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,
#2901
Mary Burnett Talbert
1866 - 1923 (57 years)
Mary Burnett Talbert was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Career Mary Morris Burnett was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1866. As the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886, Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree. She entered the field of education, first as a teacher in 1886 at Bethel University in Little Rock, then as an assistant principal of the Union High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, the highest position held by an African-American woman in the state.
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Albert Salomon
1891 - 1966 (75 years)
Albert Salomon was a German-Jewish sociologist. He was the nephew of Alice Salomon, a pioneer of the academic discipline of social work. Studies He first studied history of art, history of religions and philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1910. He later studied philosophy in Freiburg and Heidelberg, where he came into contact with Max Weber and Georg Lukács, among others. During World War I, he served as a nurse, and in 1921 he took his doctorate in the culture of friendship in Germany in the 19th Century.
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Roy Wallis
1945 - 1990 (45 years)
Roy Wallis was a sociologist and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Queen's University Belfast. He is mostly known for his creation of the seven signs that differentiate a religious congregation from a sectarian church, which he created while researching the Church of Scientology. He introduced the distinction between world-affirming and world-rejecting new religious movements.
Go to Profile#2904
Helen Lynd
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Helen Merrell Lynd was an American sociologist, social philosopher, educator, and author. She is best known for conducting the first Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, with her husband, Robert Staughton Lynd; as the coauthor of Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts ; and a pioneer in the use of social surveys. She was also the author of England in the 1880s: Toward a Social Basis for Freedom , Shame and the Search for Identity , and essays on academic freedom. In addition to writing and research, Lynd was a lectu...
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Leo Löwenthal
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Leo Löwenthal was a German sociologist and philosopher usually associated with the Frankfurt School. Life Born in Frankfurt as the son of assimilated Jews , Löwenthal came of age during the turbulent early years of the Weimar Republic. He joined the newly founded Institute for Social Research in 1926 and quickly became its leading expert on the sociology of literature and mass culture as well as the managing editor of the journal it launched in 1932, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Heterodox and independent Marxists, open to new intellectual currents such as psychoanalysis, and predominantly Jewish, the institute's members swiftly fled Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.
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Oliver Cox
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Oliver Cromwell Cox was a Trinidadian-Americann sociologist. Cox was often misconceived as a Marxist due to his focus on class conflict and capitalism, however, Cox fundamentally disagreed with Marx's analysis of Capitalism. While Marx and other classical economists viewed foreign trade as trade in surpluses, Cox felt that foreign trade was the primary driving force in capitalist development. For Cox, capitalist systems were not isolated, but rather there was an interconnected network of global capitalist systems.
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Robert Staughton Lynd
1892 - 1970 (78 years)
Robert Staughton Lynd was an American sociologist and professor at Columbia University, New York City. He is best known for conducting the first Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, with his wife, Helen Lynd; as the coauthor of Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts ; and a pioneer in the use of social surveys. He was also the author of Knowledge for What? The Place of the Social Sciences in American Culture . In addition to writing and research, Lynd taught at Columbia from 1931 to 1960. He also served on U.S. gover...
Go to Profile#2908
Fred W. Tanner
1888 - 1957 (69 years)
Fred Wilbur Tanner was an American food scientist and microbiologist who involved in the founding of the Institute of Food Technologists and the creation of the scientific journal Food Research . Academic career Tanner joined at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1923, where he was chair of the Bacteriology Department until 1948. His work focused on food safety issues, specifically pasteurization and meat curing. Tanner remained as professor until his retirement in 1956. Tanner's research in food science and technology would also lead to the establishment of the food technolo...
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Frank H. Hankins
1877 - 1970 (93 years)
Frank Hamilton Hankins was an American sociologist and anthropologist who was the president of the American Sociological Society in 1938. He wrote the book The Racial Basis of Civilization which was critical of racial theories such as Aryanism, Gobinism, Celticism, Anglo-Saxonism and Nordicism.
