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
Carl Brockelmann
1868 - 1956 (88 years)
Carl Brockelmann German Semiticist, was the foremost orientalist of his generation. He was a professor at the universities in Breslau, Berlin and, from 1903, Königsberg. He is best known for his multi-volume Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur which included all writers in Arabic to 1937, and remains the fundamental reference volume for all Arabic literature, apart from the Christian Arabic texts .
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Julije Makanec
1904 - 1945 (41 years)
Julije Makanec was a Croatian politician, teacher, philosopher and writer. During the World War II in Yugoslavia, he was the Minister of Education of the Independent State of Croatia and a high-ranking member of the Ustashas.
Go to Profile#4553
William Richards Castle Jr.
1878 - 1963 (85 years)
William Richards Castle Jr. was an American educator and diplomat. He rose rapidly to the highest levels of the United States Department of State and took a strong interest in Pacific issues, in part because of his family's background in Hawaii.
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Johann Gildemeister
1812 - 1890 (78 years)
Johann Gildemeister was a German Orientalist born in Kröpelin. Biography He studied Oriental languages and theology at the Universities of Göttingen and Bonn and graduated from the latter institution in 1838. Following a study trip to Leiden and Paris, he became a lecturer at Bonn, where he taught classes in Sanskrit, Oriental languages and literature as well as Old Testament exegesis. Later on he served as an associate professor of Oriental languages . In 1845 he relocated to the University of Marburg as a professor of theology and Oriental literature. In 1859 he returned to Bonn as a profes...
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William Ballantyne Hodgson
1815 - 1880 (65 years)
William Ballantyne Hodgson was a Scottish educational reformer and political economist. Life The son of William Hodgson, a printer, he was born in Edinburgh on 6 October 1815. In 1820 the family were living at 54 Bristo Street in the city. In 1823 he entered the Edinburgh High School, and, after working for a short time in a lawyer's office, matriculated in November 1829, when just turned 14, at the University of Edinburgh. He took no degree as a student.
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Richard Butler
1743 - 1791 (48 years)
Richard Butler was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War who was later killed while he was fighting Native Americans in the United States in a battle that is known as St. Clair's Defeat.
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Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu
1900 - 1954 (54 years)
Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at the University of Bucharest. Pătrășcanu rose to a government position before the end of World War II and, after having disagreed with Stalinist tenets on several occasions, eventually came into conflict with the Romanian Communist government of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. He became a political prisoner and was ultimately executed. Fourteen years after Pătrășcanu's death, Romania's new...
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Ignác Martinovics
1755 - 1795 (40 years)
Ignác Martinovics was a Hungarian scholar, chemist, philosopher, writer, secret agent, Freemason and a leader of the Hungarian Jacobin movement. He was condemned to death for high treason and beheaded on 20 May 1795, along with count Jakab Sigray, Ferenc Szentmarjay, József Hajnóczy and others. As the founder of the Hungarian Jacobin Clubss, he was considered an idealistic forerunner of great thought by some, and an unscrupulous adventurer by others.
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Stanisław Srokowski
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Stanisław Józef Srokowski was a Polish geographer and diplomat. Srokowski joined the Polish diplomatic service in 1920 and became the Polish Consul at Odessa and Königsberg. In 1923-1924 he was the Voivode of the Wołyń Voivodeship and became the Director of the Polish Baltic Institute at Toruń in 1926.
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Johan David Åkerblad
1763 - 1819 (56 years)
Johan David Åkerblad was a Swedish diplomat and orientalist. Career In 1778 he began his studies of classical and oriental languages at the University of Uppsala. In 1782 he defended his graduate thesis before Professor Eric Michael Fant. From 1783, he improved his language skills at the Swedish royal chancery in Constantinople.
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Mikheil Tsereteli
1878 - 1965 (87 years)
Prince Mikheil "Mikhako" G. Tsereteli also known as Michael von Zereteli was a Georgian prince, historian, philologist, sociologist and public benefactor. He was born in 1878, in a village Tskhrukveti . His father was Prince Giorgi Tsereteli. His brother Vasil Tsereteli was a famous Georgian physician, writer and public benefactor.
