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 Psychology,
#5001
June Downey
1875 - 1932 (57 years)
June Etta Downey was an American psychologist who studied personality and handwriting. Downey was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, where she received her degree in Greek and Latin from the University of Wyoming. Throughout her life Downey wrote seven books and over seventy articles. Included in this work, Downey developed the Individual Will-Temperament Test, which was one of the first tests to evaluate character traits separately from intellectual capacity and the first to use psychographic methods for interpretation.
Go to Profile#5002
Thomas Verner Moore
1877 - 1969 (92 years)
Dom Thomas Verner Moore was an American psychologist, psychiatrist and monk. He was the "first psychiatric researcher to create symptom rating scales and use factor analysis to deconstruct psychosis." He was also among the first Catholic priests to conduct influential scientific work in psychology, and he developed a psychiatric paradigm based on Catholic teaching, as well as on the philosophical perspective of Thomism.
Go to Profile#5003
Richard W. Foltin
#5004
Theodora Mead Abel
1899 - 1998 (99 years)
Theodora Mead Abel was an American clinical psychologist and educator, who used innovative ideas by combining sociology and psychology. She was a pioneer in cross-cultural psychology. Early life and education Theodora was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 9, 1899, and raised in New York City.
Go to Profile#5005
Carroll C. Pratt
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Carroll C. Pratt was an American psychologist and musicologist. Much of his work centered on the interplay of psychology, music and emotion. He was involved with the experimental psychology and Gestalt psychology movements.
Go to Profile#5006
Thelma Alper
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Thelma Gorfinkle Alper was an American clinical psychologist, known for creating a study measure for women's achievement motivation. She was also the first Jewish woman to receive a Ph.D from Harvard, having careers at multiple institutions as she conducted studies primarily on memory of tasks, with an interest in its relation to women.
Go to Profile#5007
Emma Sophia Baker
1856 - 1943 (87 years)
Emma Sophia Baker was a Canadian psychologist. In 1903, she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, it is important to know that psychology was considered a subdiscipline of philosophy at the time. Baker was also one of the first two women to earn a Ph.D. from that institution, the other was chemist Clara Benson.
Go to Profile#5008
Mildred B. Mitchell
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Mildred Bessie Mitchell was a psychologist who graduated from Yale University in 1931. She was the first clinical psychology examiner for the US Astronaut Program helping NASA select men for Project Mercury in 1959.
Go to Profile#5009
Ulf Lundberg
#5010
Claudia A. Baier
#5011
Therese Benedek
1892 - 1977 (85 years)
Therese Benedek was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst, researcher, and educator. Active in Germany and the United States between the years 1921 and 1977, she was regarded for her work on psychosomatic medicine, women's psychosexual development, sexual dysfunction, and family relationships. She was a faculty and staff member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1936 to 1969.
Go to Profile#5012
Edna Frances Heidbreder
1890 - 1985 (95 years)
Edna Frances Heidbreder was an American philosopher and psychologist who explored the study of history, and made contributions toward the field of study in psychometrics, systematic psychology, and concept formation. She expressed interest in cognition and systematic psychology, and the experimentation on personality traits and its characteristics. She also did work testing the normal inferiority complex and studied systemic problems in her later work.
Go to Profile#5013
Alina Surmacka Szczesniak
#5014
Eugénie Ginsberg
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Eugénie Ginsberg or Eugénie Ginsberg-Blaustein was a Polish philosopher and psychologist noted for her works on descriptive psychology and her analysis of existential dependence, independence, and related concepts as applied in the area of psychology.
Go to Profile#5015
Eugene Carlisle LeBel
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Reverend Eugene Carlisle LeBel, C.S.B., C.D., LL.D, was a Canadian academic and religious leader, who spent much of his life in Catholic schools, both studying and teaching. He is best known for his efforts to introduce academic changes to Assumption College, leading it to become Assumption University of Windsor and later the non-denominational University of Windsor.
Go to Profile#5016
John Alexander McGeoch
1897 - 1942 (45 years)
John Alexander McGeoch was an American psychologist and educator. Considered a modern functionalist, his interests focused on human learning and memory. He was the chair of the department of psychology at the University of Missouri from 1930 to 1935, Wesleyan University from 1935 to 1939, and University of Iowa from 1939 to 1942. He was also an editor for the Psychological Bulletin from 1931–1942.
