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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Political Science,
#4051
Esteban Gil Borges
1879 - 1942 (63 years)
Esteban Gil Borges , was a Venezuelan politician, diplomat, writer and university professor. Biography Esteban Gil Borges was born in 1879 in Caracas, Venezuela. He worked as a lawyer, diplomat, and politician. He was the 147th Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela from 2 January 1919 until 7 July 1921.
Go to Profile#4052
Henry King
1790 - 1861 (71 years)
Henry King was an American politician who served as a Jacksonian member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district from 1831 to 1833 and Pennsylvania's 8th congressional district from 1833 to 1835.
Go to Profile#4053
Anthony Ashley Bevan
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Anthony Ashley Bevan, FBA was a British orientalist. He was the son of the banker Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, and his second wife, the translator and poet Frances Bevan. Frances was the author of the famous book Three Friends of God, and Songs of Eternal Life.
Go to Profile#4054
Jacob Goldenthal
1815 - 1867 (52 years)
Jacob Goldenthal was an academic orientalist born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied ancient languages at the University of Leipzig and received his Ph.D. there in 1845. Publications Al-Ghazalis Meisan al-Almal A German translation of Criterion of ActionTodrosis hebräische Bearbeitung des Averroesschen Kommentars zu Aristoteles' Rhetorik Kalonymi apologia Maimonidis Nissim ben Jakobs Clavis talmudica Rieti und Marini oder Dante und Ovid in hebräischer Umkleidung
Go to Profile#4055
Zeno
500 - 500 (0 years)
Flavius Zeno was an influential general and politician of the Eastern Roman Empire, of Isaurian origin, who served as magister militum per Orientem, and became consul and patricius. Biography Zeno was of Isaurian origin and had a brother, who died before 448.
Go to Profile#4056
Alfred Gilmore
1812 - 1858 (46 years)
Alfred Gilmore was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Biography Alfred Gilmore was born in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was graduated from Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1833. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1836 and commenced practice in Butler.
Go to Profile#4057
James Monroe
1799 - 1870 (71 years)
James Monroe was an American politician who served as the United States representative from New York . He was the nephew of President James Monroe. Early life James Monroe was born in Albemarle County, Virginia on September 10, 1799. He was born to Ann Monroe and Andrew Augustine Monroe . His father was the older brother of his namesake and future president, James Monroe .
Go to Profile#4058
Sylvester Gilbert
1755 - 1846 (91 years)
Sylvester Gilbert was a United States representative from Connecticut. He was born in Hebron, Connecticut. He pursued classical studies and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1775. Later, he studied law, was admitted to the bar in November 1777, and commenced practice in Hebron.
Go to Profile#4059
Henry Albert Schultens
1749 - 1793 (44 years)
Hendrik Albert Schultens was a third generation Dutch linguist. Life Shultens was born in Herborn. He was the son of Jan Jacob Schultens, orientalist and professor at Leiden University and Suzanna Amalia Schramm, and was the grandson of Albert Schultens. Schultens studied orientalism in Leiden. He traveled to England and studied at Wadham College, Oxford, where he became Magister Artium, honoris causa, in 1773. He became professor in Eastern languages, first in Amsterdam, and then in Leiden. He married Catharina Elisabeth de Sitter.
Go to Profile#4060
Johann Christian Wilhelm Augusti
1772 - 1841 (69 years)
Johann Christian Wilhelm Augusti was a German theologian. Life He was born at Eschenbergen, near Gotha, Augusti was of Jewish descent, his grandfather having been a converted rabbi. He was educated at the gymnasium of Gotha and the University of Jena. At Jena he studied oriental languages, of which he became a professor there in 1803. Subsequently, he was professor of theology , and for a time rector, at the University of Breslau. In 1819 he transferred as a professor of theology to the University of Bonn. In 1828 he was appointed chief member of the consistorial council at Koblenz. There he was afterwards made director of the Rhenish Consistory of the Evangelical Church in Prussia.
Go to Profile#4061
Carl Anton Baumstark
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
Carl Anton Joseph Maria Dominikus Baumstark was a German Orientalist, philologist and liturgist. His main area of study was Oriental liturgical history, its development and its influence on literature, culture and art. His grandfather, Anton Baumstark , was a noted philologist.
