The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Political Science,
#2551
Domenico Fisichella
#90021
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Domenico Fisichella is an Italian academic and politician, who served as culture minister in the Berlusconi I Cabinet from 1994 to 1995. Career Fisichella taught political science at Sapienza University of Rome and the Luiss Business School. He wrote for Rome daily Il Tempo.
Go to Profile#2552
Teo Chee Hean
#66165
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Teo Chee Hean is a Singaporean politician and former two-star rear-admiral who has been serving as Senior Minister of Singapore since 2019 and Coordinating Minister for National Security since 2015. A member of the governing People's Action Party, he has been the Member of Parliament representing the Pasir Ris West division of Pasir Ris–Punggol GRC since 2001.
Go to Profile#2553
Katharina Holzinger
#106721
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Katharina Holzinger is a German political scientist with a focus on international politics. Since 2021, she is the Rector of the University of Konstanz. Academic career Holzinger studied political science, German studies and philosophy in Munich before earning her doctorate at the University of Augsburg in 1993. From 1993 to 1997 she was a senior researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center before joining the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn. In 2002 she completed her habilitation at the University of Bamberg. After a research stay as a Jean Monnet Fellow at t...
Go to Profile#2554
Dean McHenry
#53039
Overall Influence
1910 - 1998 (88 years)
Dean E. McHenry was an American professor of political science, and the founding chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz. McHenry was born in Lompoc, California north of Santa Barbara, and received his bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA in 1932, and went on to receive a master's degree at Stanford University in 1933 and a Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley in 1936.
Go to Profile#2555
Alfred Balitzer
#97556
Overall Influence
Alfred Balitzer is an American professor of government at Claremont Graduate University. He graduated from California State University, Los Angeles, and from the University of Chicago with a master of arts degree. He completed his Ph.D. in government at CGU in 1971. He has been involved in numerous political campaigns throughout California and the nation, such as director of the Republican National Committee under President Ronald Reagan, and chairman of Scholars for Reagan-Bush in 1984. President Reagan appointed Dr. Balitzer Special Ambassador to Brunei .
Go to Profile#2556
Eric M. Uslaner
#130254
Overall Influence
#2557
Daniel Druckman
#130355
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
#2558
Ajume Wingo
#79937
Overall Influence
Ajume Wingo is a Cameroonian political and social philosopher who is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Much of his work has focused on the analysis of non-liberal or corrupt democratic states with particular focus on contemporary African states. He has also published articles on African art, aesthetics, and culture, often juxtaposing these with western practices and customs.
Go to Profile#2559
Abiodun Williams
#67452
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Abiodun Williams is an academic in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and conflict management. Formerly he was a senior official at the United Nations, and former President of The Hague Institute for Global Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Go to Profile#2560
Mabel Bianco
#71298
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Mabel Bianco is an Argentine physician who has devoted her career to fighting for women's access to improved health services and sex education. In 1989, she established the Foundation for Studies and Research on Women , and has continued to serve as its president. She has been an activist in Latin America and the world, introducing policies addressing breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, reproductive rights and gender reform in the UN.
Go to Profile#2561
Ghazi Abdul Rahman Al Gosaibi
#80465
Overall Influence
1940 - 2010 (70 years)
Ghazi Abdul Rahman Al Gosaibi was a Saudi politician, diplomat, technocrat, poet, and novelist. He was an intellectual and a member of the Al Gosaibi family that is one of the oldest and richest trading families of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Al Gosaibi was considered among Saudi Arabia's topmost technocrats since the mid-1970s. The Majalla called him the "Godfather of Renovation" while Saudi journalist Othman Al Omeir argued that he was "the only great man in Saudi Arabia."
Go to Profile#2562
Bagher Larijani
#39307
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Bagher Ardeshir Larijani is an Iranian medical practitioner at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer and Director General of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Research Institute which has been selected as the highest-ranking research institute in Iran on numerous occasions. According to Google Scholar, in February 2020, his citations exceeded 28021 with an h-index equal to 73. Since 2011, Essential Sciences Indicators of ISI Web of Sciences has announced him to be amongst the world’s top 1% scientists. Professor Larijani’s main fields of interest in...
