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,
#4251
Kingman Brewster Jr.
1919 - 1988 (69 years)
Kingman Brewster Jr. was an American educator, academic and diplomat. He served as the 17th President of Yale University and as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Early life Brewster was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, the son of Florence Foster , a 1907 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wellesley College, and Kingman Brewster Sr., a 1906 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and a 1911 graduate of the Harvard Law School. He was a direct lineal descendant of Elder William Brewster , the Mayflower passenger, Pilgrim colonist leader, and spiritual elder of the Plymouth Colony, through his son Jonathan Brewster.
Go to Profile#4252
Walter Alexander Riddell
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Walter Alexander Riddell was a Canadian civil servant, diplomat, and academic. He was the Canadian Advisory Officer to the League of Nations from 1924 to 1937. Born in Stratford, Ontario to a single working parent, Riddell was the deputy minister of the Department of Labour for the Government of Ontario. From 1920 to 1925, he was the Canadian delegate to the International Labour Organization in Geneva. From 1924 to 1937, he was the Canadian Advisory Officer to the League of Nations. From 1940 to 1946, he was the Canadian High Commissioner to New Zealand. He later taught International Relation...
Go to Profile#4253
Louis F. Budenz
1891 - 1972 (81 years)
Louis Francis Budens was an American activist and writer. He began as a labor activist and became a member of the Communist Party USA. In 1945, Budenz renounced Communism and became a vocal anti-Communist, appearing as an expert witness at governmental hearings and writing about his experiences.
Go to Profile#4254
Jean Bruchési
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Jean Bruchési, FRSC was a Canadian writer, historian, public servant, and diplomat. He was the president of the Royal Society of Canada for 1953–4. He was the son of Charles Bruchési, KC and the nephew of Paul Bruchési, Archbishop of Montreal.
Go to Profile#4255
Cullen B. Gosnell
1893 - 1963 (70 years)
Cullen B. Gosnell was an American political scientist. He was the founder and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory University from 1933 to 1951. Early life Cullen Bryant Gosnell was born on December 14, 1893, near Spartanburg, South Carolina. He graduated from Wofford College with a bachelor's degree in 1916. He went on to receive a master's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1920 and a PhD from Princeton University in 1928.
Go to Profile#4256
Thierry Braspenning-Balzacq
1900 - Present (126 years)
Thierry Balzacq is a French scholar specializing in IR Theory, security, and diplomatic studies. He is a professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Paris. He was previously awarded Francqui Research Chair , and held the Tocqueville Chair in IR at the University of Namur.
Go to Profile#4257
Theodore Henry Robinson
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Theodore Henry Robinson was a British biblical scholar who became professor of Semitic languages at University College, Cardiff. Life Robinson was born in Edenbridge, Kent, on 9 August 1881 to the Baptist minister W. Venis Robinson and his wife Emily Jane. After studying at St. John's College, Cambridge, Regent's Park Baptist College and Göttingen University he taught Hebrew and Syriac at Serampore College, Bengal.
Go to Profile#4258
Enoch Crowder
1859 - 1932 (73 years)
Major General Enoch Herbert Crowder, USA was an American Army lawyer who served as the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army from 1911 to 1923. Crowder is most noted for implementing and administering the United States Selective Service Act of 1917, under which thousands of American men were drafted into military service during World War I.
Go to Profile#4259
Henry Courtenay Fenn
1894 - 1978 (84 years)
Henry Courtenay Fenn, more commonly known as H. C. Fenn, was an American sinologist and architect of Yale University's Chinese language program. H. C. Fenn was the son of the Reverend Dr. Courtenay Hughes Fenn, missionary to China and compiler of The Five Thousand Dictionary, and his wife Alice Holstein May Fenn, and grew up in Peking. He married Constance Latimer Sargent on January 27, 1925. Fenn was active in the "Yale system" of Chinese grammar developed by himself, George Kennedy, Gardner Tewksbury, Wang Fangyu and others working in the Institute of Far Eastern Languages at Yale in the la...
