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,
#4301
Rufus King
1755 - 1827 (72 years)
Rufus King was an American Founding Father, lawyer, politician, and diplomat. He was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia Convention and was one of the signers of the United States Constitution in 1787. After formation of the new Congress, he represented New York in the United States Senate. He emerged as a leading member of the Federalist Party and was the party's last presidential nominee during the 1816 presidential election.
Go to Profile#4302
Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, was a British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator. He served as the British controller-general in Egypt during 1879, part of the international control which oversaw Egyptian finances after the Egyptian bankruptcy of 1876. He later became the agent and consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907 during the British occupation, prompted by the Urabi revolt. This position gave Baring de facto control over Egyptian finances and governance.
Go to Profile#4303
Francisco de Paula Santander
1792 - 1840 (48 years)
Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña , was a Colombian military and political leader during the 1810–1819 independence war of the United Provinces of New Granada . He was the acting President of Gran Colombia between 1819 and 1826, and later elected by Congress as the President of the Republic of New Granada between 1832 and 1837. Santander came to be known as "The Man of the Laws" .
Go to Profile#4304
John Bright
1811 - 1889 (78 years)
John Bright was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn Laws. In partnership with Richard Cobden, he founded the Anti-Corn Law League, aimed at abolishing the Corn Laws, which raised food prices and protected landowners' interests by levying taxes on imported wheat. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. Bright also worked with Cobden in another free trade initiative, the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty of 1860, promoting closer interdependence between Great Britain and the Second French Empire.
Go to Profile#4305
Midhat Pasha
1822 - 1883 (61 years)
Ahmed Şefik Midhat Pasha was an Ottoman politician, reformist and statesman. He was the author of the Constitution of the Ottoman Empire. Midhat was born in Istanbul and educated from a private . In July 1872, he was appointed grand vizier by Abdulaziz , though was removed in August. During the First Constitutional Era, in 1876, he co-founded the Ottoman Parliament. Midhat was noted as a kingmaker and leading Ottoman democrat. He was part of a governing elite which recognized the crisis the Empire was in and considered reform to be a dire need. Midhat was reportedly killed in al-Ta'if.
Go to Profile#4306
Washington Irving
1783 - 1859 (76 years)
Washington Irving was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He wrote the short stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" , both of which appear in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain that deal with subjects such as the Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as American ambassador to Spain in the 1840s.
Go to Profile#4307
Joseph de Maistre
1753 - 1821 (68 years)
Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a member of the Savoy Senate , ambassador to Russia , and minister of state to the court in Turin .
Go to Profile#4308
Henry Cabot Lodge
1850 - 1924 (74 years)
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American Republican politician, historian, and statesman from Massachusetts. He served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. His successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations and his reservations against that treaty influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
Go to Profile#4309
Tenskwatawa
1775 - 1836 (61 years)
Tenskwatawa was a Native American religious and political leader of the Shawnee tribe, known as the Prophet or the Shawnee Prophet. He was a younger brother of Tecumseh, a leader of the Shawnee. In his early years Tenskwatawa was given the name Lalawethika , but he changed it around 1805 and transformed himself from a hapless, alcoholic youth into an influential spiritual leader. Tenskwatawa denounced the Americans, calling them the offspring of the Evil Spirit, and led a purification movement that promoted unity among the Indigenous peoples of North America, rejected acculturation to the A...
Go to Profile#4310
Sojourner Truth
1798 - 1883 (85 years)
Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Go to Profile#4311
Mykhailo Hrushevsky
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Mykhailo Serhiiovych Hrushevsky was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century. Hrushevsky is often considered the country's greatest modern historian, the foremost organiser of scholarship, the leader of the pre-revolution Ukrainian national movement, the head of the Central Rada , and a leading cultural figure in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s.
