Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#3651

Roy Brown

#148917

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Roy Brown is a former Montana state senator from Billings, Montana Senate District 25. He served four terms in the Montana House of Representatives and was elected to the state senate in 2007. He was the Republican nominee for the governor seat in Montana with Steve Daines in 2008. In 2010, Representative Kendall Van Dyk defeated Brown in the general election.

#3652

Paul Baines

#73568

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Paul Baines is a British marketing academic, specialising in the topic of marketing for political parties and candidates. He is the professor in Political Marketing at Cranfield University. He was the former Director of Business Development at the Middlesex University Business School and the former the Director for the Baines Associates Limited, since 2008. In 2019 he joined the University of Leicester as Professor of Political Marketing and Associate Dean.

#3653

George Baker

#180597

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

George S. Baker is a Canadian politician and former member of the Senate of Canada. Baker was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1974 election as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Gander—Twillingate, in Newfoundland and Labrador. He was re-elected in every subsequent election until his appointment to the Senate by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, in 2002.

#3654

David Davis

#179929

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

David McLean Davis is an Australian politician. He has been a Liberal member of the Victorian Legislative Council since March 1996, representing East Yarra Province from 1996 until 2006 when it was abolished and the Southern Metropolitan Region from 2006 onwards. He was state Minister for Health from 2010 to 2014 under Premiers Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine.

#3655

Mary Moore

#124147

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Georgina Mary Moore was a British author, diplomat and administrator, the principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1990. She published several novels, radio and television plays under the pen name Helena Osborne.

#3656

Camille Agnes Becker Paul

#171982

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Camille Agnes Becker Paul was an Australian feminist, moral theologian and activist. Early life Camille Agnes Becker was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1932. Her father, Norman Becker, was an engineer who worked on the New South Wales railroad, and her mother, Elsie Childs, was a dressmaker. She was raised in a Catholic family and attended Catholic school for primary education. and later studied to be a secretary, and a physical education trainer. She married Ken Paul in 1956, and had six children with him. Tragically, one of their children, a son, died by drowning in 1972, and one daughter was stillborn.

#3657

Huang Chen-tai

#135565

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Huang Chen-tai is a Taiwanese educator and politician. He was vice minister of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission from 1991 to 1994, before assuming the same position at the Ministry of Education until 1995. Subsequently, he was named president of Feng Chia University, where he served until his 1998 appointment as minister of the National Science Council. Huang stepped down from the position in 2000 and became active in the John Tung Foundation. In 2008, Huang left the FCU faculty and became the president of Soochow University. He was named commissioner of the Chinese Profess...

#3658

Charles Krauthammer

#187564

Overall Influence

#3659

Asha Rao

#74824

Overall Influence

Asha Rao is a mathematician and expert in cyber security. She is the Associate Dean, or Head of Department, of Mathematical Sciences and Professor at RMIT University. Education and career Rao completed her PhD in Algebra at the University of Pune. She started working at RMIT University as a lecturer in 1992, and became a Professor in 2016.

#3660

Bill Frist

#171700

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

William Harrison Frist is an American physician, businessman, conservationist and policymaker who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1995 to 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as Senate Majority Leader from 2003 to 2007. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Frist studied government and health care policy at Princeton University and earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School. He trained as a cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine, and later founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center.

#3661

Roma Guy

#78864

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Roma Guy is an American LGBT- and women's-rights activist. She was born in Maine and earned a Masters in Social Work from the University of Maine, after which she worked in Africa for nine years. She is openly lesbian.

#3662

Christoph Hofinger

#48183

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Christoph Hofinger is researcher and political consultant in Austria. Together with Günther Ogris he directs the research and consulting firm SORA . Hofinger studied literature, psychology and sociology in Vienna. In Austria, he regularly calculates election night forecastss for the Austrian broadcasting corporation ORF. He was President of the European Association of Political Consultants for the term May 2008-May 2010. In 1992, Hofinger also co-founded the Lomographic Society.

#3663

S. Sara Monoson

#175988

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

S. Sara Monoson is Professor of Political Science, Classics and Philosophy at Northwestern University. She specialises in the history of political theory, politics in ancient Greece, and classical receptions.

