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,
#2001
Marcia Ochoa
#148413
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Marcia Ochoa is a United States-based professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. They are the co-founder of El/La Para TransLatinas and is credited with popularizing the term "translatina."
Go to Profile#2002
Geir Høgsnes
#127595
Overall Influence
1950 - 2009 (59 years)
Geir Lennart Høgsnes was a Norwegian sociologist. He did research on labor and wages, and spent the better part of his academic career at the Norwegian Institute for Social Research and the University of Oslo. He was a professor until 2009, when he was found dead in his home under uncertain circumstances.
Go to Profile#2003
Mounira M. Charrad
#111898
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Mounira Maya Charrad is a Franco-Tunisian sociologist who serves as associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an author whose work focuses on political sociology, comparative history, gender politics, and the Middle East. Her research has centered on state formation, colonialism, law, citizenship, kinship, and women's rights.
Go to Profile#2004
Carolyn Halpern
#88662
Overall Influence
Carolyn Tucker Halpern is an American developmental psychologist and Professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she is Chair of the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She is also the deputy director of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Go to Profile#2005
William J. Cousins
#105197
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
William J. Cousins was an American sociologist who led international urban community development, taught sociology and race relations at several colleges, and wrote a number of books and articles on international community development. Although he was raised in the Baptist Church, he began his affiliation with the Quakers during his university years and became a lifelong pacifist.
Go to Profile#2006
Max Liboiron
#46955
Overall Influence
Max Liboiron is a Canadian researcher and designer known for their contributions to the study of plastic pollution and citizen science. Career Liboiron directs the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research , an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory based at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Liboiron was the Managing Editor of the online journal Discard Studies for nearly a decade, which publishes research on industrial waste and its social, political, cultural, and economic implications.
Go to Profile#2007
Stellan Vinthagen
#76994
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Stellan Vinthagen is a professor of sociology, a scholar-activist, and the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he directs the Resistance Studies Initiative. He is also Co-Leader of the Resistance Studies Group at University of Gothenburg and co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, as well as Editor of the Journal of Resistance Studies, and a Council Member of War Resisters International , and academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict . His research is focused on resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conflict transformation and social change.
Go to Profile#2008
Johan Roos
#10212
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Johan Roos is a Swedish organizational theorist known for his work on intellectual capital and measuring the intellectual performance of companies. He currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Hult International Business School, previously having served as President of Copenhagen Business School and Dean of the Stockholm School of Economics.
Go to Profile#2009
Lowell L. Bennion
#76428
Overall Influence
1908 - 1996 (88 years)
Lowell Lindsay Bennion was an American educator, sociologist, and humanitarian. He wrote extensively on religious living in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and was an advocate for volunteer service in Utah and Idaho.
Go to Profile#2010
Ingrid Waldron
#112029
Overall Influence
Ingrid R. G Waldron is a Canadian social scientist who is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University and serves as co-chair of the Dalhousie University Black Faculty & Staff Caucus. She co-produced the 2019 film There's Something in the Water with Elliot Page, Ian Daniel and Julia Sanderson, which is based on her book of the same name.
Go to Profile#2011
Tormod Lunde
#133488
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Tormod Karsten Lunde , also known as Tormod K. Lunde, is a Norwegian-American sociologist. He was Director of the National Institute for Consumer Research from 1990 to 1997. He was also Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo from 1991 to 1998 and at BI Norwegian Business School from 1997 to 2002.
Go to Profile#2012
Lincoln Quillian
#169044
Overall Influence
Lincoln Grey Quillian is an American sociologist. He is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, where he is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. His work focuses on social stratification, racial segregation, and racial attitudes. For example, he was the lead author of a 2017 meta-analysis which showed that rates of discrimination against African Americans in field experiments had not significantly changed since 1989.
Go to Profile#2013
Nivedita Prasad
#111321
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Nivedita Prasad is a German sociologist and human rights activist. She is professor of methods and gender-specific social work at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin, and a specialist in the human rights of migrant women.
