Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Political Science,

#2401

Alexander Ebner

#80069

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Alexander Ebner is a German social scientist and Professor of Social Economics, esp. Economic Sociology and Political Economy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His main research fields are Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Governance and Public Policy, Regional Development, and the History of Economics.

#2402

Elisabeth Jean Wood

#95061

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Elisabeth Jean Wood is an American political scientist, currently the Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment, professor of political science, and professor of international and area studies at Yale University. She studies sexual violence during war, the emergence of political insurgencies and individuals' participation in them, and democratization, with a focus on Latin American politics and African politics.

#2403

Samuel DuBois Cook

Samuel DuBois Cook

#69784

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook was a political scientist, professor, author, administrator, human rights activist, and civil servant. Dr. Cook is best known for serving as the first African-American faculty member at Duke University, in 1966, as well as serving as the President of Dillard University from 1975 to 1997. In addition to these accomplishments, Dr. Cook was also appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by President Jimmy Carter and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bill Clinton. Furthermore, he also served as the first black president of the Southern P...

#2404

Axel Murswieck

#92221

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Axel Murswieck is a German political scientist, commentator, and associate professor of political science at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. Education Murswieck studied political science, history and English studies at the Free University of Berlin. Diploma in political science in 1969. In 1973 he obtained a Ph.D. in social science from the University of Bielefeld.

#2405

Thomas Lutz

#75344

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Thomas Lutz is the head of the Memorial Museums Department of the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin, and active in Holocaust education and research at the national and international level. Life Thomas Lutz studied after the Abitur in 1975 at the Paul-Gerhard Gymnasium in Laubach History, Political Science and Sport in Marburg until 1981. In 1983 he took the second state examination in Benshaim in order to become a teacher at secondary schools.

#2406

F. LaMond Tullis

#99836

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Floyd LaMond Tullis was a professor of political science and Associate Academic Vice President at Brigham Young University from 1969 to 1998. He is a specialist in Latin American Studies and has written multiple works on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Latin America, especially Mexico.

#2407

Kenneth Neal Waltz

#121986

Overall Influence

#2408

Masaki Orita

#53627

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Masaki Orita is a Japanese lawyer specializing in international law. He is on the board of directors of the NGO Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. During the 1990s he served as Director-General of the North American Affairs Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as Japanese Ambassador to Denmark and Lithuania. From 2001 to 2004, he was the Japanese Ambassador to the United Kingdom. In 2005, served as Special Envoy for UN Reform on behalf of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a member of the Japanese chapter of the International Law Association.

#2409

William T. Rowe

#87972

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

William T. Rowe is a historian of China, and John and Diane Cooke Professor of Chinese History, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University. He considers himself a social historian of modern China, with both "social" and "modern" very broadly conceived, and works on every century from the 14th to the 20th.

#2410

Margaret Anstee

Margaret Anstee

#61127

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Dame Margaret Joan Anstee, DCMG was a British diplomat who served at the United Nations for over four decades , rising to the rank of an Under-Secretary-General in 1987. She was the first woman to hold this position.

#2411

Philip H. Melanson

#85241

Overall Influence

1944 - 2006 (62 years)

Philip H. Melanson was a Chancellor Professor of Policy Studies at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and served on the Executive Board of the university's Center for Policy Analysis now known as the Public Policy Center. He served as chair of the Political Science Department for 12 years.

#2412

Dennis Ippolito

#87225

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dennis Stephan Ippolito is a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University and considered a leading historian and expert on governmental budget theory. He has written several books on the topic including Why Budgets Matter: Budget Policy and American Politics, published by Penn State Press and Congressional Spending: A Twentieth Century Fund Report, published by Cornell University Press.

#2413

Marysia Zalewski

#88188

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Marysia Zalewski is an academic associated with feminist approaches to international relations theory. She is a professor of international relations in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University. Previously, she was a professor and head of the School of Social Science at the University of Aberdeen.

#2414

Fred Dallmayr

#87885

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Fred Reinhard Dallmayr is an American philosopher and political theorist. He is Packey J. Dee Professor Emeritus in Political Science with a joint appointment in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame . He holds a Doctor of Law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and a PhD in political science from Duke University. He is the author of some 40 books and the editor of 20 other books. He has served as president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy ; an advisory member of the scientific committee of RESET – Dialogue on Civilizations ; the executive co-chair of Worl...

