founding in 1881. In August of 2019, Herbst was succeeded by Thomas C. Katsouleas.
Go to Profile#362
Victoria Schuck
#81705
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Victoria Schuck was an American political scientist who was the president of Mount Vernon College from 1977 to 1983. As an expert on the political participation of women and women as political candidates, she contributed to the development of the study of women and politics as a subfield of political science. She also specialized in the state politics of New England, and the politics of South Vietnam. As one of the first 80 women to earn a PhD in political science, Schuck published extensively on the status of women in the profession. In total she published more than 80 articles or monographs, and co-edited several academic books.
Go to Profile#363
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden
#62725
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden is a French political scientist. She is the Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a senior researcher at the Institute for International Political Studies. Wihtol de Wenden specializes in migration studies. She is also an activist for the right to immigration in France.
Go to Profile#364
Etel Solingen
#50456
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Etel L. Solingen is a Distinguished Professor and the Thomas T. and Elizabeth C. Tierney Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California Irvine. She was President of the International Studies Association in 2012-2013 and received the 2018 William and Katherine Estes Award from the National Academy of Sciences; the 2022 Richard Holbrooke Prize from the American Academy in Berlin; the 2020 Susan Strange Professorship at the London School of Economics; and the 2019 Distinguished Scholar award in International Security from the International Studies Association.
Go to Profile#365
Nancy Hirschmann
#74553
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Nancy Joan Hirschmann is an American political scientist. She is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania where she specializes in the history of political thought, analytical philosophy, feminist theory, disability theory, and the intersection of political theory and public policy.
Go to Profile#366
Laura Rosenberger
#72695
Overall Influence
Laura Rosenberger is an American diplomat currently serving as Chair of the American Institute in Taiwan . She formerly served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for China and Taiwan at the National Security Council in the Biden administration.
Go to Profile#367
Elizabeth G. Ferris
#94985
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Elizabeth G. Ferris is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and serves as the co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement. In addition to her positions within the Brookings Institution, Ferris is an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She is also a commissioner of the Women's Refugee Commission, a distinguished author and a lifelong humanitarian.
Go to Profile#368
Sylvia Bashevkin
#78076
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Sylvia Beth Bashevkin, is Canadian academic and writer known for her research in the field of women and politics. Career Bashevkin is a professor in the Department of Political Science in the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science. From 2005 to 2011, she was Principal of University College, Toronto. She is a senior fellow of Massey College, Toronto.
Go to Profile#369
Frances E. Lee
#71089
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Frances E. Lee, an American political scientist, is currently a professor of politics and public affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She previously taught at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Maryland, College Park. Lee specializes in American politics focusing on the U.S. Congress. From 2014 to 2019, Lee was co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly and is the first editor of Cambridge University Press's American Politics Elements Series. Her 2009 book Beyond Ideology has been cited over 600 times in the political science literature.
Go to Profile#370
Laurie S. Fulton
#27185
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Laurie Susan Fulton is an American attorney, diplomat and the former United States Ambassador to Denmark. She was sworn in on July 15, 2009, and presented her credentials to the Queen of Denmark on August 3, 2009. She resigned effective February 15, 2013. In March 2013, she returned to Williams & Connolly LLP until July 2014.
Go to Profile#371
Janine A. Davidson
#55595
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Janine Anne Davidson is an American public servant, known for expertise on topics such as military operations, U.S. foreign policy and national security policy as well as higher education leadership.
Go to Profile#372
Donna Lee Bowen
#71823
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Donna Lee Bowen is an American political scientist who specializes in studies of family policy in the Middle East. She is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University where she is also an affiliated faculty member of the Women's Studies Program.
Go to Profile#373
Samina Yasmeen
#49979
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Samina Yasmeen is an Australian–Pakistani author and intellectual who is known for her work in political and strategic development in South Asia and the role of Islam in world politics. She has published articles on the position of Pakistani and Middle Eastern women, the role of Muslims in Australia, and India–Pakistan relations.
