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.
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List of the most influential people in Political Science,
#3901
Ignác Martinovics
1755 - 1795 (40 years)
Ignác Martinovics was a Hungarian scholar, chemist, philosopher, writer, secret agent, Freemason and a leader of the Hungarian Jacobin movement. He was condemned to death for high treason and beheaded on 20 May 1795, along with count Jakab Sigray, Ferenc Szentmarjay, József Hajnóczy and others. As the founder of the Hungarian Jacobin Clubss, he was considered an idealistic forerunner of great thought by some, and an unscrupulous adventurer by others.
Go to Profile#3902
Stanisław Srokowski
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Stanisław Józef Srokowski was a Polish geographer and diplomat. Srokowski joined the Polish diplomatic service in 1920 and became the Polish Consul at Odessa and Königsberg. In 1923-1924 he was the Voivode of the Wołyń Voivodeship and became the Director of the Polish Baltic Institute at Toruń in 1926.
Go to Profile#3903
Johan David Åkerblad
1763 - 1819 (56 years)
Johan David Åkerblad was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist. Career In 1778 he began his studies of classical and oriental languages at the University of Uppsala. In 1782 he defended his graduate thesis before Professor Eric Michael Fant. From 1783, he improved his language skills at the Swedish royal chancery in Constantinople.
Go to Profile#3904
Mikheil Tsereteli
1878 - 1965 (87 years)
Prince Mikheil "Mikhako" G. Tsereteli also known as Michael von Zereteli was a Georgian prince, historian, philologist, sociologist and public benefactor. He was born in 1878, in a village Tskhrukveti . His father was Prince Giorgi Tsereteli. His brother Vasil Tsereteli was a famous Georgian physician, writer and public benefactor.
Go to Profile#3905
Mamai
Mamai was a powerful Mongol military commander of the Golden Horde. Contrary to popular misconception, he was not a khan , but was a kingmaker for several khans, and dominated parts or all of the Golden Horde for a period of almost two decades in the 1360s and 1370s. Although he was unable to stabilize central authority during the war of succession known as the Great Troubles, Mamai remained a remarkable and persistent leader for decades, while others came and went in rapid succession. His defeat in the Battle of Kulikovo marked the beginning of the decline of the Horde, as well as his own ra...
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Algernon Sidney
1623 - 1683 (60 years)
Algernon Sidney or Sydney was an English politician, republican political theorist and colonel. A member of the middle part of the Long Parliament and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, Discourses Concerning Government, which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot—hero and martyr".
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Esther Chapa
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Esther Chapa Tijerina was a Mexican medical surgeon, educator, writer, feminist, suffragist, trade unionist, and women's and children's rights activist. In her medical practice she specialized in clinical analysis and microbiology, and she taught microbiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
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Annah May Soule
1859 - 1905 (46 years)
Annah May Soule was a professor of American history and political economy at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Early life Annah May Soule was born in Port Huron, Michigan, and raised in Jackson, Michigan, the daughter of Major Harrison Soule and Mary E. Parker Soule. She had an older sister, Mary Eva Soule Clark . Harrison Soule was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War when Annah and her sister were small. After the war, he served as treasurer at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#3909
Georg August Wallin
1811 - 1852 (41 years)
Georg August Wallin was a Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor remembered for his journeys in the Middle East during the 1840s. The Finnish translators of Wallin's letters state that Wallin has become a kind of "patron saint of Finnish oriental research". Among other things, the Finnish Oriental Society holds its annual meeting on his birthday. Internationally, it has been estimated that Wallin was one of the most capable Europeans to set foot in Arabia. His qualifications have been compared to U. J. Seetzen and J. L. Burckhardt, because he has been characterized as an Arabian scholar ...
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Walter Simon
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Ernest Julius Walter Simon, was a German sinologist and librarian. He was born in Berlin and lived there, being educated at the University of Berlin, until he fled the Nazis to London in 1934, where he spent all the rest of his life except for brief periods as a visiting professor in various countries, teaching Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 1947 to 1960. He made great contributions to historical Chinese phonology and Sino-Tibetan linguistics. As a sinologist, he had a Chinese name, Ximen Huade .
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Ralph C. Guzmán
1924 - 1985 (61 years)
Ralph C. Guzmán served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Latin America in the Carter Administration and was one of the nation's leading Latino educators. He co-founded the Oakes College at the University of California at Santa Cruz and later was appointed Provost at UCSC's Merrill College. Guzmán played an influential role in the early years of the Chicano Movement, and was a key figure in the Mexican-American community nationwide. During his time in the State Department, he was responsible for formulating and implementing much of the nation's policy in Central and South America.
