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,
#551
Eve Ewing
#31926
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Eve Louise Ewing is an American sociologist, author, poet, and visual artist from Chicago, Illinois. Ewing is a tenured professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her academic research in the sociology of education includes her 2018 book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side, a study of school closures in Chicago. She is the former editor at Seven Scribes and the author of the poetry collection Electric Arches which was released in September 2017. In 2019, she published 1919, a poetry collection centered around the Chicago race riot of 1919.
Go to Profile#552
Harriet Presser
#80060
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
Harriet B. Presser was a sociologist and demographer. Having served on the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, for more than 30 years, at the time of her death she was a Distinguished University Professor. She was elected president of the Population Association of America for the year 1989. In addition, she was awarded the Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association in 2010, and was elected as a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. As a scholar, she studied the intersection of gender, work and family, and pioneered the sociological specialization in that area.
Go to Profile#553
Betsy Ettorre
#150391
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Elizabeth Mary Ettorre is an Anglo-American feminist sociologist. Career Ettorre completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology at Fordham University, New York, before earning a Ph.D. in the subject with a thesis 'The Sociology of lesbianism: female "deviance" and female sexuality' at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She attended the UK's first National Lesbian Conference in Bristol in 1974 and helped to organise the UK's ninth national Women's liberation movement conference in London in 1977. Ettorre did sociological research at Institute of Psychiatry, Birkbeck Colle...
Go to Profile#554
Denise Gottfredson
#88757
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Denise Claire Gottfredson is an American criminologist and professor in the department of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an expert on school violence and juvenile delinquency. She is recognized for her research applying the techniques of program evaluation to certain crime prevention initiatives, such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the Strengthening Families Program, and the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court. She has also researched the effects of school resource officers on schools, finding that such officers spend an average of about half of their time engaged in law enforcement activities.
Go to Profile#555
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen
#57570
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Malene Freudendal-Pedersen is professor of urban planning at Aalborg University and has an interdisciplinary background linking sociology, geography, urban planning and the sociology of technology. Her research has been strongly inspired by the mobilities turn.
Go to Profile#556
Joanne Hort
#57742
Overall Influence
Joanne Hort is a New Zealand food science academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Massey University and holds the 'Fonterra Riddet Chair in Consumer and Sensory Science'. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled 'Cheddar cheese : Its texture, chemical composition and rheological properties' at the Sheffield Hallam University, Hort moved to University of Nottingham, rising to full professor. Hort then moved to Massey University, where she currently teaches.
Go to Profile#557
Hannah Landecker
#85691
Overall Influence
Hannah L. Landecker is an Australian author and academic working as a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. Education Landecker earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of British Columbia and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#558
Margrit Brückner
#104418
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Margrit Brückner is a feminist German sociologist and a retired professor of the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. Her publications on girls and women at work, and, especially, her work on violence against women, have become core academic texts. Another of her more notable specialities involves her contributions to the international debate on care.
Go to Profile#559
Rebecca Piekkari
#61899
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Rebecca Marschan-Piekkari is a Finnish organizational theorist and Professor of International Business at the Aalto University, and Vice Dean of its Department of Management Studies, known for her work on "international business research." and on multinational corporations.
Go to Profile#560
Pardis Mahdavi
#46034
Overall Influence
Pardis Mahdavi is an American scholar and the Provost and Executive Vice President of the University of Montana. Previously, she served as Dean of Social Sciences at Arizona State University. Previously she was Acting Dean of Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Prior to that, she served as Dean of Women, and Chair and professor of anthropology at Pomona College.
Go to Profile#561
Eva Kahana
#149208
Overall Influence
Eva Kahana is an American sociologist. Career Kahana is the Pierce T. and Elizabeth D Robson Professor of Humanities, Chair of the Department of Sociology, and the Director of the Elderly Care Research Center at Case Western Reserve University. She has published over 200 academic articles on Holocaust survivors, aging, and stressors.
Go to Profile#562
Corey Lee Wrenn
#118087
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Corey Lee Wrenn is an American sociologist specializing in human-animal studies, the sociology of the animal rights movement, ecofeminism, and vegan studies. She is presently a lecturer in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent.
