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,
#551
Chee Soon Juan
#17097
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Chee Soon Juan is a Singaporean politician, activist and former lecturer who has been appointed as Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party since 1993. Prior to entering politics in 1992, upon Chiam See Tong's invitation to join the Singapore Democratic Party , Chee was a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Chee subsequently succeeded Chiam as the party's secretary-general after Chiam, whom Chee and the rest of the party's leadership have had a number of disagreements, left the party. The party had three Members of Parliament at the time Chee took over as secretary-g...
Go to Profile#552
Jonathan Hopkin
#16485
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Jonathan Hopkin is Professor in the European Institute and the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence, and lectured at the Universities of Bradford, Durham and Birmingham, joining LSE in 2004. He teaches comparative politics and political economy, and has published in the areas of political parties and elections, political economy, inequality and welfare states.
Go to Profile#553
Shanto Iyengar
#20675
Overall Influence
Shanto Iyengar is an American political scientist and professor of political science at Stanford University. He is also the Harry & Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford, the director of Stanford's Political Communication Lab, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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David Butler
#12693
Overall Influence
1924 - 2022 (98 years)
Sir David Edgeworth Butler, was an English political scientist who specialised in psephology, the study of elections. He has been described as "the father of modern election science." Early life Born in London, Butler was the son of Harold Edgeworth Butler, Professor of Latin at University College, London by his wife, Margaret, née Pollard. Through his mother, he was the grandson of the historian A. F. Pollard. The politician R. A. Butler was a second cousin.
Go to Profile#555
Francis M. Wilhoit
#26950
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Francis "Frank" Marion Wilhoit was an American political scientist and author, who was the Thomas F. Sheehan Professor of Political Science at Drake University. Early life and education Wilhoit was born in 1920 in North Carolina. He attended Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree, a master in public affairs, and a PhD in Political Science. He was friends with Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski in college.
Go to Profile#556
Raymond Suttner
#18306
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Raymond Suttner is South African activist, academic, journalist and public figure. Education and activism Suttner was born in Durban, South Africa. He obtained BA and LLB degrees from the University of Cape Town and an inter-disciplinary doctorate from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
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Grayson L. Kirk
#9060
Overall Influence
1903 - 1997 (94 years)
Grayson Louis Kirk was an American political scientist who served as president of Columbia University during the Columbia University protests of 1968. He was also an advisor to the State Department and instrumental in the formation of the United Nations.
Go to Profile#558
Bernard Cecil Cohen
#25565
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Bernard Cecil Cohen is an American political scientist and educator who was acting Chancellor of University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1987. Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, Cohen received his bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees in political science from Yale University. Cohen became an original member of Princeton University's Center of International Studies and taught at Princeton from 1951 to 1959. Then, in 1959, Cohen taught at University of Wisconsin–Madison. He became chair of the political science department, dean of the graduate school, and then vice chancellor. In 1987, Cohen was acting chancellor of University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#559
Avner Cohen
#13963
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Avner Cohen is an Israeli writer, historian, and professor. He is well known for his works on Israel's nuclear history and strategic policy. He is currently a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and the Director of the Education Program and Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Go to Profile#560
Michael Mandelbaum
#11026
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Michael Mandelbaum is a professor and director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He has written a number of books on American foreign policy and edited a dozen more.
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Frank Schimmelfennig
#22778
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Frank Schimmelfennig is a professor of European politics at the Center for Comparative and International Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Academic career Frank Schimmelfennig obtained his PhD in political science from the University of Tübingen, Germany in 1995, during which time he was employed as a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science. During his studies, Schimmelfennig had research stays in Dijon, France and at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#562
Andrew Linklater
#11738
Overall Influence
1949 - 2023 (74 years)
Andrew Linklater FAcSS was a British international relations academic, and Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. In 2000, he was featured as one of the fifty thinkers in Martin Griffith's Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations.
Go to Profile#563
Amy Zegart
#22432
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Amy Zegart is an American political scientist currently serving as the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies , and professor of political science at Stanford University. She is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic. From 2013 to 2018, she served as co-director of FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation and founder and co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Program.
