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,
#1601
Stephen B. Heintz
#49292
Overall Influence
Stephen B. Heintz is an American nonprofit executive and public policy expert. Since 2001, he has served as president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a family foundation with an endowment of approximately $1.2 billion that advances social change for a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Heintz coined the term “acupuncture philanthropy” to describe his philanthropic approach of leveraging modest financial assets to trigger larger systemic change on critical issues.
Go to Profile#1602
Nic Cheeseman
#63770
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Nic Cheesemanis a British political scientist and professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham, working on democracy, elections and African politics. He is also a columnist for the The Africa Report and South Africa’s Mail & Guardian and the editor of the website Democracy in Africa. A regular commentator in the media, he is sometimes referred to by his Twitter handle, @fromagehomme.
Go to Profile#1603
Horace Campbell
#47100
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Horace G. Campbell is an international peace and justice scholar and Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, he has been involved in Africa's Liberation Struggles and has campaigned for peace and justice globally for more than four decades. From his years in Toronto, Canada, to his trips to Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and parts of the Caribbean, he has been an influential force offering alternatives to the hegemonic ideas of Eurocentrism. In an attempt to theorise new concepts of ...
Go to Profile#1604
Alexei Bogaturov
#69859
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Alexei Demosfenovich Bogaturov is a Russian international relations scholar, chairman of the International Trends editorial board, President of the Academic Forum on International Relations, Distinguished Scholar of Russia. He is an advisory board member of the Center for Global Politics, Berlin, Germany.
Go to Profile#1605
Jaap de Wilde
#43454
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Jacobus Hubertus "Jaap" de Wilde is a Dutch academic. A native of Zuidlaren, he is a Professor of International Relations and Security Studies at the University of Groningen since 2007. He headed the department of International Relations between 2008 and 2012. From 2001 to 2007 he was professor in European Security Studies at the Department of Political Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, and from 1995–2007 he was senior research fellow in European Studies and IR Theory at the Centre for European Studies , University of Twente. From 1993–1995 he worked at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institut...
Go to Profile#1606
Andrew H. Plaks
#27292
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Andrew Henry Plaks is an American sinologist who specializes in the study of the vernacular fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties. From 1973 to 2007, he taught at Princeton University, becoming full professor in 1980. He moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007, where he became Professor of East Asian Studies.
Go to Profile#1607
Kshama Sawant
#17612
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Kshama Sawant is an Indian-American politician and economist who has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014. She is a member of Socialist Alternative, the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
Go to Profile#1608
Alex Mintz
#65245
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Professor Alex Mintz , Director of the Computerized Decision Making Lab, and former Provost of IDC Herzliya, is a professor for decision-making in government, and former President of the Israeli Political Science Association.
Go to Profile#1609
Tharman Shanmugaratnam
#39096
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Tharman Shanmugaratnam , also known mononymously as Tharman, is a Singaporean politician and economist who has been serving as the ninth president of Singapore since 2023. Prior to his presidency, Tharman served as Senior Minister of Singapore between 2019 and 2023, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies between 2015 and 2023, and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore between 2011 and 2023.
Go to Profile#1610
Helen Margetts
#34862
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Helen Zerlina Margetts , is Professor of Internet and Society at the Oxford Internet Institute , University of Oxford and from 2011 to 2018 was Director of the OII. She is currently Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. She is a political scientist specialising in digital era governance and politics, and has published over a hundred books, journal articles and research reports in this field.
Go to Profile#1611
David Nalle
#55902
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
David Nalle was an American diplomat, writer, lecturer, and the former editor of Central Asia Monitor. Background Born in Philadelphia, Nalle interrupted studies in Engineering at Princeton University for World War II, during which he served as a Naval Aviator. He returned to complete a degree in English after the war.
Go to Profile#1612
Jay Cost
#71223
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Jay Cost is an American conservative political historian, journalist, and elections analyst, who writes for The Weekly Standard and National Review. Cost previously wrote "HorseRaceBlog" at RealClearPolitics. Cost has written widely on the Founding and civic virtues, political parties, and the influence of big business in American politics, and is the author of the upcoming The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy as well as the earlier A Republic No More and Spoiled Rotten.
Go to Profile#1613
Gary W. Cox
#70635
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Gary W. Cox , born in Maryland, is a political scientist, the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He qualified as a Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, in 1983, was elected a Guggenheim Fellow in 1995, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Go to Profile#1614
David C. Kang
#48838
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
David Chan-oong Kang is a Korean American political scientist. Born to a family of the Sincheon Kang clan, he holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology and International Politics from Stanford University from 1988 and a doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, 1995. Since 2009, Kang has been a professor of the University of Southern California, where he is a professor in both international politics and organization and management. He leads the Institute for Korean Studies at the same university. Kang has previously been a professor at Dartmouth College and g...
