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 female people in Sociology,
#501
Karen Chapple
#52392
Overall Influence
Karen Chapple is an American city planning academic and currently holds the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Education Chapple received an undergraduate degree in Urban Studies at Columbia University, a Masters of Science in Community and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#502
Judith Rollins
#124015
Overall Influence
Judith Rollins is a Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies and Sociology at Wellesley College. Rollins earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Howard University, and her PhD in Sociology from Brandeis University.
Go to Profile#503
Zagorka Golubović
#57639
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Zagorka Golubović was a Serbian philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist. Golubović was among the group of eight university professors, members of the Praxis school , who were in January 1975 expelled from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Philosophy on the basis of a decision of the SR Serbia People's Assembly.
Go to Profile#504
Rekha Pande
#55575
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Rekha Pande is a Professor Emeritus of history and women's studies at the Henry Martin Institute, an International Centre for Research, Interfaith Relations and Reconciliation, Hyderabad. She is also currently the Director of the Society for Empowerment through Environment Development . She is the former Head of the Centre for Women's Studies and the former Head of the Department of History at the University of Hyderabad, India. She has also served as a Director Centre for Women's Studies at Maulana Azad National Urdu University , Hyderabad. As a feminist historian, Pande researches the theore...
Go to Profile#505
Tamara Martsenyuk
#127032
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Tamara Olehivna Martsenyuk is a Ukrainian sociologist and academic who specializes in gender studies. She is known for her writing, her analysis of the role of women in the Euromaidan protests and for her critique of president Viktor Yanukovych's comments on women in Ukraine.
Go to Profile#506
Maria Márkus
#58928
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Maria Renata Márkus was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. She was educated in philosophy at the Lomonosov University in Moscow from 1952 to 1957 and was awarded her master's degree in Poland in 1957. She moved to Hungary in 1957 and became a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and was a founding member of the Institute of Sociology at the Academy. In 2010, a Festschrift was published in her honour.
Go to Profile#507
Alice Marwick
#68849
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Alice E. Marwick is a communication scholar, academic, and author, who currently works as an Associate Professor in the Communication department and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an affiliated researcher with the Data and Society Research Institute. Marwick has written for publications such as the New York Times, and the Guardian. Her works include the examination of politics, race, social media and gender. She has been a keynote speaker for various universities throughout the United States...
Go to Profile#508
Maureen Cain
#88700
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Maureen Cain received her bachelor's degree from London School of Economics in 1959, and she attained her PhD from the London School of Economics in 1969. After graduating from LSE, Cain became a professor.
Go to Profile#509
Roksana Bahramitash
#111639
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Roksana Bahramitash is an Iranian-born Canadian sociologist, author, and professor. Her work focuses on women, employment and the informal economy in the Middle East and North Africa , as well as gender segregation in Islam, and microeconomics. In post-revolution Iran, Bahramitash was working on improving peasant women's literacy and access to economic development resources.
Go to Profile#510
Elizabeth Anne Reid
#43310
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Elizabeth Anne Reid AO, FASSA, is an Australian development practitioner, feminist and academic with a distinguished career in and significant contribution to national and international public service. She founded, established and worked with a number of pioneering and specialised United Nations institutions, government agencies and non-governmental organisations. Reid was appointed the world's first advisor on women's affairs to a head of government by the Australian Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1973.
Go to Profile#511
Carol Heimer
#122421
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Carol Anne Heimer is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She is known for her research on the sociology of risk and responsibility, and on regulation and ethics. Career and personal life She received her B.A. from Reed College and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation advisors were Charles Bidwell, Edward Laumann, Paul Hirsch, Donald Levine, and Michael Schudson.
Go to Profile#512
Katrina Roen
#130471
Overall Influence
Katrina Roen is a New Zealand psychology / sociology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. She was formerly a visiting researcher at the University of Oslo. Academic career After a 1998 PhD titled 'Constructing transsexuality: Discursive manoeuvres through psycho-medical, transgender, and queer texts' at the University of Canterbury, Roen took up a series of academic posts in Wellington, Lancaster, and then Oslo where she became a visiting researcher.
