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,
#2301
Ross Koppel
#148105
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ross Koppel is an American sociologist. He is a senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and an adjunct professor of sociology at The University of Pennsylvania. He is known for studying the impact of healthcare information technology on medical practice. Koppel's work led to controversy in the health care informatics industry and significant changes to guarantee the safety and accuracy of medical records. Koppel has served as president of the Sociological Practice Association and the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology and has received numerous awards from professional associations.
Go to Profile#2302
Matthew Lee
#81476
Overall Influence
Matt Lee is an American social scientist and university administrator at Louisiana State University . He is currently the Vice President for Agriculture and Dean of the College of Agriculture. As a servant leader in higher education, his personal and administrative motto is 'Excellence through Innovation'.
Go to Profile#2303
Egon Mayer
#118723
Overall Influence
1944 - 2004 (60 years)
Egon Mayer was a Swiss-born American sociologist and professor at Brooklyn College. He wrote a number of books on Jewish culture and history, including From Suburb to Shtetl , The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of Absolutism in Europe , and Love and Tradition: Marriage Between Jews and Christians .
Go to Profile#2304
In-Jin Yoon
#174747
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
In-Jin Yoon is a South Korean sociologist. Early life and career He was born in Hongseong, South Korea and raised in Daejeon until high school. He graduated from Korea University with a BA in sociology in August 1985. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and taught at the Asian American Studies Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara between 1992 and 1995 before he joined the Department of Sociology in Korea University. He is now professor of the Department of Sociology, Korea University and the former presidents of the Association for North Korean Migrants S...
Go to Profile#2305
Ann R. Miller
#138968
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Ann Ratner Miller was an American sociologist and demographer in the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, described as "a pioneer in the study of human migration and patterns of labor force participation," "part of the first generation of demographers that assembled and analyzed census data to undertake the first systematic study of internal migration within the United States."
Go to Profile#2306
Kalervo Gulson
#169366
Overall Influence
Dr Kalervo N. Gulson is a sociologist of education at the University of New South Wales. He has previously held positions at the University of British Columbia and Charles Sturt University. His work has provided important insights into the role of space and place when theorizing education policy change.
Go to Profile#2307
Tim Blackman
#96826
Overall Influence
Tim Blackman is a British academic. He is the current Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, serving since October 2019. He previously served as the Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University from 2015–2019.
Go to Profile#2308
Ramiro Martinez Jr.
#172883
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Ramiro Martinez Jr. is an American criminologist. He is a professor at Northeastern University, in both the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Go to Profile#2309
Douglas Anderton
#180304
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Douglas L. Anderton is an American sociologist and statistician. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science and the American Statistical Association, and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association and International Statistical Institute. He earned an B.S. in economics , an M.S. in economics , and a Ph.D. in sociology , all from the University of Utah. At the University of Utah He worked on the human genetics research project with Dr. Lee L. Bean and Dr. Mark Skolnick, among others. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1983-1986, where he worked with Dr.
Go to Profile#2310
June Purvis
#15226
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
June Purvis is an emeritus professor of women's and gender history at the University of Portsmouth. From 2014-18, Purvis was Chair of the Women’s History Network UK and from 2015-20 Treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She organized at the University of Portsmouth on 31st August–1st September 2018 the Women's History Network Annual conference on the Campaigns for Women’s Suffrage: National and International Perspectives. She edits the journal Women's History Review.
Go to Profile#2311
Juho Härkönen
#181245
Overall Influence
Juho Härkönen is a Finnish academic, currently professor of sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. At the EUI, he is director of graduate studies for the Department of Political and Social Sciences since 2020, and co-director of the Comparative Life Course and Inequality Research Centre and of Florence Population Studies . Härkönen holds a PhD in political and social sciences and a Master of Research from the European University Institute, and a Master of Social Sciences from the University of Turku.