Go to Profile#564
David Stasavage
#15362
Overall Influence
David Stasavage is an American political scientist. Stasavage attended a bachelor's degree at Cornell University in 1989, then obtained his doctorate from Harvard University in 1995. He subsequently went to Europe, working successively for the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Centre for the Study of African Economies, and the Bank of England. Stasavage began teaching as a faculty associate within the London School of Economics in 1999. By 2005, his final year at the LSE, Stasavage had acquired the rank of reader. Stasavage returned to the United States in 2006, as an associate professor at New York University.
Go to Profile#565
Steven Weber
#14618
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Steven Weber is a professor at the School of Information and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. After studying history and international development at Washington University in St. Louis, he received an M.D. and a Ph.D in political science from Stanford University.
Go to Profile#566
Samuel Finer
#21972
Overall Influence
1915 - 1993 (78 years)
Samuel Edward Finer FBA was a British political scientist and historian specializing in comparative politics, who was instrumental in advancing political studies as an academic subject in the United Kingdom, pioneering the study of UK political institutions. His most notable work is The History of Government from the Earliest Times – a three-volume comparative analysis of all significant government systems. He was also a major contributor to the study of civil–military relations with the publication of his book, The Man on Horseback.
Go to Profile#567
Samuel Beer
#16862
Overall Influence
1911 - 2009 (98 years)
Samuel Hutchison Beer was an American political scientist who specialized in the government and politics of the United Kingdom. He was a longtime professor at Harvard University and served as president of the Americans for Democratic Action in the early 1960s.
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Meghan O'Sullivan
#21896
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Meghan L. O'Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Raytheon, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.
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Michael Green
#17885
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Michael Jonathan Green is an American Japanologist currently serving as CEO of the United States Studies Centre. Green previously served as senior vice president for Asia, Japan Chair, and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies , as well as Director of Asian Studies and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Georgetown University. He served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council from January 2004 to December 2005 under George W.
Go to Profile#570
Caspar Weinberger
#11495
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Caspar Willard Weinberger was an American politician and businessman. As a Republican, he served in a variety of state and federal positions for three decades, most notably as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 1981 to November 1987.
Go to Profile#571
J. David Singer
#14642
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
J. David Singer was an American professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Singer was a pioneer in the application of quantitative methods to puzzles in the field of international relations. His major contribution was the Correlates of War project, which he began in 1964 at the University of Michigan. It is a major database of statistics relating to war and its causes.
Go to Profile#572
Martin Shaw
#15101
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Martin Shaw is a British sociologist and academic. He is a research professor of international relations at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, emeritus professor of international relations and politics at Sussex University and a professorial fellow in international relations and human rights at Roehampton University. He is best known for his sociological work on war, genocide and global politics.
Go to Profile#573
Austin Sarat
#7401
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Austin Sarat is an American political scientist who is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also a Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor. He has written, co-written, or edited more than fifty books in the fields of law and political science. Professor Sarat received a B.A. from Providence College in 1969, and both an M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970 and 1973, respectively. He also received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1988.
Go to Profile#574
Bruce Russett
#25272
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Bruce Martin Russett was Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science and Professor in International and Area Studies, MacMillan Center, Yale University, and edited the Journal of Conflict Resolution from 1972 to 2009.
Go to Profile#575
Abigail Thernstrom
#8983
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Abigail Thernstrom was an American political scientist and a leading conservative scholar on race relations, voting rights and education. She was an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and vice chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 1975. According to the New York Times, she and her husband Harvard Professor Stephan Thernstrom, "are much in demand on the conservative talk-show circuit,...
Go to Profile#576
Yuen Yuen Ang
#15427
Overall Influence
Yuen Yuen Ang is a Singaporean-American professor of political science and the author of two books: How China Escaped the Poverty Trap , named one of the "Best Books of 2017" by Foreign Affairs, and China's Gilded Age . She is the Alfred Chandler Chair of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#577
Akihiko Tanaka
#18232
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Akihiko Tanaka is the current president of Japan International Cooperation Agency since 1 April 2022, succeeding Shinichi Kitaoka. He is a Japanese academic, specializing in theories of international systems, contemporary international relations in East Asia, Japan-US relations, and Japan-China relations. He is also an author, policy adviser, a media commentator, an administrator, and was president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
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Paul Manafort
#9639
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Paul John Manafort Jr. is an American lobbyist, political consultant, attorney, and convicted felon. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served as an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he co-founded the Washington, D.C.–based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr. and Roger J. Stone, joined by Peter G. Kelly in 1984. Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign leaders ...
