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,
#2351
Aili M. Tripp
#106151
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Aili Mari Tripp is a Finnish and American political scientist, currently the Wangari Maathai Professor of Political Science and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Education and early career Tripp is a dual Finnish-U.S. citizen. She was born in the United Kingdom to a Finnish mother and American father, and spent fifteen years of her childhood in Tanzania. In 1983, she graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago, earning an MA in Middle East studies form the same institution in 1985. She then received a PhD in political science from Northwestern University in 1990.
Go to Profile#2352
Paul Magnette
#86052
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Paul Magnette is a Belgian politician. Since 2019, he is the leader of the Socialist Party, social democratic French-speaking party in Belgium. Since 2012, he is also mayor of Charleroi. At academic level, he is a former political science professor at the Free University of Brussels and Director of the Institute of European Studies of the ULB. He was appointed minister in the Belgian federal government from 2007 to 2013 and was Minister-President of Wallonia from 2014 to 2017. He also was a member of the Senate of Belgium, of the Parliament of Wallonia and of the Parliament of the French Com...
Go to Profile#2353
Diane Stone
#77936
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Diane L. Stone is an Australian-British academic. Career Diane Stone has been a founding vice president of the International Public Policy Association for 8 years until June 2022. She is Professor of Global Policy at the European University Institute in the School of Transnational Governance. Until 2019, she worked at the University of Warwick for 23 years.
Go to Profile#2354
André Rouvoet
#61922
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
André Rouvoet is a retired Dutch politician of the Reformatory Political Federation party and later the Christian Union party and jurist. He is the chairman of the executive board of the Healthcare Insurance association since 1 February 2012.
Go to Profile#2355
Pan Suk Kim
#93440
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Pan Suk Kim is a South Korean professor in the field of public administration. He is currently a commission member of the International Civil Service Commission of the United Nations and the International Director of the American Society for Public Administration. He was an assistant professor of public administration in the School of Public Service at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia from 1991 to 1994. Kim is currently a professor emeritus of Public Administration in the Department of Global Public Administration, Yonsei University, Mirae Campus in South Korea.
Go to Profile#2356
Jakub J. Grygiel
#69480
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Jakub J. Grygiel is an Ordinary Professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and fellow at The Institute for Human Ecology. He is a senior advisor at The Marathon Initiative and a Visiting National Security Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a book review editor for Orbis. In 2017-2018 he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of State in the Office of Policy Planning working on European affairs. Before joining the Department of State, he was George H. W. Bush Associate Professor at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies . Grygiel was a Senior Fello...
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Jacques deLisle
#95837
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Jacques Louis deLisle is an American legal scholar and political scientist. DeLisle earned a bachelor of arts degree in public and international affairs at Princeton University in 1982, and pursued a doctorate in political science in the Government Department of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He completed his Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School, then clerked for Stephen Breyer before working for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1994, deLisle joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty as an assistant professor of law. He was made a full professor in 1999, and became Stephen A.
Go to Profile#2358
Timothy C. Wong
#56442
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Timothy C. Wong , is a Sinological translator and literary theorist of traditional Chinese fictional narratives and the Chinese efforts to Westernize and politicize their modern counterparts into what everyone now equates with "novels." Wong was born in Hong Kong as an American citizen, and moved with his family back to Hawaii, his father's birthplace, when he was 10 years old. He remained in the city of Honolulu through high school, before going on to northern California for his undergraduate—and eventually graduate—studies.
Go to Profile#2359
Nicholas Valentino
#81812
Overall Influence
Nicholas A. Valentino is an American political scientist. He currently serves as a principal investigator of the American National Election Studies . Valentino earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University and completed his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began teaching at the University of Michigan in 1997. He left Michigan for an appointment as Mike Hogg Professor of Community Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. He returned to the University of Michigan faculty in 2009.
Go to Profile#2360
Colin Thain
#99988
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Colin Thain is professor of political science and a former head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. Born in Bedlington, Northumberland, Thain received a BA in economics and Ph.D. in government from the University of Manchester. He was previously based at the University of Ulster. Thain is currently also a visiting fellow at All Souls College and senior visiting research fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. In 1988, while he was a lecturer at the University of Exeter, Thain ...
