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,
#2651
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard
#72497
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard , is a Danish political scientist with a particular interest in public choice analysis and classical liberalism. Education and employment Kurrild-Klitgaard holds the degrees of Ph.D. in political science, M.Sc. in social science and a B.A. from the University of Copenhagen, and an M.A. in political science from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#2652
Nadim Rouhana
#70416
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Nadim N. Rouhana is Professor of International Negotiation and Conflict Studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Founder and General Director of Mada al-Carmel, Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, which undertakes theoretical and applied social research and policy analysis to broaden knowledge and critical thinking about the Palestinians in Israel, equal citizenship, and democracy.
Go to Profile#2653
Francis Geoffrey Castles
#136931
Overall Influence
#2654
Edward Newman
#110433
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Edward Newman is a British political scientist who is Professor of International Security at the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. He is also an International Associate at the Center for Peace and Human Security, Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. Newman was previously Senior Lecturer in International Relations and former Deputy Head of the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham and, before that, Director of Studies on Conflict and Security in the Peace and Governance Programme of the United Nations University in Tokyo.
Go to Profile#2655
Maya Harris
#50292
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Maya Lakshmi Harris is an American lawyer, public policy advocate, and writer. Harris was one of three senior policy advisors for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign's policy agenda and she also served as chair of the 2020 presidential campaign of her sister, Kamala Harris.
Go to Profile#2656
Kim Yeon-chul
#106269
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Kim Yeon-chul is a South Korean associate professor of unification at Inje University who served as Minister of Unification under President Moon Jae-in from April 2019 to June 2020. Before promoted to Minister, Kim was the president of the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-funded research institute. He was previously a policy advisor to then-Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young from 2004 to 2006.
Go to Profile#2657
Dagmar Schäfer
#44003
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Dagmar Schäfer is a German sinologist and historian of science. She is director of Department III, Artifacts, Action, Knowledge at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. She is honorary professor for the history of technology, Technical University, Berlin; adjunct professor, Institute of Sinology, Freie Universität, Berlin, and Tianjin University . She was previously a guest professor at the school of history and culture of science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She was also the director of the Centre for Chinese Studies and held the professorial chair of Chinese studies...
Go to Profile#2658
Justin Marlowe
#71236
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Justin Marlowe is a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is an expert on public finance and budgeting. He has published four books and more than 50 articles on topics such as: capital budgeting and finance, state and local tax policy, public pension liabilities, public health systems finance, government financial disclosure, and public-private partnerships. In 2018, Marlowe was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Go to Profile#2659
J. Peter Burgess
#49193
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
J. Peter Burgess is a philosopher and political scientist. He is Professor and Director of the Chair of Geopolitics of Risk at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. He is series editor of the Routledge New Security Studies collection. His research and writing concern the meeting place between science, culture and politics in particular in Europe, focusing most recently on value theory and digital technologies. He has published 18 books and over 100 articles in the fields of philosophy, political science, gender studies, cultural history, security studies and cultural theory. He has contributed to research and educational policy in Norway, France, Poland and the European Commission.
Go to Profile#2660
Ricard Zapata Barrero
#78969
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Ricard Zapata-Barrero is a scholar of migration studies, specializing in migration governance, citizenship, and diversity. He is a full professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and the director of the Research Group on Immigration .
Go to Profile#2661
David Wright-Neville
#109895
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
David Peter Wright-Neville is a former Australian academic who specialised in international relations and terrorism. He was Deputy Director of the Global Terrorism Research Centre and an Associate Professor of Politics in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University until his resignation in 2009. His contributions to discussions on terrorism appear in Australian and overseas media In 2008, he was selected to participate in the Australia 2020 Summit.
Go to Profile#2662
Juliet Hooker
#98391
Overall Influence
Juliet Hooker is a Nicaraguan-born political scientist who currently holds the Royce Family Professorship of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University. She is a political philosopher who focuses on racial justice, the theory of multiculturalism, and the political thought of the Americas.
