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,
#2201
John A. DiBiaggio
#20477
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
John Angelo DiBiaggio was an American dentist and academic who served as president of the University of Connecticut from 1979 to 1985, president of Michigan State University from 1985 to 1992, and president of Tufts University from 1992 to 2001. He was a "people person" known for his fundraising skills and fostering collaboration, interdisciplinary research and learning, and civic engagement.
Go to Profile#2202
Kathryn Newcomer
#89324
Overall Influence
Kathryn Newcomer is an American Political Scientist, author and professor of public policy and public administration. She was previously the director of the George Washington University's Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
Go to Profile#2203
Martha Brill Olcott
#39440
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Martha Brill Olcott is an American expert on Central Asia and the Caspian. She was a senior associate with the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, co-directing the Carnegie Moscow Center's Project on Ethnicity and Politics in the former Soviet Union from 1995 to 2014. Dr. Olcott taught political science at Colgate University from 1975 until 1998. She previously served as a special consultant to Acting United States Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and as director of the Central Asian American Enterprise Fund. Dr. Olcott is currently a visitin...
Go to Profile#2204
Steven Lamy
#71050
Overall Influence
Steven Lamy is a professor of international relations and a Vice Dean for the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. He is also a past Director of the University of Southern California School of International Relations.
Go to Profile#2205
Matthew S. Holland
#47009
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Matthew Scott Holland has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since April 2020. He previously served as the 6th president of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, and its first president after UVU was granted university status .
Go to Profile#2206
Marc Stears
#51982
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Marc Stears is a British political theorist. He is Director of the UCL Policy Lab, based at University College London, having previously led the Sydney Policy Lab at The University of Sydney. Before arriving in Sydney in 2018, Marc had been Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation. He was previously Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of University College, Oxford. His published works have focussed mainly on the development of progressive political movements in the UK and the USA. He was a leading thinker in the Blue Labour movement. He was formerly chief speechwriter to Ed Miliba...
Go to Profile#2207
John Horgan
#64398
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
John Joseph Horgan is a Canadian former politician who served as the 36th premier of British Columbia from 2017 to 2022, and also as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party from 2014 to 2022. Horgan was the member of the Legislative Assembly for the constituency of Langford-Juan de Fuca and its predecessors from 2005 to 2023.
Go to Profile#2208
Kevin Anderson
#57008
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Kevin Anderson is a British climate scientist. Anderson has a decade of industrial experience, principally as an engineer in the petrochemical industry. He regularly provides advice on issues of climate change across different tiers of governance, from local and regional through to national and the European Commission.
Go to Profile#2209
John David Lewis
#31723
Overall Influence
1955 - 2012 (57 years)
John David Lewis was a political scientist, historian and Objectivist scholar who held the post of visiting associate professor in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program at Duke University from 2008 to 2012, as well as Associate Professor of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lewis was also an Anthem Fellow for Objectivist Scholarship.
Go to Profile#2210
Melani Cammett
#100693
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Melani Claire Cammett is an American political scientist; she is currently the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government at Harvard University and the Director of the university's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cammett's research focuses on ethnoreligious violence and the politics of development, particularly in the Middle East.
Go to Profile#2211
Jeremy Seekings
#80450
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Jeremy Seekings is a British-born academic who is professor of political studies and sociology at the University of Cape Town. He is the director of the university's Centre for Social Science Research.
Go to Profile#2212
Lee Sigelman
#100537
Overall Influence
1945 - 2009 (64 years)
Lee Philip Sigelman was an American political scientist. At the time of his death in 2009, he was the Columbian College Distinguished Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He served as editor-in-chief of the American Political Science Review from 2001 to 2007, as editor-in-chief of American Politics Quarterly from 1981 to 1987, and as president of the Midwest Political Science Association in 1994.