Go to Profile#374
Deborah Birx
#30642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Deborah Leah Birx is an American physician and diplomat who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021. Birx specializes in HIV/AIDS immunology, vaccine research, and global health. Starting in 2014, she oversaw the implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program to support HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in 65 countries. From 2014-2020, Birx was the United States global AIDS coordinator for presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and served as the United States special representative for global health diplomacy between 2015 and 2021.
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Lisa Hill
#55421
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Lisa Hill is Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has previously held positions at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. Hill's research interests include electoral law, Australian politics, history of political thought, social, political and economic thought of the Scottish Enlightenment, the development and pre-history of liberalism, classical political economy, political corruption, and classical Stoicism. She is particularly known for her work in support of compulsory voting. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sc...
Go to Profile#376
Barbara Kellerman
#39135
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Barbara Kellerman is an American professor of public leadership, currently at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Previously, she was a professor at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, and Uppsala universities and Dartmouth College. She was one of the founders of the International Leadership Association.
Go to Profile#377
Bina D'Costa
#73663
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Bina D'Costa is an Australian-Bangladeshi academic who specializes in conflict and gender studies in South Asia. Career D'Costa was at the Global Justice Center in New York City in 2008. D'Costa was a professor of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs of the Australian National University. She was a visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva from 2012 to 2014. She was a visiting scholar at the Refugee Studies Centre under Department of International Development of University of Oxford from 2011 to 2012. She served as the Asia Rapporteur of Asia-Europe Meeting in 2017.
Go to Profile#378
Leah Stokes
#65266
Overall Influence
Leah Cardamore Stokes is a Canadian-American political scientist specializing in environmental policy. She is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition, Stokes is a senior policy consultant at Evergreen Action and Rewiring America. She also hosts the climate change podcast A Matter of Degrees. Her research focuses on political behavior, public opinion, and the politics of energy and environmental policy in the United States.
Go to Profile#379
Karen Mossberger
#69260
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Karen Mossberger is an American political scientist and scholar of public policy and public administration. She is the Frank and June Sackton Professor of Urban Policy at Arizona State University, where she is also Director of the School of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Sustainability Scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. She is an expert on the diffusion and implementation of policy ideas, with a particular focus on the politics of internet access in the United States.
Go to Profile#380
Eunice Reddick
#58491
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Eunice Sharon Reddick is an American diplomat and is a former ambassador to Niger. She previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe. Biography Reddick graduated from Hunter College High School in New York City in 1969 and received a BA in history and literature from New York University and a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs . After completing her graduate studies, Reddick worked for several years at the Africa-America Institute in New York and Washington.
Go to Profile#381
Joan Tronto
#8134
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Joan Claire Tronto , is professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, and was previously professor of women's studies and political science at Hunter College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.
Go to Profile#382
Jan Knippers Black
#71226
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Jan Knippers Black was an American professor of Human Rights, International and Comparative Politics of the Western Hemisphere, Women's Rights, and Globalization at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Go to Profile#383
Sara Hobolt
#71233
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Sara Binzer Hobolt, FBA is a Danish political scientist, who specialises in European politics and electoral behaviour. She holds the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Go to Profile#384
Martha Ackelsberg
#54733
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Martha A. Ackelsberg is an American political scientist and women's studies scholar. Her work focuses on the nature of power and its relationship with communities. Cases used in her research include feminist activism in the United States and the Mujeres Libres, an anti-fascist women's organization during the Spanish Revolution of 1936.
Go to Profile#385
Frances McCall Rosenbluth
#90249
Overall Influence
1958 - 2021 (63 years)
Frances McCall Rosenbluth was an American political scientist. She was the Damon Wells Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She was a comparative political economist, specializing in the political economy of Japan, the role of gender in political economy, inequality, and party politics. She had previously served as the deputy provost of Yale University, while being an executive board member at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. She was also the Vice-President of International Affairs at Waseda's School of Political Science and Economics.
Go to Profile#386
Ines Mergel
#45247
Overall Influence
Ines Mergel is a full professor of public administration in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She was previously on the public administration faculty at The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, where she earned tenure as an associate professor of public administration and international affairs. Mergel is an expert in social media and teaches courses in agile government, digital government, and social media in the public sector.
