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,
#351
Doris Y. Wilkinson
#49609
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Doris Yvonne Wilkinson is an American sociologist from Lexington, Kentucky, who was an instigator of racial integration at the University of Kentucky as the first African American to graduate from the University of Kentucky in 1958 as an undergraduate student. At the University of Kentucky, she was the director for the African American Heritage in the Department of Sociology. And in 1969 Wilkinson was the first African-American woman to become a full-time faculty member at University of Kentucky when she joined the Department of Sociology.
Go to Profile#352
Maddie Breeze
#83780
Overall Influence
Maddie Breeze is a British sociologist, and lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Strathclyde. In 2016 she won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize of the British Sociological Association for her book Seriousness in Women’s Roller Derby: Gender, Organization, and Ambivalence.
Go to Profile#353
Margot Jefferys
#97192
Overall Influence
1916 - 1999 (83 years)
Margot Jefferys was Professor of Medical Sociology at Bedford College, London, from 1968 to 1982. She went to Berkhamsted Girls School.
Go to Profile#354
Gina Neff
#40992
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Neff was previously Professor of Technology & Society at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. Neff is an organizational sociologist whose research explores the social and organizational impact of new communication technologies, with a focus on innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work.
Go to Profile#355
Maristella Svampa
#84423
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Maristella Noemi Svampa is an Argentine sociologist. Biography She got a B.A. in Philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, in 1984, and a PhD in Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. She is a full professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, a public organization in Argentina that promotes science and technology. She is the head of the journal "Observatório Social de América Latina" of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences .
Go to Profile#356
Carol Aneshensel
#71762
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Carol Aneshensel is an American sociologist. She specializes in the sociology of mental health, focusing especially on how social inequalities lead to corresponding disparities in mental health. She is currently professor and vice chair for the Department of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at University of California, Los Angeles .
Go to Profile#357
Chrys Ingraham
#34239
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Chrys Ingraham is Professor of Sociology at Purchase College of the State University of New York. Biography Dr. Ingraham is a native of New York State where she worked for 12 years at U.S.Air and co-owned a feminist bookstore before returning to school at Onondaga Community College. She transferred to Syracuse University's Maxwell School where she graduated with a Masters in Public Administration , Graduate Certification in Women's Studies and a Ph.D. in Sociology . Her dissertation research addressed how the Comstock Law allowed for the censorship and suppression of feminist thought in 19th century U.S.
Go to Profile#358
Erella Shadmi
#78016
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Erella Shadmi is an Israeli sociologist and peace activist. She previously worked for two decades for the Israel Police. Career Shadmi was born in Tel Aviv. Whilst at school she attended left-wing demonstrations and became a peace activist. She then studied communications at university. Despite her activism giving her a critical attitude towards the Israel Police, she decided to join in 1970 and rose to the position of colonel. In an interview with Al-Monitor, she criticised the sexual inequalities she experienced and credited two commissioners for their respect of women. She also commented in a book chapter that the police force could tolerate her pregnancy but not her lesbianism.
Go to Profile#359
Margit Warburg
#59583
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Margit Warburg is a Danish sociologist of religion. Since 2004, she has been professor of Sociology of Religion in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She was an associate professor at the same university from 1979 to 2004.
Go to Profile#360
Carole Ferrier
#42816
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Carole Ferrier is an Australian feminist academic. She is Professor in English at the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. She has many published works about feminism, socialism, literature and culture. She has been the editor of the radical feminist academic journal Hecate since its inception in 1975.
Go to Profile#361
Peggy Phelan
#18399
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Peggy Phelan is an American feminist scholar. She is one of the founders of Performance Studies International, the former chair of New York University's Department of Performance Studies from 1993 to 1996, Stanford's Theatre and Performance Studies Department from 2007 to 2011, and continues as the Ann O’Day Maples Professor of the Arts, Professor of Theater & Performance Studies and English, and the Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute. Her research interests while at Stanford University include; American Literature, British Literature, and performance studies with a focus...
