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,
#701
Adam Bodnar
#16193
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Adam Piotr Bodnar is a Polish lawyer, educator, human rights activist and politician. He was the Polish Ombudsman for Citizen Rights from 2015 until July 2021. Life and career In 2000, he graduated in law from the University of Warsaw and in 2001 he obtained the Master of Law degree in the field of comparative constitutional law from the Central European University in Budapest. He also completed a course in European Law co-organized with Cambridge University as well as American Law co-organized with the University of Florida at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile#702
Kent E. Calder
#25595
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Kent E. Calder was the interim dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies , serves as the director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, and is also the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of East Asian Studies at SAIS. Calder previously served as the vice dean for faculty affairs and international research cooperation at SAIS.
Go to Profile#703
Joseph Grieco
#21146
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Joseph M. Grieco is professor of political science at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. Within international relations theory he is a neorealist and is a key figure in the debate between neorealists and neoliberals.
Go to Profile#704
Colin Hay
#25567
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris and Affiliate Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield, joint editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative European Politics. and Managing Editor of the journal New Political Economy.
Go to Profile#705
Gerd R. Puin
#7100
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Gerd Rüdiger Puin is a German scholar of Oriental studies, specializing in Quranic palaeography, Arabic calligraphy and orthography. He was a lecturer of Arabic language and literature at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. In regards to his approach of historical research, Puin is considered a representative of the "Saarbrücken School", which is part of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.
Go to Profile#706
Chan Heng Chee
#17580
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Chan Heng Chee is a Singaporean academic and diplomat who has been serving as Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2012, Chairwoman of the National Arts Council and Member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights. She had also served as Singapore Ambassador to the United States between 1996 and 2012.
Go to Profile#707
Clifford May
#18843
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Clifford D. May is an American journalist, editor, political activist, and podcast host. He is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank created shortly after the 9/11 attacks, where he hosts the podcast Foreign Podicy. He is the weekly "Foreign Desk" columnist for The Washington Times.
Go to Profile#708
David M. Lampton
#26621
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
David M. Lampton is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and former Chairman of The Asia Foundation.
Go to Profile#709
Dominique Moïsi
#13163
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Dominique Moïsi is a French political scientist and writer. He was a co-founder and is a senior advisor of the Paris-based Institut Français des Relations Internationales , Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at Harvard University, and the chairholder for Geopolitics at the College of Europe, the oldest educational institution in European affairs, in Natolin. He is also a Fellow at CEDEP, the European Centre for Executive Development. Moïsi regularly contributes op-ed articles and essays to the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, the Project Syndicate as well as Die Welt and Der Standard.
Go to Profile#710
David Scheffer
#23349
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
David John Scheffer is an American lawyer and diplomat who served as the first United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, during President Bill Clinton's second term in office. He is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, where he directed the Center for International Human Rights from 2006 to 2019.
Go to Profile#711
Alexander Dallin
#13459
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Alexander Davidovich Dallin was an American historian, political scientist, and international relations scholar at Columbia University, where he was the Adlai Stevenson Professor of International Relations and the director of the Russian Institute. Dallin was also the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History at Stanford University, and served as Director for the Center for Russian and East European Studies.
Go to Profile#712
Lenora Fulani
#13265
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lenora Branch Fulani is an American psychologist, psychotherapist, and political activist. She is best known for her presidential campaigns and development of youth programs serving minority communities in the New York City area. In the 1988 United States presidential election heading the New Alliance Party ticket, she became the first woman and the first African American to achieve ballot access in all fifty states. She received more votes for president in a U.S. general election than any other woman until Jill Stein of the Green Party of the United States in 2012. Fulani's political concern...
