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,

#2301

John Hulsman

#75539
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
John C. Hulsman is an American foreign policy expert. He was the Alfred von Oppenheim Scholar in Residence at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. Hulsman writes for the Aspen Institute of Italy and is senior research fellow at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He used to work for The Heritage Foundation, where he was a senior research fellow in international relations there. He is president and co-founder of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, an international relations consulting firm. He has taught European security studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies , and world politics and U.S.
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#2302

Georgina Waylen

#84048
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Georgina Nicola Alexandra Waylen, is a British political scientist, specialising in comparative politics, political economy, and gender and politics. Since April 2012, she has been Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester. She previously taught at the University of Sheffield, the University of Salford and the University of East Anglia. She was a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University from 2016 to 2017, and has been a visiting professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics since 2018.
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#2303

Gilbert Rozman

#93901
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Gilbert Friedell Rozman is an American sociologist specializing in Asian studies. Rozman completed an undergraduate degree in Chinese and Russian studies at Carleton College, and earned a doctorate in sociology at Princeton University. He was a Princeton faculty member between 1970 and 2013, where he taught as Musgrave Professor of Sociology.
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#2304

Christian Lammert

#92546
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Christian Lammert is a German political scientist. Life Born in Offenbach am Main, Lammert teaches as professor for North American domestic policy at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies of the Free University of Berlin and is research associate at the Zentrum für Nordamerika-Forschung of the Goethe University Frankfurt.
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#2305

Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia
#18669
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic and social critic and feminist. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.
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#2306

Stuart Croft

#48383
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Stuart Croft is a British political scientist and the Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University, a position he has held since 2016. He received a Ph.D. from Southampton University and worked at Birmingham University before joining Warwick in 2007 as Professor of International Security. Croft has published widely in the field of international security and counter-terrorism and is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
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#2307

Kristofer Schipper

Kristofer Schipper
#18469
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Kristofer Marinus Schipper , also known as Rik Schipper and by his Chinese name Shi Zhouren , was a Dutch sinologist. He was a professor of Oriental studies at Leiden University, appointed there in 1993. Schipper worked as researcher for École française d'Extrême-Orient and later taught as directeur de recherche in History of Daoism studies at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He was head of the Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises from the Collège de France. He also taught at Fuzhou University and Zhangzhou College. After his retirement, he and his wife Yuan Bingling moved to Fuz...
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#2308

Catherine Zuckert

#75049
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Catherine H. Zuckert is an American political philosopher and Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Books Postmodern Platos Natural Right and the American Imagination: Political Philosophy in Novel FormPlato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues Machiavelli's Politics The Truth about Leo Strauss with Michael P. Zuckert, University of Chicago PressLeo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy with Michael P. Zuckert, University of Chicago Press
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#2309

Diana Mutz

#41838
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Prof. Dr. Diana Carole Mutz is the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also the director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. She is known for her research in the field of political communication. She formerly served as editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Political Behavior.
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#2310

Kaare Strøm

#115836
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Kaare Strøm is a Norwegian political scientist. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1984, and is now a professor at the University of California, San Diego. He has also been a fellow at the University of Rochester in 1988, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace from 1994 to 1995, the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio in 2001 and Stanford University from 2004 to 2005.
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#2311

Leslie R. Wolfe

#44413
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Leslie Rosenberg Wolfe was an American women's rights activist, known for her work as the longtime leader of the Center for Women Policy Studies. She particularly focused her activism on the intersection of racism and sexism faced by women of color.
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#2312

Janine R. Wedel

#78548
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Janine R. Wedel is an American anthropologist and university professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a senior research fellow of the New America Foundation. She is the author of several books and many articles on some key systemic processes of the day. She is the first anthropologist to win the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
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#2313

Lykke Friis

#89639
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Lykke Friis is Prorector for Education at the University of Copenhagen and is a former Danish politician for the party Venstre and former Minister for Climate and Energy and equal rights. Prior to her political career she has once before been Prorector at the University of Copenhagen and held the position from 2006 - 2009. Prior to her appointment as government minister, she was not a member of Venstre.
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#2314