Go to Profile#4062
Ludolf Krehl
1825 - 1901 (76 years)
Christoph Ludolf Ehrenfried Krehl was a German orientalist born in Meissen. Biography From 1843 Krehl studied theology and philology at the University of Leipzig, where he attended lectures by Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer on Arabic, Persian and Turkish philology. In 1846 he continued his education at the University of Tübingen as a student of Heinrich Ewald. Later on, he embarked on study trips to Gotha, Paris and Saint Petersburg.
Go to Profile#4063
Jakob Christmann
1554 - 1613 (59 years)
Jakob Christmann was a German Orientalist who also studied problems of astronomy. Life Christmann, a Jew who converted before 1578 to Christianity, studied Orientalistics at the University of Heidelberg's Collegium Sapientiae and became teacher at the Dionysianum. He followed humanist Thomas Erastus to Basel and continued his study tour in Breslau, Vienna and Prague.
Go to Profile#4064
Vasily Mikhaylovich Alekseyev
1881 - 1951 (70 years)
Vasiliy Mikhaylovich Alekseyev was an eminent Soviet sinologist and a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1902 he graduated from the Saint Petersburg University and became a professor. He also worked in the British Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Museum für Völkerkunde, Musée Guimet etc.
Go to Profile#4065
Kōjirō Yoshikawa
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
was a Japanese sinologist noted for his studies of Chinese history and Classical Chinese literature, especially the Book of Documents and Analects of Confucius. Yoshikawa was awarded many honors for his scholarship, including membership in the Japan Art Academy and he was named a Person of Cultural Merit. In 1969 he was awarded the Prix Stanislas Julien for the entire body of his work.
Go to Profile#4066
August Müller
1848 - 1892 (44 years)
August Müller was a German orientalist. Biography He was educated in classical philology and Semitic studies at the universities of Halle and Leipzig, where he was a student of Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer. In 1874, he became an associate professor, and in 1882 accepted the post of professor of oriental philology at the University of Königsberg. In 1890, he returned as a professor to the University of Halle.
Go to Profile#4067
Friedrich August Rosen
1805 - 1837 (32 years)
Friedrich August Rosen was a German Orientalist, brother of Georg Rosen and a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He studied in Leipzig, and from 1824 in Berlin under Franz Bopp. He was briefly professor of oriental literature at the University of London and became secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1831.
Go to Profile#4068
Friedrich Heinrich Hugo Windischmann
1811 - 1861 (50 years)
Friedrich Heinrich Hugo Windischmann was a German orientalist, exegete and Catholic leader. Biography Son of the philosopher Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, he studied philosophy, classical philology, and Sanskrit at Bonn, theology at Bonn and Munich, and Armenian with the Mekhitarists in Venice. After receiving a doctorate in theology at Munich on 2 January 1836, he was ordained as a priest on the following 13 March; seven months later he became vicar of the cathedral and secretary of Archbishop Gebsattel of Munich. In 1838 he was professor-extraordinary of canon law and New Testament e...
Go to Profile#4069
August Conrady
1864 - 1925 (61 years)
August Conrady was a German sinologist and linguist. From 1897 he was professor at the University of Leipzig. Conrady first studied classical philology, comparative linguistics and Sanskrit; he continued with Tibetan and Chinese language. He put forward his research findings in 1896 on the relationship between the prefix and tones in the Sino-Tibetan languages, in the work Eine Indo-Chinesische causative-Denominativ-Bildung und ihr Zusammenhang mit den Tonaccenten .
Go to Profile#4070
Adolf Sturmthal
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Adolf Fox Sturmthal was a U.S. political scientist, sociologist and journalist of Austrian birth who specialised in labour studies and international relations. Biography Sturmthal earned a PhD in Political Science in 1925 at Vienna University. He was chairman of the Association of Austrian Social Democratic Students and Academics. He moved to Zurich in 1926 to assist Friedrich Adler, the secretary of the Labour and Socialist International, and was editor of International Information. In 1933 and 1934 he organised international aid for German and Austrian socialist refugees from the Austrofascist Dollfuss and Nazi regimes.
Go to Profile#4071
Samuel Landauer
1846 - 1937 (91 years)
Samuel Landauer was a German Jewish orientalist and librarian. He received his education at the Yeshiva of Eisenstadt , the gymnasium of Mainz, and the universities of Leipzig, Strasbourg, and Munich . In 1875, he became privatdozent of Semitic languages at the University of Strasbourg, and was appointed librarian there in 1884. In 1894, he received the title of Professor.
