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,

#3701

Krzysztof Miszczak

#181930
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Krzysztof Ryszard Miszczak – Polish scientist, political scientist, Germanist, sinologist, professor extraordinarius, diplomat. Director, member of the board of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation. Counsellor general to the prime minister at the chancellery of the prime minister. Chairman of the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation's council. Member of the Euro-Atlantic Association. In 2015 he was appointed a member of the scientific council of the Institute for Western Affairs. Lecturer at the European Law Faculty and Law Institute of the Warsaw School of Economics.
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#3702

A. Graeme Auld

#187312
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Alan Graeme Auld is a British Old Testament scholar. He is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Edinburgh. Auld was born in Aberdeen and studied at Robert Gordon's College, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1976 for his thesis on 'Studies in Joshua: Text and Literary Relations'. Auld has written commentaries on Joshua, Judges and Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. He served as president of the Society for Old Testament Study in 2005.
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#3703

Errol Henderson

#188815
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
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#3704

Anna Sroka

#154461
Overall Influence
Anna Marta Sroka is a Polish political scientist, who serves as Poland Ambassador to Spain . Life Anna Sroka has graduated from Political Science at the University of Wrocław . She studied also in Berlin and on the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 2006, she defended a Ph.D. thesis on the model of autonomy in Spain. In 2015, she received habilitation degree at the University of Warsaw. She specializes on quality of democracy.
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#3705

Carlos Rojas

#128310
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Carlos Rojas is an American sinologist and translator. He is currently Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He is a cultural historian and his work and teachings primarily focus on Chinese culture. He also teaches the subjects of film, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1995 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2000. Before his professorship at Duke, Rojas was Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Film at the University of Florida. Rojas lives in Durham, Nort...
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#3706

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

#158229
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an Executive in Residence at Schmidt Futures. Before that she was Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development . Wanjiru is also the Founder and past Executive Director of Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for African girls and young women and a former Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco.
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#3707

David Whetham

#173096
Overall Influence
David Glenn Whetham is Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. His teaching and research over the last ten years has been primarily focused on understanding the impact of technology on the normative environment, and improving the provision of military ethics education and training both in the UK and internationally.
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#3708

Susan Tolchin

#181538
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Susan Jane Tolchin was an American political scientist. Life Susan Jane Goldsmith was born in Manhattan to Jacob Goldsmith, a lawyer, and his wife Dorothy , a teacher. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago and New York University. She taught at Mount Vernon College, at The George Washington University during the early 1990s, and George Mason University.
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#3709

Patrick O'Meara

#123870
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Professor Patrick O'Meara was the Master of Van Mildert College and Professor of Russian and Russian History at Durham University. Until 2003, he was Associate Professor of Russian at Trinity College, Dublin. He has held visiting fellowships at the Kennan Institute, Washington DC and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
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#3710

Kim Sook

#189034
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Kim Sook is a South Korean diplomat. He has been the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations in New York since 2011. Kim was educated at Seoul National University and joined the South Korean diplomatic service in 1978. He has held a variety of diplomatic positions in the United States, Canada, and India. In May 2011, he became South Korea's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.
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#3711

Tom Chambers

#185640
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Thomas William Chambers was a provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1971 to 1986. During his time in office he served as a member of the Executive Council of Alberta serving various portfolios from 1978 to 1986.
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#3712

Elvis Jacob Stahr Jr.

#173156
Overall Influence
1916 - 1998 (82 years)
Elvis Jacob Stahr Jr. was an American government official and college president and administrator. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1936 as a member of Sigma Chi and Pershing Rifles, he attended Merton College at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He served as lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army during World War II. He returned to the University of Kentucky and became a professor and then dean of the College of Law, before becoming president of West Virginia University. He served as the United States Secretary of the Army between 1961 and 1962 and served as president of Indiana University from 1962 to 1968.
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#3713

Constance Horner

#180495
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Constance Joan Horner is an American businesswoman, known for being the third Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management as well as President Reagan's chief advisor on Federal civil service personnel matters. She was a presidential appointee in the Administrations of President Reagan and President George H. W. Bush.
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#3714

Jack Scott

#134373
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (92 years)
Jack Alan Scott is an American educator and former Democratic politician. Currently, a scholar in residence at Claremont Graduate University, Scott earlier served as president at two California community colleges, member of the California State Assembly and California State Senate and Chancellor of the California Community Colleges System.
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#3715

Maria José Rodriguez-Salgado

#157616
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Maria José Rodriguez-Salgado is professor of international history at the London School of Economics. Rodriguez-Salgado is a specialist in 16th and 17th century Europe, Elizabeth Tudor, Philip II, Charles V, and Anglo-Spanish relations. With the staff of the National Maritime Museum she curated and wrote the guide to their exhibition Armada.
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#3716

Henry P. Caulfield Jr.