Go to Profile#2563
Ikuo Kabashima
#93407
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Ikuo Kabashima is a Japanese politician and the current governor of Kumamoto Prefecture. He has been governor since 2008. Ikuo Kabashima received a bachelor's and master's degrees in Animal Science and Agricultural Economics from the University of Nebraska. He received a Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1979. He studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Sidney Verba in HKS.
Go to Profile#2564
Roland Rich
#103733
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Roland Rich is a former Australian Ambassador and educator. He is currently the Director of the United Nations and Global Policy Master of Arts program at Rutgers University, where he has been an Associate Teaching Professor since 2015. He was also a senior United Nations official as the head of the United Nations Democracy Fund from 2007 to 2014, and as Officer-in-Charge of the United United Nations Office for Partnerships from 2010 to 2014.
Go to Profile#2565
Richard Tuck
#71643
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Richard Francis Tuck is a British academic, political theorist and historian of political thought. Life and career Tuck was born in 1949, the son of Professor J. P. and Jane Tuck and the younger brother of Anthony Tuck. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read history and graduated with BA and PhD degrees. He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1973 to 1995, where he was a Fellow of Jesus College. He then joined the faculty of Harvard University, where he teaches as the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government. He wa...
Go to Profile#2566
Susan Orr
#58001
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Susan Orr headed the United States Children's Bureau, a federal agency organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, Administration for Children and Families, as Associate Commissioner.
Go to Profile#2567
Magnus Ranstorp
#93850
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Per Magnus Ranstorp is a Swedish scholar who has written about Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda and other militant Islamic movements. He is the Research Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College, directing a project on Strategic Terrorist Threats to Europe which focuses on radicalisation and recruitment of salafist-jihadist terrorists across Europe and the convergence between Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Weapons, and Terrorism. Ranstorp graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota in 1985.
Go to Profile#2568
John Peter Pelissero
#98741
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
John P. Pelissero is a Political Scientist and Higher Education Consultant located in the Chicago Metropolitan Area. He currently serves as Senior Scholar in Government at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics of Santa Clara University. Pelissero is professor emeritus of political science at Loyola University Chicago, where he was a member of the faculty for 35 years. He was Provost and Chief Academic Officer of Loyola University Chicago from 2010 to 2018. He also served as Loyola's Interim President from July 1, 2015, to July 31, 2016. Pelissero's other Loyola experience includes service ...
Go to Profile#2569
Gaetano Quagliariello
#98788
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Gaetano Quagliariello is an Italian politician, former Minister of Constitutional Reforms and current leader of Identity and Action party. Biography Toti was born in Naples in 1960. During the University he was a member of the youth wing of the Italian Republican Party. In 1980s he became a member of the Radical Party led by Marco Pannella.
Go to Profile#2570
John Bew
#65133
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
John Bew is Professor in History and Foreign Policy at King's College London and from 2013 to 2014 held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the John W. Kluge Center.
Go to Profile#2571
William Howard Wriggins
#106418
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
William Howard Wriggins was a US diplomat, author and academic who served as the United States ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives from 1977 until 1979. His interest in the study of Sri Lanka spanned over fifty years of professional and academic work.
Go to Profile#2572
Margaret Hermann
#50080
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Margaret G. "Peg" Hermann is an American political psychologist who was the long-time director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
Go to Profile#2573
Edward Steinfeld
#99550
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Edward Saul Steinfeld is a political scientist and academic specializing in contemporary Chinese politics. He is currently Director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Steinfeld moved to Brown in 2013, having previously taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#2574
Funmi Olonisakin
#71527
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Funmi Olonisakin is a British Nigerian scholar, who is a Professor of leadership, peace and conflict at King's College London, and an Extra-Ordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. She is the founder and former Director of the African Leadership Centre founded on the principle of Pan-Africanism to build the next generation of leaders and scholars on the African continent with core transformational values. Olonisakin is the Programme Director of the ALC's Master of Science programmes on Leadership, peace and security. She is a research associate of Political Sciences at the Universi...
