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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Psychology,
#4851
Eleanor Gamble
1868 - 1933 (65 years)
Eleanor Acheson McCulloch Gamble was an influential American psychologist from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. Gamble published most of her work on audition and memory influenced by Georg Elias Müller, Edward B. Titchener, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Ernst Heinrich Weber. Despite her chronic eye conditions she was successful in editing volumes of textbooks, her own papers, and directing many master's degree students. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1889. She went on to obtain her doctorate from Cornell University in 1898. She held several teac...
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Lorine Pruette
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Lorine Livingston Pruette was an American feminist, psychologist, and writer. Early life Lorine Pruette was born in Millersburg, Tennessee, to college-educated parents. Her mother and her maternal grandmother were among the first generation of college-educated women in the United States. Pruette's mother's dreams of a career in writing were never fulfilled; she placed enormous pressure on Pruette to fulfill the life she always wanted.
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Peter Hagoort
#4854
Claude Emerson Welch
#4855
Richard Baerwald
1867 - 1929 (62 years)
Richard Baerwald was a German academic psychologist, in Berlin. Towards the end of his life he became interested in parapsychology and occultism . He edited the Zeitschrift für Kritischen Okkultismus from 1926 to 1928.
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Dorothy Adkins
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Dorothy Christina Adkins was an American psychologist. Adkins is best known for her work in psychometrics and education testing, particularly in achievement testing. She was the first female president of the Psychometric Society and served in several roles in the American Psychological Association.
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Francis Aveling
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
Francis Arthur Powell Aveling MC ComC was a Canadian psychologist and Catholic priest. He married Ethel Dancy of Steyning, Sussex in 1925. Life Francis Aveling was born at St. Catharines, Ontario 25 December 1875. He went to Bishop Ridley College in Ontario and McGill University before studying at Keble College at the University of Oxford, England. Aveling was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father Luke Rivington in 1896 and entered the Pontificio Collegio Canadese in Rome. There he earned his doctor of divinity degree. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1899, and served as a curate in Tottenham, before becoming first rector of Westminster Cathedral Choir School.
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Henri de Saint-Simon
1760 - 1825 (65 years)
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon , better known as Henri de Saint-Simon , was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on politics, economics, sociology and the philosophy of science. He was a younger relative of the famous memoirist the Duc de Saint-Simon.
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Felix Deutsch
1884 - 1964 (80 years)
#4860
Maud A. Merrill
1888 - 1978 (90 years)
Maud Amanda Merrill was an American psychologist. Both an alumna and faculty member of Stanford University, Merrill worked with Lewis Terman to develop the second and third editions of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales.
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Margaret Kuenne Harlow
1918 - 1971 (53 years)
Margaret Ruth Kuenne Harlow was an American developmental psychologist. She was married to Harry Harlow from 1946 until her death in 1971. Early life Margaret Ruth Kuenne was born in St. Louis on 29 August 1918 to Edward S. Kuenne and Margaret E. Kuenne; she was the oldest of three children .
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Shoma Morita
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
, also read as Shōma Morita, was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and the founder of Morita therapy, a branch of clinical psychology strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. In his capacity as the head of psychiatry for a large Tokyo hospital, Morita began developing his methods while working with sufferers of shinkeishitsu, or anxiety disorders with a hypochondriac base.
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Harrison G. Gough
#4864
Lu Zhiwei
1894 - 1970 (76 years)
Lu Zhiwei , also known as C. W. Luh, was an influential Chinese psychologist and linguist from Wuxing, Zhejiang. He was also an important figure in Chinese poetry, both for his critical ideas and as a poet being one of the early poets to work in the Modern Chinese poetry, influenced by a more vernacular style and by international developments in poetry.
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Géza Révész
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Géza Révész was a Hungarian-Dutch psychologist of Jewish heritage, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of European psychology. Life Révész was born in the Siófok, Hungary, a town located at Lake Balaton, where his father owned a famous vineyard. He studied law in Budapest and received his doctorate in 1902, when he finished his dissertation entitled Das Trauerjahr der Witwe.
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Rudolf Hippius
1905 - 1945 (40 years)
Rudolf Werner Georg Hippius was a Baltic-German psychologist and sociologist. He is best known for his work in "racial psychology" carried out under the auspices of the Nazi regime, and specifically his study of the "suitability" of people of mixed German and Slavic descent, which he carried out in the occupied Reichsuniversität Posen or University of Poznan from 1942 to 1944. The objective of the study was to determine whether individuals who were of mixed German and Slavic heritage were suitable to be considered for German citizenship or if they should be deported. It was during this period...
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Ingjald Nissen
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Ingjald Nissen was a Norwegian psychologist and philosopher. Nissen published around twenty books, and was a government scholar from 1938. His books treated a number of fundamental human questions such as sexuality, mass psychology, power hunger and the feeling of guilt. His most popular book was Psykopatenes diktatur from 1945, an effort to discuss the German catastrophe. He was a member of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights.