#156924
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Henry P. Caulfield Jr. was an American political scientist who had a long and distinguished career in public service with the U.S. Department of the Interior, culminating as the first director of its U.S. Water Resources Council, before becoming professor of political science at Colorado State University. He served on many boards and advisory committees and as a consultant to water resources agencies worldwide, and received awards for his service. Caulfield was born in New York City, and died in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he retired in 1986.
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#3717

Brian Mueller

Brian Mueller
#25267
Overall Influence
Brian E. Mueller is an American academic and university administrator. He is the current president of Grand Canyon University and CEO of Grand Canyon Education. Mueller has been the President of the university since July 1, 2008, and a director since March 2009. Mueller is also notably the CEO of the for-profit publicly traded Grand Canyon Education Inc that provides services to GCU.
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#3718

Snejina Gogova

#79479
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Snejina Gogova is Bulgarian Sinologist, sociolinguist, and psycholinguist, and Professor of Chinese Linguistics at the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philologies of Sofia University. Gogova published in English and Chinese between 1985 and 2001 and in Russian and Bulgarian from 1970 to 2009.
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#3719

Ben Graf Henneke

#74160
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Ben Graf Henneke was the president of the University of Tulsa , in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States, from 1958 to 1967. A professor of speech and theatre, he wrote an early textbook on radio announcing, and was instrumental in the creation of the university's radio station, KWGS. Henneke also wrote the TU fight song when he was an undergraduate student at the school. Henneke has been cited as one of the most influential figures in the university's history.
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#3720

O Sonfa

#113645
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
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#3721

David Young

David Young
#179576
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
David R. Young is an American lawyer, businessman, and academic. He served as a Special Assistant at the National Security Council in the Nixon administration and an Administrative Assistant to Henry Kissinger. He has lived in the United Kingdom since the mid-1970s.
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#3722

Chen Bao-ji

#174738
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Chen Bao-ji is a Taiwanese politician. He served as the Minister of Council of Agriculture from 6 February 2012 to 31 January 2016. Education Chen obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in animal husbandry from National Taiwan University in 1975 and 1977, respectively. He then obtained his doctoral degree in animal nutrition from Cornell University in the United States in 1989.
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#3723

John Hills

#159210
Overall Influence
1954 - 2020 (66 years)
Sir John Robert Hills, was a British academic, latterly professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He acted as director of the ESRC Research Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion from 1997. His work focused on inequality, and the role of social policy over the life course.
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#3724

Ngosa Simbyakula

#186830
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Robert Ngosa Simbyakula is a Zambian diplomat, the current and 17th Permanent Representative of the Republic of Zambia to the United Nations and a former ambassador to the United States of America in Washington DC, he succeeded Palan Mulonda, who served starting in 2013.
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#3725

Spencer Abraham

#179506
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Edward Spencer Abraham is an American attorney, author, and politician who served as the 10th United States Secretary of Energy from 2001 to 2005, under President George W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a United States Senator from Michigan from 1995 to 2001. Abraham is one of the founders of the Federalist Society, and a co-founder of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. As of 2023, he remains the last Republican to serve as a U.S. senator from Michigan.
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#3726

Charles M. Williams

Charles M. Williams
#123049
Overall Influence
1917 - 2011 (94 years)
Charles Marvin Williams was an American finance professor at Harvard Business School. He was a recognized authority on commercial banking who taught his students using the case method. Born in Romney, West Virginia in 1917, Williams earned his bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University and his master's degree from Harvard Business School. He served in the United States Navy during World War II, joining the faculty of Harvard Business School in 1947 and becoming a tenured professor in 1956. He retired from the school's faculty in 1986, concluding a four-decade teaching career.
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#3727

Rosie Campbell

#178248
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Rosie Campbell is professor of politics at King's College, University of London. Previously she was a professor at UCL and Birkbeck College. She is a specialist in public expectations of politicians and voting behaviour. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
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#3728

