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,
#4151
Grigory Zinoviev
1883 - 1936 (53 years)
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. An Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a prominent figure in the leadership of the early Soviet Union and served as chairman of the Communist International from 1919 to 1926.
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Edmund Burke
1729 - 1797 (68 years)
Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher who spent most of his career in Great Britain. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party.
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Niccolò Machiavelli
1469 - 1527 (58 years)
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince , written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
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Simón Bolívar
1783 - 1830 (47 years)
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire. He is known colloquially as El Libertador, or the Liberator of America.
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Anton Denikin
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was a Russian military leader who served as the acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of South Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923. Previously, he was a general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.
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Zheng He
1371 - 1433 (62 years)
Zheng He was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty, and often regarded as the greatest admiral in Chinese history. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family and later adopted the surname Zheng conferred by the Yongle Emperor. Commissioned by the Yongle Emperor and later the Xuande Emperor, Zheng commanded seven expeditionary treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433. According to legend, his larger ships carried hundreds of sailors on four decks and were almost twice ...
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David Ricardo
1772 - 1823 (51 years)
David Ricardo was a British political economist, politician, and member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. He is recognized as one of the most influential classical economists, alongside figures such as Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill.
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Vladimir Lenin
1870 - 1924 (54 years)
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.
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Hannah Arendt
1906 - 1975 (69 years)
Hannah Arendt was a German-born American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theoristss of the 20th century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. In the popular mind she is best remembered for the controversy surrounding the trial of Adolf Eichmann, her attempt to explain how ordinary people become actors in totalitarian systems, which was considered by some an apologia, and for the phrase "the banality of ev...
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Alexis de Tocqueville
1805 - 1859 (54 years)
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville , usually known as just Tocqueville, was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both, he analyzed the living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
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Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
1738 - 1805 (67 years)
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, KG, PC was a British Army officer, Whig politician and colonial administrator. In the United States and the United Kingdom, he is best known as one of the leading British general officers in the American War of Independence. His surrender in 1781 to a combined American and French force at the siege of Yorktown ended significant hostilities in North America. Cornwallis later served as a civil and military governor in Ireland, where he helped bring about the Act of Union; and in India, where he helped enact the Cornwallis Code and the Permanent Settl...
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Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Admiral of the Fleet Albert Victor Nicholas Louis Francis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma was a British statesman, naval officer, colonial administrator and close relative of the British royal family. Mountbatten, who was of German descent, was born in the United Kingdom to the prominent Battenberg family. He was a maternal uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and a second cousin of King George VI. He joined the Royal Navy during the First World War and was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command, in the Second World War. He later served as the last Vicero...
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Carl Schmitt
1888 - 1985 (97 years)
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he is noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism. His work has been a major influence on subsequent political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology, but its value and significance are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with Nazism.
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Herbert Spencer
1820 - 1903 (83 years)
Herbert Spencer was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism.
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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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François Nau
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
François Nau was a French Catholic priest, mathematician, Syriacist, and specialist in oriental languages. He published a great number of eastern Christian texts and translations for the first and often only time.
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Leo Stern
1901 - 1982 (81 years)
Leo Stern was an Austrian-German left-wing political activist. In 1933 he switched his party membership from the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party. During the fascist ascendancy he participated in the Spanish Civil War as an anti-Franco Interbrigadist and later, in the Great Patriotic War, served as an officer in the Soviet Red Army. Between the two he studied successfully for a higher degree at the University of Moscow, receiving his Habilitation degree in 1940 in return for a dissertation of Contemporary Catholicism. Emerging from the war in 1945, almost certainly by now closel...
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Joachim Menant
1820 - 1899 (79 years)
Joachim Menant was a French magistrate and orientalist. He was born in Cherbourg. He studied law and became vice-president of the tribunal civil of Rouen in 1878, and a member of the court of appeal three years later. But he became best known for his studies on cuneiform inscriptions.
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William Wright
1830 - 1889 (59 years)
William Wright was a famous English Orientalist, and Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Many of his works on Syriac literature are still in print and of considerable scholarly value, especially the catalogues of the holdings of the British Library and Cambridge University Library. A Grammar of The Arabic Language, often simply known as Wright's Grammar, continues to be a popular book with students of Arabic. Wright is also remembered for the Short history of Syriac literature.
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Frederick Dickins
1838 - 1915 (77 years)
Frederick Victor Dickins was a British naval surgeon, barrister, orientalist and university administrator. He is now remembered as a translator of Japanese literature. Life Dickins was born at 44 Connaught Terrace in Paddington, London to Thomas Dickins and Jane Dickins. He first visited Japan as a medical officer on HMS Coromandel in 1863. For three years he was at Yokohama in charge of medical facilities there. During this time he was in contact with Japanese doctors and culture, and also Ernest Satow who became a lifelong correspondent and friend. He began publishing English translations of Japanese classical works at this time.