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Emory S. Bogardus
1882 - 1973 (91 years)
Emory Stephen Bogardus was a prominent figure in the history of American sociology. Bogardus founded one of the first sociology departments at an American university, at the University of Southern California in 1915.
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Willard Waller
1899 - 1945 (46 years)
Willard Walter Waller was an American sociologist. Much of his research concerned the sociology of the family, sociology of education and the sociology of the military. His The Sociology of Teaching was described as an "early classic" in the field of the sociology of education. Before his sudden death, he was recognized as one of the most prominent scholars in the field of sociology.
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Norman E. Himes
1899 - 1949 (50 years)
Norman Edwin Himes was an American sociologist and economist and Professor at Colgate University, known for his work on the medical history of contraception. Himes obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 1932. After graduation, he started his academic career at Colgate University in 1932. In World War II he served at the Surgeon General of the United States. His research interests were in the field of "population problems, history of contraception and the birth control movement, and marriage and family relations."
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Maynard A. Joslyn
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Maynard Alexander Joslyn was a Russian Empire-born, American food scientist who involved in the rebirth of the American wine industry in California following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Joslyn was also involved in the development of analytical chemistry as it applied to food, leading to the advancement of food chemistry as a scientific discipline.
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George A. Lundberg
1895 - 1966 (71 years)
George Andrew Lundberg was an American sociologist. Background Lundberg was born in Fairdale, North Dakota. His parents, Andrew J. Lundberg and Britta C. Erickson, were immigrants from Sweden. Lundberg received his bachelor's degree from the University of North Dakota in 1920, a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1922, and a doctorate in 1925 from the University of Minnesota, where he studied under and F. Stuart Chapin.
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George F. Stewart
1908 - 1982 (74 years)
George F. Stewart was an American food scientist who was involved in processing, preservation, chemistry, and microbiology of poultry and egg-based food products. He also became the first president of the International Union of Food Science and Technology after it was formed at the 1970 conference in Washington, D.C., from the International Congress of Food Science and Technology.
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Henry Pratt Fairchild
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Henry Pratt Fairchild was a distinguished American sociologist who was actively involved in many of the controversial issues of his time. He wrote about race relations, abortion and contraception, and immigration. He was involved with the founding of Planned Parenthood and served as President to the American Eugenics Society.
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Paul H. Landis
1901 - 1985 (84 years)
Paul Henry Landis, was an American sociologist. A prolific writer of over 20 books and 100 journal articles, Landis's work spanned the fields of rural sociology, Natural Resource Sociology, Sociology of Education, Adolescence, Social Control, and many other topics. Born in Cuba, Illinois, Landis was raised in a fundamentalist religious upbringing, before attending Greenville College and eventually the University of Michigan for a master's degree and The University of Minnesota for a PhD. After graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1931, Landis joined the faculty of South Dakota State University as an assistant professor in the Department of Rural Sociology.
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Luther L. Bernard
1881 - 1951 (70 years)
Luther Lee Bernard was an American sociologist and psychologist. He was the 22nd President of the American Sociological Association . He has been described as "among the best known U.S. sociologist in the country... between the 1920 and the 1940,".
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Frederick H. Harbison
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Frederick Harris Harbison was an American labor economist and Professor of Labor Economics at Princeton University. He was known for his 1959 study Management in the industrial world and other works on labor and management.
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Bernard E. Proctor
1901 - 1959 (58 years)
Bernard E. Proctor was an American food scientist who was involved in early research on food irradiation. Early life A native of Malden, Massachusetts, Proctor graduated from Malden High in 1919, then graduated with an S.B. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1923. He would then earn his Ph.D. at MIT in 1927.