Go to Profile#3912
David Stuart
1753 - 1814 (61 years)
David Stuart was a Virginia physician, politician, and correspondent of George Washington. When Washington became President of the United States, he made Stuart one of three commissioners appointed to design a new United States capital city.
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James Gunn
1753 - 1801 (48 years)
#3914
Albert Hotopp
1886 - 1942 (56 years)
Albert Hotopp was a German political activist and writer. As an active member of the Communist Party of Germany he fell foul of the Nazi Germany authorities during the in 1933. In 1934 he emigrated to the Soviet Union where he disappeared, probably dying in a labour camp, in the second half of 1942.
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Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad
648 - 686 (38 years)
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad was the Umayyad governor of Basra, Kufa and Khurasan during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I , and the leading general of the Umayyad army under caliphs Marwan I and Abd al-Malik .
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V. O. Key Jr.
1908 - 1963 (55 years)
Valdimer Orlando Key Jr. was an American political scientist known for his empirical study of American elections and voting behavior. He taught at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard. Early life and education V. O. Key was born in Austin, Texas.
Go to Profile#3917
Johann David Michaelis
1717 - 1791 (74 years)
Johann David Michaelis was a German biblical scholar and teacher. He was member of a family that was committed to solid discipline in Hebrew and the cognate languages, which distinguished the University of Halle in the period of Pietism. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
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Friedrich Rückert
1788 - 1866 (78 years)
Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages. Biography Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was born 16 May 1788 in Schweinfurt and was the eldest son of a lawyer, Johann Adam Rückert, and his wife, Maria Barbara . He was educated at the local Gymnasium and at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg. From 1816 to 1817, he worked on the editorial staff of the Morgenblatt at Stuttgart. Nearly the whole of the year 1818 he spent in Rome, and afterwards he lived for several years at Coburg , where he married Luise Wiethaus-Fischer in 1821.
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Richard Wilhelm
1873 - 1930 (57 years)
Richard Wilhelm was a German sinologist, theologian and missionary. He lived in China for 25 years, became fluent in spoken and written Chinese, and grew to love and admire the Chinese people. He is best remembered for his translations of philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English. His translation of the I Ching is still regarded as one of the finest, as is his translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower; both were provided with introductions by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who was a persona...
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Otto Franke
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Otto Franke was a German diplomat, sinologist, and historian. He was the preeminent German sinologist of his time, called the "Nestor of German Sinology" by Hellmut Wilhelm. He served as a diplomat at the German embassy to the Qing empire for 13 years, before becoming the inaugural Sinology Chair at the University of Hamburg and then at the University of Berlin. His five-volume Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches , though unfinished because of World War II, remains the standard history of China in Germany decades after its publication. His son Wolfgang Franke was also a well-known sinologist ...
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Frederic Austin Ogg
1878 - 1951 (73 years)
Frederic Austin Ogg was an American political scientist. Biography Ogg was born at Solsberry, Indiana, in 1878. He graduated from DePauw University and took post graduate courses at Indiana and Harvard universities. After several years spent in teaching in high schools and colleges, he became associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in 1914, and full professor in 1917. He was a member of many economic and historical societies.
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Harry Pollitt
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Harry Pollitt was a British communist who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain from July 1929 to September 1939 and again from 1941 until his death in 1960. Pollitt spent most of his life advocating communism. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, Pollitt was an adherent particularly of Joseph Stalin even after Stalin's death and disavowal by Nikita Khrushchev. Pollitt's acts included opposition to the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and Polish–Soviet War, support for the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, both support and opposition...
Go to Profile#3923
David R. Mayhew
#3924
Martin Haug
1827 - 1876 (49 years)
Martin Haug was a German orientalist. Biography Haug was born at Ostdorf , Württemberg. He became a pupil in the gymnasium at Stuttgart at a comparatively late age, and in 1848 he entered the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he studied oriental languages, especially Sanskrit. He afterwards attended lectures at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and in 1854 settled as Privatdozent at the University of Bonn. In 1856 he moved to the University of Heidelberg, where he assisted Bunsen in his literary undertakings.
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Gustaf Dalman
1855 - 1941 (86 years)
Gustaf Hermann Dalman was a German Lutheran theologian and orientalist. He did extensive field work in Palestine before the First World War, collecting inscriptions, poetry, and proverbs. He also collected physical articles illustrative of the life of the indigenous farmers and herders of the country, including rock and plant samples, house and farm tools, small archaeological finds, and ceramics. He pioneered the study of biblical and early post-biblical Aramaic, publishing an authoritative grammar and dictionary , as well as other works. His collection of 15,000 historic photographs and 5,...
