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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Political Science,
#2601
Mike Godwin
#38170
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Michael Wayne Godwin is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme. From July 2007 to October 2010, he was general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. In March 2011, he was elected to the Open Source Initiative board. Godwin has served as a contributing editor of Reason magazine since 1994. In April 2019, he was elected to the Internet Society board. From 2015 to 2020, he was general counsel and director of innovation policy at the R Street Institute.
Go to Profile#2602
Rudolph Klein
#133368
Overall Influence
#2603
Eddie Glaude
#36324
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is an American academic, author, and current-affairs pundit. He is currently the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. He has previously been the chair of Princeton's Center for African American Studies and the chair of its Department of African American Studies. He has authored five books, and edited or co-edited two others. He has published articles on U.S. media platforms such as Time and the Huffington Post. He is a contributor to the MSNBC cable news channel, and frequently appears as a commentator o...
Go to Profile#2604
Piash Karim
#74168
Overall Influence
1958 - 2014 (56 years)
Manjur Karim Piash popularly known as Piash Karim was a professor, researcher and political commentator with specializations in political economy, political sociology, nationalism and social theory. After independence, he completed his bachelor's degree from the University of Dhaka and went to the US for higher studies. In his long career as a teacher, he taught at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Culver–Stockton College and BRAC University. Karim had authored several of books and journals on nationalism and sociology.
Go to Profile#2605
Gerald Gartlehner
#84514
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Gerald Gartlehner is an Austrian physician, health scientist and clinical epidemiologist. Considered a pioneer in the field of evidence-based medicine in Austria, Gartlehner has dedicated much of his career to establishing and promoting the use of evidence syntheses to make sound clinical and health policy decisions. Gartlehner was ranked in the top 1% of highly cited researchers in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Go to Profile#2606
Buie Seawell
#55731
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Malcolm Buie Seawell Jr. is an American professor at the University of Denver. He is also an attorney, and former Colorado Democratic Party chair. Born in North Carolina, he is the son of the state's former Attorney General, Malcolm Buie Seawell.
Go to Profile#2607
Alex Wayman
#28247
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
Alex Wayman was a Tibetologist and Indologist and worked as a professor of Sanskrit at Columbia University. He was of Jewish background. After finishing his B.A. , M.A. and Ph. D. at the University of California, Los Angeles he came to Columbia as a visiting professor in 1966. In 1967 he was made professor of Sanskrit and remained in this position until his retirement in 1991.
Go to Profile#2608
James Stimson
#107396
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
James Allen Stimson is an American political scientist and the Raymond Dawson Distinguished Bicentennial Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After teaching at the University at Buffalo and Florida State University, among other institutions, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997, remaining there until his retirement in 2018. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he served as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 1994 to 1995 and as a Guggenheim Fellow from 2006 to 2007.
Go to Profile#2609
David Wilson, Baron Wilson of Tillyorn
#79610
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
David Clive Wilson, Baron Wilson of Tillyorn, is a retired British administrator, diplomat and Sinologist. He was the penultimate Commander-in-Chief and 27th Governor of Hong Kong . He served as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the British Monarch's representative to the Assembly, in 2010 and 2011. He is also one of the two living former governors of Hong Kong with Chris Patten. He retired from the House of Lords on 12 February 2021 after sitting as a crossbencher for over 28 years.
Go to Profile#2610
Sarah Song
#81364
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Sarah Song is professor of law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a political and legal theorist with a special interest in democratic theory and issues of citizenship, immigration, multiculturalism, gender, and race.
Go to Profile#2611
James M. Glaser
#89352
Overall Influence
James M. Glaser is an American political scientist specializing in electoral politics and political behavior. He is currently the Dean of School of Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Political Science at Tufts University.
Go to Profile#2612
George W. Downs
#82047
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
George Woodrow Downs, Jr. was an American political scientist and pioneer of the application of noncooperative game theory to international politics. He was a professor of politics at New York University, where he served as chair of the political science department , Dean of Social Science , and later as the Bernhardt Denmark Professor of International Affairs. Before that, he had served as Boswell Professor of Peace and War at Princeton University from 1987 to 1998. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014. His books included The Search for Government ...
