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 people in Sociology,
#701
Ernest Krausz
#11761
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Ernest Krausz was an Israeli professor of sociology who served as rector and Acting President of Bar Ilan University. He also taught at Netanya Academic College. Biography Ernest Krausz was born in Romania. His parents were Rabbi Moshe Eliezer Krausz and Beila , and he and his two sisters were raised in Alba Iulia, where his father was Chief Rabbi.
Go to Profile#702
Tressie McMillan Cottom
#13607
Overall Influence
Tressie McMillan Cottom is an American writer, sociologist, and professor. She is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science and an affiliate of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is also an opinion columnist at The New York Times.
Go to Profile#703
Ronald P. Dore
#18340
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Ronald Philip Dore was a British sociologist specialising in Japanese economy and society and the comparative study of types of capitalism. He was an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and was a fellow of the British Academy, the Japan Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The citation for his eminent scholar award from the Academy of International Business describes him as "an outstanding scholar whose deep understanding of the empirical phenomena he studied and ability to build on it to develop theoretical contributions are ...
Go to Profile#704
Julien Freund
#32206
Overall Influence
1921 - 1993 (72 years)
Julien Freund was a French philosopher and sociologist. Freund was called an "unsatisfied liberal-conservative" by Pierre-André Taguieff, for introducing France to the ideas of Max Weber. His work as a sociologist and political theorist is a continuation of Carl Schmitt's. Freund, like many people from Alsace, was fluent in German and French. His works have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
Go to Profile#705
Egon Bittner
#41898
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Egon Bittner was born in Czechoslovakia and emigrated to the United States after World War II. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles. He held the Harry Coplan Professorship in the Social Sciences and was chair of the sociology department at Brandeis University, where he supervised the dissertation of Nancy J. Chodorow. He is known for his ground breaking studies of the relationships between police and society.
Go to Profile#706
Barbara Evelyn Bailey
#54254
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Barbara Evelyn Bailey OJ is an educator, writer and gender studies scholar from Kingston, Jamaica. In addition to her education work, she has represented Jamaica at numerous conferences and assemblies regarding women's rights. In 2008 she was elected by the state parties as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
Go to Profile#707
Patrick Baert
#28362
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Patrick Baert is a Belgian sociologist and social theorist, based in Britain. He is a professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. Baert studied at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and at Oxford University where he obtained his D.Phil. in 1990. In Oxford, he studied with Rom Harré and wrote his dissertation on George Herbert Mead's notion of time and its relevance for social theory, subsequently published as Time, Self and Social Being. He carried out postdoctoral work with Claude Javeau in Brussels and Anthony Giddens in Cambridge before taking up a teaching position at Cambridge.
Go to Profile#708
Karla Jay
#20247
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Karla Jay is a distinguished professor emerita at Pace University, where she taught English and directed the women's and gender studies program between 1974 and 2009. A pioneer in the field of lesbian and gay studies, she is widely published.
Go to Profile#709
Salim Tamari
#36461
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Salim Tamari , is a Palestinian sociologist who is the director of the Institute of Palestine Studies and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, has called Tamari "the preeminent Palestinian historical sociologist."
Go to Profile#710
Robin Room
#36258
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Robin Gerald Walden Room is an Australian sociologist and researcher who studies the health effects of alcohol and other drugs. From 2015 - 2017 he was the director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University, formerly at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia, as well as the Professor of Alcohol Policy Research at the School of Population Health of the University of Melbourne, since March 2006. He is also a professor at the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs at Stockholm University.
Go to Profile#711
Elżbieta Hałas
#60830
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Elżbieta Hałas is a Polish sociologist and a professor at the University of Warsaw. She specializes in the sociology of culture. She is the director of the Cultural Department in the University of Warsaw's Institute of Sociology. Previously she lectured at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, where she received her doctorate in 1986.
Go to Profile#712
Cecilia L. Ridgeway
#44681
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Cecilia L. Ridgeway is an American sociologist and the Lucie Stern Professor of Social Sciences, Emerita in the Sociology Department at Stanford University. She is known for her research on gender and status processes, specifically on how large, societal-level gender and status inequalities are recreated in face-to-face interaction. Ridgeway served as president of the American Sociological Association in 2013. She also edited Social Psychology Quarterly from 2001 to 2003.
