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 people in Political Science,
#501
Robert I. Rotberg
#15839
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Robert Irwin Rotberg is an academic from the United States who served as President of the World Peace Foundation . A professor in governance and foreign affairs, he was director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government , and has served in administrative positions at Tufts University and Lafayette College.
Go to Profile#502
Randolph L. Braham
#11503
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Randolph Lewis Braham was an American historian and political scientist, born in Romania, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the City College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A specialist in comparative politics and the Holocaust, he was a founding board member of the academic committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , Washington, D.C., and founded The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center in 1979.
Go to Profile#503
Alger Hiss
#8101
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.
Go to Profile#504
Joseph W. Westphal
#17787
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Joseph William Westphal is an American politician and diplomat who was most recently the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He served as the 30th United States Under Secretary of the Army from 2009 to 2014.
Go to Profile#505
Meredith Jung-En Woo
#15304
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Meredith Jung-En Woo is an American academic and author. She is a Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. She served as President of Sweet Briar College, and is the former director of the International Higher Education Support Program at the Open Society Foundation in London. She also served as the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Go to Profile#506
Chris Daggett
#8529
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Christopher Jarvis Daggett is an American businessman who is the president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, one of the largest foundations in New Jersey. A former regional administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, he ran as an independent candidate for Governor of New Jersey in 2009, garnering 5.8% of the vote.
Go to Profile#507
Ilvo Diamanti
#12065
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ilvo Diamanti is an Italian political scientist. Biography Ilvo Diamanti graduated from the University of Padua with a degree in Political Science, and completed his Doctorate in Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento. He was an assistant professor in methodology of social research in the Faculty of Statistics at the University of Padua and associate professor of Political Sociology at the University of Urbino "Carlo Bo".
Go to Profile#508
Robert Pastor
#17823
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Robert Alan Pastor was a member of the National Security Council staff and a writer on foreign affairs. Education Pastor earned his bachelor's degree in history from Lafayette College and a Masters of Public Administration and Policy , with a concentration in International Economics from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also holds a PhD from Harvard in the field of political science. He served in the US Peace Corps in Malaysia where he learned Malay/Indonesian. He also was a Fulbright Professor at El Colegio de México in Mexico where he taught courses on U.S....
Go to Profile#509
Géraldine Muhlmann
#10265
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Géraldine Muhlmann is a French political scientist and political journalist. She is a former host of the France 5 program C politique . Education and positions Muhlmann received the 1er accessit in the philosophy concours général in 1989.
Go to Profile#510
Richard Ned Lebow
#12893
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Richard Ned Lebow is an American political scientist best known for his work in international relations, political psychology, classics and philosophy of science. He is Professor of International Political Theory at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and James O. Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College. Lebow also writes fiction. He has published a novel and collection of short stories and has recently finished a second novel.
Go to Profile#511
Terry M. Moe
#14654
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Terry M. Moe is a professor of political science at Stanford University, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Moe is a political scientist, an education scholar, and a bestselling author. He has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. At Stanford, he holds an endowed professorship of political science called the William Bennett Munro professorship.
Go to Profile#512
Robert E. Goodin
#11795
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#513
Patrick Bond
#16404
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Patrick Bond is Distinguished Professor at the University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology, where he directs the Centre for Social Change. From 2020-21 he was professor at the University of the Western Cape School of Government and from 2015-19, distinguished professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand Wits School of Governance. Before that, from 2004, he was senior professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he directed the Centre for Civil Society. His research interests include political economy, environment, social policy, and geopolitics.
Go to Profile#514
Claude Longchamp
#38109
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Claude Longchamp is a Swiss historian and political scientist . He is a prominent political analyst for Swiss national television and radio, and he is the main figure behind the research institute gfs.berne, which conducts both the main pre- and post-vote polls and projections of national votes in Switzerland.
Go to Profile#515
Rogers Smith
#18977
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#516
Wendy Brown
#6141
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#517
Robert Dallek
#6453
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He retired as a history professor at Boston University in 2004 and previously taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles , and Oxford University. He won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
Go to Profile#518
Johannes Agnoli
#16679
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Johannes Agnoli was an Italian Marxist political scientist, though he rejected the label Marxist, preferring instead - somewhat ironically - to call himself an Agnolist. Biography Agnoli grew up in Belluno, northern Italy. As a pupil, he became an admirer of Benito Mussolini's fascism and a member of the fascist youth organization, because this was considered a type of rebellion or non-bourgeois behavior. Graduating from school in 1943, he then volunteered for the Wehrmacht, the German military, and was sent to Yugoslavia to combat Partisans. In May 1945 he was captured by the British near Trieste and became a prisoner of war in the Moascar camp in Egypt.