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Guillaume Postel
1510 - 1581 (71 years)
Guillaume Postel was a French linguist, Orientalist, astronomer, Christian Kabbalist, diplomat, polyglot, professor, religious universalist, and writer. Born in the village of Barenton in Normandy, Postel made his way to Paris to further his education. While studying at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, he became acquainted with Ignatius of Loyola and many of the men who would become the founders of the Society of Jesus, retaining a lifelong affiliation with them. He entered Rome in the novitiate of the Jesuits in March 1544, but left on December 9, 1545 before making religious vows.
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Willy Bang Kaup
1869 - 1934 (65 years)
Johann Wilhelm Max Julius Bang Kaup, was a German turkologist, linguist and orientalist. Biography Willy Bang Kaup was born to Heinrich Bang and Auguste Bang. Heinrich was a lawyer by profession and was the Mayor. Willy Kaup was inducted to orientalism during his early days. This facts have become evident by H. L. Fleischer during their communications via letters at a later point of time. Bang Kaup did study Manchu, Old Persian, Avestan, and Mongol with Charles de Harlez. In 1893 and 1909 he brought out a new edition of ancient Persian inscriptions together with Friedrich H. Weissbach and wrote several articles on the subject.
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May Gorslin Preston Slosson
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
May Gorslin Preston Slosson was an American educator and suffragist. She was the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in Philosophy in the United States. Life May Gorslin Preston was the daughter of Reverend Levi Campbell Preston and the former Mary Gorslin. Her family moved to Kansas from New York State. She earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from Hillsdale College in Michigan. In 1880 she became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in Philosophy in the United States. Her thesis was entitled Different Theories of Beauty.
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Georgiy Shevel
1919 - 1989 (70 years)
Georgiy Georgiyevich Shevel was a Soviet politician and diplomat. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR . Education Georgiy Shevel graduated from the Faculty of philology of the University of Kharkiv .
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Johann Martin Augustin Scholz
1794 - 1852 (58 years)
Johann Martin Augustin Scholz was a German Roman Catholic orientalist, biblical scholar and academic theologian. He was a professor at the University of Bonn and travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Near East in order to locate manuscripts of the New Testament.
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Eusèbe Renaudot
1646 - 1720 (74 years)
Eusèbe Renaudot was a French theologian and Orientalist. Biography Renaudot was born in Paris, and brought up and educated for a career in the church. After being educated by the Jesuits, and joining the Oratorians in 1666, he was in poor health, left his order, and never took more than minor orders. Despite his interest in theology and his title of abbé, much of his life was spent at the French court, where he attracted the notice of Colbert and was often employed in confidential affairs.
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Hans Heinrich Schaeder
1896 - 1957 (61 years)
Heinz Heinrich Schaeder was a German Orientalist and Iranologist. Life Heinz Heinrich Schaeder was born in Göttingen, Germany on 31 January 1896. He was the son of theologist Erich Schaeder, brother of historian Hildegard Schaeder and cousin of theologian Günter Lüling. Raised in a strict fashion by his father, Schaeder studied classical philology at the University of Kiel since 1914. During World War, he served in the German Army. He continued his studies in classical philology at Kiel under Werner Jaeger. Under the influence of historian Fritz Kern, Lommel developed an interest in the Middle east.
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Carl Schmitt
1889 - 1989 (100 years)
Carl Schmitt was an American painter, etcher, pastelist, and writer. Life Education and early career Schmitt was born in Warren, Ohio, the son of Jacob A. Schmitt , a music professor and organist, and Grace Tod Wood Schmitt . He left Warren High School before graduating to study art in New York City under the patronage of Zell Hart Deming, editor of the local Warren Tribune newspaper and a prominent local patron of the arts. After a year at the Chase School, Schmitt enrolled at the National Academy of Design studying with Emil Carlsen. He graduated from the NAD in 1909, winning top honors for his work in still life.
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Oskars Voits
1866 - 1959 (93 years)
Oskars Augusts Voits was a Latvian medical doctor and diplomat. In addition to a long medical career, Voits played a role in establishing Latvia's diplomatic relations abroad after the Latvian War of Independence.
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Franz Woepcke
1826 - 1864 (38 years)
Franz Woepcke was a German historian, Orientalist and mathematician. He is remembered for publishing editions and translations of medieval Arabic mathematical manuscripts and for his research on the propagation of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in the medieval era.
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Paul Brown
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
Paul Brown was an American politician and lawyer, who served in the United States House of Representatives. Brown was born in Hartwell, Georgia, and graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1901. He was admitted to the state bar in that year and began practicing law in Lexington, Georgia. He farmed and also served as the Mayor of Lexington from 1908 to 1914. Brown served in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1907 and 1908.
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Hugh Stewart
1884 - 1934 (50 years)
Hugh Stewart, was an academic, soldier and historian whose work had a major impact in both England and New Zealand. Born in Scotland, Stewart worked in Russia teaching English after completing his education. He then taught classical studies at the University of Liverpool in England and then at Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. During the First World War, he volunteered for service abroad with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He participated in several engagements at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, and was decorated for bravery and leadership. He ended the war as a lieu...
