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,
#851
Lynn Rapaport
#191798
Overall Influence
Lynn Rapaport is an American sociologist and Holocaust scholar. She is the Henry Snyder Professor of Sociology at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and her doctorate from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#852
Nelly Naumann
#74121
Overall Influence
1922 - 2000 (78 years)
Nelly Naumann was a German scholar of Japanese studies with a specialisation in Japanese mythology and folklore and Shinto. Life and career Naumann was born Thusnelda Joch in Lörrach, where she was educated at the Hebel Gymnasium, completing her Abitur in 1941. She studied Japanese and Chinese studies, ethnology and philosophy at the University of Vienna. World War II delayed the completion of her dissertation, "Das Pferd in Sage und Brauchtum Japans" until 1946, when she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in Japanese studies from that university.
Go to Profile#853
Zuzana Čaputová
#69492
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Zuzana Čaputová is a Slovak politician, lawyer and environmental activist. She is the fifth president of Slovakia, a position she has held since 15 June 2019. Čaputová is the first woman to hold the presidency, as well as the youngest president in the history of Slovakia, elected at the age of 45.
Go to Profile#854
Taima Moeke-Pickering
#187601
Overall Influence
Taima Moeke-Pickering is a Canadian-New Zealand academic, a Māori, of Ngāti Pūkeko and Tuhoe descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Laurentian University. Academic career After years of working as a professor and administrator at the University of Waikato and years at Waikato Institute of Technology, Moeke-Pickering moved to Canada in 2006 to take up a position as an assistant professor in the School of Indigenous Relations at Laurentian University. She completed her PhD in 2010 titled 'Decolonisation as a social change framework and its impact on the development of Indigenous-based curricula for Helping Professionals in mainstream Tertiary Education Organisations'.
Go to Profile#855
Suzanne M. Babich
#176199
Overall Influence
Suzanne Marie Babich , formerly Suzanne Havala Hobbs is an American public health scientist, food writer, registered dietitian and vegetarianism activist. She was the primary author for the American Dietetic Association's 1988 and 1993 vegetarian position papers.
Go to Profile#856
Jodi O'Brien
#191814
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jodi O'Brien is a Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at Seattle University. Her teaching and research interests include gender. sexuality, religion, social psychology, and social inequality. She is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender and Society and co-editor of the “Contemporary Sociological Perspectives” book series. Her books include The Production of Reality, Social Prisms, and Everyday Inequalities. O'Brien is openly gay.
Go to Profile#857
Marilyn Kilgen
#58922
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Marilyn Gayle Barrios Kilgen is an American microbiologist and seafood safety scientist. She is the Alcee Fortier Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Nicholls State University. Personal life and education Growing up, Kilgen thought about becoming a doctor but changed her plans after her mother died of breast cancer. She chose to attend her father's alma mater for post-secondary education, Nicholls State University.
Go to Profile#858
Ileana Rodríguez
#83666
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Ileana Rodríguez is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Latin American Literatures and Cultures at the Ohio State University, and she is also affiliated with the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica .
Go to Profile#859
Ruth H. Alexander
#98071
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Ruth Hammack Alexander was an American activist for women in collegiate sports. She established the "Lady Gator Athletic" program at the University of Florida to allow women to participate in intercollegiate athletics for the first time.
Go to Profile#860
Prathia Hall
#19068
Overall Influence
1940 - 2002 (62 years)
Prathia Laura Ann Hall Wynn was an American leader and activist in the Civil Rights Movement, a womanist theologian, and ethicist. She was the key inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Go to Profile#861
Bjørg Aase Sørensen
#118222
Overall Influence
1944 - 2010 (66 years)
Bjørg Aase Sørensen was a Norwegian sociologist. She was senior researcher at the Work Research Institute, professor at Vestfold University College and adjunct professor at the University of Oslo. She was editor-in-chief of Acta Sociologica from 1974 to 1976.
Go to Profile#862
Mariza Corrêa
#99773
Overall Influence
1945 - 2016 (71 years)
Mariza Corrêa was a Brazilian anthropologist and sociologist. She was professor at the Department of Anthropology of the State University of Campinas . Trained in journalism in the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul , she started to study social sciences in the State University of Campinas where she graduated in 1975. She earned in 1982 her PhD in Political Sciences at the University of São Paulo with a thesis on Raimundo Nina Rodrigues.