Go to Profile#513
Becky Pettit
#60897
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Elizabeth M. "Becky" Pettit is an American sociologist with expertise in demography. She has been a professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, as well as an affiliate at its Population Research Center, since 2014. She is an advocate for decarceration in the United States.
Go to Profile#514
Lynn Davidman
#77504
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Lynn Rita Davidman is an American sociologist. She is the distinguished professor of modern Jewish studies and professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. Early life and education Davidman was born in New York City to a Modern Orthodox Jewish family. After her mother's death when she was 13 years old, Davidman began to question her religious upbringing, which caused a divide between her and her family.
Go to Profile#515
Charis Kubrin
#61326
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Charis Elizabeth Kubrin is an American criminologist and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine . Education and career After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2000, Kubrin taught at George Washington University for 11 years; she left George Washington University for UCI in the summer of 2011. In 2016, she and her UCI colleague Carroll Seron served as editors of a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science about prison realignment in California.
Go to Profile#516
Dorothy Wedderburn
#22750
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Dorothy Enid Wedderburn was Principal of Bedford College, part of the University of London, and after the merger with Royal Holloway College, another college of the university, was the first principal of the combined institution.
Go to Profile#517
Jan E. Stets
#164904
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
#518
Lisbeth Larsson
#81455
Overall Influence
1949 - 2021 (72 years)
Lisbeth Helena Larsson was a Swedish literary historian and researcher who from 2000 was professor of literary studies at the University of Gothenburg where she focused on gender studies. Drawing on the archive of women's history at the Arts Faculty Library, she published a book on women from Gothenburg, Hundrade och en Göteborgskvinnor . It paved the way for a grant from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation which in March 2018 led to the establishment of Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon, a searchable biographical dictionary of Swedish women. Larsson is also remembered as a theatre and...
Go to Profile#519
Elvira de Mejia
#100936
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elvira de Mejia is a biochemist and food scientist, currently working as a professor of Food Sciences and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She is an expert in the areas of food science, food toxicology, and chemoprevention.
Go to Profile#520
Rosemary Deem
#165379
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
#521
Malala Yousafzai
#778
Overall Influence
1997 - Present (27 years)
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the age of 17. She is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. Yousafzai is a human rights advocate for the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."
Go to Profile#522
Jacqueline Anne Rouse
#110488
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Anne Rouse was an American scholar of African American women’s history. She is most widely known for her work on Southern black women and their activism from the turn of the twentieth century to the Civil Rights Movement.
Go to Profile#523
Christine Williams
#137913
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Christine L. Williams is an American sociologist. She is a professor of Sociology and the Elsie and Stanley E. Adams Sr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of specialization include gender, sexuality, and workplace inequality. Her research primarily involves gender discrimination at work.
Go to Profile#524
Jessica Valenti
#67966
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Jessica Valenti is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism , He's a Stud, She's a Slut , The Purity Myth , Why Have Kids? , and Sex Object: A Memoir . She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape , and Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World . Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She currently runs the Abortion, Every Day newsletter on Substack. The Washington Post d...
Go to Profile#525
Katherine Beckett
#118599
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Katherine Beckett is an American sociologist known for researching the United States criminal justice system. She is a professor in the University of Washington's Law, Societies & Justice Program, as well as in the Department of Sociology there. She previously taught at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#526
Valerie Jenness
#55522
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Valerie Jenness is an author, researcher, public policy advisor, and professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine . Jenness is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and prior to that, was a senior visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan. Jenness served as dean of the School of Social Ecology from 2009 to 2015 and chair of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society from 2001-2006.
Go to Profile#527
Sigrid Metz-Göckel
#113297
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Sigrid Metz-Göckel is a German sociologist, political scientist and social psychologist who specializes in women's and gender studies as well as in educational research and didactics. She is a professor emerita at the Technical University of Dortmund. In the late 1970s, Metz-Göckel pioneered women's studies in Germany which became an established university course in Dortmund in 1971.