Go to Profile#4072
Carlton J. H. Hayes
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes was an American historian, educator, diplomat, devout Catholic and academic. A student of European history, he was a leading and pioneering specialist on the study of nationalism. He was elected as president of the American Historical Association over the opposition of liberals and the more explicit Anti-Catholic bias that defined the academic community of his era. He served as United States Ambassador to Spain in World War II. Although he came under attack from the CIO and others on the left that rejected any dealings with Francoist Spain, Hayes succeeded in his...
Go to Profile#4073
Gerard Clauson
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson was an English civil servant, businessman, and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages. The eldest son of Major Sir John Eugene Clauson, Gerard Clauson attended Eton College, where he was Captain of School, and where, at age 15 or 16, he published a critical edition of a short Pali text, "A New Kammavācā" in the Journal of the Pali Text Society. In 1906, when his father was named Chief Secretary for Cyprus, he taught himself Turkish to complement his school Greek. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in classics, receiving his d...
Go to Profile#4074
Edward Samuel Corwin
1878 - 1963 (85 years)
Edward Samuel Corwin was an American legal scholar who served as the president of the American Political Science Association. His various political writings in the early to mid-twentieth century microcosmically depict the rising activist thinking in various areas of American, constitutional law.
Go to Profile#4075
Daniel Lerner
1917 - 1980 (63 years)
Daniel Lerner was an American scholar and writer known for his studies on modernization theory. Lerner's study of Balgat Turkey played a critical role in shaping American ideas about the use of mass media and US cultural products to promote economic and social development in post-colonial nations. In 1958, he wrote the seminal book The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Scholars have argued that the research project that formed the basis of the book emerged from intelligence requirements in the US government, and was a result of the contract between the Office of Int...
Go to Profile#4076
Harold Lasswell
1902 - 1978 (76 years)
Harold Dwight Lasswell was an American political scientist and communications theorist. He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics and was a PhD student at the University of Chicago. He was a professor of law at Yale University. He studied at the Universities of London, Geneva, Paris, and Berlin in the 1920s . He served as president of the American Political Science Association , of the American Society of International Law and of the World Academy of Art and Science .
Go to Profile#4077
Herbert Marcuse
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Herbert Marcuse was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin and then at Freiburg, where he received his PhD. He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research – what later became known as the Frankfurt School. He was married to Sophie Wertheim , Inge Neumann , and Erica Sherover . In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and popular culture, arguing that they represen...
Go to Profile#4078
Edwin Borchard
1884 - 1951 (67 years)
Edwin Montefiore Borchard was an American international legal scholar, jurist, and Sterling Professor at the Yale Law School. He was a leading advocate of innocence reform and compensation for victims of wrongful conviction as well as the use of declaratory judgments. His work in international law emphasized non-intervention and neutrality.
Go to Profile#4079
Luther Carrington Goodrich
1894 - 1986 (92 years)
Luther Carrington Goodrich was an American sinologist and historian of China. A prolific author, he is perhaps best remembered for his work on the Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644. Life Luther Carrington Goodrich was born on September 21, 1894, in Tongzhou, a southeastern suburb of Beijing, where his parents were serving as Protestant missionaries. His father, Chauncey Goodrich , had published A Pocket Dictionary and Pekingese Syllabary in 1891 and among the nephews of Chauncey's great-grandfather Josiah were a US Senator and US Representative.
Go to Profile#4080
Walter F. Dodd
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Walter Fairleigh Dodd was a professor in the political science department at Johns Hopkins University who wrote "one of the most important books on the process of amending state constitutions." Biography He graduated from Florida State College in 1898, and received a Bachelors in Science from John B. Stetson University in 1901. At the University of Chicago, he was a Fellow, 1902–1904, and received a Ph.D. in 1905. In 1904–1907, he was in charge of the section of foreign law in the Library of Congress. He held a research appointment at Johns Hopkins in 1908–1910, in 1910–1911 was associate in ...