Go to Profile#579
Klaus von Beyme
#27171
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Klaus Gustav Heinrich von Beyme was a German political scientist who was professor of political science emeritus at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. Education Beyme was born on 3 July 1934 in Saarau, Germany. Following the German Abitur in Celle in 1954, from 1954 to 1956 Beyme initially began his studies towards a career as a publisher. Thereafter, from 1956 to 1961, he studied Political Science, History, History of Art and Sociology at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Munich, Paris and Moscow. The unusual choice of Moscow as a place of study was made, based on interest and on Beyme's personal history.
Go to Profile#580
James Rubin
#13165
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
James Phillip Rubin is an American former diplomat and journalist who served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in the Clinton Administration from 1997–2000. He wrote a regular column on foreign affairs for The Sunday Times of London, and is currently Diplomatic Counselor to the newly elected Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .
Go to Profile#581
Hossein Bashiriyeh
#11110
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Hossein Bashiriyeh, is an Iranian scholar in political theory and political sociology, who was born in 1953 in Hamedan, Iran. Bashiriyeh has been described as the "Father of political sociology in Iran", and was a prominent academic figure influencing the Iranian reform movement.
Go to Profile#582
Charles Lipson
#27531
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Charles H. Lipson is an American political scientist who is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago. His areas of specialization include international relations, international political economy and modern international history.
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Mike Davis
#6008
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Michael Ryan Davis was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism .
Go to Profile#584
Bolaji Akinyemi
#26714
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi is a Nigerian professor of political science who was Nigeria External Affairs Minister from 1985 to late 1987. He is the chairman of the National Think Tank. Early life, academic career, and personal life Akinyemi was born in Ilesa, in what is now Osun State. He attended Igbobi College in Yaba from 1955 until 1959, Christ's School Ado Ekiti from 1960 to 1961, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, from 1962 to 1964, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, US, 1964 to 1966, and Trinity College, Oxford, Eng...
Go to Profile#585
S. Laurel Weldon
#17795
Overall Influence
#586
Sarah Sewall
#15563
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Sarah Sewall is Executive Vice President for Policy at In-Q-Tel, a strategic investor for the national security community. A national security expert whose career spans government service and academia, she most recently served as Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, where she was the key architect of the Obama Administration's preventive approach to combatting violent extremism abroad. At both the Pentagon and State Department, she built and led organizations that integrated security and human rights in their policy and operational work. She spent ten y...
Go to Profile#587
Helen Milner
#20516
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Helen V. Milner is an American political scientist and the B. C. Forbes Professor of Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she is also the Director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. She has written extensively on issues related to international political economy like international trade, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, globalization and regionalism, and the relationship between democracy and trade policy.
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Yossi Shain
#23571
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Yossi Shain was a member of the Knesset for Yisrael Beiteinu. He is also the Romulo Betancourt Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University where he also serves as head of TAU's School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs, head of the Abba Eban Graduate Studies Program in Diplomacy and director of the Frances Brody Institute for Applied Diplomacy. He is also a full professor of comparative government and diaspora politics at Georgetown University, and the founding director of the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown. In 2007, he also served as president of Western Galilee College.
Go to Profile#589
Volker Perthes
#24992
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Volker Perthes is a German political scientist, academic and writer. Apart from his focus on research, writing and teaching about the Middle East, he was director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs . From 2021 to 2023, he served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Sudan and Head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan .
Go to Profile#590
John Campbell
#12545
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
John Campbell is a British political writer and biographer. He was educated at Charterhouse and the University of Edinburgh from where he gained a Ph.D. in politics in 1975. His works include biographies of Lloyd George, F. E. Smith, Aneurin Bevan, Roy Jenkins, Edward Heath, and Margaret Thatcher, the last consisting of two volumes, The Grocer's Daughter and The Iron Lady . A one-volume abridgment prepared by David Freeman , entitled The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, From Grocer's Daughter to Prime Minister, was published in 2009 and reissued in paperback in 2011. He was awarded the NCR Bo...