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Samuel Z. Westerfield Jr.
1919 - 1972 (53 years)
Samuel Zazu Westerfield Jr. was a career foreign services officer who was appointed American ambassador to Liberia on July 8, 1969. Early life Westerfield's parents were Dr. Samuel Z.C. Westerfield and Rachael Weddleton Colquitt. His father was the first black student to graduate with a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Nebraska.
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Stephen Miller
1816 - 1881 (65 years)
Stephen Miller was an American Republican politician. He was the first Civil War veteran to serve as Minnesota Governor. He was the fourth Governor of Minnesota. Early years and business entrepreneur Born in Carroll Township, Pennsylvania, Stephen Miller established a series of successful businesses. Frail health prompted the entrepreneur, of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, to leave home at age 42 and follow his friend Alexander Ramsey to Minnesota, where the climate reportedly was more congenial. Miller established a mercantile business in St. Cloud and, within two years, had risen to prominenc...
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Hans Wilhelmsson Ahlmann
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Hans Jakob Konrad Wilhelmsson Ahlmann was a Swedish geographer, glaciologist, and diplomat. Born in Karlsborg, Sweden, Ahlmann grew up in Stockholm. He studied with Professor Gerard De Geer at Stockholm University, and gained his doctorate in 1915 on a doctoral thesis on Sweden's Lake Ragundasjön. The same year, he became an associate professor of geography at the University of Stockholm. He was appointed Associate Professor of Geography at Uppsala University in 1920 and professor at the Stockholm University from 1929 until 1950.
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Lionel Barnett
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Lionel David Barnett CB FBA was an English orientalist. The son of a Liverpool banker, Barnett was educated at Liverpool High School, Liverpool Institute, University College, Liverpool and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a first class degree in classics and was three times a winner of a Browne medal.
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David Heinrich Müller
1846 - 1912 (66 years)
David Heinrich Müller was a Jewish Austrian orientalist. Biography He was educated in Vienna, Leipzig, Strassburg, and Berlin; became professor of Semitic philology at Vienna in 1881. Works Himjaritische Inschriften Südarabische Studien Die Burgen und Schlösser Südarabiens Sabäische Denkmäler Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Arabien Die altsemitischen Inschriften von Sendschirli Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Abessinien Ezechielstudien Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form Südarabische Alterthümer Die Mehri- und Soqotri-Sprache, Vol. I, II, III He published editions of:Kitab al Farq Hāmdāni, Geo...
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Marion Murdoch
1849 - 1943 (94 years)
Marion Murdoch was an American minister in Iowa. Murdoch was said to be the first woman in America to receive the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Early years and education Murdoch was born in Garnavillo, Iowa, October 9, 1849. Her father, Judge Samuel Murdoch, was the last living member of the Territorial legislature of Iowa. He had been a member of the state legislature and judge of the district court. Her mother had come from New York in 1837. Murdoch's early life was spent in outdoor pursuits, developing in her that love of nature and desire for a life of freedom for women. Of the family o...
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Niels Ludvig Westergaard
1815 - 1878 (63 years)
Niels Ludvig Westergaard was a Danish Orientalist and professor. Biography Westergaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1833, he became a student at Borgerdivskolen in Copenhagen. Westergaard studied Old Norse as well as Sanskrit and continuing his studies at the University of Bonn , and also in London, Paris and Oxford. After returning to Denmark, he published "Radices linguae sanscritae". From 1841 to 1844 he journeyed throughout India and Persia, where he conducted important investigations in Bombay and at Persepolis. In 1844 he began deciphering ancient Elamite cuneiform using the 3-way parallel text of the 6th cent.
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Tadeusz Jan Kowalski
1889 - 1948 (59 years)
Tadeusz Jan Kowalski was a Polish orientalist, expert on Middle East Muslim culture and languages. He was a professor at Jagiellonian University, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Published works
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Ernst Kühnel
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Ernst Kühnel was a German art historian who specialized in Islamic art. He was notable for his research on the connection between Islamic and Coptic art, particularly in textiles. Kühnel served as director of the Museum of Islamic Art from 1931 to 1951, and was a professor at the University of Berlin from 1935 to 1954. He was also a consultant for the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and president of Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft .
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Étienne Balazs
1905 - 1963 (58 years)
Étienne Balazs was a Hungarian-born French sinologist. Major works Le traité économique du "Soueichou", . Google Books.Le traité juridique du "Soueichou", 1954.Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy; Variations on a Theme. . Translated by H. M. Wright. Edited by Arthur F. Wright. Google Books. Reprints a selection from Balazs' major articles:Pt I INSTITUTIONS: • Significant Aspects of Chinese Society • China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society • Chinese Feudalism • The birth of capitalism in China • Fairs in China • Chinese Towns • Marco Polo in the Capital of China • ...
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