#3664

Hsueh Shou Sheng

#127329

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Hsueh Shou Sheng was a Chinese educator who served as Vice-Chancellor of Nanyang University in Singapore and the founding Rector of University of East Asia, Macau . Biography Hsueh Shou Sheng was born on 8 March 1926 in Shanghai, China. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Yenching University in Peking and Doctorat ès Sciences Politique from University of Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies.

#3665

Marvin Wachman

#92203

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Marvin Wachman , a professor of American history, was president of Lincoln University and Temple University, and was interim president of Albright College and the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.

#3666

Grzegorz Braun

#177276

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Grzegorz Michał Braun is a Polish far-right politician, journalist, academic lecturer, movie director and screenwriter. He is the leader of the monarchist party, Confederation of the Polish Crown and one of the leaders of Confederation Liberty and Independence. He was elected to the Sejm in 2019.

#3667

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

#187811

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

Teresa Jadwiga Rakowska-Harmstone was a Polish-Canadian political scientist. She was an expert in the politics of Eastern Europe, Soviet Studies, and post-Soviet Studies. Rakowska-Harmstone was a professor at Carleton University from 1966 until her death, where she helped establish the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies and was head of the Department of Political Science. She was also a professor at Collegium Civitas from its founding, and served a term as the head of the Department of International Relations there.

#3668

Payam Akhavan

#187812

Overall Influence

#3669

Vincent L. Hutchings

#187813

Overall Influence

Vincent L. Hutchings was a professor in the Department of Political Science at Western Washington University from 1986-2021. In 2015 Professor Johnson received the WWU Philip E. Sharpe Community Engagement Award for his outstanding community service. Alma Maters: PhD and MA in Political Science from University of California, Los Angeles, B.A. in Political Science from San Jose State University Academic Website

#3670

Eileen Cheng-yin Chow

#116764

Overall Influence

Eileen Chengyin Chow is a sinologist, Chinese translator and University Teacher. She works for the Duke University and for the Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan. She graduated in Literature from Harvard University and studied her Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Together with Carlos Rojas, in 2009 she translated to English Brothers, the longest novel written by the Chinese novelist Yu Hua. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and was awarded France's Prix Courrier International in 2008.

#3671

Toby Dodge

#132001

Overall Influence

Toby Dodge is an English political scientist whose main area of interest lies in the Middle East. He completed a PhD on the transformation of international system in the aftermath of the First World War and the creation of the Iraqi state at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He also taught international relations and Middle Eastern politics in the Department of Political Studies at SOAS for four years. Toby was Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick. He is currently a Reader in the Int...

#3672

Albert Legault

#170447

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Albert Legault was a Canadian academic and researcher. He notably performed research on strategic studies and specialized in peacekeeping. He published several books on nuclear deterrence and disarmament. He worked as a professor for the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université Laval. He held a PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

#3673

Nicholas G. Thacher

#116495

Overall Influence

1915 - 2002 (87 years)

Nicholas Gilman Thacher was a United States diplomat. Early life and career He was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1915 to John Hamilton Thacher and Edith Gilman Thacher. He had an older brother, John Jr., and an older sister, writer Edith Thacher Hurd. Thacher attended the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in economics. Upon graduation from Princeton, Thacher worked for Bankers Trust and simultaneously worked on a law degree from Fordham University. He entered officer training school and served aboard the USS Pensacola during World War II.

#3674

Thomas Ambrosio

#187944

Overall Influence

#3675

Mao Kao-wen

#137836

Overall Influence

1936 - 2019 (83 years)

Mao Kao-wen was a Taiwanese chemist, politician, and diplomat. He served as the president of National Tsinghua University from 1981 to 1987. He also was the Minister of Education of the Republic of China from June 1987 to February 1993.

#3676

Valerie Bryson

#183897

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Valerie Bryson is a British political scientist, who has published extensively on feminist theory and politics. She was appointed professor of politics at the University of Huddersfield in 2002, and is founder of the Centre for Democracy and Governance in 2006, serving as its director until 2008. Since 2010, she has been professor emerita.

#3677

Raoni Rajão

#183069

Overall Influence

Raoni Guerra Lucas Rajão is a Brazilian environmental scientist and associate professor in environmental management and social studies of science & technology in the Department of Production Engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the U.S. In March 31st 2023, Raoni Rajão was nominated Director of the Department of Policies to Deforestation and Burning Control of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, in Brazil, becoming responsi...

