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,

#2751

Bernd Reiter

#122164
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Bernd Reiter is a political scientist and professor at Texas Tech University. He formerly served as the Director of the Institute for The Study of Latin American and the Caribbean and professor of political science for the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on democracy, race and decolonization. Reiter is a decolonization scholar and has collaborated with such authors as Arturo Escobar , Sandra Harding, Raewyn Connell, Catherine Walsh, Gustavo Esteva, Walter Mignolo, and Aram Ziai. He has also made contributions to Critical Whiteness Studies.
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#2752

Cristovam Buarque

#72575
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Cristovam Ricardo Cavalcanti Buarque is a Brazilian university professor and member of Cidadania. He was a senator for the Federal District from 2003 to 2019. Biography Buarque graduated in mechanical engineering from the Federal University of Pernambuco in 1966. At that time he engaged in student politics becoming a militant of the Ação Popular, a group of the Leftist Progressive Church. After the 1964 coup, he was persecuted and exiled to France, where he earned a PhD in economics from the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris, in 1973. He worked at Inter-American Development Bank in Ecuador, Honduras, and the United States from 1973–79.
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#2753

Daniel Wincott

#89547
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Daniel Edward Wincott FLSW is the Blackwell Law and Society Chair at Cardiff Law School, a position he has held since September 2008. Education Wincott gained his degree from the University of Manchester, and completed his master's there in 1989. He went on to do his doctorate at London School of Economics which he completed in 1999. His thesis was titled The policy configurations of 'welfare statee' and women's role in the workforce in advanced industrial societies.
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#2754

Lyndsey Stonebridge

#105759
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Lyndsey Stonebridge FBA FEA is an English scholar and professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham. Her work relates to refugee studies, human rights, and the effects of violence on the mind in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is also a regular radio and media commentator, writing for publications such as The New Statesman, Prospect Magazine, and New Humanist.
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#2755

Jeong Se-hyun

#112020
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Jeong Se-hyun is a South Korean politician who served as an Unification Minister under two consecutive presidents from 2002 to 2004. He spent more than two decades at the Ministry of Unification which he first joined as a researcher on communist countries at then-Board of National Unification in 1977. In 2002 he was appointed as the head of the Ministry and assumed the post until June 2004 serving two consecutive Presidents, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. He was also credited with boosting inter-Korean cooperative projects including Kaesong Industrial Region, a landmark site of Inter-Korean c...
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#2756

Stephen M. Engel

#48048
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Stephen Marcus Engel is an American academic and political scientist who is currently a professor of politics at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He is an affiliated scholar with the American Bar Association.
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#2757

Gangan Prathap

#144043
Overall Influence
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#2758

Anna Triandafyllidou

Anna Triandafyllidou
#122453
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Anna Triandafyllidou is a sociologist. She holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair on Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University . She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. Her main areas of research and teaching are the governance of cultural diversity, migration, and nationalism from a European and international perspective.
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#2759

Adile Ayda

Adile Ayda
#47197
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Adile Ayda was the first woman career diplomat of Turkey, but is today better remembered as an Etruscologist. She became interested in Etruscan studies while stationed in Rome as the Minister-Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy, did research on the subject during her stay in Italy and wrote down her findings in a number of books, in Turkish and in French. What is spectacular about her texts on Etruscans and renders them of interest is that she posits the Etruscans as Turkic, a proposition that is as controversial today as it was during her lifetime.
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#2760

John D. Millett

#84105
Overall Influence
1912 - 1993 (81 years)
John David Millett was the 16th president of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and first chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents. During his career, he served as the Senior Vice President of the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C. Millett Hall at Miami University and an academic building at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, are named in his honor.
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#2761

Alessandro Molon

#104742
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Alessandro Lucciola Molon is a Brazilian teacher and politician, member of the Brazilian Socialist Party and former Leader of the Opposition in the Chamber of Deputies. He was the rapporteur to Brazil's Bill of Rights for the Internet , ensuring net neutrality, privacy protection and freedom of expression online.
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#2762