Go to Profile#362
Karen Hansen
#99440
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Karen V. Hansen is an American author and professor of sociology and women's and gender studies at Brandeis University. Her books include Encounter on the Great Plains and Not-So-Nuclear Families. Biography Hansen was born in Chico, California, and received her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#363
Nilüfer Göle
#36938
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Nilüfer Göle is a Turkish sociologist and a contemporary Turkish academic who specializes in the political movement of today's educated, urbanized, and religious Muslim women. From 1986 to 2001 a professor at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, she is currently Directrice d'études at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales , Centre d’Analyse et d’Intervention Sociologiques , in Paris. Göle is the author of Interpénétrations: L’Islam et l’Europe and The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling. Through personal interviews, Göle has developed detailed case studies of young Turkish women who are turning to the tenets of fundamental Islamic gender codes.
Go to Profile#364
Marion Fourcade
#100385
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Marion Fourcade is a French sociologist. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work on the sociology and history of the field of economics, as well as her work on digital society and digital economy.
Go to Profile#365
Jean Floud
#34464
Overall Influence
1915 - 2013 (98 years)
Jean Esther Floud was a prominent educational sociologist and later an academic. She was the Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1972 to 1983. Early life She was born Jean Esther McDonald to working-class parents and went to primary and secondary schools in her home town of Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. In 1927, the family moved to Stoke Newington, north London where she won a free place at North Hackney Central School for Girls, a grammar school.
Go to Profile#366
Dorothy Height
#5191
Overall Influence
1912 - 2010 (98 years)
Dorothy Irene Height was an African American civil rights and women's rights activist. She focused on the issues of African American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. Height is credited as the first leader in the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for women and African Americans as problems that should be considered as a whole. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. Height's role in the "Big Six" civil rights movement was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism. In 1974, she was named to the National Commission...
Go to Profile#367
Margaret Stacey
#110289
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Professor Margaret "Meg" Stacey was a British sociologist and a leading figure in the establishment of Sociology as an academic discipline. Early life and education She was born Margaret Petrie, in London on 27 March 1922. Her mother was a teacher and her father was a manufacturer and printer.
Go to Profile#368
Shulamit Reinharz
#37092
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Shulamit Reinharz was the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University until 2017. During her tenure at Brandeis, she was director of the women's studies program from 1991 to 2001 and launched The Scholars Program, the first graduate program to focus on Jewish women. She was the founding director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute in 1997 and founder and director of the Women's Studies Research Center in 2001.
Go to Profile#369
Jacqueline Peschard
#53213
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Jacqueline Peschard Mariscal is a Mexican sociologist who specializes in electoral integrity and democracy studies. She was President Commissioner of the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information from 2009 until 2013. She also served as Counselor to the Instituto Nacional Electoral from 1997 to 2003. In 2010, she was elected president of the Iberoamerican Network of Data Protection , which is a forum for promoting the universal right to data protection across Latin America.
Go to Profile#370
Linda Haas
#125312
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Linda L. Haas is an American sociologist. She is professor emerita of sociology at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Life Haas holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has received an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the Gothenburg University in Sweden.
Go to Profile#371
Rhacel Parreñas
#125489
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at University of Southern California. She previously taught at Brown University, the University of California, Davis and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research has been featured in NPR's "The World", Bloomberg News, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, de Volkskrant, and the American Prospect. Parreñas has written five monographs, co-edited three anthologies, and published a number of peer-reviewed articles.
Go to Profile#372
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
#92116
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is an American sociologist. Her main areas of research are gender, migration studies, and Latino studies. She has authored several books, received numerous awards and honors, and contributed to the field through various talks, publications, and mentoring. In 2015, she received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association, International Migration Section, and in 2018 she received the Julian Samora Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association, Latina/o Sociology Section.
Go to Profile#373
Karla F.C. Holloway
#41810
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Karla Francesca Holloway is an American academic. She is James B. Duke Professor of English & Professor of Law at Duke University, and holds appointments in the Duke University School of Law as well as the university's Department of English, Department of African & African American Studies, and Program in Women's Studies.
