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.
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List of the most influential people in Sociology,
#2751
Alvin Gouldner
1920 - 1980 (60 years)
Alvin Ward Gouldner was an American sociologist, lecturer and radical activist. Early life Goulder was born in New York City. He earned a B.B.A. degree from the Baruch College of the City University of New York and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.
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Dorothy Swaine Thomas
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Dorothy Swaine Thomas was an American sociologist and economist. She was the 42nd President of the American Sociological Association, the first woman in that role. Life and career Thomas was born on October 24, 1899, in Baltimore, Maryland to John Knight and Sarah Swaine Thomas.
Go to Profile#2753
Antonio Gramsci
1891 - 1937 (46 years)
Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926 where he remained until his death in 1937.
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Jan Stanisław Bystroń
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Jan Stanisław Bystroń was a Polish sociologist and ethnographer. Professor of University of Poznań, University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, member of Polish Academy of Science.
Go to Profile#2755
Alfred Vierkandt
1867 - 1953 (86 years)
Alfred Vierkandt was a German sociologist, ethnographer, social psychologist, social philosopher and philosopher of history. He is known for a broad and phenomenological Gesellschaftslehre promulgated in the 1920s, and for his formal sociology.
Go to Profile#2756
Vilhelm Aubert
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Johan Vilhelm Aubert was an influential Norwegian sociologist. He was a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo from 1963 to 1971 and at the Department of Sociology from 1971 to 1988. He co-founded the Norwegian Institute for Social Research already in 1950, and has been labelled the "father of Norwegian sociology". In his early life he was a member of the anti-Nazi resistance group XU, and while later involved on the radical wing of the Labour Party, he edited the newspaper Orientering.
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Franz Oppenheimer
1864 - 1943 (79 years)
Franz Oppenheimer was a German Jewish sociologist and political economist, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state. Life and career After studying medicine in Freiburg and Berlin, Oppenheimer practiced as a physician in Berlin from 1886 to 1895. From 1890 onwards, he began to concern himself with sociopolitical questions and social economics. After his activity as a physician, he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Welt am Morgen, where he became acquainted with Friedrich Naumann, who was, at the time, working door-to-door for different daily papers.
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Arnold Gehlen
1904 - 1976 (72 years)
Arnold Gehlen was an influential conservative German philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist. Biography Gehlen's major influences while studying philosophy were Hans Driesch, Nicolai Hartmann and especially Max Scheler. Furthermore, he was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and US-American pragmatism: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and especially George Herbert Mead.
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Hilmi Ziya Ülken
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Hilmi Ziya Ülken was a Turkish scholar and writer who had an influential role in the development of sociological and philosophical views in Turkey. In addition to his scientific work, he produced literary work, including poems.
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Beatrice Webb
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term "collective bargaining". She was among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society.
Go to Profile#2761
Nels Anderson
1889 - 1986 (97 years)
Nels Anderson was an early American sociologist who studied hobos, urban culture, and work culture. Biography Anderson studied at the University of Chicago under Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, whose Concentric zone model was one of the earliest models developed to explain the organization of urban areas. Anderson's first publication, The Hobo , was a work that helped pioneer participant observation as a research method to reveal the features of a society and was the first field research monograph of the famed Chicago School of Sociology, marking a significant milepost in the discipline of Sociology.
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Helmuth Plessner
1892 - 1985 (93 years)
Helmuth Plessner was a German philosopher and sociologist, and a primary advocate of "philosophical anthropology". Life and career Plessner had an itinerant education in Germany between 1910 and 1920. He began studying medicine in Friedburg before moving on to zoology and philosophy in Heidelberg. In Göttingen, he studied phenomenology with Husserl, and finally wrote his "Habititationsschrift" under the guidance of Max Scheler. Plessner then held a professorship in Cologne from 1926 to 1933, when he was forced to resign his position because of Jewish ancestry on his father's side. Living in isolation, Plessner initially fled Germany to Istanbul.
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Emil Lederer
1882 - 1939 (57 years)
Emil Lederer was a Bohemiann-born German economist and sociologist. Purged from his position at Humboldt University of Berlin in 1933 for being Jewish, Lederer fled into exile. He helped establish the "University in Exile" at the New School in New York City.