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Mamai
Mamai was a powerful Mongol military commander of the Golden Horde. Contrary to popular misconception, he was not a khan , but was a kingmaker for several khans, and dominated parts or all of the Golden Horde for a period of almost two decades in the 1360s and 1370s. Although he was unable to stabilize central authority during the war of succession known as the Great Troubles, Mamai remained a remarkable and persistent leader for decades, while others came and went in rapid succession. His defeat in the Battle of Kulikovo marked the beginning of the decline of the Horde, as well as his own ra...
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Algernon Sidney
1623 - 1683 (60 years)
Algernon Sidney or Sydney was an English politician, republican political theorist and colonel. A member of the middle part of the Long Parliament and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, Discourses Concerning Government, which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot—hero and martyr".
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Esther Chapa
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Esther Chapa Tijerina was a Mexican medical surgeon, educator, writer, feminist, suffragist, trade unionist, and women's and children's rights activist. In her medical practice she specialized in clinical analysis and microbiology, and she taught microbiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
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Annah May Soule
1859 - 1905 (46 years)
Annah May Soule was a professor of American history and political economy at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Early life Annah May Soule was born in Port Huron, Michigan, and raised in Jackson, Michigan, the daughter of Major Harrison Soule and Mary E. Parker Soule. She had an older sister, Mary Eva Soule Clark . Harrison Soule was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War when Annah and her sister were small. After the war, he served as treasurer at the University of Michigan.
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Georg August Wallin
1811 - 1852 (41 years)
Georg August Wallin was a Finnish orientalist, explorer and professor remembered for his journeys in the Middle East during the 1840s. The Finnish translators of Wallin's letters state that Wallin has become a kind of "patron saint of Finnish oriental research". Among other things, the Finnish Oriental Society holds its annual meeting on his birthday. Internationally, it has been estimated that Wallin was one of the most capable Europeans to set foot in Arabia. His qualifications have been compared to U. J. Seetzen and J. L. Burckhardt, because he has been characterized as an Arabian scholar ...
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Walter Simon
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Ernest Julius Walter Simon, was a German sinologist and librarian. He was born in Berlin and lived there, being educated at the University of Berlin, until he fled the Nazis to London in 1934, where he spent all the rest of his life except for brief periods as a visiting professor in various countries, teaching Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 1947 to 1960. He made great contributions to historical Chinese phonology and Sino-Tibetan linguistics. As a sinologist, he had a Chinese name, Ximen Huade .
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Ralph C. Guzmán
1924 - 1985 (61 years)
Ralph C. Guzmán served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Latin America in the Carter Administration and was one of the nation's leading Latino educators. He co-founded the Oakes College at the University of California at Santa Cruz and later was appointed Provost at UCSC's Merrill College. Guzmán played an influential role in the early years of the Chicano Movement, and was a key figure in the Mexican-American community nationwide. During his time in the State Department, he was responsible for formulating and implementing much of the nation's policy in Central and South America.
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David Stuart
1753 - 1814 (61 years)
David Stuart was a Virginia physician, politician, and correspondent of George Washington. When Washington became President of the United States, he made Stuart one of three commissioners appointed to design a new United States capital city.
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James Gunn
1753 - 1801 (48 years)
#4571
Albert Hotopp
1886 - 1942 (56 years)
Albert Hotopp was a German political activist and writer. As an active member of the Communist Party of Germany he fell foul of the Nazi Germany authorities during the in 1933. In 1934 he emigrated to the Soviet Union where he disappeared, probably dying in a labour camp, in the second half of 1942.
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Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad
648 - 686 (38 years)
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad was the Umayyad governor of Basra, Kufa and Khurasan during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I , and the leading general of the Umayyad army under caliphs Marwan I and Abd al-Malik .
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V. O. Key Jr.
1908 - 1963 (55 years)
Valdimer Orlando Key Jr. was an American political scientist known for his empirical study of American elections and voting behavior. He taught at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard. Early life and education V. O. Key was born in Austin, Texas.