#2415

Daniele Caramani

#77429

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Daniele Caramani is a comparative political scientist. Education Daniele Caramani grew up in Milan and Paris. He holds a baccalauréat from the Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. After the BA and MA at the University of Geneva, he obtained his Ph.D. at the European University Institute, Florence. He attended the Essex and Michigan methods summer schools.

#2416

Colin Seymour-Ure

#63941

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Colin Knowlton Seymour-Ure was professor of government at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was a specialist in the history of political cartoons and caricature and was one of the founders of the British Cartoon Archive.

#2417

Nick Economou

#79203

Overall Influence

Nicholas Economou is an Australian political scientist. He is a regular commentator in the media on Australian politics, being published in a wide range of Australian and international newspapers. He has also done commentary work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation .

#2418

Marc Holzer

#112414

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Marc Holzer is an American public administration scholar and distinguished professor of public administration at Suffolk University, and was formerly Founding Dean and University Professor at the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration. His primary research interests include public service, public affairs and administration, public performance improvement, public management and citizen engagement in the U.S. and internationally.

#2419

Brown Chimphamba

#50843

Overall Influence

Brown Chimphamba is a Malawian academic, civil servant and diplomat. He is the former Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He was also the chairman of the commission which ran the 1993 referendum which ended the rule of Hastings Banda's Malawi Congress Party. He was also the Vice Chancellor of the University of Malawi.

#2420

Geoff Gallop

#76123

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Geoffrey Ian Gallop is an Australian academic and former politician who served as the 27th Premier of Western Australia from 2001 to 2006. He is currently a professor and director of the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney and former chairman of the Australian Republican Movement.

#2421

Alfred J. Kahn

#68742

Overall Influence

1919 - 2009 (90 years)

Alfred Joseph Kahn was an American expert on social policy, particularly as it related to child welfare. He was critical of problems at the local and federal governmental level in providing services related to child development and family support, arguing that a comprehensive system of social welfare provision should be made available to all Americans comparable to similar systems offered in Western Europe.

#2422

Mark B. Salter

#87883

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Mark B. Salter is a full professor of political science at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Security Dialogue, an academic journal in the field of security studies. Salter received a PhD in political science from the University of British Columbia in 1999, and held a professorship at The American University in Cairo before moving to the University of Ottawa.

#2423

Knut Midgaard

#99961

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Knut Midgaard is a Norwegian political scientist. Born in Oslo, he first studied the history of ideas. In 1958 he was among the proponents of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and in 1959 he graduated with the mag.art. degree. He was briefly lecturer at the University of Oslo before getting a NAVF scholarship as a research fellow at the Nansen Institute and Harvard University.

#2424

John Ferejohn

#92508

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

John Arthur Ferejohn is an American legal scholar and political scientist. He is the Samuel Tilden Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he has been a full-time faculty member since 2009. He previously served as a professor of social science at the California Institute of Technology and as the Carolyn S. G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. While teaching political science at Stanford, he was also a senior fellow at their Hoover Institution. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and rece...

#2425

Kimberly Marten

#94996

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Kimberly Marten is an author and scholar specializing in international security, foreign policy, Russia, and environmental politics. She held the 5-year-term Ann Whitney Olin Professorship of Political Science at Barnard College from 2013 to 2018, and then returned to chair the Barnard Political Science Department for a second time from 2018-2021. She was the director of the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute from 2015 to 2019, and the Harriman Institute published a profile of her career. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Inte...

#2426

Brantly Womack

#66815

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Brantly Womack is Professor Emeritus of Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he has held the Cumming professorial chair, and Senior Faculty Fellow at the Miller Center, where he has held the CK Yen professorial chair. Most of his work has been on Chinese national and international politics.

#2427

Clark Gibson

#80506

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Clark C. Gibson is an American political scientist, best known for his work on African politics, elections in emerging democracies, and environmental politics. Gibson is currently a professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he previously served as chairman of the Department of Political Science. He has consulted for The World Bank, The United Nations, the Carter Center, the United States Agency for International Development, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. Gibson has done influential work on electoral fraud.