#3678

Mark Johnson

#88395

Overall Influence

Mark Johnson is an American attorney and politician who served as North Carolina's Superintendent of Public Instruction for one term. A Republican, he was first elected in 2016, narrowly defeating incumbent June Atkinson. Prior to his election as state superintendent, Johnson served for two years on the Forsyth County School Board while working as a lawyer in Winston-Salem. Prior to attending law school, Johnson taught at West Charlotte High School for two years with Teach for America. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for North Carolina lieutenant governor in 2020.

#3679

Donald Hawley

#102752

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

Sir Donald Hawley was a British colonial lawyer, diplomat and writer. Career Donald Frederick Hawley was educated at Radley College. At the outbreak of World War II, about to go to university, he volunteered for the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry but was told to continue to university: he went to New College, Oxford where he took a four-term wartime degree in law.

#3680

Everette James

#133864

Overall Influence

Everette James is Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Health Policy Institute . Biography In September, 2014 James was named to the M. Allen Pond Endowed Chair in Health Policy and Management. He teaches graduate courses on the history of U.S. health reform and writes and speaks frequently on healthcare business and legal issues.

#3681

Robert Nandor Berki

#174675

Overall Influence

1936 - 1991 (55 years)

Robert Nandor Berki , who published as R. N. Berki, was a Hungarian-British political scientist. Life Berki was born on 12 July 1936 in Budapest, and educated from 1941 to 1952 at the Catholic Piarista Convent School in Budapest. After working for a year in the Hungarian government's land redistribution department, he studied classical music and jazz at a Budapest music academy. Escaping Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he managed to get to Britain in 1957.

#3682

Pavel Chobanyan

Pavel Chobanyan

#170703

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Pavel Ashoti Chobanyan was an Armenian historian. Biography Pavel Chobanyan was born in the city of Khanlar in the Goygol District of the Azerbaijan SSR on March 15, 1948. His ancestors came from the village of Zaylik in Dashkasan District. In 1973 he graduated with honors from the Department of Archeology, Ethnography and Source Studies of Yerevan State University.

#3683

Arkady Rzegocki

Arkady Rzegocki

#68726

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Arkady Józef Rzegocki is a Polish political scientist, an assistant professor of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Between 2016 and 2021 he served as the Republic of Poland Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Head of The Foreign Service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Since 1 September 2023 he serves as the Ambassador to Ireland.

#3684

Samuel Cabanchik

#181302

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Samuel, Manuel Cabanchik is an Argentine philosopher, academic and politician. He was elected to the Argentine Senate in 2007, representing the City of Buenos Aires on the Civic Coalition ticket. He left the Civic Coalition on July 8, 2009, and formed his own parliamentary group, the Federal Buenos Aires Project, and was subsequently considered a circumstantial ally of the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner government.

#3685

Chiang Wei-ling

#176539

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Chiang Wei-ling is a Taiwanese educator. He was the Minister of the Ministry of Education of the Executive Yuan in 2012–2014. He is also the former President of National Central University in Taoyuan.

#3686

Albert Blumberg

#30804

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Albert E. Blumberg was an American philosopher and political activist. He was an official of the Communist Party for several years before joining the Democratic Party as a district leader. Early life Albert was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a middle-class Litvak family. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and then furthered his education by acquiring a master's degree from Yale, studying at the Sorbonne, and receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna. While studying in Vienna he became attracted to the Vienna circle of Logical Positivists, founded by the German philosopher M...

#3687

David Niven

#188366

Overall Influence

#3688

Christopher Lynch

#185616

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Christopher Lynch is a political scientist and theorist who focuses his research on Machiavelli. Lynch has published one book and numerous articles in academic journals. Publications Lynch translated, edited, and provided an introduction of Niccolò Machiavelli's Art of War. While staying true to the original text, Lynch was also able to translate it into modern English to allow the audience to respect Machiavelli's writings on the relationship between war and politics. Additionally, the introduction that Lynch wrote provides political and historical context and its current relevance. Furtherm...

#3689

William J. Dyess

#177125

Overall Influence

1929 - 1996 (67 years)

William Jennings Dyess was an American diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 1980 to 1981 and as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1982 to 1983. William J. Dyess was born in Troy, Alabama on August 1, 1929. He was educated at the University of Alabama, receiving a B.A. in 1950 and an M.A. in international relations in 1951. He then spent the 1951–52 academic year studying at the University of Oxford and 1952–53 at Syracuse University. In 1953, he was drafted and spent 1953 to 1956 serving in the United States Army. He returned to Syracu...

