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).

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List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#2251

Ed King

#57158
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Ralph Edwin King Jr. , better known as Ed King, is a United Methodist minister, civil rights activist, and retired educator. He was a key figure in historic civil rights events taking place in Mississippi, including the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in of 1963 and the Freedom Summer project in 1964. Rev. King held the position of chaplain and dean of students, 1963–1967, at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. At this critical juncture of the civil rights movement, historian John Dittmer described King as “the most visible white activist in the Mississippi movement.”
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#2252

Michael R. Krätke

Michael R. Krätke
#65573
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Michael R. Krätke was professor for political economy at Lancaster University, and editor of the German scholarly journal . Krätke has been working on the history of Marxism since the 1990s Among other things, he has developed a periodization of Marxist intellectual history and identified four stages: from 1842 until Marx’ death in 1883, "classical marxism" from 1883 until World War I, the third stage from the Russian Revolution into the 1960s, the last stage of a social-scientific Marxism following the Marx-Renaissance of the 1960s. He is a member of the scientific advisory council to th...
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#2253

Yōichi Masuzoe

#66673
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
is a Japanese politician who was elected to the position of governor of Tokyo in 2014 and resigned in June 2016 due to the misuse of public funds. He was previously a member of the Japanese House of Councillors and the Japanese Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Before entering politics, he became well known in Japan as a television commentator on political issues.
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#2254

Charles Mathias

#41848
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Charles McCurdy Mathias Jr. was an American politician and attorney. A Republican, he served as a member of the United States Senate, representing Maryland from 1969 to 1987. He was also a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1959 to 1961, and of the United States House of Representatives, representing the of Maryland from 1961 to 1969.
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#2255

Olga Poblete

#91537
Overall Influence
1908 - 1999 (91 years)
Olga Poblete de Espinosa was a long-time women's rights activist and feminist in Chile. She was a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962. Poblete and Elena Caffarena were later honored as "founding matriarchs" by the Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile of '83 or MEMCH '83. This relates to them being important members of the original MEMCH that existed in the 1940s. Along with women's rights, she was concerned with individual development and welfare issues.
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#2256

Nikola Milošević

#35216
Overall Influence
1929 - 2007 (78 years)
Nikola Milošević, PhD was a Serbian writer, political philosopher, literary critic, and politician. He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He was professor of Literary Theory at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology since 1969. He became a correspondent member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1983 and a full member in 1994. He was president of the Miloš Crnjanski Endowment in Belgrade.
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#2257

Gretchen Ritter

#52866
Overall Influence
Gretchen Ritter is an American political scientist and academic administrator who is the current vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer of Syracuse University. She was previously the executive dean and vice provost of Ohio State University's College of Arts and Sciences from 2019 to 2021.
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#2258

Mary Lyndon Shanley

#51624
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Mary Lyndon Shanley is a feminist legal scholar specializing in issues of the American family and reproductive technologies. Her book Just Marriage weighed into the controversy around gay marriage with a historical and political science perspective. She has written on the idea of the "ethic of care" in US political science.
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#2259

Francis Woodman Cleaves

#46409
Overall Influence
1911 - 1995 (84 years)
Francis Woodman Cleaves was a sinologist, linguist, and historian who taught at Harvard University, and was the founder of Sino-Mongolian studies in America. He is well known for his translation of The Secret History of the Mongols.
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#2260

Alec Stone Sweet

#80039
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Alec Stone Sweet is an American political scientist and jurist. He is Professor and Chair of Comparative and International Law at The University of Hong Kong. Scholarship Stone Sweet graduated from Western Washington University , the Johns Hopkins SAIS , and the University of Washington .
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#2261

David E. Potter

#43004
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
David Edwin Potter is the founder and chairman of the microcomputer systems company Psion PLC., and Psion Teklogix after Psion's acquisition of Teklogix in the year 2000. Early life Potter was born in East London, South Africa, in 1943 and brought up in Cape Town. In 1963 he took up a Beit scholarship to read natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1966 he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to study for a doctorate in mathematical physics at Imperial College London, where he was subsequently appointed to the staff. As an academic during the 1970s, he taught at the Universit...
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#2262

