Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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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).

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School

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List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#2101

Emil Aslan

#77844

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Emil Aslan is a Czech political scientist and university lecturer, between 2018 and 2021 research director at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. Biography and career Emil Aslan was born in Yerevan. He graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University , Charles University , Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University . He was Fulbright Visiting scholar at Harvard University. In 2020, Aslan became a Full Professor.

#2102

Yuli Tamir

#60709

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Yael "Yuli" Tamir is an Israeli academic and former politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party between 2003 and 2010, and as Minister of Immigrant Absorption and Education, as well as the deputy speaker of the Knesset and a member of the Finance committee, the Education committee and the Security and Foreign Affairs committee. From 2010 to 2020, Tamir was President of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. Since 2015 she is an adjunct professor at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford. As of October 2020, Tamir is President of Beit Berl College.

#2103

Rainer Eisfeld

#62007

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Rainer Eisfeld is a German political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Osnabrück. Education and career Eisfeld received an economics degree from the University of Saarbrücken in 1966 and his PhD in political science from the Goethe University of Frankfurt in 1971. He was assistant professor at Goethe University of Frankfurt, 1972–73, and professor of political science at the University of Osnabrück, 1974-2006 . His international appointments include visiting scholarships at UCLA and the University of Arizona. He taught at UCLA as a visiting professor in 2002.

#2104

Jane Byrne

#38917

Overall Influence

1934 - 2014 (80 years)

Jane Margaret Byrne was an American politician who served as the 50th mayor of Chicago from April 16, 1979, until April 29, 1983. Prior to her tenure as mayor, Byrne served as Chicago's commissioner of consumer sales from 1969 until 1977, the only female in the mayoral cabinet.

#2105

Gunnar Grendstad

#103689

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Gunnar Grendstad is a Norwegian political scientist and professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has researched methodological aspects of political science and American politics, and specializes on judicial behavior on the Supreme Court of Norway. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and Purdue University.

#2106

Robert Donaldson

#56502

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Robert Herschel Donaldson is an American political scientist. Donaldson attended Harvard University. He completed his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in 1964, his Master of Arts in 1966, and his Ph.D. in 1969. His doctoral dissertation analyzed the Soviet Union's economic policies. He was admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society as an undergraduate and has remained active in the organization as a professor.

#2107

Kei Koizumi

#84415

Overall Influence

Kei Koizumi is an American policy advisor serving as Principal Deputy Director for Policy for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He previously served as a senior advisor on science policy for the American Association for the Advancement of Science after serving as a senior advisor to the National Science and Technology Council under President Obama.

#2108

Cengiz Aktar

#67169

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Cengiz Aktar is a Turkish political scientist, essayist and columnist. He has published numerous books on the European Union and its relations with Turkey. He was a director at the UNHCR and worked extensively with the European Commission. He initiated a campaign calling for an apology of the Turkish citizens towards the Armenians for the Armenian genocide.

#2109

Charles Blahous

Charles Blahous

#55047

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Charles Paul "Chuck" Blahous III is the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as well as a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing in domestic economic policy and retirement security , as well as federal fiscal policy, entitlements, and health care programs.

#2110

Willy Vande Walle

#55037

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Willy F. Vande Walle is a Belgian academic, author, Japanologist and Sinologist. Willy Vande Walle was born in Roeselare, Belgium. His secondary education focused on classical humanities at Klein Seminarie Roeselare . He studied Oriental Philology and History at the State University of Ghent and earned his doctoral degree in Oriental Philology in 1976.

#2111

Irene Eber

#55127

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Irene Eber was an Israeli Orientalist. She was the Louis Frieberg Professor of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Jerusalem , and Senior Fellow of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute. She lived in Jerusalem. She was also a specialist in translations from Chinese.

#2112

Drew Linzer

#70926

Overall Influence

Drew Linzer is an American political scientist who serves as the director and chief scientist at Civiqs. He was formerly an assistant professor of political science at Emory University. He is known for his psephology site "Votamatic". In 2014, Linzer ran the successful Daily Kos election forecast.

