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,
#5051
Herbert Langfeld
1879 - 1958 (79 years)
Herbert Sidney Langfeld was an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . Biography Herbert Langfeld was born in Philadelphia on July 24, 1879. He grew up in Philadelphia and was initially drawn to a diplomatic career. He was working for the American Embassy in Berlin when he was attracted to psychology. He earned a PhD in 1909 at the University of Berlin. He took a faculty position at Harvard University and ultimately went to Princeton University, where he became the psychological laboratory director and later the department chair for psychology. While at Princeton he also directly influenced the ecological psychology approach of J.
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Howard Parshley
1884 - 1953 (69 years)
Howard Madison Parshley was an American zoologist, a specialist on the Heteroptera who also wrote more broadly on genetics, reproduction and human sexuality. He was responsible for translating The Second Sex into English.
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Arthur Kornhauser
1896 - 1990 (94 years)
Arthur William Kornhauser was an American industrial psychologist. He was an early researcher on topics such as labor unions and worker attitudes, and advocated a form of industrial psychology that approached problems from the workers' standpoint rather than that of management. He has been described as one of the most important early figures in organizational psychology, and is particularly remembered for his focus on worker well-being. His work was interdisciplinary, crossing the boundaries between industrial psychology and sociology and political science.
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Alvin C. Eurich
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Alvin Christian Eurich was a 20th-century American educator who is most notable for having served as the first president of the State University of New York from 1949–1951. Early life and education Eurich was born in Bay City, Michigan and pursued degrees in Psychology at North Central College and the University of Maine. He supported himself by working as a speech instructor while in Maine. He earned a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1929, where he worked as a professor and assistant dean of the College of Education from 1927 to 1936.
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Wolfgang Köhler
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Wolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology. During the Nazi regime in Germany, he protested against the dismissal of Jewish professors from universities, as well as the requirement that professors give a Nazi salute at the beginning of their classes. In 1935 he left the country for the United States, where Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania offered him a professorship. He taught with its faculty for 20 years, and did continuing research. A Review of General Psychology survey, publish...
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Harold Clyde Bingham
1888 - 1964 (76 years)
Harold Clyde Bingham was an American psychologist and primatologist. He spent his early career as a psychology professor, interrupting this to join the United States Army during World War I. He joined the faculty of Yale University in 1925 and studied under the supervision of Robert Yerkes. Yerkes, a psychology professor, had an interest in primates, and Bingham also entered this field. He led a 1929-30 expedition to the Belgian Congo to study gorillas in the wild. Though hampered by the size of the expedition, Bingham managed to get close to several troops of the animals and record details of their behavior.
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John Wallace Baird
1869 - 1919 (50 years)
John Wallace Baird was a Canadian psychologist. He was the 27th president of the American Psychological Association . He was the first Canadian, and only the second non-American, to hold the office. He was also a founding editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology, and served in subordinate editorial capacities for Psychological Review, American Journal of Psychology, and the Journal of Educational Psychology. At his death in 1919, he was the designate to succeed Granville Stanley Hall as president of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Katharine Banham
1897 - 1995 (98 years)
Katharine May Banham was an English psychologist who specialized in developmental psychology. She was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal. Early life and education Katharine May Banham received a B.S. from the University of Manchester in 1919 and a M.S. from Cambridge University in 1921. In 1923, she earned a M.A. from the University of Toronto and graduated cum laude from the Université de Montréal in 1934, being the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from that university.
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Harvey A. Carr
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
Harvey A. Carr , a founding father of functionalist psychology, was renowned for a methodical and thorough approach to his science. His work was largely devoted to studies of animal cognition and perception. Carr collaborated with John B. Watson on his most well-known project: the famous Kerplunk experiment. Carr held his post as chairman of the Psychology department at the University of Chicago from 1926 to 1938. He also served as the president of the American Psychological Association in 1926.
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Ruth Wendell Washburn
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Ruth Wendell Washburn was an American educational psychologist. She received a B.A. from Vassar in 1913, an M.A. from Radcliffe in 1922, and a Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1929. The Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School in Colorado Springs, Colorado is named in her honor.
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Åse Gruda Skard
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
Åse Gruda Skard was a Norwegian university professor, child psychologist and author. She was a noted pioneer in the field of childhood development and psychology. Biography She was born at Kristiania , Norway. She was the daughter of Halvdan Koht and Karen Elisabeth Grude . Her father was a noted historian and professor and the University of Oslo. Her mother was an educator, author and feminist pioneer. Her brother Paul Koht was a diplomat and ambassador.
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Helga Eng
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Helga Kristine Eng was a Norwegian psychologist and educationalist. She was the third woman to receive a doctor's degree in Norway, and the first to do so in psychology. Early life and education She was born in Rakkestad as a daughter of teacher and smallholder Hans Andersen Kirkeng and Johanne Marie Sæves . She had seven siblings. She graduated from Asker Seminary in 1895, and started a career as a primary school teacher. She started in Lier, continued in Moss from 1897 to 1900 when she was hired at Lakkegata School at Tøyen, Oslo.
