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,

#3151

Stephen Sloan

#171104
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Stephen Sloan is an American political scientist known for studying terrorism and political violence. Biography Sloan received his B.A. from Washington Square College at New York University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative politics from New York University. He was formerly the Lawrence J. Chastang Distinguished Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of Central Florida, where he remains a Distinguished Fellow of the Global Perspectives Office. Previously, he was a Professor and Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma for almost 40 years. At the University of Oklah...
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#3152

Nina Kasniunas

#69919
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Nina Therese Kasniunas is an American political scientist and writer. She is the Arsht Professor in Ethics and Leadership in the Center for People, Politics, & Markets at Goucher College. Early life and education Kasniunas was born in 1972. She earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1995. She completed a master's degree in 2002 at Loyola University Chicago where she earned a doctorate in political science in 2009. She completed her dissertation titled Impact of Interest Group Testimony on Lawmaking in Congress under doctoral advisor Raymond Tatlovich.
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#3153

Srikanth Kondapalli

#110023
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Srikanth Kondapalli is the Dean of School of International Studies and a Professor of China studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Kondapalli is a frequent writer and commentator in the national and international media. He has been quoted regularly in BBC News, China Daily, Der Spiegel, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Indian Express, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Xinhua.
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#3154

Huang Jing

#76489
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Huang Jing is a Chinese-American political scientist and alleged foreign agent. He was the director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation and the Lee Foundation Professor on US-China Relations at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy until his permanent residence was revoked after the Ministry of Home Affairs called him "an agent of influence of a foreign country" on August 4, 2017.
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#3155

Michael Traugott

#86547
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Michael Wolfe Traugott is an American political scientist, communication studies researcher, and political pundit. As of 2022, he is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and adjunct research professor at UM's Institute for Social Research, Center for Political Studies.
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#3156

Erika Weinthal

#92915
Overall Influence
Erika Weinthal is an American environmental policy scholar currently the Lee Hill Snowdon Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke University. Her current research is environmentalism and its legal politics.
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#3157

Wheeler Thackston

#38963
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Wheeler McIntosh Thackston is an American Orientalist. He has edited and translated numerous Chaghatai, Arabic, and Persian literary and historical works. Life Thackston is a graduate of Princeton's Oriental Studies department, where he was a member of Princeton's Colonial Club, and Harvard's Near Eastern Studies department , where he was Professor of the Practice of Persian and other Near Eastern Languages from 1972. He studied at Princeton under Martin Dickson and at Harvard with Annemarie Schimmel. Thackston retired from teaching at Harvard in 2007.
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#3158

Georgy Toloraya

#97794
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Georgy Toloraya , is a Russian diplomat, Expert, Panel of Experts, UN Security Council Committee established pursuant to SC Resolution 1718 , Executive Director of Russian National Committee on BRICS research, Honorary Director, Center of Russian Strategy in Asia, Institute of Economics Russian Academy of Sciences, Visiting professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations .
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#3159

Hakan Yılmaz

#70144
Overall Influence
Hakan Yilmaz is a professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. University education and career Yilmaz completed his undergraduate education at the Economics Department of Boğaziçi University . He received his MA and Ph.D. degrees at the Political Science Department of Columbia University in New York City. He has taught courses and published works in the areas of contemporary Turkish politics, the culture and identity dimensions of European integration and European-Turkish relations, the international context of democratization, and culture and politics.
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#3160

Robert Carothers

#60549
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Robert Lee Carothers , a writer and poet, served as chancellor of the Minnesota State University System and the tenth president of the University of Rhode Island from 1991 to 2009. Early life and education Robert Carothers was born on September 3, 1942 in Sewickley, Pennsylvania to Robert Fleming Carothers and Mary Carothers. He attended public schools in the Quaker Valley. Carothers received his B.A. degree from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania in 1965. He joined Delta Sigma Phi fraternity Delta Nu Chapter in 1962 and was elected the President of the Fraternity twice. From 1960 to 1968, Carothers served in the United States Army, and availed of military scholarships for his studies.
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#3161

Vojin Rakić

Vojin Rakić
#82830
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Vojin B. Rakic is a Serbian philosopher and political scientist. He publishes in English, but also in Serbian. He has a PhD in political science from Rutgers University in the United States. His publications on ethics, bioethics , Kant, and cosmopolitan justice are considered as influential writings in the international academic arena, as can be read in the references to Rakić`s works, the endorsements of his two latest books, as well as in the open letter of support for Rakić that has been signed by dozens of the world`s most reputed ethicists and philosophers, in which they state their opin...
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#3162