Go to Profile#2213
Yvonne Svanström
#54284
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Yvonne Svanström, , is an associate professor and head of the Department of Economic History at Stockholm University. Career She earned her PhD in 2000, with a dissertation on prostitution in the 19th century. An expanded and popularized version of her thesis was published in Swedish as "Offentliga kvinnor. Prostitution I Sverige 1812–1918".
Go to Profile#2214
Robert F. Turner
#67944
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Robert F. Turner was a professor of international law and national security law at the University of Virginia and the co-founder of its Center for National Security Law. Education Turner earned his BA in Government with honors from Indiana University in 1968. While attending the university, he became chairman of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists Conservative League. Later, he became the National Research Director for Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam. He undertook graduate work in history and political science at Stanford University in 1972 and 1973 while employed by the Hoover Institution.
Go to Profile#2215
Daniel Rothenberg
#64753
Overall Influence
Daniel Rothenberg is a Professor of Practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies and co-director with Peter Bergen of the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University. He is also a senior fellow at New America.
Go to Profile#2216
J. William Davis
#93080
Overall Influence
1908 - Present (116 years)
J. William Davis was an American academic administrator who is known as the father of the National Letter of Intent for college athletics. Davis was chairman of Texas Tech University's Athletic Council from 1948 to 1969. He created a form, the National Letter of Intent, to prevent coaches from pulling recruits from other schools. The form was adopted in 1964 by the College Commissioners Association.
Go to Profile#2217
Peter Nedergaard
#56552
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Peter Nedergaard is a Danish professor of political science who has been employed at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen since 2008. Peter Nedergaard is member of the Order of Dannebrog.
Go to Profile#2218
C. E. Beeby
#76864
Overall Influence
1902 - 1998 (96 years)
Clarence Edward Beeby , most commonly referred to as C.E. Beeby or simply Beeb, was a New Zealand educationalist and psychologist. He was influential in the development of the education system in New Zealand, first as a director of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research from 1936, and then as Director of Education from 1940, initially under the First Labour Government. He also served as ambassador to France and on the UNESCO executive.
Go to Profile#2219
Ehrhart Neubert
#70648
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Ehrhart Neubert is a retired German Evangelical minister and theologian. During its final decade he emerged as an opponent of the East German one-party dictatorship, becoming a member of the League of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic . Since the collapse of the East German political regime in 1989/90 he has participated prominently on committees and as an author seeking to understand and evaluate it.
Go to Profile#2220
Stuart Nagel
#97535
Overall Influence
1934 - 2001 (67 years)
Stuart S. Nagel was an American academic. A Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, he is notable for having coined the terms "super-optimizing" and "win-win analysis" and advancing the boundaries of policy studies.
Go to Profile#2221
Deborah Avant
#99255
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Deborah Denise Avant is an American political scientist and faculty member at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies. Avant is also the Director of the university's Sie Cheou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy and the president of the International Studies Association.
Go to Profile#2222
Klaus Bachmann
#63356
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Klaus Dieter Bachmann is a German journalist, writer, historian and political scientist. He is an author of books and writings on German, Austrian and Polish culture, history and politics, as well as on the European Union and German-Polish as well as Polish-Ukrainian relations. In 1988, Bachmann settled in Poland and began to write on a regular basis for various Austrian and German newspapers and weeklies , reporting on the revolutionary and evolutionary political, economic, social and cultural changes in the post-Soviet bloc countries. Since 1989, he worked as the accredited foreign correspondent based in Poland, and also from 1992, in Kyiv, Minsk and Vilnius.
Go to Profile#2223
Indra Øverland
#64429
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Indra Overland is a specialist on energy politics. He did his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK, and has later published on a broad range of energy politics issues. The PhD thesis was awarded the Toby Jackman Prize.
Go to Profile#2224
Jaakko Nousiainen
#107277
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Jaakko Nousiainen is a professor of Finnish political science, and has served as a chancellor of the University of Turku. He graduated as a student in the Joensuu lyseon, in 1950. He was a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, in 1959. In his doctoral dissertation, he studied Communist support in the municipality of Kuopio. An expert in Finland politics and government, Nousiainen analyzed the basis of Communism's support and distinguished Communism between Communist rural and Communist urban areas.