Baldev Raj Nayar

#107609
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Baldev Raj Nayar was an Indian-born Canadian academic. He was a professor of political science at McGill University from 1991 to 2021. He joined McGill University as an assistant professor in 1964. He was born in Punjab on 26 October 1931, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1963.
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#2315

Leszek Sykulski

Leszek Sykulski
#82491
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Leszek Sykulski is a Polish political scientist specializing in geopolitics. Biography He graduated from Jagiellonian University in Cracow , Silesian University in Katowice and National Defence University in Warsaw . He graduated also from General Kosciuszko Military Academy of Land Forces .
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#2316

Herbert Paul Kitschelt

#116959
Overall Influence
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#2317

Jeffrey Lewis

#42297
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jeffrey Lewis is an American expert in nuclear nonproliferation and geopolitics, currently a professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and director of the CNS East Asia Nonproliferation Program. He has written two books on China's nuclear weapons, and numerous journal and magazine articles, blog posts, and podcasts on nonproliferation and related topics.
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#2318

Alexandra Goujon

Alexandra Goujon
#59283
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Alexandra Goujon is a French political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the University of Burgundy. She specializes in political conflict and regime change in Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Belarus.
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#2319

W. Meredith Bacon

#100099
Overall Influence
W. Meredith Bacon is a retired political science professor and LGBT-rights activist. When she changed her name and transitioned to female in 2005, she retained the "W" as a first initial that was changed to stand for nothing and retained her lifelong middle name, Meredith.
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#2320

Patrick Deneen

#73471
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Patrick J. Deneen is an American political theorist, author, and public intellectual, who serves as a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. In 2018, he came to prominence with the publishing of his book, Why Liberalism Failed.
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#2321

Yu Keping

#97792
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Yu Keping is the Director of the Center for Chinese Government Innovations at Peking University. He is a noted scholar having produced many noted books including the widely noted Democracy is a Good Thing. In addition to his academic work he has also acted as an advisor on political reforms to the Chinese government.
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#2322

Lilly Goren

#45126
Overall Influence
Lilly J. Goren is an American political scientist and historian. She is a professor of political science and global studies at Carroll University, where she has also been Chair of the Department of History, Political Science and Religious Studies. Goren uses popular culture, such as literature and film, to understand American politics. She has published work on how popular culture affects public perceptions of political leadership by women, how feminist ideas are reflected and affected by popular culture, and the politics of re-distribution in the United States Congress.
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#2323

Beth Simone Noveck

Beth Simone Noveck
#64494
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Beth Simone Noveck is the 1st Chief Innovation Officer of New Jersey, Director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, and Director of The Governance Lab. She is also affiliated faculty with the Institute for Experiential AI. She is the author of Solving Public Problems: How to Fix our Government and Change Our World , Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Government , Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful , and co-editor of the State of Play: Law and Virtua...
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#2324

Ko Sung-kuk

#96878
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ko Sung-kuk is a South Korean political scientist. During his career as an instructor for the Political Science Department at Korea University, the authorities sentenced Ko Sung-kuk to 3 years of imprisonment, and to a 3-year suspension of teaching license under the National Security Act on November 27, 1986.
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#2325

Taiaiake Alfred

#29276
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is an author, educator, and activist, born in Montreal, Quebec in 1964 and raised in the community of Kahnawake. Alfred is an internationally recognized Kanien’kehá:ka professor. Alfred grew up in Kahnawake and received a B.A. in History from Concordia University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. He served in the US Marine Corps in the 1980s. Alfred was the founding director of the University of Victoria’s Indigenous Governance Program (serving from 1999 until 2015) and was awarded a Canada Research Chair 2003–2007, in addition to a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in education.
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#2326

Brian Moore

#59596
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Brian Patrick Moore is an American politician and founder of antiwar organization Nature Coast Coalition for Peace & Justice. A perennial candidate, he was the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party USA for the 2008 United States presidential election; he waged several campaigns for mayor and city council in Washington, D.C., and twice ran for the United States House of Representatives from Florida's 5th congressional district, winning none; he ran for the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Florida in 2010, but lost in the primary election.
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#2327