Hans Fränkel

Hans Fränkel
#74521
Overall Influence
1916 - 2003 (87 years)
Hans Hermann Fränkel , usually Anglicized to Hans Frankel, was a German-American sinologist noted for his studies of Chinese poetry and literature and his 25-year tenure as professor of Chinese at Yale University.
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#3163

Steven Fielding

#109410
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Steven Fielding is an academic in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham where he is professor of political history and director of the Centre for British Politics. His most recent work A State of Play sets out the qualified constructivist view that how individuals regard real politics can be shaped by fictional works about politics.
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#3164

Abigail Bakan

Abigail Bakan
#95633
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Abigail "Abbie" B. Bakan is a Canadian academic. Academic career Bakan was chair of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto from 2013 to 2018 and after the end of her term remains a professor in the department. Her research focuses on employment equity, Marxist theory and "anti-oppression politics".
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#3165

David Lee

#132278
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
David Lee Ta-wei is a Taiwanese politician and diplomat who is the chairman of Straits Exchange Foundation since 31 January 2023. He formerly served as the chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation in 2020, the Secretary-General of the National Security Council of Taiwan in 2018-2020, the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 20 May 2016 to 26 February 2018, and the Secretary-General to the President since 3 August 2020 to 31 January 2023.
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#3166

Anthony D. Burke

#105630
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Anthony Burke is an Australian political theorist and international relations scholar. He is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales. He was the founding editor and is publisher of the transdisciplinary journal of the humanities and social sciences, Borderlands.
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#3167

Akinyele Umoja

Akinyele Umoja
#91107
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Akinyele Umoja is an American educator and author who specializes in African-American studies. As an activist, he is a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Currently, he is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University .
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#3168

Michael L. Gross

#103812
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Michael L. Gross is a political ethicist and professor of political science at the University of Haifa where he is Chair of the Division of International Relations. He is the author of Bioethics and Armed Conflict, the first comprehensive study of medical ethics in conventional, unconventional, and low-intensity war which examines the dilemmas that arise when bioethical principles clash with military necessity. His contention is that medical ethics in time of war cannot be identical to medical ethics in peacetime. He is also the author of Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination, ...
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#3169

Anatoly Aksakov

#87775
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Anatoly Gennadyevich Aksakov is a Russian politician and economist. He is a member of the Russian State Duma from the A Just Russia party. Early life and career After graduating from secondary school in 1975, Aksakov began studies at Moscow State University in the Economics Department in 1977. After graduating in 1983 as a qualified economist, Aksakov served as a Deputy in the State Council of the Chuvash Republic. In 1986 he completed post-graduate studies in economics at Moscow State University.
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#3170

Hossein Askari

#119380
Overall Influence
Hossein Askari is a scholar of economic development in the Middle East and in Islam and the founder of Islamicity Indices, a benchmark to build effective institutions for political, social and economic reform and progress.
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#3171

Walter Clemens

#147562
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Walter Carl Clemens, Jr. is an American political scientist known for advancing complexity science as an approach to the study of international relations and for arms control and U.S. relations with communist and post-communist countries. Since 2008, he has been a regular contributor to Global Asia, the quarterly journal of the East Asia Foundation. He has authored numerous books, articles, and editorials. In 2023, he published Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims and The Republican War on America: Dangers of Trump and Trumpism. Clemens is a Professor Emeritus at Boston Univers...
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#3172

Monika Motsch

#129248
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Monika Motsch is a German sinologist who works as a professor at the University of Bonn and University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. Biography Monika Motsch was born in Germany in 1942. In 1971, she earned her doctor's degree in Sinology from Heidelberg University. From 1973 to 2004, she successively worked as lecturer and professor at the University of Bonn. She was director of the Department of Sinology of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in 1998, and held that office until 2000. From 2012 to 2014, she was a foreign specialist of Tsinghua University. During that time, she worked with her husba...
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#3173

Julie Mostov

#171467
Overall Influence
Julie Mostov is an American political scientist, academic administrator and consultant. She is the dean of NYU Liberal Studies. Early life Mostov graduated from Mount Holyoke College. She earned a master's degree from the University of Belgrade and a PhD from New York University.
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#3174

Paul Rogers

#96848
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Paul Grant Rogers was an American lawyer and politician from the U.S. state of Florida. A Democrat, Rogers served in the U.S. House of Representatives as the member from Florida's 11th congressional district. He was chairman of Research America from 1996 to 2005.
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#3175