Go to Profile#2014
Lydia Bean
#142755
Overall Influence
Lydia N. Bean is an American sociologist. She authored an ethnographic book, The Politics of Evangelical Identity , about Evangelical communities on the Canada–United States border. Bean is a fellow at New America and a faculty research associate at the University of Texas at Arlington. She was an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University. Bean has been a Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives and was a candidate for the 2021 Texas's 6th congressional district special election.
Go to Profile#2015
Hamid Naficy
#22103
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Hamid Naficy is an Iranian-born American filmmaker, writer, scholar, and educator. He is the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication at Northwestern University in the department of Radio/Film/Television, an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Art History, and a core member of the Middle East and North African Studies Program.
Go to Profile#2016
Rachel Sherman
#150047
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Rachel Sherman is an associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research. Her first book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels , analyzes how workers, guests, and managers in luxury hotels make sense of and negotiate class inequalities that marked their relationships. Her second book, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence , explores the lived experience of privilege among wealthy and affluent parents in New York City.
Go to Profile#2017
Thomas Lemke
#146803
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Thomas Lemke is a German sociologist and social theorist. He is best known for his work on Governmentality, Biopolitics and his readings of Michel Foucault. He is a Professor of Sociology with specialization in Biotechnologies, Nature and Society at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Go to Profile#2018
Daryl B. Lund
#74198
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Daryl Bert Lund is an American food scientist and engineer who has served in various leadership positions within the Institute of Food Technologists, including President in 1990–1991 and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Food Science from 2003-2012. Lund was named one of 26 innovators in Food Engineering magazine's 75th anniversary edition in September 2003.
Go to Profile#2019
Phil Scraton
#37026
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Phil Scraton is a critical criminologist, academic and author. He is a social researcher, known particularly for his investigative work into the context, circumstances and aftermath of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. More recently, he was a member of the Hillsborough Independent Panel and headed its research. Currently he is Professor Emeritus, School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, and formerly Director of the Childhood, Transition and Social Justice Initiative.
Go to Profile#2020
Lise Kjølsrød
#135344
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Lise Kjølsrød is a Norwegian sociologist, specialising in the sociology of medical care. She graduated from the University of Oslo with a mag.art. degree in 1978, and took the dr.philos. degree in 1992. She worked as a research assistant at the University of Oslo from 1978, and as a scholarship holder at Norges almenvitenskapelige forskningsråd from 1986. From 1988 to 1990 she was a bureucreat in the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. She then became amanuensis at the University of Oslo in 1990, and researcher at the Institute for Social Research from 1991. She then returned to the University of Oslo to become associate professor from 1995 and finally professor from 2005.
Go to Profile#2021
Mikolaj Piskorski
#121725
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Mikołaj Jan Piskorski who often goes by Misiek is Dean of IMD Asia and Oceania and a Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IMD Business School. He is known for his research in the area of digital transformation, on-line social platforms and study of how companies leverage social platforms to improve their profitability.
Go to Profile#2022
Philip Gorski
#117227
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Philip Stephen Gorski is an American sociologist, interested in both the sociology of religion and historical sociology. Biography Gorski gained an A.A. from Deep Springs College in 1983, his B.A. from Harvard in 1986. and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. His advisor was sociologist of religion Robert Neelly Bellah. He worked at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1996 until joining Yale University in 2007, where he became co-director of the Center for Comparative Research alongside Julia Adams.
Go to Profile#2023
Kathleen Kiernan
#157600
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Kathleen Kiernan is a Demographer. She is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy and Demography at the University of York. Kiernan joined the university in October 2004 from her previous role as Professor of Social Policy and Demography at the London School of Economics. She was awarded an OBE for services to Social Science in the 2006 New Year Honours and was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2012.
Go to Profile#2024
Piotr Sztompka
#173163
Overall Influence
#2025
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
#173191
Overall Influence
#2026
Jane Elliott
#164986
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Barbara Jane Elliott is a British sociologist and academic. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. From October 2014 to September 2017 she was chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council. Her research uses longitudinal, qualitative and quantitative methodologies to explore issues of gender and employment.