Hong Seok-hyun

#60782
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Hong Seok-hyun is a noted figure in South Korean media industry. He is the chairman of JoongAng Holdings, Korea Peace Foundation and Korea Baduk Association. He is a brother-in-law of Lee Kun-hee. In 1994 he became the president and publisher of JoongAng Ilbo. Since then, he has led major innovations in South Korean newspaper industry, and completed comprehensive and all-round media portfolio with different media organizations.
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#2263

Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca

Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca
#64848
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca is a Spanish social scientist based at the Charles III University of Madrid. He has been the director of the Instituto Carlos III-Juan March since its creation in 2013 from CEACS.
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#2264

Uwe Backes

#69623
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Uwe Backes is a German political scientist and specialist in political extremism. He is a professor at the Technical University Dresden and together with Eckhard Jesse the editor of the Yearbook on Extremism and Democracy and Series on Extremism and Democracy. Backes is an adherent of the classical German theory of extremism that postulates that the extreme right and the extreme left have much in common in their opposition to liberty and democracy.
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#2265

Carsten Greve

#47606
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Carsten Greve is a Danish professor at Copenhagen Business School. He is Ph.D in Political Science and Cand.scient.pol. from University of Copenhagen. Greve has been a professor since 2006. He received his master’s degree in political science in 1992, and earned his Ph.D. in political science in 1997 from the University of Copenhagen. He has been at CBS since 2004 and a full professor since 2010. From 2006-2010 he was professor with special responsibilities. From 1998-2004 he was at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. In 1996-1997, he was at the Institute of Economi...
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#2266

Lene Hansen

#57253
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Lene Hansen is an international relations scholar who is a full professor at the University of Copenhagen. Hansen is most well known within academia for her critique of the absence of gender within the thinking of the Copenhagen School of security studies. Her article "The Little Mermaid's Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School" is most commonly referenced for that argument. The Feminist scholar Christine Sylvester describes Hansen as the 'leading European feminist doing Critical Security Studies'.
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#2267

Sharyn O'Halloran

#61994
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Sharyn O’Halloran is the Strategic Academic Leadership Initiative Professor of Political Economy at Trinity College Dublin and Trinity Professorial Fellow. In 2006 she was named the George Blumenthal Professor of Political Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City., where she served as the Senior Vice Dean and Chief Academic Officer at the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University in New York City.[1] A political scientist and economist by training, O’Halloran has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of internat...
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#2268

Paul Musgrave

#67673
Overall Influence
Paul Musgrave is an assistant professor of government at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an expert in American foreign policy matters. He teaches courses in international relations theory, history and international relations, energy politics, U.S. foreign policy, and politics and science fiction.
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#2269

Dalia Dassa Kaye

#110597
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Dalia Dassa Kaye is an American academic. She serves as the Director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Early life Dalia Dassa Kaye received a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
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#2270

Dorothee Bohle

#114004
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Dorothee Bohle is a German political scientist and professor at the European University Institute in Florence. Her work focuses on international political economy, European integration and eastward enlargement, as well as transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe. She won the 2013 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research for her book Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery .
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#2271

Valerie Jane Bunce

#108302
Overall Influence
Valerie Jane Bunce is an American political scientist, currently the Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies and a Professor of Government at Cornell University. She studies democratization, international democratic movements, ethnic politics, and governance in communist and post-communist states.
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#2272

Elco Brinkman

#80117
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Leendert Cornelis "Elco" Brinkman is a retired Dutch politician and businessman who served as Minister of Welfare, Health and Culture from 1982 to 1989 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal in 1994.
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#2273

Joseph S. Murphy

#27820
Overall Influence
1933 - 1998 (65 years)
Joseph Samson Murphy was an American political scientist and university administrator, who was President of Queens College, President of Bennington College, and Chancellor of the City University of New York.
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#2274

Umut Özkirimli

#48545
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
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#2275

María Teresa Belandria

María Teresa Belandria
#99901
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
María Teresa Belandria is a Venezuelan diplomat, lawyer, professor of political science, and politician who was named by Juan Guaidó and received as Venezuela's ambassador to Brazil in February 2019. She served as the international coordinator for the Venezuelan political party, Come Venezuela . On 4 June 2019, the Brazilian government approved her credentials and recognized her as the official ambassador of Venezuela.
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#2276