Go to Profile#2312
Nancy Hazel
#76839
Overall Influence
Nancy Hazel was a Research Fellow with the School of Social Work at the University of Kent. In 1974, Hazel was part of a working group from the Council of Europe that published a report on child placement. The following year, she developed what became known as the Kent Family Placement Project , the forerunner of all modern foster care across the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#2313
Rachel Robinson
#7016
Overall Influence
1922 - Present (102 years)
Rachel Annetta Robinson is an American former professor and registered nurse. She is the widow of professional baseball player Jackie Robinson. After her husband's death, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation.
Go to Profile#2314
Ann Buchanan
#172500
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Ann Hermione Buchanan, MBE, FASC was a British researcher, author and academic. She was Senior Research Associate in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention and Professor Emeritus of Social Work at Oxford University. She was also a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Hilda's College since 1994.
Go to Profile#2315
Marla F. Frederick
#89614
Overall Influence
Marla Faye Frederick is an American ethnographer and scholar, with focus on African-American religious experience. She is currently the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Her work addresses a range of topics including race, gender, religion and media studies.
Go to Profile#2316
Eqbal Ahmad
#16063
Overall Influence
1933 - 1999 (66 years)
Eqbal Ahmad was a Pakistani political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, his support for resistance movements globally and academic contributions to the study of the Near East. Born in Bihar, British India, Ahmad migrated to Pakistan as a child and went on to study economics at the Forman Christian College. After graduating, he worked briefly as an army officer and was wounded in the First Kashmir War in 1948. He participated in the Algerian Revolution, then studied the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism, becoming an early opponent of the war upon his return to the U.S.
Go to Profile#2317
Kitty Calavita
#171075
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Kitty C. Calavita is an American criminologist, focusing in sociology of law, criminology, immigration, criminal justice and inequality, currently the Chancellor's Professor Emerita at University of California, Irvine and an Elected Fellow of the American Political and Social Science Society.
Go to Profile#2318
Carolyn Bohach
#167788
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Carolyn Hovde Bohach is an American food scientist, currently University Distinguished Professor at Washington State University. Her research has focused on enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli which include the infamous O157:H7 serotype.
Go to Profile#2319
Jesús Martín-Barbero
#90201
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Jesús Martín-Barbero was a Spanish-Colombian communication scientist. Biography Born in Ávila, Spain in 1937, he lived in Colombia since 1963; he also published as Jesús Martin B. He was a Doctor of Philosophy , and was a specialist in culture and media. Most of his published books are in Spanish; some have been translated into other languages.
Go to Profile#2320
Israel Singer
#39221
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Israel Singer was secretary general of the World Jewish Congress from 1986 to 2007. Life Singer grew up in Brooklyn, the son of Austrian refugees. He teaches political science in Touro University, New York, Lander College for Men, and taught at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Go to Profile#2321
Nísia Trindade
#100367
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Nísia Trindade Lima is a Brazilian social scientist, sociologist, researcher and university professor who has been serving as Minister of Health of Brazil since 2023. She served as chairwoman of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation from 2017 to 2023.
Go to Profile#2322
Sarah Colvin
#174695
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Sarah Jean Colvin is a British scholar of German, literary theory, and gender studies. Since 2014, she has been Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. She previously held the Eudo C. Mason Chair of German at the University of Edinburgh , and was Professor in Study of Contemporary Germany at the University of Birmingham , then Professor of German at the University of Warwick .
Go to Profile#2323
Elizabeth Bernstein
#150221
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Elizabeth Bernstein is an American sociologist who is noted for her studies that focus on women, gender, and sexuality. She is also a professor at Columbia University's Barnard College. Education Bernstein completed her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001.
Go to Profile#2324
Paul Bellair
#179561
Overall Influence
Paul E. Bellair is a professor of sociology at Ohio State University, where he has taught since 1995. He was educated at the State University of New York at Albany . His Ph.D. committee was chaired by Allen Liska, and also included Steven Messner and Marv Krohn. He is known for researching multiple aspects of crime, including life-course criminology, community context, and race and crime.
Go to Profile#2325
Yvonne Haddad
#38335
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is Professor of the History of Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Her interests and focus include contemporary Islam; intellectual, social and political history in the Arab world; Islam in the West; Quranic Exegesis; and gender and Islam. Haddad's current research focuses on Muslims in the West and on Islamic Revolutionary Movements. She has published extensively in the field of Islamic studies.