Go to Profile#519
Roderic Ai Camp
#13676
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Roderic Ai Camp is an American academic specialized in Mexican studies. He is a frequent consultant to international media including the BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and was once a contributing editor to Microsoft Encarta.
Go to Profile#520
Abdullah Gül
#14930
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Abdullah Gül is a Turkish politician who served as the 11th President of Turkey, in office from 2007 to 2014. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2003, and concurrently served as both Deputy Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister between 2003 and 2007. He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank.
Go to Profile#521
David Apter
#12962
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
David Ernest Apter was an American political scientist and sociologist. He was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University.
Go to Profile#522
Minxin Pei
#14235
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Minxin Pei is a Chinese-American political scientist and opinion columnist, who is the editor of the China Leadership Monitor. He is a specialist on governance in China, U.S.–East Asia relations, as well as democratization in developing nations. He is currently the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College and is a non-resident senior fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He was formerly a senior associate with the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Go to Profile#523
Michael Ignatieff
#13782
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. Most recently, he was rector and President of Central European University; he held this position from 2016 until July 2021.
Go to Profile#524
Charlie Cook
#13674
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Charles Edward Cook Jr. is an American political analyst who specializes in election forecasts and political trends. Cook writes election forecasts and rankings in the publication he founded, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, and in other media. He is a political analyst for the National Journal and since 1994 with NBC. Cook writes two columns for National Journal, "The Cook Report" for the main publication and "Off to the Races" for the online National Journal Congress Daily. Since the 1984 US presidential election, Cook has provided election night commentary for various television...
Go to Profile#525
John Gray
#3199
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
John Nicholas Gray is an English political philosopher and author with interests in analytic philosophy, the history of ideas, and philosophical pessimism. He retired in 2008 as School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gray contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman, where he is the lead book reviewer. He is an atheist.
Go to Profile#526
Peter Feaver
#12429
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Peter Douglas Feaver is an American professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and a civil-military relations scholar. Feaver has served as director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies since 1999, and founded Duke University's Program in American Grand Strategy. He served in the George W. Bush administration, where he served as a special advisor for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council. Prior to working on the National Security Council of George W. Bush, he served as director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.
Go to Profile#527
Lara Brown
#13669
Overall Influence
Lara M. Brown is an American political scientist who served as director of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University between 2016 and 2022. Early life and education Brown was born and brought up in California. She obtained a BA, MA and PhD in political sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles. Subsequently she also obtained an MA in American politics and public policy from the University of Arizona.
Go to Profile#528
Clark Clifford
#13264
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Clark McAdams Clifford was an American lawyer who served as an important political adviser to Democratic presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Jimmy Carter. His official government positions were White House Counsel , Chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board , and Secretary of Defense ; Clifford was also influential in his role as an unofficial, informal presidential adviser in various issues. A successful Washington, D.C., lawyer, he was known for his elite clientele, charming manners, and impeccable suits.
Go to Profile#529
Marvin Kalb
#10670
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Marvin Leonard Kalb is an American journalist. He was the founding director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Edward R. Murrow Professor of Press and Public Policy from 1987 to 1999. The Shorenstein Center and the Kennedy School are part of Harvard University. Kalb is currently a James Clark Welling Fellow at George Washington University and a member of the Atlantic Community Advisory Board. He is a guest scholar in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
Go to Profile#530
Mark B. Rosenberg
#9729
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Mark B. Rosenberg is a professor and former university administrator who served as the president of Florida International University from August 2009 until January 2022 and former Chancellor of the State University System of Florida. He is member of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank and has testified before the United States Congress numerous times. He also served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Rosenberg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with Omicron Delta Kappa honors in 1971 from Miami University in Ohio.
Go to Profile#531
Hugh Heclo
#24559
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Hugh Heclo was born in Marion, Ohio. After receiving a Bachelor of Art's degree from George Washington University in 1965, he went on to receive an M.A. from Manchester University in 1967, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1970. Heclo was a Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, in the United States from 1987 until retirement in 2014. He was previously a professor of government at Harvard University and George Washington University in the 1980s. He operated Ashcroft Farms, a Christmas tree farm outside Winchester, Virginia.
Go to Profile#532
George Shire
#20383
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
George Shire is a Zimbabwean who lives in London in the United Kingdom. He is a veteran of the war to liberate Rhodesia from white minority rule. He has written newspaper articles and participated in television and radio programs defending the actions of Robert Mugabe's government.
Go to Profile#533
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
#11127
Overall Influence
1927 - 2003 (76 years)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an American politician and diplomat. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 after serving as an adviser to President Richard Nixon.
Go to Profile#534
Richard Rose
#20079
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Richard Rose is an American political scientist who has been a professor of politics in Scotland since 1966. His research has included the Northern Ireland conflict, enlargement of the European Union, democratisation, policy transfer, elections and voting.