Go to Profile#387
Hanan Ashrawi
#52910
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi is a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar. Ashrawi began her career at Birzeit University. Beginning in the 1990s, Ashrawi was a member of the PLO's Leadership Committee, serving as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991. In 1996, Ashrawi was appointed as the Palestinian Authority Minister of Higher Education and Research. Ashrawi was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem in 1996 and was re-elected in 2006. She was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 2009 and 2018, becoming the body's first female member.
Go to Profile#388
Katharine Moon
#73955
Overall Influence
Katharine H. S. Moon is an American academic. Moon is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College. She is also the inaugural holder of the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for East Asia Policy Studies.
Go to Profile#389
Janine Brodie
#78979
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Marion Janine Brodie is a Canadian political scientist. She is a Distinguished University Professor and a Canada Research Chair in Political Economy and Social Governance at the University of Alberta. Brodie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and honoured with the Order of Canada in 2017.
Go to Profile#390
Liu Yu
#32442
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Liu Yu is a Chinese writer and political scientist. She is an associate professor of political science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. A prominent spokeswoman for Chinese liberalism, Liu's book , an introduction of the workings of American democracy to a Chinese audience, was acclaimed as a creative and well-written cornerstone of the ideological movement.
Go to Profile#391
Nancy Halliday Ely-Raphel
#42904
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Nancy Halliday Ely-Raphel is an American diplomat. She was the United States Ambassador to Slovenia from 1998 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, she was the first Director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Go to Profile#392
Isabell Lorey
#61415
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Isabell Lorey is a political theorist at the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies and professor at the Institute for Political Science at the University of Kassel. Education In 1996, Lorey graduated from the University of Tübingen. Her dissertation, which focused on subjectivity construction in the philosophy of Judith Butler as well as its political and theoretical implications for feminist theory, later became her first book.
Go to Profile#393
Margaret Weir
#64796
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Margaret M. Weir is an American political scientist and sociologist, best known for her work on social policy and the politics of poverty in the United States, particularly at the levels of state and local government.
Go to Profile#394
Jennifer Clapp
#80349
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Jennifer Ann Clapp is a Canadian political economist. She is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Education Clapp earned her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Michigan and her master's degree and PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#395
Kang-i Sun Chang
#30370
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Kang-i Sun Chang , is a Chinese-born American sinologist. She is a scholar of classical Chinese literature. She is the inaugural Malcolm G. Chace Professor, and former chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.
Go to Profile#396
Shelley H. Metzenbaum
#66735
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Shelley Hope Metzenbaum is an American nonprofit executive, academic, and former government official specializing in public sector performance management. She was the founding president of the Volcker Alliance and worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration. Metzenbaum is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Go to Profile#397
Kyrsten Sinema
#41588
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Kyrsten Lea Sinema is an American politician and former social worker serving as the senior United States senator from Arizona, a seat she has held since 2019. A former member of the Democratic Party, Sinema became an independent in December 2022.
Go to Profile#398
Flora Botton
#33118
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (92 years)
Flora Botton Beja is a Mexican sinologist and gender studies scholar. She was born in Greece, but acquired Spanish nationality through her parents and naturalized as Mexican after her arrival in Mexico in 1949. She was a co-founder of the gender studies and a pioneer of Oriental studies programs at El Colegio de México. She was one of the first academics to focus on China in Mexico and Latin America. Her works have widely been influential in the region and she was one of the founders of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios de Asia y África .
Go to Profile#399
Catherine McArdle Kelleher
#66391
Overall Influence
1939 - 2023 (84 years)
Catherine McArdle Kelleher was an American political scientist involved in national and international security policy. She was Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and College Park Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Kelleher was the Director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin from 1998 to 2001 when she was appointed Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College . In the 1990s she was appointed Honorarprofessor at the Free University of Berlin, and she regularly taught at the Geneva Center for Security Policy in Switzerland f...
Go to Profile#400
Leontine T. Kelly
#32681
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Leontine Turpeau Current Kelly was an American bishop of the United Methodist Church. She was the second woman elevated to the position of bishop within the United Methodist Church, and the first African American woman.
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