Go to Profile#2663
Nicholas Peroff
#70499
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Nicholas C. Peroff is an American political scientist, public administrator and professor in Native American studies and Complexity Theory at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, he formerly held teaching positions in Taiwan, South Korea and South Africa.
Go to Profile#2664
José Ignacio Torreblanca
#137730
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
José Ignacio Torreblanca Payá is a Spanish political analyst and political scientist. Working as opinion writer for El Mundo since 2018, he was the op-ed editor of El País from 2016 to 2018. Biography Born in 1968 in Madrid, he earned a PhD in political science at the Complutense University of Madrid . He is full professor of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia . He has been a researcher for the Elcano Royal Institute.
Go to Profile#2665
Luis Fraga
#128523
Overall Influence
Luis Ricardo Fraga is an American political scientist. Fraga was raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. He earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and completed a master's and doctoral degree at Rice University. He was president of the Western Political Science Association between 1997 and 1998, and has since served the American Political Science Association in several positions, among them secretary and vice president. Fraga has taught at the University of Washington, Stanford University, and the University of Oklahoma. He holds the Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professorship of Political Science and is the Rev.
Go to Profile#2666
Brett Ashley Leeds
#119773
Overall Influence
Brett Ashley Leeds is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Rice University, where she has also been the chair of the department. She studies how domestic politics affect international conflict and cooperation, as well as international institutions. She specializes in how alliances between countries function, and how they help countries prevent wars.
Go to Profile#2667
Lynn Scarlett
#97193
Overall Influence
Patricia Lynn Scarlett is a US environmental policy executive and analyst. Until December 2021, she was the Chief External Affairs Officer at the Nature Conservancy. She is a frequent commentator on environmental issues. She was the Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Secretary of the Interior from 2005 to 2009, having previously served as the Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget from 2001 to 2005. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Scarlett was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of the Interior on November 22, 2005. In 2006 she served as acting Secretary of the Interior between the administrations of Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne.
Go to Profile#2668
Peter J. Newell
#138004
Overall Influence
#2669
Margaret Wilson
#98459
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Margaret Anne Wilson is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician. She served as Attorney-General from 1999 to 2005 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, during the Fifth Labour Government.
Go to Profile#2670
John Lee
#101820
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
John Lee is an Australian academic and policy expert working on international economic and security affairs with a focus on the Indo-Pacific. Lee was a senior adviser to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop from 2016 to 2018. He was also appointed the government's lead adviser for the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper to guide Australian external policy for the next decade and beyond. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and an Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney until 2022. Lee was a board member of t...
Go to Profile#2671
Bethany Barratt
#126150
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Bethany Barratt is an American political scientist and author. She writes and researches about human rights and their effects on foreign policy. She is a professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois, and the director of its Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project, which engages undergraduates in comparative cross-national research on a variety of human rights challenges, especially as they occur in urban settings..
Go to Profile#2672
David Eby
#88103
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
David Robert Patrick Eby is a Canadian politician and lawyer who has been serving as the 37th and current premier of British Columbia since November 18, 2022, and has been serving as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party since October 21, 2022. A member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Eby has represented the riding of Vancouver-Point Grey since 2013. From 2017 to 2022, he served in the John Horgan cabinet as attorney general.
Go to Profile#2673
Daniel DiSalvo
#85360
Overall Influence
Daniel Ross DiSalvo is a political scientist, author, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and professor and chair of political science in the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York–CUNY.
Go to Profile#2674
Petr Pithart
#97473
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Petr Pithart is a Czech politician, lawyer and political scientist who served as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic from 6 February 1990 to 2 July 1992. He was also the Senator for Chrudim from 1996 to 2012 and served as President of the Senate from 8 January 1996 to 16 December 1998 and again from 19 December 2000 to 15 December 2004.
Go to Profile#2675
Douglass Cater
#95360
Overall Influence
1923 - 1995 (72 years)
Silas Douglass Cater Jr. was an American journalist, political aide, and college president. Cater started his career as a journalist for The Reporter and, in 1964, became an aide for Lyndon B. Johnson. After his time in the White House, Cater was a fellow at the Aspen Institute and the vice chairman of The Observer. In 1982, Cater became the 22nd president of Washington College. He retired to Montgomery, Alabama in 1991 and died in 1995.