Per Kværne

#41145
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Per Kværne is a Norwegian tibetologist and historian of religion. Biography Per Kværne was born in Oslo, Norway. In 1970 he received the mag.art. degree in Sanskrit at the University of Oslo. From 1970 to 1975 he worked as a lecturer in the history of religion at the University of Bergen. In 1973 he received the dr.philos. degree from the University of Oslo with his thesis An Anthology of Buddhist Tantric Songs. From 1975 to 2007 he was professor of the history of religion at the University of Oslo, and he is now a professor emeritus.
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#3176

Michael A. Weinstein

#118720
Overall Influence
1942 - 2015 (73 years)
Michael A. Weinstein was an American political philosopher and political scientist, punk musician, and photography critic. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, and the author or co-author of more than twenty books on a wide array of topics in philosophy. Weinstein also engaged in public political analysis, most notably in regard to the Somali civil war, but also the Unabomber and the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuses.
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#3177

Janine Hayward

#160705
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Janine Alyth Deaker Hayward is a New Zealand politics academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Otago. Hayward is the granddaughter of John Waddell Hayward who was Registrar of the University of Otago from 1948 to 1974.
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#3178

James Robert Hightower

#29248
Overall Influence
1915 - 2006 (91 years)
James Robert Hightower was an American sinologist. He was a professor of Chinese at Harvard University who specialized in the translation of Chinese literature. Although he spent his youth in Colorado, Hightower lived most of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts studying and teaching at Harvard.
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#3179

Frances W. Herring

#148398
Overall Influence
1902 - 1993 (91 years)
Frances W. Herring was a Professor of Government at University of California, Berkeley. She was the leader of the Women Strike for Peace in 1961 and a signatory on The Triple Revolution. Career Herring was a Professor of Government at the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote about housing, employment and development in America. In 1948 she formed the Washington Committee for Academic Freedom records. Herring wrote about the development and control of nuclear industry in California.
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#3180

Shamit Saggar

#153297
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Shamit Saggar FAcSS is professor of public policy at the University of Western Australia where he is also Director of the Public Policy Institute. He is also visiting professor in the Policy Institute at King’s College, London, and emeritus professor of political science at the University of Essex.
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#3181

Race Mathews

#119377
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Charles Race Thorson Mathews is an Australian co-operative economist, and former member of Victoria's State Parliament and Australia's Federal Parliament for the Australian Labor Party . he was a senior research fellow at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics.
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#3182

Amy Erica Smith

#126948
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Amy Erica Smith is an American political scientist. Education and academic career Smith was born in Eugene, Oregon, and raised in Dallas, Texas. She earned a bachelor's degree in Latin American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, obtained a master's degree in city and regional planning at Cornell University, then pursued doctoral studies in political science at the University of Pittsburgh. Smith moved to Ames, Iowa, in 2012, and began teaching at Iowa State University as an assistant professor of political science. In 2018, she became an associate professor. Since 2019, Smith has s...
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#3183

James Harris

#81726
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
James Harris is an American communist politician and member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996, receiving 8,463 votes, and again in 2000, receiving 7,378 votes. Harris also served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 and 2008 in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot due to being born in Nicaragua. More recently Harris was the SWP candidate in the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral election, receiving 2,057 votes .
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#3184

Jeffrey A. Segal

#172161
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Allan Segal is an American political scientist who serves as a SUNY Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University, where he was formerly the chair of the Political Science Department. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in political science in 2011 and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. He formerly served as a Visiting Professor of American Politics at Harvard University, as a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, and as president of the Midwest Political Science Associatio...
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#3185

Vernon Lattin

#64611
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Vernon Eugene Lattin , an American of Mexican-American heritage, was the seventh president of Brooklyn College, from 1992 to 2000. Biography Lattin was born in Winslow, Arizona, to Eli Voil Lattin and Betty Lattin. In 1720, his ancestors had moved from Spain to a farming village in what was then called New Spain, and is now New Mexico, which in 1821 became part of Mexico, and then in 1846 became part of the US. He and his family moved to New Mexico when he was eight years old. His single mother raised him and his two brothers.
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#3186

Chung Sye-kyun

#103522
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Chung Sye-kyun is a South Korean politician who has served as Speaker of the National Assembly from 2016 to 2018 and Prime Minister of South Korea from 2020 to 2021. He was previously leader of the main opposition Democratic Party between 2008 and 2010, and twice chairman of its predecessor, the Uri Party, first on an interim basis from October 2005 to January 2006 and then fully from February 2007 until the Uri Party's dissolution in August of that year.
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#3187

