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,
#2901
Marion Talbot
1858 - 1948 (90 years)
Marion Talbot was an American educator who served as Dean of Women at the University of Chicago from 1895 to 1925, and an influential leader in the higher education of women in the United States during the early 20th century. In 1882, while still a student, she co-founded the American Association of University Women with her mentor Ellen Swallow Richards. During her long career at the University of Chicago, Talbot fought tenaciously and often successfully to improve support for women students and faculty, and against efforts to restrict equal access to educational opportunities.
Go to Profile#2902
Tommy Douglas
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Thomas Clement Douglas was a Canadian politician who served as the seventh premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and Leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. A Baptist minister, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation . He left federal politics to become Leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan. His government introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program.
Go to Profile#2903
Jean Martin
1923 - 1979 (56 years)
Jean Isobel Martin FASSA was an Australian sociologist who was a pioneer of the discipline in Australia. Many of her works examined the role of immigrants in Australian society. Her academic career "spanned teaching and research appointments in seven Australian universities".
Go to Profile#2904
Frederick Charles Frey
1891 - Present (134 years)
Frederick Charles Frey was born near Amite, Louisiana, on November 8, 1891. He was a graduate of Amite High School, Louisiana State University, and the University of Minnesota, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1929.
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Margaret Hodgen
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Margaret Trabue Hodgen was an American sociologist and author. Hodgen was a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Hodgen wrote the highly influential Doctrine of the Survivals, first published as a book in 1936, but originally launched in the journal American Anthropology in 1931.
Go to Profile#2906
Elmer Louis Struening
#2907
Maud Gonne
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Maud Gonne MacBride was an Irish republican revolutionary, suffragette and actress. She was of Anglo-Irish descent and was won over to Irish nationalism by the plight of people evicted in the Land Wars. She actively agitated for Home Rule and then for the republic declared in 1916. During the 1930s, as a founding member of the Social Credit Party, she promoted the distributive programme of C. H. Douglas. Gonne was well known for being the muse and long-time love interest of Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
Go to Profile#2908
Roger Casement
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Roger David Casement , known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist executed by the United Kingdom for treason during World War I. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, becoming known as a humanitarian activist, and later as a poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations", he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in the rubber industry in Peru.
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Carl Kelsey
1870 - 1953 (83 years)
Carl Kelsey was an American sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Biography A native of Grinnell, Iowa, Kelsey was educated at Iowa College, Andover Theological Seminary, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career as a social worker in Helena, Montana in 1895, before moving to do the same job in Buffalo, New York, Boston, and Chicago. In 1903, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and joined their faculty as an instructor the same year. He became an assistant professor there in 1904, and a full professor in 1907.
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Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
1855 - 1920 (65 years)
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist. He was also an entrepreneur in the city of Ploiești. Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was the father of communist activist Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea and of philosopher Ionel Gherea.
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James Q. Dealey
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
James Quayle Dealey was a British American sociologist, journalist, academic, and newspaper editor. Dealey served as the tenth president of the American Sociological Association. Early life and education Dealey was born on 13 August 1861 in Manchester, England to George and Mary Ann Dealey, née Nellins. Dealey was first educated in secondary schools in Liverpool. At the age of nine, Dealey's family moved to Galveston, Texas where attended the local public schools there. When he was seventeen, Dealy was hired at the Galveston News, working alongside his two brothers Thomas and George. Dealey w...
Go to Profile#2912
Marcel Boll
1886 - 1971 (85 years)
Marcel Boll was a French scientist, sociologist, philosopher, educator, scientific journalist , and a founding member of the Rationalist Union . Boll was one of the most prolific contributors of articles to Les Cahiers Rationalistes and Raison Présente , two journals published by the Rationalist Union. He was one of the main popularizers of the theory of relativity, the quantum theory, and other aspects of the physical sciences during the interwar period and in the early 1950s. An advocate of neopositivism, his numerous works on physics, philosophy, sociology, education, and other subjects all reflect his neopositivist perspective.
