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,
#3851
Robbin Laird
#181531
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Robbin F. Laird is a military and security analyst. Biography He has taught at Columbia University, Queens College, Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University. He worked with The Center for Defense Analysis and the Institute for Defense Analysis. He is a member of the Board of Contributors of AOL Defense and writes for The Diplomat. He is the director of the ICSA, LLC since 2000 and co-founder of the website Second Line of Defense, since 2010 and of Defense.info since 2018. He is the editor of two defense websites, Second Line of Defense and Defense Information. He became a fellow of T...
Go to Profile#3852
François Joyaux
#191545
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
François Joyaux is emeritus professor of East Asian civilization at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales where he created the diplôme des hautes études internationales. He has also taught at the université de Paris I, the École nationale d'administration and the Instituts d'études politiques of Paris and Grenoble. He is a member of the Société Asiatique.
Go to Profile#3853
John R. Broxson
#189218
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
John Ray Broxson was an American politician who served as a member of the Florida Senate from the 1st district from 1966 to 1972. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 19th sheriff of Santa Rosa County from 1959 to 1961
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Gwendolyn Sasse
#149450
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Gwendolyn Sasse is professor of comparative politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Sasse has research interests in post-communist transitions; comparative democratisation; ethnic conflicts; international conditionality; national minorities; the political behaviour of migrants; diaspora politics; and the political in contemporary art. Since 1 October 2016 Sasse has been the director of the in Berlin.
Go to Profile#3855
Aïssata Lam
#191302
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Aïssata Lam is a Mauritanian Development Professional . She is the cofounder and president of the Youth Chamber of Commerce of Mauritania and has a background in microfinance and agricultural finance. She works in climate finance and is very involved in youth and women empowerment on the African continent, specially in Mauritania.
Go to Profile#3856
Luis Javier Garrido
#103957
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Luis Javier Garrido Platas was a Mexican political analyst, researcher, writer and academic. Garrido was born in Mexico City in 1941. His father, Luis Garrido Díaz, served as the rector of National Autonomous University of Mexico from 1948 to 1952 and again from 1952 to 1953. A political analyst and professor, Garrido taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. One of his best known books, "El Partido de la revolución Institucionalizada," was first published in 1982.
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Dan O'Meara
#119916
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dan O'Meara is an intellectual and university professor of South African origin, now working in Quebec. Formerly a member of the African National Congress , O'Meara is a committed activist renowned for his position in the fight against apartheid. His earlier work analyzed ideology among Afrikaners in South Africa. His more recent work focuses on Great Britain and the United States, taking a critical approach to studying international relations.
Go to Profile#3858
Cindy Vestergaard
#192051
Overall Influence
#3859
Edwin John Feulner
#192103
Overall Influence
#3860
Lucy T. Allen
#189408
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Lucy Taylor Allen is a former Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly. Political career She represented the state's forty-ninth House district, including constituents in Franklin, Halifax and Nash counties, from her first election in 2002 through 2010. Allen is a former teacher from Louisburg, North Carolina, and served as the mayor of Louisburg . From 1972–1980, Allen served as a member of the Franklin County Board of Education. Allen is an Episcopalian.
Go to Profile#3861
Katia Buffetrille
#132887
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Katia Buffetrille is a French ethnologist and tibetologist. She works at the École pratique des hautes études . Her doctoral thesis is entitled Montagnes sacrées, lacs et grottes : lieux de pèlerinage dans le monde tibétain. Traditions écrites. Réalités vivantes . She has done fieldwork in Tibet and Nepal, researching pilgrimage, non-Buddhist beliefs, and sacred geography.
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Hüseyin Bağcı
#102644
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hüseyin Bağcı is a Turkish academic, author, and the president of the Foreign Policy Institute. He is also a professor at METU, Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Department of International Relations.
Go to Profile#3863
Damos Dumoli Agusman
#76820
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Damos Dumoli Agusman is an Indonesian diplomat. He currently serves as Ambassador to Austria, Slovenia and International Organizations in Vienna. Early life Agusman was born in Aceh. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Padjadjaran University in 1987, writing a senior thesis about the law of treaties concluded by international organizations. While in law school, he served as a research assistant to future Supreme Court justice Mieke Komar Kantaatmadja. He later earned his master's degree from the University of Hull in 1991 and doctoral degree from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2014; the l...
