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,
#4451
Tom Pendergast
1872 - 1945 (73 years)
Thomas Joseph Pendergast , also known as T. J. Pendergast, was an American political boss who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri, from 1925 to 1939. Pendergast only briefly held elected office, as an alderman, but his capacity as chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Party allowed him to use his large network of Irish family and friends to help the election of politicians, in some cases by voter fraud, and to hand out government contracts and patronage jobs. He became wealthy in the process, but his addiction to gambling, especially horse racing, later led to a large accum...
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Christian Ravis
1613 - 1677 (64 years)
Christian Ravis was an itinerant German orientalist and theologian. It has been questioned whether Ravis really mastered the languages he claimed to teach: whether his competence extended further than Turkish. His reputation with Jacobus Golius was undermined by Nicolaus Petri of Aleppo, who worked for Ravis copying manuscripts.
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George Grafton Wilson
1863 - 1951 (88 years)
George Grafton Wilson was a distinguished professor of International Law during the first half of the 20th century. He served on the faculties of Brown University, Harvard University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the U.S. Naval War College.
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Mariano Iberico Rodríguez
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Mariano Iberico Rodríguez was a Peruvian philosopher. Life and education He was born in Cajamarca, Peru on April 11, 1892 and received his higher education at the National University of San Marcos in Lima. In 1919 he was awarded doctorates in Literature, Political Science and Administration, and Jurisprudence. After completing his training, he became a professor in the School of Arts at the University of San Marcos, the same center of Lima where he had completed his studies. Throughout his career he would teach History of Modern Philosophy, Subjective Philosophy, History of Ancient Philosophy, Aesthetics and Contemporary Philosophers.
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Giuseppe Luigi Assemani
1710 - 1782 (72 years)
Giuseppe Luigi Assemani was a Lebanese Catholic priest, an orientalist and a Professor of Oriental languages in Rome. Assemani came from a well known family of Lebanese Maronites that included several notable Orientalists. His uncle was Archbishop Giuseppe Simone Assemani whom he helped with his writings; besides assisting his uncle he also studied in Rome and was appointed by the Pope, firstly as the Professor of Syriac at the Sapienza and later as the Professor of liturgy by Pope Benedict XIV. The Pope also made Assemani a member of the Academy for Historic Research which had just been esta...
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Simone Assemani
1752 - 1821 (69 years)
Simone Assemani , grand-nephew of Giuseppe Simone Assemani, was born in Rome. He was professor of Oriental languages in Padua. He is best known by his masterly detection of the literary imposture of Giuseppe Vella, a Maltese priest, which claimed to be a history of the Saracens in Syria.
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Ruth Lawson
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
Ruth Catherine Lawson was an American political scientist. Lawson specialized in international law and European affairs. She was a professor of political science at Mount Holyoke College from 1942 to 1976. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956, and is the namesake for the Ruth C. Lawson Chair in International Politics and the Ruth C. Lawson Fellowships at Mount Holyoke.
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Louise Holborn
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
Louise Wilhelmine Holborn was a German-American political scientist. She was a professor at Connecticut College from the late 1940s until 1970. She specialized in the politics of refugees and migration, conducting a number of studies on the topic for organizations like the United Nations, and she was also an advocate for refugees.
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Li Hsi-mou
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
Li Hsi-mou was a notable Chinese educator, electrical engineer, and politician in Taiwan. Biography Li was born in Jiashan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang province, Qing Dynasty China. Li's courtesy name was Zhenwu . Li studied electrical engineering at Shanghai Industrial and Vocational College . Li later was qualified and obtained Zhejaing provincial finance support to study in the United States.
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Hartwig Hirschfeld
1854 - 1934 (80 years)
Hartwig Hirschfeld was a Prussian-born British Orientalist, bibliographer, and educator. His particular scholarly interest lay in Arabic Jewish literature and in the relationship between Jewish and Arab cultures. He is best known for his editions of Judah Halevi's Kuzari—which he published in its original Judeo-Arabic and in Hebrew, German and English translations—and his studies on the Cairo Geniza.
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Jacobus Golius
1596 - 1667 (71 years)
Jacob Golius born Jacob van Gool was an Orientalist and mathematician based at the University of Leiden in Netherlands. He is primarily remembered as an Orientalist. He published Arabic texts in Arabic at Leiden, and did Arabic-to-Latin translations. His best-known work is an Arabic-to-Latin dictionary, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum , which he sourced for the most part from the Sihah dictionary of Al-Jauhari and the Qamous dictionary of Fairuzabadi.
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Wilhelm Max Müller
1862 - 1919 (57 years)
Wilhelm Max Müller was a German-born American orientalist. Biography Müller was born at Gleißenberg, Germany. He received his higher education in Erlangen, Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig, where he received his Ph.D. He was one of the last students of the Egyptologist Georg Ebers.
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John O'Brien
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
John Bernard O'Brien was a political candidate and party leader of Social Credit in New Zealand. Biography O'Brien was the Social Credit Party candidate for the Manawatu electorate in the 1957 and 1960 general election placing third. Following the sudden death of Bill Brown, O'Brien unsuccessfully contested the electorate in the .