Go to Profile#591
Neve Gordon
#17008
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Neve Gordon is an Israeli professor and academic. He is a professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London and writes on issues relating to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and human rights. He used to teach at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A member of Academia for Equality, an organization working to promote democratization, equality and access to higher education for all communities living in Israel.
Go to Profile#592
Andrew Moravcsik
#23525
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Andrew Maitland Moravcsik is professor of politics and international affairs, director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, and founding director of both the European Union Program and the International Relations Faculty Colloquium at Princeton University. He holds a lifetime appointment as distinguished affiliated professor at the Technische Universität München, in Munich, Germany, where he is affiliated with its Hochschule für Politik.
Go to Profile#593
Barbara Geddes
#24175
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Barbara Geddes is an American political scientist. One of the main important theorists of authoritarianism and empirical catalogers of authoritarian regimes, she is currently a full professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her 2003 book Paradigms and Sand Castles is an influential research design book in comparative politics.
Go to Profile#594
Rein Taagepera
#12520
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Rein Taagepera is an Estonian political scientist and former politician. Education Born in Tartu, Estonia, Taagepera fled from Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1944. Taagepera graduated from high school in Marrakech, Morocco, and then studied physics in Canada and the United States. He received a B.A. Sc in 1959 and a M.A. in 1961 from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 1965. Working in industry until 1970, he received another M.A. in international relations in 1969 and moved to academia as a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, where he stayed for his entire American career.
Go to Profile#595
Oliver Stuenkel
#21865
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Oliver Stuenkel is a German-Brazilian political scientist, writer and Associate Professor at FGV's School of International Relations in São Paulo, Brazil. In addition to several books written on emerging powers and global politics — such as BRICS and the Future of Global Order and Post-Western World , he is a columnist for EL PAÍS and Americas Quarterly and a frequent commentator in the national and international media on topics related to Brazilian politics and foreign policy, US-China relations and political risk. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Global Times, among others.
Go to Profile#596
Miles Yu
#25304
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Miles Maochun Yu is an American historian and strategist who served as the principal China policy and planning adviser to former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Yu is a professor of military history and modern China at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He is also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he directs the China Center, director of the Project 2049 Institute, and the Robert Alexander Mercer Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Go to Profile#597
H. Bradford Westerfield
#25461
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Holt Bradford Westerfield was a Damon Wells Professor of International Studies and professor of political science at Yale University. Biography He was educated at The Choate School , Yale, where he was president of the Yale Political Union, and Harvard, where he earned his graduate degrees and taught from 1952 to 1956. After a year at the University of Chicago he joined the Yale faculty in 1957, and remained there for 40 years. Westerfield was a legendary teacher at Yale, where one of his popular courses was nicknamed by students "Lies and Spies." In 1993 he received the inaugural Byrnes-Sewall Award for undergraduate teaching, and in 2003 he received the Phi Beta Kappa Devane Medal.
Go to Profile#598
C. Boyden Gray
#8884
Overall Influence
1943 - 2023 (80 years)
Clayland Boyden Gray was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as White House Counsel from 1981 to 1993 and as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union from 2006 to 2007. He was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C.–based law firm Boyden Gray & Associates LLP.
Go to Profile#599
Robert Hutchings
#25516
Overall Influence
Robert Hutchings is the Walt and Elspeth Rostow Chair in National Security at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and served as dean of the school from 2010 to 2015. Previously he was Diplomat-in-Residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Hutchings joined the Princeton faculty in 1997, and his research interests include international relations, diplomacy, and European affairs. Hutchings is best known as the former chair of the National Intelligence Council, a position he held from 2003 to 2005, during a leave of absence from Princeton.
Go to Profile#600
Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway
#6704
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway is the heir apparent to the Norwegian throne. He is the only son of King Harald V and Queen Sonja. Haakon represents the fourth generation of the sitting Norwegian royal family of the House of Glücksburg. He married Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, with whom he has two children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus.
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