Aleksandr Panov

#100687
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Panov is a Russian diplomat. Born in Moscow, Panov graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1968. He entered the diplomatic service immediately upon graduation.
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#3188

Jennifer Curtin

#48067
Overall Influence
Jennifer Curtin is a New Zealand public policy academic, and a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled 'Women in trade unions : strategies for the representation of women's interests in four countries' at the Australian National University, Curtin moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor. Curtin is a frequent political columnist in the New Zealand and international media.
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#3189

Konstantin Khudoley

Konstantin Khudoley
#86192
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Konstantin Konstantinowitsch Khudoley is a member of the steering committee of the Petersburg Dialogue and the vice rector, vice chairman of the science council and the manager of the Chair of European Studies in Saint Petersburg State University.
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#3190

Stefan Fröhlich

#162641
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Stefan Fröhlich is a German political scientist and professor for International Relations at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. The emphasis in his work is on German foreign policy, transatlantic relations and US foreign policy, European foreign and security policy, and International Political Economy.
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#3191

Russell Hunt Fifield

#172469
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Russell Hunt Fifield was an American political scientist, writer, and professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He was a specialist in the politics of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
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#3192

Daniel Hershkowitz

#70867
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Daniel Hershkowitz is an Israeli politician, mathematician, and Orthodox rabbi. Since 2018, he has headed the . He is professor emeritus of mathematics at the Technion, and is also rabbi of the Ahuza neighborhood in Haifa. He was president of Bar-Ilan University from 2013-17.
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#3193

Nibal Thawabteh

Nibal Thawabteh
#122376
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Nibal Thawabteh is a Palestinian women's rights activist who works at Birzeit University. Life Thawabteh was the first woman to be elected to the Beit Fajjar Village Council, where she served for seven years. She developed her own training manual and volunteered to help other women get seats in the council. In 2005 she founded the monthly newspaper Al Hal , which addresses controversial issues including incest, polygamy, honor killings, illegal marriages, lesbianism and the plight of the poor. In 2008 she was the newspaper's editor-in-chief and a contributing writer. For the first issue of th...
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#3194

Sergio Fabbrini

#172569
Overall Influence
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#3195

Tsien Tsuen-hsuin

#70048
Overall Influence
1909 - 2015 (106 years)
Tsien Tsuen-hsuin , also known as T.H. Tsien, was a Chinese-American bibliographer, librarian, and sinologist who served as a professor of Chinese literature and library science at the University of Chicago, and was also curator of its East Asian Library from 1949 to 1978. He is known for studies of the history of the Chinese book, Chinese bibliography, paleography, and science and technology, especially the history of paper and printing in China, notably Paper and Printing, Volume 5 Pt 1 of British biochemist and sinologist Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. He is also known ...
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#3196

Keith Whittington

#87132
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Keith E. Whittington is an American political scientist. Whittington studied government, finance and business at the University of Texas at Austin, then earned a master's and doctoral degree in political science from Yale University. He attended Katy High School where he graduated in the Class of 1986.
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#3197

Rhonda M. Williams

#118125
Overall Influence
1957 - 2000 (43 years)
Rhonda Michèle Williams was an American professor, activist and political economist whose work combined economics with multiple other social fields including race and gender analysis, law, politics, public policy and cultural studies. She aimed to show how the examination of the roles of race and gender in economics benefitted from an inclusive approach rather than a separate and fragmented analysis in order to ensure that issues of economic inequality and discrimination were aptly addressed. Williams was also noted as being consistent in aligning her own ethics with economic analysis resulti...
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#3198

Douglas Sturkey

#106644
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Robert Douglas Sturkey is a former Australian diplomat and Official Secretary to the Governor-General of Australia. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra.
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#3199

Maurice Vile

#87416
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
Maurice John Crawley Vile is a British political scientist. His main areas of interest are constitutional theory, federalism, the separation of powers, American government and politics. Early life Vile was born on 23 July 1927 in Stoke Newington, East London, and moved to Victoria Park, South Hackney, three years later. His father Edward, was a packer at a textile warehouse, Jeremiah Rotherham and Company in Shoreditch, until it was destroyed in the Second World War. In 1938 he gained a London County Council Scholarship to Hackney Downs School and moved with the School when it was evacuated to Norfolk in 1939.
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#3200

Minion K. C. Morrison

#165057
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Minion Kenneth Chauncey Morrison is an American political scientist. He is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. Morrison studies comparative politics and American politics, and has published books and articles on the Civil Rights Movement and its effects on the next several decades of American politics, including a biography of Mississippi NAACP leader Aaron Henry. He also specializes in the politics of Ghana.
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