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Clare W. Graves
1914 - 1986 (72 years)
Clare W. Graves was a professor of psychology and originator of the emergent cyclical theory of adult human development, aspects of which were later popularised as Spiral Dynamics. He was born in New Richmond, Indiana.
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James P. Lichtenberger
1870 - 1953 (83 years)
James Pendleton Lichtenberger was an American sociologist and academic. Lichtenberger served as the twelfth president of the American Sociological Association. Early life and education Lichtenberger was born on 10 June 1870 in Decatur, Illinois to Conrad H. and Anna Elizabeth Lichtenberger, née Nesbitt. Lichtenberger attended Eureka College and received a bachelor's degree in 1893. He soon after enrolled in the ministry of the Church of the Disciples of Christ and was a pastor in the church in Canton, Illinois from 1896 to 1899, after which we transferred to a congregation in Buffalo, New York.
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Louisa E. Rhine
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Louisa Ella Rhine was an American doctor of botany and is known for her work in parapsychology. At the time of her death, she was recognized as the foremost researcher of spontaneous psychic experiences, and has been referred to as the "first lady of parapsychology."
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Richard Müller-Freienfels
1882 - 1949 (67 years)
Richard Müller-Freienfels was a German philosopher, psychologist and social critic. He was "one of the most important mediators of empirical psychology" to poetics. Life Müller-Freienfels was born in Bad Ems on 7 August 1882. He was a lecturer and writer at the Berlin Trade School . He died on 12 December 1949 in Weilburg.
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Curt W. Bondy
1894 - 1972 (78 years)
Curt Werner Bondy was a German psychologist and social educator. Literary works Pädagogische Problem im Jugendstrafvollzug, 1925Problems of Internment Camps, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1943.Bindungslose Jugend, 1952
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Bernice Cronkhite
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Bernice Brown Cronkhite was an educator and former dean of Radcliffe College, working there for thirty-six years. She was the first woman at Radcliffe College to earn a doctorate in political science.
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John Edgar Coover
1872 - 1938 (66 years)
John Edgar Coover , also known as J. E. Coover was an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his experiments into extrasensory perception. Career Coover carried out a psychical research programme at Stanford University . He conducted approximately 10, 000 experiments with 100 subjects to test for extrasensory perception . He concluded after four years of research that "statistical treatments of the data fail to reveal any cause beyond chance". He also conducted 1,000 experiments with psychics and it was revealed that they had no advantage of any supposed psychic ability over norm...
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Donald G. Paterson
1892 - 1961 (69 years)
Donald Gildersleeve Paterson was an American psychologist known for pioneering applied psychology, in particular vocational counseling, industrial/organizational psychology, and differential psychology in the United States. He was a professor of psychology at the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota from 1921 to 1960.
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Samuel Soal
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Samuel George Soal was a British mathematician and parapsychologist. He was charged with fraudulent production of data in his work in parapsychology. Biography Soal graduated with first class honours in mathematics from Queen Mary College in 1910. After service in World War I, in which he suffered shelling at the Battle of the Somme, he lectured in mathematics at Oxford in the Army School of Education, before returning as a lecturer to Queen Mary College, University of London. In 1944, he was awarded the D.Sc. from Queen Mary College, where he continued to lecture in mathematics until his retirement in 1954.
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Minnie Steckel
1890 - 1952 (62 years)
Minnie Steckel was an American teacher, psychologist, clubwoman, and an activist involved in the women's poll tax repeal movement. Steckel began her career as a school teacher and worked her way up to school principal, superintendent and school psychologist, earning her bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees. From 1932 until her death in 1952, she was the dean of women and counselor at Alabama College. She served as president of the local Montevallo chapter of the American Association of University Women from 1937 to 1939, as president of the state chapter of the Business and Professional Wome...
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Clare Winnicott
1906 - 1984 (78 years)
Clare Winnicott OBE was an English social worker, civil servant, psychoanalyst and teacher. She played a pivotal role in the passing of The Children's Act of 1948. Alongside her husband, D. W. Winnicott, Clare would go on to become a prolific writer and prominent social worker and children's advocate in 20th century England.
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Edwin Ray Guthrie
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Edwin Ray Guthrie was a behavioral psychologist who began his career as a mathematics teacher and philosopher. But, he became a psychologist at the age of 33. He spent most of his career at the University of Washington, where he became full professor and then emeritus professor in psychology.
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Roswell G. Ham
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Roswell Gray Ham was an American educator who served as the 11th President of Mount Holyoke College from 1937 to 1957. He was born in LeMoore, California and received his B.A. from University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He taught at Yale for ten years before becoming the first male president of Mount Holyoke.
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Jessie P. Guzman
1898 - 1996 (98 years)
Jessie Parkhurst Guzman was a writer, archivist, historian, educator, and college administrator, primarily at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. In her work at the Tuskegee Institute, particularly in the Department of Research and Records, she documented the lives of African Americans and maintained the Institute's lynching records.