Go to Profile#535
Edward Luck
#20296
Overall Influence
1948 - 2021 (73 years)
Edward C. Luck was an American professor, author, and expert in international relations. He served as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect between 2008 and 2012, appointed at the Assistant Secretary-General level. He was replaced by Jennifer Welsh of Canada. Previously he was Vice President of the International Peace Institute as well as the director of the Center on International Organization of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He also served as Dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego between 2012 and 2013.
Go to Profile#536
Maurice Papon
#11122
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Maurice Papon was a French civil servant and Nazi collaborator who was convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the occupation of France. Papon led the police in major prefectures from the 1930s to the 1960s, before he became a Gaullist politician. When he was secretary general for the police in Bordeaux during World War II, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews. He is also known for his activities in the Algerian War , during which he tortured insurgent prisoners as prefect of the Constantinois department, and ordered, as prefect of the Paris police, the dea...
Go to Profile#537
Barry Rubin
#17331
Overall Influence
1950 - 2014 (64 years)
Barry M. Rubin was an American-born Israeli writer and academic on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs. Career Rubin was the director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs and a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. He was the editor of the GLORIA center website. The GLORIA center has since been renamed to the Rubin Center in his honor. He was also editor of the journal Turkish Studies.
Go to Profile#538
Alan Wolfe
#5097
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Alan Wolfe is an American political scientist and a sociologist on the faculty of Boston College who serves as director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation in partnership with Yale University Press and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, "dedicated to research and education aimed at renewing and sustaining the historic vision of American democracy".
Go to Profile#539
Wolfgang Drechsler
#12233
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Wolfgang Drechsler is a Public Administration and Management, Innovation Policy and Political Philosophy scholar. He is Professor of Governance, and one of the founders and directors of the Technology Governance program, at the Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia, where between 2010 and 2016 he also served as Vice Dean for International Relations at its Faculty of Social Sciences. Since 2017, he is also affiliated with Harvard University, as a Davis Center Associate and for six years a member of the center’s Advisory Board, and since 2019, with University College London, where ...
Go to Profile#540
Giandomenico Majone
#26515
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Giandomenico Majone was an Italian scholar of political science whose expertise was regulatory governance within the European Union as well as theories of delegation and their effect on the perceived democratic deficit of the EU. He was an Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Go to Profile#541
Dinesh D'Souza
#3198
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Dinesh Joseph D'Souza is an Indian-American right-wing political commentator, author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. He has written over a dozen books, several of them New York Times best-sellers.
Go to Profile#542
Yezid Sayigh
#20429
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Yezid Sayigh is a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. Previously, he was a professor of Middle East Studies at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, a member of the Academic Board of the Gulf Research Center, and a member of the board of trustees of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research . From 1994 to 2003, he was the assistant director of studies at the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University. Sayigh also headed the Middle East Research Programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London from 1998 to 2003.
Go to Profile#543
Elizabeth J. Perry
#25896
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Elizabeth J. Perry, FBA is an American scholar of Chinese politics and history at Harvard University, where she is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served as Director of Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research from 1999 to 2003 and as president of the Association for Asian Studies in 2007.
Go to Profile#544
Pierre-André Taguieff
#5991
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Pierre-André Taguieff is a French philosopher who has specialised in the study of racism and antisemitism. He is the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in an Institut d'études politiques de Paris laboratory, the Centre for Political Research . He is also a member of the Cercle de l'Oratoire think tank.
Go to Profile#545
Alexander J. Motyl
#18524
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#546
Ronald Grigor Suny
#9290
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Ronald Grigor Suny is an American historian and political scientist. Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan and served as director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, 2009 to 2012 and was the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2015, and is Emeritus Professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#547
Eliz Sanasarian
#22939
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Eliz Sanasarian is an Iranian-American professor of political science at the University of Southern California. She is best known for her expertise and books on ethnic politics and feminism, particularly regarding the Middle East and Iran. Sanasarian joined the faculty in 1985.
Go to Profile#548
Carol M. Swain
#12124
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Carol Miller Swain is an American political scientist and legal scholar who is a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. A frequent television analyst, she is the author and editor of several books. Her interests include race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution.
Go to Profile#549
Nadiya Svitlychna
#36480
Overall Influence
1936 - 2006 (70 years)
Nadiya Oleksiyivna Svitlychna was a Ukrainian dissident and human rights activist, and an active member of the Ukrainian Helsinki group. She was a writer and editor and for a time was a political prisoner of the Soviet regime.
Go to Profile#550
Ivo Daalder
#21602
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Ivo H. Daalder , is President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and has served since July, 2013. He was the U.S. Permanent Representative on the Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from May 2009 to July 2013. He is a specialist in European security. He was a member of the staff of United States National Security Council during the administration of President Bill Clinton, and was one of the foreign policy advisers to President Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.
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