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William Ross
#185758
Overall Influence
William Ross was an American lawyer and politician. Life He was the son of Robert Ross, a Scottish tanner who settled at Rossville, a hamlet in Newburgh, New York. William Ross studied law and gained admission to the bar in 1801, and practiced at Newburgh, New York. He married first Mary S. McLean , and then Caroline Middlebrook of Connecticut.
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Pamela Balch
#37046
Overall Influence
Pamela Balch is the 18th president of West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, West Virginia. Balch is a 1971 graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College, and was the unanimous choice as the eighteenth president of the college by the board of trustees.
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Malika Zeghal
#130934
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Malika Zeghal is a Tunisian Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life at Harvard University, and formerly an associate professor of the anthropology and sociology of religion in the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Go to Profile#3867
Michael Huttner
#188817
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michael Huttner is an American attorney, author, crisis communications expert and political entrepreneur. Huttner is a partner with Culture of Giving Back to advise donors on progressive causes and he also serves as Chief Executive Officer of Next Titan Capital, a boutique investment bank focused on cannabis and psychedelics. Huttner was formerly the CEO of Powerplant Global Strategies, a public affairs firm focused on investments in the cannabis industry. In January 2010, he convened a small group of drug reform and policy leaders in Colorado, which laid the groundwork for Colorado to become the first state to decriminalize cannabis in the country.
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Karin Stanford
#162488
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#3869
Olga Frolova
#107295
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Olga Pavlovna Frolova / Russian: Óльга Пáвловна Фролóва is a Russian orientalist who wrote her major works on the Japanese and Chinese linguistics. She is a professor and a public figure. She received such State Rewards as the Order of the Rising Sun in 2007, The Order of Merit for the Fatherland in 2010, etc. At present she is the head of the Oriental Branch at the Foreign Languages Department of Novosibirsk State University .
Go to Profile#3870
Lorrie Frasure
#192221
Overall Influence
Dr. Lorrie Frasure is a proud first-generation college graduate, born and raised on the Southside of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as Department Vice Chair for Graduate Studies in Political Science. In 2020-2021, she will also serve as Acting Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In 2015, she became the first African American female and the first woman of color to earn tenure and promotion in the Political Science Department at UCLA. Alma Maters: Ph.D.
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Harvey Claflin Mansfield
#192238
Overall Influence
#3872
Edith J. Patterson
#189759
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Edith Jerry Patterson is a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates who represents district 28, which is based in Charles County. She previously served as a county commissioner from 2002 to 2010 and a member of the Board of Education for Charles County from 1983 to 1995.
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Tiziana Dearing
#192254
Overall Influence
#3874
James T. Harris III
#35460
Overall Influence
James T. Harris III is the fourth president of the University of San Diego. Previously, he served as president of Widener University and Defiance College , where he was named one of the top 50 character-building presidents in the United States by the John Templeton Foundation.
Go to Profile#3875
Jessica Tuchman Matthews
#192268
Overall Influence
#3876
Samuel B. Kazman
#192276
Overall Influence
#3877
Richard P. Nielsen
#118063
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Richard P. Nielsen is the Professor of Management and Organization at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and a past President of the Society for Business Ethics. Biography Nielsen was born in 1946 in New York City. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.
Go to Profile#3878
Yasutoshi Yukawa
#174711
Overall Influence
1941 - 2014 (73 years)
Yasutoshi Yukawa was a Japanese linguist who contributed to African and Tibetan linguistics. In 2006 his students and colleagues honoured his work with a Festschrift Yasutoshi Yukawa's initial research interest was Theoretical Linguistics, especially syntax and semantics . During the 1960s and 1970s he published several important papers on Lhasa dialect of Tibetan. He began work on African linguistic in 1975. His main contribution is description of Bantu languages, their genetic classification and tone systems.
Go to Profile#3879
Jessica Vaughan
#192372
Overall Influence
#3880
Krzysztof Dębnicki
#172458
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Krzysztof Dębnicki is a Polish scientist and diplomat serving as a Poland ambassador to Malaysia , Pakistan and Mongolia . Education Krzysztof Dębnicki studied at the University of Ghana . He earned his Master's of Arts degree in history from the University of Warsaw. In 1984, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on political transitions in Nepal between 1950 and 1980. In 2008, he gained post-doctoral degree – habilitation – on political system of India.