George Anastaplo

#44092
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
George Anastaplo was a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and author who was famously denied admission for many years to the Illinois Bar. The denial of his admission became a Supreme Court case, In re Anastaplo, in which he insisted that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the privacy of political affiliations; in particular, he refused to answer questions about membership in the Communist Party. Anastaplo's stand was based on Constitutional principles and consequent rejection of McCarthyism, and nobody alleged that he had membership in the Communist Party.
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#2277

Noel B. Reynolds

#67235
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Noel Beldon Reynolds is an American political scientist and an emeritus professor of political science at Brigham Young University , where he has also served as an associate academic vice president and as director for the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies . He was a member of the BYU faculty from 1971 to 2011. He has also written widely on the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , of which he is a member.
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#2278

Josep Colomer

#67300
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Josep Maria Colomer Calsina is a political scientist and economist. His research focuses on the strategies for the design, establishment, and change of political institutions. Topics include the processes of democratization, the origins of parliamentary and separation of powers regimes, the invention of electoral systems and voting rules, the development of nations and empires such as the United States and the European Union, and the increasing role of global institutions.
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#2279

S. Azmat Hassan

#47583
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Syed Azmat Hassan is a former Ambassador of Pakistan and a former senior faculty associate of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, specialising in Diplomacy and Middle Eastern studies. He was associated with the Lahore University of Management Sciences in its Humanities and Social Sciences Department. He was born on 7 August 1944 in Sialkot, Pakistan to Syed Fida Hassan and Zeenat Hassan.He died on 13 January 2020.
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#2280

Hryhoriy Nemyria

#98442
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Hryhoriy Mykhailovych Nemyria is the First Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Ukraine and Deputy Chairman of the Batkivshchyna. Family Nemyria is married to his wife Lyudmila Nemyrya; he has a son Mykhailo, and a daughter.
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#2281

Neta Crawford

#73141
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Neta C. Crawford is an American political scientist. She is Montague Burton Chair in International Relations at the University of Oxford and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. Crawford previously served as professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences in Boston, Massachusetts.
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#2282

Thomas Meyer

Thomas Meyer
#78200
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Meyer is a German political scientist and professor emeritus at Dortmund university. Life Thomas Meyer studied philosophy, political science, and German literature at the University of Frankfurt. In 1973, he received a doctoral degree at Frankfurt for a dissertation about the role of the proletarian in Karl Marx's theory of liberation. He received the Habilitation from the Free University of Berlin in 1977. In later years, Meyer has studied the role of the media in modern politics and has become a noted critic of the way the media influences the style and content of political debates. His term "media democracy" highlights the decisive role of media in political processes.
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#2283

Endymion Wilkinson

Endymion Wilkinson
#29257
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Endymion Porter Wilkinson is an English diplomat and sinologist who served as the European Union Ambassador to China and Mongolia from 1994 to 2001. He is particularly noted for Chinese History: A New Manual, the first version of which appeared in 1973, an authoritative guide to Sinology and Chinese history for which he was awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien for 2014. The 2022 revised and enlarged Sixth Edition consists of two volumes, 1.7-million-words, covering topics, primary sources, and scholarship from earliest times to 1976.
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#2284

Mark White

#42309
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Mark Wells White Jr. was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 43rd governor of Texas from 1983 to 1987. He also held office as Secretary of State of Texas , and as Texas Attorney General .
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#2285

Louis W. Goodman

#78659
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Louis W. Goodman is a scholar in the field of international relations and the former Dean of the School of International Service at American University. He held the position for 25 years. He is a past president of The Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs.
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#2286

Denis Stairs

#77859
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Denis W. Stairs is professor emeritus in political science at Dalhousie University. Education and academics Denis Stairs obtained a B.A. in history from Dalhousie University in 1961. He went on to get his second B.A. from Oxford in 1964, this time in philosophy, politics and economics. He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Toronto, where he specialized in international politics and foreign policy.
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#2287

Shirley Robin Letwin

#53969
Overall Influence
1924 - 1993 (69 years)
Shirley Robin Letwin was an American academic who lived in London. Biography Early life Shirley Robin Letwin was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her family were Jewish immigrants from Kiev. She graduated from the University of Chicago, where she was taught by Friedrich Hayek, and did graduate studies at the London School of Economics. She decided to move to England permanently in 1965.
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#2288