Go to Profile#563
Anna Freixas
#114609
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Anna Freixas Farré is a Spanish feminist writer and retired university professor. Biography Anna Freixas graduated with a PhD in psychology at the University of Barcelona, where she was a pupil of , and where she developed the first years of her teaching career. In her doctoral thesis, she analyzed the self-perception of the aging process of women. In 1981 she arrived in Andalusia, when she entered the University of Córdoba, first at the Institute of Education Sciences and then the Faculty of Educational Sciences, where she was Professor of Evolutionary Psychology and Education. She also crea...
Go to Profile#564
Alena V. Ledeneva
#74643
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Alena Valeryevna Ledeneva is Professor of Politics and Society at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies , University College London . She is known for her studies of blat, corruption and informal practices in Russia.
Go to Profile#565
Elaine Brody
#71250
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Elaine Marjorie Brody was an American gerontologist and sociologist, who studied cases on elderly Americans tended to by caregivers. In a career lasting six decades, she was one of the first social workers to research her clients, particularly of "women in the middle", a term she used to refer to women who raised their children and cared for their elderly parents simultaneously. Brody contributed to the foundation of gerontology, and her works established a precedent in this field.
Go to Profile#566
Akwugo Emejulu
#109759
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Akwugo Emejulu is a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick. She focuses on political sociology, including inequalities across Europe and grassroots campaigns for women of colour. Early life and education Emejulu completed her bachelor's degree in political science at the American University. She joined the University of Glasgow for her graduate studies, earning a Master of Philosophy in Urban Policy. She moved to the University of Strathclyde for her PhD, which she was awarded in 2010. Her PhD thesis considered community development as a discourse, identities and social practises ...
Go to Profile#567
Manali Desai
#142470
Overall Influence
Manali Desai is a Reader in Sociology and a Fellow at Newnham College. She is currently the Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and is believed the first woman of color to lead a department at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#568
Nancy Denton
#23149
Overall Influence
Nancy Anne Denton is an American sociologist. She is a professor of sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, where she Professor Emeritus. SUNY Albany, where Dr. Havidan Rodriguez is currently the president of the university. She is known for her research on racial segregation in the United States with Douglas Massey, with whom she co-authored the book American Apartheid. A book, well reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, when first published. Upon retiring from SUNY Albany, she received the Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Community and Urban Sociology section from ...
Go to Profile#569
Marilyn Salzman Webb
#67733
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Marilyn Salzman Webb , also known as Marilyn Webb, is an American author, activist, professor, feminist and journalist. She has been involved in the civil rights, feminist, anti-Vietman war and end-of-life care movements, and is considered one of the founders of the Second-wave women's liberation movement.
Go to Profile#570
Pamela Smock
#137610
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Pamela Jane Smock is an American sociologist and demographer. She is a research professor in the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center, of which she was the director from 2010 to 2013. She is also a professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Michigan. She is known for her research on issues related to the family, such as cohabitation, which she has been studying for over two decades.
Go to Profile#571
Delia Davin
#59952
Overall Influence
1944 - 2016 (72 years)
Delia Davin was a writer and lecturer on Chinese society and particularly Chinese women's stories. She was one of the first foreign scholars to consider the impact of the policies of the Chinese Communist Party on women.
Go to Profile#572
Claire Wallace
#109334
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Claire Wallace is Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen and was President of the European Sociological Association between 2007 and 2009, during which she helped to organise the Annual Conference in Lisbon in 2009 and in Glasgow in 2007. She has also been editor in chief of the international journal European Societies between 2001 and 2006.
Go to Profile#573
Alison Jones
#62283
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Barbara Alison Jones is a New Zealand academic who works in the field of sociology of education. She is the great-great-great granddaughter of Andrew Buchanan, New Zealand politician 1862–1874; great-great granddaughter of William Baldwin New Zealand politician 1863–1867; great granddaughter of Admiral William Oswald Story of the British Royal Navy. She has two sons, Finn McCahon Jones and Frey McCahon Jones
Go to Profile#574
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
#32857
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is an American sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a 1984 MacArthur Genius.
