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,
#4551
M. Carey Thomas
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Martha Carey Thomas was an American educator, suffragist, and linguist. She was the second president of Bryn Mawr College, a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Early life and education Thomas was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 2, 1857. She was the daughter of James Carey Thomas and Mary Thomas. She was conceived "in full daylight", because her father, a doctor, thought this would diminish the chance of his wife miscarrying.
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Thomas F. Bayard
1828 - 1898 (70 years)
Thomas Francis Bayard was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as the United States Senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Secretary of State. After four years in private life, he returned to the diplomatic arena as Ambassador to Great Britain.
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Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington
1618 - 1685 (67 years)
Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, KG, PC was an English statesman. A supporter of the Royalists during the English Civil War, he joined the royal family in exile before returning to England at the Restoration in 1660. He gained political influence over the following decade and became one of Charles II's key advisors as a member of the Cabal ministry from 1668. He was impeached in 1674. He was a leading figure in the Court faction in the Parliament of England, a grouping which would evolve into the Tories.
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Subramania Bharati
1882 - 1921 (39 years)
C. Subramania Bharathi was a Tamil writer, poet, journalist, Indian independence activist, social reformer and polyglot. He was bestowed the title "Bharathi" for his excellence in poetry. He was a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry and is considered one of the greatest Tamil literary figures of all time. He is popularly known by his mononymous title "Bharathi/ Bharathiyaar," and also by the other title "Mahakavi Bharathi" . His numerous works included fiery songs kindling patriotism during the Indian Independence movement. He fought for the emancipation of women, against child marriage, vehemently opposed the caste system, and stood for reforming society and religion.
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Hirata Atsutane
1776 - 1843 (67 years)
was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name was . He also used the names , , and . His personal name was .
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Claudia Jones
1915 - 1964 (49 years)
Claudia Vera Jones was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the United States, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and Black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. Upon arriving in the UK, she immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and would remain a member for the rest of her life. She then founded Britain's first major Black newspape...
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Duff Cooper
1890 - 1954 (64 years)
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, , known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician and diplomat who was also a military and political historian. First elected to Parliament in 1924, he lost his seat in 1929 but returned to Parliament in the 1931 Westminster St George's by-election, which was seen as a referendum on Stanley Baldwin's leadership of the Conservative Party. He later served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty. In the intense political debates of the late 1930s over appeasement, he first put his trust in the League of Nations, and later realised that war with Germany was inevitable.
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William Muir
1819 - 1905 (86 years)
Sir William Muir was a Scottish Orientalist, and colonial administrator, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Lieutenant Governor of the North-West Provinces of British India. Life He was born at Glasgow the son of William Muir , a merchant, and Helen Macfie . His older brother was John Muir, the Indologist and Sanskrit scholar. He was educated at Kilmarnock Academy, the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and Haileybury College. In 1837 he entered the Bengal civil service. Muir served as secretary to the governor of the North-West Provinces, and as a member of the Agra revenue board, and during the Mutiny he was in charge of the intelligence department there.
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Henry Highland Garnet
1815 - 1882 (67 years)
Henry Highland Garnet was an American abolitionist, minister, educator and orator. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was educated at the African Free School and other institutions, and became an advocate of militant abolitionism. He became a minister and based his drive for abolitionism in religion.
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James Wilford Garner
1871 - 1938 (67 years)
James Wilford Garner was an American professor of political science. Biography He graduated from the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1892 and studied at the University of Chicago and at Columbia University , where he was a member of the Dunning School. His dissertation, Reconstruction in Mississippi, though critical of Reconstruction, was regarded by W. E. B. Du Bois as the fairest of the works of the Dunning School.
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Malcolm H. Kerr
1931 - 1984 (53 years)
Malcolm Hooper Kerr was a university professor specializing in the Middle East and the Arab world. An American citizen, he was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, where he died. He served as president of the American University of Beirut until he was killed by gunmen in 1984.