Go to Profile#4260
Geoffrey Ostergaard
1926 - 1990 (64 years)
Geoffrey Nielsen Ostergaard was a British political scientist best known for his work on the connections between Gandhism and anarchism, on the British co-operative movement, and on syndicalism and workers' control. His books included The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of the Sarvodaya Movement for Non-Violent Revolution in India , coauthored with Melville Currell, and Nonviolent Revolution in India , both dealing with the Sarvodaya movement. He spent the majority of his academic career at the University of Birmingham.
Go to Profile#4261
Andrew W. Cordier
1901 - 1975 (74 years)
Andrew Wellington Cordier was a United Nations official and President of Columbia University. Early life Cordier was born on a farm near Canton, Ohio and attended high school in Hartville, Ohio where he became quarterback of the football team and valedictorian of his graduating class. He graduated in 1922 from Manchester University and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Medieval History at the University of Chicago in 1927. He married the former Dorothy Butterbaugh in 1924. He studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Switzerland in 1930–1931 where he made surveys of the situations in the Sudetenland, Danzig, and the Chaco War.
Go to Profile#4262
Ernest B. Price
1890 - 1973 (83 years)
Ernest Batson Price was an American diplomat, university professor, military officer, and businessman. He spent over twenty years in China and witnessed first-hand warlord power struggles, the growth of Japanese militarism, America's post-war diplomacy, China's civil war, and the profound social change that followed. As a result of this first-hand experience, Price was one of America's foremost authorities on Chinese language, culture, and politics from the early nineteen twenties through the mid nineteen fifties.
Go to Profile#4263
Virgil Blum
1913 - 1990 (77 years)
Virgil Clarence Blum was an American Jesuit and professor of political science at Marquette University. Early life and education Virgil Clarence Blum was born on March 27, 1913, in Defiance, Iowa, one of twelve children of John and Elizabeth Blum. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1934 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1947. In 1938 Blum received a bachelor's degree in Latin and English from St. Stanislaus Seminary at Florissant, Missouri. In 1945 he earned a master's degree in history and political science from Saint Louis University. Blum returned to Saint Louis University in 1950 for...
Go to Profile#4264
Mabel Palmer
1876 - 1958 (82 years)
Mabel Palmer also known as Mabel Atkinson in her first career, was a British-born, suffragist, journalist and lecturer. After her marriage, she began a second career as a South African educator and academic, using her married name. One of her most noted accomplishments came after her retirement from teaching, when she spearheaded a movement to provide university education for non-white students. After providing free courses in her home for a decade, she became director of the segregated courses offered by the Natal University College, serving from 1945 to 1955. After her second retirement, Pa...
Go to Profile#4265
Arthur A. Ageton
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Arthur Ainslie Ageton was a naval officer, ambassador, writer, and writing teacher. He was the United States Ambassador to Paraguay from September 9, 1954, to April 10, 1957. He was also a rear admiral in the Navy.
Go to Profile#4266
Julia Grace Wales
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Julia Grace Wales was a Canadian academic known for authoring the Wisconsin Plan, a proposal to set up a conference of intellectuals from neutral nations who would work to find a solution for the First World War.
Go to Profile#4267
Harry Augustus Garfield
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
Harry Augustus "Hal" Garfield was an American lawyer, academic, and public official. He was president of Williams College and supervised the United States Fuel Administration during World War I. He was a son of President James A. Garfield.
Go to Profile#4268
Rufus B. von KleinSmid
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid , also spelled Kleinsmidt, was the seventh president of the University of Arizona and the fifth president of the University of Southern California . Life and career Von KleinSmid started his academic career at DePauw University where he was a professor of education and psychology. He became USC's fifth president in 1921. A high priority of his administration was to expand professional training programs, and von KleinSmid also presided over a building program that added nine major structures to the university campus. By the end of his first decade in office, USC ha...
Go to Profile#4269
Julieta Kirkwood
1936 - 1985 (49 years)
María Julieta Kirkwood Bañados was a Chilean sociologist, political scientist, university professor and feminist activist. She is considered one of the founders and impellers of the Chilean feminist movement in the 1980s. She is considered the forerunner of Gender studies in Chile.