Go to Profile#5017
Albert William Wolters
1893 - 1961 (68 years)
Albert William Phillip Wolters was a British psychologist. History Wolters spent most of his academic career at the University of Reading. He was initially appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Education in 1908. Here he taught courses in Philosophy and Social Institutions. In 1910 he began teaching psychology and he convinced the university authorities to provide him with facilities to establish a psychological laboratory and subsequently a department of psychology. He was made Professor of Psychology and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the university.
Go to Profile#5018
Robert John Pearce Carey
#5019
Willy Lens
#5020
Margaret K. Knight
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Margaret Kennedy Knight , , was a psychologist and humanist. Biography Born in Hertfordshire, England, Knight went to Girton College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1926. In 1948 she gained a master's degree.
Go to Profile#5021
Traian Herseni
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Traian Herseni was a Romanian social scientist, journalist, and political figure. First noted as a favorite disciple of Dimitrie Gusti, he helped establish the Romanian school of rural sociology in the 1920s and early '30s, and took part in interdisciplinary study groups and field trips. A prolific essayist and researcher, he studied isolated human groups across the country, trying to define relations between sociology, ethnography, and cultural anthropology, with an underlying interest in sociological epistemology. He was particularly interested in the peasant cultures and pastoral society of the Făgăraș Mountains.
Go to Profile#5022
Sidney Clarence Garrison
1885 - 1945 (60 years)
Sidney Clarence Garrison was an American educator and psychologist. He served as the second President of Peabody College from 1938 to 1945. He was the author of several books about education. Early life Sidney Clarence Garrison was born on October 17, 1885, in Lincolnton, North Carolina. His father was Rufus J. Garrison and his mother, Susie Elizabeth Mooney. He had a brother, Karl C. Garrison, who became a psychologist.
Go to Profile#5023
Roland Clark Davis
1902 - 1961 (59 years)
Roland Clark Davis was an American psychologist recognized for his innovation in instrumentation and measurement of electrophysiological phenomena. Davis contributed to the measurement of electrodermal activity, gastric reflexes, and muscle action potentials. Davis published over 70 articles on psychophysiology and related topics across a 30-year career and mentored many graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington from 1931 through 1961.
Go to Profile#5024
Joseph Peterson
1878 - 1935 (57 years)
Joseph Peterson was an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . Early life Joseph Peterson was born on September 8, 1878, in Huntsville, Utah. His parents, Hans Jordon Peterson and Inger Mary Christensen, were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had immigrants from Denmark to the United States.
Go to Profile#5025
Kate Brousseau
1862 - 1938 (76 years)
Kate Brousseau was an American professor and researcher on mental hygiene, chair of the Psychology Department at Mills College. Early life Kate Brousseau was born on April 24, 1862, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, daughter of Judge Julius Brousseau , born in New York by French Canadian parents, and Caroline Yakeley , of English and German heritage. Brousseau was the older of four siblings.
Go to Profile#5026
Laurance F. Shaffer
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Laurance Frederic Shaffer was an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . Biography Shaffer was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces and he opened the first pilot selection examining unit during World War II. He was a department chair at Columbia University and he served as editor of the Journal of Consulting Psychology. Shaffer promoted the concept of mental hygiene, which combined the notions of health promotion and psychological adjustment. He was the APA president in 1953.
Go to Profile#5027
Karl Holzinger
1892 - 1954 (62 years)
Karl John Holzinger was an American educational psychologist known for his work in psychometrics. Education Holzinger received his A.B. and A.M. degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1915 and 1917, respectively. He then attended the University of Chicago, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1922. He subsequently studied at University College London with both Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman. Holzinger became interested in intelligence testing through his work with Spearman.
Go to Profile#5028
J. Macbride Sterrett
1847 - 1923 (76 years)
J. Macbride Sterrett was an American philosopher. Early life J. Macbride Sterrett was born in 1847. Career Mcbride was a philosopher. His major works were on Christian apologetics, Hegel, and the British Empiricists. He served as the second President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 1909.