Go to Profile#4312
Nicos Poulantzas
1936 - 1979 (43 years)
Nicos Poulantzas was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist and philosopher. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading structural Marxist; while at first a Leninist, he eventually became a proponent of the "democratic road to socialism." He is best known for his theoretical work on the state, but he also offered Marxist contributions to the analysis of fascism, social class in the contemporary world, and the collapse of dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s, such as Francisco Franco's rule in Spain, António de Oliveira Salazar's in Portugal, an...
Go to Profile#4313
Lucy Stone
1818 - 1893 (75 years)
Lucy Stone was an American orator, abolitionist and suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone became the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery. Stone was known for using her birth name after marriage, contrary to the custom of women taking their husband's surname.
Go to Profile#4314
Vidkun Quisling
1887 - 1945 (58 years)
Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling was a Norwegian military officer, politician and Nazi collaborator who nominally headed the government of Norway during the country's occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II.
Go to Profile#4315
Lucretia Mott
1793 - 1880 (87 years)
Lucretia Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in 1840. In 1848, she was invited by Jane Hunt to a meeting that led to the first public gathering about women's rights, the Seneca Falls Convention, during which the Declaration of Sentiments was written.
Go to Profile#4316
Eleanor Roosevelt
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role of First Lady. Roosevelt then served as a United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and in 1948 she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#4317
Christian Rakovsky
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Christian Georgievich Rakovsky was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat and statesman; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist. Rakovsky's political career took him throughout the Balkans and into France and Imperial Russia; for part of his life, he was also a Romanian citizen.
Go to Profile#4318
Frank Johnson Goodnow
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
Frank Johnson Goodnow was an American educator and legal scholar. He was the first president of the American Political Science Association. He was an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#4319
Pedro Albizu Campos
1891 - 1965 (74 years)
Pedro Albizu Campos was a Puerto Rican attorney and politician, and a leading figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement. He was the president and spokesperson of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico from 1930 until his death. He led the nationalist revolts of October 1950 against the United States government in Puerto Rico. Albizu Campos spent a total of twenty-six years in prison at various times for his Puerto Rican independence activities.
Go to Profile#4320
Timothy Pickering
1745 - 1829 (84 years)
Timothy Pickering was the third United States Secretary of State under Presidents George Washington and John Adams. He also represented Massachusetts in both houses of Congress as a member of the Federalist Party. In 1795, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#4321
Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava
1826 - 1902 (76 years)
Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, , was a British public servant and prominent member of Victorian society. In his youth he was a popular figure in the court of Queen Victoria, and became well known to the public after publishing a best-selling account of his travels in the North Atlantic.
Go to Profile#4322
Graham Martin
1912 - 1990 (78 years)
Graham Anderson Martin was an American diplomat. He was the ambassador to Thailand and as U.S. representative to SEATO from 1963 to 1967, ambassador to Italy from 1969 to 1973 and the last United States Ambassador to South Vietnam from 1973 until his evacuation during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
Go to Profile#4323
John Hay
1838 - 1905 (67 years)
John Milton Hay was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and an assistant for Abraham Lincoln, he became a diplomat. He served as United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also a biographer of Lincoln, and wrote poetry and other literature throughout his life.
Go to Profile#4324
George Bancroft
1800 - 1891 (91 years)
George Bancroft was an American historian, statesman and Democratic politician who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state of Massachusetts and at the national and international levels.
Go to Profile#4325
Dean Acheson
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman's main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947, especially regarding the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was in private law practice from July 1947 to December 1948. After 1949 Acheson came under partisan political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman's policy toward the...
Go to Profile#4326
Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend
1674 - 1738 (64 years)
Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, was an English Whig statesman. He served for a decade as Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1714 to 1717 and again from 1721 to 1730. He directed British foreign policy in close collaboration with his brother-in-law, prime minister Robert Walpole. He was often known as Turnip Townshend because of his strong interest in farming turnips and his role in the British Agricultural Revolution.
