The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Political Science,
#4451
Roy Peel
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Roy Victor Peel was a political scientist and academic, and the director of the United States Census Bureau from 1950 to 1953. Early life and education Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1896, Peel's service in World War I interrupted his college education; he was a second lieutenant in the Army Air Service. After the war, he completed his B.A., graduating from Augustana College in 1920. From there, Peel moved between teaching and post-graduate education, eventually earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1927.
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Walter Rice Sharp
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Walter Rice Sharp was an American political scientist. He was born on January 25, 1896. Sharp attended Wabash College. Upon graduation, he served in the United States military as an infantry captain. After the end of World War I, Sharp enrolled at Yale University. Further graduate study at the University of Bordeaux in France was funded by the American Field Service Fellowship awarded in 1920. Sharp received a doctorate in law in 1922, and returned to the United States. He taught at Washington and Lee University from 1923 to 1924, then joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty for fifteen years.
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Louise Overacker
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Louise Overacker was an American political scientist. She specialized in the study of money in politics, United States presidential primaries, and comparative party systems, particularly those of Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. She was one of the first professors to teach government at Wellesley College, where she was a faculty member from 1925 until 1957, and helped to establish the Wellesley Department of Political Science in 1940.
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Daniel David Luckenbill
1881 - 1927 (46 years)
Daniel David Luckenbill was an American assyriologist and professor at the University of Chicago. Publications Complete bibliography:John A. Maynard: In Memoriam: A Bibliography of D. D. Luckenbill. In: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. 45, 1929, S. 90–93. A Study of the temple documents from the Cassite period. The Chicago University Press, Chicago 1907. Thesis PhD Annals of Sennacherib. The Chicago University Press, Chicago 1924. Reprint 2005. .Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. The Chicago University Press, Chicago 1926/1927. Mehrfache Reprints.Bd. 1 Historical records of Assyria: from the earliest times to Sargon.Bd.
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Harold Foote Gosnell
1896 - 1997 (101 years)
Harold Foote Gosnell was an American political scientist and writer, known for his research and writings on American politics, elections, and political parties. Gosnell attended the University of Rochester, graduating summa cum laude in 1918. He went on to the University of Chicago, where in 1922 he received his doctorate. He became a professor at Chicago and taught there until 1941. During World War II, he went to Washington, D.C., as a budget analyst and later as an operations officer for the United States Department of State, while he continued to study and write on politics. He served in the federal government until 1960, and was on the faculty at American University.
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Philip Marshall Brown
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Philip Marshall Brown was an American educator and diplomat, born at Hampden, Maine, and educated at Williams College. In 1900–1901, he served as secretary to Lloyd C. Griscom and from 1901 to 1903 was second secretary for the American Legation of Constantinople. He served as Secretary of legation to Guatemala and Honduras, 1903–1907, and as secretary of the American Embassy of Constantinople, 1907–1908. From the latter year to 1910 he was minister to Honduras. Resigning from the diplomatic service, he was appointed instructor in international law at Harvard University in 1912 and in the foll...
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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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Carlton J. H. Hayes
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes was an American historian, educator, diplomat, devout Catholic and academic. A student of European history, he was a leading and pioneering specialist on the study of nationalism. He was elected as president of the American Historical Association over the opposition of liberals and the more explicit Anti-Catholic bias that defined the academic community of his era. He served as United States Ambassador to Spain in World War II. Although he came under attack from the CIO and others on the left that rejected any dealings with Francoist Spain, Hayes succeeded in his...
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George Catlin
1896 - 1979 (83 years)
Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin was an English political scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of Anglo-American co-operation, he worked for many years as a professor at Cornell University and other universities and colleges in the United States and Canada. He preached the use of a natural science model for political science. McMaster University Libraries holds his correspondence archive and the body of some of his works. He had two children, one of whom was the politician and academic Shirley Williams.
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Adolf Sturmthal
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Adolf Fox Sturmthal was a U.S. political scientist, sociologist and journalist of Austrian birth who specialised in labour studies and international relations. Biography Sturmthal earned a PhD in Political Science in 1925 at Vienna University. He was chairman of the Association of Austrian Social Democratic Students and Academics. He moved to Zurich in 1926 to assist Friedrich Adler, the secretary of the Labour and Socialist International, and was editor of International Information. In 1933 and 1934 he organised international aid for German and Austrian socialist refugees from the Austrofascist Dollfuss and Nazi regimes.
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Harold Innis
1894 - 1952 (58 years)
Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada from the 1930s to 1960s, and continues to be a fundamental part of the Canadian political economic trad...