Go to Profile#2361
James Mitchell
#101931
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
James Mitchell was an Ulster loyalist and Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve officer who provided a base and storage depot for the Glenanne gang at his farm at Glenanne, near Mountnorris, County Armagh, during the Troubles. The gang, which contained over 40 known members, included soldiers of the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment , officers of the RUC, the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the illegal paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force and some Ulster Defence Association members.
Go to Profile#2362
William E. Skillend
#73280
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
William E. Skillend was the first British academic specializing in the Korean language, and the first professor of Korean at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Skillend was born in Liverpool and went on to study Japanese at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he received a first-class degree and later completed a PhD. He became one of the generation of British orientalists who started as military translators, in his case at Bletchley Park.
Go to Profile#2363
Ray Bush
#102032
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Raymond Carey Bush is a professor of African studies at the school of politics and international studies at the University of Leeds. He is a member of the Leeds University Centre for African Studies advisory board and deputy chair of the Review of African Political Economy . Bush is married to Dr. Mette Wiggen, a fellow academic at POLIS.
Go to Profile#2364
Michael Cullen
#64473
Overall Influence
1945 - 2021 (76 years)
Sir Michael John Cullen was a New Zealand politician. He served as the 16th deputy prime minister of New Zealand, also as the minister of Finance, minister of Tertiary Education, and attorney-general. He was the deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1996 until November 2008, when he resigned following a defeat in the general election. He resigned from Parliament in April 2009, to become the deputy chairman of New Zealand Post from 1 November 2009 and chairman from 1 November 2010 until leaving the role in 2016. On 6 March 2020 he announced that he had resigned from the Lakes and Bay of Plenty district health boardss, respectively.
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Marilyn Tavenner
#42959
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Marilyn Barbour Tavenner is an American government official and health-care executive who served as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, from 2011 to 2015.
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Jean-François Seznec
#82054
Overall Influence
Jean-François Seznec is a political scientist specializing in business and finance in the Middle East. He retired in 2020 and now spends his time managing Hollywood Farm, a fourth-generation family farm in the Broadneck peninsula of Annapolis, Maryland.
Go to Profile#2367
Dale C. Copeland
#87911
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Dale C. Copeland is a Professor of international relations with a focus on trade, war and economic interdependence. Bibliography Origins of Major War. Cornell University Press, 2001.Economic Interdependence and War. Princeton University Press, 2014A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China. Princeton University Press, 2024
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Douglas Hyde
#58750
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Douglas Arnold Hyde was an English political journalist and writer. Originally a communist and the news editor of the Daily Worker, he resigned in 1948 and converted to Catholicism. After his conversion, he gained an international reputation in the late 1940s and 1950s as a prominent and outspoken critic of communism. His magnum opus I Believed was a great financial success, created with the help of MI6, with reprints secretly being sponsored by the UK Foreign Office's Information Research Department to be used as anti-soviet propaganda.
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Colette Capriles
#72003
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Colette Capriles is a Venezuelan political scientist. As a professor of political philosophy and social sciences at Simón Bolívar University, she served as Head of the Political Science Section. She specializes in the study of anti-liberal political thought and culture, and in Venezuelan politics. Capriles is a frequent media commentator and opinion columnist on these topics.
Go to Profile#2370
Jan-Werner Müller
#67337
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Jan-Werner Müller is a German political philosopher and historian of political ideas working at Princeton University. Biography Born in Bad Honnef in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in 1970, Jan-Werner Müller studied at Free University of Berlin, University College London, the University of Oxford's St Antony’s College and Princeton University. He was Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford from 1996 to 2003 and a Fellow of St Antony’s College's European Studies Centre from 2003 to 2005. He has taught political theory and the history of political ideas at Princeton since 2005.
Go to Profile#2371
Ludger Klimek
#119360
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
#2372
Filippo Sabetti
#110621
Overall Influence
Filippo Sabetti is a professor of political science at McGill University. He holds a bachelor's degree in History and Politics from McMaster University , Woodrow Wilson Fellow , a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University . His research interests cover Canadian and Comparative Politics, Social Dilemmas, History of Self-Governance, Religion and Public Life, Political Economy of Crime and Punishment, and Development of Constitutional and Federalist Political Thought. Massive fan of the film Minority Report.
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Mark A. Boyer
#86725
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Mark A. Boyer is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut. He is a specialist in international relations theory. His recent scholarship analyzes governmental responses to climate change at the regional and local level. He has also investigated pedagogical methodologies.