Ali Tarhouni

#86229
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Ali Abdussalam Tarhouni is a Libyan economist and politician. Tarhouni served as the minister for oil and finance on the National Transitional Council, the provisional governing authority in Libya, from 23 March to 22 November 2011. He acted in the capacity of interim prime minister of Libya during the departure of outgoing incumbent Mahmoud Jibril from 23 October 2011 until Abdurrahim El-Keib was formally named to succeed Jibril on 31 October.
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#2328

Bruce Bagley

#64029
Overall Influence
Bruce Michael Bagley is an American academic, and chair of department and professor of international studies at the University of Miami. In November 2019, he was charged with money laundering, and in June 2020 he pled guilty to laundering approximately $2.5 million in deposits from overseas accounts that were controlled by Alex Saab and keeping a percentage for himself. On Nov. 17, 2021, he was sentenced to six months in prison.
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#2329

Robert Elgie

#89225
Overall Influence
1965 - 2019 (54 years)
Robert Clyde Elgie was a professor at Dublin City University and Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His work mainly related to the study of semi-presidential systems. Professor Elgie was head of the Law School at Dublin City.
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#2330

Kelly Greenhill

#76210
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Kelly M. Greenhill is an American political scientist. She is an associate professor at Tufts University and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She specializes in weapons of mass migration, forced displacement, and foreign policy.
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#2331

Corinne McLaughlin

#37554
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Corinne McLaughlin was an American author and educator. She was executive director of The Center for Visionary Leadership and a Fellow of The World Business Academy and the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland. McLaughlin and her partner Gordon Davidson founded Sirius, an ecological village in Massachusetts. She coordinated a national task force for President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development and has taught politics at American University. McLaughlin has lectured in the U.S., Europe and South America. She is co-author of The Practical Visionary: A New World Guide to Spiritual Growth and...
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#2332

Rozy Munir

#70539
Overall Influence
1943 - 2010 (67 years)
Rozy Munir was an Indonesian politician, diplomat and leading figure in Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organization in the country. He served as a government minister with the administration of former President Abdurrahman Wahid. In 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono appointed Munir as Indonesia's Ambassador to Qatar, a position he held until his death in 2010.
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#2333

David Elton

#105605
Overall Influence
David Elton is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Lethbridge, and past President of Max Bell Foundation. Elton taught at the University of Lethbridge for over thirty years. In 1980 Dr. Elton began working as President of the Canada West Foundation , and served as President until 1997. During Elton's tenure, CWF research topics included institutional reform and citizens' engagement. In 1997 Elton was appointed as President of the Max Bell Foundation, a charitable granting philanthropic organization.
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#2334

Richard G. Niemi

#117724
Overall Influence
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#2335

Gerd Nonneman

#83562
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Gerd Nonneman is a Professor of International Relations and Gulf Studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University's campus in Qatar , where he served as Dean from 2011 to 2016. Before joining Georgetown University, he held the Al-Qasimi Chair in Gulf Studies, and a Chair in International Relations and Middle East Politics, at the University of Exeter. He is a former Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies and of the Centre for Gulf Studies at that university. He is also a former Executive Director of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies .
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#2336

Rodney Barker

#85104
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Rodney Barker is a British academic and political commentator. He was Professor of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in London from September 2006 to September 2009. He is married to the medical sociologist Helen Roberts.
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#2337

Jonathan Boston

#70182
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Jonathan George Boston is a New Zealand academic and professor of policy studies at the Victoria University of Wellington School of Government. Academic career Boston got his MA from the University of Canterbury and his DPhil from the University of Oxford.
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#2338

Jack Brooks

#43000
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Jack Bascom Brooks was an American Democratic Party politician from the state of Texas who served 42 years in the United States House of Representatives, initially representing from 1953 through 1967, and then, after district boundaries were redrawn in 1966, the from 1967 to 1995. He had strong political ties to prominent Texas Democrats, including Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and President Lyndon B. Johnson. For over fifteen years, he was the dean of the Texas congressional delegation.
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#2339