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James D. Thompson
1920 - 1973 (53 years)
James David Thompson was an American sociologist. In 1932, Thompson's family moved to Chicago where he went to a public high school. He graduated from Indiana University with a B.A. in business and served in the United States Air Force from 1941 to 1946. He obtained a master's degree in journalism and worked half a year as an editor for the Chicago Journal of Commerce before taking a position as a journalism teacher at the University of Wisconsin. From 1950 to 1954, he worked on his final degree, a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Albert Eulenburg
1840 - 1917 (77 years)
Albert Eulenburg was a German neurologist born in Berlin. Education Born into a Jewish family, he studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin, Bern and Zurich, earning his doctorate in 1861. Among his instructors were Johannes Peter Müller , Ludwig Traube and Albrecht von Graefe . Later he became a professor of pharmacology at the University of Greifswald, and in 1882, a professor of neurology in Berlin.
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Stefan Czarnowski
1879 - 1937 (58 years)
Stefan Zygmunt Czarnowski was a Polish sociologist, folklorist and professor of the University of Warsaw. Czarnowski was a member of the Polish pro-independence movements, he fought in the Polish Legions and the Polish-Soviet War. At first supporter of endecja, he gravitated towards supporting Polish Socialist Party.
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Georges Palante
1862 - 1925 (63 years)
Georges Toussaint Léon Palante was a French philosopher and sociologist. Palante advocated aristocratic individualist ideas similar to Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. He was opposed to Émile Durkheim's holism, promoting methodological individualism instead.
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Howard P. Becker
1899 - 1960 (61 years)
Howard Paul Becker was a longtime professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Biography Becker was born in New York in 1899, the son of Charles Becker, a New York police officer, and Letitia , of Ontario. His parents divorced six years after his birth. His mother married again, to Becker's brother Paul. His father Charles Becker later married twice more. He was prosecuted in New York for the 1912 murder of a gambler, found guilty, and executed in 1915.
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Albert Galloway Keller
1874 - 1956 (82 years)
Albert Galloway Keller was a sociologist, author, and student and colleague of William Graham Sumner. He is best known as the editor of Sumner's papers, in numerous volumes, published in the early 20th century by the Yale University Press. He was a scholar in his own right and wrote on German colonial policy, economic geography, and sociology.
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Jean Stoetzel
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Jean Stoetzel was a French sociologist. Biography He had Alsacian and Lorrainian descent. Stoetzel had studied in Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in a preparatory class for superior schools In 1932, he entered École normale supérieure in Parisе.
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Everett Stonequist
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Everett Verner Stonequist was an American Sociologist perhaps best known for his 1937 book, The Marginal Man Life & Work Stonequist was born in Worcester, Mass. and received his A.B. degree in History and Sociology at Clark University. He later studied at Cornell University, Columbia University, and the University of Paris. He received his doctorate in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1930.
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Roderick D. McKenzie
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
Roderick Duncan McKenzie was a Canadian-American sociologist, who became head of the sociology department at the University of Michigan. McKenzie served as the 2nd Vice-President of the American Sociological Association in 1932–1933, and was a charter member of the Sociological Research Association.
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George M. Simmel
#2774
Ali Shariati
1933 - 1977 (44 years)
Ali Shariati Mazinani was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century, and has been called the "ideologue of the Islamic Revolution", although his ideas did not end up forming the basis of the Islamic Republic.
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Jacob Riis
1849 - 1914 (65 years)
Jacob August Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist, and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most fa...
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Neva Boyd
1876 - 1963 (87 years)
Neva Leona Boyd was an American sociologist. She founded the Recreational Training School at the Hull House in Chicago. The school taught a one-year educational program in group games, gymnastics, dancing, dramatic arts, play theory, and social problems. She was on the faculty of Northwestern University from 1927 to 1941.
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Kurt Albert Gerlach
1886 - 1922 (36 years)
Kurt Albert Gerlach was a German professor and sociologist. Life Gerlach was the son of the chemist and later director of the Continental AG Albert Gerlach and his wife Martha Friedmann. He had studied at the university of Kiel under Ferdinand Tönnies and received his doctorate in 1911 with a work on the role of Denmark in global economy. He then studied at the University of Leipzig. In 1911 and 1912 he went to England and studied at the London School of Economics and became a member of the Fabian Society. In 1913 he habilitated in Leipzig with a treaty on protective measures for female factory workers in England.