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Thomas Wolsey
1473 - 1530 (57 years)
Thomas Wolsey was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. He also held important ecclesiastical appointments. These included the Archbishop of York—the second most important role in the English church—and that of papal legate. His appointment as a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515 gave him precedence over all other English clergy.
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Theodor Heuss
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Theodor Heuss was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His cordial nature – something of a contrast to the stern character of chancellor Konrad Adenauer – largely contributed to the stabilization of democracy in West Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder years. Before beginning his career as a politician, Heuss had been a political journalist.
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Ziauddin Barani
1285 - 1357 (72 years)
Ziauddin Barani was an Indian Muslim political thinker of the Delhi Sultanate located in present-day Northern India during Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Firuz Shah's reign. He was best known for composing the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi , a work on medieval India, which covers the period from the reign of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq to the first six years of the reign of Firoz Shah Tughluq; and the Fatwa-i-Jahandari which promoted a hierarchy among Muslim communities in the Indian subcontinent, although according to M. Athar Ali it was not based on race or even like the caste system, but taking as a model of ...
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Richard Bourke
1777 - 1855 (78 years)
General Sir Richard Bourke, KCB , was an Irish soldier, who served in the British Army and was Governor of New South Wales from 1831 to 1837. As a lifelong Whig , he encouraged the emancipation of convicts and helped bring forward the ending of penal transportation to Australia. In this, he faced strong opposition from the landlord establishment and its press. He approved a new settlement on the Yarra River, and named it Melbourne, in honour of the incumbent British prime minister, Lord Melbourne.
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A. J. Muste
1885 - 1967 (82 years)
Abraham Johannes Muste , usually cited as A. J. Muste, was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, antiwar movement, and civil rights movement.
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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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Carlos P. Romulo
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Carlos Peña Romulo Sr. was a Filipino diplomat, statesman, soldier, journalist and author. He was a reporter at the age of 16, a newspaper editor by 20, and a publisher at 32. He was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines, a general in the US Army and the Philippine Army, university president, and president of the United Nations General Assembly.
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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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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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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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Karl Loewenstein
1891 - 1973 (82 years)
Karl Loewenstein was a German lawyer and political scientist, regarded as one of the prominent figures of Constitutional law in the twentieth century. His research and investigations into the typology of the different constitutions have had some impact on the Western constitutional thought. Loewenstein is credited with establishing the theoretical foundations of militant democracy to battle anti-democratic mass movements.
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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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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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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
#4580
F. S. Northedge
1918 - 1985 (67 years)
Frederick Samuel Northedge was a British Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Early life He attended Bemrose Grammar School in Derby. Northedge then read classics at Merton College, Oxford, before moving on to study international relations at the London School of Economics.
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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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Mercer Cook
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
Will Mercer Cook , popularly known as Mercer Cook, was a diplomat and professor. He was the first American ambassador to the Gambia after it became independent, appointed in 1965 while also still serving as ambassador to Senegal. He was also the second American ambassador to Niger.
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Francis D. Wormuth
1909 - 1980 (71 years)
Francis Dunham Wormuth was an American lawyer and teacher, having been a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah.
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Alexander Nikuradse
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Alexander Nikuradse , also known by his pseudonym Al. Sanders, was a Georgian-German physicist and Nazi political scientist. Born in Samtredia, Georgia, Russian Empire, he was sent by the Georgian government to complete his studies in Berlin. Nikuradse remained in Berlin and became a German citizen after the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. Being in staunch opposition to Soviet rule in Georgia, he was actively involved in Georgian émigré activities, and had close Nazi connections. Since their common days as Soviet exiles in Munich in the early 1920s, he had been on friendly terms with Alfred Rosenberg whose views on the Caucasus were largely shaped under Nikuradse's influence.
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Dolf Sternberger
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Dolf Sternberger was a German philosopher and political scientist at the University of Heidelberg. Dolf Sternberger is known for his concept of citizenship in contemporary German political thought, and for coining the term "constitutional patriotism" in 1979, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany.