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John Reynolds
1625 - 1657 (32 years)
John Reynolds was a soldier in the English Civil War and during the Commonwealth. Reynolds may have been a member of the Middle Temple. He joined the parliamentary army, and in 1648 he commanded a regiment of horse. He took part in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. He was a member of the Westminster-based Protectorate Parliament for Galway and Mayo in 1654 and Waterford and Tipperary in 1656. He was knighted in 1655. In 1657 he commanded the English force which cooperated with the French in Flanders in the Anglo-Spanish War and was lost at sea when returning to England.
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John Henderson Jr.
1870 - 1923 (53 years)
John Brooks Henderson Jr. was an American diplomat, educator, and malacologist. Early life Henderson was born in Pike County, Missouri on February 18, 1870. He was the son of United States Senator John Brooks Henderson and social activist Mary Foote Henderson, who was known as "The Empress of Sixteenth Street." His father was known as the Senator who introduced the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery and one of seven Republicans who voted against the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in May 1868.
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Hiob Ludolf
1624 - 1704 (80 years)
Hiob or Job Ludolf , also known as Job Leutholf, was a German orientalist, born at Erfurt. Edward Ullendorff rates Ludolf as having "the most illustrious name in Ethiopic scholarship". Life After studying philology at the Erfurt academy and at Leiden, he travelled in order to increase his linguistic knowledge. While searching in Rome for some documents at the request of the Swedish Court , he became friends with Abba Gorgoryos, a monk from the Ethiopian province of Amhara, and acquired from him an intimate knowledge of the Ethiopian language of Amhara.
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George W. Kirchwey
1855 - 1942 (87 years)
George Washington Kirchwey was an American lawyer, politician, journalist and legal scholar. He was one of the co-founders of the New York Peace Society in 1906 and the Warden of Sing Sing State Prison from 1915 to 1916. He was president of the American Peace Society in 1917.
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Georgy Aleksandrov
1908 - 1961 (53 years)
Georgy Fedorovich Aleksandrov was a Marxist philosopher and a Soviet politician. Biography Childhood and education Aleksandrov was born in 1908 in Saint Petersburg in a worker's family of Russian ethnicity, but became homeless during the Russian Civil War. In 1924-1930, he studied Communist philosophy in Borisoglebsk and Tambov and then transferred to the Moscow Institute of History and Philosophy. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1928. After graduating in 1932, Aleksandrov remained with the Institute for graduate studies, eventually becoming a professor, a deputy director and th...
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Georg Sabinus
1508 - 1560 (52 years)
Georg Sabinus or Georg Schuler was a German poet, diplomat and academic. Sabinus was born at Brandenburg an der Havel. He served as Professor of Poetry and Eloquence and first-ever rector of the Albertina . He died, aged 52, in Frankfurt .
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Robert Disque
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Robert C. Disque was a professor of electrical engineering and interim president of what is now Drexel University. Early life Born in Burlington, Iowa, Disque went on to attend the University of Wisconsin where he received his Bachelor of Letters in 1903. He furthered his education, receiving his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1908. After his graduation Disque accepted a teaching position at his Alma Mater, and served as an instructor until 1917.
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James McBride
1802 - 1875 (73 years)
James McBride was an American politician, educator, and patriarch of a political family in the state of Oregon. A native of Tennessee, he served in the Oregon Territorial Legislature and as United States Minister to Hawaii, as well as one of the founders of the Oregon Republican Party. Two of his sons served in the United States Congress, while a third served on the Oregon Supreme Court.
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Johannes Cuspinian
1473 - 1529 (56 years)
Johannes Cuspinianus , born Johan Spießhaymer , was a German-Austrian humanist, scientist, diplomat, and historian. Born in Spießheim near Schweinfurt in Franconia, of which Cuspinianus is a Latinization, he studied in Leipzig and Würzburg. He went to Vienna in 1492 and became a professor of medicine at the University of Vienna. He became Rector of the university in 1500 and also served as Royal Superintendent until his death.
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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,...
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Rudolf Tschudi
1884 - 1960 (76 years)
Rudolf Tschudi was a Swiss philologist, historian, and Orientalist. Life Tschudi studied classical philology as well as eastern philology in Basel, Erlangen , and Tübingen and was a member of the Schwizerhüsli Basel, Erlanger, and Tübingen Wingolf fraternities. He then became an assistant professor in 1910 and a professor at the Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut in 1914.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ...
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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.
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A. Leo Oppenheim
1904 - 1974 (70 years)
Adolf Leo Oppenheim , one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of his generation was editor-in-charge of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute from 1955 to 1974 and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.
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Martin Wight
1913 - 1972 (59 years)
Robert James Martin Wight was one of the foremost British scholars of international relations in the twentieth century. He was the author of Power Politics , as well as the seminal essay "Why Is There No International Theory?" . He was a teacher of some renown at both the London School of Economics and the University of Sussex, where he served as the founding Dean of European Studies.