Go to Profile#2676
Melissa R. Michelson
#73080
Overall Influence
Melissa R. Michelson is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Menlo College, and in July 2020 she became the Dean of Arts and Sciences there. She studies voter mobilization and engagement in the United States, particularly among minority communities, as well as public opinion and political communication.
Go to Profile#2677
Jerry Farber
#27529
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Gerald H. 'Jerry' Farber is an American educator, writer, activist and former child actor. Early life and education Farber was born in El Paso, Texas in 1935. As an undergraduate student at UCLA in December 1954, he was nominated by the senior staff of the UCLA Daily Bruin to be city editor of the student newspaper, but he and the other four staff nominees for editorial positions were rejected by a special two-man committee composed of student body president Skip Byrne and a representative of the university administration. In the spring term 1955, he and four other students , issued and distributed an underground newspaper called The Observer on the UCLA campus.
Go to Profile#2678
Elena Korosteleva
#40675
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Elena Korosteleva is a dissident academic researcher and principal investigator focusing on governance, democratisation, complexity and resilience. She is Professor of Politics and Global Sustainable Development and Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick and is visiting professor at the Oxford Belarus Observatory at the Oxford University.
Go to Profile#2679
Michael N. Baur
#138634
Overall Influence
#2680
Samuel Walker
#59424
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Samuel Emlen Walker is an American civil liberties, policing, and criminal justice expert. He specializes in police accountability. Early life and education Walker was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, but grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. His father was an executive who worked for the railroad.
Go to Profile#2681
Donald S. Strong
#97136
Overall Influence
1912 - 1995 (83 years)
Donald S. Strong was an American political scientist. He was Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama from 1946 to 1979. He published research about antisemitism in the 1930s in the United States, African-American voter suppression, and the rise of the Republican Party in the Southern United States.
Go to Profile#2682
Amy Mazur
#92387
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Amy Gale Mazur is an American political scientist and professor at Washington State University, as well as an associate researcher at the Centre d’Études Européennes at Sciences Po, Paris. Education Mazur attended University of Caen Normandy in 1982-1983 and attained her B.A. at Colby College in 1984. She completed graduate work at Sciences Po in 1986-1987. She obtained her M.A. in 1986 and in 1992 her Ph.D. in Politics and French Studies at New York University.
Go to Profile#2683
Mariarosa Dalla Costa
#24955
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Mariarosa Dalla Costa is an Italian autonomist feminist and co-author of the classic The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, with Selma James. This text launched the "domestic labour debate" by re-defining housework as reproductive labor necessary to the functioning of capital, rendered invisible by its removal from the wage-relation.
Go to Profile#2684
Réjane Sénac
#78552
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Réjane Sénac is a French political scientist. She specialises in gender equality in recent French history and politics, as well as the politics of discrimination and diversity. She is the Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Centre de recherches politiques of Sciences Po. She was president of the parity commission of the French High Council for Equality between Women and Men , which was an independent national advisory body under the Prime Minister of France from January 2013 to January 2019.
Go to Profile#2685
Mark M. Goldblatt
#45782
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Mark Meyer Goldblatt is an American journalist, novelist, theologian and educator. He attended Queens College of the City University of New York from 1974-1979, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English. After brief stints as a proofreader and copyeditor, he enrolled in the CUNY Graduate Center in 1983 and was awarded a doctorate in English literature in 1990, writing his dissertation on the theological underpinning of the Protestant Reformation in England.
Go to Profile#2686
Catharine A. Mackinnon
#139082
Overall Influence
#2687
Richard Clutterbuck
#67306
Overall Influence
1917 - 1998 (81 years)
Major-General Richard Lewis Clutterbuck was a British Army officer who later became a pioneer in the study of political violence. Career Clutterbuck was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1937 after graduating in mechanical sciences from Pembroke College, Cambridge. After Dunkirk, he went through both the Western Desert and Italian campaigns. The army sent Clutterbuck to different hotspots, including Palestine during the Irgun Zvei Leumi's terrorist campaign. In 1956, up against Chinese communists, Clutterbuck shed his rank badges to go on patrol as an ordinary soldier. As chief engin...