John R. Hubbard

#18084
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
John Randolph Hubbard was an American educator, academic administrator, and diplomat who served as the eighth president of the University of Southern California from 1970 and 1980. Early life and education Hubbard was born and raised in Belton, Texas. He earned his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin. As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, he became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
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#2340

Philip Robins

#88610
Overall Influence
Philip Robins is an Oxford University Reader in Politics and International Relations, with special reference to the Middle East, and a Fellow of St. Antony's College, University of Oxford. Before that, he was the Head of the Middle East Program, which he founded, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London, which he joined in September 1987.
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#2341

Bernhard Ebbinghaus

#62907
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Bernhard Ebbinghaus is a German sociologist and comparative social policy expert at the University of Mannheim. Biography Ebbinghaus was born in 1961 in Stuttgart. He studied sociology at the University of Mannheim and was a Fulbright student at the New School for Social Research in 1984/85. Following a year at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes Européennes in Geneva, he was a doctoral student at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy , where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Labour Unity in Union Diversity: Trade Unions and Social Cleavages in Western Europe, 1890-1989 . Returnin...
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#2342

George Alleyne

#38473
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Sir George Allanmore Ogarren Alleyne served as United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean region 2003–2010. He was appointed to the position by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in February 2003.
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#2343

Hazem Hosny

#113700
Overall Influence
Hazem Hosny is an Egyptian political scientist. He was Professor of Political Science at Cairo University. Criticism of Sisi Hazem Hosny has criticised the policies of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi with Mahmoud Refaat. In January 2018 he supported Sami Anan's bid to contest Sisi in the 2018 Egyptian presidential election.
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#2344

François Burgat

François Burgat
#42782
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
François Burgat, born April 2, 1948, in Chambéry, is a French political scientist and arabist, Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research posted at IREMAM in Aix-en-Provence. He has been the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council research program "When Autoritarism Fails in the Arab World WAFAW" .
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#2345

Kenneth M. Newton

#118161
Overall Influence
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#2346

Kimberly Hutchings

#46477
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Kimberly Hutchings is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. She is a leading scholar in international relations theory. She has extensively researched and published on international political theory in respect to Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, international and global ethics, Feminist theory and philosophy, and politics and violence. Her work is influenced by the scholarly tradition that produced the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory.
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#2347

Peter Swire

Peter Swire
#45670
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Peter P. Swire is the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Swire is also Professor of Law and Ethics in the Scheller College of Business and has an appointment by courtesy with the School of Public Policy. He is an internationally recognized expert in privacy law. Swire is also a senior fellow at the Future of Privacy Forum and has served on the National Academies of Science and Engineering Forum on Cyber Resilience. During the Clinton administration, he became the first person to hold the position of Chief Counselor for Privacy in the Office of Management and Budget.
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#2348

Beşir Atalay

#85012
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Beşir Atalay is a Turkish politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey in the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from 2011 to 2014. Previously he was minister of interior from 28 August 2007 to 14 July 2011.
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#2349

Pavel Gusterin

#25868
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Pavel Vyacheslavovich Gusterin is a Russian orientalist. Education Pavel Gusterin is a graduate of the Tver State University , the Institute of Asian and African Countries at the Moscow State University named after Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov , and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation .
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#2350

Giorgio Napolitano

#72965
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (99 years)
Giorgio Napolitano was an Italian politician who served as the president of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first to be re-elected to the office. In office for 8 years and 244 days, he was the longest-serving president, until the record was surpassed by Sergio Mattarella in 2023. He also was the longest-lived president in the history of the Italian Republic, which has been in existence since 1946. Although he was a prominent figure of the First Italian Republic, he did not take part in the Constituent Assembly of Italy that drafted the Italian constitution; he is considered one of the symbols of the Second Italian Republic, which came about after the Tangentopoli scandal of the 1990s.
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