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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Sociology,
#451
Min Zhou
#13733
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Min Zhou 周敏 is a Chinese-born American sociologist. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Zhou completed a bachelor's degree in English at Sun Yat-sen University in 1982, and became a lecturer at her alma mater until 1984, when she began graduate study. She enrolled at the State University of New York at Albany, earning a master of arts and doctorate in sociology in 1985 and 1989, respectively. Zhou started her teaching career as an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in 1990, then moved to the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994, where she was promoted to associate and later full professor.
Go to Profile#452
Helga Nowotny
#11441
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Helga Nowotny is Professor emeritus of Social Studies of Science, ETH Zurich. She has held numerous leadership roles on Academic boards and public policy councils, and she has authored many publications in the social studies of science and technology.
Go to Profile#453
Filomina Clarice Steady
#43488
Overall Influence
Filomena Clarice Steady is a US-based Sierra Leonean author and academic who specializes in the intersectionality of racism and sexism. Early life and education Steady was born in Sierra Leone, studied in the US and England, and currently lives in the US.
Go to Profile#454
Wolfgang Sofsky
#53834
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Wolfgang Sofsky is a German sociologist and former professor of sociology at University of Göttingen and Erfurt University. Works
Go to Profile#455
Dariusz Gawin
#35952
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Dariusz Gawin is a Polish historian and sociologist, deputy director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum dedicated to the memory of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and located in the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland. Gawin serves as an Adiunkt at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a contributor to leading Polish magazines such as Przegląd Polityczny, Res Publica Nowa, Tygodnik Powszechny and Rzeczpospolita, as well as historical and scientific journals such as Teologia Polityczna and Krytyka Polityczna. He was the host of a TV programme Trzeci punkt widz...
Go to Profile#456
Juliet Schor
#12395
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Juliet B. Schor is an American economist and Sociology Professor at Boston College. She has studied trends in working time, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic inequality, and concerns about climate change in the environment. From 2010 to 2017, she studied the sharing economy under a large research project funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She is currently working on a project titled "The Algorithmic Workplace" with a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#457
Matthias Gross
#28298
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Matthias Gross is a German sociologist and science studies scholar. He currently is Full Professor of Environmental Sociology at the University of Jena, and by joint appointment, at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig, Germany.
Go to Profile#458
Marisa Matias
#26839
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Marisa Isabel dos Santos Matias is a Portuguese sociologist and Member of the European Parliament, elected for the first time in 2009 and re-elected in 2014. She currently sits on the Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industry, Research and Energy Committees. She is also Chairwoman of the Delegation of the European Parliament for relations with the Mashreq countries . Between 2010 and 2016 she was Vice-President of the Party of the European Left.
Go to Profile#459
Mayer Zald
#35358
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Mayer Nathan Zald was an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology, social work and business administration at the University of Michigan, noted for contributions to the sociology of organizations and social movements.
Go to Profile#460
George Gerbner
#3982
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
George Gerbner was a professor of communication and the founder of cultivation theory. He taught at Temple University, Villanova University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Personal life Early life and education Gerbner was born on August 8, 1919, in Budapest, Hungary.
Go to Profile#461
Michael Kimmel
#27596
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael Scott Kimmel is an American retired sociologist specializing in gender studies. He was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University in New York and is the founder and editor of the academic journal Men and Masculinities. Kimmel is a spokesman of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism and a longtime feminist. In 2013, he founded the at Stony Brook University, where he is Executive Director. In 2018 he was publicly accused of sexual harassment. He filed for retirement while Title IX charges were pending; no charges were subsequently filed.
Go to Profile#462
Norman Birnbaum
#15117
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Norman Birnbaum was an American sociologist. He was an emeritus professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a member of the editorial board of The Nation. Early life He was educated in New York City's public schools, at Williams College, and has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University. He taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Oxford University, the University of Strasbourg, Amherst College, served on the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research and was Distinguished Fulbright Professor at the University of Bologna.