Go to Profile#2225
Carl Levy
#89527
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Carl Levy is professor of politics at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a specialist in the history of modern Italy and the theory and history of anarchism. Education Levy was educated at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the London School of Economics .
Go to Profile#2226
Mark Beeson
#92699
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Mark Beeson is an adjunct professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney. Prior to this he was Professor of International Politics at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He previously worked at Murdoch University, Griffith University and the University of Queensland in Australia, and the University of York and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#2227
Aki Orr
#62920
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Akiva "Aki" Orr was an Israeli writer and political activist. He was an outspoken critic of Zionism and supported a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After 1968 Orr was a leading advocate of radical direct democracy.
Go to Profile#2228
Henry R. Nau
#101882
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Henry R. Nau is professor of political science and international affairs at Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of a theory of American foreign policy known as conservative internationalism and a book by the same name.
Go to Profile#2229
Robert G. Gard Jr.
#62830
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Robert Gibbins Gard Jr. is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and former chairman of the board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where his work focuses on nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, Iraq, Iran, military policy, nuclear terrorism, and other national security issues.
Go to Profile#2230
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey
#88836
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, FBA is a British-American professor of political science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She served as the LSE's Head of the Department of Government from 2019 to 2022.
Go to Profile#2231
Marian Sawer
#103512
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Philippa Marian Sawer is an Australian political scientist. She is a professor emeritus at the Australian National University . Early life Sawer was born in Auckland, New Zealand, the daughter of Ralph and Marjorie Goodwin. She moved to Australia to attend Ascham School in Sydney, and subsequently attended the Australian National University in Canberra. She graduated B.A. in 1968, M.A. in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1975. Her doctoral thesis was titled "The question of the Asiatic mode of production: towards a new Marxist historiography".
Go to Profile#2232
Ramnarayan Rawat
#56550
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Ramnarayan Rawat is a professor at the University of Delaware and a historian of the Indian subcontinent and has also had appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Washington. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Delhi. He has conducted research on the Chamar caste in India, and displayed that their work centered on agriculture and not tanning as previously thought. His work was banned in parts of India for some time due to usage of the word "Chamar."
Go to Profile#2233
William C. Martel
#77455
Overall Influence
1955 - 2015 (60 years)
William C. Martel was a scholar who specialized in studying the leadership and policymaking processes in organizations, strategic planning, cyberwarfare and militarisation of space, and technology innovation. He taught at the U.S. Air War College and U.S. Naval War College, and performed research for DARPA and the RAND Corporation. He later become Associate Professor of International Security Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a position he held until his death in 2015.
Go to Profile#2234
Drew Hutton
#66159
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Peter Drew Hutton is an Australian activist, academic, campaigner and past political candidate. Hutton co-founded the Queensland Greens and Australian Greens and ran in elections in Queensland and Australia at all three levels of government.
Go to Profile#2235
Uwe Wagschal
#92871
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Uwe Wagschal is a German political scientist. Education Wagschal studied political science and economics at the University of Heidelberg. Magister Artium in political science and economics in 1992. Earned a diploma in economics in 1993, and graduated with a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Heidelberg based on a dissertation dealing with public debt in comparative perspective.
Go to Profile#2236
Brian Raftopoulos
#86312
Overall Influence
Brian Raftopoulos is a Mellon Senior Research Mentor at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape and a former Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe. He first emigrated to South Africa in 2006 to serve as Director of Research and Advocacy in the human rights NGO Solidarity Peace Trust.
Go to Profile#2237
Mihir Sharma
#71110
Overall Influence
Mihir Swarup Sharma is an Indian economist who is senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and an opinion columnist for Bloomberg News. Before that he was the opinion editor for Business Standard and a columnist for the Indian Express.