Go to Profile#575
Francisca de Haan
#111482
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Francisca de Haan is a Dutch historian and writer who specializes in women's and gender history. From 2002 until 2022, she has taught at the Central European University, first in Budapest and since 2020 located in Vienna, where she is now Professor Emerita of Gender Studies and History, as well as being a fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Her publications include A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries and she is the founding editor of Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and South Eastern European Women’s and Gender History .
Go to Profile#576
Joanne Belknap
#119628
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Joanne Elizabeth Belknap is an American criminologist and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Belknap was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. She trained at Temple University's Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. She studies jail-to-community reentry and implementing college courses in prisons. She was awarded the 2009 Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Lectureship Award, which recognizes efforts to advance women in academia, interdisciplinary scholarly contributions and distinguished teaching.
Go to Profile#577
Dzodzi Tsikata
#134899
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Dzodzi Tsikata is a Ghanaian feminist, academic, professor of Development Sociology and Director of Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. Biography Dzodzi Tsikata is a professor at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana. Her academic interests include gender and development Issues, gender equity policies and practices. She was elected in June 2015 as the president of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa at their 14th general assembly meeting in Senegal.
Go to Profile#578
Marcia Ochoa
#148413
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Marcia Ochoa is a United States-based professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They are the co-founder of El/La Para TransLatinas and is credited with popularizing the term "translatina."
Go to Profile#579
Mounira M. Charrad
#111898
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Mounira Maya Charrad is a Franco-Tunisian sociologist who serves as associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an author whose work focuses on political sociology, comparative history, gender politics, and the Middle East. Her research has centered on state formation, colonialism, law, citizenship, kinship, and women's rights.
Go to Profile#580
Carolyn Halpern
#88662
Overall Influence
Carolyn Tucker Halpern is an American developmental psychologist and Professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she is Chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She is also the deputy director of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Go to Profile#581
Ingrid Waldron
#112029
Overall Influence
Ingrid R. G Waldron is a Canadian social scientist who is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University and serves as co-chair of the Dalhousie University Black Faculty & Staff Caucus. She co-produced the 2019 film There's Something in the Water with Elliot Page, Ian Daniel and Julia Sanderson, which is based on her book of the same name.
Go to Profile#582
Nivedita Prasad
#111321
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Nivedita Prasad is a German sociologist and human rights activist. She is professor of methods and gender-specific social work at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin, and a specialist in the human rights of migrant women.
Go to Profile#583
Lydia Bean
#142755
Overall Influence
Lydia N. Bean is an American sociologist. She authored an ethnographic book, The Politics of Evangelical Identity , about Evangelical communities on the Canada–United States border. Bean is a fellow at New America and a faculty research associate at the University of Texas at Arlington. She was an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University. Bean has been a Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives and was a candidate for the 2021 Texas's 6th congressional district special election.
Go to Profile#584
Rachel Sherman
#150047
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Rachel Sherman is an associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research. Her first book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels , analyzes how workers, guests, and managers in luxury hotels make sense of and negotiate class inequalities that marked their relationships. Her second book, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence , explores the lived experience of privilege among wealthy and affluent parents in New York City.
Go to Profile#585
Lise Kjølsrød
#135344
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Lise Kjølsrød is a Norwegian sociologist, specialising in the sociology of medical care. She graduated from the University of Oslo with a mag.art. degree in 1978, and took the dr.philos. degree in 1992. She worked as a research assistant at the University of Oslo from 1978, and as a scholarship holder at Norges almenvitenskapelige forskningsråd from 1986. From 1988 to 1990 she was a bureucreat in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. She then became amanuensis at the University of Oslo in 1990, and researcher at the Institute for Social Research from 1991. She then returned to the University of Oslo to become associate professor from 1995 and finally professor from 2005.
Go to Profile#586
Kathleen Kiernan
#157600
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Kathleen Kiernan is a Demographer. She is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy and Demography at the University of York. Kiernan joined the university in October 2004 from her previous role as Professor of Social Policy and Demography at the London School of Economics. She was awarded an OBE for services to Social Science in the 2006 New Year Honours and was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2012.
Go to Profile#587
Jane Elliott
#164986
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Barbara Jane Elliott is a British sociologist and academic. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. From October 2014 to September 2017 she was chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council. Her research uses longitudinal, qualitative and quantitative methodologies to explore issues of gender and employment.