Go to Profile#2374
Linda Cardinal
#55991
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Linda Cardinal is a Franco-Ontarian political scientist. She is a University Professor and a Canada Research Chair in Canadian Francophonie and Public Policies at the University of Ottawa. Cardinal was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2013 and honoured with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Member of the Order of Canada. She was also the first coordinator of the francophone studies program at the University of Ottawa.
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David Levi-Faur
#96778
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
David Levi-Faur is an Israeli political scientist and academic who specializes in comparative political economy and public policy, regulation and governance. He is currently affiliated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of over 70 academic papers.
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Zouheir Chokr
#97859
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Zouheir Chokr is the President of the Lebanese University. Early career Chokr was born in Bednayel in 1947. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III . After teaching with the Lebanese University, Chokr worked as a Lebanese Ambassador in Qatar.
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Trifonia Melibea Obono
#83927
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Trifonia Melibea Obono Ntutumu Obono is an Equatorial Guinean novelist, political scientist, academic and LGBT activist. Her novel La Bastarda is the first novel by a female Equatorial Guinean writer to be translated into English.
Go to Profile#2379
Krystyna Chojnicka
#95576
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Prof. Dr Hab. Krystyna Chojnicka is a Polish lawyer and political scientist. She finished her law degree and a PhD in political science at Jagiellonian University. In 2008, she was voted the dean of the Faculty of Law and Administration at Jagiellonian University.
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Bamidele A. Ojo
#45684
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Bamidele Adesegun Ojo is a Nigerian and American political scientist, author and professor emeritus of political science and international studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, New Jersey, USA.
Go to Profile#2381
Lierre Keith
#15089
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Lierre Keith is an American writer, radical feminist, food activist, and radical environmentalist. Biography Keith attended Brookline High School in Massachusetts. She began her public involvement in the feminist movement as the founding editor of Vanessa and Iris: A Journal for Young Feminists . During this same period, she also volunteered with a group called Women Against Violence Against Women in Cambridge, where she participated in educational events and protest campaigns. In 1984, she was a founding member of Minor Disturbance, a protest group against militarism from a feminist perspective.
Go to Profile#2382
Shuntaro Torigoe
#46728
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Shuntaro Torigoe is a Japanese journalist and political activist. Journalism career Torigoe was born in present-day Ukiha, Fukuoka and graduated from Kyoto University. He began his reporting career with the Mainichi Shimbun in 1965. He served at one point as the Mainichi correspondent in Tehran, and traveled to the front lines of the Iran–Iraq War in 1984, becoming the only Japanese journalist to do so. He left Mainichi in 1989 and thereafter was known for his role as a commentator on TV Asahi news programs. He was named editor-in-chief of OhMyNews Japan in 2006.
Go to Profile#2383
Frédérique Matonti
#69092
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Frédérique Matonti is a French political scientist. She is a professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. She is an expert in the history of political philosophy, political parties, and gender studies.
Go to Profile#2384
Jerzy Łukaszewski
#79241
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Jerzy Wojciech Łukaszewski was a Polish and Belgian academic and diplomat. He lived in Belgium from 1960 on, where he taught at the College of Europe in Bruges from 1961 and served as its rector from 1972. From 1990 to 1996, he was Polish ambassador to France.
Go to Profile#2385
William James Booth
#97325
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
William James Booth is a professor in the department of political science and in the department of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. W. James Booth earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1982. Selected publications Communities of Memory. On Witness, Identity, and Justice, Cornell University Press, 2006, "Maîtres chez nous: Some questions about culture and continuity. A response to Alan Patten's "Rethinking culture: the social lineage account." American Political Science Review 107"From this Far Place: On Justice and Absence," American Political Science Review 105: 750–764."The Color of Me...
Go to Profile#2386
Joel S. Fetzer
#75238
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Joel Steven Fetzer is an American political scientist best known for his pioneering work on comparative politics, nationalism, and democratization. He is a distinguished professor of political science at Pepperdine University.
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Milton R. Konvitz
#34787
Overall Influence
1908 - 2003 (95 years)
Milton Ridbas Konvitz was a Cornell University faculty member. He died September 5, 2003, at the age of 95. Early life, education and early career He was born in 1908 in Safed, a city in what is now Israel that was then part of the vilayet of Sidon of the Ottoman Empire, and was the son of Rabbi Joseph Konvitz and grandson of Rabbi Yaakov Dovid Wilovsky . In 1915, he immigrated to the United States, becoming a citizen in 1926. He studied at New York University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1929 and in 1930 a law degree. In 1933, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell. Pr...