Go to Profile#2613
Mamoun Fandy
#119493
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Dr. Mamoun Fandy is an Egyptian-born American scholar. He is president of the think tank London Global Strategy Institute, a former senior fellow at the Baker Institute, the United States Institute of Peace, and at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Before that Fandy was a research professor of politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, as well as of Arab politics at the National Defense University. He is frequently seen on American television, and is a columnist for Al-Ahram and the Asharq Al-Awsat.
Go to Profile#2614
Gregory Mahler
#90157
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Gregory S. Mahler is an American political scientist with a general interest in comparative politics, and more specific interests in legislatures and constitutionalism. Education Mahler completed his undergraduate studies at Oberlin College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University.
Go to Profile#2616
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
#47269
Overall Influence
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar is a teacher, left wing politician and columnist based in Pakistan. Akhtar is associate professor of political economy at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He served as the president of the Awami Workers Party's Punjab executive committee from March 16, 2014 to January 17, 2020. He is deputy general secretary of Awami Workers Party.
Go to Profile#2617
Maurice Manning
#105697
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Maurice Manning is an Irish academic and former Fine Gael politician. Manning was a member of the Oireachtas for 21 years, serving in both the Dáil and the Seanad. On 12 March 2009 he was elected Chancellor of the National University of Ireland, while remaining President of the Human Rights Commission. From 2002 to 2014, he was President of the Irish Human Rights Commission.
Go to Profile#2618
Paul N. Stockton
#32344
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Dr. Paul N. Stockton is the President of Paul N Stockton LLC, a strategic advisory firm in Santa Fe, NM. From 2009 to 2013, Dr. Stockton served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs, where he helped lead the department's response to Hurricane Sandy. He was responsible for Defense Critical Infrastructure Protection, Western Hemisphere security policy, domestic crisis management, continuity of operations planning, and a range of other responsibilities. While Assistant Secretary, Dr. Stockton also served as executive director of the Council of Governors.
Go to Profile#2619
Kendall Myers
#99000
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Walter Kendall Myers is a former U.S. State Department employee who, with his wife, Gwendolyn, was arrested and indicted on June 4, 2009, on charges of spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years. He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. federal court in July 2010.
Go to Profile#2620
Jered Carr
#108560
Overall Influence
Jered Byron Carr is a political scientist, professor of urban policy and a former Policy analyst for the Florida State Legislature in the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability.
Go to Profile#2621
Masah Iko Aoki
#134426
Overall Influence
#2622
Uri Bar-Joseph
#86862
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Uri Bar-Joseph is professor emeritus in the Department for International Relations of The School for Political Science at Haifa University. He specializes in national security, intelligence studies, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Go to Profile#2623
Stephen J. Kopp
#41045
Overall Influence
1951 - 2014 (63 years)
Stephen James Kopp was an American educator. He was president of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia from 2005 until his death in 2014. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Notre Dame, and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Go to Profile#2624
Beatrice Halsaa
#92588
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Beatrice Halsaa is a Norwegian political scientist, gender studies expert and feminist. She was appointed as Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Oslo in 2003, the second person to hold a chair in that discipline at the University of Oslo. She was leader of the EU research project "Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: The Impact of Contemporary Women's Movements," which was a cooperation of 15 research institutions in ten countries. Her fields of expertise are gender equality, women's movements, feminist theory, and multiculturalism.
Go to Profile#2625
Kerwin Swint
#51202
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Kerwin Swint is an American political scientist and author, known for his research and writing in the fields of political campaigns, mass media, and political history. He or his work has appeared in a number of national and international media, including CNN, FOX News, the BBC, the ABC program The View, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Toronto Star, The Daily Mail , The Guardian , National Journal, Mental Floss, Publishers Weekly, Salon, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous other media.
Go to Profile#2626
Kayhan Barzegar
#98494
Overall Influence
Kayhan Barzegar is an Iranian professor of international relations, political strategist and researcher of International affairs. He is the chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran. Barzegar is known for his works on Iranian foreign policy.
Go to Profile#2627
Richard Armitage
#97302
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Richard Lee Armitage is an American former diplomat and government official. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Armitage served as a U.S. Navy officer in three combat tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a riverine warfare advisor. After leaving active duty, he served in a number of civil-service roles under Republican administrations. He worked as an aide to Senator Bob Dole before serving in various posts in the Defense Department and State Department.