Go to Profile#4270
Homer Hulbert
1863 - 1949 (86 years)
Homer Bezaleel Hulbert was an American missionary, journalist, linguist, and Korean independence activist. Hulbert went by a variety of names in Korea, including Hŏ Halpo , Hŏ Hŭlpŏp , and Halpo .
Go to Profile#4271
Carlo Cattaneo
1801 - 1869 (68 years)
Carlo Cattaneo was an Italian philosopher, writer, and activist, famous for his role in the Five Days of Milan in March 1848, when he led the city council during the rebellion. Early life and education Cattaneo was born in Milan on 15 June 1801. He was the son of Melchiorre Cattaneo, a goldsmith, and Maria Antonia Sangiorgi. After attending school in Milan he studied law at the University of Pavia, graduating in 1824.
Go to Profile#4272
Patras Bokhari
1898 - 1958 (60 years)
Syed Ahmed Shah , commonly known as Patras Bokhari , was a Pakistani humorist, writer, broadcaster and diplomat who served as a Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations. Born in Peshawar, British India to a Kashmiri family, Shah studied at Edwardes Mission School in Peshawar and moved to Lahore where he studied English literature at the Government College. Shah moved to United Kingdom where he received his Tripos from the Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He returned to Lahore where he taught English at Government College in 1927. He became a prominent part of the Muslim intelligentsia in South Asia.
Go to Profile#4273
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
1864 - 1958 (94 years)
Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, , known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923, was a British lawyer, politician and diplomat. He was one of the architects of the League of Nations and a defender of it, whose service to the organisation saw him awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937.
Go to Profile#4274
William Blount
1749 - 1800 (51 years)
William Blount was an American politician, landowner and Founding Father who was one of the signers of the Constitution of the United States. He was a member of the North Carolina delegation at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and led the efforts for North Carolina to ratify the Constitution in 1789 at the Fayetteville Convention. He then served as the only governor of the Southwest Territory and played a leading role in helping the territory gain admission to the union as the state of Tennessee. He was selected as one of Tennessee's initial United States Senators in 1796, serving until ...
Go to Profile#4275
Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi
1894 - 1972 (78 years)
Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi , was an Austrian-Japanese politician, philosopher, and count of Coudenhove-Kalergi. A pioneer of European integration, he served as the founding president of the Paneuropean Union for 49 years. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer and major landowner in Tokyo. His childhood name in Japan was Eijiro Aoyama. Being a native Austrian-Hungarian citizen, he became a Czechoslovak citizen in 1919 and then took French citizenship from 1939...
Go to Profile#4276
Frank Meyer
1909 - 1972 (63 years)
Frank Straus Meyer was an American philosopher and political activist best known for his theory of "fusionism" – a political philosophy that unites elements of libertarianism and traditionalism into a philosophical synthesis which is posited as the definition of modern American conservatism. Meyer's philosophy was presented in two books, primarily In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo and also in a collection of his essays, The Conservative Mainstream . Fusionism has been summed up by E. J. Dionne, Jr. as "utilizing libertarian means in a conservative society for traditionalist ends."
Go to Profile#4277
Antonio Pigafetta
1492 - 1531 (39 years)
Antonio Pigafetta was a Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the world's first circumnavigation, and is best known for being the chronicler of the voyage. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant until Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, and kept an accurate journal, which later assisted him in translating the Cebuano language. It is the first recorded document concerning the language.
Go to Profile#4278
Henry Jones Ford
1851 - 1925 (74 years)
Henry Jones Ford was an American political scientist, journalist, university professor, and government official. He served as president of the American Political Science Association. He was appointed by Woodrow Wilson as the Banking and Insurance Commissioner of New Jersey in 1912.
Go to Profile#4279
John Smith
1580 - 1631 (51 years)
John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, admiral of New England, and author. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. He was knighted for his services...