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Hans Morgenthau
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Hans Joachim Morgenthau was a German-American jurist and political scientist who was one of the major 20th-century figures in the study of international relations. Morgenthau's works belong to the tradition of realism in international relations theory; he is usually considered among the most influential realists of the post-World War II period. Morgenthau made landmark contributions to international relations theory and the study of international law. His Politics Among Nations, first published in 1948, went through five editions during his lifetime and was widely adopted as a textbook in U.S.
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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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Philip Jessup
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Philip Caryl Jessup , also Philip C. Jessup, was a 20th-century American diplomat, scholar, and jurist notable for his accomplishments in the field of international law. Early life and education Philip Caryl Jessup was born on January 5, 1897, in New York, New York. He was the grandson of Henry Harris Jessup In 1919, he received his undergraduate A.B. degree from Hamilton College. In 1924, he received a law degree from Yale Law School. In 1927, he received a doctorate from Columbia University.
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Owen Lattimore
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and then taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations there from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on American policy in Asia.
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Rupert Emerson
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
Rupert Emerson was a professor of political science and international relations. He served on the faculty of Harvard University for forty-three years and served in various U.S government positions. After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1917–1918, he received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1922, then a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 1927. He was a member of the American Political Science Association, the Association for Asian Studies , the African Studies Association , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
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F. Gregory Gause, III
#4468
C. B. Macpherson
1911 - 1987 (76 years)
Crawford Brough Macpherson was an influential Canadian political scientist who taught political theory at the University of Toronto. Life Macpherson was born on 18 November 1911 in Toronto, Ontario. After graduating from the University of Toronto Schools, he received his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto in 1933. He then earned a Master of Science degree in economics at the London School of Economics where he studied under the supervision of Harold Laski, he joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 1935. At that time a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the social sci...
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Rasmus B. Anderson
1846 - 1936 (90 years)
Rasmus Bjørn Anderson was an American author, professor, editor, businessman and diplomat. He brought to popular attention the fact that Viking explorers were the first Europeans to arrive in the New World and was the originator of Leif Erikson Day.
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Georgiy Afanasyev
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Georgiy Afanasyev was a Ukrainian historian, politician, and diplomat. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian State . Received a master's degree for his thesis: "The main points of the ministerial Turgot" ; and his doctoral dissertation was: "The Conditions of the Grain Trade in France at the End of the 18th Century" . From 1888 he lectured at the Odessa University. He read in Odessa and Kiev.
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Väinö Tanner
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Väinö Tanner was a Finnish geographer, geologist, professor and diplomat. Tanner is best known for his studies on the Quaternary geology of northern Finland. He was a vocal opponent to the Finnicization of the University of Helsinki.
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Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough
1658 - 1735 (77 years)
Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough and 1st Earl of Monmouth, was an English Army officer, Whig politician and peer. He was the son of John Mordaunt, 1st Viscount Mordaunt, and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Carey, the second son of Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth. Mordaunt's father, John Mordaunt, was created Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon and Baron Mordaunt of Reigate, Surrey, in 1659.
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John Cook
1730 - 1789 (59 years)
John Cook was an American planter and politician from Smyrna, in Kent County, Delaware. He served in the Delaware General Assembly and as Governor of Delaware. Early life and family Cook was born in Duck Creek, now Smyrna, son of Michal and Lois Cook. He was first cousin to Thomas Collins . He supposedly married Elizabeth Collins, the sister of Thomas Collins, and if so, married his first cousin. They had five children: Sarah, Margaret, Elizabeth, Michael, and Robert. He was a prosperous farmer and tanner and gradually acquired a considerable amount of land in the area. Included in the property at one time was Belmont Hall,.
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Alastair Francis Buchan
1918 - 1976 (58 years)
Alastair Francis Buchan, was a leading British writer on defence studies in the 1970s. Career The son of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, Alastair Buchan was given the same forename as his father's brother, who had been killed in the First World War. He was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, Buchan joined the Canadian Army and saw active service in the Second World War.
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Jacques Bacot
1877 - 1965 (88 years)
Jacques Bacot was an explorer and pioneering French Tibetologist. He travelled extensively in India, western China, and the Tibetan border regions. He worked at the École pratique des hautes études. Bacot was the first western scholar to study the Tibetan grammatical tradition, and along with F. W. Thomas belonged to the first generation of scholars to study the Old Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts. Bacot made frequent use of Tibetan informants. He acquired aid from Gendün Chöphel in studying Dunhuang manuscripts.
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Carl Bezold
1859 - 1922 (63 years)
Carl Bezold was a German orientalist. Known primarily for his research in Akkadian , he also researched other Semitic languages: Syriac, Ge'ez and Arabic. Biography He was educated at the Universities of Munich and Leipzig, where he studied with Assyrologist Friedrich Delitzsch. In 1883, he obtained his habilitation at Munich with a thesis titled Die Schatzhöhle; aus dem syrischen texte dreier unedirten Handschriften . Later on, he spent several years working at the British Museum in London. In 1894, he became a full professor at the University of Heidelberg.