Go to Profile#3881
Youssef Mahmoud
#63635
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Youssef Mahmoud, a national from Tunisia was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as his Special Representative for the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad , effective 1 June 2010. He replaces Victor da Silva Angelo of Portugal, whose function ended in March 2010.
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André Lévy
#54095
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
André Lévy was a French sinologist. He was born in 1925 in Tianjin. He translated many Chinese works of fiction into French. Biography Levy was born in Tianjin, China, in 1925, the son of a family of watchmakers and jewellers, and grew up in the French concession in Tianjin. He married Anne-Marie Lévy, the Norwegian writer. Levy studied French and Sinology, Hindi and Sanskrit at the Sorbonne, and published numerous translations from the Chinese, including La pérégrination vers l'Ouest and Fleur en fiole d'or . In 1958, he was in charge of the EFEO in Hanoi for a while, before its closure. I...
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Hiroshi Ota
#68208
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Hiroshi Ota is a Japanese diplomat. Education He studied at University of Tokyo and entered the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1960. Career He served as Japanese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 1992-1994 and to Thailand in 1996–1999.
Go to Profile#3884
Chanakya
375 BC - 283 BC (92 years)
Chanakya was an ancient Indian polymath who was active as a teacher, author, strategist, philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor. He is traditionally identified as Kauṭilya or Vishnugupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise, the Arthashastra, a text dated to roughly between the fourth century BCE and the third century CE. As such, he is considered the pioneer of the field of political science and economics in India, and his work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics. His works were lost near the end of the Gupta Empire in the sixth century CE and not rediscovered until the early 20th century.
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Annie Besant
1847 - 1933 (86 years)
Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist, and campaigner for Indian nationalism. She was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She became the first female president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.
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Henry George
1839 - 1897 (58 years)
Henry George was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land should belong equally to all members of society. George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.
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Sam Houston
1793 - 1863 (70 years)
Samuel Houston was an American general and statesman who played an important role in the Texas Revolution. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and was one of the first two individuals to represent Texas in the United States Senate. He also served as the sixth governor of Tennessee and the seventh governor of Texas, the only individual to be elected governor of two different states in the United States.
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John Stuart Mill
1806 - 1873 (67 years)
John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century" by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until 1934 , was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism. Due to his military and political accomplishments, Atatürk is regarded as one of the most importa...
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T. E. Lawrence
1888 - 1935 (47 years)
Thomas Edward Lawrence was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
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Theodor Herzl
1860 - 1904 (44 years)
Theodor Herzl was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and political activist who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine in an effort to recreate a jewish state.
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Józef Beck
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Józef Beck was a Polish statesman who served the Second Republic of Poland as a diplomat and military officer. A close associate of Józef Piłsudski, Beck is most famous for being Polish foreign minister in the 1930s and for largely setting Polish foreign policy.
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Anthony Eden
1897 - 1977 (80 years)
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promotion as a young Conservative member of Parliament, he became foreign secretary aged 38, before resigning in protest at Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy towards Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy. He again held that position for most of the Second World War, and a third time in the early 1950s. Having been deputy to Winston Churchill for almost 15 years, Eden succeeded him ...
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Frédéric Bastiat
1801 - 1850 (49 years)
Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School. A member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window. He was described as "the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived" by economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter.
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Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
1784 - 1865 (81 years)
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of its imperial power. He held office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865. He began his parliamentary career as a Tory, defected to the Whigs in 1830, and became the first prime minister from the newly formed Liberal Party in 1859. He was highly popular with the British public. David Brown argues that "an important part of Pa...
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Susan B. Anthony
1820 - 1906 (86 years)
Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
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Leo Strauss
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Leo Strauss was a German-American scholar of political philosophy who specialized in classical political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.
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James G. Blaine
1830 - 1893 (63 years)
James Gillespie Blaine was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the United States House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, serving as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1869 to 1875, and then in the United States Senate from 1876 to 1881.
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Roger Casement
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Roger David Casement , known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist executed by the United Kingdom for treason during World War I. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, becoming known as a humanitarian activist, and later as a poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations", he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in the rubber industry in Peru.
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Ralph Bunche
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He is the first black Nobel laureate and the first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations , and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations.
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