Go to Profile#1615
Peter Shergold
#27790
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Peter Roger Shergold is an Australian academic, company director, and former public servant. Shergold was the Chancellor of Western Sydney University from 2011 through 2022. Between February 2003 and February 2008, he was the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and as such was the most senior official in the Australian Public Service.
Go to Profile#1616
John W. Ryan
#24502
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
John William Ryan was an American academic administrator who most notably served as the President of Indiana University for sixteen years. Early life and career Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois and earned a B.A. from the University of Utah in 1951, where he was a 1950 initiate of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. He earned master's and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University in 1958 and 1959, respectively. While in graduate school, Ryan served in two professional roles: first as a research analyst in the Kentucky Department of Revenue, then in establishing the graduate public administration program at Thammasat University.
Go to Profile#1617
Paul Wilkinson
#21975
Overall Influence
1937 - 2011 (74 years)
Paul Wilkinson CBE was a British terrorism expert and an Emeritus Professor of International Relations and director of the University of St Andrews Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence . Dubbed "Britain's leading academic specialist in the study of terrorism", he was a frequent commentator in mainstream British media and an advisor to the UK government.
Go to Profile#1618
David F. Gordon
#54256
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
David F. Gordon is Head of Research at Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy. He was previously the U.S. State Department's Director of Policy Planning, where he held a rank equivalent to a United States Assistant Secretary of State.
Go to Profile#1619
Nancy Soderberg
#30256
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Nancy Elisabeth Soderberg is an American foreign policy strategist who currently serves as Resident Director for National Democratic Institute in Kosovo. Soderberg served as the third-ranking official on the Clinton Administration's National Security Council from 1993 to 1997 and as an Alternate Representative to the United Nations as a Presidential Appointee, with the rank of Ambassador, from 1997 to 2001. She has also held positions at the International Crisis Group, Connect U.S. Fund, and the Public Interest Declassification Board. In 2012 she ran unsuccessfully for Florida Senate District 4.
Go to Profile#1620
Ze'ev Ben Aryeh
#51876
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Ze'ev Ben Aryeh is an Israeli diplomat and the former Israeli ambassador to Belarus, who pleaded guilty to illegally tipping off his long-term friend Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to a criminal investigation being conducted into his affairs.
Go to Profile#1621
Marshall D. Shulman
#27905
Overall Influence
1916 - 2007 (91 years)
Marshall Darrow Shulman was an American diplomat, scholar of Soviet studies and the founding director of W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Shulman earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, a graduate degree in English literature from Harvard University, and a master's degree from Columbia University's Russian Institute.
Go to Profile#1622
Luigi R. Einaudi
#44342
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Luigi Roberto Einaudi is an American career diplomat. He assumed the post of Acting Secretary General of the Organization of American States in October 2004 upon the resignation of Secretary General Miguel Ángel Rodríguez.
Go to Profile#1623
Michael Brecher
#76327
Overall Influence
1925 - 2022 (97 years)
Michael Brecher was a Canadian political scientist and teacher in Quebec. Life and career Brecher was born on 14 March 1925. He obtained his PhD in International Relations from Yale University in 1953, and joined the faculty of McGill University in 1954. He was R.B. Angus Professor of Political Science at McGill University until his retirement. His areas of research included; theory of crisis, conflict and war, protracted conflicts/enduring rivalries, foreign policy theory, international systems, the Middle East and South Asia international relations.
Go to Profile#1624
Tara McCormack
#70997
Overall Influence
Tara McCormack is an academic and author. She is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Leicester. Education and career McCormack graduated with a BA in politics from Queen Mary University of London, and an MSc in International Relations and Government from the London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in international security at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster. She specialises in security, foreign policy and democratic legitimacy; intervention and Britain's war powers. Before taking up her post at the University of Leicester McCorm...
Go to Profile#1625
Vicente Blanco Gaspar
#14842
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Vicente Blanco Gaspar is a Spanish ambassador, diplomat and writer who is an expert in international law, diplomacy and international organizations. Biography Blanco Gaspar studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid between 1958 and 1963. The same year he obtained his law degree, he obtained a scholarship from the Fulbright Program to continue his education at the University of Michigan where he studied a master's degree in comparative law on international aggression with Professor Wm.W. Bishop. He continued researching the issue of weighted voting and writing his doctoral thesis at Harvard University where he was an assistant professor, in 1965 under Louis B.