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Eugen Steinach
1861 - 1944 (83 years)
Eugen Steinach was an Austrian physiologist and pioneer in endocrinology. Steinach played a significant role in discovering the relationship between sex hormones and human physical identifiers. Life and career Steinach was born on 28 January 1861, in Hohenems, County of Tyrol, Austrian Empire. His family were well-off and had been prominent in Jewish affairs in Hohenems for several generations. His father and his grandfather were both physicians; his father studied under Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, a leading German physiologist.
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Rose Goldsen
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
Rose Kohn Goldsen was a professor of sociology at Cornell University and a pioneer in studying the effects of television and popular culture. Prior to coming to Cornell, Goldsen worked for the Office of Radio Research, Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research. Goldsen came to Cornell as a research associate and felt that she encountered employment discrimination because she was a woman. In 1958, a faculty position opened up and she demanded to be considered, resulting in her appointment to the faculty.
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Frank Tannenbaum
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Frank Tannenbaum was an Austrian-American historian, sociologist and criminologist, who made significant contributions to modern Mexican history during his career at Columbia University. Early life Tannenbaum was born in Austria on 4 March 1893. His Eastern European Jewish family immigrated to the United States in 1905. He ran away from home as an adolescent and never finished high school. He worked at a number of menial jobs and became involved in radical labor politics of the era.
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George Edgar Vincent
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
George Edgar Vincent was an American sociologist and university president. Biography He was born at Rockford, Illinois, the son of Bishop John H. Vincent. He studied at Yale, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and served on the thirteenth editorial board of The Yale Record. After graduating in 1885, he engaged in journalistic and literary work.
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Charles Richmond Henderson
1848 - 1915 (67 years)
Charles Richmond Henderson was an American Baptist minister and sociologist. After being a pastor for nearly 20 years in Terre Haute and Detroit, he took an appointment as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, where he became a tenured professor. He published several works on society in the United States, the prison system, and the sociology of charities.
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Margaret Fuller
1810 - 1850 (40 years)
Sarah Margaret Fuller , sometimes referred to as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.
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St. Clair Drake
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
John Gibbs St. Clair Drake was an African-American sociologist and anthropologist whose scholarship and activism led him to document much of the social turmoil of the 1960s, establish some of the first Black Studies programs in American universities, and contribute to the independence movement in Ghana. Drake often wrote about challenges and achievements in race relations as a result of his extensive research.
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Georges Davy
1883 - 1976 (93 years)
Georges Davy was a French sociologist. He was a student and disciple of Émile Durkheim. With Marcel Mauss and Paul Huvelin he pioneered anthropological studies of the origins of the idea of contract.
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Valtazar Bogišić
1834 - 1908 (74 years)
Valtazar Bogišić , also known as Baltazar Bogišić, was a Serbian jurist and a pioneer in sociology. In the domain of private law his most notable research was on family structure and the unique Montenegrin civil code of 1888. He is considered to be a pioneer in the sociology of law and sociological jurisprudence. He was also a follower of the German Historical School of law, and may be considered a transitional figure between the Historical School and sociological approaches to law. In 1902 Bogišić was elected president of the International Institute of Sociology in Paris.
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Ulysses G. Weatherly
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Ulysses Grant Weatherly Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and a founding member of the American Sociological Society, and on its executive committee from 1907 to 1910. He was appointed as vice president in 1920 and President in 1923.
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Gabriel Le Bras
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Gabriel Le Bras was a French legal scholar and sociologist. Early life Gabriel Le Bras was born on July 23, 1891, in Paimpol, France. He received a Doctorate and the Agrégation in Laws in 1922. Career Le Bras was a Professor of Law at the University of Strasbourg from 1923 to 1929. He was director of research in the Sociology of Religion at the École pratique des hautes études from 1945 to 1962. He served as the Dean of the Law School at the University of Paris from 1959 to 1962.
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Robert McKenzie
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Robert Trelford McKenzie was a Canadian professor of politics and sociology, and a psephologist . He is perhaps best known in Britain as one of the main presenters of the BBC's General Election programmes.