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Johann David Michaelis
1717 - 1791 (74 years)
Johann David Michaelis was a German biblical scholar and teacher. He was member of a family that was committed to solid discipline in Hebrew and the cognate languages, which distinguished the University of Halle in the period of Pietism. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
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Friedrich Rückert
1788 - 1866 (78 years)
Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages. Biography Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was born 16 May 1788 in Schweinfurt and was the eldest son of a lawyer, Johann Adam Rückert, and his wife, Maria Barbara . He was educated at the local Gymnasium and at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg. From 1816 to 1817, he worked on the editorial staff of the Morgenblatt at Stuttgart. Nearly the whole of the year 1818 he spent in Rome, and afterwards he lived for several years at Coburg , where he married Luise Wiethaus-Fischer in 1821.
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Richard Wilhelm
1873 - 1930 (57 years)
Richard Wilhelm was a German sinologist, theologian and missionary. He lived in China for 25 years, became fluent in spoken and written Chinese, and grew to love and admire the Chinese people. He is best remembered for his translations of philosophical works from Chinese into German that in turn have been translated into other major languages of the world, including English. His translation of the I Ching is still regarded as one of the finest, as is his translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower; both were provided with introductions by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who was a persona...
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Otto Franke
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Otto Franke was a German diplomat, sinologist, and historian. He was the preeminent German sinologist of his time, called the "Nestor of German Sinology" by Hellmut Wilhelm. He served as a diplomat at the German embassy to the Qing empire for 13 years, before becoming the inaugural Sinology Chair at the University of Hamburg and then at the University of Berlin. His five-volume Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches , though unfinished because of World War II, remains the standard history of China in Germany decades after its publication. His son Wolfgang Franke was also a well-known sinologist ...
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Frederic Austin Ogg
1878 - 1951 (73 years)
Frederic Austin Ogg was an American political scientist. Biography Ogg was born at Solsberry, Indiana, in 1878. He graduated from DePauw University and took post graduate courses at Indiana and Harvard universities. After several years spent in teaching in high schools and colleges, he became associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in 1914, and full professor in 1917. He was a member of many economic and historical societies.
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Harry Pollitt
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Harry Pollitt was a British communist who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain from July 1929 to September 1939 and again from 1941 until his death in 1960. Pollitt spent most of his life advocating communism. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, Pollitt was an adherent particularly of Joseph Stalin even after Stalin's death and disavowal by Nikita Khrushchev. Pollitt's acts included opposition to the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and Polish–Soviet War, support for the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, both support and opposition...
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David R. Mayhew
#4581
Martin Haug
1827 - 1876 (49 years)
Martin Haug was a German orientalist. Biography Haug was born at Ostdorf , Württemberg. He became a pupil in the gymnasium at Stuttgart at a comparatively late age, and in 1848 he entered the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he studied oriental languages, especially Sanskrit. He afterwards attended lectures at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, and in 1854 settled as Privatdozent at the University of Bonn. In 1856 he moved to the University of Heidelberg, where he assisted Bunsen in his literary undertakings.
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Gustaf Dalman
1855 - 1941 (86 years)
Gustaf Hermann Dalman was a German Lutheran theologian and orientalist. He did extensive field work in Palestine before the First World War, collecting inscriptions, poetry, and proverbs. He also collected physical articles illustrative of the life of the indigenous farmers and herders of the country, including rock and plant samples, house and farm tools, small archaeological finds, and ceramics. He pioneered the study of biblical and early post-biblical Aramaic, publishing an authoritative grammar and dictionary , as well as other works. His collection of 15,000 historic photographs and 5,...
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Spark Matsunaga
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Spark Masayuki Matsunaga was an American politician and attorney who served as United States Senator for Hawaii from 1977 until his death in 1990. Matsunaga also represented Hawaii in the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the Hawaii territorial house of representatives. A member of the Democratic Party, Matsunaga introduced legislation that led to the creation of the United States Institute of Peace and to reparations to Japanese-American World War II detainees.
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Arthur Twining Hadley
1856 - 1930 (74 years)
Arthur Twining Hadley was an American economist who served as President of Yale University from 1899 to 1921. Biography Hadley was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of James Hadley, Professor of Greek at Yale 1851–1872, and his wife, née Anne Loring Morris. He graduated from Yale College in 1876, where he was a member of DKE and Skull and Bones, and received prizes in English, classics and astronomy. He then studied political science at Yale , and at the University of Berlin under Adolph Wagner. He was a tutor at Yale in 1879–1883, instructor in political science in 1883–1886, professo...