Go to Profile#1626
Alon Ben-Meir
#57061
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Alon Ben-Meir is an American expert on Middle East politics and affairs, specializing in peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. For the past twenty five years, Ben-Meir has been directly involved in various Track II diplomatic negotiations and is a staunch advocate of the Arab Peace Initiative. He operates regularly as a liaison between Arab, Turkish, and Israeli officials. Also, Ben-Meir serves as senior fellow at New York University's Center for Global Affairs where he has taught courses on the Middle East and international negotiations for 18 years, and he is the Middle East Project Director at the World Policy Institute.
Go to Profile#1627
Edmond Keller
#66236
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Edmond Joseph Keller, Jr. is an American Africanist. A graduate of Louisiana State University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Keller is a professor in the political science department at UCLA. He is the former Director of the Globalization Research Center-Africa and the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at UCLA. He has taught at Indiana University, Dartmouth College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Xavier University , and the University of California-Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#1628
Noël O'Sullivan
#29713
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Noël O'Sullivan is currently Research Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Hull. He studied at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. In 1967 he joined the Politics Department at Hull University. In 1992 he was given a personal chair in political philosophy at Hull.
Go to Profile#1629
Jean C. Oi
#53077
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jean C. Oi is an American political scientist and expert in the politics of China. She is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics in the department of political science at Stanford University. She is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies there. She studies political economy and fiscal reform, particularly in rural China.
Go to Profile#1630
Kenneth Good
#72207
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Kenneth Alfred Francis Good was an Australian academic and formerly Professor of Political Science at the University of Botswana. He specializes in the analysis of the political economy of African and Melanesian nations. In 2005 he was ejected from Botswana for criticizing the government, later winning a favorable judgement from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Go to Profile#1631
J. C. Hurewitz
#48601
Overall Influence
1914 - 2008 (94 years)
Jacob Coleman Hurewitz was an American political scientist Hurewitz graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1936, then did his graduate work at Columbia, making what was then an unusual decision to concentrate on the Middle East. He worked for the Near East section of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, then worked successively at the State Department, as a political adviser on Palestine to the President’s cabinet and for the United Nations secretariat. Professor Hurewitz began studying Middle Eastern politics in 1950, before the field had emerged as an academic discipline.
Go to Profile#1632
Sherrod Brown
#32379
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Sherrod Campbell Brown is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Ohio, a seat which he has held since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the U.S. representative for from 1993 to 2007 and the 47th secretary of state of Ohio from 1983 to 1991. He started his political career in 1975 as an Ohio state representative.
Go to Profile#1633
Ralph Braibanti
#65847
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Ralph Braibanti was the James B. Duke Professor of political science at Duke University, and was known for his work in Islamic studies; his work focused on Pakistan. He founded the American Institute of Pakistan Studies and served as its President for nine years.
Go to Profile#1634
Jacek Kugler
#63173
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Jacek Kugler is a prominent American political scientist and scholar of International Relations. He is the former Chair of the Department of Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
Go to Profile#1635
Kingsley Moghalu
#55578
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu OON is a Nigerian political economist. He served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, appointed by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, from 2009 to 2014. He subsequently taught at Tufts University as Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy from 2015 to 2017. He was the presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party in the country's general election in February 2019.
Go to Profile#1636
Baburam Bhattarai
#58264
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Baburam Bhattarai , also known by his nom de guerre Laaldhwoj, is a Nepalese politician and former Prime Minister, who presently serves as leader of the Nepal Socialist Party. Bhattarai was a long-time leading member and deputy chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal prior to founding a new party, Naya Shakti Party, Nepal. He subsequently embraced democratic socialism.
Go to Profile#1637
Göran Malmqvist
#8303
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Nils Göran David Malmqvist was a Swedish linguist, literary historian, sinologist and translator. He was also a member of the Swedish Academy between 1985 and 2019. Biography Göran Malmqvist was born on 6 June 1924, in Jönköping, Sweden. Following introductory studies of Chinese under Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren at Stockholm University, Malmqvist studied in China in 1948–1950. He then returned to Stockholm, taking a Licentiate of Arts degree in 1951. His international research career started shortly thereafter with a lectureship in Chinese at the University of London in 1953–1955. He was the...
Go to Profile#1638
A. H. M. Moniruzzaman
#44279
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
A. H. M. Moniruzzaman is a career diplomat in the Bangladesh Foreign Service. He served as the head of Bangladesh's mission to the European Commission in Brussels and ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg from September 2006 until December 2008. He was concurrently ambassador to Switzerland.