Go to Profile#463
Lisa Jean Moore
#40880
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Lisa Jean Moore is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the State University of New York, Purchase College. She was born in New York State, received a BA from Tufts University, a Masters of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from the University of California, San Francisco. After receiving her doctoral degree in 1995, Moore was a fellow in the National Institutes of Mental Health, Traineeship in AIDS Prevention Sciences at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, the largest research center in the world dedicated to social, behavioral and policy science approaches to HIV.
Go to Profile#464
Keith Hopkins
#19603
Overall Influence
1934 - 2004 (70 years)
Morris Keith Hopkins, FBA was a British historian and sociologist. He was professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to 2000. Hopkins had a relatively unconventional route to the Cambridge professorship. After Brentwood School, he graduated in classics at King's College, Cambridge in 1958. He spent time as a graduate student, much influenced by Moses Finley, but left before completing his doctorate for an assistant lectureship in sociology at the University of Leicester .
Go to Profile#465
Ralph H. Turner
#27379
Overall Influence
1919 - 2014 (95 years)
Ralph Herbert Turner was an American sociologist who researched collective behavior and social movements. He served as president of the American Sociological Association and editor of Sociometry and the Annual Review of Sociology. He was the recipient of both a Fulbright grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#466
Lawrence W. Sherman
#7641
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Lawrence W. Sherman is an American experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing. Sherman's use of randomized controlled experiments to study deterrence and crime prevention has led him to examine such wide-ranging issues as domestic violence, saturation patrol, gun violence, crack houses, and reintegrative shaming. He has collaborated with over 30 police and justice agencies around the world, and been credited as a key founder of the field of experimental criminology.
Go to Profile#467
Ariel Salleh
#3140
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on humanity-nature relations, political ecology, social change movements, and ecofeminism. Background Salleh is a Founding Member of the Global University for Sustainability, Hong Kong; Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Humanities, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa; formerly Honorary Associate Professor in Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia; and Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. She taught in Social Ecology at the University o...
Go to Profile#468
John Kitsuse
#34275
Overall Influence
1923 - 2003 (80 years)
John Itsuro Kitsuse was an American professor of sociology who contributed to the sociology of social problemss, criminology and deviance. Kitsuse is famous for his pioneer work in studying social problems as social constructionss. From 1977 until his death, Kitsuse and his colleague Malcolm Spector published some of their research in this field in their book Constructing Social Problems. As a second generation Japanese American, Kitsuse was imprisoned in an American internment camp from 1942–1943, due to the ongoing war between the United States and Japan.
Go to Profile#469
Richard Grathoff
#28335
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Richard Helmut Grathoff was a phenomenologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany. Born on August 30, 1934, in Unna, Westphalia, Germany, he received his PhD from the New School for Social Research in 1969 after studying under Aron Gurwitsch, Thomas Luckmann and Peter L. Berger. Influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz, his work has included research in the topics of milieu and life-world and contemporary social theory. He died in Oerlinghausen, Germany on November 10, 2013.
Go to Profile#470
Jean-Louis Fabiani
#29069
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Jean-Louis Fabiani is a French sociologist, professor of sociology and social anthropology at the Central European University, and the director of studies at the Centre d'études sociologiques et politiques Raymond Aron at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Go to Profile#471
James M. Jasper
#20532
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
James Macdonald Jasper is a writer and sociologist who has taught Ph.D. students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2007. He is best known for his research and theories about culture and politics, especially the cultural and emotional dimensions of protest movements.
Go to Profile#472
Beverley Skeggs
#24059
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist, noted as one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world. Currently, she works as a "Distinguished Professor" in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, developing a Center for Social Inequalities in the North West of England. She continues to run the "Economics of Care" theme at the International Inequalities centre at the London School of Economics and is a visiting professor at Goldsmiths University. She has been the head of two of the UK's leading Sociology Departments, at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, as well as co-director of Lancaster's Women's Studies.
Go to Profile#473
Erik Grønseth
#20989
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Erik Grønseth was a Norwegian sociologist, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo from 1971 to 1989, and "one of the post-war pioneers of sociology" in Norway. He is regarded as one of the founders of men's studies. Together with Harriet Holter, he is also considered the founder of Norwegian family sociology.