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Harry Alpert
1912 - 1977 (65 years)
Harry Alpert was an American sociologist, best known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science program in the 1950s. During his time at the NSF , Alpert guided the development of the U.S. NSF's earliest efforts to provide funding to the social sciences, and helped to establish the agency's basic policy framework for funding social science research and fellowships. In his short five-year term as director, Alpert was able to establish a viable policy framework for NSF funding that would help to demonstrate both the value and scientific legitimacy of social scienc...
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John Porter
1921 - 1979 (58 years)
John Arthur Porter was a Canadian sociologist from 1950 to the late 1970s. His work in the field of social stratification opened up new areas of inquiry for many sociologists in Canada. Porter was born in Vancouver and completed his education at the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. There, he became interested in studies of social class. On returning to Canada he joined the faculty of Carleton University. He remained at Carleton as a professor, and later, as department chairman, dean and academic vice-president. He was also visiting professor at Harvard and the University of ...
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Paul Massing
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Paul Wilhelm Massing was a German sociologist. Life and career Born in Grumbach in the Rhine Province, he attended school in Cologne, and later studied economics and social sciences at Frankfurt University, when Franz Neumann was there and at Cologne Handelshochschule . He graduated in 1926 as a Diplom-Kaufmann . A year later, he studied for one term at the Sorbonne in Paris and prepared his dissertation on agrarian conditions of France in 19th century and the agrarian program of the French socialist parties. In 1928, he returned to Frankfurt University to study with Wilhelm Gerloff and at...
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Delores P. Aldridge
1900 - Present (126 years)
Delores P. Aldridge is an American sociologist. Aldridge was the first African-American faculty member at Emory University, and the founder of the first African American and African studies program in the American south.
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Charles Josiah Galpin
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Charles Josiah Galpin was an American academic. Galpin was a trailblazer of rural sociology, known for advancing research in analysis of rural populations, rural standards of living, rural social organization, and social structures. Galpin was a rural sociologist, professor, author, pastor, and advocate for rural populations. He published 112 works in 245 publications in one language and 2,667 library holdings including The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community ; Rural Life ; My Drift into Rural Sociology ; and Rural Social Problems . His early career set the stage for his influential c...
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Paul Fauconnet
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Paul Fauconnet was a French sociologist who is best known as a contributor to the L'Année Sociologique. Fauconnet aggregated in philosophy in 1892 and earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1895. He also earned a further doctorate in law in 1920, although his interest in the law was purely scholarly and he never practiced as a lawyer. He became a professor at the faculty of letters in 1907 at the University of Toulouse and later chargé de cours at the faculty of letters in 1921 in Paris, obtaining a chair in 1932. His dissertation was entitled La responsabilité: Etude de sociologie . It adopt...
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Eddie Roux
1903 - 1966 (63 years)
Eddie Roux was a Transvaal Colony-born botanist, academic, writer, member of the South African Communist Party and anti-apartheid activist. Early life He was born Edward Roux to Afrikaner father Phillip R. Roux, a pharmacist and botanist, who was involved in the Labour Party and English mother, Edith May Wilson. He grew up in Bezuidenhout Valley, Johannesburg. Roux's political view were further inspired by the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution. After matriculating at Jeppe High School, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand and studied botany and zoology. At university, he joined ...
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Shridhar Venkatesh Ketkar
1884 - 1937 (53 years)
Shridhar Venkatesh Ketkar was a Marathi sociologist, historian and novelist from Maharashtra, India. He is principally known as the chief editor of Maharashtriya Jnanakosha, the first-ever encyclopedia in the Marathi language.
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Hilda Weiss
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Hilda Weiss was a sociologist, trade unionist, and socialist. She lived in Germany until 1933 when Hitler came to power, then escaped to France. In 1939 she emigrated to the United States and lived there until her death in 1981.