Go to Profile#1639
Chris Grayling
#49868
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Christopher Stephen Grayling is a British politician and author who served as Secretary of State for Justice from 2012 to 2015, Leader of the House of Commons from 2015 to 2016 and Secretary of State for Transport from 2016 until 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament for Epsom and Ewell since 2001. Grayling previously worked in the television and film industry.
Go to Profile#1640
Anna Leander
#37128
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Anna Leander is a sociologist and political scientist. Leander is currently a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She previously taught at the Copenhagen Business School and the Inst. de Relacoes Internacionais, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Leander is well known for her work in critical security studies and international political sociology. Theoretically, Leander has played an important role in bringing the work of Pierre Bourdieu into conversation with the discipline of International Relations, as well as more recently working with materialist and pragmatist sociologies.
Go to Profile#1641
Peter Wallensteen
#34287
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Peter Wallensteen, born 29 July 1945 in Stockholm, is a peace and conflict researcher in Sweden, now Senior Professor in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University. He was the first holder of the Dag Hammarskjöld Chair in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, 1985-2012. He was the Richard G. Starmann Sr. Research Professor of Peace Studies, at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame , 2006-2018. From 1972 to 1999 he directed the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University.
Go to Profile#1642
Wilhelm Hennis
#79764
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Wilhelm Hennis was a German political scientist. Hennis was born in Hildesheim. In 1960, he became professor at the Pedagogical College of Hannover. In 1962, he became a Professor in Hamburg, and in 1967 at Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, where until his death he was a professor emeritus. He died, aged 89, in Freiburg im Breisgau.
Go to Profile#1643
Alberto van Klaveren
#45808
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Albert Leo van Klaveren Stork is a Dutch-born Chilean lawyer, political scientist, and diplomat who has been serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs since 10 March 2023. Previously, he served as the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs of Chile between 2006 and 2009. Van Klaveren also represented Chile in the International Court of Justice in the case regarding the Chilean–Peruvian maritime dispute. Before assuming his post as a minister, he taught at the University of Chile.
Go to Profile#1644
Susan M. Collins
#42237
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Susan M. Collins is an American economist who has served as the 14th president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston since July 1, 2022. She is the first African American woman and first woman of color to lead any of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. Collins previously served as the 16th provost and executive vice president for academic affairs of the University of Michigan from 2020 to 2022.
Go to Profile#1645
Seth Jones
#38918
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Seth G. Jones is an academic, political scientist and author. Jones is most renowned for his work on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism; much of his published material and media presence relates to US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in confronting al-Qāʿida. He is currently a senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, director of the International Security Program, and director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Go to Profile#1646
Roger Boesche
#33173
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Roger Boesche was an American political theorist. He was the Arthur G. Coons Distinguished Professor of the History of ideas at Occidental College. Early life Roger Boesche was born on January 24, 1948, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated from Stanford University, where he earned a PhD in political science.
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Ronald K. McMullen
#59276
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Ronald Keith McMullen is an American foreign service officer and a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to Eritrea 2007–10. McMullen was born in Iowa, and received his doctorate from the University of Iowa, where wrote his dissertation on economic consequences of African coups d'état. He received a master's degree from the University of Minnesota and his bachelor's degree from Drake University.
Go to Profile#1648
John Agresto
#36211
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
John Agresto is an American author, lecturer, and university administrator. Life Agresto was born on January 7, 1946, at the Navy Yard Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, to John and Theresa Agresto. He was raised in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. After graduating from Brooklyn Prep, a Jesuit high school, Agresto went to college in Boston.
Go to Profile#1649
Charles T. Rubin
#48259
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Charles T. Rubin is a political science professor, philosopher and writer. Rubin was raised in Cleveland, Ohio and attended nearby Case Western Reserve University, receiving a bachelor's degree in philosophy and political science in 1975. He went on to study at Boston College, where he graduated with a doctoral degree in 1983 and also where he met his wife Leslie Rubin, a fellow political science academic. Rubin and his wife taught at Kenyon College before both moving to Duquesne University as professors and raising their children. Rubin began at Duquesne as an assistant professor in 1987 and continued teaching there for over 30 years.
Go to Profile#1650
Sheena Chestnut Greitens
#43703
Overall Influence
Sheena Elise Chestnut Greitens is an American political scientist who is an associate professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She was First Lady of Missouri from 2017 to 2018.
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