Go to Profile#2628
Michael P. Riccards
#86705
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Michael P. Riccards is an American political scientist, writer, administrator, and professor. Riccards has been the president of three American colleges and has written extensively on public policy, the American political process, the papacy as a leadership problem, and the history of the American presidency. His book The Ferocious Engine of Democracy was praised by Bill Clinton. He was the founding executive director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy – New Jersey. He now is president of the American Public Policy Institute on YouTube.
Go to Profile#2629
Ricardo René Larémont
#97873
Overall Influence
Ricardo René Larémont is a political scientist at Binghamton University, where he has been teaching Islamic Politics and Islamic Law in the North Africa and the Sahel. Education Ricardo René Larémont graduated from New York University in 1976, with a B.A., cum laude in political science. He received Juris Doctor from NYU in 1979, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1995.
Go to Profile#2630
Jiang Yi-huah
#78051
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jiang Yi-huah is a Taiwanese politician and former Premier of Taiwan . On 29 November 2014, he tendered his resignation and was succeeded by Mao Chi-kuo on 8 December 2014. Prior to his appointment as the Premier, Jiang was the Vice Premier of the Republic of China from 2012 to 2013. He served as Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2012 and Minister of Research, Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan from 2008 to 2009.
Go to Profile#2631
Shawn Rosenberg
#86868
Overall Influence
Shawn Rosenberg is a Canadian author, academic and a researcher. He is a Professor of Political Science & Psychological Science at University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on cognition and political ideology, candidate image-making, the decline of democracy and the rise of populism. In an article on Politico, he was called "one of the lions" of the field of political psychology.
Go to Profile#2632
Michele Wucker
#111274
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Michele M. Wucker /’wʊkər/ is an American author, commentator and policy analyst specializing in the world economy and crisis anticipation. She is the author of The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong when Our Prosperity Depends on Getting it Right and Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola.
Go to Profile#2633
Gábor Török
#113987
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Gábor Török is a Hungarian political scientist and historian, associate professor at the Institute of Political Science of the Corvinus University of Budapest. Biography Gábor Török was born in Szombathely on 11 August 1971. He graduated from Nagy Lajos Secondary School, located in Szombathely, in 1989. He received his diplomas from the Eötvös Loránd University in history and political theory, both with distinction. In 1997, he placed first in the National Academic Student Conference. He received the Pro Scientia gold-medal in 1998 for excellence in studies and preeminent academic achievement.
Go to Profile#2634
Lorenzo Fioramonti
#77309
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Lorenzo Fioramonti is a political scientist and Former Minister of Education, University and Research of the Italian Republic. Fioramonti is a professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences of the University of Surrey , where he directs the Institute for Sustainability. Prior to joining the University of Surrey, Fioramonti was a professor of political economy at the University of Pretoria and an associate fellow of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation .
Go to Profile#2635
Deividas Matulionis
#88618
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Deividas Matulionis , is a Lithuanian politician and diplomat, who is currently the ambassador to NATO since 2020. He was the former Chancellor of the Prime Minister of Lithuania. Matulionis had also served as the ambassador to Germany from 2012 to 2017, as well as the Ambassador to Denmark from 2001 to 2006.
Go to Profile#2636
Robert C. Paehlke
#135223
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Robert C. Paehlke is an American Canadian political scientist, environmentalist, Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies and Political Science at Trent University, Canada, and author, best known for his work on environmentalism and progressive politics.
Go to Profile#2637
Anneliese Dodds
#95931
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Anneliese Jane Dodds is a British Labour and Co-operative politician and public policy analyst serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, and Chair of the Labour Party since 2021. She was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from April 2020 to May 2021, the first woman to hold the position. She has been Member of Parliament for Oxford East since 2017 and was a Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 2014 to 2017.
Go to Profile#2638
Karthick Ramakrishnan
#88792
Overall Influence
Subramanian Karthick Ramakrishnan, typically published as S. Karthick Ramakrishnan or Karthick Ramakrishnan, is an American political scientist, currently a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a founder of AAPI Data and the UC Riverside Center for Social Innovation, and has been the Associate Dean of the School of Public Policy. He studies the political behavior and engagement of immigrants to the United States, and manages projects to gather data about minority groups in America.