Hau Lung-pin

#87155
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Hau Lung-pin is a Taiwanese politician. As a member of the New Party, he was elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1995, and resigned his seat to lead the Environmental Protection Administration in 2001. Hau stepped down from the EPA in 2003 and served as Mayor of Taipei from 2006 to 2014. He joined the Kuomintang in 2006 and has served as vice chairman of the party in 2014 and from 2016 to 2020.
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#2763

Abdüllatif Şener

#85488
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Abdüllatif Şener is a Turkish politician. He was Minister of Finance of Turkey from 1996 to 1997 and Deputy Prime Minister from 2002 to 2007, under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Life and career Şener was born in Gürün, Sivas Province in Turkey. He graduated from the School of Political Sciences at Ankara University. He earned his PhD degree from Gazi University in Ankara. He lectured on finance at Gazi University and Hacettepe University, before he served as a controller in the Department of Revenues within the Ministry of Finance.
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#2764

Terry M. Moe

#144389
Overall Influence
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#2765

Kathryn Hendley

#94984
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Kathryn Hendley is an American professor of law and politics, and is currently the William Voss-Bascom Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Hendley received her Ph.D. the University of California - Berkeley and her J.D. from the University of California - Los Angeles. Hendley's research focuses on legal and economic reform in the former Soviet Union. She is currently engaged in an inter-disciplinary project aimed at understanding how business is conducted in Russia and the role of law in business transactions and corporate governance. This project h...
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#2766

Šarūnas Liekis

#115798
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Šarūnas Liekis is a Lithuanian historian and political scientist. He is Professor of Politics and dean of the faculty of politics and diplomacy at the Vytautas Magnus University . He is an expert on inter-ethnic relations and conflicts.
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#2767

Daniel Béland

#144552
Overall Influence
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#2768

Aloizio Mercadante

#79916
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Aloizio Mercadante Oliva is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the Chief of Staff of Brazil between 2014 and 2015. He was a founder of the Workers' Party in February 1980 and vice-chairman of the party between 1991 and 1999, then state senator from São Paulo between 2003 and 2010. From 2011 to 2012 he was Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation in Brazil, and in 2012 he became Minister of Education, due to Fernando Haddad's departure to run for mayor of São Paulo.
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#2769

Alexander E. Wendt

#144747
Overall Influence
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#2770

Bill Owens

#64348
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
William Forrester Owens is an American former politician who served as the 40th Governor of Colorado, from 1999 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he was re-elected in 2002, amassing 62.6% of the vote, the largest Republican share of the vote in state history. , he is the last Republican to serve as Governor of Colorado.
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#2771

Yeşim Arat

#121571
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Yeşim Arat , is a Turkish political scientist and author specialized in gender politics, Turkish politics, women in Turkish politics, and women's movements in Turkey. She is a professor in the department of political science and international relations at Boğaziçi University.
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#2772

Vasundhara Sirnate

#93532
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Vasundhara Sirnate is an Indian political scientist, journalist and writer, who co-founded The Polis Project. She is an alumnus of the Lady Shri Ram College and the Jawahar Lal Nehru University. She was the chief-coordinator of research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy from 2013 to 2017, and served The Polis Project as a director of research from November 2017 to November 2020. Her works include Passive Police: Institutional Learning Through Inquiry Commissions and Kashmir's Crossroads.
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#2773

Orde Kittrie

Orde Kittrie
#72199
Overall Influence
Orde Félix Kittrie is a tenured professor of law at Arizona State University, where his teaching and research focus on international law and criminal law. He has written extensively in the areas of international law, criminal law, nuclear non-proliferation, and international negotiations. Professor Kittrie is also the director of ASU's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Washington Legal Externship Program. Professor Kittrie was recipient of the 2006-2007 Centennial Professor of the Year award at ASU, a university-wide honor presented in recognition of outstanding teaching inside and outsid...
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#2774