Go to Profile#3926
Spark Matsunaga
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Spark Masayuki Matsunaga was an American politician and attorney who served as United States Senator for Hawaii from 1977 until his death in 1990. Matsunaga also represented Hawaii in the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the Hawaii territorial house of representatives. A member of the Democratic Party, Matsunaga introduced legislation that led to the creation of the United States Institute of Peace and to reparations to Japanese-American World War II detainees.
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Arthur Twining Hadley
1856 - 1930 (74 years)
Arthur Twining Hadley was an American economist who served as President of Yale University from 1899 to 1921. Biography Hadley was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of James Hadley, Professor of Greek at Yale 1851–1872, and his wife, née Anne Loring Morris. He graduated from Yale College in 1876, where he was a member of DKE and Skull and Bones, and received prizes in English, classics and astronomy. He then studied political science at Yale , and at the University of Berlin under Adolph Wagner. He was a tutor at Yale in 1879–1883, instructor in political science in 1883–1886, professo...
Go to Profile#3928
Wendy Wood
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Wendy Wood, born Gwendoline Emily Meacham, was a campaigner for Scottish independence. An eccentric and colourful figure, she was also a gifted artist, sculptor and writer, and her theatrical political activism often created controversy.
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Mohan Sinha Mehta
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Mohan Singh Mehta was founder of Vidya Bhavan group of institutions and Seva Mandir in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Life Mohan Singh Mehta was born in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, on 20 April 1895 to Jeewan Singh Mehta. His wife’s name was Hulas Kumari Mehta and he had one son, Jagat Singh Mehta, who became Foreign Secretary in the Government of India.
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Thomas Lynch
1700 - 1684 (-16 years)
Sir Thomas Lynch was the English governor of Jamaica on three separate occasions in the 17th century . He was also chief justice of Jamaica for a time. Life He was the son of Theophilus Lynch Esq of Rixton Hall in Lancashire , fourth son of William Lynch Esq of Cranbrook in Kent, and of his wife Judith, eldest daughter of Royal chaplain and Bishop of London John Aylmer. He served under Robert Venables in the army which went out to Jamaica in 1655. In January 1661, after a period back in England he was appointed provost-marshal of the island for life.
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Rasmus B. Anderson
1846 - 1936 (90 years)
Rasmus Bjørn Anderson was an American author, professor, editor, businessman and diplomat. He brought to popular attention the fact that Viking explorers were the first Europeans to arrive in the New World and was the originator of Leif Erikson Day.
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Georgiy Afanasyev
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Georgiy Afanasyev was a Ukrainian historian, politician, and diplomat. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian State . Received a master's degree for his thesis: "The main points of the ministerial Turgot" ; and his doctoral dissertation was: "The Conditions of the Grain Trade in France at the End of the 18th Century" . From 1888 he lectured at the Odessa University. He read in Odessa and Kiev.
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Väinö Tanner
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Väinö Tanner was a Finnish geographer, geologist, professor and diplomat. Tanner is best known for his studies on the Quaternary geology of northern Finland. He was a vocal opponent to the Finnicization of the University of Helsinki.
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Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough
1658 - 1735 (77 years)
Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough and 1st Earl of Monmouth, was an English Army officer, Whig politician and peer. He was the son of John Mordaunt, 1st Viscount Mordaunt, and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Carey, the second son of Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth. Mordaunt's father, John Mordaunt, was created Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon and Baron Mordaunt of Reigate, Surrey, in 1659.
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John Cook
1730 - 1789 (59 years)
John Cook was an American planter and politician from Smyrna, in Kent County, Delaware. He served in the Delaware General Assembly and as Governor of Delaware. Early life and family Cook was born in Duck Creek, now Smyrna, son of Michal and Lois Cook. He was first cousin to Thomas Collins . He supposedly married Elizabeth Collins, the sister of Thomas Collins, and if so, married his first cousin. They had five children: Sarah, Margaret, Elizabeth, Michael, and Robert. He was a prosperous farmer and tanner and gradually acquired a considerable amount of land in the area. Included in the property at one time was Belmont Hall,.
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Alastair Francis Buchan
1918 - 1976 (58 years)
Alastair Francis Buchan, was a leading British writer on defence studies in the 1970s. Career The son of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, Alastair Buchan was given the same forename as his father's brother, who had been killed in the First World War. He was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, Buchan joined the Canadian Army and saw active service in the Second World War.
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Jacques Bacot
1877 - 1965 (88 years)
Jacques Bacot was an explorer and pioneering French Tibetologist. He travelled extensively in India, western China, and the Tibetan border regions. He worked at the École pratique des hautes études. Bacot was the first western scholar to study the Tibetan grammatical tradition, and along with F. W. Thomas belonged to the first generation of scholars to study the Old Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts. Bacot made frequent use of Tibetan informants. He acquired aid from Gendün Chöphel in studying Dunhuang manuscripts.