Go to Profile#2326
Payal Arora
#172692
Overall Influence
Payal Arora is an Indian anthropologist, full Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam, author and consultant. She is the founder of CatalystLab, an organization that connects academia, business and the public on social issues. Her work focuses on internet usage in the Global South, specifically on digital cultures, inequality and data governance.
Go to Profile#2327
Suad Joseph
#184748
Overall Influence
#2328
Aleksandr Shchipkov
#122299
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Shchipkov is a Russian political scientist, sociologist of religion, specialist in church-state relationships, doctor of political science, professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, editor-in-chief of RELIGARE.RU Internet magazine.
Go to Profile#2329
David Scott
#184771
Overall Influence
#2330
Lawrence Goodridge
#112325
Overall Influence
Lawrence Goodridge is the Leung Family Professor of Food Safety at the University of Guelph and Director of Guelph's Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety. Goodridge studies detection of and protection from food- and water-borne pathogens such as escherichia coli, salmonella and listeria. He uses wastewater testing to study the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases.
Go to Profile#2331
Christopher Badcock
#166150
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Christopher Robert Badcock is a British sociologist and Emeritus Reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics, from which he retired in 2011. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1973 under the supervision of Ernest Gellner. His thesis, and his early work thereafter, focused on the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. He served as a lecturer in sociology at Polytechnic of the South Bank from 1969 to 1973, and was on the faculty in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics from 1974 until his retirement. He is known for working with Bernard Crespi to dev...
Go to Profile#2332
Cindy Patton
#54229
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Cindy Patton is an American sociologist and historian specializing in the history of the AIDS epidemic. A former faculty member at Temple University and Emory University, she currently teaches at Simon Fraser University, where she held the Canada Research Chair in Community, Culture, and Health from 2003 to 2014. Her work has appeared in Criticism, the Feminist Review, and the International Review of Qualitative Research, and she co-edited a special edition of Cultural Studies on French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
Go to Profile#2333
Carolyn Cannuscio
#177802
Overall Influence
Carolyn Cannuscio is an American epidemiologist who is an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as Director of Research for the Center for Public Health Initiatives. Cannuscio works to improve public health with a specific focus on disadvantaged urban populations.
Go to Profile#2334
Marian Baird
#135792
Overall Influence
Marian Pam Baird is an Australian academic researcher, Professor of Gender and Employment Relations and Head of the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney, and a member of the Australian Fair Work Commission. She is also Foundation Director, Women and Work Research Group. Her research focuses on all aspects of women in the workforce over their lifespan.
Go to Profile#2335
Chris Bourg
#129618
Overall Influence
Chris Bourg is an American librarian, sociologist and former officer of the United States Army. She has been the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries since 2015. Career and education Bourg graduated with a B.A. from Duke University and a M.A. from the University of Maryland. She went on to study sociology at Stanford University where she completed an M.A. and PhD. Her doctoral thesis titled Gender mistakes and inequality was supervised by Cecilia L. Ridgeway.
Go to Profile#2336
Kum-Kum Bhavnani
#176541
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Kum-Kum Bhavnani is an American university professor, filmmaker, and author. As of 2018, she is a Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Professor with Feminist Studies and Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Chair of the interdisciplinary program in Women, Culture, Development. She served as the Chair of the University of California Academic Senate.
Go to Profile#2337
Klaus Weber
#185022
Overall Influence
#2338
Laura Wexler
#175501
Overall Influence
Laura Wexler is Professor of American Studies, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and co-chair of the Women's Faculty Forum at Yale University. An American feminist theorist her academic concerns are in the disciplines of women's studies and visual culture.
Go to Profile#2339
Virginia Burrus
#149701
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.