Giovanni Pettinato

#40697
Overall Influence
1934 - 2011 (77 years)
Giovanni Pettinato was an Assyriologist and paleographer of writings from the ancient Near East, specializing in the Eblaite language, His major contributions to the field include the deciphering of the Eblaite script, discovered by Paolo Matthiae in 1974–75.
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#2775

John Hibbing

#136900
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
John Richard Hibbing is an American political scientist and was the former Foundation Regents University Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is known for his research on the biological and psychological correlates of political ideology. With Kevin B. Smith and John R. Alford, Hibbing is the co-author of Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, published by Routledge in 2013.
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#2776

Costas Panagopoulos

#123166
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Costas Panagopoulos is an American professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston who studies political campaigns and elections. He earned his undergraduate degree in government at Harvard in 1994, and then a masters followed by a PhD from New York University in politics in 2005.
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#2777

Russell Hardin

#145179
Overall Influence
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#2778

Abby Lippman

#110999
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Abby Lippman was a Canadian feminist and epidemiologist who served as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. She was known for her advocacy for human rights and women's health, and for her research applying a feminist perspective to biotechnology and pharmaceutical drugs. Among her most notable works were her critiques of hormone replacement therapy, the pharmaceutical industry, the HPV vaccine, and the "geneticization" of reproductive technologies. In 2001, Lippmann helped the Center for Genetics and Society to continue the...
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#2779

Frank Biermann

#145259
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
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#2780

Oliver P. Richmond

#145495
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
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#2781

Claude Welch

#30006
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Claude Raymond Welch was a historical theologian specializing in Karl Barth and nineteenth-century theology. He served as President and academic dean of the Graduate Theological Union in California.
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#2782

Todd Shields

#107239
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Todd Shields is an American educator who is the current chancellor at Arkansas State University. He previously served as a political scientist at the University of Arkansas, where he was Dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. He completed his B.A. in psychology and political science at Miami University in 1990, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 1991 and 1994. As Dean of Fulbright College, he leads the largest college in the university, home to over 8,500 students pursuing degrees in degrees in the fine arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences.
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#2783

Mariam Abou Zahab

#79575
Overall Influence
1952 - 2017 (65 years)
Mariam Abou Zahab was a French political scientist, sociologist, and scholar of Islamic studies. She was an expert in the Politics of the Middle East, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. She was also a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan.
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#2784

Frank R. Pfetsch

#110560
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Frank Pfetsch was Professor of International Politics Emeritus at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. Education Pfetsch studied Political Science and Economics at German and foreign universities. He received his Ph.D. in political science in 1965 and his habilitation in 1973 at the University of Heidelberg.
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#2785

Harold L. Nieburg

#78023
Overall Influence
1927 - 2001 (74 years)
Harold Leonard Nieburg was an American political scientist, best known for his influential book on the military-industrial complex, In the Name of Science. Born in 1927 in Philadelphia, he attended the University of Chicago, earning a Ph. B. , A.M. , and Ph.D. in political science. He served briefly in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, reaching the rank of corporal, and as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and for the Chicago Sun-Times. Later he taught at Illinois State University, Case Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee before accepting a position at Binghamton University in 1970.
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#2786

Giacomo Benedetto

#113350
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Giacomo Benedetto FRSA is a British Italian political scientist and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is an expert in European Union politics, and has researched and published extensively on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, and the EU budget. Benedetto is also associate editor of the peer-reviewed European Journal of Government and Economics, and co-ordinator of the EUROSCI Network Centre in the UK.
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#2787

Robert C. Smith

#57946
Overall Influence
1947 - 2023 (76 years)
Robert Charles Smith is a political science professor at San Francisco State University . He is known for his scholarship on race and politics in the United States, about which he has written several books. The "Black Politics" class he began teaching at SFSU in 1990 proved controversial; students protested the class because it was offered in the political science department rather than the African American studies department, which was interpreted by some students as encroaching on the latter department's area of focus.
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#2788