Go to Profile#374
Joyce Ladner
#40336
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Joyce Ann Ladner is an American civil rights activist, author, civil servant, and sociologist. Early life and education Ladner was born in Battles, Wayne County, Mississippi, on October 12, 1943, and grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She was raised with four brothers and four sisters. Ladner graduated high school in 1960 with her older sister, Dorie Ladner. She earned her B.A. in sociology in 1964 from Tougaloo College, before earning her Ph.D at Washington University in St. Louis in 1968. During college, Ladner and her sister Dorie organized civil rights protests alongside Medgar Evers and other students from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Go to Profile#375
Geneviève Zubrzycki
#89686
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Geneviève Zubrzycki is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies, and the Center for European Studies at the University of Michigan. She is also affiliated with the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#376
Loretta Ross
#44619
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Loretta J. Ross is an American academic, feminist, and activist who advocates for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. As an activist, Ross has written on reproductive justice activism and the history of African American women.
Go to Profile#377
Celia Stopnicka Heller
#84610
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Celia Heller was an American sociologist. She was born in Poland. Biography After graduating from Brooklyn College, in 1950, she entered a graduate program in sociology at Columbia University, earning a Master's in 1952, and a Ph.D. in 1962. Subsequently, she taught at Hunter College, beginning as an assistant professor, in 1964. She became a full professor there in 1972, and retired with emeritus status in 1984. During her career at Hunter College, she also taught at the Graduate Center, CUNY. From 1970 to 1971 she was a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University.
Go to Profile#378
Julia Chinyere Oparah
#46312
Overall Influence
Julia Chinyere Oparah, formerly Julia Sudbury, is a British professor and department chair of Ethnic Studies at Mills College in Oakland California, where she also played a major role in establishing its Queer Studies Program. She is an activist-scholar, a community organizer, and an intellectual focused on producing relevant scholarship in accompaniment to social justice movements.
Go to Profile#379
Bonnie Thornton Dill
#111462
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Bonnie Thornton Dill is a feminist scholar and Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park. Born in Chicago, Dill attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School, which she credits with inspiring her approach to leadership and research.
Go to Profile#380
Clare Collins
#80436
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Clare Elizabeth Collins is an Australian dietician who is Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle. She serves as Director for Research in the School of Health Sciences and Deputy Director of the Priority Research Centre. She was awarded the 2017 Hunter Medical Research Institute Researcher of the Year and is a Fellow of Dietitians Australia.
Go to Profile#381
Li Yinhe
#64142
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Li Yinhe is a Chinese sociologist, sexologist, and activist for LGBT rights in China. Her main academic interests have been sexual norms in contemporary China, homosexuality, diverse sexual behaviors including sadomasochism, and women's studies.
Go to Profile#382
Akosua Adomako Ampofo
#77168
Overall Influence
Josephine Akosua Adomako Ampofo is a Ghanaian academic who is a professor of Gender Studies and African Studies at the University of Ghana. She is feminist activist-scholar, and a strong advocate for social justice.
Go to Profile#383
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
#49417
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of English at Emory University with a focus on disability studies and feminist theory. Her book Extraordinary Bodies, published in 1997, is a founding text in the disability studies canon.
Go to Profile#384
Lisa Adkins
#93667
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Lisa Adkins is a sociologist and academic. As of 2018, she holds a professorship at the University of Sydney, where she is also Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. From 2015-2019 she was a Distinguished Professor in the Academy of Finland. She has previously held professorships at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in the fields of economic sociology and feminist theory, most recently on the welfare state and labour markets under finance capitalism and in post-industrial societies. She is co-editor-in-chief of Australian Feminist S...
Go to Profile#385
Aline Wong
#82279
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Aline Wong is a Singaporean sociologist and former politician. She was one of the first women Parliament members in Singapore, elected in 1984. She went on to have a career in both politics and education. In 2001, she retired from politics, but continued to be active in the community and in education. In 2015, she became the first woman in Singapore to hold the position of chancellor, working at SIM University.