Go to Profile#863
Marisa Morán Jahn
#126919
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Marisa Morán Jahn, also known as Marisa Jahn is an American multimedia artist, writer, and educator based in New York City. She is a co-founder and president of Studio REV-, a nonprofit arts organization that creates public art and creative media to impact the lives of low-wage workers, immigrants, youth, and women. She teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a lecturer, Teachers College of Columbia University, and The New School. Jahn has edited three books about art and politics.
Go to Profile#864
Celeste Kaplan
#86734
Overall Influence
Celeste Strack Kaplan , was an American social worker, educator, and activist. From 1973 to 1982, she was executive director for El Nido Family Services, and in 1983 helped found and served as the initial president of the Los Angeles Roundtable for Children until 1990. She was also a professor at the University of Southern California School for Social Work from 1983 to 1990, and helped create the LA County Department of Children and Family Services in 1984. In 2012 she was selected for the Social Work Hall of Distinction.
Go to Profile#865
Natascha McNamara
#89212
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Natascha Duschene McNamara is an Ngarrindjeri Australian academic, activist, and researcher. She co-founded the Aboriginal Training and Cultural Institute in Balmain, New South Wales and served as President of the Aboriginal Children's Advancement Society Ltd. Her affiliations include: Fellowship, Centre of Indigenous Development Education and Research, University of Wollongong ; member, Australian Press Council; and Member, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Council.
Go to Profile#866
Juliette Sméralda
#40406
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Juliette Sméralda is a French Afro-descendant sociologist. Publications L'Indo-Antillais entre Noirs et Békés, Éditions L'Harmattan La société martiniquaise entre ethnicité et citoyenneté, Éditions L'Harmattan Du cheveu défrisé au cheveu crépu, Éditions Publibook, Paris, 2012.Peau noire cheveu crépu, l'histoire d'une aliénation, Éditions Jasor La racisation des relations intergroupes ou la problématique de la couleur. Le cas de la Martinique, Éditions L'Harmattan La question de l’immigration indienne dans son environnement socio-économique martiniquais : 1848-1900, Éditions L'Harmattan Guadeloupe Martinique, des sociétés en révolte.
Go to Profile#867
Soledad Bianchi
#191772
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Soledad Bianchi is a Chilean sociologist specialized in the sociology of literature. She went into exile in France during the military dictatorship era. Sources
Go to Profile#868
Dorothy McKnight
#142264
Overall Influence
Dorothy "Dottie" B. McKnight worked as the executive director of the United States Women's Lacrosse Association and the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, a university professor, a varsity coach, and an advocate for sex equity in athletics.
Go to Profile#869
Joan Woodward
1916 - 1971 (55 years)
Joan Woodward was a British professor in industrial sociology and organizational studies. Background Woodward was educated at Oxford University, where she gained a first in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1936, followed by an MA in medieval philosophy from Durham University in 1938, and a Diploma in Social and Public Administration from Oxford in 1939. During World War II she worked as a manager, rising to be Senior Labour Manager at ROF Bridgwater. She undertook her early research at South East Essex College of Technology, before joining Imperial College in 1957 as a part-time lecturer...
Go to Profile#870
Dorothy Swaine Thomas
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Dorothy Swaine Thomas was an American sociologist and economist. She was the 42nd President of the American Sociological Association, the first woman in that role. Life and career Thomas was born on October 24, 1899, in Baltimore, Maryland to John Knight and Sarah Swaine Thomas.
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Beatrice Webb
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term "collective bargaining". She was among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society.
Go to Profile#872
Neva Boyd
1876 - 1963 (87 years)
Neva Leona Boyd was an American sociologist. She founded the Recreational Training School at the Hull House in Chicago. The school taught a one-year educational program in group games, gymnastics, dancing, dramatic arts, play theory, and social problems. She was on the faculty of Northwestern University from 1927 to 1941.
Go to Profile#873
Rose Goldsen
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
Rose Kohn Goldsen was a professor of sociology at Cornell University and a pioneer in studying the effects of television and popular culture. Prior to coming to Cornell, Goldsen worked for the Office of Radio Research, Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research. Goldsen came to Cornell as a research associate and felt that she encountered employment discrimination because she was a woman. In 1958, a faculty position opened up and she demanded to be considered, resulting in her appointment to the faculty.
Go to Profile#874
Margaret Fuller
1810 - 1850 (40 years)
Sarah Margaret Fuller , sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.