Go to Profile#4081
Willmoore Kendall
1909 - 1968 (59 years)
Willmoore Bohnert Kendall Jr. was an American conservative writer and a professor of political philosophy. Early life and education Kendall was born March 5, 1909, in Konawa, Oklahoma. His father, who was blind, was a Southern Methodist minister who preached in Konawa and other local towns. At age two, Kendall learned to read by playing with a typewriter. Graduating from high school at age 13, Kendall enrolled at Northwestern University before transferring to the University of Tulsa. In 1920, Kendall graduated from the University of Oklahoma at age 18. In 1927, under the pseudonym Alan Monk, Kendall wrote his first book, Baseball: How to Play It and How to Watch It.
Go to Profile#4082
Sigmund Neumann
1904 - 1962 (58 years)
Sigmund Neumann was a German political scientist and sociologist. Born in Leipzig but emigrating first to London and then to the United States following the rise of Nazi Germany, Neumann was a leading proponent of the Second Thirty Years War-outlook on World War I and World War II and was awarded honorary doctorates from both Munich and Berlin Universities following his return to Germany in 1949. Before coming to the United States in 1934 to join the faculty of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Neumann taught at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik and the London School of Economics, among other institutions.
Go to Profile#4083
Nicholas J. Spykman
1893 - 1943 (50 years)
Nicholas John Spykman was an American political scientist who was Professor of International Relations at Yale University from 1928 until his death in 1943. He was one of the founders of the classical realist school in American foreign policy, transmitting Eastern European political thought to the United States.
Go to Profile#4084
Arthur Jeffery
1892 - 1959 (67 years)
Arthur Jeffery was a Protestant Australian professor of Semitic languages from 1921 at the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo, and from 1938 until his death jointly at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Jeffery was awarded a D.Litt. from Edinburgh University in 1938. He is the author of extensive historical studies of Middle Eastern manuscripts. His important works include Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'an: The Old Codices, which catalogs all surviving documented variants of the orthodox Quran text; and The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an,...
Go to Profile#4085
J. J. L. Duyvendak
1889 - 1954 (65 years)
Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak was a Dutch Sinologist and professor of Chinese at Leiden University. He is known for his translation of The Book of Lord Shang and his studies of the Dao De Jing. He was co-editor of the renowned sinology journal T'oung Pao with French scholar Paul Pelliot for several decades.
Go to Profile#4086
Jacobus tenBroek
1911 - 1968 (57 years)
Jacobus tenBroek was an American disability rights activist, historian and political scientist. Early life TenBroek was born in Alberta, Canada in 1911. He became partially blind at the age of 7 due to an accident with a bow and arrow. His remaining eyesight deteriorated, and he was completely blind by age 14. His mother decided to move the family to California so tenBroek could attend a state school for the blind.
Go to Profile#4087
Carlo Conti Rossini
1872 - 1949 (77 years)
Carlo Conti Rossini was an Italian orientalist. He was director of the State Treasury from 1917 to 1925, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1921 and Royal Academy of Italy from 1939. He wrote various works on the historical geography of Ethiopia, of which the most famous is Italia ed Etiopia dal trattato di Uccialli alla battaglia d'Adua . He also wrote articles on phonetic Ethiopian . His library is preserved in Rome.
Go to Profile#4088
Christen Jensen
1881 - 1961 (80 years)
Christen Jensen was an American educator who twice served as interim president of Brigham Young University . The two terms were 1939-1940 while Franklin S. Harris was doing work in Iran and then in Nov. 1949-Feb. 1951 between the presidencies of Howard S. McDonald and Ernest L. Wilkinson.
Go to Profile#4089
W. W. Kulski
1903 - 1989 (86 years)
Władysław Wszebór Kulski was a Polish political scientist. Kulski was born in Warsaw, Poland. He was educated at the Warsaw School of Law, where he gained a Master of Laws in 1925. In 1927 he was awarded a Doctor Juris from the Paris School of Law. From 1928 until 1945 he was part of the Polish Foreign Service and from 1928 until 1933 he was a member of the League of Nations staff in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1933 until 1936 Kulski was a Counsellor and then Secretary of the Polish Permanent Delegation to the League and then he was head of the Legal Service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Go to Profile#4090
Thomas Walker Arnold
1864 - 1930 (66 years)
Sir Thomas Walker Arnold was a British orientalist and historian of Islamic art. He taught at Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, later Aligarh Muslim University, and Government College University, Lahore.