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Carl Bezold
1859 - 1922 (63 years)
Carl Bezold was a German orientalist. Known primarily for his research in Akkadian , he also researched other Semitic languages: Syriac, Ge'ez and Arabic. Biography He was educated at the Universities of Munich and Leipzig, where he studied with Assyrologist Friedrich Delitzsch. In 1883, he obtained his habilitation at Munich with a thesis titled Die Schatzhöhle; aus dem syrischen texte dreier unedirten Handschriften . Later on, he spent several years working at the British Museum in London. In 1894, he became a full professor at the University of Heidelberg.
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Arnolds Spekke
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Arnolds Spekke received a doctorate in philology from the University of Latvia in 1927. In 1932 he received a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and went studying in Poland and Italy. From 1933 to 1939 he was the Latvian envoy to Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Albania with permanent residence in Rome, Italy.
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Ilija Garašanin
1812 - 1874 (62 years)
Ilija Garašanin was a Serbian statesman who served as the prime minister of Serbia between 1852 and 1853 and again from 1861 to 1867. Ilija Garašanin was conservative in internal politics. He believed that bureaucracy was the only way for administration to work. In foreign politics, he was the first pro-Yugoslavia statesman among Serbs. He believed that a great Yugoslav state had to maintain its independence from both Russia and Austria. He was one of the more influential Serbian politicians of the 19th century.
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1809 - 1865 (56 years)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French socialist, politician, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, using that term, and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of community and property". Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist...
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Adolf Grabowsky
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Adolf Grabowsky was a German political scientist and author of several books about geopolitics and political theory, including "Democracy and Dictatorship" . He was a Jewish convert to Protestantism, and founder and editor of the Zeitschrift für Politik. He was a supporter of the Weimar democracy.
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Elechukwu Njaka
1921 - 1975 (54 years)
Mazi Elechukwu Nnadibuagha Njaka was a Nigerian political scientist, known for the book Igbo Political Culture. Family background E.N. Njaka was born in Okwaejiaku, Umukegwu, Akokwa on 23 June 1921. His father, Mazi George Maduneme Njaka, was one of the earliest Christian converts of the Catholic Denomination in Orlu province. His mother, Mrs. Mary Nwaku Njaka , also from Umukegwu, was one of the earliest seamstresses to come from Mbanasaa clan. Elechukwu was their second child.
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Johann Fück
1894 - 1974 (80 years)
Johann Wilhelm Fück was a German Orientalist. Starting in 1913, Fück studied classical and Semitic philology at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and Goethe University Frankfurt. From 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the German National People's Party. His promotion took place in 1921 as part of the Orientalist Seminar at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he had lectureships in Hebrew language from 1921 to 1930, and in Arabic philology and Islamic studies from 1935 to 1938. He attained his habilitation in 1929. In the interim from 1930 to 1935, he was a professor at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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Karl Friedrich Neumann
1793 - 1870 (77 years)
Karl Friedrich Neumann was a German orientalist. Life Neumann was born, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg. He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg, Munich and Göttingen, became a convert to Protestantism and took the name of Neumann. From 1821 to 1825 he was a teacher in Würzburg and Speyer; then he learned Armenian in Venice at the San Lazzaro degli Armeni and visited Paris and London.
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William Jones
1809 - 1873 (64 years)
William Jones was a political Radical and Chartist, who was a former actor, working as a watchmaker at Pontypool in Monmouthshire and also kept a beer house. He was prosecuted for his part in the Chartist Newport Rising at Newport, Monmouthshire on 4 November 1839.
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Edward Stevens
1755 - 1834 (79 years)
Dr Edward Stevens FRSE was an American physician and diplomat. He was a close friend of American soldier and statesman Alexander Hamilton. Stevens' date of birth was unclear due to lack of records, with the year 1752 being published by Kristian Caroe, without sources, in his 1905 book Den danske lægestand, 1479-1900 until historian Michael E. Newton published contemporary records establishing Stevens birthplace and date.
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Ian Turner
1922 - 1978 (56 years)
Ian Alexander Hamilton Turner was an Australian political activist, serving important roles in both the Communist Party of Australia and Australian Labour Party. As a leading historian, he wrote the book Industrial Labour and Politics, which examined the Australian labour politics.
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James Allen
1855 - 1942 (87 years)
Sir James Allen was a prominent New Zealand politician and diplomat. He held a number of the most important political offices in the country, including Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also New Zealand's Minister of Defence during World War I.
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Ferdinand Wüstenfeld
1808 - 1899 (91 years)
Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld was a German orientalist, known as a literary historian of Arabic literature, born at Münden, Hanover. He studied theology and oriental languages at Göttingen and Berlin. He taught at Göttingen, becoming a professor there . He published many important Arabic texts and valuable works on Arabic history.
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