Go to Profile#713
Iring Fetscher
#10813
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Iring Fetscher was a German political scientist and researcher on Hegel and Marxism. Fetscher was born on 4 March 1922 at Marbach am Neckar, and was brought up in Dresden. After the Second World War he studied at Tübingen and Paris, receiving a doctorate in 1950. He belatedly published his thesis in 1970. He habilitated in 1959 with a dissertation on the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Go to Profile#714
David Frost, Baron Frost
#26905
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
David George Hamilton Frost, Baron Frost is a former British diplomat, civil servant and politician who served as a Minister of State at the Cabinet Office between March and December 2021. Frost was Chief Negotiator of Task Force Europe from January 2020 until his resignation in December 2021.
Go to Profile#715
Dave Rubin
#9070
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
David Joshua Rubin is an American conservative political commentator. He is the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show on YouTube and on the network BlazeTV. Launched in 2013, his show was originally part of TYT Network, until he left in 2015, in part due to widening ideological differences. Previously, Rubin hosted LGBT-themed talk shows, including The Ben and Dave Show from 2007 to 2008 and The Six Pack from 2009 to 2012, both of which he co-hosted with Ben Harvey. Rubin has written two books.
Go to Profile#716
Sebastian Heilmann
#30683
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Sebastian Heilmann is a German political scientist and sinologist. He serves as the founding president of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Heilmann is a professor for the political economy of China at the University of Trier with many publications on China's political system, economic policy and international relations.
Go to Profile#717
Larbi Sadiki
#19286
Overall Influence
Larbi Sadiki is a Tunisian writer, political scientist and professor of political science and democratization at the College of Arts and Sciences of Qatar University. He was formerly a scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center and lecturer at University of Exeter. Sadiki's writing focuses on the democratization of the Arab world as well as human rights studies and dialogue between the Western and Islamic civilizations.
Go to Profile#718
Mitchell Reiss
#22389
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Mitchell B. Reiss is an American diplomat, academic, and business leader who served as the 8th President and CEO of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the 27th president of Washington College and in the United States Department of State.
Go to Profile#719
Alan A. Altshuler
#28437
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Alan Anthony Altshuler is an American educator and government official. Altshuler is the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor in Urban Policy and Planning, Emeritus, at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Go to Profile#720
Ronald Deibert
#24010
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Ronald James Deibert is a Canadian professor of political science, philosopher, founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor projects. Deibert was one of the founders and former VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon.
Go to Profile#721
Antony Blinken
#21427
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Antony John Blinken is an American lawyer and diplomat currently serving as the 71st United States secretary of state. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama. Blinken was previously national security advisor to then-vice president Joe Biden from 2009 to 2013.
Go to Profile#722
Anthony Marx
#15377
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Anthony William "Tony" Marx is an American academic. He became the current president and CEO of the New York Public Library in July 2011, succeeding Paul LeClerc. Marx is the former president of Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Since joining the New York Public Library, Marx has focused on expanding the library’s education programs and on increasing public access to library e-books. He has also prioritized services for researchers and bringing library materials to public schools.
Go to Profile#723
Scott Gottlieb
#5217
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Scott Gottlieb is an American physician and investor who served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from May 2017 until April 2019. He is presently a senior fellow at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute , a partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates , a member of the board of directors of drug maker Pfizer, Inc, a member of the board of directors of Illumina, Inc., a contributor to the cable financial news network CNBC, and a frequent guest on the CBS News program Face the Nation. An elected member of the National Academy ...
Go to Profile#724
Stephen Baskerville
#21380
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Stephen K. Baskerville is an American scholar of political science. He is described by Paul Craig Roberts as a leading authority on divorce, child custody and the family court system. Education and employment Baskerville holds a BA in International Relations from American University as well as a PhD in Political Science and History from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Go to Profile#725
Amaney Jamal
#22288
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Amaney A. Jamal is an American scholar of Middle Eastern politics who is currently the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and Director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University. Jamal earned her bachelor's degree in politics at UCLA in 1993, followed by her PhD in political science from the University of Michigan. A Carnegie Scholar, Jamal specializes in democratization and civic engagement in the Arab world as well as Muslim and Arab civic engagement in the US. She currently directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development at Princeton University, ...