#2428

Karin Priester

#83680

Overall Influence

1941 - 2020 (79 years)

Karis Priester was a German historian and political scientist. Biography Priester studied romance languages, history, philosophy, and political science at the University of Cologne, Aix-Marseille University, the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Florence. She obtained her doctorate in history and her habilitation in political science from the University of Marburg with a thesis on Italian Marxism. After teaching at the University of Giessen and RWTH Aachen University, she was a professor of political sociology at the University of Münster starting in 1980. She retired in February 2007.

#2429

Erkki Tuomioja

#78936

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Erkki Sakari Tuomioja is a Finnish politician and a member of the Finnish Parliament. From 2000 to 2007 and 2011 to 2015, he served as the minister for foreign affairs. He was president of the Nordic Council in 2008.

#2430

Elizabeth F. Cohen

#59848

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Elizabeth F. Cohen is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. She is a political theorist who studies citizenship, immigration, and value of time in politics.

#2431

Alison Broinowski

#91410

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Alison Elizabeth Broinowski, is an Australian academic, journalist, writer and former Australian public servant. Biography Alison Woodroffe was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 25 October 1941. She attended the Wilderness School from 1946 to 1958, and in 1962 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Adelaide. In December 1963, she married diplomat Richard Philip Broinowski. From 1963 to 1964, she was a cadet for the Australian Department of External Affairs before beginning her extensive public service career, including various diplomatic postings, with the De...

#2432

Richard Morris Titmuss

#123325

Overall Influence

#2433

Keiko McDonald

#37477

Overall Influence

1940 - 2008 (68 years)

Keiko McDonald was an American orientalist. Biography Keiko McDonald was born in Nara, Japan, on January 1, 1940. In 1963, McDonald graduated from Osaka University of Foreign Studies with a degree in English. She received an MA in English from the State University of California-Sacramento in 1966. Later attending the University of Oregon where she received her Doctor of Arts in 1971 and a PhD in 1974.

#2434

Renee Marlin-Bennett

#79679

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Renee Marlin-Bennett , is a professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Her research on global problems probes power, information flows, borders, and bodies. The research draws upon approaches from international theory, pragmatism, international political sociology, and global political economy. Early in her career, her focus was on the evolution of rules that order global practices as well as those that provide the basis for disorder. She has examined substantive areas such as trade, intellectual property, information, and privacy to examine how contestation, rhetorical fram...

#2435

Paul Kevenhörster

#74038

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Paul Johannes Kevenhörster is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Westphalian William's University of Muenster in Germany. His work focuses on politics in Japan, municipal government and international development co-operation. He has served in academia as well as in a government agency and as consultant to a variety of organisations. Since 1966 Paul Kevenhörster is married to Gisela Drerup. They have three daughters, Uta, Eva and Ina, three granddaughters and a grandson, Milla and Emma Kevenhörster, Sophie and Lucas Russell.

#2436

Anne Tiernan

#112958

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Professor Anne Tiernan is from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Tiernan is a writer, educator, political scientist, and consultant in areas of public administration, public policy and research analysis. She is known for her research expertise in policy and has presented at conferences both nationally and internationally. She has a regular weekly radio slot on 'Weekends with Tim Cox' on 612 ABC Brisbane. Tiernan is currently the Professor at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University and Fellow of ANZSOG.

#2437

Rudy Insanally

#86185

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Samuel Rudolph Insanally was a Guyanese diplomat. He was Guyana's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1987 onwards and was Minister of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guyana from 2001 to 2008.

#2438

Hanne Marthe Narud

#107257

Overall Influence

1958 - 2012 (54 years)

Hanne Marthe Narud was a Norwegian political scientist. She was awarded the cand.polit. degree in 1988 and the dr.polit. degree in 1996. She was a professor of political science at the University of Oslo, and as a scholar on political coalitions and election research she was widely cited in the media; in 2008 reported to be the most cited female scholar in the Norwegian press. In 2009 she was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#2439

Akhtar Imam

#56410

Overall Influence

1917 - 2009 (92 years)

Akhtar Imam was a Bangladeshi educationist, feminist and social activist. Early life Imam was born on 30 December 1917 in Narinda, Old Dhaka. She completed her matriculation and intermediate exams from Eden Girl's High School and Intermediate College, Dhaka in 1933 and 1935 respectively. In 1937, she completed her honors in philosophy from Bethune College of Calcutta University. She was awarded the Gangamani Devi Medal for being first in her batch. In 1946, she finished her master's degree in philosophy from the University of Dhaka. In 1952 she was awarded a scholarship from the Bengal Muslim Education Fund by the Pakistani Government in 1952 to pursue higher education outside the country.