Go to Profile#528
Helen Matthews Lewis
#77905
Overall Influence
1924 - 2022 (98 years)
Helen Matthews Lewis was an American sociologist, historian, and activist who specialized in Appalachia and women's rights. She was noted for developing an interpretation of Appalachia as an internal United States colony, as well as designing the first academic programs for Appalachian studies. She also specialized in Appalachian oral history, collecting and preserving the experiences of Appalachian working-class women in their own words. She is known as the "grandmother of Appalachian Studies" as her work has influenced a generation of scholars who focus on Appalachia.
Go to Profile#529
Elaine Unterhalter
#136346
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Elaine Unterhalter is a South African educational researcher. She is Professor of Education and International Development at University College London. Unterhalter was elected as Fellow of the British Academy in 2020. She is a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association.
Go to Profile#530
Hilda Herzer
#110094
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Hilda María Herzer was an Argentine sociologist, environmentalist and professor. She was a researcher with FLACSO, and visiting professor at Universidad Nacional del Litoral. She earned her bachelor's degree at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires in 1960, and her PhD in social sciences at New York University. Herzer was a pioneer in the field of urban studies in Argentina. Her fieldwork, conducted with her research group, focused on the city of Pergamino. She is remembered for her teaching and research at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani and for serving ...
Go to Profile#531
Ruth Frankenberg
#73924
Overall Influence
1957 - 2007 (50 years)
Ruth Alice Emma Frankenberg was a British–American social scientist and feminist, known for her pioneering work in the field of whiteness studies. Biography Ruth Frankenberg was born in Cardiff, Wales, 17 September 1957. She was the daughter of Ronald Frankenberg , an anthropologist best known for his work Village on the Border, which demonstrated how anthropological methods could be appropriately applied to British society. Her partner Lata Mani is a feminist and historian, currently residing in California. Mani is the author of Contentious Traditions, an analysis of widow burning in colonial India.
Go to Profile#532
Montserrat Sagot
#39254
Overall Influence
Montserrat Sagot Rodríguez is a Costa Rican sociologist especially known for her work on violence against women and girls. She was a pioneer in research on femicide in Central America. In 2010, she published the first research on femicide in Costa Rica.
Go to Profile#533
Cora Baldock
#60129
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Cora Vellekoop Baldock is an Australian-Dutch Sociologist. She was president of the Australian Sociological Association 1979-1980 and served as a member of the Australian Federal Government's Multicultural Advisory Committee. She was the first female professor at Murdoch University, Perth, and its first professor of sociology.
Go to Profile#534
Anja Joergensen
#55674
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Anja Jørgensen is a Danish professor of urban sociology at Aalborg University. Education In 1997 Jørgensen completed her MA in Sociology at Aalborg University. In 2003 she received her PhD in Sociology.
Go to Profile#535
Shere Hite
#48996
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Shere Hite was an American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite built upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey. She also referenced theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.
Go to Profile#536
Sarah Ben-David
#124540
Overall Influence
Sarah Ben-David is an Israeli Professor of Criminology whose scientific and public activity focuses mainly on victimology and criminology and overlapping areas between these two fields. In recent years, Ben-David has worked to encourage research, awareness and therapy in the field of sexual harassment of men and women, and regarding awareness of the reciprocal nature of intimate partner violence and domestic violence.
Go to Profile#537
Heike Mauer
#43384
Overall Influence
Heike Mauer is a German gender theorist. She wrote a monograph about prostitution in Luxembourg and written about gender studies through the lens of postcolonialism and intersectionality. She works at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Go to Profile#538
Marie-Andrée Bertrand
#41271
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Marie-Andrée Bertrand was a French-Canadian criminologist, a feminist and anti-prohibitionist. Biography Bertrand was born in Montreal and started her career as a social worker for female offenders, mainly sex workers. In 1963, she received a master's degree from the Université de Montréal. She went on to study criminology at the School of Criminology, University of California, Berkeley, where she got her Ph.D. in 1967. She held a professorship in criminology at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal. She continued to work, until her death, doing research, teaching and publishing.
Go to Profile#539
Kathleen Lynch
#68598
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Kathleen Lynch is an Irish sociologist, activist and professor emeritus of equality studies at University College Dublin. Career Lynch began her career as a social worker, working in North Dublin city. Her seminal work is a co-authored study with Anne Lodge, Equality and Power in Schools: Redistribution, Recognition, and Representation. It was a two-year study of twelve Irish schools, studying all aspects from streaming to sexual orientation. Lynch was involved in the establishment of the Equality Studies Centre in University College Dublin in 1990. In 2005, she was involved in the creation of the UCD School of Social Justice.