Go to Profile#5029
Nicholas Humphrey
#5030
Friedrich Oltmanns
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Friedrich Oltmanns was a German biologist phycologist. In 1884 he received his doctorate at the University of Strasbourg, afterwards working as an assistant at the University of Rostock . In 1893, he was appointed an associate professor of botany at the University of Freiburg, where in 1902 he became a full professor and director of the botanical garden. With Max Verworn, Hermann Theodor Simon, Eugen Korschelt and others, he was co-editor of the 10-volume Handwörterbuch der Naturwissenschaften.
Go to Profile#5031
Robert Ludwig Kahn
1923 - 1970 (47 years)
Robert Ludwig Kahn was a German-American scholar of German studies and poet. He grew up in Nuremberg and Leipzig as the son of Jewish parents who sent him abroad to England on a Kindertransport in 1939. After the end of World War II, Kahn learned his parents had perished in the Holocaust, which was a traumatic experience that caused him to lose his faith. He never recovered from survivor guilt.
Go to Profile#5032
Johann Maass
1766 - 1823 (57 years)
Johann Gebhard Ehrenreich Maass was a German psychologist. Maass was born in 1766 in Krottendorf near Halberstadt. In 1791 he became an extraordinary professor of philosophy, and in 1798 a full professor. Among his writings on psychology are Versuche: Über die Einbildungskraft , Über die Leidenschaften , and Über die Gefühle und Affekte . He died in Halle in 1823.
Go to Profile#5033
Thaddeus L. Bolton
1865 - 1948 (83 years)
Thaddeus Lincoln Bolton was an American psychologist who was head of the Department of Psychology at Temple University for twenty years. In February 1947, about a year before his death, he set aside $61,000 in a trust fund to establish the Thaddeus L. Bolton Professorship at Temple.
Go to Profile#5034
Thomas Hunter
1876 - 1953 (77 years)
Sir Thomas Alexander Hunter was a New Zealand psychologist, university professor and administrator. He was vice chancellor of the University of New Zealand from 1929 to 1947, chairman of Massey Agricultural College from 1936 to 1938, and principal of Victoria University College from 1938 to 1951. At the age of seventy-five, Hunter retired after serving, for almost fifty years, at Victoria University College.
Go to Profile#5035
Grace Manson
1893 - 1967 (74 years)
Grace Eveyln Manson was an American psychologist known for her work as an occupational psychologist. Early life and education Manson was born on July 15, 1893, in Baltimore, Maryland. Educated at Goucher College, where she received her AB in 1915, and Columbia University, where she received her AM in 1919, she went on to earn a Ph.D. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1923.
Go to Profile#5036
Margaret Verrall
1857 - 1916 (59 years)
Margaret de Gaudrion Verrall was a classical scholar and lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge. Much of her life and research was concerned with the study of parapsychology, mainly in order to examine how psychic abilities might demonstrate the abilities, breadth and power of the human mind. She began to exhibit and develop psychic abilities herself around 1901, and became both a recipient and analyst of many cross-correspondences produced by psychics, most notably the Palm Sunday scripts.
Go to Profile#5037
Naomi Norsworthy
1877 - 1916 (39 years)
Naomi Norsworthy was an American psychologist who served as the first female faculty member at Columbia University Teacher's College. Her parents had emigrated from England two years before her birth. Norsworthy was the eldest of four children with two younger brothers and a third who died soon after birth. She was educated in public school in Rutherford, New Jersey then enrolled in New Jersey State Normal School at the age of 15, and was among the youngest students there; she graduated from the school in three years.
Go to Profile#5038
John S. Hougham
1821 - 1894 (73 years)
John Scherer Hougham , was Purdue University’s first appointed professor, first acting President after Purdue's first President Richard Dale Owen resigned on March 1, 1874, and later an official acting President between the administrations of Abraham C. Shortridge and Emerson E. White.