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Jorge Castañeda Gutman
#70772
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jorge Castañeda Gutman is a Mexican politician and academic who served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs . He also authored more than a dozen books, including a biography of Che Guevara, and he regularly contributes to newspapers such as Reforma , El País , Los Angeles Times and Newsweek magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2008.
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Phillip O. Foss
#92491
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
Phillip Oliver Foss an American political scientist, was born in Maxbass, North Dakota to Oliver Foss and Petra Elton Foss and died in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was a decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War; was employed in public service with the U.S. Department of the Interior; helped establish the doctoral program in Environmental Politics and Policy at Colorado State University; published numerous scholarly books, research monographs, journal articles and chapters in anthologies; served as a consultant to government agencies, and received numerous awards and honors, includin...
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Jurema Werneck
#116592
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Jurema Werneck is the Brazilian director for Amnesty International in Brazil. She is a black feminist, physician, author, and doctor in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is also a board member of the Global Fund for Women. Her works include, "Estelizacao de mulheres um desafio para a bioetica?", "Saúde da população negra", "O Livro Da Saude Das Mulheres Negras", and "Black Women's Health: Our Steps Come Away".
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Anne Phillips
#32805
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Anne Phillips , is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics , where she was previously Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.
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Wyn Grant
#65881
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Wyn Grant is a British political scientist and professor of politics at the University of Warwick. He was chair and president of the Political Studies Association . Wyn Grant is a graduate of the universities of Leicester, Strathclyde and Exeter. In 2010 he was presented with the Diamond Jubilee Lifetime Achievement award of the Political Studies Association of the UK at their Awards Ceremony. He was elected an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2011.
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Michael J. Laver
#121040
Overall Influence
#2394
Yohuru Williams
#54948
Overall Influence
Yohuru R. Williams is an American academic, author and activist. Williams is a Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. He was previously the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas . He was previously a professor of history and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University and former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Williams is a notable scholar of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In 2009, Diverse magazine n...
Go to Profile#2395
Joseph Uscinski
#42342
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Joseph E. Uscinski is an American political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracy theories. His most notable work is American Conspiracy Theories co-authored with Joseph M. Parent. He is an associate professor at the University of Miami's Political Science department, and author of several academic publications. He has been made a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 2020.
Go to Profile#2396
Emma Sky
#88571
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Emma Sky, OBE is a British expert on conflict, reconciliation and stability, who has worked mainly in the Middle East. She served in Iraq as the political advisor to US General Ray Odierno and General David Petraeus during the surge. She is director of the International Leadership Center at Yale University, overseeing the Yale World Fellows Program and other initiatives. She is a Senior Fellow at Yale's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where she lectures on Middle East politics and global affairs.
Go to Profile#2397
Joseph Palermo
#64030
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Joseph A. Palermo is an associate professor of history at Sacramento State University, an author and a commentator. He received his undergraduate degree in sociology and anthropology from UC Santa Cruz in 1984, a master's degree in history from San Jose State University in 1986 and a master's and doctorate in American history from Cornell University in 1998. The Politics of Race and War: Robert F. Kennedy and the Democratic Party, 1965-1968 was the title of his dissertation.
Go to Profile#2398
William A. Stanton
#84944
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
William A. Stanton is an American retired career diplomat. Since his retirement from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2012, he has consecutively served as a professor in Taiwan at National Tsing Hua University, National Taiwan University, National Yang Ming University which became National Yang Ming Jiao Tung University, and in 2021 as Chair Professor at National Chengchi University.
Go to Profile#2399
Manuel Muñiz
#85894
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Manuel Muñiz Villa is a Spanish lawyer, academic administrator, and International Relations scholar and is currently the Provost of IE University and Dean of its School of Global and Public Affairs. From 1 June 2023, Muñiz is the President of the Association of Professional Schools of International Schools.
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Leon Epstein
#90160
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Leon David Epstein was an American political scientist. He was born in Milwaukee on May 29, 1919, and raised in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1936 to study economics, earning his bachelor's and master's degree in 1940 and 1941, respectively. While serving in the military, Epstein was stationed in the United Kingdom and took classes at the University of Oxford. He subsequently completed a doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1948. Epstein began teaching at the University of Oregon in 1947, and accepted a faculty position at his alma mater, UW–Madison, in 1949.
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