Go to Profile#4280
Tommy Douglas
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Thomas Clement Douglas was a Canadian politician who served as the seventh premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and Leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. A Baptist minister, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation . He left federal politics to become Leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan. His government introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program.
Go to Profile#4281
Mikhail Bakunin
1814 - 1876 (62 years)
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist. He is among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major figure in the revolutionary socialist, social anarchist, and collectivist anarchist traditions. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.
Go to Profile#4282
Sándor Kőrösi Csoma
1784 - 1842 (58 years)
Sándor Csoma de Kőrös was a Hungarian philologist and Orientalist, author of the first Tibetan–English dictionary and grammar book. He was called Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa in Tibetan, meaning "the foreign pupil", and was declared a bosatsu or bodhisattva by the Japanese in 1933. He was born in Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania . His birth date is often given as 4 April, although this is actually his baptism day and the year of his birth is debated by some authors who put it at 1787 or 1788 rather than 1784. The Magyar ethnic group, the Székelys, to which he belonged believed that they were derived from a branch of Attila's Huns who had settled in Transylvania in the fifth century.
Go to Profile#4283
Félicité de La Mennais
1782 - 1854 (72 years)
Félicité Robert de La Mennais was a French Catholic priest, philosopher and political theorist. He was one of the most influential intellectuals of Restoration France. Lamennais is considered the forerunner of liberal Catholicism and social Catholicism.
Go to Profile#4284
Whitney Young
1921 - 1971 (50 years)
Whitney Moore Young Jr. was an American civil rights leader. Trained as a social worker, he spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively worked for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised. Young was influential in the United States federal government's War on Poverty in the 1960s.
Go to Profile#4285
Nancy Cunard
1896 - 1965 (69 years)
Nancy Clara Cunard was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon—who were among her lovers—as well as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader V. K. Krishna Menon.
Go to Profile#4286
Zayd ibn Ali
695 - 740 (45 years)
Zayd ibn ʿAlī , also spelled Zaid, was the son of Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin, and great-grandson of Ali ibn Abi Talib. He led an unsuccessful revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate, in which he died. The event gave rise to the Zaydiyya sect of Shia Islam, which holds him as the next Imam after his father Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin. Zayd ibn Ali is also seen as a major religious figure by many Sunnis and was supported by the prominent Sunni jurist, Abu Hanifa, who issued a fatwa in support of Zayd against the Umayyads.
Go to Profile#4287
Arthur F. Bentley
1870 - 1957 (87 years)
Arthur Fisher Bentley was an American political scientist and philosopher who worked in the fields of epistemology, logic and linguistics and who contributed to the development of a behavioral methodology of political science.
Go to Profile#4288
Edward Fitzgerald Beale
1822 - 1893 (71 years)
Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale was a national figure in the 19th-century United States. He was a naval officer, military general, explorer, frontiersman, Indian affairs superintendent, California rancher, diplomat, and friend of Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody and Ulysses S. Grant. He fought in the United States-Mexican War, emerging as a hero of the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. He achieved national fame in 1848 in carrying to the east the first gold samples from California, contributing to the gold rush.
Go to Profile#4289
Charles Eliot
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Sir Charles Norton Edgcumbe Eliot was a British diplomat, colonial administrator and botanist. He served as Commissioner of British East Africa in 1900–1904. He was British Ambassador to Japan in 1919–1925.
Go to Profile#4290
Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma
1545 - 1592 (47 years)
Alexander Farnese was an Italian noble and condottiero, and a general of the Spanish army, who was Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Castro from 1586 to 1592, as well as Governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1578 to 1592. Thanks to a steady influx of troops from Spain, during 1581–1587 Farnese captured more than thirty towns in the south and returned them to the control of Hapsburg Spain. During the French Wars of Religion he relieved Paris for the Catholic League. His talents as a commander on the battlefield, strategist and organizer earned him the regard of his contemporaries and military hi...