Go to Profile#713
Jean-Michel Berthelot
#26260
Overall Influence
1945 - 2006 (61 years)
Jean-Michel Berthelot was a French sociologist, philosopher, epistemologist and social theorist, specialist in philosophy of social sciences, history of sociology, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, sociology of science and sociology of the body.
Go to Profile#714
Louis Chauvel
#26862
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Louis Chauvel is a French sociologist, full professor at University of Luxembourg, PhD Université de Lille , Habilitation Sciences Po . He is specialized in social generations, in the analysis of social structures, in cohort and generational change. Chauvel received some international media attention as an expert following the spring 2006 First Employment Contract protests in France, which underlined the déclassement of the young generations in France. His analyses on the declining leadership of the "new" middle classes on the French political system explain the 2007 success of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Go to Profile#715
Ruth Baldacchino
#44111
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Ruth Baldacchino is an LGBT and intersex activist, former Co-Secretary General of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association , and Senior Program Officer for the first intersex human rights fund.
Go to Profile#716
Kim Voss
#57585
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Kim Voss is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley whose main field of research is social movements and the American labor movement. Education and career Voss received her bachelor's degree from Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1974.
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Wigand Siebel
#46849
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Wigand Siebel was a German sociologist. Scientific career After his graduation, Siebel worked for the Social Research Center of Dortmund. In 1964, he was appointed a lecturer at the Ruhr University at Bochum. In 1965, he was appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of the Saarlands in Saarbrücken.
Go to Profile#718
Lane Kenworthy
#14512
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Lane Kenworthy is an American professor of sociology and political science. He has worked at the University of Arizona since 2004, being a full professor since 2007. He is known for his statistical and analytic work on the economic effects of income and wealth distribution. He currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego.
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Francis T. Cullen
#62231
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Francis Thomas Cullen, Jr. is an American criminologist and Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati's School of Criminal Justice. Education and career Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1951, Cullen enrolled at Bridgewater State College in 1968, hoping to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam War by getting a grade point average of 2.0 or higher. He graduated in 1972 with a B.A. in psychology. He later received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1974 and 1979, respectively. Both his graduate degrees were in sociology and education. He taught at Wes...
Go to Profile#720
Ronald Weitzer
#36087
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ronald Weitzer is an American sociologist specializing in criminology and a professor at George Washington University, known for his publications on police-minority relations and on the sex industry.
Go to Profile#721
Peter Tatchell
#961
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Peter Gary Tatchell is an Australian-born British human rights campaigner, best known for his work with LGBTQI+ social movements. Tatchell was selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981. He was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for ostensibly supporting extra-Parliamentary action against the Thatcher government. Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election in February 1983, in which the party lost the seat to the Liberals. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBT rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded.
Go to Profile#722
Didier Lapeyronnie
#59465
Overall Influence
1956 - 2020 (64 years)
Didier Lapeyronnie was a French sociologist and a professor at Paris-Sorbonne University. He was an associate member Centre d'analyse et d'intervention sociologiques, and of the Groupe d'étude des méthodes de l'analyse sociologique de la Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#723
Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo
#61552
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo is a Mexican sociologist and public intellectual of wide renown in Mexico and Spain. He is perhaps most well known for his study of nineteenth-century civic culture in Mexico, Imaginary Citizens, a book that made his reputation as a highly skilled interpreter of Mexican politics and has since gone through three editions. He is the author of over a dozen additional books and a large number of scholarly articles on political theory, historical sociology, and cultural criticism. Escalante also intervenes frequently in the print and television media of Mexico, and has b...
Go to Profile#724
Rinaldo Walcott
#44323
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Rinaldo Wayne Walcott is a Canadian academic and writer. He wrote in 2021 "I was born in the Caribbean Barbados and have lived most of my life in Canada, specifically Toronto." Walcott is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. He holds the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. Previously, he was an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. He was also affiliated with the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#725
James R. Beniger
#28130
Overall Influence
1946 - 2010 (64 years)
James Ralph Beniger was an American historian and sociologist and Professor of Communications and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, particularly known for his early work on the history of quantitative graphics in statistics, and his later work on the technological and economic origins of the information society.
Go to Profile#726
Guillermo O'Donnell
#4896
Overall Influence
1936 - 2011 (75 years)
Guillermo Alberto O'Donnell Ure was a prominent Argentine political scientist who specialized in comparative politics and Latin American politics. He spent most of his career working in Argentina and the United States, and who made lasting contributions to theorizing on authoritarianism and democratization, democracy and the state, and the politics of Latin America. His brother is Pacho O'Donnell.