Go to Profile#875
Nannie Helen Burroughs
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Nannie Helen Burroughs was an educator, orator, religious leader, civil rights activist, feminist, and businesswoman in the United States. Her speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the 1900 National Baptist Convention in Virginia, instantly won her fame and recognition. In 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC. Burroughs' objective was at the point of intersection between race and gender.
Go to Profile#876
Kate Stephens
1853 - 1954 (101 years)
Kate Brown Stephens was an American naturalist and the curator of mollusks and marine invertebrates at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1910 to 1936. Biography Stephens was born in London, England. Her father, Thomas Brown, was a cab driver; her mother, Mary Tyler Brown, died when Kate was in her late teens or early twenties. Helping to raise her younger brother George while the family lived in the Kensington area of London, Kate is said to have worked at the Natural History Museum. She immigrated to the United States around 1888-1890. She lived for a short time in the city of Sa...
Go to Profile#877
Mirta Aguirre
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Mirta Aguirre Carreras was a Cuban poet, novelist, journalist and political activist from the LGBTQI movement. She has been called "the most important female academic and woman of letters in post-revolutionary Cuba".
Go to Profile#878
Ella Eaton Kellogg
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Ella Eaton Kellogg was an American dietitian known for her work on home economics and vegetarian cooking. She was educated at Alfred University ; and the American School Household Economics . In 1875, Kellogg visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium, became interested in the subjects of sanitation and hygiene, and a year later enrolled in the Sanitarium School of Hygiene. Later on, she joined the editorial staff of Good Health magazine, and in 1879, married Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Go to Profile#879
Carey D. Miller
1895 - 1965 (70 years)
Carey Dunlap Miller was an American food scientist and a University of Hawaii at Manoa food and nutrition professor and department chair from 1922-1958. Early life and education Miller was born to immigrant parents that owned a ranch in Idaho. She graduated from Boise High School in 1912. She received her bachelor's degree with honors from the University of California, Berkeley and later her master's degree at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#880
Mary Burnett Talbert
1866 - 1923 (57 years)
Mary Burnett Talbert was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Career Mary Morris Burnett was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1866. As the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886, Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She entered the field of education, first as a teacher in 1886 at Bethel University in Little Rock, then as an assistant principal of the Union High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, the highest position held by an African-American woman in the state.
Go to Profile#881
Irene Barnes Taeuber
1906 - 1974 (68 years)
Irene Barnes Taeuber was an American demographer who worked for the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, where she edited the journal Population Index from 1936 to 1954. Her scholarly work is credited with helping to establish the science of demography.
Go to Profile#882
Ruth Glass
1912 - 1990 (78 years)
Ruth Glass was a German-born British sociologist, urban planner and founder of the Centre for Urban Studies at University College London . Life She was born in Berlin on 30 June 1912, the daughter of Eli Lazarus, who was Jewish, and Lilly Leszczynska. She left Germany in 1932, studying at the London School of Economics. After spending two years from 1941 at the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University, she returned to the United Kingdom in 1943. She concentrated on town planning and social planning.
Go to Profile#883
Mildred Parten Newhall
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Mildred Bernice Parten Newhall was an American sociologist, a researcher at University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development. She completed her doctoral dissertation in 1929. In it she developed the theory of six stages of child's play, which led to a series of influential publications.
Go to Profile#884
Ruth Shonle Cavan
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Ruth Shonle Cavan was an American sociologist based at the University of Chicago. She specialized in deviance and criminology and was a leader of the Chicago school of sociology. According to Moyer :Ruth Shonle Cavan is recognized by most current criminologists as an extraordinary writer with analytical skills and the ability to synthesize the research in the field. One of the major strengths of her writings is her ability to build on the theoretical perspectives and methodologies of the Chicago School and to use other perspectives and methodologies when appropriate....[M]ost current crimino...
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Mary Frank Fox
Mary Frank Fox is Dean's Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a pioneer and leader in the study of women and men in academic and scientific occupations and organizations. Her work has introduced and established the ways that participation and performance in science reflect and are affected by complex social-organizational processes. Fox's research is published in over 60 different scholarly and scientific journals, books, and collections, including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology, and Human Values, Sociology of Edu...
Go to Profile#886
Helen Lynd
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Helen Merrell Lynd was an American sociologist, social philosopher, educator, and author. She is best known for conducting the first Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, with her husband, Robert Staughton Lynd; as the coauthor of Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts ; and a pioneer in the use of social surveys. She was also the author of England in the 1880s: Toward a Social Basis for Freedom , Shame and the Search for Identity , and essays on academic freedom. In addition to writing and research, Lynd was a lectu...