Go to Profile#2639
Jana S. Rošker
#60664
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jana S. Rošker is a Slovenian sinologist and professor at the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. Biography Jana Rošker was born in 1960 in Murska Sobota. She was a student of sinology, journalism and pedagogy at the University of Vienna. She also studied at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Nankai University and Beijing University. She received her PhD at the University of Vienna in 1988 for the thesis 'Theories of the State and Anarchist Criticism of the State in China at the Turn of the Century' . During her studies and later in life she spe...
Go to Profile#2640
Katrin Flikschuh
#81546
Overall Influence
Katrin A. Flikschuh FBA is professor of political theory at the London School of Economics . Flikschuh's research interests relate to the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant, metaphysics and meta-level justification in contemporary political philosophy, global justice and cosmopolitanism, and the history of modern political thought.
Go to Profile#2641
Harold W. Rood
#96151
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Harold William "Bill" Rood was a political scientist and author of Kingdoms of the Blind. He was Professor Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and taught international relations and national security affairs beginning in 1962. Rood was also a fellow at the Claremont Institute and published articles in the Claremont Review of Books. He received the Claremont Institute's Salvatori Prize in the American Founding in 2007 and taught in the Claremont Institute's Publius Fellows Program since 1979.
Go to Profile#2642
François Duchêne
#91278
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Louis-François Duchêne was a journalist and political analyst of European integration who wrote for The Economist and was professor emeritus at the University of Sussex. He was influenced by his work with Jean Monnet, from 1953 to 1955 at the European Coal and Steel Community in Luxembourg and later from 1958 to 1962 at Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe in Paris. He was director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 1969 to 1974. He wrote an authoritative biography of Monnet titled Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence .
Go to Profile#2643
Darko Tanasković
#85130
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Darko Tanasković is a Serbian university professor of Oriental studies, writer, translator, academic and diplomat. Tanasković was the Ambassador of Serbia to Turkey, Azerbaijan, Vatican City, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and UNESCO. He authored over 600 scientific works and articles.
Go to Profile#2644
Rob Reich
#38269
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Robert C. Reich is an American political scientist. He is a professor of political science at Stanford University, the director of Stanford's McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, co-director of Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society , and associate director of Stanford's institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence . A political theorist, Reich's work focuses primarily on applied ethics, educational inequality and the role of philanthropy in the public sector, along with other topics in liberal democratic theory.
Go to Profile#2645
Howard Biddulph
#45350
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Howard Lowell Biddulph born in Rexburg, Idaho, was a political scientist whose work focused on the government of the Soviet Union. At various times, he was a faculty member at Brigham Young University , University of Victoria, and Rutgers University.
Go to Profile#2646
Wolfgang Franke
#32685
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
Wolfgang Leopold Friedrich Franke was a German sinologist whose research was focused on the history of the Ming dynasty and of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. He served as Chair of Sinology at the University of Hamburg for 27 years. His father Otto Franke, also a sinologist, had set up the chair in 1910.
Go to Profile#2647
Michael Gableman
#65462
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Michael J. Gableman is an American lawyer and former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A Republican, he has been described as a hard-line conservative. From June 2021 until August 2022, Gableman was employed as a "special counsel" by Wisconsin Assembly speaker Robin Vos to investigate the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in Wisconsin. His fourteen month investigation resulted in various unsubstantiated accusations against municipal clerks and members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, but found nothing of substance. Gableman himself became a lightning rod fo...
Go to Profile#2648
Gregory Sisk
#47973
Overall Influence
Gregory Charles Sisk is an American legal scholar. Sisk earned his bachelor's degree from Montana State University and studied law at the University of Washington School of Law. He taught for twelve years at the Drake University School of Law, where he held the Richard M. & Anita Calkins Distinguished Professorship, before joining the University of St. Thomas School of Law in 2003, where he is the Pio Cardinal Laghi Distinguished Chair in Law. Sisk is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Go to Profile#2649
John Wahlke
#136330
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
John Charles Wahlke was an American political scientist. Wahlke was born on October 29, 1917, and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. After graduating from high school in 1935, Wahlke worked for Seagram and Sons and the Crosley Corporation. He attended the University of Cincinnati and Harvard College, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, then served in the United States Army before continuing graduate study at Harvard University, where he completed a doctoral dissertation in 1952.
Go to Profile#2650
Charles A. McClelland
#82965
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Charles Armor McClelland was an American political scientist, systems analyst and Professor International Relations at the San Francisco State University, who was among the first to introduce General Systems Theory in the field of International Relations.
Go to Profile