#2113

Jao Tsung-I

#35758

Overall Influence

1917 - 2018 (101 years)

Jao Tsung-I or Rao Zongyi was a Hong Kong sinologist, calligrapher, historian and painter. A versatile and prolific scholar, he contributed to many fields of humanities, including history, archaeology, epigraphy, folklores, religion, art history, musicology, literature, and Near Eastern Studies. He published more than 100 books and about 1,000 academic articles over a career spanning more than 80 years.

#2114

Deborah J. Yashar

#98733

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Deborah Jane Yashar is an American political scientist. She is a Full Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Her research interests involve politics of children and immigration in the Americas.

#2115

Bryan D. Jones

#70724

Overall Influence

Bryan D. Jones is an American political scientist and public policy scholar. He holds the J. J. "Jake" Pickle Regents Chair in Congressional Studies at the University of Texas. He is an Academic Director of the Comparative Agendas Project, which has received more than $2,650,000 of National Science Foundation grant funding.

#2116

Raymond Taras

#50478

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Raymond Taras is a Canadian political scientist. His interests include issues of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, multiculturalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ethnic conflicts, and response to refugee crisis and immigration in the receiving countries. During the 2014–15 academic year Ray Taras was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex. In 2018-19 he is Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Australian National University in Canberra.

#2117

Tamim al-Barghouti

Tamim al-Barghouti

#49256

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Tamim Al-Barghouti is a Palestinian-Egyptian poet, columnist and political scientist. Nicknamed the "poet of Jerusalem" , he is one of the most widely read poets in the Arab World. He received his PhD degree in political science from Boston University in 2004. He grew up in a family interested in Arabic literature. His father was the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti from the Deir Ghassana village, and his mother is the Egyptian novelist and political writer Radwa Ashour.

#2118

Milton Heumann

#86401

Overall Influence

Milton Heumann is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Yale University. He taught at the University of Michigan before joining the Rutgers faculty in 1981. He has spent many semesters as a Visiting Lecturer and Guggenheim Fellow at Yale Law School. He was chair of the Political Science Department of Rutgers from 1997 - 2003. His principal research interests are in the area of legal process, criminal justice and civil liberties.

#2119

Richard W. Mansbach

#91835

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Richard Wallace Mansbach is an American political scientist. Mansbach studied political science, history, and Spanish at Swarthmore College and graduated in 1964. He then attended the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. After completing his dissertation, Mansbach joined the Swarthmore College faculty, in 1967. He became an assistant professor in 1968. Mansbach remained at Swarthmore for two years. While teaching at Rutgers University, Mansbach was named a fellow of the American Council on Education in 1981, and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. He later moved to Iowa State U...

#2120

Justin Rosenberg

#40292

Overall Influence

Justin Rosenberg is a professor in International Relations at the University of Sussex. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1993 with a thesis titled Social structures and geopolitical systems: A critique of the Realist theory of International Relations. Within academia, Rosenberg is associated with "New Marxist" international relations theory. His first book, The Empire of Civil Society formed a Marxist critique of Realist and Neo-Realist theories of International Relations. He has since changed his view of the relation of domestic and international factors as part of ...

#2121

Paschalis Kitromilides

#80955

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Paschalis M. Kitromilides in Nicosia, Cyprus, is a Greek-Cypriot political scientist and intellectual historian. His expertise is on the history of political thought. His special field of research is the Enlightenment in South-eastern Europe, focusing on the central role of its Neohellenic component. He is a professor of political science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens since 1983. He was elected full member of the Academy of Athens on 6 February 2020.

#2122

J. Peter Pham

#48546

Overall Influence

John Peter Pham is an American academic and author specializing in international relations with a focus on African affairs. Pham was the United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region of Africa, from March 2020 until the end of President Donald Trump's administration in January 2021. Prior to this, he served as the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa from November 2018. Prior to these appointments, Pham was also Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of its Africa Center. In September 2020, Pham was accorded the personal rank of ambassador, becoming the first Vietnamese American to achieve that rank.

