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
Stephen Miller
1816 - 1881 (65 years)
Stephen Miller was an American Republican politician. He was the first Civil War veteran to serve as Minnesota Governor. He was the fourth Governor of Minnesota. Early years and business entrepreneur Born in Carroll Township, Pennsylvania, Stephen Miller established a series of successful businesses. Frail health prompted the entrepreneur, of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, to leave home at age 42 and follow his friend Alexander Ramsey to Minnesota, where the climate reportedly was more congenial. Miller established a mercantile business in St. Cloud and, within two years, had risen to prominenc...
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Hans Wilhelmsson Ahlmann
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Hans Jakob Konrad Wilhelmsson Ahlmann was a Swedish geographer, glaciologist, and diplomat. Born in Karlsborg, Sweden, Ahlmann grew up in Stockholm. He studied with Professor Gerard De Geer at Stockholm University, and gained his doctorate in 1915 on a doctoral thesis on Sweden's Lake Ragundasjön. The same year, he became an associate professor of geography at the University of Stockholm. He was appointed Associate Professor of Geography at Uppsala University in 1920 and professor at the Stockholm University from 1929 until 1950.
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Lionel Barnett
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Lionel David Barnett CB FBA was an English orientalist. The son of a Liverpool banker, Barnett was educated at Liverpool High School, Liverpool Institute, University College, Liverpool and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a first class degree in classics and was three times a winner of a Browne medal.
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David Heinrich Müller
1846 - 1912 (66 years)
David Heinrich Müller was a Jewish Austrian orientalist. Biography He was educated in Vienna, Leipzig, Strassburg, and Berlin; became professor of Semitic philology at Vienna in 1881. Works Himjaritische Inschriften Südarabische Studien Die Burgen und Schlösser Südarabiens Sabäische Denkmäler Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Arabien Die altsemitischen Inschriften von Sendschirli Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Abessinien Ezechielstudien Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form Südarabische Alterthümer Die Mehri- und Soqotri-Sprache, Vol. I, II, III He published editions of:Kitab al Farq Hāmdāni, Geo...
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Marion Murdoch
1849 - 1943 (94 years)
Marion Murdoch was an American minister in Iowa. Murdoch was said to be the first woman in America to receive the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Early years and education Murdoch was born in Garnavillo, Iowa, October 9, 1849. Her father, Judge Samuel Murdoch, was the last living member of the Territorial legislature of Iowa. He had been a member of the state legislature and judge of the district court. Her mother had come from New York in 1837. Murdoch's early life was spent in outdoor pursuits, developing in her that love of nature and desire for a life of freedom for women. Of the family o...
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Niels Ludvig Westergaard
1815 - 1878 (63 years)
Niels Ludvig Westergaard was a Danish Orientalist and professor. Biography Westergaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1833, he became a student at Borgerdivskolen in Copenhagen. Westergaard studied Old Norse as well as Sanskrit and continuing his studies at the University of Bonn , and also in London, Paris and Oxford. After returning to Denmark, he published "Radices linguae sanscritae". From 1841 to 1844 he journeyed throughout India and Persia, where he conducted important investigations in Bombay and at Persepolis. In 1844 he began deciphering ancient Elamite cuneiform using the 3-way parallel text of the 6th cent.
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Tadeusz Jan Kowalski
1889 - 1948 (59 years)
Tadeusz Jan Kowalski was a Polish orientalist, expert on Middle East Muslim culture and languages. He was a professor at Jagiellonian University, and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Published works
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Ernst Kühnel
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Ernst Kühnel was a German art historian who specialized in Islamic art. He was notable for his research on the connection between Islamic and Coptic art, particularly in textiles. Kühnel served as director of the Museum of Islamic Art from 1931 to 1951, and was a professor at the University of Berlin from 1935 to 1954. He was also a consultant for the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and president of Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft .
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Étienne Balazs
1905 - 1963 (58 years)
Étienne Balazs was a Hungarian-born French sinologist. Major works Le traité économique du "Soueichou", . Google Books.Le traité juridique du "Soueichou", 1954.Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy; Variations on a Theme. . Translated by H. M. Wright. Edited by Arthur F. Wright. Google Books. Reprints a selection from Balazs' major articles:Pt I INSTITUTIONS: • Significant Aspects of Chinese Society • China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society • Chinese Feudalism • The birth of capitalism in China • Fairs in China • Chinese Towns • Marco Polo in the Capital of China • ...
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Walter Ernest Clark
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Walter Ernest Clark was president of the University of Nevada 1918–1938. Clark was born in Defiance, Ohio to Lemen Talor and Marth Clark, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1896. From 1893 to 1897 he was a sergeant in the signal corps of Company K, Fourth Ohio National Guard. And from 1896 to 1899 Clark was instructor in mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan. In 1903 Clark was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. From 1901 to 1907 he was instructor in economics and politics at the College of the City of New York. Between 1903 and 1908 he was a resident and settl...
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William Carey Crane
1816 - 1885 (69 years)
William Carey Crane was an American Baptist minister, an educator, and the president of Baylor University from 1864 to 1885. Early life and education William Carey Crane was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 17, 1816. He attended the Mount Pleasant Classical Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Virginia Baptist Seminary, now known as Richmond College. In 1883, he attended the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute and Madison, now known as Colgate University. In 1836, he received a B.A. from Columbian College, now known as George Washington University, followed by an M.A. in 1839.