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Alexandru Claudian
1898 - 1962 (64 years)
Alexandru Claudian was a Romanian sociologist, political figure, and poet. A student and practitioner of Marxism, he worked as a schoolteacher, entry-level academic, field researcher, and journalist, before finally earning a professorship at the University of Iași. An anti-fascist, Claudian enlisted with the Romanian Social Democratic Party during the interwar, moving closer to the anti-communist center by the late 1940s, and became that faction's main theoretician. His condemnation of Marxism and totalitarianism made him an enemy of the communist regime, which imprisoned him for several year...
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Fred Hampton
1948 - 1969 (21 years)
Fredrick "Chairman Fred" Allen Hampton Sr. was an American activist. He came to prominence in his late teens and very early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots , and the Young Lords , and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist, Hampton considere...
Go to Profile#2915
Constantin Dimitrescu-Iași
1849 - 1923 (74 years)
Constantin Dimitrescu-Iași was a Moldavian, later Romanian philosopher, sociologist and pedagogue. Biography Born in Iași, his father was the magistrate Dimitrie Dimitrescu. He attended primary school in his native city from 1856 to 1860, followed by high school from 1860 to 1867. His classmates there included Alexandru Lambrior, George Panu, and Calistrat Hogaș. From 1867 to 1869, he attended the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Iași, and at the same time worked as a substitute Latin teacher. From 1869 to 1870, Dimitrescu-Iași taught at Botoșani. He again taught at Iași from 1870 to 1872, continuing his university studies in the process.
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Sjoerd Hofstra
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Sjoerd Hofstra was a Dutch sociologist and anthropologist, best known as the first Dutch person to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Africa, where he lived among the Mende in Sierra Leone. Hofstra was an animal protection advocate.
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Virgil I. Bărbat
1879 - 1931 (52 years)
Virgil Iuliu Bărbat was a Romanian sociologist. Born in Rasa, Călărași County, he graduated from Brăila's Nicolae Bălcescu High School in 1897, followed by the social sciences faculty of the University of Geneva, where he received his degree in 1905. Subsequently, he took courses on sociology, ethics and economics at Heidelberg and Leipzig. In 1909, he defended his thesis, in philosophy, at the University of Bern. Titled Nietzsche – tendances et problèmes, this was published at Zürich in 1911. After taking his doctorate, he remained abroad, embarking on a number of study trips. His destinatio...
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Alexander Sergeyevich Lappo-Danilevsky
1863 - 1919 (56 years)
Alexander Sergeyevich Lappo-Danilevsky was a Russian historian and sociologist. He attended the University of St. Petersburg, graduating from the Faculty of History and Philology in 1886. He played an influential role in introducing Nikolai Kondratiev to sociology, economics and scientific method.
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M. Carey Thomas
1857 - 1935 (78 years)
Martha Carey Thomas was an American educator, suffragist, and linguist. She was the second president of Bryn Mawr College, a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Early life and education Thomas was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 2, 1857. She was the daughter of James Carey Thomas and Mary Thomas. She was conceived "in full daylight", because her father, a doctor, thought this would diminish the chance of his wife miscarrying.
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Graham Taylor
1851 - 1938 (87 years)
Graham Taylor was a Minister, Social Reformer, Chicago Theological Seminary faculty member, Educator and Founder of Chicago Commons Settlement House along with Jane Addams.
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Víctor Jara
1932 - 1973 (41 years)
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and Communist political activist. He developed Chilean theater by directing a broad array of works, ranging from locally produced plays to world classics, as well as the experimental work of playwrights such as Ann Jellicoe. He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva canción chilena movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende.
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Chen Xujing
1903 - 1967 (64 years)
Chen Xujing was a leading Chinese sociologist. Biography Chen Xujing was born in Hainan. He was schooled in Singapore and at Lingnan Middle School, at which he enrolled in 1920. He graduated from Fudan University in 1925. After receiving a PhD in Political Science from the University of Illinois in 1928, he published his thesis on theories of sovereignty in the following year. While holding a sociology post at Lingnan University, he travelled to study in Germany. He became a professor at Nankai University, heading the Economic Research Institute and School of Politics and Economics, and serving as vice president of the university.