Frédéric Encel

Frédéric Encel
#32507
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Frédéric Encel is a French writer and scholar of geopolitics. He received his DEA in geopolitics from the Centre of Geopolitical Analysis and Research at the University of Paris VIII in 1992. He remained there studying under Yves Lacoste and earned his doctorate in geopolitics in 1997. He teaches international relations at the ESG Management School. He frequently points out the Iranian danger in French press.
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#2789

Christopher M. Hann

#146232
Overall Influence
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#2790

Francis Janet K. Thompson

#146355
Overall Influence
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#2791

Richard Feiock

#132401
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Richard C. Feiock is an American political scientist. He is formerly the Augustus B. Turnbull Professor & The Jerry Collins Eminent Scholar Chair at The Florida State University Askew School of Public Administration and Policy. He resigned in 2020 amid a sexual misconduct investigation. The investigation found that he had been reported for sexual misconduct multiple times since 1991. Dozens of journals in the field responded by condemning his behavior and advocating for better protection of graduate students.
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#2792

Mark Philp

#146440
Overall Influence
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#2793

Ryosei Kokubun

Ryosei Kokubun
#83161
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Ryosei Kokubun is a Japanese academic and author. He is currently professor emeritus at Keio University and served as the President, National Defense Academy of Japan from April 2012 to March 2021. Kokubun's main interests are Sino-Japanese relations and Chinese politics, and he previously served as Dean, Faculty of Law and Politics of the Graduate School of Law at Keio University from 2007 to 2012, President of the Japan Association for Asian Studies from 2008 to 2012 and president of the Japan Association of International Relations.
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#2794

Lindsay Oades

#84567
Overall Influence
Lindsay G. Oades is an Australian wellbeing public policy strategist, author, researcher and academic. He is the Director of the Centre for Wellbeing Science and a professor at the University of Melbourne. He is also a non-executive Director of Action for Happiness Australia, and the Positive Education Schools Association. He is a former co-editor of the International Journal of Wellbeing.
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#2795

James O'Connor

#24276
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
James Richard O'Connor was an American political economist and professor of sociology. He was born April 20, 1930, in Boston, Massachusetts, and died November 12, 2017, in Santa Cruz, California. Together with Barbara Laurence he founded the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism in 1988.
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#2796

Clyde Wilcox

#146705
Overall Influence
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#2797

Peter Barlerin

#112060
Overall Influence
Peter Henry Barlerin is an American diplomat and career member of the Senior Foreign Service who served as the United States Ambassador to Cameroon from 2017 to 2020. He has served as an American diplomat since 1989. Prior to becoming an ambassador, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of African Affairs at the United States Department of State. Barlerin has served at seven U.S. missions overseas, including posts in Madagascar, Japan, France, Chad, and Mali.
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#2798

Mansoor bin Tahnoon Al Nahayan

#102556
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Dr. Mansoor Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan is an academic in political science, a medical practitioner, and a pilot. Biography Born in Al Ain in 1973, Dr. Mansoor began his career in the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. From 1990 to 2011, he earned many qualifications including operational, eleFFment and section lead fighter pilot, operational helicopter pilot, ATPL and ATPL. In 2011, Dr. Mansoor became a qualified instructor pilot and examiner.
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#2799

Guillermo A. O’donnell

#146897
Overall Influence
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#2800

Jos C.N. Raadschelders

#77226
Overall Influence
Jos C.N. Raadschelders is a scholar of public administration. He is a professor at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University and also holds an honorary appointment at the University of Leiden. Raadschelders is the former managing editor of Public Administration Review and in 2012 received the Chester A. Newland Presidential Citation of Merit from the American Society of Public Administration. He has written twenty-three books and more than 160 articles and chapters within the interdisciplinary field of public administration.
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