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Michael Woo
#70996
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael K. Woo is an American politician and academic who was the dean of the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. As a member of the Los Angeles City Council representing District 13 from 1985 to 1993, he was that body's first Asian American member and its youngest member upon his election, at 33.
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Jacques Sémelin
#88918
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Jacques Sémelin is a French historian and political scientist. He is a professor at Sciences Po Paris and senior researcher at the CNRS . His main fields of study are the Holocaust, mass violence, civil resistance and rescue in genocidal situations, and more recently the survival of Jews in France during the Second World War. In 1998, he created a pioneering course on genocides and massacres at Sciences Po Paris. He is the founder of the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence.
Go to Profile#2577
Linda McClain
#62227
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Linda McClain is the Robert B. Kent Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law, and was previously the Rivkin Radler Distinguished Professor of Law at Hofstra Law School. McClain's work focuses on family law, sex equality, and feminist legal theory.McClain has written extensively on topics related to family, gender, and constitutional issues.
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Luiza Bialasiewicz
#87866
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Luiza Bialasiewicz is a political geographer and Professor of European Governance in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to Amsterdam in 2011, she was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, and prior to that, Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Durham. Bialasiewicz obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 2013, Bialasiewicz has been Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Natolin, where she teaches a course on European Geopolitics.
Go to Profile#2579
Irma Sandoval
#82695
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Irma Eréndira Sandoval Ballesteros is a Mexican politician and scholar, expert in public administration and corruption control. In 2018 she was appointed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as head of the Ministry of Public Administration. Prior to her designation, in 2016, she was elected member of Mexico's City Constituent Assembly, where she was vice-coordinator of Morena's parliamentary fraction and secretary of the Committee for Good Governance, Fight against Corruption and Responsibilities of Public Servants.
Go to Profile#2580
Tam David-West
#67385
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Tamunoemi Sokari David-West was a Nigerian academic, social critic, and federal minister. Academia David-West was born in Buguma, Kalabari, in what is now Rivers State. He received his higher education at the University of Ibadan and earned a BSc degree at Michigan State University , an MSc degree at Yale University , and a PhD degree at McGill University . David-West was consultant virologist and senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan in 1969 and was subsequently promoted to professor of virology in 1975.
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Mark Blitz
#65599
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Mark Blitz is an American political philosopher and Fletcher Jones Professor of Political Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College. He earned degrees at Harvard University . Books Plato's political philosophy, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, . 2010Conserving liberty, Stanford, Calif. : Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 2011Duty bound : responsibility and American public life, Lanham : Rowman and Littlefield publ. , . 2005Heidegger's Being and time and the possibility of political philosophy, Ithaca : Cornell university press, . 1981Duty bound, Lanham Rowman and Littlefield publ.
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Nachman Shai
#89316
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Nachman Shai is an Israeli journalist and politician who served as Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs. He previously served as a member of the Knesset and its Deputy Speaker, as well as the IDF spokesman.
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Alexei Arbatov
#105773
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Alexei Georgievich Arbatov is a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Head of the Center for International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations , and a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He is a Russian political scientist, academic, author, and former politician.
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Edward Carmines
#132486
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Edward G. Carmines is an American political scientist, and serves as Distinguished Professor, Warner O. Chapman Professor of Political Science, and Rudy Professor at Indiana University. At IU, he directs the Center on American Politics and serves as Director of Research for the Center on Representative Government.
Go to Profile#2585
Włodzimierz Julian Korab-Karpowicz
#41141
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Włodzimierz Julian Korab-Karpowicz is a Polish philosopher and political theorist. Biography W. J. Korab-Karpowicz was born in Gliwice, Poland in 1953. He comes from a noble Polish family. Korab, included in his family name, refers to the Korab coat of arms. His grandfather Jan Korab-Karpowicz was a distinguished lawyer and cavalry officer in the pre-war Poland. In his early youth he lived in Gdańsk and then in Sopot, where he completed high school. He studied engineering at the Gdańsk University of Technology, where, in 1977, he completed a master's degree in Electronic Engineering.