Go to Profile#386
Kathleen Cleaver
#9173
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary. Early life Juette Kathleen Neal was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 13, 1945. Her parents were both activists and college graduates of the University of Michigan. Her father, Ernest Eugene Neal, was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother, Pearl Juette Johnson, earned a master's degree in mathematics. Three years after Cleaver was born, her father accepted a job as the director of th...
Go to Profile#387
Candace A. Yano
#22633
Overall Influence
Candace A. Yano is Professor and Chair at Haas School of Business's Operations and Information Technology Management Group, and Professor and former Head of Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, both at University of California, Berkeley. She is also a senior technical consultant on operations management issues for Yano Accountancy Corporation .
Go to Profile#388
Diane Reay
#49271
Overall Influence
Diane Reay is a sociologist and academic, who is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. She is noted for her study about educational inequalities among students in state schools in the United Kingdom. She has maintained that there is a tendency to misuse the school selection practice to transform social class differences into education. For instance, she criticized the Oxbridge application process as "institutionally racist".
Go to Profile#389
Yasuko Muramatsu
#87978
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Yasuko Muramatsu is a Japanese development economist, author and women's rights activist. She was the president of Tokyo Gakugei University and is the president of Japan Women's Learning Foundation.
Go to Profile#390
Mariann Jelinek
#78136
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Mariann Jelinek is an American organizational theorist, and Emeritus Professor of Strategy at the College of William & Mary, considered an icon for her contributions in the field of management of technology and innovation.
Go to Profile#391
Sonia Johnson
#16410
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.
Go to Profile#392
Yoko Ono
#2051
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1952 to join her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in the early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles, with whom she would subsequently record as a duo in the Plastic Ono Band. The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lenn...
Go to Profile#393
Natalie Kampen
#49523
Overall Influence
1944 - 2012 (68 years)
Natalie Kampen was an American art historian and women's studies professor. She was born Natalie Boymel on February 1, 1944 in Philadelphia to Pauline and Jules Boymel. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and 1967, respectively. She went on to attend Brown University, receiving her PhD in 1976. Her thesis analyzed depictions of Roman working women in second and third century reliefs from Ostia Antica. Boymel taught at the University of Rhode Island from 1969 to 1988. She taught women's studies and art history at Barnard College.
Go to Profile#394
Martha S. Feldman
#79534
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Martha S. Feldman is an organization theorist best known for her work on organizational routines and, particularly, routine dynamics. Other areas of research she has contributed to include inclusive management and qualitative research methods. Feldman is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine She has published four books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles.
Go to Profile#395
Azadeh Kian
#24570
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut is an Iranian-French academic, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Sciences department and Director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University Paris Cité. She is included and recognized in the BBC project 100 Women.
Go to Profile#396
Judith Astelarra
#116225
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Judith Astelarra Bonomi is an Argentine sociologist based in Spain where she has specialized in gender studies. In Chile, she contributed to work on agricultural reform in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences. In 1977, she was appointed Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where from 1992, as founder and coordinator of the Seminario de Estudios de la Mujer , she introduced gender studies in Spain. She later served at the university as Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology. Since the late 1970s, she has published...
Go to Profile#397
Nonie Darwish
#17649
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American writer, founder of Arabs for Israel movement, and is Director of Former Muslims United. Darwish is an outspoken critic of Islam. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described her as an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activist.
Go to Profile#398
Lillian B. Rubin
#35000
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Lillian Breslow Rubin was an American writer, professor, psychotherapist and sociologist. She was a distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College and also worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. Rubin was a feminist.
Go to Profile#399
Swasti Mitter
#52706
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Swasti Mitter was a researcher into gender and development. She held posts as Professor of Gender and Technology at the University of Brighton, and as a deputy director of the UNU Institute of New Technologies at the University of Maastricht . Her main area of research involved exploring the ways Information Technologies have influenced employment patterns for women in less developed countries.
Go to Profile#400
Pepper Schwartz
#67214
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Pepper Schwartz is an American sexologist and sociologist teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, United States. She is the author or co-author of numerous books, magazines, and website columns, and is a television personality on the subject of sexuality.
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