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Franz Neumann
1900 - 1954 (54 years)
Franz Leopold Neumann was a German political activist, Western Marxist theorist and labor lawyer, who became a political scientist in exile and is best known for his theoretical analyses of Nazism. He studied in Germany and the United Kingdom, and spent the last phase of his career in the United States, where he worked for the Office of Strategic Services from 1943 to 1945. During the Second World War, Neumann spied for the Soviet Union under the code-name "Ruff". Together with Ernst Fraenkel and Arnold Bergstraesser, Neumann is considered to be among the founders of modern political scienc...
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Elmer Eric Schattschneider
1892 - 1971 (79 years)
Elmer Eric Schattschneider was an American political scientist. Life and career Schattschneider was born in Bethany, Minnesota. He received his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Pittsburgh and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. He taught at Columbia, the New Jersey College for Women , and Wesleyan University . Schattschneider was president of the American Political Science Association for 1956–1957 and is the namesake of its award for the best dissertation in the field of American politics. He died in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
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Godfrey Rolles Driver
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver , known as G. R. Driver, was an English Orientalist noted for his studies of Semitic languages and Assyriology. He is considered the "most distinguished British Hebraist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries".
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Stein Rokkan
1921 - 1979 (58 years)
Stein Rokkan was a Norwegian political scientist and sociologist. He was the first professor of sociology at the University of Bergen and a principal founder of the discipline of comparative politics. He founded the multidisciplinary Department of Sociology at the University of Bergen, which encompassed sociology, economics and political science and which had a key role in the postwar development of the social sciences in Norway.
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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.
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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.
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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 .
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Josef Laurenz Kunz
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Josef Laurenz Kunz was an Austrian American jurist. He was a Professor of International Law at the University of Toledo from 1934 to 1960, after having emigrated from Austria in 1932. Kunz earned his doctorate degree in 1920 from the University of Vienna, where he was a student of Hans Kelsen.
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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.
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William Edward Soothill
1861 - 1935 (74 years)
William Edward Soothill, was a Methodist missionary to China who later became Professor of Chinese at University College, Oxford, and a leading British sinologist. Life Born in Halifax, Yorkshire in January 1861, Soothill matriculated at London University. He entered the ministry of the United Methodist Free Church arriving in China in 1882 and spent 29 years as a missionary in Wenzhou, China. Another leading missionary there until 1909 was Grace Stott who led the China Inland Mission there.
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Hedley Bull
1932 - 1985 (53 years)
Hedley Norman Bull was Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University, the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford until his death from cancer in 1985. He was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford from 1977 to 1985, and died there.
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Herman Finer
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Herman Finer was a Jewish Romanian-born British political scientist and Fabian socialist. Finer was born in Hertsa, Romania, to Max Finer and Fanny Weiner. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago. He was the eldest brother of Samuel Finer.
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Edward Buehrig
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Edward Henry Buehrig was an American political scientist who spent most of his career at the Indiana University Bloomington. He was known as a leading authority on the foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson.
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Hashimoto Mantaro
1932 - 1987 (55 years)
Hashimoto Mantarō was a Japanese sinologist and linguist who is best known for advocating research on language geography, linguistic typology, and how different areal features in the varieties of Chinese reflect contact with other language families.
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Erich Haenisch
1880 - 1966 (86 years)
Erich Haenisch was a German sinologist and first-degree cousin of politician Konrad Haenisch. He was the academic teacher of George Kennedy . During World War II., Haenisch was the only German sinologist who actively intervened with the Nazi government on behalf of his colleague Henri Maspero, who had been arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Buchenwald, since his son was a member of the resistance. Since Haenisch did not receive support by his German colleagues, he could not save Maspero, who died in Buchenwald on March 17, 1945.
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W. G. K. Duncan
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
Walter George Keith Duncan , was an Australian academic and political scientist. Education Duncan was educated at Fort Street Boys' High School, Sydney, completing his education, BA and MA at the University of Sydney and PhD at the London School of Economics.
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Fritz Krenkow
1872 - 1953 (81 years)
Fritz Johann Heinrich Krenkow was a German orientalist. He was the uncle of D. H. Lawrence. Born in Germany, Krenkow moved to England aged 12. He earned a living with a hosiery firm in Leicester, and later acquired a reputation as an Arabic scholar. He later became a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University during 1929-30, and then at University of Bonn 1931-35.
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W. G. S. Adams
1874 - 1966 (92 years)
William George Stewart Adams was a Scottish political scientist and public servant who became principal of an Oxford College and a leader in the fields of voluntary service and rural regeneration. Background and education George Adams was born in Auchingramont Road, Hamilton, the younger son of John and Margaret Adams, by whom he was given "an intellectual and somewhat evangelistic upbringing". His father was Rector of St John's Grammar School and had founded Gilbertfield House School, both in Hamilton. His mother came from a Glasgow mercantile family and was a niece of the social activist...
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