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Robert K. Carr
1908 - 1979 (71 years)
Robert Kenneth Carr was an American scholar in the field of government/political science. His main area of interest and expertise was in the field of civil liberties/civil rights, and he did the bulk of his writing while on the faculty of Dartmouth College. Carr also served as the executive secretary of President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights. He was the primary author of the committee's landmark report, "To Secure These Rights" , which spotlighted the need for more rigorous federal enforcement of civil rights. He served as president of Oberlin College, Ohio, from 1960–1970.
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Morton Grodzins
1917 - 1964 (47 years)
Morton M. Grodzins was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, as well as a dean of the school and an editor at Chicago University Press. He is known for coining the term "tipping point" in studies of white flight, such as "Metropolitan Segregation" and The Metropolitan Area as a Racial Problem . His theories related to Tipping Point were later made famous by Malcolm Gladwell and his book, "The Tipping Point." His book Americans Betrayed was the first major study criticizing the Japanese-American internment during World War II, based on his and others' work at the Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement Study at University of California, Berkeley.
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Turrell V. Wylie
1927 - 1984 (57 years)
Turrell Verl "Terry" Wylie was an American scholar, Tibetologist, sinologist and professor known as one of the 20th century's leading scholars of Tibet. He taught as a professor of Tibetan Studies at the University of Washington and served as the first chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. Wylie founded the Tibetan Studies program at the University of Washington, the first of its kind in the United States, setting a major precedent for future programs and research in the field. His system for rendering the Tibetan language in Latin script, known as Wylie transliteration, ...
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Billy Dudley
1931 - 1980 (49 years)
Billy Joseph Stanley Oritsesaninomi Dudley was a leading Nigerian political scientist, working mostly at the University of Ibadan , which he joined in 1959. Until late 1962, he was on the staff of the Extra Mural Department of UI, and from 1960 to 1962 he was based in Zaria, where he began the research that he later supplemented with research in London, England, during periods of leave in 1961, 1963, and 1965, each lasting several months. His resulting PhD was published in 1968 as Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria. He became a Professor at UI in 1971 and Head of department in 1972.
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Peter A. Boodberg
1903 - 1972 (69 years)
Peter Alexis Boodberg was a Russian-American scholar, linguist, and sinologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley for 40 years. Boodberg was influential in 20th century developments in the studies of the development of Chinese characters, Chinese philology, and Chinese historical phonology. He has been described as "one of the most original and commanding scholars" of the 20th century.
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Daniel Cosío Villegas
1898 - 1976 (78 years)
Daniel Cosío Villegas was a Mexican prominent economist, essayist, historian, and diplomat. Cosío Villegas was born in Mexico City. After studying one year in engineering and two years of philosophy, he received a B.A. in Law from the National University and took several courses in economics at Harvard, Wisconsin and Cornell. Later, he received master's degrees from the London School of Economics and the École libre de sciences politiques of Paris .
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Fedor von Bock
1880 - 1945 (65 years)
Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock was a German Generalfeldmarschall who served in the German Army during the Second World War. Bock served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in 1939, commander of Army Group B during the Invasion of France in 1940, and later as the commander of Army Group Center during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941; his final command was that of Army Group South in 1942.
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Kang Youwei
1858 - 1927 (69 years)
Kang Youwei was a prominent political thinker and reformer in China of the late Qing dynasty. His increasing closeness to and influence over the young Guangxu Emperor sparked conflict between the emperor and his adoptive mother, the regent Empress Dowager Cixi. His ideas were influential in the abortive Hundred Days' Reform. Following the coup by Cixi that ended the reform, Kang was forced to flee. He continued to advocate for a Chinese constitutional monarchy after the founding of the Republic of China.
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Michael Harrington
1928 - 1989 (61 years)
Edward Michael Harrington Jr. was an American democratic socialist. As a writer, he was best known as the author of The Other America. Harrington was also a political activist, theorist, professor of political science, and radio commentator. He was a founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and its most influential early leader.
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James Burnham
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis . Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. He later rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His book The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics.
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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.
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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.
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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" .
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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.
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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.
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