Go to Profile#2027
Joanna Kidman
#71268
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Joanna Kidman is a Māori sociology academic of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Raukawa descent and as of 2019 is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 2001 PhD titled Travelling in the present historic: a case study of socialisation in an academic community in New Zealand at the Australian National University, Kidman moved to Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#2028
Andrew Webster
#90991
Overall Influence
1951 - 2021 (70 years)
Andrew Webster was an English sociologist who was a professor of sociology at the University of York, where he established the Science and Technology Studies research unit. He studied the sociocultural and economic implications of introducing biomedical technologies, including stem cell research and regenerative medicine, into clinical settings.
Go to Profile#2029
William Wilbanks
#73627
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
William Lee Wilbanks was an American criminologist and former professor of criminal justice at Florida International University. Education Wilbanks graduated from Belton High School in Belton, Texas in 1958. At Belton High, he was an all-state guard on the State AA Championship basketball team that won the Class 2A championship in 1958. He went on to receive his B.A. from Abilene Christian College in 1963, after which he received his M.A.'s from Abilene Christian College, Sam Houston State University, and the University at Albany, SUNY in 1965, 1972, and 1972, respectively. In 1975, he received his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2030
Han Woo Park
#173486
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Han Woo Park is a Korean academic and professor at the Department of Media and Communications, Yeungnam University. He is one of South Korea's most highly cited social science scholars. He is recognized as a pioneer in Webometrics and an expert on Internet activism in South Korea. His research mainly focuses on online media and biggish data in academic, governmental, and business communications. He is currently Editor in Chief of Quality & Quantity and the Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia.
Go to Profile#2031
Irina Zherebkina
#168338
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Irina Anatoliyivna Zherebkina is a Ukrainian feminist academic. She is Professor of Theory of Culture and Philosophy of Science at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and the permanent director of the Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies , which she helped found in 1994.
Go to Profile#2032
John M. Mogey
#165064
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
John MacFarlane Mogey was a British geographer and sociologist whose career was based on his study of conditions in Northern Ireland. Career In 1939, Mogey broadcast with Emyr Estyn Evans on "Who Are The Irish?" for the BBC Northern Ireland service. He also gave radio talks in 1946 and 1947.
Go to Profile#2033
Esther Ngan-ling Chow
#135496
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Dr Esther Ngan-ling Chow is a sociologist and Emerita Professor at the American University, Washington D.C., United States. She was among the first sociologists to conduct sociological analyses of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in the case of Asian American women.
Go to Profile#2034
Didier Fassin
#173585
Overall Influence
#2035
Walidah Imarisha
#18999
Overall Influence
Walidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist. Career Writing Imarisha is co-editor, with adrienne maree brown, of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, named after the legendary science fiction writer Octavia Butler. She also co-edited Another World Is Possible, the first anthology out in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Go to Profile#2036
Leo Bogart
#34127
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Leo Bogart was an American sociologist and media and marketing expert. Biography According to his obituary in The Independent, Bogart was "Born Jewish ... in Poland in 1921," and "had emigrated with his family to the United States aged two."
Go to Profile#2037
Naoki Monna
#43125
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Naoki Monna is a Japanese sociologist who is Emeritus professor of Rikkyo University in Tokyo. At present, a professor at Kyoto Sangyo University in Kyoto. In July 1965 he graduated from Doshisha University. His specialized field is Mass Communication, Journalism, risk management and citizen journalism.
Go to Profile#2038
Robert Scheer
#5409
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Robert Scheer is an American left-wing journalist who has written for Ramparts, the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Hustler Magazine, Truthdig, Scheerpost and other publications as well as having written many books. His column for Truthdig was nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation. He is a clinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Scheer is the former editor in-chief for the Webby Award-winning online magazine Truthdig. For many years, he co-...
