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 (53 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 (66 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 (82 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 (87 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 (49 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 (91 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 (73 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 (78 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
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#870
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#871
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#872
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#873
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.
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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#875
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.
Go to Profile#877
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#879
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.
Go to Profile#880
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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Barbara Bodichon
1827 - 1891 (64 years)
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was an English educationalist and artist, and a leading mid-19th-century feminist and women's rights activist. She published her influential Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women in 1854 and the English Woman's Journal in 1858. Bodichon co-founded Girton College, Cambridge . Her brother was the Arctic explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith.
Go to Profile#882
Eleanor Roosevelt
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role of First Lady. Roosevelt then served as a United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and in 1948 she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#883
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
1890 - 1998 (108 years)
Marjory Stoneman Douglas was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass , which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring .
Go to Profile#884
Frances Willard
1839 - 1898 (59 years)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Willard became the national president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1879 and remained president until her death in 1898. Her influence continued in the next decades, as the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were adopted. Willard developed the slogan "Do Everything" for the WCTU and encouraged members to engage in a broad array of social reforms by lobbying, petitioning, preaching, publishing, and education. During her lifetime, Willard su...
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Marion Talbot
1858 - 1948 (90 years)
Marion Talbot was an American educator who served as Dean of Women at the University of Chicago from 1895 to 1925, and an influential leader in the higher education of women in the United States during the early 20th century. In 1882, while still a student, she co-founded the American Association of University Women with her mentor Ellen Swallow Richards. During her long career at the University of Chicago, Talbot fought tenaciously and often successfully to improve support for women students and faculty, and against efforts to restrict equal access to educational opportunities.
Go to Profile#886
Jean Martin
1923 - 1979 (56 years)
Jean Isobel Martin FASSA was an Australian sociologist who was a pioneer of the discipline in Australia. Many of her works examined the role of immigrants in Australian society. Her academic career "spanned teaching and research appointments in seven Australian universities".
Go to Profile#887
Margaret Hodgen
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Margaret Trabue Hodgen was an American sociologist and author. Hodgen was a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Hodgen wrote the highly influential Doctrine of the Survivals, first published as a book in 1936, but originally launched in the journal American Anthropology in 1931.
Go to Profile#888
Maud Gonne
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Maud Gonne MacBride was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. She was of Anglo-Irish descent and was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of people evicted in the Land Wars. She actively agitated for Home Rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
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M. Carey Thomas
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Martha Carey Thomas was an American educator, suffragist, and linguist. She was the second president of Bryn Mawr College, a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Early life and education Thomas was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 2, 1857. She was the daughter of James Carey Thomas and Mary Thomas. She was conceived "in full daylight", because her father, a doctor, thought this would diminish the chance of his wife miscarrying.
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Margaret Jarman Hagood
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Margaret Loyd Jarman "Marney" Hagood was an American sociologist and demographer who "helped steer sociology away from the armchair and toward the calculator". She wrote the books Mothers of the South and Statistics for Sociologists , and later became president of the Population Association of America and of the Rural Sociological Society.
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Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 - 1797 (38 years)
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
Go to Profile#892
Jacqueline Burgoyne
1944 - 1988 (44 years)
Jacqueline Lesley Burgoyne was a British sociologist and academic who specialised in family life. Career Jacqueline Burgoyne was born in Worcester on 10 September 1944 and schooled at Bristol. She enrolled at the University of Sheffield in 1963 and completed a sociology degree, before qualifying as a teacher in Bath and then returning to Sheffield to work on a project which would lead to her first book, Books and Reading , the result of a collaboration with Peter H. Mann; after its completion, she worked as a teacher and then in 1971 joined Sheffield City College of Education as a lecturer. ...
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Rosemary Seymour
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
Rosemary Yolande Levinge Seymour was a New Zealand feminist academic. She was instrumental in establishing New Zealand's first women's studies course at the University of Waikato in 1974, the Women's Studies Journal, and the Women's Studies Association of New Zealand.
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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#895
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#896
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".
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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