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George Humphrey
1889 - 1966 (77 years)
George William Humphrey FRSC was a British psychologist, author, and philosopher. He was the founder of the Canadian Psychological Association, the first Director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. Humphrey's research concentrated on behavioral studies such as reinforcement, habituation, and apparent movements, as well as psychophysical topics like audiogenic seizures. He is known for Humphrey's Law.
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Alexis F. Lange
1862 - 1924 (62 years)
Alexis Frederick Lange was the Dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley and led the effort to found the community college system in the state of California. External links Lange bust in Haviland Hall
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Henri van Praag
1916 - 1988 (72 years)
Naphthali ben Levi van Praag was a Jewish-Dutch writer, teacher, and religious historian, and became known also for his publications in the field of parapsychology. Childhood and education Van Praag was the son of Esther Van Praag and diamond cutter Louis van Praag. The family was Jewish but not religious. The family moved to Antwerp, where Van Praag attended elementary and high school.
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Abraham Aaron Roback
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Abraham Aaron Roback was a Jewish American psychologist and promoter of Yiddish. Life A. A. Roback was born on 19 June 1890 in Goniondz, Russian Empire . He was the youngest of four children of Isaac Roback and Leba Rahver. The family emigrated to Montreal in 1892, where he attended public schools. He graduated from McGill University in 1912, having studied philosophy with J.W.A. Hickson and experimental psychology with William Dunlop Tait. He studied for a PhD under Hugo Münsterberg at Harvard University, where he later taught for several years. He also taught at the University of Pittsburgh...
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Kenneth A. Wallston
#4873
Eino Kaila
1890 - 1958 (68 years)
Eino Sakari Kaila was a Finnish philosopher, critic and teacher. He worked in numerous fields including psychology , physics and theater, and attempted to find unifying principles behind various branches of human and natural sciences.
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Narziß Ach
1871 - 1946 (75 years)
Narziß Kaspar Ach was a German psychologist and university lecturer in Königsberg, Prussia and Göttingen, Germany. Biography From 1890–1895 and in 1898/99 he studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Würzburg and received his doctorate in 1895. In 1895/96 he worked in the psychological laboratory of Heidelberg University alongside Emil Kraepelin. In 1897, Ach went on a trip to North America for further examination of motion sickness. Following the journey, he worked at the pharmacological institute of the University of Strasbourg.
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Richard M. Elliott
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Richard Maurice "Mike" Elliott was an American psychologist who served as the departmental chair of the University of Minnesota Psychology Department from 1919 until 1951. Biography Elliott was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He received his Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and in 1910 went on to graduate school at Harvard University where he was advised by Hugo Münsterberg and influenced by Robert Yerkes. During World War I, Elliott conducted mental testing under the command of Donald G. Paterson. Elliott arrived to chair the new University of Minnesota Psychology Department in 1919.
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Donald Marquis
1908 - 1973 (65 years)
Donald George Marquis was an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . He was best known for his tenure as a department chair and professor at the University of Michigan.
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Mary Collins
1895 - 1989 (94 years)
Mary Collins was an expert in colour vision, and psychology lecturer at Edinburgh University. Academic career Mary Collins gained her MA in 1917 from Edinburgh University, her BEd in 1919 and PhD in 1923. She was then appointed lecturer in psychology at the University. Her first book, Colour blindness was published in 1925 covering her initial work in studying aspects of color vision. Subsequently, she worked extensively with Sir James Drever, head of department, and subsequently with Boris Semeonoff . Collins became senior lecturer by 1950 and reader by 1956, retiring "before 1962".
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Charles Henry Thompson
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Charles Henry Thompson was an American educational psychologist and the first African-American to earn a doctorate degree in educational psychology. He obtained a Master's degree and Ph.D at the University of Chicago. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he became an educator at Howard University. During his time at Howard, he was the dean of the liberal art college and later became the dean of Howard's graduate school, where he made several administrative and scholarship changes. Additionally, he founded The Journal of Negro Education, an academic journal pertaining to the education of African-American students.
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Andreas Bjerre
1879 - 1925 (46 years)
Sören Andreas Bjerre, known as Andreas Bjerre, was a Swedish academic specialising in criminal law and criminal psychology. Early life and career Born in Göteborg in 1879, Andreas Bjerre was the son of Sören Bjerre, who was a rich butter-merchant, and Sophie Jörgensen. His brother was the psychologist Poul Bjerre .
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Eugen Kahn
1887 - 1973 (86 years)
Eugen Kahn was a German psychiatrist. His "habilitation" supervisors were Emil Kraepelin and Ernst Rüdin. He argued Willenlos was a misnomer for the Haltlose, as the patients demonstrated plenty of "will" and simply lacked the ability to translate it into action. He was the first Sterling Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale 1930-1946.