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John L. Gillin
1871 - 1958 (87 years)
John Lewis Gillin was an American sociologist, specializing in applied sociology, and the 16th president of the American Sociological Association . He was also active in the activities of the American Red Cross.
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Minnie Louise Haskins
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Minnie Louise Haskins was a British poet and an academic in the field of sociology, best known for being quoted by King George VI in his Royal Christmas Message of 1939. Early life Haskins was born at 2 Kingswood Hill, Oldland, South Gloucestershire, six miles east of Bristol, and she grew up in the neighbouring village of Warmley. Her father was Joseph Haskins, a grocer, and her mother was Louisa Bridges. Her father acquired a pottery at Warmley making drain pipes, which was continued after his death by her mother. The family lived at Warmley House.
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Lewis Wade Jones
1910 - 1979 (69 years)
Lewis Wade Jones was a sociologist and teacher. He was born in Cuero, Texas, the son of Wade E. and Lucynthia McDade Jones. A member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, he received his AB degree from Fisk University in 1931, and followed it with postgraduate study as a Social Science Research Council Fellow at the University of Chicago in 1931–1932.
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Charles A. Ellwood
1873 - 1946 (73 years)
Charles Abram Ellwood was one of the leading American sociologists of the interwar period, studying intolerance, communication and revolutions and using many multidisciplinary methods. He argued that sociology should play a role in directing cultural evolution through education of society.
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F. Stuart Chapin
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Francis Stuart Chapin was an American sociologist and educator; he was a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota from 1922 to 1953. Background He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1909, as well as his PhD from the same school in 1911.
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A.K. Nazmul Karim
1922 - 1982 (60 years)
Abul Khair Nazmul Karim was a Bangladeshi sociologist and academic. He was posthumously awarded Ekushey Padak for his contribution to education by the government of Bangladesh in 2012. Personal life Karim was born in the Noakhali/Comilla area, now known as Lakshmipur. His parental residence was at Falgoonkora village in the Comilla District. He was the seventh of eight children of Abu Rashid Nizamuddin Mahmood Ahmed and Mossammat Shamsun Neda Khatun. He came from an educated family of school inspectors, private tutors, diwans, and magistrates. His mother came from a zamindari family.
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William Z. Ripley
1867 - 1941 (74 years)
William Zebina Ripley was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economy at Harvard University, and racial anthropologist. Ripley was famous for his criticisms of American railroad economics and American business practices in the 1920s and 1930s, and later for his tripartite racial theory of Europe. His work of racial anthropology was later taken up by racial physical anthropologists, eugenicists, white supremacists, Nordicists, and racists in general, and it was considered a valid academic work at the time, although today...
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Muriel Rukeyser
1913 - 1980 (67 years)
Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet, essayist, biographer, and political activist. She wrote poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".
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Achille Ouy
1889 - 1959 (70 years)
Achille Ouy was a French philosopher and sociologist. Ouy taught philosophy at various lycees, and was involved with the Mercure de France. "A follower of René Worms and Gaston Richard, Ouy "performed many day-to-day tasks that held the R.I.S. and IIS together from 1919 to 1940."
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Gunnar Landtman
1878 - 1940 (62 years)
Gunnar Landtman was a Finnish philosopher as well as a sociology and philosophy professor. A pupil of Edvard Westermarck, he graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1905. He later became an associate professor there from 1910 to 1927 and then a temporary professor until his death in 1940. At the university, Landtman was a member of the Prometheus Society, a student society promoting freedom of religion. Landtman was the first modern sociological anthropologist. His most important journey was a two-year trip to Papua New Guinea where he lived with the Kiwai Papuans from 1910 to 1912. He w...
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Olgerd Bochkovsky
1885 - 1939 (54 years)
Olgerd Ipolyt Bochkovsky – Ukrainian sociologist, journalist, diplomat and political activist whose political writings were published in Ukrainian newspapers in Canada, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other countries. His selected writings have recently appeared in a three-volume edition. Born in a Polish-Lithuanian family in Dolynska village, Kherson Gubernia , he studied in St. Petersburg, where he was involved in the socialist movement. After the revolution in 1905 he emigrated to Austro-Hungary and settled in Prague. In 1909 he graduated from Charles University . At that time he was involved i...
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