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 Social Work,
#101
Liz Beddoe
#173593
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Elizabeth 'Liz' Beddoe is a New Zealand social work academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After completing a 2010 PhD titled 'Building professional capital: New Zealand social workers and continuing education' at Deakin University, Beddoe rose to full professor at the University of Auckland.
Go to Profile#102
Edward Kruk
#127171
Overall Influence
Edward Kruk is a Canadian sociologist and social worker. He has conducted internationally recognized research on child custody, shared parenting, family mediation, divorced fathers, parental alienation, parental addiction, child protection, and grandparent access to their grandchildren. Kruk is an associate professor of social work at the University of British Columbia. He is the founding president of the International Council on Shared Parenting.
Go to Profile#103
Ruth Kaarlela
#80304
Overall Influence
1919 - 2018 (99 years)
Ruth Kaarlela was an American university professor and social worker. Her work was in the fields of blindness, gerontology, and vision rehabilitation therapy. Early life Kaarlela was born and raised in Keweenaw Bay, Michigan, the eleventh of twelve children born to Robert Kaarlela and Mary Kaarlela. When she was a child, she wrote poems published in the Detroit Free Press. She attended Baraga High School, and earned her undergraduate and master's level degrees in social work at Wayne State University. She completed doctoral work in gerontology at the University of Michigan. She also held a te...
Go to Profile#104
L. Georgi DiStefano
#178001
Overall Influence
Laura Georgi DeStafano is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who served as the Executive Director/Clinical Director for the San Diego State University’s Center for Alcohol & Drug Studies, Driving Under the Influence Program, from 2001-2013.
Go to Profile#105
Jane Maidment
#150495
Overall Influence
Jane M. Maidment is a New Zealand social work academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Canterbury. Academic career After a PhD titled 'Social work field education in New Zealand' at the University of Canterbury, Maidment joined the staff, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#106
Dilip V. Jeste
#60452
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Dilip V. Jeste is an American geriatric neuropsychiatrist, who specializes in successful aging as well as schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in older adults. He was senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care, distinguished professor of psychiatry and neurosciences, Estelle and Edgar Levi Memorial Chair in Aging, director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging, and co-director of the IBM-UCSD Artificial Intelligence Center for Healthy Living at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. after serving for 36 years, he retired from UC San ...
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Charles Musselwhite
#68172
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Charles Brian Alexander Musselwhite is Professor of Psychology at Aberystwyth University. He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom and educated at Bay House School, Gosport, Hampshire, followed by St Vincent Sixth Form College, Gosport, Hampshire. He went on to read Psychology at University of Southampton before completing a PhD in the Transportation Research Group, University of Southampton examining attitudes to car driver behaviour.
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Michàlle Mor Barak
#177510
Overall Influence
Michàlle E. Mor Barak is an American social scientist in the areas of social work and business management, a researcher, academic and author. She is Dean's Endowed Professor of Social Work and Business at the University of Southern California. She is known for being the first to offer a theory-based measure for the construct of inclusion. She was among the first to identify and offer differential definitions for diversity and for inclusion. She coined the term Globally Inclusive Workplace, which she developed into a theory-based model with practical applications.
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Jane Sanders
#74872
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Mary Jane O'Meara Sanders is an American social worker, college administrator, activist, and political strategist. Sanders was provost and interim president of Goddard College and president of Burlington College . In June 2017, she founded the think tank The Sanders Institute. She has been married to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders since May 28, 1988. She has also served as the first lady of Burlington, Vermont, during her husband's term as mayor.
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Pushpa Basnet
#176698
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Pushpa Basnet is a social worker and the founder/president of Early Childhood Development Center and Butterfly Home, non-profit organizations, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her organization works to strengthen the rights of children living behind bars with their incarcerated parents.
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Maria Simon
#49105
Overall Influence
1918 - 2022 (104 years)
Maria Dorothea Simon was an Austrian psychologist and scholar of social work. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna near the end of the First World War, she was educated in Austria and Czechoslovakia but emigrated to London after the latter was annexed by Germany in 1938. While in the United Kingdom, she worked at the Hampstead Nurseries, an experimental child care centre run by the psychoanalyst Anna Freud. She was married to the jurist and resistance activist .