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Philip S. Holzman
#4882
Albert Lilius
1873 - 1947 (74 years)
Albert Henrik Lilius was a child psychologist a pioneering researcher in Finland and professor at the University of Helsinki. He published a book about Nordic figures from the history of educational work along with several others.
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Georg Anschütz
1886 - 1953 (67 years)
Georg Ernst Anschütz was a German psychologist, who worked especially in the field of music psychology and synaesthesia. Due to his exposed role during the National Socialism period, he was dismissed from university service after 1945. His writings were nevertheless reprinted until the 1970s.
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Karl Beth
1872 - 1959 (87 years)
Karl Beth was a German academic involved in the fields of the history of religion, the psychology of religion, and Christianity. He has been described as "one of the founding fathers of the psychology of religion".
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Walter J. Lonner
#4886
Marvin D. Dunnette
#4887
John Clarence Defries
#4888
Lillien Jane Martin
1851 - 1943 (92 years)
Lillien Jane Martin was an American psychologist. She published over twelve books. Martin experienced ageism and sexism as an early woman in psychology. Early life and education Lillien Jane Martin was born on July 7, 1851, at Olean, New York. At the age of four, she entered the nearby Olean Academy. At the age of sixteen, her talents were recognized such that she became a teacher at a girls' school in Wisconsin. By the age of 26, in 1876, she had earned enough money to return to her native New York where she enrolled at Vassar College at Poughkeepsie, New York.
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Hendrik Verwoerd
1901 - 1966 (65 years)
Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd , also known as H. F. Verwoerd, was a South African politician, scholar, and newspaper editor who served as Prime Minister of South Africa and is commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid. Verwoerd played a significant role in socially engineering apartheid, the country's system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy, and implementing its policies, as Minister of Native Affairs and then as prime minister . Furthermore, Verwoerd played a vital role in helping the far-right National Party come to power in 1948, serving as their political strategist and propagandist, becoming party leader upon his premiership.
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Eberhard Zwicker
1924 - 1990 (66 years)
Karl Eberhard Zwicker was a German acoustics scientist and full professor at the Technical University of Munich. Zwicker studied physics and electrical engineering at the University of Stuttgart and was an assistant of . In 1967 he was appointed full professor of the newly founded Institute for Electro-Acoustics of the Technical University of Munich.
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Friedrich Jodl
1849 - 1914 (65 years)
Friedrich Jodl was a German philosopher and psychologist. Biography Friedrich Jodl grew up in a Munich family association which, due to its proximity to the royal court, had provided numerous senior civil servants in Bavaria. The painter Heinrich Bürkel, a family friend, introduced him to the fine arts at an early age.
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Ian Hindmarch
#4893
Jerome E. Singer
#4894
Guy Montrose Whipple
1876 - 1941 (65 years)
Guy Montrose Whipple was an American educational psychologist known for developing psychological tests of human intelligence and personality. His other research interests included gifted education, literacy, vocational education, and the psychology of eyewitness testimony. A 1997 article about giftedness described Whipple as "an all-but-forgotten pioneer in this field".
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Otto Klemm
1884 - 1939 (55 years)
Gustav Otto Klemm was a German psychologist and philosopher, as well as the first chair as Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Leipzig. While his psychological work is largely irrelevant today, Klemm is one of the best-known representatives of the Leipzig School of Gestalt psychology. His studies on human motor, which were carried out under his guidance, had scientific validity, both in terms of their findings as well as the careful methodology. He is next to Nikolai Alexandrovich Bernstein among the first researchers who have studied the phenomenon of variability of partial ...
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Gao Juefu
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Gao Juefu , also known as Gao Zhuo , was one of China's modern psychologists and a psychology historian. He was born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. When he was young, he studied at the Beijing Higher Normal School and the University of Hong Kong Department of Education.
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Johannes von Kries
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Johannes Adolf von Kries was a German physiological psychologist who formulated the modern “duplicity” or “duplexity” theory of vision mediated by rod cells at low light levels and three types of cone cells at higher light levels. He made important contributions in the field of haemodynamics. In addition, von Kries was a significant theorist of the foundations of probability.
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Christine Eiser
#4899
John E. Arnold
1913 - 1963 (50 years)
John Edward Arnold was an American professor of mechanical engineering and professor of business administration at Stanford University. He was a pioneer in scientifically defining and advancing inventiveness, based on the psychology of creative thinking and imagination, and an internationally recognized innovator in educational philosophy.
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Donald Saklofske
Donald Harold Saklofske is a Canadian psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario. He is a former president of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences and the current editor-in-chief of its official journal, Personality and Individual Differences. He is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Canadian Psychological Association, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
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