Go to Profile#4327
Whitelaw Reid
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Whitelaw Reid was an American politician and newspaper editor, as well as the author of Ohio in the War, a popular work of history. After assisting Horace Greeley as editor of the New-York Tribune, Reid purchased the paper after Greeley's death in late 1872 and controlled it until his own death. The circulation grew to about 60,000 a day, but the weekly edition became less important. He invested heavily in new technology, such as the Hoe rotary printing press and the linotype machine, but bitterly fought against the unionized workers for control of his shop.
Go to Profile#4328
Moses Gaster
1856 - 1939 (83 years)
Moses Gaster was a Romanian, later British scholar, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation, London, and a Hebrew and Romanian linguist. Moses Gaster was an active Zionist in Romania as well as in England, where in 1899 he helped establish the English Zionist Federation.
Go to Profile#4329
Rebecca West
1892 - 1983 (91 years)
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield , known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon , on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder , her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason , later The New Meaning of Treason , a study of th...
Go to Profile#4330
Shūmei Ōkawa
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Shūmei Ōkawa was a Japanese nationalist and Pan-Asianist writer, known for his publications on Japanese history, philosophy of religion, Indian philosophy, and colonialism. Background Ōkawa was born in Sakata, Yamagata, Japan in 1886. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1911, where he had studied Vedic literature and classical Indian philosophy. After graduation, Ōkawa worked for the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff doing translation work. He had a sound knowledge of German, French, English, Sanskrit and Pali.
Go to Profile#4331
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
1857 - 1936 (79 years)
Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was a Dutch scholar of Oriental cultures and languages and advisor on native affairs to the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies . Born in Oosterhout in 1857, he became a theology student at Leiden University in 1874. He received his doctorate at Leiden in 1880 with his dissertation 'Het Mekkaansche Feest' . He became a professor at the Leiden School for Colonial Civil Servants in 1881.
Go to Profile#4332
5th Dalai Lama
1617 - 1682 (65 years)
Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso was the 5th Dalai Lama and the first Dalai Lama to wield effective temporal and spiritual power over all Tibet. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being a key religious and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. Gyatso is credited with unifying all Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang after a Mongol military intervention which ended a protracted era of civil wars. As an independent head of state, he established relations with the Qing empire and other regional countries and also met early European explorers. Gyatso also wrote 24 volumes' worth of scho...
Go to Profile#4333
Nadezhda Krupskaya
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya was a Russian revolutionary and the wife of Vladimir Lenin. Krupskaya was born in Saint Petersburg to an aristocratic family that had descended into poverty, and she developed strong views about improving the lives of the poor. She embraced Marxism and met Lenin at a Marxist discussion group in 1894. Both were arrested in 1896 for revolutionary activities and after Lenin was exiled to Siberia, Krupskaya was allowed to join him in 1898 on the condition that they marry. The two settled in Munich and then London after their exile, before briefly returning to Rus...
Go to Profile#4334
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1860 - 1935 (75 years)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman , also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, advocate for social reform, and eugenicist. She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. She has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis.
Go to Profile#4335
August Bebel
1840 - 1913 (73 years)
Ferdinand August Bebel was a German socialist politician, writer, and orator. He is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers' Association into the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany . During the repression under the terms of the Anti-Socialist Laws, Bebel became the leading figure of the social democratic movement in Germany and from 1892 until his death served as chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Go to Profile#4336
Ernst Freund
1864 - 1932 (68 years)
Ernst Freund was a noted American legal scholar. He received a Dr. Jur. from the University of Heidelberg and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University . He was professor of political science at the University of Chicago and then professor of law at Chicago , serving as the John P. Wilson Professor of Law . Freund was principally responsible for the development of administrative law in the United States during the early twentieth century. He was one of the organizers of the Immigrants' Protective League . The University of Chicago Law School has established the Ernst Freund Di...
Go to Profile#4337
Arthur St. Clair
1737 - 1818 (81 years)
Arthur St. Clair was a Scottish-American soldier and politician. Born in Thurso, Scotland, he served in the British Army during the French and Indian War before settling in Pennsylvania, where he held local office. During the American Revolutionary War, he rose to the rank of major general in the Continental Army, but lost his command after a controversial retreat from Fort Ticonderoga.