Go to Profile#2340
Tal Dekel
#177560
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Tal Dekel is an art historian, curator and academic. Her work deals with modern and contemporary art in Israel and around the world. Her research focuses on issues of visual culture, analyzing its interrelations with race, class, gender, sexuality and nationality, while using feminist theories and transnationalism. Her recent research revolves around case studies of women immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and the Philippines in Israel.
Go to Profile#2341
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder
#167922
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder is an Israeli-Arab sociologist, anthropologist, and feminist activist with a specialty in gender studies. She is the first Bedouin woman in Israel to receive a doctorate, and to be promoted to Associate Professor. In June 2021, she was appointed Vice-President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Go to Profile#2342
Paul Schervish
#116832
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Paul G. Schervish is an American sociologist and former Jesuit priest who specializes in the academic study of philanthropy. He is a professor emeritus of sociology at Boston College, where he formerly served as director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy prior to its closure in 2015. During the 2000–01 academic year, he was a Fulbright Scholar at University College Cork. He has been named to the NonProfit Times annual "Power and Influence Top 50" list five times.
Go to Profile#2343
Hande Eslen-Ziya
#115569
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Hande Eslen-Ziya is a Turkish-born, Norway-based sociologist and psychologist. She is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Populism, Anti-Gender and Democracy Research Group at the University of Stavanger in Norway. She has an established interest in gender and social inequalities, transnational organizations and social activism, and has a substantial portfolio of research in this field. Her research has been published in Gender, Work and Organisation, Emotion, Space and Society, Social Movement Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Leadership, Men and Masculinities, and Social Politics, as well as in other internationally recognized journals.
Go to Profile#2344
Lauren Krivo
#183806
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lauren J. Krivo is an American sociologist who is professor of sociology at Rutgers University, where she is also an affiliated professor in the Program in Criminal Justice. She is also the director of graduate studies in Rutgers' sociology department. She is known for her work on residential segregation and disadvantage as they relate to race and crime in the United States. She co-founded the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network, a national network of scholars dedicated to researching race, crime, and justice, along with her longtime collaborator Ruth D. Peterson.
Go to Profile#2345
Lucien-Samir Oulahbib
#112452
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Lucien-Samir Oulahbib is a French sociologist, political scientist, writer and journalist who taught at the University Lyon 3, from 2007 until 2019. He taught at the University Paris X from 2005 to 2007 and now teaches at Albert le Grand Institute. He manages Dogma philosophy journal together with Isabelle Saillot.
Go to Profile#2346
Dino Abazović
#170488
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Dino Abazović is a sociologist and Full Professor at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Biography He studied sociology at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo where he graduated in 1999. He earned his post-graduate degree from the same institution in 2005 with a thesis on the sociological determination of religious nationalism. In 2009 he earned his PhD with a thesis on the subject of Bosnian Muslims between secularization and desecularization. In 2012 he was named Centennial Professor and head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at the Faculty of...
Go to Profile#2347
Pamela Anne Quiroz
#157574
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Pamela Anne Quiroz is an American sociologist. She is executive director of Inter University Program on Latino Research and director of Center for Mexican American Studies and professor of sociology, University of Houston.
Go to Profile#2348
Sonajharia Minz
#25629
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sonajharia Minz is an academician, trained in Mathematics and Computer Science, and engages with adivasi issues. She is the second tribeswoman hailing from Chotanagpur and appointed as a Vice-Chancellor in Sido Kanhu Murmu University, Dumka.
Go to Profile#2349
Maureen Baker
#185162
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Maureen Baker is a Canadian–New Zealand sociologist and an emeritus professor of the University of Auckland. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2009. Baker's work focused on children, families and gender.
Go to Profile#2350
Sara Goldrick-Rab
#55907
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Sara Youcha Goldrick-Rab is an American professor, sociologist, and author. Goldrick-Rab was most recently the Professor of Sociology and Medicine at Temple University until she resigned in August 2022, the Founding Director of The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, the founder and Board Secretary of Believe in Students, and the Chief Strategy Officer for Emergency Aid of Edquity. A sociologist of higher education, Goldrick-Rab's research focuses on policies that aim to reduce socioeconomic and racial inequalities. She received the American Educational Research Association Early...
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