Go to Profile#2039
Ulbo de Sitter
#79819
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Lamoraal Ulbo de Sitter was a Dutch sociologist and Professor of business administration at the Radboud University Nijmegen, known for his seminal work in the field of sociotechnical system in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#2040
Janet Zollinger Giele
#62656
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Janet Zollinger Giele is an American sociologist and Professor Emerita of Sociology, Social Policy, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. She is best known for her research on the evolving lives of women, from the 19th century women's rights movements to women's contemporary work and family roles. In addition, her publications include the methodology of life course research and the history and growth of American family policy. She has written or edited ten books and authored numerous articles, a body of work that has been widely cited in her field.
Go to Profile#2041
Hanna Świda-Ziemba
#173779
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Hanna Maria Świda-Ziemba was Polish sociologist, scholar and opposition activist in the Polish People's Republic. Biography Her father was professor Witold Świda, and her sister was professor Zofia Świda. She grew up in Vilnius and started keeping a diary from the age of ten, describing life in Soviet-occupied Vilnius, and documenting the post-war period of creating a new socio-political reality in Poland. She became interested in the mechanisms of totalitarian states and would later expand on her observations in her academic studies.
Go to Profile#2042
Jonathan Dollimore
#77123
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jonathan G Dollimore is a British philosopher and critic in the fields of Renaissance literature , gender studies, queer theory , history of ideas, death studies, decadence, and cultural theory. He is the author of four academic books, a memoir, and numerous academic articles. With Alan Sinfield he was the co-editor of and key contributor to Political Shakespeare, and the co-originator of the critical practice known as cultural materialism. Dollimore is credited with making major interventions in debates on sexuality and desire, Renaissance literary culture, art and censorship, and cultural ...
Go to Profile#2043
Sam Bourcier
#42762
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Sam Bourcier is a French sociologist and lecturer at Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III. They are a transfeminist and queer activist. According to Bourcier's twitter, they use the French gender-neutral neopronoun iel.
Go to Profile#2044
Jack Rothman
#11839
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
Jack Rothman is an American sociologist and social worker. He is best known for his work in community organizing within the field of social work. He has authored some 25 books and monographs and lectured extensively on social problems and social change. His core interests include poverty, inequality, racism and multicultural relations, mental health, and community participation.
Go to Profile#2045
Ethan Zuckerman
#5231
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Ethan Zuckerman is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020, and the author of the 2013 book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, which won the Zócalo Book Prize. In 2020, he became an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#2046
Gordon Zahn
#51763
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Gordon Zahn was an American sociologist, pacifist, professor, and author. Early life Born out of wedlock, Zahn took his stepfather's last name. During World War II, he was a conscientious objector, and served in a Civilian Public Service camp established by the Catholic Worker Movement. Zahn later transferred to Rosewood State Training School in Maryland, a school for the developmentally disabled. He worked there as a conscientious objector until April 1946. His experiences at Rosewood were published in the Catholic Worker in the July and October 1946 issues, as a continuation of his attempt ...
Go to Profile#2047
C. K. Yang
#116949
Overall Influence
1911 - 1999 (88 years)
Ch'ing-k'un Yang , better known as C. K. Yang, was an American sociologist who pioneered the application of sociological theory to the study of China. He was known for his contributions to the study of Chinese religion and his argument that religion in China was "diffuse" and present in many aspects rather than being institutionalized in churches.
Go to Profile#2048
Ton de Leeuw
#42873
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Antonius Cornelis Joannes de Leeuw is a Dutch organizational theorist and Emeritus professor of business administration at the University of Groningen, known for his contributions in the field of systems theory and methodology applied to business administration, management and innovation.
Go to Profile#2049
Keith Kahn-Harris
#37172
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist and music critic. He is an honorary research fellow and senior lecturer at Birkbeck College and an associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College.
Go to Profile#2050
Roy Bryce-Laporte
#93106
Overall Influence
1933 - 2012 (79 years)
Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte was a sociologist who established one of the first African-American studies departments. Roy Simon Laporte was born and raised in the Republic of Panama, of a family of mixed West Indian and African ancestry.
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