Go to Profile#540
Cora Bagley Marrett
#95745
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Cora Bagley Marrett is an American sociologist. From May 2011 until August 2014, Marrett served as the deputy director of the National Science Foundation. Biography Early life Cora Bagley Marrett was born in 1942 in Kenbridge, Virginia. Her parents only had a sixth grade education and Marrett was the youngest of 12 children.
Go to Profile#541
Jackie Smith
#123282
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Jackie Smith is an American sociologist. She specializes in Political economy and Transnational organization social movements. Since 2011, she has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Smith currently serves as editor of the Journal of World-Systems Research, an official journal of the American Sociological Association and published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. She is an advocate for the Open Access movement, arguing that scholarly societies should consider publishing options beyond those of major publishers. She is a leading advocate for ...
Go to Profile#542
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
#93374
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Aileen Moreton-Robinson is an Australian academic, Indigenous feminist, author and activist for Indigenous rights. She is a Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka people from Minjerribah in Queensland. She completed a PhD at Griffith University in 1998, her thesis titled Talkin' up to the white woman: Indigenous women and feminism in Australia. The thesis was published as a book in 1999 and short-listed for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and the Stanner Award. A 20th Anniversary Edition was released in 2020 by University of Queensland Press. Her 2015 monograph The White Possessive: ...
Go to Profile#543
Gargi Bhattacharyya
#124894
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Gargi Bhattacharyya is a British sociologist. They are professor of sociology at the University of East London . Life Bhattacharyya's parents are from Bengal. Their younger sister is the playwright Sonali Bhattacharyya. They were a lecturer at Aston University and the University of Birmingham before coming to UEL in 2013.
Go to Profile#544
Pinar Karaca-Mandic
#40410
Overall Influence
Pinar Karaca-Mandic is an American economist who is C. Arthur Williams Jr. Professor in Healthcare Risk Management and Academic Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research . She was previously on the faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an economist for the RAND Corporation.
Go to Profile#545
Heather Hamill
#94112
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Heather Hamill is a sociologist who is currently an associate professor at the University of Oxford, St Cross College. She specializes in the study of crime and extralegal governance. Her book, The Hoods: Crime and Punishment in Belfast, about paramilitary punishment attacks in Northern Ireland, won the James Donnelly Sr. Prize for Books in History and Social Sciences, awarded by the American Conference for Irish Studies. According to the award committee:
Go to Profile#546
Nancy Lee Peluso
#89036
Overall Influence
Nancy Lee Peluso is an American rural sociologist. She is the Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#547
Assata Shakur
#26974
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Assata Olugbala Shakur is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Liberation Army . In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is currently wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million FBI reward for information leading to her capture, and an additional $1 million reward offered by the Attorney General of New Jersey.
Go to Profile#548
Eva Gothlin
#93073
Overall Influence
1957 - 2006 (49 years)
Eva Gothlin was a Swedish historian of ideas. Biography Eva Lundgren was born on 26 January 1957 in Norrköping. Gothlin defended her thesis on the history of ideas at the University of Gothenburg in 1991 with the dissertation Kön och existens: studier i Simone de Beauvoirs Le Deuxième Sexe . In 1998, she became the first director of the then newly-formed National Secretariat for Gender Research. In 2001, she became an Associate Professor of History of Ideas. From 2004 until her death, she was a senior lecturer at the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg.
Go to Profile#549
Katharine Betts
#141882
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Katharine Betts is an Australian sociologist specialising in environmental and population issues. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology with Swinburne University. She is also a member of The Australian Sociological Association and Sustainable Population Australia.
Go to Profile#550
Susan Sorenson
#128934
Overall Influence
Susan B. Sorenson is a professor of social policy, and of health and societies, at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a senior fellow in public health, director of the PhD program in social welfare, and director of the Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center there. She is known for studying gun violence from a public health and political perspective, and she has argued for increasing the availability of data to researchers regarding this subject.
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