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Christa Fouché
#115192
Overall Influence
Christa B. Fouché is a New Zealand social work academic. She is currently professor of social work at the University of Auckland. Her work has covered people living with medical conditions such as HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer's disease.
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Cindy Kiro
#18795
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Dame Alcyion Cynthia Kiro is a New Zealand public-health academic, administrator, and advocate, who has served as the 22nd governor-general of New Zealand since 21 October 2021. Kiro is the first Māori woman, the third person of Māori descent, and the fourth woman to hold the office.
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Kevin Gorey
#182110
Overall Influence
Kevin Michael Gorey is an American epidemiologist and social worker. He is a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. He is known for his Canada-USA comparative research on cancer treatment access and survival. He has also published research showing that well endowed preschool interventionss can increase children's IQ scores by an average of nearly 15 points.
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Valerie Wright-St Clair
#185841
Overall Influence
Valerie Wright-St Clair is a New Zealand registered occupational therapist, occupational scientist and Professor of Social Gerontology and Occupational Science in the School of Health Sciences at Auckland University of Technology .
Go to Profile#116
Michael J. Holosko
#188778
Overall Influence
Michael J. Holosko is Professor of Social Work at the University of Windsor and holds an endowed chair as the Pauline M. Berger Professor of Family and Child Welfare at The University of Georgia, School of Social Work. He has research focusing on areas of evaluation, health care, gerontology, social policy, and music intervention. According to Sage Publishing he has been a consultant to a variety of large and small health and human service organizations and industry in the areas of: program evaluation, outcomes, accreditation, organizational development, communication, leadership, visioning,...
Go to Profile#117
Peggy Koopman-Boyden
#184366
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Dame Peggy Gwendoline Koopman-Boyden is a New Zealand gerontologist. A professor of social gerontology at the University of Waikato, she was accorded the title of professor emeritus when she retired in 2016.
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Ashley Biden
#158779
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Ashley Blazer Biden is an American social worker, activist, philanthropist, and fashion designer. She served as the executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice from 2014 to 2019. Prior to her administrative role at the center, Biden worked in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families. She founded the fashion company Livelihood, which partners with the online retailer Gilt Groupe to raise money for community programs focused on eliminating income inequality in the United States, launching it at New York Fashion Week in 2017. Biden's parents are Presi...
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Marios Kyriazis
#77823
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Marios Kyriazis is a medical doctor and gerontologist. He is known for work, publications and involvement with life extension. Applying the concept of hormesis on anti-ageing medicine, Kyriazis controversially suggested that leading a stressful, irregular and constantly stimulating lifestyle may be a way of reducing the impact of age-related dysfunction.
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John Grimley Evans
#117380
Overall Influence
1936 - 2018 (82 years)
Sir John Grimley Evans was a British gerontologist. Early life and education Grimley Evans was born in Birmingham to Harry Walter Grimley Evans and Violet Prenter Walker on 17 September 1936. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, and studied at St John's College, Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford.
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June Gary Hopps
#190904
Overall Influence
June Gary Hopps was presented The Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education Award in 2017 and is presently the Thomas J. Parham Professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. She was the first African American and the youngest person to serve as dean of the Boston College School of Social Work. Dr Hopps has won NASW’s award for Outstanding Leadership in the Social Work Profession; the establishment of the June Gary Hopps Graduate Fellowship at Boston College; and the proclamation of June Gary Hopps Day by the state of Massachusetts. Alma Maters: Ph.D.
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Elizabeth Danto
#28386
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Elizabeth Ann Danto is professor emeritus of social welfare at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Freud's Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918-1938 which received both the Gradiva Award and the Goethe Prize, and Historical Research . Dr. Danto writes and lectures internationally on the history of psychoanalysis as a system of thought and a marker of urban culture.