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Vera Mae Green
1928 - 1982 (54 years)
Vera Mae Green was an American anthropologist, educator, and scholar, who made major contributions in the fields of Caribbean studies, interethnic studies, black family studies and the study of poverty and the poor. She was one of the first African-American Caribbeanists and the first to focus on Dutch Caribbean culture. She developed a "methodology for the study of African American Anthropology" that acknowledged the diversity among and within black families, communities and cultures. Her other areas of research included mestizos in Mexico and communities in India and Israel. "[C]ommitted to...
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Arthur Salz
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Arthur Salz was a German professor of sociology and economics who wrote on mercantilism, imperialism, and power. He taught at the University of Heidelberg before being forced to flee Germany because of his Jewish faith. He was familiar with the Stefan George circle and married Sophie Kantorowiz, the sister of historian Ernst Kantorowicz.
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Patrick Murphy Malin
1903 - 1964 (61 years)
Patrick Murphy Malin was an American activist and administrator who followed Roger Nash Baldwin as the second Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Early life Malin was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1903, the son of a banker. He entered the family business at age ten, and was expected to eventually become president of the bank. However, Woodrow Wilson's World War I speeches gave him a desire to travel and get a government job. He attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, graduating as valedictorian in 1924.
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William Lyman Underwood
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
William Lyman Underwood was an American photographer who was also involved in the research of time-temperature canning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1895 to 1896. Biography A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Underwood was the second son of William James Underwood, one of the nine children of William Underwood, the founder of the William Underwood Company.
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Joseph Husslein
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
Joseph C. Husslein, S.J. was a key figure in the early twentieth century in the development of American Catholic social thought. Husslein was one of several figures, such as John A. Ryan, trying to apply the Catholic social teaching of Pope Leo XIII’s watershed encyclical Rerum novarum . In the next decades Husslein would write over 500 articles on Catholic social teaching. The national Jesuit weekly magazine America published most of these articles. Husslein worked as an editor of the magazine.
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Stanisław Ossowski
1897 - 1963 (66 years)
Stanisław Ossowski was one of Poland's most important sociologists. He held professorships at Łódź University and Warsaw University . Life Ossowski first contributed to logic and aesthetics before moving on to sociology. He studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw, his teachers were i.a. Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Jan Łukasiewicz and Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He also studied in Paris , in Rome and in London. He took part in the 1920 war. Doctorate wrote to Tadeusz Kotarbiński at the University of Warsaw. He took part in the September campaign. He spent the occupation in Lviv and Warsaw. He ta...
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Eva Verbitsky Hunt
1934 - 1980 (46 years)
Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband Robert Hunt, she performed innovative regional work in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.
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Mary Roberts Coolidge
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Mary Roberts Coolidge , also known as Mary Roberts Smith, was an American sociologist and author. She was an instructor at Wellesley College before joining the faculty of Stanford University, where she became the first full-time American professor of sociology. She later founded the sociology department of Mills College.
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Elmer Pendell
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
Elmer Pendell was an American eugenicist and sociologist. Early life Pendell was born in Waverly, New York to George and Ida Harris PenDell. Pendell received his B.S. from the University of Oregon; M.A. from the University of Chicago; PhD from Cornell University; L.L.B. from George Washington University.
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Yves Stourdzé
1947 - 1986 (39 years)
Yves Stourdzé was a French sociologist. He studied technical and institutional conditions for innovation and how acceptable the effects of these are on society. He has also produced one of the most pertinent analyses of the phenomenon of informatization.
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David Glass
1911 - 1978 (67 years)
David Victor Glass was an eminent English sociologist and was one of the few sociologists elected to the Royal Society. He is also one of the very few people to be elected both Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Royal Society. He was professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, 1948–1978.
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Mary Mims
1882 - 1967 (85 years)
Mary Mims was born in Minden, Louisiana. She was a community organizer, teacher, educator, humanitarian, lecturer, and a pioneering sociologist. She was the founder of the "community organization movement" in cooperative extension. She was an extension services specialist in community organizing and worked for Louisiana State University. She was a state community worker for Louisiana.
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Walter Schiff
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
#2943
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
#2947
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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