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Wendy Wood
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Wendy Wood, born Gwendoline Emily Meacham, was a campaigner for Scottish independence. An eccentric and colourful figure, she was also a gifted artist, sculptor and writer, and her theatrical political activism often created controversy.
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Mohan Sinha Mehta
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Mohan Singh Mehta was founder of Vidya Bhavan group of institutions and Seva Mandir in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Life Mohan Singh Mehta was born in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, on 20 April 1895 to Jeewan Singh Mehta. His wife’s name was Hulas Kumari Mehta and he had one son, Jagat Singh Mehta, who became Foreign Secretary in the Government of India.
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Homer H. Dubs
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Homer Hasenpflug Dubs was an American sinologist and polymath. Though best known for his translation of sections of Ban Gu's Book of Han, he published on a wide range of topics in ancient Chinese history, astronomy and philosophy. Raised in China as the son of missionaries, he returned to the United States and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy . He taught at University of Minnesota and Marshall College before undertaking the Han shu translation project at the behest of the American Council of Learned Societies. Subsequently, Dubs taught at Duke University, Columbia University and Hartford Seminary.
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Thomas Lynch
1700 - 1684 (-16 years)
Sir Thomas Lynch was the English governor of Jamaica on three separate occasions in the 17th century . He was also chief justice of Jamaica for a time. Life He was the son of Theophilus Lynch Esq of Rixton Hall in Lancashire , fourth son of William Lynch Esq of Cranbrook in Kent, and of his wife Judith, eldest daughter of Royal chaplain and Bishop of London John Aylmer. He served under Robert Venables in the army which went out to Jamaica in 1655. In January 1661, after a period back in England he was appointed provost-marshal of the island for life.
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Karl August Wittfogel
1896 - 1988 (92 years)
Karl August Wittfogel was a German-American playwright, historian, and sinologist. He was originally a Marxist and an active member of the Communist Party of Germany, but after the Second World War, he was an equally fierce anticommunist.
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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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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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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
#4594
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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Gerard Clauson
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Sir Gerard Leslie Makins Clauson was an English civil servant, businessman, and Orientalist best known for his studies of the Turkic languages. The eldest son of Major Sir John Eugene Clauson, Gerard Clauson attended Eton College, where he was Captain of School, and where, at age 15 or 16, he published a critical edition of a short Pali text, "A New Kammavācā" in the Journal of the Pali Text Society. In 1906, when his father was named Chief Secretary for Cyprus, he taught himself Turkish to complement his school Greek. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in classics, receiving his d...
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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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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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Sun Ce
175 - 200 (25 years)
Sun Ce , courtesy name Bofu, was a Chinese military general, politician, and warlord who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty of China. He was the eldest child of Sun Jian, who was killed during the Battle of Xiangyang when Sun Ce was only 16. Sun Ce then broke away from his father's overlord, Yuan Shu, and headed to the Jiangdong region in southern China to establish his own power base there. With the help of several people, such as Zhang Zhao and Zhou Yu, Sun Ce managed to lay down the foundation of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period.
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Martha Coffin Wright
1806 - 1875 (69 years)
Martha Coffin Wright was an American feminist, abolitionist, and signatory of the Declaration of Sentiments who was a close friend and supporter of Harriet Tubman. Early life Martha Coffin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on Christmas Day 1806, the youngest child of Anna Folger and Thomas Coffin, a merchant and former Nantucket ship captain. Martha was the youngest of eight children. Some of her well-known siblings were Sarah, Lucretia, Eliza, Mary, and Thomas. All of her siblings were born in Nantucket. When she was two years old, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Martha was educated at Quaker schools.
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Albert VII, Archduke of Austria
1559 - 1621 (62 years)
Albert VII was the ruling Archduke of Austria for a few months in 1619 and, jointly with his wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia, sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands between 1598 and 1621. Prior to this, he had been a cardinal, Archbishop of Toledo, viceroy of Portugal and Governor General of the Habsburg Netherlands. He succeeded his brother Matthias as reigning archduke of Lower and Upper Austria, but abdicated in favor of Ferdinand II the same year, making it the shortest reign in Austrian history.
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