John Marini

#44534
Overall Influence
John Marini is an American political scientist. He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is the author of two books about the administrative state and the co-editor of two more books.
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#2289

John E. Schwarz

#59315
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
John E. Schwarz is an American political scientist. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A in 1961, received his Ph.D from Indiana University in 1967, and studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and L'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. He was an economic adviser to Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana in 1963, completed work for his Ph.D in Belgium and Luxembourg in 1964-66, and then went on to teach at the University of Minnesota from 1966-1970 and the University of Arizona from 1970-2004. In 2006, he became a distinguished senior fellow at Demos, a public policy ...
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#2290

Dominic D. P. Johnson

#78991
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Dominic D. P. Johnson is an Alistair Buchan Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Education He received a D. Phil. in biology from the University of Oxford in 2001 and a PhD in political science from the University of Geneva in 2004. Drawing on both disciplines, he researches and writes on the role of human biology and evolution in understanding the behaviour of individuals, groups, organizations, and states.
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#2291

Brad Henry

#47799
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Charles Bradford Henry is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 26th governor of Oklahoma from 2003 to 2011. A Democrat, he previously served in the Oklahoma Senate from 1992 to 2003. Henry was elected governor in 2002 with 43% of the vote and reelected for a second term in 2006 with 67% of the vote. He was the third governor and second Democrat in Oklahoma history to serve two consecutive terms, along with Democrat George Nigh and Republican Frank Keating. Henry was unable to seek a third term in the 2010 election due to term limits set by the Oklahoma Constitution. He was succ...
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#2292

Peter Steinberger

#65766
Overall Influence
Peter James Steinberger is a professor of political philosophy at Reed College. He was the thirteenth president of Reed College, preceding Colin Diver. Steinberger has served on the Reed College faculty since 1977. While at Reed College, Steinberger has taught his classes primarily in the same room for 35 years. He has also authored editorial columns in both the local and national press, including The Oregonian, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.
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#2293

Michael E. Brown

Michael E. Brown
#86953
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Michael E. Brown is an American academic. He formerly served as Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs of the George Washington University, where he currently serves as Professor of International Affairs, Political Science, and Gender Studies.
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#2294

Wayne A. Cornelius

#73492
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Wayne Cornelius is a U.S. scholar of comparative immigration policy and Mexican politics and development. He received his B.A. in Political Science from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio in 1967. Cornelius founded the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego in 1979, and directed it from 1979–1994 and 2001-2003. He was also the founding director of UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, established in 1999. Cornelius is also a Past President of the Latin American Studies Association. Cornelius has also been a Research Fellow of the Institut...
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#2295

Kay Coles James

#75674
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Kay Coles James is an American public official who served as secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia from January 2022 to August 2023, and as the director for the United States Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Previous to the OPM appointment, she served as Virginia secretary of health and human resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans.
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#2296

Mona Lena Krook

#76304
Overall Influence
Mona Lena Krook is an American political scientist. She is a Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, where she is also the Chair of the Women and Politics Ph.D. Program. She studies the political representation of women, particularly gender quotas in governments and the phenomenon of violence against women in politics.
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#2297

Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa

#76672
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa was a Mexican diplomat. He served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs from April 1979 to 30 November 1982, during the administration of José López Portillo. He was the father of Jorge Castañeda Gutman, who later also served as Foreign Secretary from 2000 to 2003.
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#2298

Andrew C. Weber

Andrew C. Weber
#62123
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Andrew Charles Weber was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs, whose areas of responsibility are US nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs. Appointed by President Obama, he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on 18 May 2009 and served until 1 October 2014.
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#2299

Nurun Nahar Faizannesa

Nurun Nahar Faizannesa
#101953
Overall Influence
1931 - 2004 (73 years)
Nurun Nahar Faizannesa was a Bangladeshi feminist and social activist. She was the first elected female member of the syndicate of the University of Dhaka and the National Pay Commission of Bangladesh.
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#2300

Heribert Adam

#68514
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Heribert Adam is a German-Canadian university professor and author. Adam is professor emeritus of political sociology at Simon Fraser University, specializing in human rights, comparative racisms, peace studies, Southern Africa, and ethnic conflict. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, he is a former president of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Ethnic, Minority and Race Relations.
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