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A. G. Mearns
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Alexander Gow Mearns FRSE MBE was a Scottish physician and public health expert. He was one of the first people in forensic science to use insect activity to determine the time of death. In authorship he is referred to as A. G. Mearns.
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H. J. Pearce
1871 - 1943 (72 years)
H. J. Pearce was an American psychologist. He was the founder of Brenau College, and served as its president from 1900 to 1943. Early life Haywood Jefferson Pearce was born in 1871. He received a PhD from a university in Germany in 1907.
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Agnes L. Rogers
1884 - 1943 (59 years)
Agnes Low Rogers was a Scottish educator and educational psychologist. Early life Agnes Low Rogers was born in Dundee, the daughter of William Thomson Rogers and Janet Low Rogers. She earned a master's degree at the University of St. Andrews in 1908. She passed the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge in 1911, and completed doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1917. Her dissertation, published the following year, was titled Experimental Tests of Mathematical Ability and their Prognostic Value .
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Konstantin Ramul
1879 - 1975 (96 years)
Konstantin Ramul was an Estonian professor of psychology and longtime chair of psychology at the University of Tartu. He is best known for his work on the history of experimental psychology. Ramul believed that history is dependent upon psychology, though the philosopher of science Ernest Nagel criticized him for "not stat[ing] clearly the type of psychological investigation which is relevant to the historian's task" .
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Minnie Abercrombie
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Minnie Abercrombie , also known as M. L. J. Abercrombie, was a British zoologist, educationalist and psychologist. She was known for her work on invertebrates and her work in the publishing industry, conducted with her husband, Michael Abercrombie. She also contributed to the theory and practice of education through her teaching, research, lecturing and writing. In particular, she carried out pioneer psychological research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and ex...
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Stefan Błachowski
1889 - 1962 (73 years)
Stefan Błachowski was a Polish psychologist and professor at Poznań University. Life Błachowski was the son of a military physician, Konstanty Błachowski, and Maria Niklas. He graduated from Gymnasium no. V in Lwów and in 1907 began studying philosophy, psychology and philology at Lwów University. In 1909 he transferred briefly to Vienna University, then to Göttingen University . In 1913 he studied biology again at Vienna and successfully defended his doctoral thesis at Göttingen.
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Ethel Dench Puffer Howes
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Ethel Dench Puffer Howes was an American psychologist, suffragist, and college professor. She taught at Wellesley College, Smith College, and Simmons College. She was Executive Secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League, and founder of the Institute for the Coordination of Women's Interests at Smith College.
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David Kennedy Fraser
1888 - 1962 (74 years)
David Kennedy Fraser FRSE FEIS was a Scottish psychologist, educator and amateur mathematician. He was an author of several books looking at the education of the handicapped and was closely associated with the Scottish Association for Mental Health. He campaigned vigorously for the rights of handicapped persons.
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Otto Selz
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Otto Selz was a German psychologist from Munich, Bavaria, who formulated the first non-associationist theory of thinking, in 1913. Influenced by the German phenomenological tradition, Selz used the method of introspection, but unlike his predecessors, his theory developed without the use of images and associations. Wilhelm Wundt used the method of introspection in the 1880s, but thought that higher-level mental processes could not be studied in the scientific laboratory.
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Kurt Lewin
1890 - 1947 (57 years)
Kurt Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied himself to three general topics: applied research, action research, and group communication.
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Henry C. McComas
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Henry Clay McComas was an American psychologist and skeptic. McComas was born December 21, 1875, in Baltimore. He achieved his bachelor's degree at Johns Hopkins in 1897, his Masters at Columbia in 1898 and his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1910. He worked as an assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University, he was also an editor for the Psychological Index.
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Frederic Bartlett
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett FRS was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology as well as cultural psychology. Bartlett considered most of his own work on cognitive psychology to be a study in social psychology, but he was also interested in anthropology, moral science, philosophy, and sociology. Bartlett proudly referred to himself as "a Cambridge psychologist" because while he was at the University of Cambridge, settling for one type of psychology was not an option.
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Stefan Baley
1885 - 1952 (67 years)
Stefan Baley was a Polish psychologist, doctor and pedagogue of Ukrainian descent.
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Alois Höfler
1853 - 1922 (69 years)
Alois Höfler was an Austrian philosopher and university professor of education in Prague and Vienna. He was seen by the logical positivist Otto Neurath as an important link between Bernard Bolzano's work and the Vienna Circle.
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Mario Ponzo
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Mario Ponzo was an Italian academic psychologist. He was also the Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Rome as well as the Honorary President of the Italian Society of Psychology. He was born in Milan, Italy to a Piedmontese family.
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Roger Barker
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Roger Garlock Barker was a social scientist, a founder of environmental psychology and a leading figure in the field for decades, perhaps best known for his development of the concept of behavior settings and staffing theory. He was also a central figure in the development of ecological psychology and rehabilitation psychology.
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Harold Homer Anderson
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Harold Homer Anderson was an American research professor of psychology at Michigan State University, who published on child psychology, clinical psychology, personality, and cross-national research.
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