#2440

Mark Hooghe

#123877

Overall Influence

#2441

Jean Hardisty

#102317

Overall Influence

1945 - 2015 (70 years)

Jean V. Hardisty was a political scientist and lesbian radical feminist activist who became a national resource for human rights movements seeking social and economic justice and an end to bigotry based on race, gender, or class. She was a senior scholar with the Wellesley Centers for Women.

#2442

Lisa Ellis

#123028

Overall Influence

Elisabeth Ellis, known as Lisa Ellis, is an American-born New Zealand political theorist and professor in the Department of Politics and Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago. Ellis is director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program at the University of Otago.

#2443

David Bukay

#49833

Overall Influence

David Bukay is a Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Haifa. He is the author of Islamic Fundamentalism and the Arab Political Culture. He specializes in the Arab–Israeli conflict; inter-Arab relations and the Palestinian question; international terrorism and fundamental Islam; theoretical issues and political applications in the Middle East; Asad's foreign policy towards Israel and Lebanon; the culture approach to understanding the Middle-East.

#2444

Maurice Jones

#57924

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Maurice Antonia Jones is the CEO of OneTen , a coalition of companies dedicated to creating one million jobs for African Americans by the end of the 2020s. Previously, he was president and CEO of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national community development financial institution. Previously, he served as the Deputy Secretary of HUD in the Obama administration, and then as the Virginia Secretary of Commerce in the cabinet of Governor Terry McAuliffe.

#2445

Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja

#30060

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja is a former Saudi ambassador and the minister of culture and information between 2009 and 2014. Early life and education Khoja was born in Mecca in 1940. He obtained a bachelor of science degree from King Saud University. Then he earned a master of science degree in organic chemistry in Birmingham University in 1967. He also holds a PhD in organic chemistry at Birmingham University in 1969.

#2446

Kenneth Baer

#53837

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Kenneth S. Baer is an American political advisor and author who served as Associate Director for Communications and Strategic Planning and Senior Advisor for White House's Office of Management and Budget from 2009 to 2012. He is the founder and co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Baer is a former White House speechwriter, author, and analyst. And he is the CEO and Founder of the strategic communications firm, Crosscut Strategies.

#2447

Mümtaz'er Türköne

Mümtaz'er Türköne

#71525

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mümtaz'er Türköne, , is a Turkish academic and author. He was a faculty member at Gazi University from 1993 to 2007 and was a columnist for the Zaman and its English-language sister Today's Zaman.

#2448

Jeffry Frieden

#62036

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Jeffry Alan Frieden is the Stanfield Professor of International Peace at Harvard University and chair of Harvard University's Department of Government. According to the Open Syllabus Project, he is one of the most cited authors on college syllabi for political science courses.

#2449

Corinne Debaine-Francfort

#43788

Overall Influence

Corinne Debaine-Francfort is a French archaeologist and sinologist, a researcher at the CNRS specialised in the archaeology on Eastern Central Asia and in the protohistory of north-west China. Career Debaine-Francfort has been a Doctor of Far Eastern studies at Paris Diderot University since 1989 and research director at CNRS since 1995. She is a member of a team carrying out research on Central Asia. She has taken part in various archaeological expeditions in this region, and in the first Sino-foreign excavation to be authorized by China since 1949. Since 1995 she has been co-director of the Franco-Chinese archaeological mission to Sinkiang.

#2450

Donald Kinder

#104512

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Donald Ray Kinder is an American political scientist and the Philip E. Converse Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is also a professor by courtesy in the University of Michigan's Department of Psychology, and a research professor in the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research's Center for Political Studies. In 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

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