#2123

Mats Berdal

#77805

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Mats R. Berdal is Professor of Security and Development at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. Early life Mats R. Berdal was born on 5 October 1965. He gained a BSc degree from the London School of Economics in 1988, and a DPhil degree from St Antony's College, Oxford in 1992.

#2124

Rainer Bauböck

#77642

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Rainer Bauböck is an Austrian sociologist, political scientist and migration researcher. Bauböck is a former Chair in Social and Political theory at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, part time professor in the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and Chair of the Commission for Migration and Integration Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

#2125

Louise Shelley

#41484

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Louise Isobel Shelley is a university professor and Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair at the Schar School of Policy and International Affairs at George Mason University in Virginia. She is also founder and executive director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center .

#2126

John Warhurst

#70328

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

John Lewis Warhurst, AO, is a noted Australian academic and a prominent leader within the Australian Republican Movement. He currently holds the positions of Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Deputy Chair of the Republican Movement.

#2127

Frederick M. Hess

Frederick M. Hess

#56092

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Frederick M. Hess is an American educator, political scientist, and author. He is a resident fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his blog "Rick Hess Straight Up" at Education Week, he is also a senior contributor to Forbes, an executive editor of Education Next, and a contributing editor to National Review. His books include Spinning Wheels, Letters to a Young Education Reformer, Cage-Busting Leadership, A Search for Common Ground, and The Great School Rethink.

#2128

Anita Isaacs

#84604

Overall Influence

Anita Isaacs is a Canadian political scientist. She is the Benjamin R. Collins Professor of Social Sciences and professor of political science at Haverford College. She studies democracy, democratization, and democratic transitions, with a focus on peace building in Latin America and particularly in Ecuador and Guatemala.

#2129

Alan M. Wachman

Alan M. Wachman

#62043

Overall Influence

1958 - 2012 (54 years)

Alan Michael Wachman was a scholar of East Asian politics and international relations, specializing in cross-strait relations and Sino-U.S. relations. He was a professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Previously he had been the co-director of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in the PRC, and the president of China Institute in America.

#2130

M. Cecil Mackey

#20302

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Maurice Cecil Mackey Jr. was president of University of South Florida from 1971 to 1976, president of Texas Tech University from 1976 to 1979, and president of Michigan State University from 1979 to 1985.

#2131

Porfirio Muñoz Ledo

#71200

Overall Influence

1933 - 2023 (90 years)

Porfirio Alejandro Muñoz Ledo y Lazo de la Vega was a Mexican politician. He was one of the founders of the Party of the Democratic Revolution , and served as Ambassador to Cuba from January 2022 until his death.

#2132

Tamar Hermann

#75517

Overall Influence

Tamar Hermann is an Israeli professor of political science at the Open University and a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute . Biography Hermann is the academic director of IDI's Guttman Center for Surveys, the editor of IDI's annual Israeli Democracy Index, and the co-editor of the monthly Peace Index, a joint project of IDI and Tel Aviv University. The findings of the Peace Index have been published in Haaretz, Yediot Ahronoth, and other news sources, and are currently published in Hebrew every month on the Walla website. The findings of the Index can be found in full at www.peac...

#2133

Helmut Norpoth

#95866

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Helmut Norpoth is an American political scientist and professor of political science at Stony Brook University. Norpoth is best known for developing the Primary Model to predict US presidential elections.

#2134

Azmi Bishara

#59525

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Azmi Bishara is a Palestinian-Israeli public intellectual, political philosopher and author. He is presently the General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

#2135

John Gastil

#89821

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

John Gastil currently holds a joint appointment as Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Penn State University. He is known for his research on deliberative democracy and group decision making.

#2136

Franco Archibugi

Franco Archibugi

#53726

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Franco Archibugi was an Italian scholar in political, economic and social sciences, university professor in economic policy and spatial planning. He largely operated in Italy and in international governmental agencies; including in the field of economic development, social welfare and cooperation policy. Archibugi was the author of several works in planning theory and methodology, and was among the theorists and promoters of a new unitary discipline of planning – the “Planology” – aimed at creating a bridge between the theoretical scientific progress in economics and other social sciences with the actual political and administrative efficiency and management.