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Arnolds Spekke
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
Arnolds Spekke received a doctorate in philology from the University of Latvia in 1927. In 1932 he received a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship and went studying in Poland and Italy. From 1933 to 1939 he was the Latvian envoy to Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Albania with permanent residence in Rome, Italy.
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Ilija Garašanin
1812 - 1874 (62 years)
Ilija Garašanin was a Serbian statesman who served as the prime minister of Serbia between 1852 and 1853 and again from 1861 to 1867. Ilija Garašanin was conservative in internal politics. He believed that bureaucracy was the only way for administration to work. In foreign politics, he was the first pro-Yugoslavia statesman among Serbs. He believed that a great Yugoslav state had to maintain its independence from both Russia and Austria. He was one of the more influential Serbian politicians of the 19th century.
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1809 - 1865 (56 years)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French socialist, politician, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, using that term, and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of community and property". Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist...
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Adolf Grabowsky
1880 - 1969 (89 years)
Adolf Grabowsky was a German political scientist and author of several books about geopolitics and political theory, including "Democracy and Dictatorship" . He was a Jewish convert to Protestantism, and founder and editor of the Zeitschrift für Politik. He was a supporter of the Weimar democracy.
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Elechukwu Njaka
1921 - 1975 (54 years)
Mazi Elechukwu Nnadibuagha Njaka was a Nigerian political scientist, known for the book Igbo Political Culture. Family background E.N. Njaka was born in Okwaejiaku, Umukegwu, Akokwa on 23 June 1921. His father, Mazi George Maduneme Njaka, was one of the earliest Christian converts of the Catholic Denomination in Orlu province. His mother, Mrs. Mary Nwaku Njaka , also from Umukegwu, was one of the earliest seamstresses to come from Mbanasaa clan. Elechukwu was their second child.
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Johann Fück
1894 - 1974 (80 years)
Johann Wilhelm Fück was a German Orientalist. Starting in 1913, Fück studied classical and Semitic philology at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and Goethe University Frankfurt. From 1919 to 1921 he was a member of the German National People's Party. His promotion took place in 1921 as part of the Orientalist Seminar at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he had lectureships in Hebrew language from 1921 to 1930, and in Arabic philology and Islamic studies from 1935 to 1938. He attained his habilitation in 1929. In the interim from 1930 to 1935, he was a professor at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
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Karl Friedrich Neumann
1793 - 1870 (77 years)
Karl Friedrich Neumann was a German orientalist. Life Neumann was born, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg. He studied philosophy and philology at Heidelberg, Munich and Göttingen, became a convert to Protestantism and took the name of Neumann. From 1821 to 1825 he was a teacher in Würzburg and Speyer; then he learned Armenian in Venice at the San Lazzaro degli Armeni and visited Paris and London.
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William Jones
1809 - 1873 (64 years)
William Jones was a political Radical and Chartist, who was a former actor, working as a watchmaker at Pontypool in Monmouthshire and also kept a beer house. He was prosecuted for his part in the Chartist Newport Rising at Newport, Monmouthshire on 4 November 1839.
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Edward Stevens
1755 - 1834 (79 years)
Dr Edward Stevens FRSE was an American physician and diplomat. He was a close friend of American soldier and statesman Alexander Hamilton. Stevens' date of birth was unclear due to lack of records, with the year 1752 being published by Kristian Caroe, without sources, in his 1905 book Den danske lægestand, 1479-1900 until historian Michael E. Newton published contemporary records establishing Stevens birthplace and date.
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Ian Turner
1922 - 1978 (56 years)
Ian Alexander Hamilton Turner was an Australian political activist, serving important roles in both the Communist Party of Australia and Australian Labour Party. As a leading historian, he wrote the book Industrial Labour and Politics, which examined the Australian labour politics.
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James Allen
1855 - 1942 (87 years)
Sir James Allen was a prominent New Zealand politician and diplomat. He held a number of the most important political offices in the country, including Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was also New Zealand's Minister of Defence during World War I.
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Ferdinand Wüstenfeld
1808 - 1899 (91 years)
Heinrich Ferdinand Wüstenfeld was a German orientalist, known as a literary historian of Arabic literature, born at Münden, Hanover. He studied theology and oriental languages at Göttingen and Berlin. He taught at Göttingen, becoming a professor there . He published many important Arabic texts and valuable works on Arabic history.
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Albert Socin
1844 - 1899 (55 years)
Albert Socin was a Swiss orientalist, who specialized in the research of Neo-Aramaic, Kurdish and contemporary Arabic dialects. He also made contributions to the geography, archaeology, religion, art and literature of the Middle East.