Go to Profile#2688
Vitali Silitski
#82595
Overall Influence
1972 - 2011 (39 years)
Vitali Silitski was a Belarusian political scientist, analyst, the first director of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. He got his PhD in political science from the Rutgers University . Silitski is the author of the concepts of preventive authoritarianism and authoritarian international. He was also a civil activist and blogger.
Go to Profile#2689
Ioannis D. Evrigenis
#72366
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ioannis D. Evrigenis is a Greek-American political philosopher. He is a professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. Biography Evrigenis received his B.A. in political science from Grinnell College in 1993. He earned a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics & Political Science in 1994. From 1994 to 1996, Evrigenis served as an artillery quartermaster in the Hellenic Army, holding the rank of second lieutenant. In 2002, he received an M.A. in political science from Harvard University. In 2005, Evrigenis earned his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. He received the Herrnstein P...
Go to Profile#2690
Joshua Stacher
#105029
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Joshua A. Stacher is an American political scientist and scholar of Middle East politics, authoritarianism, and social movements. Background and education Joshua Stacher received his undergraduate degree at Washington and Jefferson College in 1998, having majored in History and English. He subsequently studied comparative politics and Middle Eastern Islamist movements at The American University in Cairo, there receiving his master's in Political Science in 2002.
Go to Profile#2691
Mark R. Thompson
#112977
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Mark R. Thompson is an expert on Southeast Asian politics, with particular interest in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. He also works on broader themes of comparative politics, particularly authoritarianism and democratization. He is professor of politics at the City University of Hong Kong, where he is head of the Department of Asian and International Studies and also director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre . Earlier he taught in the United Kingdom , Germany , and Japan . In 2013-2014 he was president of the Asian Political and International Studies Association . He has been...
Go to Profile#2692
David R. Knechtges
#35590
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
David Richard Knechtges is an American sinologist and professor emeritus of Chinese literature at the University of Washington. An expert on Han dynasty and Six dynasties period literature, Knechtges' studies of Chinese fu poetry are largely responsible for the revival of Western academic interest in the subject, a major genre which had become largely neglected until the mid-20th century.
Go to Profile#2693
Ben R. Martin
#139564
Overall Influence
#2694
James Millett Snyder
#139731
Overall Influence
#2695
Jennifer Sterling-Folker
#71975
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jennifer Sterling-Folker is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. She was the Alan R. Bennett Honors Professor of Political Science. She is a specialist in International Relations theory.
Go to Profile#2696
Jürgen Hartmann
#89009
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Jürgen Hartmann is a German political scientist. Since 2011, he has been a professor of political science, especially with respect to comparative politics, at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.
Go to Profile#2697
Detlef Sack
#121521
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Detlef Sack was born 1965. He is professor of democracy theory and government system research at Faculty of Political Science, University of Wuppertal. Academia Detlef Sack holds the Chair of Comparative Political Science, focusing on comparative research on democratic processes and regimes and analysis of public policy and governance. In 2005 he was a Research fellow at Aston University and was also visiting scholar Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK. He was speaker of the Forum of Young Political and Administrational Scientists from 2006 till 2008. Detlef Sack is member ...
Go to Profile#2698
Edwin Busuttil
#103877
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Edwin Busuttil was a Maltese politician, son of Paul and Therese Busuttil. He served as Head of Department of Public Law and Criminal Law, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Law and Pro-Rector at the University of Malta.
Go to Profile#2699
David Judge
#86108
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Professor David Judge , is a British political scientist based at the University of Strathclyde, where he is Emeritus Professor in the School of Government and Public Policy. His main research interests include legislative studies, United Kingdom political institutions, the European Parliament and representative democracy.
Go to Profile#2700
Benjamin I. Page
#140010
Overall Influence