Go to Profile#588
Joanna Kidman
#71268
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Joanna Kidman is a Māori sociology academic of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 2001 PhD titled Travelling in the present historic: a case study of socialisation in an academic community in New Zealand at the Australian National University, Kidman moved to Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#589
Irina Zherebkina
#168338
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Irina Anatoliyivna Zherebkina is a Ukrainian feminist academic. She is Professor of Theory of Culture and Philosophy of Science at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and the permanent director of the Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies , which she helped found in 1994.
Go to Profile#590
Esther Ngan-ling Chow
#135496
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Dr Esther Ngan-ling Chow is a sociologist and Emerita Professor at the American University, Washington D.C., United States. She was among the first sociologists to conduct sociological analyses of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in the case of Asian American women.
Go to Profile#591
Walidah Imarisha
#18999
Overall Influence
Walidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist. Career Writing Imarisha is co-editor, with adrienne maree brown, of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, named after the legendary science fiction writer Octavia Butler. She also co-edited Another World Is Possible, the first anthology out in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Go to Profile#592
Janet Zollinger Giele
#62656
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Janet Zollinger Giele is an American sociologist and Professor Emerita of Sociology, Social Policy, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. She is best known for her research on the evolving lives of women, from the 19th century women's rights movements to women's contemporary work and family roles. In addition, her publications include the methodology of life course research and the history and growth of American family policy. She has written or edited ten books and authored numerous articles, a body of work that has been widely cited in her field.
Go to Profile#593
Hanna Świda-Ziemba
#173779
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Hanna Maria Świda-Ziemba was Polish sociologist, scholar and opposition activist in the Polish People's Republic. Biography Her father was professor Witold Świda, and her sister was professor Zofia Świda. She grew up in Vilnius and started keeping a diary from the age of ten, describing life in Soviet-occupied Vilnius, and documenting the post-war period of creating a new socio-political reality in Poland. She became interested in the mechanisms of totalitarian states and would later expand on her observations in her academic studies.
Go to Profile#594
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann
#92753
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Ulrike Tikvah Kissmann is a German sociologist. Life Ulrike T. Kissmann completed her Abitur and Baccalauréat in 1986 and joined the classe préparatoire at the Lycée La Bruyère in Versailles to study Philosophy and Classical Philology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Sèvres-Ulm. From 1987 to 1993, she completed a double degree program in Physics and Philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin . She was awarded the Erwin-Stephan-Preis by the TU Berlin for her degree. From 1993 to 1994, she successfully completed a postgraduate degree in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#595
Gunhild Hagestad
#143609
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Gunhild Oline Hagestad is a retired Norwegian sociologist and a former assistant professor at Agder University College. Her research interests have focused on the sociology of aging. Personal life Hagestad was born in Birkenes on 6 November 1942, a daughter of Tønnes Hagestad and Bertha Stapnes. She was married to György Bisztray from 1966 to 1975.
Go to Profile#596
Nayereh Tohidi
#72466
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nayereh Esfahlani Tohidi is an Iranian-born American professor, researcher, and academic administrator. Tohidi is a professor emerita and former chair of gender and women’s studies, and the founding director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at California State University, Northridge.
Go to Profile#597
Kim Blankenship
#118690
Overall Influence
Kim M. Blankenship is an American sociologist and HIV/AIDS researcher. She is a professor at the American University College of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Core of the District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research.
Go to Profile#598
Margo Okazawa-Rey
#92072
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Margo Okazawa-Rey , is an American professor emerita, educator, writer, and social justice activist, who is most known as a founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and for her transnational feminist advocacy.
Go to Profile#599
Erna Solberg
#29087
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Erna Solberg is a Norwegian politician and the current Leader of the Opposition. She served as the 35th prime minister of Norway from 2013 to 2021, and has been Leader of the Conservative Party since May 2004.
Go to Profile#600
Juana María Rodríguez
#127693
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Juana María Rodríguez is a Cuban-American professor of Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly writing in queer theory, critical race theory, and performance studies highlights the intersection of race, gender, sexuality and embodiment in constructing subjectivity.
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