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William J. Scott
1926 - 1986 (60 years)
William J. Scott was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as Treasurer of Illinois from 1963 until 1967 and as Illinois Attorney General from 1969 until his disqualification from office following his conviction of a tax crime.
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Michel Mouskhely
1903 - 1964 (61 years)
Michel Mouskhely born Mikheil Muskhelishvili was a Georgian-French political scientist and jurist. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, then part of Russian Empire, Muskheli emigrated to Western Europe following the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921. He then studied at Göttingen, Munich, Lyons, and Paris. After his brief work for the University of Paris , he lectured at the University of Cairo from 1935 to 1948. In 1948, he became a Professor of International Law and of Political and Economic Sciences at the University of Strasbourg. Mouskhely organized and directed a center for Soviet studies at t...
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Jakob Jonas Björnståhl
1731 - 1779 (48 years)
Jakob Jonas Björnståhl , Swedish orientalist and Greek philologist from the Lund University. He was a manuscript collector . External links Björnståhl, Jakob Jonas Nordisk familjebok
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Adolf Neubauer
1832 - 1907 (75 years)
Adolf Neubauer was at the Bodleian Library and reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University. Biography He was born in Bittse , Upper Hungary . The Kingdom of Hungary was then part of the Austrian Empire. He received a thorough education in rabbinical literature.
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Thomas E. Mann
#4467
Michael Walsh
1810 - 1859 (49 years)
Michael Walsh was a United States representative from New York. Early life Born in Youghal, Cork, Ireland to Protestant parents, he completed preparatory studies, was graduated from Trinity College, Dublin and emigrated to the United States, settling in Baltimore, Maryland. He learned the lithographic printing trade, and moved to New York City. While in New York City, Walsh also founded the anti-Catholic Bowery Boys gang.
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Józef Kowalewski
1800 - 1878 (78 years)
Józef Kowalewski was a Polish orientalist. Founder of the Philomatic Association, in 1824 convicted by the Russian authorities for pro-independence Polish activity and exiled into Russia. Allowed to study at the Kazan University, he studied Mongolia, particularly Mongolian language and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1833 he founded the Department of Mongolian Studies at Kazan University - the first in Europe. In the years 1844-1849 he published his major work - a Mongolian - Russian - French dictionary. In 1862 he was allowed to return to Poland ; he refused to support the January Uprising and did not...
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Alfred Buntru
1887 - 1974 (87 years)
Alfred Buntru was a German academic and member of the Nazi Party. Born in Sankt Blasien in the Waldshut district of the Grand Duchy of Baden, he was educated at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Buntru later became a professor of hydraulic engineering and a deputy Reichsdozentenführer . He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel in 1938, attaining the SS rank of Oberführer. As part of his SS membership, he was involved in the Spitzeldienste, the network of political informants set up by the Nazi Party's intelligence organization, the Sicherheitsdienst . Buntru survived the S...
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Nathaniel Schmidt
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Nathaniel Schmidt of Ithaca, New York, was a Swedish-American Baptist minister, Christian Hebraist, orientalist, professor, theologian, and progressive Democrat. Background Schmidt was born at Hudiksvall Municipality, in the historical province of Hälsingland, Gävleborg County, Sweden. His parents were Lars Peter Anderson and Fredericka Wilhelmina Schmidt. Taking his mother's name when he became an adult, Schmidt married Miss Ellen Alfvén, of Stockholm, Sweden on September 26, 1887. She was the daughter of Anders Alfvén and Charlotta Christina Axelson Puke. Their daughter, Dagmar A. Schmidt, Cornell Class of 1918, , lived in Rockville Center, New York, at the time of the Schmidt's death .
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Martijn Theodoor Houtsma
1851 - 1943 (92 years)
Martijn Theodoor Houtsma , often referred to as M. Th. Houtsma, was a Dutch orientalist and professor at the University of Utrecht. He was a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a leading expert on the history of the Seljuks. He remains best known for his work as editor of the first edition of the standard encyclopedic reference work on Islam, the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
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August Dillmann
1823 - 1894 (71 years)
Christian Friedrich August Dillmann was a German orientalist and biblical scholar. Life The son of a Württemberg schoolmaster, he was born at Illingen. He was educated at the University of Tübingen, where he became a pupil and friend of Heinrich Ewald, and studied under Ferdinand Christian Baur, though he did not join the new Tübingen school. For a short time he worked as pastor at Sersheim, near his native place, but he soon came to feel that his studies demanded his whole time.
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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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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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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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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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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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Daniel Lerner
1917 - 1980 (63 years)
Daniel Lerner was an American scholar and writer known for his studies on modernization theory. Lerner's study of Balgat Turkey played a critical role in shaping American ideas about the use of mass media and US cultural products to promote economic and social development in post-colonial nations. In 1958, he wrote the seminal book The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Scholars have argued that the research project that formed the basis of the book emerged from intelligence requirements in the US government, and was a result of the contract between the Office of Int...
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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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