Go to Profile#726
Daniel Ziblatt
#29975
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Daniel Ziblatt is an American political scientist and a professor at Harvard University with a research focus on comparative politics, democracy and democratization as well as the politics and political history of Western Europe. Since 2018 he has been Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of the book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. In 2018, Ziblatt also published How Democracies Die with fellow Harvard professor Steven Levitsky. The book examines the conditions that can lead democracies to break down from within, rather than due to external events such as military coups or foreign invasions.
Go to Profile#727
Geoff Mulgan
#12202
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Sir Geoffrey John Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London . From 2011 to 2019 he was Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts and visiting professor at University College London, the London School of Economics, and the University of Melbourne. In 2020, he joined the Nordic think tank Demos Helsinki as a Fellow.
Go to Profile#728
Walter F. Murphy
#16914
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Walter Francis Murphy, Jr. was an American political scientist and writer. Early life and education Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Murphy received a Distinguished Service Cross and was awarded a Purple Heart for his service in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War, eventually retiring with the rank of colonel. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1950 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957.
Go to Profile#729
Riordan Roett
#29050
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Riordan Roett is an American political scientist specializing in Latin America. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in political science and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was assistant professor and acting director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University and was the Sarita and Don Johnston Professor of Political Science and Director of the Western Hemisphere Program at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. until 2018. He is now Profe...
Go to Profile#730
Dankwart Rustow
#22434
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Dankwart Alexander Rustow was a professor of political science and sociology specializing in comparative politics. He is prominent for his research on democratization. In his seminal 1970 article 'Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,' Rustow broke from the prevailing schools of thought on how countries became democratic. Disagreeing with the heavy focus on necessary social and economic pre-conditions for democracy, he argued that national unity was the necessary precondition for democracy.
Go to Profile#731
Marc Lazar
#16837
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Marc Lazar is a french academic who serves as a professor and director of the Doctoral School at the Paris Institute of Political Studies . He is also the President of the LUISS school of government in Rome. He manages a research group on contemporary Italy with CERI . He is a specialist of the History of left-wing parties, and Italian politics. He graduated from the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences .
Go to Profile#732
Leon Fuerth
#18608
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Leon Sigmund Fuerth is a former diplomat who served as national security adviser to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. He was succeeded in that capacity by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in January 2001. Fuerth now directs the Project on Forward Engagement at the George Washington University, where he also serves as a professor of international affairs.
Go to Profile#733
Tom Hayden
#11240
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Thomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring the Port Huron Statement and standing trial in the Chicago Seven case.
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Benjamin Page
#26024
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Benjamin Ingrim Page is the Gordon S. Fulcher professor of decision making at Northwestern University. His interests include American politics and U.S. foreign policy, with particular interests in public opinion and policy making, the mass media, empirical democratic theory, and political economy. In 2014, Page, alongside co-author Martin Gilens, appeared on The Daily Show to discuss their study that found the policy-making process of American politics is dominated by economic elites.
Go to Profile#735
John Logsdon
#14558
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
John Logsdon is the founder and from 1987 to 2008 was the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. In 2003, Logsdon was a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. He is a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. He is frequently cited as an authority on space policy and history by press entities such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and has appeared on various television networks.
Go to Profile#736
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
#7955
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann was a German political scientist. Her most famous contribution is the model of the spiral of silence, detailed in The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin. The model is an explanation of how perceived public opinion can influence individual opinions or actions.
Go to Profile#737
Harris Mylonas
#21195
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University and the editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers, a peer-reviewed journal published by Cambridge University Press. Mylonas’s research contributes to our understanding of states’ management of diversity that may originate from national minorities, immigrants, diasporas, or refugees. His work emphasizes and explores the importance of international security considerations in domestic policy-making. His book, The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees, and Minori...
Go to Profile#738
Ramin Mehmanparast
#23390
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ramin Mehmanparast is an Iranian diplomat, the former spokesman of the Iranian foreign ministry and the former ambassador to Poland and Lithuania. He was the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the head of the "Center for Public Diplomacy & Media" and the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 31 October 2009 until his resignation on 11 May 2013. He was also the ambassador of Iran to Thailand from 1996 to 2000 and Kazakhstan from 2004 to 2009.