Go to Profile#2238
Daniel Schueftan
#48945
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Dan Schueftan Biography Dan Schueftan was an advisor to Israel's National Security Council, and to former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon. Schueftan served as a consultant to Israeli decision-makers and the top echelon of Israel's foreign policy and defense establishments, also briefing European and American political leaders and senior officers. He is the author of several books on contemporary Middle Eastern history.
Go to Profile#2239
Helge Blakkisrud
#113140
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Helge Blakkisrud is a Norwegian political scientist and editor. Blakkisrud holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Oslo. He is Head of the Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs .
Go to Profile#2240
Christopher J. Pollitt
#113164
Overall Influence
#2241
Raanan Rein
#60942
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Raanan Rein is the Elías Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History and former Vice President of Tel Aviv University. Since 2005 Rein is the Head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies. He is a member of Argentina's National Academy of History, and former President of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association . The Argentine government awarded him the title of Commander in the Order of the Liberator San Martín for his contribution to Argentine culture. The Spanish government awarded him the title of Commander in the Order of Civil Merit. His c...
Go to Profile#2242
Anne de Tinguy
#97237
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Anne de Tinguy is a French historian and political scientist. Since 2005 she has been a University Professor of contemporary history at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. She studies international relations, specializing in the foreign policy of Russia and Ukraine, as well as migration studies.
Go to Profile#2243
Nicole Wong
#22470
Overall Influence
Nicole A. Wong is an American attorney, specializing in Internet, media and intellectual property law. In May 2013, she was selected by the Barack Obama administration to be the White House deputy chief technology officer of the United States. She earned the nickname "the Decider" while she was vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, where she was responsible for arbitrating issues of censorship for Google. Wong stepped down as Deputy US CTO on August 16, 2014, to return with her family to California. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group, a globa...
Go to Profile#2244
Joy James
#48487
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Joy James is an American political philosopher, academic, and author. James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. Her books include Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Shadowboxing, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists, Resisting State Violence, and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin where she developed the Harriet Tubman Digital Repository.
Go to Profile#2245
Susan Welch
#85617
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Susan Welch was an American political scientist who served as the Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts at Pennsylvania State University from 1991 to 2019, the longest serving dean in Penn State's history.
Go to Profile#2246
Charles Richard Stith
#42339
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Charles R. Stith is an American businessman, diplomat, former educator, author and politician. He is currently the Chairman of The Pula Group, LLC., which invests in high value opportunities in Africa. He is the non-executive chairman of the African Presidential Leadership Center, a Johannesburg-based NGO focused on leadership development and tracking economic and political trends in Africa. He established and formerly directed Boston University's African Presidential Center. Prior to this, Stith presented his letter of credence as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to the United Republic of Tanzania in September 1998.
Go to Profile#2247
Peverill Squire
#99385
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Peverill Squire is the Hicks and Martha Griffiths Chair in American Political Institutions at the University of Missouri, a political scientist well known for his work on legislative institutions, with specific focus on state legislaturess. He has written, or co-authored, over 87 unique publications in the form of article and book chapters. He graduated in 1986 with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently he lives in Columbia, Missouri with his wife and dog, Csilla which is Hungarian for star.
Go to Profile#2248
Sung-Yoon Lee
#73105
Overall Influence
Sung-Yoon Lee is a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies, and specialist on North Korea. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor in Korean Studies and assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He was also an associate in research at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. and a research fellow at the National Asia Research Program.
Go to Profile#2249
Matthew Kroenig
#63973
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Matthew Kroenig is an American political scientist, author, and national security strategist. He is professor in the Department of Government and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Kroenig is known for his research on international security and nuclear weapons.
Go to Profile#2250
Huck Gutman
#53472
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Stanley "Huck" Gutman is an American academic and political advisor. He is a professor of English at the University of Vermont and former chief of staff to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He is the co-author of Sanders's political memoir, Outsider in the White House.
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