Jack Johnson

#169921
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Jack Johnson is an American politician and a Republican Party member of the Tennessee Senate for the 27th district, which is composed of Williamson County. Early life and education Born in Amarillo, Texas, Johnson graduated from Texas State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education. Johnson is married to Deanna Carol Bell Johnson and they have three children. The Johnsons reportedly attend Grace Chapel Church in Franklin.
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#3729

Lucia Nader

#186942
Overall Influence
Lucia Nader is a Brazilian social entrepreneur and human rights activist. She is currently a fellow with the Open Society Foundations, investigating how professional civil society organizations are dealing with trends of contemporary societies - a project called Solid Organizations in a Liquid World. She was, until December 2014, Executive Director of Conectas Human Rights. She holds a postgraduate degree in Development and International Organizations from the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a bachelor's degree in international relations from the Catholic University of São Paulo .
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#3730

Wolfgang von Leyden

#127195
Overall Influence
1911 - 2004 (93 years)
Wolfgang Marius von Leyden was a German political philosopher who edited the letters of the 17th century empiricist, John Locke. He was born in Berlin on 28 December 1911, and was a grandson of Ernst Viktor von Leyden. He received a broad humanistic education, studying at German and Italian universities. When in Italy, in 1939, he found himself stateless, possibly because of his Jewish descent, or possibly because of being confused with his brother, who was an alleged member of the communist party in Germany. Just before the second World War broke out he managed, assisted by an Englishman h...
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#3731

Ray Mabus

Ray Mabus
#179519
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr. is an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2017. Mabus previously served as the State auditor of Mississippi from 1984 to 1988, as the 60th governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992, and as the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1996.
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#3732

Eric Crosbie

#189610
Overall Influence
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#3733

Bill Harris

#180181
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Bill Harris was a Republican politician, who served in the Ohio General Assembly, notably as President of the Ohio Senate from 2005 to 2010. Life and career Originally from Tennessee, Harris earned his B.A. in Secondary Education from the University of Arizona. A former U.S. Marine, Harris served in the Korean War as a machine gunner and a platoon commander. After Korea he attended the US Army Counterintelligence School, and then served the remainder of his 23-year career with the USMC as an intelligence and counterintelligence officer, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam. Following his time in the military, Harris moved to Ashland, Ohio, where he began a career as an automotive dealer.
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#3734

Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

#188064
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Elizabeth Theiss-Morse is an American political scientist. She is the Willa Cather Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she has also served as the Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. She studies political psychology, with a particular focus on group identity, the role of emotions in politics, and public opinion in the United States.
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#3735

Fatemeh Shayan

#49102
Overall Influence
Fatemeh Shayan is an Iranian political scientist and assistant professor at the University of Isfahan. Her book titled Security in the Persian Gulf Region won the Farabi International Award. Career Shayan is an assistant professor at the University of Isfahan, Iran. Earlier, she was a post-doctoral scholar at University of Tampere , Finland. She completed her doctoral study, along with many academic publications in international journals, in the Faculty of Management at UTA, and defended her dissertation in December 2014. She was also a researcher at UTA during 2013–2014. Her latest book, Security in the Persian Gulf Region, was published by Palgrave McMillan.
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#3736

Berenice A. Carroll

#157313
Overall Influence
1932 - 2018 (86 years)
Berenice Anita Carroll was an American political scientist and activist specialized in peace and conflict studies, feminist theory, and women's studies. Carroll led the creation of the women's studies program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and served as director of the Purdue University women's studies program. She initiated the establishment of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession in 1969.
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#3737

Mahmoud Yazbak

Mahmoud Yazbak
#73698
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Mahmoud Yazbak is an Israeli Arab academic. He is the first Arab elected as President of the Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel, , the main scholarly association of researchers on the Middle East and Islam in Israel.
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#3738

Maria Otero

Maria Otero
#187910
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Maria Otero was the first holder of the office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from January 15, 2012, through February 4, 2013. She also served as the President's Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues.
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#3739

John Orman

#102748
Overall Influence
1949 - 2009 (60 years)
John Michael Orman was a politics professor at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He was the 1984 Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Congress seat in Connecticut's fourth district, and briefly challenged Senator Joseph Lieberman for the 2006 Democratic Senate nomination. As of 2007, Orman was one of two people claiming to be the current chairman of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. He was born in Brazil, Indiana.
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#3740

Manuel Cruz Rodríguez

#156681
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Manuel Cruz Rodríguez is a Spanish philosopher and politician who served as the 60th President of the Senate from May to December 2019. Prior to this, between 2016 and 2019, Cruz served as member of the Congress of Deputies in representation of Barcelona. He is a member of the Socialists' Party of Catalonia.
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#3741