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Milan Kujundžić Aberdar
1842 - 1893 (51 years)
Milan Kujundžić Aberdar was a Serbian poet, philosopher and politician. Biography He was born in Belgrade and given the name Janićije but later he changed it to Milan. His pseudonym Aberdar came from his collected poems.
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John Wilson
1804 - 1875 (71 years)
John Wilson FRS was a Scottish Christian missionary, orientalist and educator in the Bombay presidency, British India. In 1828, he married Margaret Bayne and together they went as Christian missionaries of the Scottish Missionary Society to Bombay, India, arriving on 13 February 1829. He is the founder of Wilson College, Mumbai and one of the founders of Bombay University, along with the Hon. Jugonnath Sunkersett and Dr. Bhau Daji Lad. He was also the president of the Asiatic Society of Bombay from 1835 to 1842; and was elected Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870.
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Edward Pococke
1604 - 1691 (87 years)
Edward Pococke was an English Orientalist and biblical scholar. Early life The son of Edward Pococke , vicar of Chieveley in Berkshire, he was brought up at Chieveley and educated from a young age at Lord Williams's School, Thame, Oxfordshire. He matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1619, and later was admitted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford . He was ordained a priest of the Church of England on 20 December 1629.
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Jean Monnet
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet was a French civil servant, entrepreneur, diplomat, financier, administrator, and political visionary. An influential supporter of European unity, he is considered one of the founding fathers of the European Union.
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Thomas Hollis
1720 - 1774 (54 years)
Thomas Hollis FRS FRSA was an English political philosopher and author. Early life Hollis was educated at Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, until the age 10, and then in St. Albans until 15, before learning French, Dutch and accountancy in Amsterdam. After the death of his father in 1735, his guardian was a John Hollister. He was trained in this time in public service by John Ward of Gresham College, London. He took Chambers with Lincoln's Inn from 1740 to 1748, though without ever reading law. By this time he was a man of considerable wealth having inherited from his father, grand...
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Vasily Struve
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Vasily Vasilievich Struve was a Soviet orientalist from the Struve family, the founder of the Soviet scientific school of researchers on Ancient Near East history. In 1907 he entered the Department of History at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Petersburg University, where he studied the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and Ancient Egyptian language under the leadership of the famous Russian Egyptologist Boris Turaev. He became proficient in all types of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, including Demotic. He graduated from the Petersburg University in 1911 and continued research w...
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John Williamson
1903 - 1974 (71 years)
John Williamson was a Scottish-born radical best remembered as a top leader of the Communist youth movement in the 1920s in the United States. Biography Early years John Williamson was born on June 23, 1903, in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of a marine engineer who was severely injured in an accident at sea shortly after his child was born. A woodworker and shipbuilder by trade, Williamson only had 8 years of formal education, later attending high school at night. He came to the United States in July 1913, settling in Seattle.
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Rudolf Hoernlé
1841 - 1918 (77 years)
Augustus Frederic Rudolf Hoernlé CIE , also referred to as Rudolf Hoernle or A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, was a German Indologist and philologist. He is famous for his studies on the Bower Manuscript , Weber Manuscript and other discoveries in northwestern China and Central Asia particularly in collaboration with Aurel Stein. Born in India to a Protestant missionary family from Germany, he completed his education in Switzerland, and studied Sanskrit in the United Kingdom. He returned to India, taught at leading universities there, and in the early 1890s published a series of seminal papers on ancient manuscripts, writing scripts and cultural exchange between India, China and Central Asia.
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Vasile Alecsandri
1821 - 1890 (69 years)
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat. He was one of the key figures during the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia. He fought for the unification of the Romanian Principalities, writing "Hora Unirii" in 1856 and giving up his candidacy for the title of prince of Moldavia, in favor of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. He became the first minister of foreign affairs of Romania and was one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy. Alecsandri was a prolific writer, contributing to Romanian literature with poetry, prose, several plays, and collections...
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Joseph Gelders
1891 - 1951 (60 years)
Joseph Sidney Gelders was an American physicist who later became an antiracist, civil rights activist, labor organizer, and communist. In the mid-1930s, he served as the secretary and southern-U.S. representative of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. In September 1936, Gelders was kidnapped, beaten, and nearly killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan for his civil rights and labor organizing activities. After his recovery, Gelders continued his activism and cofounded the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax. He collaborated closely with other activists including Lucy Randolph Mason and Virginia Foster Durr.
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John Finley Crowe
1787 - 1860 (73 years)
John Finley Crowe was a Presbyterian minister and the founder of Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. His residence from 1824 to 1860, the Crowe-Garritt House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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