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Alinah Kelo Segobye
#186045
Overall Influence
Alinah Kelo Segobye is a social development activist and archaeologist, with specialisms in social development and HIV/AIDS and the future of studying the past in Africa and African archaeology. She is Dean of Human Sciences at the Namibia University of Science and Technology and an elected fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
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Cathy C. Schubert
#191837
Overall Influence
#125
Wendy Maltz
#181250
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Wendy Maltz is an American sex therapist, psychotherapist, author, educator, and clinical social worker. She is an expert on the sexual repercussions of sexual abuse, understanding women's sexual fantasies, treating pornography-related problems, and promoting healthy sexuality. She has taught at the University of Oregon and, up until her retirement in 2016 from providing counseling services, was co-director with her husband, Larry Maltz, of Maltz Counseling Associates therapy practice in Eugene, Oregon.
Go to Profile#126
Gary Wilson
#60595
Overall Influence
1956 - 2021 (65 years)
Gary Bruce Wilson was an American anti-pornography campaigner. Biography Wilson was an author who lived in Ashland, Oregon. He was formerly an adjunct professor of biology at Southern Oregon University and also taught at vocational schools. Together with his wife, Marina Robinson, he was an instructor of karezza, and the couple shared an antipathy towards orgasms. He became widely known from his 2012 TEDx talk entitled "The Great Porn Experiment" in which he argued exposure to pornography changes brain chemistry. The talk has been viewed over 13 million times.
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Barbara Monroe
#149618
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Dame Barbara Monroe, is a British social worker and hospital chief executive. She began working at St Christopher's Hospice in 1987, rising to the position of Chief Executive in 2000 and retiring in 2014.
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Jessie Donaldson Schultz
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Jessica Louise Donaldson Schultz Graham was an English professor at Montana State College and social worker on Native reservations in Montana and Wyoming. Early life and education Jessie "Jessie" Louise Donaldson was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Paul, Minnesota to a wealthy family. She grew up in Minneapolis and McGregor, Iowa. Jessie earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1913 and moved to Gallatin, Montana to become a rural schoolteacher.
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Vladimir Korenchevsky
1880 - 1959 (79 years)
Vladimir Korenchevsky was a Russian-British pathologist, gerontologist, pharmacologist, and bacteriologist. Biography Vladimir Korenchevsky was born on 15 January 1880 in the town Ashmyany, Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire. In 1898 Korenchevsky graduated from school in Riga with the silver medal, and in 1903 he graduated from the Imperial Military Medical Academy with honors. He was a doctor in a military field hospital during the Russo-Japanese War . After war he participated in the elimination of plague outbreaks in Mongolia. Then he worked in the medical faculty of the Imperial Moscow University where he became interested in gerontology.
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Harry Cassidy
1900 - 1951 (51 years)
Harry Cassidy was a Canadian academic, social reformer, civil servant and, briefly, a politician. Cassidy was born on January 8, 1900, to parents Herbert Cassidy and Maria Morris Cassidy, transplanted Maritimers who ran a general store. In 1916 Cassidy enlisted underage in the army, spending the next three years in uniform and returning to Canada in the spring of 1919. Harry Cassidy was a pioneer in the field of social work. He was the founding dean of the School of Social Welfare at University of California, Berkeley in the early 1940s before resigning to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
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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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Mary Antoinette Cannon
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Mary Antoinette Cannon was an American medical social worker and social work educator. She was a professor in the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University, and president of the American Association of Hospital Social Workers.
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Grace Abbott
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
Grace Abbott was an American social worker who specifically worked in improving the rights of immigrants and advancing child welfare, especially the regulation of child labor. Her elder sister, Edith Abbott, who was a social worker, educator, and researcher, had professional interests that often complemented those of Grace's.
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Mary Richmond
1861 - 1928 (67 years)
Mary Ellen Richmond was an American social work pioneer. She is regarded as the mother of professional social work along with Jane Addams. She founded social case work, the first method of social work and was herself a Caseworker.
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Alice Salomon
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
Alice Salomon was a German social reformer and pioneer of social work as an academic discipline. Her role was so important to German social work that the Deutsche Bundespost issued a commemorative postage stamp about her in 1989. A university, a park and a square in Berlin are all named after her.