Go to Profile#4091
Ray Ginger
1924 - 1975 (51 years)
Raymond Sydney Ginger was an American historian, author, and biographer of wide-ranging scholarship whose special focus was on labor history, economic history, and the epoch often called the Gilded Age. His biography of the American labor leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs is widely considered definitive, and his account of the Scopes trial has also received high praise. Both titles are still in print, and both, along with many of his other works, have been widely used in college courses across the United States.
Go to Profile#4092
Erich Kordt
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
Erich Kordt , was a German diplomat who was involved in the German Resistance to the regime of Adolf Hitler. Early career A convinced Anglophile, Kordt spoke perfect English after gaining a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He joined the German Foreign Office in 1928 and was posted to Geneva and Bern in Switzerland. He then served as Legationsrat in the London Embassy under Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop for whom he developed a personal dislike and a professional disdain. Still, he became a member of the Nazi Party in November 1937. In February 1938, when Ribbentrop became foreign m...
Go to Profile#4093
Brutus Coste
1910 - 1984 (74 years)
Brutus Coste was a Romanian diplomat whose service was cut short by the Second World War and who spent most of the rest of his life as an anti-communist campaigner in the United States. When U.S. government funding and interest in East European émigrés waned, Coste took up an academic position at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. He did not live to see the fall of the Ceaușescu regime.
Go to Profile#4094
Alfred Eckhard Zimmern
1879 - 1957 (78 years)
Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern was an English classical scholar, historian, and political scientist writing on international relations. A British policymaker during World War I and a prominent liberal thinker, Zimmern played an important role in drafting the blueprint for what would become the League of Nations.
Go to Profile#4095
Zurab Avalishvili
1876 - 1944 (68 years)
Zurab Avalishvili was a Georgian historian, jurist and diplomat in the service of the Democratic Republic of Georgia . He was also known as Zurab Davidovich Avalov in a Russian manner. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia , into the family of Prince David Avalishvili, he graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1900 and took post-graduate courses at the Department of Law, University of Paris from 1900 to 1903. He became a Docent at the St. Petersburg University in 1904 and a Professor of Public Law at the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1907. He was an official adviser to the Russian Ministr...
Go to Profile#4096
Ignaty Krachkovsky
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Ignaty Yulianovich Krachkovsky Krachkovsky was one of the founders of the Soviet school of Arab studies. Krachkovsky is known for authoring the translation of Quran into Russian. His book of recollections Among Arabic Manuscripts was awarded Stalin Prize .
Go to Profile#4097
Walter Hillier
1849 - 1927 (78 years)
Sir Walter Caine Hillier KCMG CB was a British diplomat, academic, author, Sinologist and Professor of Chinese at King's College London. Early life Walter Hillier was born in Hong Kong but educated in England, at Bedford School and at Blundell's School, Tiverton. His father was Charles Hillier, Chief Magistrate, Hong Kong, and British Consul at Bangkok and his mother, Elizabeth, daughter of missionary Walter Medhurst. He was the brother of Edward Guy Hillier, one of the most respected bankers at the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and its long-term manager in Peking .
Go to Profile#4098
Sakuzō Yoshino
1878 - 1933 (55 years)
Sakuzō Yoshino was a Japanese academic, historian, author and professor of political science. Yoshino was active as a political thinker in the Taishō period. He is best known for his formulation of the theory of "Minponshugi," or politics of the people.
Go to Profile#4099
Otto Pretzl
1893 - 1941 (48 years)
Otto Pretzl was a German Arabist-orientalist, who specialized in Koranic studies. From 1912 he studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and in 1920 was ordained as a priest in Freising. Afterwards, he studied theology and Oriental languages at the University of Munich, where he later qualified as a lecturer in Old Testament exegesis and Islamic and Semitic languages . In 1934 he became an associate professor at the university, attaining a full professorship during the following year. In 1937 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4100
Karl Vilhelm Zetterstéen
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Karl Vilhelm Zetterstéen was a Swedish professor and orientalist. Biography Zetterstéen was born at Orsa in Dalarna, Sweden. He began his studies at Uppsala University in 1884, became a Ph.D. and docent of Semitic languages in 1895. He also studied under professor Eduard Sachau at the University of Berlin. He was acting professor of Oriental languages at Lund University 1895-1904 and professor of Semitic languages in Uppsala 1904–1931. He became emeritus 1931.
Go to Profile