Go to Profile#474
Ullica Segerstråle
#29684
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Ullica Christina Olofsdotter Segerstråle is a Finnish sociologist and historian of science who is professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Segerstråle’s published nonfiction books include Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond and Nature’s Oracle: The Life and Work of W. D. Hamilton , the latter of which is the first biography of evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton.
Go to Profile#475
David Martin
#26401
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
David Alfred Martin, FBA was a British sociologist and Anglican priest who studied and wrote extensively about the sociology of religion. Early life and education David Martin was born on 30 June 1929 in Mortlake. He was the son of a "between-maid" from Dorset and a groom from Hertfordshire who became a chauffeur and then a black cab driver in London and preached regularly at Hyde Park. He was brought up in a revivalist family and attended Barnes Methodist Church. He won a scholarship to East Sheen Grammar School, which he attended from 1940 to 1947.
Go to Profile#476
Gøsta Esping-Andersen
#9684
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Gøsta Esping-Andersen is a Danish sociologist whose primary focus has been on the welfare state and its place in capitalist economies. Jacob Hacker describes him as the "dean of welfare state scholars." Over the past decade his research has moved towards family demographic issues. A synthesis of his work was published as Families in the 21st Century .
Go to Profile#477
Mireia Vehí
#32566
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (39 years)
Mireia Vehí i Cantenys is a Spanish sociologist and politician from Catalonia, who currently serves as Member of the Congress of Deputies of Spain. She was previously a member of the Parliament of Catalonia.
Go to Profile#478
Gayatri Reddy
#25822
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Gayatri Reddy is an Indian anthropologist who has also made contributions to queer and gender studies. Reddy received her PhD in Anthropology in 2000 from Emory University after M.A in Anthropology from Columbia University and B.A. in Psychology from Delhi University. She is currently an associate professor in Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Reddy has carried out fieldwork on a community of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in India. Her current research is on male queer identity among South Asian immigrants to the US.
Go to Profile#479
John Keith Irwin
#20080
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
John Keith Irwin was an American sociologist and criminologist who was known internationally as an expert on the American prison system. He published dozens of scholarly articles and seven books on the topic.
Go to Profile#480
Joel Best
#19787
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Joel Gordon Best is a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. He specializes in topics such as social problems and deviance. His current research focuses on awards, prizes, and honors in American culture. He is an author of over ten books and dozens of academic articles.
Go to Profile#481
Morris I. Rosenberg
#67841
Overall Influence
#482
Ramachandra Guha
#1301
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ramachandra "Ram" Guha is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social, political, contemporary, environmental and cricket history, and the field of economics. He is an important authority on the history of modern India.
Go to Profile#483
David R. Williams
#67855
Overall Influence
#484
Hossein Bashiriyeh
#11110
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Hossein Bashiriyeh, is an Iranian scholar in political theory and political sociology, who was born in 1953 in Hamedan, Iran. Bashiriyeh has been described as the "Father of political sociology in Iran", and was a prominent academic figure influencing the Iranian reform movement.
Go to Profile#485
Albert J. Reiss
#15889
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Albert John Reiss Jr. was an American sociologist and criminologist. Career He served as the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology at Yale University from 1970 until his retirement in 1993. He is recognized for his contributions to social control theory, as well as for his research on police violence. He has been credited with coining the term "proactive" while researching violent incidents between police and private citizens as a research director for Lyndon B. Johnson's President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. This research led Reiss to conclude that t...
Go to Profile#486
Peter Weingart
#28160
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Peter Weingart is a German professor emeritus in sociology and former director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld. Life and academic career Peter Weingart studied sociology and economics from 1961 until 1967 at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and Freie Universität Berlin. Till 1968, he was University Fellow at Princeton University in New Jersey and received a doctorate 1969 at the Freie Universität Berlin. The thesis was about the American scientific lobby in the process of research planning.