Go to Profile#887
Julieta Kirkwood
1936 - 1985 (49 years)
María Julieta Kirkwood Bañados was a Chilean sociologist, political scientist, university professor and feminist activist. She is considered one of the founders and impellers of the Chilean feminist movement in the 1980s. She is considered the forerunner of Gender studies in Chile.
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Jane Addams
1860 - 1935 (75 years)
Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States. Addams co-founded Chicago's Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses, providing extensive social services to poor, largely immigrant families. In 1910, Addams was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school. In 1920, she was a co-founder of the Amer...
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Harriet Martineau
1802 - 1876 (74 years)
Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist often seen as the first female sociologist. She wrote from a sociological, holistic, religious and feminine angle, translated works by Auguste Comte, and, rarely for a woman writer at the time, earned enough to support herself. The young Princess Victoria enjoyed her work and invited her to her 1838 coronation. Martineau advised "a focus on all [society's] aspects, including key political, religious, and social institutions". She applied thorough analysis to women's status under men. The novelist Margaret Oliphant called her "a born lecturer and politician...
Go to Profile#890
Eva Verbitsky Hunt
1934 - 1980 (46 years)
Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband Robert Hunt, she performed innovative regional work in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.
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Mary Roberts Coolidge
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Mary Roberts Coolidge , also known as Mary Roberts Smith, was an American sociologist and author. She was an instructor at Wellesley College before joining the faculty of Stanford University, where she became the first full-time American professor of sociology. She later founded the sociology department of Mills College.
Go to Profile#892
Mary Mims
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Mary Mims was born in Minden, Louisiana. She was a community organizer, teacher, educator, humanitarian, lecturer, and a pioneering sociologist. She was the founder of the "community organization movement" in cooperative extension. She was an extension services specialist in community organizing and worked for Louisiana State University. She was a state community worker for Louisiana.
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Minnie Louise Haskins
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Minnie Louise Haskins was a British poet and an academic in the field of sociology, best known for being quoted by King George VI in his Royal Christmas Message of 1939. Early life Haskins was born at 2 Kingswood Hill, Oldland, South Gloucestershire, six miles east of Bristol, and she grew up in the neighbouring village of Warmley. Her father was Joseph Haskins, a grocer, and her mother was Louisa Bridges. Her father acquired a pottery at Warmley making drain pipes, which was continued after his death by her mother. The family lived at Warmley House.
Go to Profile#894
Muriel Rukeyser
1913 - 1980 (67 years)
Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet, essayist, biographer, and political activist. She wrote poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".
Go to Profile#895
Viola Klein
1908 - 1973 (65 years)
Viola Klein was a sociologist in Great Britain. Her work demonstrated that objective ideas about women's attributes are socially constructed. Although her early training was in psychology and philosophy, her most prolific research engagements concerned women's social roles and how these changed after the Industrial Revolution. She was one of the first scholars to bring quantitative evidence to bear on this socio-economic topic. Her research not only illuminated the changing roles of women in society, but she also wrote and lectured on concrete social and political changes that would help faci...
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Annie Marion MacLean
1869 - 1934 (65 years)
Annie Marion MacLean was a pioneering American sociologist of the women's Chicago School, and is sometimes referred to as the "mother of contemporary ethnography". She was one of the first women to pursue a professional career in sociology.
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Rose Hum Lee
1904 - 1964 (60 years)
Rose Hum Lee was a first generation Chinese-American who became the first woman and the first Chinese-American to head a United States university sociology department. Biography Daughter of Hum Wong Long and Lin Fong, Hum was born the second of seven children and raised in Butte, Montana. She attended Butte High School and trained to become a secretary.
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Clara Zetkin
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights. Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She then joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League, which later became the Communist Party of Germany . She represented that party in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933.
Go to Profile#899
Olive Stone
1897 - 1977 (80 years)
Olive "Polly" Matthews Stone was a sociologist whose interests focused on human welfare, race relations, and southern American farmers. Throughout her life, she was actively involved in several Marxist reading groups and financially contributed to union organizing in the black belt region.
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Anna Howard Shaw
1847 - 1919 (72 years)
Anna Howard Shaw was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. She was also a physician and one of the first ordained female Methodist ministers in the United States. Early life
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