#2137

Luis Eduardo González

#86020

Overall Influence

1945 - 2016 (71 years)

Luis Eduardo González was a Uruguayan political scientist, sociologist and polling specialist. He was a professor at the University of the Republic and the Catholic University. He published, among others, in the Uruguayan Journal of Political Science, the Latin American Research Review, and the Mexican Journal of Sociology.

#2138

Ralph Goodale

#68437

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ralph Edward Goodale is a Canadian diplomat and retired politician who has served as the Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom since April 19, 2021. Goodale was first elected in 1974 as the member of Parliament for Assiniboia, as a member of the Liberal Party. He was defeated in 1979, and moved into provincial Saskatchewan politics, serving as leader of the Saskatchewan Liberals from 1981 to 1988. He returned to federal politics in 1993, as the MP for Regina—Wascana , and served in the governments of Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau, in several roles including as min...

#2139

Mieczysław B. Biskupski

#74702

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Mieczysław B. Biskupski is a Polish-American historian and political scientist, with focus on Central European history and international relations. He has held professorship appointments at St. John Fisher College, the University of Rochester, and the University of Warsaw. In 1997 he was a Fellow of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Since 2002 he is the Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish-American Studies at Central Connecticut State University.

#2140

Mieke Verloo

#77306

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Mieke Verloo is a Dutch political scientist and a professor of comparative politics and inequality issues at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and non-residential permanent fellow at the IWM, Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. She is considered one of the leading directors of scientific research on feminist politics and opposition to gender+ equality in Europe. In 2015 she won the ECPG Gender and Politics Career Achievement Award.

#2141

Numan Kurtulmuş

#58142

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Prof. Dr. Numan Kurtulmuş is a Turkish politician and academician who is currently the speaker of the Grand National Assembly. He served as Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey in the 62nd, 63rd, 64th and 65th AKP governments between 2014 and 2017 and Minister of Culture and Tourism between 2017 and 2018. Previously he served as the leader of Felicity Party between 2008 and 2010 and People's Voice Party between 2010 and 2012.

#2142

Ümit Cizre

#93273

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Ümit Cizre is a Turkish academic, and a leading expert on civilian-military relations in Turkey. She is a professor of political science and international relations at Istanbul Şehir University. She is the editor of Almanac Turkey 2005 – Security Sector and Its Democratic Oversight , which gained public attention in Turkey.

#2143

Adam Berinsky

#67937

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Adam J. Berinsky is a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of the 2004 book Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America and the 2009 book In Time of War: Understanding Public Opinion, From World War II to Iraq.

#2144

Shaun Bowler

#97768

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Shaun Bowler is Distinguished Professor & Dean of the Graduate Division in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. External links Faculty profile

#2145

David P. Baron

#109666

Overall Influence

#2146

Luuk van Middelaar

Luuk van Middelaar

#47267

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Luuk Johannes van Middelaar is a Dutch historian and political philosopher. From December 2009 to 2014 he was a member of the cabinet of Herman Van Rompuy, the first full-time President of the European Council. Van Middelaar is best known for his book The Passage to Europe .

#2147

Fritz Wilhelm Scharpf

#109735

Overall Influence

#2148

Bruce R. Kuniholm

#86920

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Bruce R. Kuniholm is an American academic and the former dean of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. A Professor of Public Policy and History, his field of research expertise is concentrated primarily on U.S. Foreign Policy in the Near and Middle East.

#2149

John Strawson

#45241

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

John Strawson is an author and law professor at the University of East London School of Law, where he teaches International law and Middle East Studies. He specialises in the area of law and postcolonialism, with particular reference to the middle east, Islam and international law.

#2150

Dottie Lamm

#43631

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Dorothy Louise Vennard Lamm is an American feminist, women's rights activist, educator, author, and speaker. She was First Lady of Colorado during her husband Richard Lamm's three terms as Governor of Colorado , and unsuccessfully ran for the United States Senate as the Colorado Democratic candidate in 1998. She wrote a weekly column for The Denver Post from 1979 to 1996 and later published three books. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1985.

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