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David S. G. Goodman
#56414
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David Stephen Gordon Goodman is Director of the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, where he is also Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations. He is also Emeritus Professor in the Department of China Studies at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, China; and Emeritus Professor in the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney. Prof Goodman is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.
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Michael Shafir
#81503
Overall Influence
1944 - 2022 (78 years)
Michael Shafir was a Romanian–Israeli political scientist. He has been described as "one of the leading analysts of antisemitism and the treatment of the Holocaust in east-central Europe". Shafir was born in Bucharest, Romania. He immigrated to Israel during the Communist period in Eastern Europe, later returning to Romania in 2005. From then until his retirement he taught at the Faculty of European Studies of Babeș-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca; in 2012 he donated his collection to the .
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Judith Kurland
#90151
Overall Influence
Judith Kurland was a Regional Director for the United States Department of Health and Human Services during the second Clinton administration. She was appointed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala in 1997.
Go to Profile#2589
Ziad Majed
#46461
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Ziad Majed is a Lebanese/French political researcher and university professor. He holds a PhD in political sciences from Sciences Po Paris, a Masters degree in Arabic Literature and a BA in Economics from the American University of Beirut.
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Daniel Okimoto
#112999
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Daniel I. Okimoto is a Japanese-American academic and political scientist. Early life Okimoto was born at the Santa Anita Assembly Center during the early stages of the World War II Internment of Japanese Americans. As an infant, he was sent along with his family to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona as part of the enforcement of Executive Order 9066.
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Igor Lukšič
#110324
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Igor Lukšič is a Slovenian political scientist, politician and was president of the Slovenian Social Democrats . Between November 2008 and February 2012, he served as minister of education in the center-left government of Borut Pahor.
Go to Profile#2592
Nikos Kotzias
#95941
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Nikolaos Kotzias, GCM is a Greek politician and diplomat who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018. He was Foreign Minister from 23 September 2015 until his resignation on 17 October 2018; previously he held the same post from 27 January to 28 August 2015. Nominated by SYRIZA, he was sworn in as a member of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in January 2015.
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Matthew Levitt
#86748
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies . From 2005 to early 2007 he was a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he served both as a senior official within the department's terrorism and financial intelligence branch and as deputy chief of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. From 2001 to 2005, ...
Go to Profile#2594
Rein Taagepera
#132939
Overall Influence
#2595
Keith Poole
#132965
Overall Influence
#2596
Ronald H. Chilcote
#101230
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Ronald H. Chilcote is a political economist from the United States. He is currently the Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Riverside, and has served as managing editor of the academic journal Latin American Perspectives since its founding in 1974. Chilcote's main area of research is on Brazil, Portugal and the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, as well as comparative politics, political economy and development theory.
Go to Profile#2597
Adolph L. Reed Jr.
#80264
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Adolph Leonard Reed Jr. is an American professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in studies of issues of racism and U.S. politics. He has taught at Yale, Northwestern, and the New School for Social Research and he has written on racial and economic inequality. He is a contributing editor to The New Republic and has been a frequent contributor to The Progressive, The Nation, and other left-wing publications. He is a founding member of the U.S. Labor Party.
Go to Profile#2598
C. G. Schmitt
#133072
Overall Influence
#2599
Danton Remoto
#24327
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Danton Relato Remoto is a Filipino writer, essayist, reporter, editor, columnist, and professor. Remoto received the first prize at the ASEAN Letter-Writing Contest for Young People. The award earned Remoto a scholarship at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. As a professor, Remoto taught English and Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University. Remoto is the chairman emeritus of Ang Ladlad, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender political party in the Philippines.
Go to Profile#2600
Stephen Owen
#74346
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Stephen Owen is an American sinologist specializing in Chinese literature, particularly Tang dynasty poetry and comparative poetics. He taught Chinese literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Emeritus; becoming emeritus before he was one of only 25 Harvard University Professors. He is a member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of American Philosophical Society.
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