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Margaret Jarman Hagood
1907 - 1963 (56 years)
Margaret Loyd Jarman "Marney" Hagood was an American sociologist and demographer who "helped steer sociology away from the armchair and toward the calculator". She wrote the books Mothers of the South and Statistics for Sociologists , and later became president of the Population Association of America and of the Rural Sociological Society.
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Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 - 1797 (38 years)
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
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George Jackson
1941 - 1971 (30 years)
George Lester Jackson was an American author, activist and convicted felon. While serving an indeterminate sentence for stealing $70 from a gas station in 1961, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity and co-founded the prison gang Black Guerrilla Family.
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Alan Little
1934 - 1986 (52 years)
Alan Neville Little, JP was a British social scientist. Biography Alan Neville Little was born on 12 July 1934, the son of Charles Henry Little and Lilian Little. In 1955, he married Dr Valerie Hopkinson; they had three children. Little attended Northgate Grammar School in Ipswich, before studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science , receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology and doctorate in economics. He lectured at the LSE from 1959 to 1966 and then spent two years as a consultant at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development . In 1968, he was appointed director of research and statistics at the Inner London Education Authority .
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Marcus Garvey
1887 - 1940 (53 years)
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was a Jamaican political activist. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League , through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.
Go to Profile#2928
Jacqueline Burgoyne
1944 - 1988 (44 years)
Jacqueline Lesley Burgoyne was a British sociologist and academic who specialised in family life. Career Jacqueline Burgoyne was born in Worcester on 10 September 1944 and schooled at Bristol. She enrolled at the University of Sheffield in 1963 and completed a sociology degree, before qualifying as a teacher in Bath and then returning to Sheffield to work on a project which would lead to her first book, Books and Reading , the result of a collaboration with Peter H. Mann; after its completion, she worked as a teacher and then in 1971 joined Sheffield City College of Education as a lecturer. ...
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Chen Da
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Chen Da was a Chinese sociologist. Biography Chen was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province and his sobriquet was Tongfu . From 1912-1916, he studied at Tsinghua School in Beijing. From 1916 to 1923, he studied in the United States, and obtained his doctorate degree from Columbia University. Upon graduation, he returned to China and taught at Tsinghua for many years. When Tsinghua School transformed into Tsinghua University in 1929, Chen helped found the department of sociology and became a professor and the chair of the department. During Sino-Japanese War, he moved south with the university to K...
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Carl Nicolai Starcke
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Carl Nicolai Starcke was a Danish sociologist, politician, educator and philosopher. He is buried at Holmens Cemetery. He was the father of Viggo Starcke, another writer and publisher of books such as Denmark in World History.
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Rosemary Seymour
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
Rosemary Yolande Levinge Seymour was a New Zealand feminist academic. She was instrumental in establishing New Zealand's first women's studies course at the University of Waikato in 1974, the Women's Studies Journal, and the Women's Studies Association of New Zealand.
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Michel Aflaq
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement; he is considered by several Ba'athists to be the principal founder of Ba'athist thought. He published various books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Battle for One Destiny and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution .
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Sheldon Glueck
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Sheldon Glueck was a Polish-American criminologist. He and his wife Eleanor Glueck collaborated extensively on research related to juvenile delinquency and developed the "Social Prediction Tables" model for predicting the likelihood of delinquent behavior in youth. They were the first criminologists to perform studies of chronic juvenile offenders and among the first to examine the effects of psychopathy among the more serious delinquents.
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Bobby Sands
1954 - 1981 (27 years)
Robert Gerard Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. Sands helped to plan the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sands was arrested while trying to escape and sentenced to 14 years for firearms possession.