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Bertha Reynolds
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
Bertha Capen Reynolds was an American social worker who was influential in the creation of strength-based practice, radical social work and critical social work, among others. Early life and education Bertha Capen Reynolds born in Brockton, Massachusetts, on December 11, 1887 to Mary Reynolds and Franklin Stewart Reynolds. Her father died while she was a young child, and she moved with her mother to Boston to work as a teacher.
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Jessie Taft
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
J. Jessie Taft was an American philosopher and an early authority on child placement and therapeutic adoption. Educated at the University of Chicago, she spent the bulk of her professional life at the University of Pennsylvania, where she and Virginia Robinson were the co-founders and innovators of the functional approach to social work. Taft is the author of The Dynamics of Therapy in a Controlled Relationship . She is also remembered for her work as the translator and biographer of Otto Rank, an outcast disciple of Sigmund Freud; in addition, development of the functional approach to social work was greatly inspired by her work with Rank.
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Sister Nivedita
1867 - 1911 (44 years)
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
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Sadie Gray Mays
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Sadie Gray Mays was an African-American social worker, trained at the University of Chicago. As the wife of Benjamin Mays, she was also a prominent Baptist minister's wife, a college president's wife , and a civil rights activist.
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Elmina R. Lucke
1889 - 1987 (98 years)
Elmina R. Lucke was an American educator, social worker and international relations expert. After graduating from Oberlin College, she taught high school in Ohio and worked on social service projects before earning her doctorate in International Law and Relations from Columbia University. From 1927 to 1946, she taught at the Teachers College of Columbia making numerous trips abroad to study social work. In 1946, she moved to India to found the first master's degree program in Asia and second school of social work in the country, serving as its director for the next three years. Between 1950 and 1955, she served as a consultant to social work schools in Cairo, Egypt and Pakistan.
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Gaylord Starin White
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
Gaylord Starin White was an American social reformer and activist who was prominent in the settlement movement. He was the second and long-serving director of New York City's Union Settlement and, at his death, the dean of students at Union Theological Seminary. A New York City Housing Authority center for the elderly bears his name, as did a summer camp in Arden, New York for inner-city children.
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Miriam Van Waters
1887 - 1974 (87 years)
Miriam Van Waters was an American prison reformer of the early to mid-20th century whose methods owed much to her upbringing as an Episcopalian involved in the Social Gospel movement. During her career as a penologist, which spanned most of the years from 1914 through 1957, she served as superintendent of three prisons: Frazier Detention Home for boys and girls in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall for girls, and the Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Framingham, then called the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women. While in California, Van Waters established an experimental reformatory school, El Retiro, for girls age 14 to 19.
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Thea Bowman
1937 - 1990 (53 years)
Thea Bowman, FSPA was a Black Catholic religious sister, teacher, musician, liturgist and scholar who made major contributions to the ministry of the Catholic Church toward African Americans. She became an evangelist among her people, assisted in the production of an African-American Catholic hymnal, and was a popular speaker on faith and spirituality in her final years, in addition to recording music. She also helped found the National Black Sisters' Conference to provide support for African-American women in Catholic religious life. She died of cancer in 1990.
Go to Profile#144
Helen Dingman
1885 - 1978 (93 years)
Helen Dingman was an American academic and social worker who was one of the central figures in the Progressive and New Deal eras to bring social and economic reform to Appalachia. After teaching in Massachusetts for five years from 1912 to 1917, Dingman moved to Kentucky to establish the Smith Community Life School under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church. Serving as principal and directing six other schools in Harlan County, Kentucky, she provided both education and social services to the community until 1922. After a two year placement as an assistant superintendent for the mission board in New York, she was hired as a teacher in the Sociology Department at Berea College.
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Clive McCay
1898 - 1967 (69 years)
Clive Maine McCay was an American biochemist, nutritionist and gerontologist. Biography McCay was professor of animal husbandry at Cornell University from 1927 to 1963. His main interest was the influence of nutrition on aging. He is best known for his work in proving that caloric restriction increases the life span of rats, which is seen as seminal in triggering further research and experiments in the field of nutrition and longevity. Scientists are still trying to understand the connection between caloric restriction and longevity.
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