Christopher Morphew

#122925
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Christopher Clark Morphew is an American academic and the current dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education, a position he assumed on August 1, 2017. He has held leadership positions in the Association for the Study of Higher Education and American Educational Research Association. His work has been published in many journals, such as The Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, The Journal of Higher Education, Educational Finance, Higher Education Policy, and Studies in Higher Education. He has presented his work in more than two dozen different countries. His work has b...
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#3742

Rogan Kersh

#189791
Overall Influence
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#3743

Tony Tan

#183315
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Tony Tan Keng Yam is a Singaporean former politician who served as the seventh president of Singapore between 2011 and 2017. Prior to his presidency, he went on to serve as Minister for Education between 1980 and 1991, Minister for Finance between 1983 and 1985, and Minister for Defence between 1985 and 1991, Deputy Prime Minister between 1995 and 2005, and Coordinating Minister for National Security between 2003 and 2005. He is currently the oldest living former president, since the death of S. R. Nathan in 2016.
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#3744

Christopher McMullen

#120086
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Christopher J. McMullen is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He served as the United States Ambassador to Angola from October 2010 to June 12, 2013. McMullen was raised in Pennsylvania and earned a bachelor's degree from West Chester University in 1974. He also received a master's degree in modern European history from West Chester University in 1976. McMullen graduated from Georgetown University with a PhD in Latin American history in 1980 as well as graduating from the National War College in 2001. He was later employed at Georgetown teaching Latin American history which he also taught at George Mason University.
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#3745

Jack Horner

#183040
Overall Influence
1927 - 2004 (77 years)
John Henry "Jack" Horner was a Canadian rancher, politician, and Cabinet minister. Life and career Nicknamed "Cactus Jack", Horner was born in Saskatchewan, the fifth child in a family of six boys and three girls. His mother's uncle had been a prisoner of Louis Riel's provisional government. His father, Ralph Horner, was a failed Conservative candidate who was appointed to the board of directors of Canadian National Railways by the government of R. B. Bennett in 1931, and then to the Senate of Canada in 1933.
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#3746

Bob Williams

#176291
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Gomer Robert Williams was an American accountant and politician who served as a member of the Washington House of Representatives, representing the 18th district from 1979 to 1983 and the 19th district from 1983 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he was the Republican nominee for Governor of Washington in 1988, losing to incumbent Democrat Booth Gardner by over 24 percentage points. In 1991, he founded the conservative think tank Freedom Foundation.
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#3747

Albert Rakoto Ratsimamanga

#170861
Overall Influence
1907 - 2001 (94 years)
Albert Rakoto Ratsimamanga was a Malagasy physician, biochemist and diplomat. Born into a disgraced royal family; Ratsimamanga trained as a doctor of exotic medicine in French Madagascar and France, where he pioneered modern nutraceuticals. Ratsimamanga returned to Madagascar and, with his wife, Suzanne Urverg-Ratsimamanga, in 1957, established the which specialised in herbal medicine.
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#3748

Vladimír Valach

#109808
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Vladimír Valach was a Slovak diplomat, economist and writer. He significantly contributed to the development of Slovak banking sector and French-Slovak relations. Biography Vladimír Valach was born on 26 April 1937 in Tekovské Nemce, Czechoslovakia. He studied at the University of Economics in Prague . Between 1968-1976 he worked as a branch manager of the commercial banking arm of the State Bank of Czechoslovakia in Bratislava. Subsequently he held the post of a deputy general director of the State Bank. In the 1990s, Valach capitalized on his experience in the field of banking and monetary policy, when he was named the first vice-governor of the CNB's Emission bank in Prague.
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#3749

Hilal Khashan

#189916
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Hilal Khashan is a scholar of the Middle East. His research focuses on Middle Eastern regional security, with emphasis on the Persian Gulf. He is quoted in the international press as a commentator on Lebanese and regional politics. In recent publications, he has analyzed the alliance between Hezbollah and Maronite leader Michel Aoun, discussed Hezbollah's plans for Lebanon, and written about Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 which in his opinion is "flawed".
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#3750

Daniel Serwer

#105146
Overall Influence
Daniel P. Serwer is a professor of Practice of Conflict Management as well as director of the Conflict Management and American Foreign Policy programs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Serwer is also a research scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C.
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