Go to Profile#5039
Heinrich Racker
1910 - 1960 (50 years)
Heinrich Racker was a Polish-Argentine psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish origin. Escaping Nazism, he fled to Buenos Aires in 1939. Already a doctor in musicology and philosophy, he became a psychoanalyst, first under the direction of Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, and later working with Ángel Garma and Marie Langer in Argentina. His most important work is a study of the psychoanalytic technique known as transference and countertransference, which was published for the first time in 1968.
Go to Profile#5040
Frieda Goldman-Eisler
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
Frieda Goldman-Eisler was a psychologist and pioneer in the field of psycholinguistics. She is known for her research on speech disfluencies; a volume dedicated in her honor calls her "the modern pioneer of the science of pausology".
Go to Profile#5041
Edward Richard Shaw
1855 - 1903 (48 years)
Edward Richard Shaw was a Professor and Dean, New York University, and author of numerous books, primarily children's schoolbooks. Shaw was born in 1855 at Bellport, New York . His undergraduate work was at Lafayette College, and he received his Ph.D. from New York University. After serving as Principal at Sayville, New York; Greenport, Suffolk County, New York; and Yonkers High School, he became Professor of Pedagogy in the New York University. By the time of his death, he was Dean.
Go to Profile#5042
Morris Viteles
1898 - 1996 (98 years)
Morris Simon Viteles was an influential researcher and writer in the field of industrial and organizational psychology. His book Industrial Psychology, published in 1932, was the first comprehensive modern textbook in the field. His writings were so influential that he was often regarded as the founder of the field, although he disavowed that claim.
Go to Profile#5043
Ingebrikt Grose
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Ingebrikt Fredrick Grose or Ingebricks F. Grose was an author, college professor and founding president of Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Background Inglebrikt was the first child of Johan and Ingeborg Grose. His father, Johan had arrived in the United States during 1854 from Stetten, then a part of Prussia. His mother, Ingeborg emigrated to the United States from the western Norway during the same year. His parents were married in Wisconsin in 1860 and moved to Kenyon, Minnesota, where Grose was born in 1862. Grose attended primary school in Kenyon, after which he traveled to St.
Go to Profile#5044
Hilde Himmelweit
1918 - 1989 (71 years)
Hildegard Therese Himmelweit was a German social psychologist who had a major influence on the development of the discipline in Britain. Biography Hilde was born in Berlin in 1918. Her father, Dr Siegfried Litthauer, was a chemist and industrialist. She went to Newnham College, Cambridge . She married Freddy Himmelweit. She received her PhD under Hans Eysenck at the Institute of Psychiatry.
Go to Profile#5045
Marion A. Wenger
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
Marion Augustus "Gus" Wenger was an American psychologist who specialized in psychophysiology. He was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. At an early age he was nicknamed Gus. Wenger died at the age of 75 due to heart failure.
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Merrill Carlsmith
1936 - 1984 (48 years)
James Merrill Carlsmith was an American social psychologist perhaps best known for his collaboration with Leon Festinger and Elliot Aronson in the creation and development of cognitive dissonance theory. He also worked extensively with Mark Lepper on the subject of attribution theory. With Jonathan L. Freedman and David O. Sears he wrote the textbook, Social Psychology .
Go to Profile#5047
Isabelle Liberman
1918 - 1990 (72 years)
Isabelle Yoffe Liberman was an American psychologist, born in Latvia, who was an expert on reading disabilities, including dyslexia. Isabelle Liberman received her bachelor's degree from Vassar College and her doctorate from Yale University. She was a professor at the University of Connecticut from 1966 through 1987 and a research associate at the Haskins Laboratories.
Go to Profile#5048
Deborah L. Best
1900 - Present (126 years)
Deborah L. Best is the William L. Poteat Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Education Best earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and an MA in General Experimental Psychology at Wake Forest University, and a PhD in developmental psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#5049
Ruth Morris Bakwin
1898 - 1985 (87 years)
Ruth Morris Bakwin was a noted pediatrician and child psychologist and the first woman intern at the Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City . Bakwin and her husband, also a pediatrician, were long associated with New York University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#5050
William Stern
1871 - 1938 (67 years)
William Stern was a German psychologist and philosopher. He is known for the development of personalistic psychology, which placed emphasis on the individual by examining measurable personality traits as well as the interaction of those traits within each person to create the self.
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