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Elizabeth Povinelli
#20291
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University, where she has also been the Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Law and Culture. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University in 1991. She is the author of books and essays of critical theory as well as a former editor of the academic journal Public Culture.
Go to Profile#728
Glenn Firebaugh
#47265
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Glenn Firebaugh is an American sociologist and leading international authority on social science research methods. Currently he is the Roy C. Buck Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Pennsylvania State University. He has also held regular or visiting faculty appointments at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, Oxford University, and the University of Michigan. Firebaugh is best known for his contributions to statistical methods and for his research on global inequality. In 2018 he received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the American Sociological Association for "a career of ...
Go to Profile#729
June Jordan
#10479
Overall Influence
1936 - 2002 (66 years)
June Millicent Jordan was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation. Jordan was passionate about using Black English in her writing and poetry, teaching others to treat it as its own language and an important outlet for expressing Black culture.
Go to Profile#730
Leonore Davidoff
#28770
Overall Influence
1932 - 2014 (82 years)
Leonore Davidoff was a feminist historian and sociologist who pioneered new approaches to women's history and gender relations, including through her analysis of the gendered division of roles in public and private spheres. She helped create the Feminist Library in London in 1975. She was also the founding editor of the academic journal Gender & History. For much of her academic career, Davidoff was based at the University of Essex in the UK, and was a Professor Emerita when she died.
Go to Profile#731
Saskia Wieringa
#54559
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Saskia Eleonora Wieringa is a Dutch sociologist. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Same-Sex Relations Crossculturally at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. The area of study was established by the Foundation for Lesbian and Gay Studies and sponsored by Hivos. From 1 April 2005 to 19 April 2012, she served as the director of Aletta, Institute for Women's History in Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#732
Dominique Schnapper
#34478
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Dominique Schnapper was a member of the Constitutional Council of France from 2001 to 2010. She is also a scholar and professor of sociology. Her sociological studies have been largely historical and have ranged from inquiries into minorities and labour to others on citizenship and nations. She has been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Go to Profile#733
Andrew G. Walder
#35925
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Andrew G. Walder is an American political sociologist specializing in the study of Chinese society. He has taught at Harvard University and Stanford University, where he joined the faculty in 1997 and is the Denise O'Leary & Kent Thiry Professor of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#734
Ann Morning
#7644
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Ann Juanita Morning is an American sociologist and demographer whose research focuses on race. In particular, she has studied racial and ethnic classification on censuses worldwide, as well as beliefs about racial difference in the United States and Western Europe. Much of her work examines how contemporary science—particularly the field of genetics—influences how we conceptualize race.
Go to Profile#735
Tukufu Zuberi
#36614
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Tukufu Zuberi is an American sociologist, filmmaker, social critic, educator, and writer. Zuberi has appeared in several documentaries on Africa and the African diaspora, including Liberia: America's Stepchild , and 500 Years Later . He is one of the hosts of the long-running PBS program History Detectives. As founder of his own production company, he produced the film African Independence, which premiered at the San Diego Black Film Festival in January 2013. He is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, professor and chair of the sociology department, and professor of Africana studies...
Go to Profile#736
Renate Mayntz
#35113
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Renate Mayntz is a German sociologist. She was director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, and is now director emerita. Biography Mayntz studied in the United States, and in 1957 received her doctorate from the Free University of Berlin. She taught at the Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer and the University of Cologne before founding, in 1984, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. In 1999, she won the Schader Award, Germany's highest accolade for a social scientist, and in 2004 she was awarded the Bielefelder Wissenschaftspreis.
Go to Profile#737
Peter Wagner
#31213
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Peter Wagner is a German social and political theorist. His research brings together social and political philosophy and theory with the comparative-historical sociology of modern societies in Europe, Latin America and southern Africa. He has done comparative research in the history of the social sciences and has contributed to debates about the so-called Axial Age, while his recent work has addressed questions of historical progress and social and political transformations. He is a former Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute, Florence, and a former Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.