#3690

Joanna R. Quinn

#186387

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Joanna R. Quinn is a Canadian political scientist. She is a Professor of political science and director of the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction at the University of Western Ontario.

#3691

Dimitar Dimitrov

#177951

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Dimitar Dimitrov is a Macedonian politician , scientist , writer. Dimitrov was the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Education of the Republic of Macedonia, the Ambassador of the Republic of Macedonia to Russia and Belarus.

#3692

Pierre Rosanvallon

#188544

Overall Influence

#3693

Aleksey Malashenko

#30368

Overall Influence

1951 - 2023 (72 years)

Aleksey Vsevolodovich Malashenko was a Russian academic and political scientist. He specialized in the oriental and Islamic studies. He was the son of actress . Biography Malashenko graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries in 1974 with a degree in history. In 1972, he studied in Egypt and Turkmenistan. From 1974 to 1976, he served in the Soviet Armed Forces in Algeria. He was a researcher at Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences from 1976 to 1982. In 1978, he defended his dissertation on Islam in Algeria.

#3694

Janie Leatherman

#188077

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Janie L. Leatherman is an international relations scholar from the United States. She is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at Fairfield University. Her publications encompass conflict early warning and prevention, conflict transformation, and peace building, which work is cited in the development of the international principle and doctrine on the Responsibility to Protect. In addition, her scholarship has contributed to the normative understanding of peace building, and the exercise of discipline and punitive power in international affairs, including in the global politica...

#3695

Thomas Kean

#175629

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

Thomas Howard Kean is an American businessman, academic administrator, and politician who served as the 48th governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990 and as president of Drew University from 1990 until 2005.

#3696

Henry Frye

#142021

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

Henry E. Frye is an American judge and politician who served as the first African-American chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Early life and education Henry Frye was born August 1, 1932, in Ellerbe, Richmond County, North Carolina. He was 8th of 12 children, born to Walter Atlas and Pearl Motley Frye. His parents were tobacco and cotton farmers. He went to the Ellerbe Colored High School, but by accident he obtained a diploma from Ellerbe High School, the white one. After graduating with honors from North Carolina A&T State University, Frye reached the rank of captain in the United States Air Force, serving in Korea and Japan.

#3697

Marie Tulip

#149730

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Marie Tulip was an Australian feminist writer, academic and proponent for the ordination of women as priests. Early and family life Born Marie Grant in Mackay, Queensland to parents Robert and Elspeth Grant, Tulip attended a Presbyterian church as a child. Tulip attended boarding school in Brisbane and later, having received a scholarship, attended the University of Queensland where she studied Arts and achieved an Honours degree in French. As an undergraduate, she participated in Australian Student Christian Movement gatherings with, among others, James Tulip . They married in Chicago in 1957.

#3698

Matteo Bonotti

#187671

Overall Influence

Matteo Bonotti is an Italian political theorist. He is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University in Australia, where he teaches in the Department of Politics and International Relations. His research areas include political parties, freedom of speech, food policy, and language policy.

#3699

Ola Oni

#173733

Overall Influence

1933 - 1999 (66 years)

Ola Oni was a Nigerian marxist political economist, socialist and human right activist. Early life The anti-military and pro-democracy, Ola Oni hails from Ekiti State southwestern Nigeria where he was born but based in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, Nigeria. He was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan but was sacked due to his radicalism. Ebenezer Babatope's book, "Student Power in Nigeria" , tells the life of Ola Oni. He died on December 22, 1999, at the University College Hospital, Ibadan. After his demise, he was immortalized and a social research center, Comrade Ola Oni Centre For So...

#3700

William Muse

#74397

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

William Van Muse was the President of the University of Akron from 1984 to 1992, of Auburn University from 1992 to 2001, and Chancellor of East Carolina University from 2001 to 2003. Biography William Muse was born in Mississippi. He received a B.S. in accounting from Northwestern State University in Louisiana, followed by an MBA and Ph.D. in Business and Administration from the University of Arkansas. He taught at Georgia Tech and Ohio University. He served as Dean of the business schools at Appalachian State University, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Texas A&M University. He also served as Vice-Chancellor at Texas A&M.

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