Go to Profile#4291
Ignác Goldziher
1850 - 1921 (71 years)
Ignác Goldziher , often credited as Ignaz Goldziher, was a Hungarian scholar of Islam. Along with the German Theodor Nöldeke and the Dutch Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, he is considered the founder of modern Islamic studies in Europe. Goldziher is also known for his foundational work of esoteric exegesis of the Hebrew Bible in the seminal work on the topic in "Mythology among the Hebrews," in which he defended Jewish mythology from accusations by the racists of the time that the Jews "stole" the myths of other peoples by explaining the similarities as a consequence of an origination in star lo...
Go to Profile#4292
Jan Masaryk
1886 - 1948 (62 years)
Jan Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbulent, and impulsive man".
Go to Profile#4293
Giuseppe Tucci
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Giuseppe Tucci was an Italian orientalist, Indologist and scholar of East Asian studies, specializing in Tibetan culture and the history of Buddhism. During its zenith, Tucci was a supporter of Italian fascism, and he used idealized portrayals of Asian traditions to support Italian ideological campaigns. Tucci was fluent in several European languages, Sanskrit, Bengali, Pali, Prakrit, Chinese and Tibetan and he taught at the University of Rome La Sapienza until his death. He is considered one of the founders of the field of Buddhist Studies.
Go to Profile#4294
George W. Norris
1861 - 1944 (83 years)
George William Norris was an American politician from the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. He served five terms in the United States House of Representatives as a Republican, from 1903 until 1913, and five terms in the United States Senate, from 1913 until 1943. He served four terms as a Republican and his final term as an independent. Norris was defeated for re-election in 1942.
Go to Profile#4295
Charles Francis Adams Sr.
1807 - 1886 (79 years)
Charles Francis Adams Sr. was an American historical editor, writer, politician, and diplomat. As United States Minister to the United Kingdom during the American Civil War, Adams was crucial to Union efforts to prevent British recognition of the Confederate States of America and maintain European neutrality to the utmost extent. Adams also featured in national and state politics before and after the Civil War.
Go to Profile#4296
Nicolae Titulescu
1882 - 1941 (59 years)
Nicolae Titulescu was a Romanian politician and diplomat, at various times ambassador, finance minister, and foreign minister, and for two terms president of the General Assembly of the League of Nations .
Go to Profile#4297
William J. Burns
1861 - 1932 (71 years)
William John Burns was an American private investigator and law enforcement official. He was known as "America's Sherlock Holmes" and earned fame for having conducted private investigations into a number of notable incidents, such as clearing Leo Frank of the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan, and for investigating the deadly 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing conducted by members of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. From August 22, 1921, to May 10, 1924, Burns served as the director of the Bureau of Investigation , predecessor to the Federal B...
Go to Profile#4298
Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie
1826 - 1882 (56 years)
Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie was an Irish jurist and economist. He was professor of jurisprudence and political economy in Queen's College, Belfast, noted for challenging the Wages-Fund doctrine and for addressing contemporary agrarian policy questions. A critic of Ricardian orthodoxy, he said that it had sidelined consumer behaviour and demand. He developed the idea of consumer sovereignty, but insisted that the analysis of demand should be based on historical and comparative institutional work.
Go to Profile#4299
William Hamilton
1730 - 1803 (73 years)
Sir William Hamilton, KB, PC, FRS, FRSE was a British diplomat, politician, antiquarian and vulcanologist who served as the Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Naples from 1764 to 1800. After sitting in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1761 to 1764, he began working as a diplomat, succeeding Sir James Gray as the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. While in Italy, Hamilton became involved in studying local volcanoes and collecting antiquities, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society and being given the Copley Medal. His second wife was Emma Hamilton, who was famed as the m...
Go to Profile#4300
Sabit Damolla
1883 - 1934 (51 years)
Sabit Damolla was a Uyghur independence movement leader who led the Hotan rebellion against the Xinjiang Province government of Jin Shuren and later the Uyghur leader Khoja Niyaz. He is widely known as the first and only prime minister of the short-lived Islamic Republic of East Turkestan from November 12, 1933, until the republic's defeat in May 1934.
Go to Profile