Go to Profile#739
Julia Lovell
#16173
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Julia Lovell is a British scholar and prize-winning author and translator focusing on China. Life and career Lovell is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between culture and modern Chinese nation-building.
Go to Profile#740
Andrew Wilson
#12841
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Andrew Wilson is a British historian and political scientist specializing in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine. He is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Professor in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He wrote The Ukrainians: The Story of How a People Became a Nation and Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World.
Go to Profile#741
Brendan Nyhan
#12722
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Brendan Nyhan is an American political scientist and professor at Dartmouth College. He is also a liberal to moderate political blogger, author, and political columnist. He was born in Mountain View, California and now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Go to Profile#742
Kalypso Nicolaïdis
#22963
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Kalypso Aude Nicolaïdis is a Franco-Greek academic, currently Professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Studies at Oxford University, England. She teaches in the areas of European integration, international relations, international political economy, negotiation and game theory and research methods as University Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations. In 2020, Nicolaïdis joined the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute as a full time professor.
Go to Profile#743
Nathan J. Brown
#27474
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Nathan J. Brown is an American scholar of Middle Eastern law and politics at George Washington University. Brown is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs and the former director of its Institute for Middle East Studies.
Go to Profile#744
Cheryl Benard
#35975
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Cheryl Benard is an academic scholar, writer, political scientist and novelist. She is the wife of Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iraq. She and Khalilzad have two sons, Alexander Benard and Maximilian Benard.
Go to Profile#745
Thomas Ambrosio
#30178
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Thomas Ambrosio is a professor of political science in the Criminal Justice and Political Science Department at North Dakota State University. He teaches courses in international relations and international law.
Go to Profile#746
Susan George
#10316
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Susan George is an American and French political and social scientist, activist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. She is the president of the Transnational Institute, a think-tank located in Amsterdam. She is a fierce critic of the present policies of the International Monetary Fund , World Bank and what she calls their 'maldevelopment model'. She similarly criticizes the structural reform policies of the Washington Consensus on Third World development. She is of U.S. birth but now resides in France, and has had dual citizenship since 1994.
Go to Profile#747
David R. Mayhew
#36826
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
David R. Mayhew is a political scientist and Sterling Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Yale University. He is widely considered one of the leading scholars on the United States Congress, and the author of nine influential books on American politics, including Congress: The Electoral Connection. In 2017, University of California, Berkeley professor Eric Schickler chronicled Mayhew's lifetime of contributions to the study of Congress in a journal article published in The Forum. Mayhew has been a member of the Yale faculty since 1968, and his students include several leading contempora...
Go to Profile#748
Mark David Hall
#17061
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Mark David Hall Mark David Hall is a Professor in Regent University's Robertson School of Government and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of First Liberty Institute. As well, Mark is Distinguished Scholar of Christianity & Public Life at George Fox University, Associate Faculty at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, and a Senior Fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. In 2022-2023, he was a Garwood Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program and a Visiting Scholar ...
Go to Profile#749
Abhisit Vejjajiva
#19265
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Abhisit Vejjajiva is a Thai politician who was the prime minister of Thailand from 2008 to 2011. He was the leader of the Democrat Party from 2005 until he resigned following the party's weak performance in the 2019 election. As leader of the second largest party in the House of Representatives, he was also leader of the opposition – a position he held from 2005 to 2008 and again after his premiership until his party's en masse resignation from the House on 8 December 2013. As of 2023, Abhisit is the last prime minister to not come from the military or be related to the Shinawatra family.
Go to Profile#750
Fran Hosken
#13488
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Fran P. Hosken was an American designer, writer, feminist, and social activist. She founded the Women's International Network in 1975, and published a quarterly journal on women's health issues that became known, in particular, for its research into female genital mutilation .
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