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László Radványi
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
László Radványi , also known as Johann Lorenz Schmidt, was a Hungarian-German writer and academic. Life Childhood and early career Radványi was born into a Jewish family in Hungary. As a boy, Radványi attended a grammar school on Marko Street in Budapest. While attending grammar school, at the age of 16, he authored a book of poetry, which received a preface from Frigyes Karinthy. Radványi studied economics and philosophy at the University of Budapest from 1918 to 1919, where he became involved in radical politics. With the destruction of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 he fled to Vienn...
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Nannie Helen Burroughs
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Nannie Helen Burroughs was an educator, orator, religious leader, civil rights activist, feminist, and businesswoman in the United States. Her speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the 1900 National Baptist Convention in Virginia, instantly won her fame and recognition. In 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC. Burroughs' objective was at the point of intersection between race and gender.
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Maniruzzaman Islamabadi
1875 - 1950 (75 years)
Munīruzzamān Khān Islāmābādī , also known by the epithet Biplobi Maulana , was a Muslim philosopher, nationalist activist and journalist from Islamabad in Bengal Presidency, British India . He was among the founders of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind.
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C. Olin Ball
1893 - 1970 (77 years)
Charles Olin Ball was an American food scientist and inventor who was involved in the thermal death time studies in the food canning industry during the early 1920s. This research was used as standard by the United States Food and Drug Administration for calculating thermal processes in canning. He was also a charter member of the Institute of Food Technologists in 1939 and inducted among the first class of its fellows in 1970 for his work in academia and industry.
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Weston J. Morrow
#2941
Erastus Milo Cravath
1833 - 1900 (67 years)
Erastus Milo Cravath was a pastor and American Missionary Association official who after the American Civil War, helped found Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and numerous other historically black colleges in Georgia and Tennessee for the education of freedmen. He also served as president of Fisk University for more than 20 years.
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Naim Frashëri
1846 - 1900 (54 years)
Naim bey Frashëri, more commonly Naim Frashëri , was an Albanian historian, journalist, poet, rilindas and translator who was proclaimed as the national poet of Albania. He is regarded as a pioneer of modern Albanian literature and one of the most influential Albanian cultural icons of the 19th century.
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Steve Chase
Steve Chase was the director of the Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability program in the department of Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England. He is an activist, organizer, Quaker, lecturer, and editor.
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Théophile Funck-Brentano
1830 - 1906 (76 years)
Théophile Funck-Brentano was a Luxembourgian-French sociologist. He was the son of Jacques Funck, a notary in Luxembourg City that lived with Charles Metz, who was witness to Funck-Bretano's birth. He was the father of Frantz Funck-Brentano.
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Kate Stephens
1853 - 1954 (101 years)
Kate Brown Stephens was an American naturalist and the curator of mollusks and marine invertebrates at the San Diego Natural History Museum from 1910 to 1936. Biography Stephens was born in London, England. Her father, Thomas Brown, was a cab driver; her mother, Mary Tyler Brown, died when Kate was in her late teens or early twenties. Helping to raise her younger brother George while the family lived in the Kensington area of London, Kate is said to have worked at the Natural History Museum. She immigrated to the United States around 1888-1890. She lived for a short time in the city of Sa...
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Mirta Aguirre
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Mirta Aguirre Carreras was a Cuban poet, novelist, journalist and political activist from the LGBTQI movement. She has been called "the most important female academic and woman of letters in post-revolutionary Cuba".
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Ella Eaton Kellogg
1853 - 1920 (67 years)
Ella Eaton Kellogg was an American dietitian known for her work on home economics and vegetarian cooking. She was educated at Alfred University ; and the American School Household Economics . In 1875, Kellogg visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium, became interested in the subjects of sanitation and hygiene, and a year later enrolled in the Sanitarium School of Hygiene. Later on, she joined the editorial staff of Good Health magazine, and in 1879, married Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
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G. Malcolm Trout
1896 - 1990 (94 years)
George Malcolm Trout An American dairy industry pioneer, writer, researcher, and professor emeritus in food science at Michigan State University. Trout is credited with finding the key to the creation of homogenized milk.
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