Go to Profile#738
Ruth Levitas
#55716
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Ruth Levitas is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol. She is well known internationally for her research on utopia and utopian studies. Her book, The Concept of Utopia , addresses the notion of the ideal society throughout European history. Her follow-on book, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society , makes the case that 'utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal.' She has formulated a program of sociology which is fundamentally utopian-focused in conventional sociological discourse.
Go to Profile#739
Ann Shola Orloff
#29463
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Ann Shola Orloff is an American sociologist, specializing in Comparative-Historical Sociology, Gender and Social Inequalities, Sociological Theory and Political Sociology. She is a Professor of Sociology and Political Science and Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair at Northwestern University. She is also editor of Social Politics, published by Oxford University Press, which she co-founded with Barbara Hobson in 1994.
Go to Profile#740
Maurice R. Stein
#24566
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Maurice R. Stein is an American sociologist and innovator in higher education. Stein is co-recipient of the 1987 Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the American Sociological Association's Community and Urban Sociology Section, while his pedagogical innovations have been highlighted of late by Harvard University's Jeffrey Schnapp in Schnapp's studies in the digital humanities . Retired from Brandeis University since 2002, Stein resides with his spouse, Phyllis Stein , at their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a long-time member of the Harvard Institute for L...
Go to Profile#741
M. Jacqui Alexander
#64805
Overall Influence
M. Jacqui Alexander is a writer, teacher, and activist. She is both a Professor Emeritus at the Women and Gender Studies Department of the University of Toronto as well as the creator and director of the Tobago Centre "for the study and practice of indigenous spirituality". Jacqui Alexander is an enthusiast of "the ancient African spiritual systems of Orisa/Ifá, and a student of yoga and Vipassana meditation". She has received teachings on this meditative practice in Nigeria, the Kôngo, India, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. The themes of her work have captured a range of social jus...
Go to Profile#742
James D. Montgomery
#59346
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
James Douglas Montgomery is professor of sociology and economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has applied game-theoretic models and non-monotonic logic to present formal analysis and description of social theories and sociological phenomena. He was the recipient of James Coleman Award for his paper “Toward a Role-Theoretic Conception of Embeddedness”. His paper is a major contribution towards formalization of social theories and sociological interpretation of game theories since he presents a repeate...
Go to Profile#743
Gordon Marshall
#15317
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Gordon Marshall is a British sociologist and former Director of the Leverhulme Trust in England. Education Born in Falkirk, Gordon Marshall was educated at Falkirk High School, the University of Stirling and Nuffield College, Oxford .
Go to Profile#744
Iryna Bekeshkina
#45544
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Iryna Bekeshkina was a Ukrainian sociologist. She was the head of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation from 2010 until 2020. She specialized in the study of Ukrainian society and politics. She was also a frequent media commentator and policy advocate.
Go to Profile#745
Ian Taylor
#17244
Overall Influence
1944 - 2001 (57 years)
Ian Taylor was a British sociologist. He was born in Sheffield. Taylor completed his undergraduate degree at Durham University, where he was an active socialist and involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He continued his studies at Cambridge before returning to Durham for his doctorate.
Go to Profile#746
Herman Musaph
#66728
Overall Influence
1915 - 1992 (77 years)
Herman Musaph was a Dutch Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, dermatologist and sexologist. Musaph was born in Amsterdam. He studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam. In 1977 Musaph became Professor of Medicine at the University of Utrecht. He wrote various works on dermatology.
Go to Profile#747
Uta Gerhardt
#43947
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Uta Gerhardt is a German sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of Heidelberg. She studied sociology, philosophy and history at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. In 1969, she obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz. The focus of her work is on medical sociology, structural-functionalist role theory, and general sociological theory. She also wrote a major biography of Talcott Parsons.
Go to Profile#748
Shalini Randeria
#14341
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Shalini Randeria is an American-born Indian anthropologist. Education She was born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, and brought up in Mumbai and New Delhi, Randeria is an alumna of the University of Delhi, the University of Oxford and Heidelberg University, and earned her PhD at the Free University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#749
Tina Campt
#53704
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Tina Campt is Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. Campt previously held faculty positions as Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities at Brown University, Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Africana and Women's Studies at Barnard College, Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University, and Professor of Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Campt is the author of four books: Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich, Image Matters: Archive...
Go to Profile#750
Robert M. Hauser
#40495
Overall Influence
Robert Mason Hauser is an American sociologist. He is the Vilas Research and Samuel F. Stouffer professor of sociology emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging.
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