Go to Profile#4338
Gifford Pinchot
1865 - 1946 (81 years)
Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician. He served as the fourth chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, as the first head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th governor of Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Republican Party for most of his life, though he joined the Progressive Party for a brief period.
Go to Profile#4339
Richard Francis Burton
1821 - 1890 (69 years)
Sir Richard Francis Burton was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar, and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine languages.
Go to Profile#4340
Abul A'la Maududi
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Abul A'la al-Maududi was an Islamic scholar, Islamist ideologue, Muslim philosopher, jurist, historian, journalist, activist, and scholar active in British India and later, following the partition, in Pakistan. Described by Wilfred Cantwell Smith as "the most systematic thinker of modern Islam", his numerous works, which "covered a range of disciplines such as Qur’anic exegesis, hadith, law, philosophy, and history", were written in Urdu, but then translated into English, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Burmese, Malayalam and many other languages. He sought to revive Islam, and to propagate what he understood to be "true Islam".
Go to Profile#4341
Josephine Butler
1828 - 1906 (78 years)
Josephine Elizabeth Butler was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution.
Go to Profile#4342
Dag Hammarskjöld
1905 - 1961 (56 years)
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2023, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. He was a son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917.
Go to Profile#4343
Lucy Burns
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Lucy Burns was an American suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was a passionate activist in the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined the militant suffragettes. Burns was a close friend of Alice Paul, and together they ultimately formed the National Woman's Party.
Go to Profile#4344
Victoria Woodhull
1838 - 1927 (89 years)
Victoria Claflin Woodhull , later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because she was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35.
Go to Profile#4345
Andrew McNaughton
1887 - 1966 (79 years)
General Andrew George Latta McNaughton was a Canadian electrical engineer, scientist, army officer, cabinet minister, and diplomat. Early life McNaughton was born in Moosomin, District of Assiniboia, North-West Territories , on 25 February 1887. Both of McNaughton's parents were immigrants from Scotland, and his youth was a happy one, being brought up by an adventuresome father who had once been a trader in buffalo hides and a kindly, loving mother. His upbringing on a farm instilled in him a life-long love of hard work and self-discipline. McNaughton spent his free time riding horses across the vast expanses of the Prairies while also engaging in hunting and fishing.
Go to Profile#4346
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando
1860 - 1952 (92 years)
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was an Italian statesman, who served as the Prime Minister of Italy from October 1917 to June 1919. Orlando is best known for representing Italy in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference with his foreign minister Sidney Sonnino. He was also known as "Premier of Victory" for defeating the Central Powers along with the Entente in World War I. He was also the provisional President of the Chamber of Deputies between 1943 and 1945, and a member of the Constituent Assembly that changed the Italian form of government into a republic. Aside from his prominent political role, Orland...
Go to Profile#4347
Harold Nicolson
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Sir Harold George Nicolson was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West.
Go to Profile#4348
Arnold Bergstraesser
1896 - 1964 (68 years)
Arnold Bergstraesser was a German political scientist. Along with Wolfgang Abendroth, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Theodor Eschenburg, and Eric Voegelin, he was one of the founders of political science in West Germany after World War II.
Go to Profile#4349
Leonard Woolf
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Leonard Sidney Woolf was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own work and his wife's novels. A writer himself, Woolf created nineteen individual works and wrote six autobiographies. Leonard and Virginia did not have any children.
Go to Profile#4350
Fritz Morstein Marx
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Fritz Morstein Marx or F. M. Marx was a German-American political and administrative scientist. History Fritz Marx was born in Hamburg on February 23, 1900. He studied law after a short military service in the First World War. In 1922 he was awarded his doctorate at the University of Hamburg and then entered the Administration Service of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In 1930–31 he did research in the United States, funded by scholarships from the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1933 he emigrated to the US after the National Socialists came to power. He then worked in academia and as an administrator.
Go to Profile