Go to Profile#487
Marge Frantz
#49396
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
Marge Frantz was an American activist and among the first generation of academics who taught women's study courses in United States. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, from a young age she became involved in progressive causes. She worked as a labor organizer, agitated for civil rights, and participated in the women's poll tax repeal movement. After working as a union organizer for the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union in 1944, she was employed full time at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in Nashville, as a secretary and as the editor of the organization's press organ, Southern Patriot.
Go to Profile#488
Nevin S. Scrimshaw
#29631
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was an American food scientist and Institute Professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scrimshaw was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the course of his long career he developed nutritional supplements for alleviating protein, iodine, and iron deficiencies in the developing world. His pioneering and extensive publication
Go to Profile#489
Liu Dalin
#44545
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Liu Dalin, also sometimes Dalin Liu or Ta-lin Liu, was a Chinese professor of sociology at Shanghai University, who pioneered the field of sexology. Liu was born on 2 June 1932. In 1989–90, he helped conduct a nationwide survey on sexual behavior and attitudes in China, not unlike the Kinsey Report in the United States. A report on the survey's outcomes was first published in 1992 in Shanghai; in 1997 Liu published the English edition Sexual Behavior in Modern China . Also in 1997, he opened China's first sex museum in Shanghai; it has since moved to Tongli.
Go to Profile#490
Grigory Yudin
#26820
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Grigory Borisovich Yudin, also known as Greg Yudin , is a Russian political scientist and sociologist. Yudin is an expert in public opinion and polling in Russia. He is columnist for the newspaper Vedomosti and the online magazine Republic, as well as the website Proekt. He has also written for Open Democracy.
Go to Profile#491
Ruut Veenhoven
#21075
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Ruut Veenhoven is a Dutch sociologist and a pioneer on the scientific study of happiness, in the sense of subjective enjoyment of life. His work on the social conditions for human happiness at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, has contributed to a renewed interest in happiness as an aim for public policy. He has shown that happiness can be used a reliable measure to assess progress in societies which was one of the sources of inspiration for the United Nations to adopt happiness measures as a holistic approach to development. Veenhoven is the founding director of the World Database of Happiness and a founding editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Go to Profile#492
Peter Townsend
#12107
Overall Influence
1928 - 2009 (81 years)
Peter Brereton Townsend was a British sociologist. The last position he held was Professor of International Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He was also Emeritus Professor of Social Policy in the University of Bristol, and was one of the co-founders of the University of Essex. He wrote widely on the economics of poverty and was co-founder of the Child Poverty Action Group. The Peter Townsend Policy Press Prize was established by the British Academy in his memory.
Go to Profile#493
Robin Murphy Williams
#32514
Overall Influence
1914 - 2006 (92 years)
Robin Murphy Williams was an American sociologist who is primarily known for identifying and defining 15 core values that are central to the American way of life. Life Williams was born on October 11, 1914, in the city of Hillsborough, North Carolina. He graduated from North Carolina State College in 1933 at the age of 19 before going on earn an M.A. at Harvard University in 1939 and his PhD from the same establishment in 1943.
Go to Profile#494
Bryan Turner
#35380
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Bryan Stanley Turner is a British and Australian sociologist. He was born in January 1945 in Birmingham, England. Turner has held university appointments in England, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Holland, Singapore and the United States. He was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Research Team Leader for the Religion Cluster at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore .
Go to Profile#495
Roger Finke
#31807
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Roger Finke is a Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives. He is a former president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.
Go to Profile#496
Kai T. Erikson
#17696
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Kai Theodor Erikson is an Austrian-born American sociologist, noted as an authority on the social consequences of catastrophic events. He served as the 76th president of the American Sociological Association.
Go to Profile#497
Suad Joseph
#32256
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Suad Joseph received her doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1975. Dr. Joseph is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis and in 2009 was President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Her research addresses issues of gender; families, children, and youth; sociology of the family; and selfhood, citizenship, and the state in the Middle East, with a focus on her native Lebanon. Her earlier work focused on the politicization of religion in Lebanon. Joseph is the founder of the Middle East Research Group in...
Go to Profile#498
Daniel Bertaux
#38388
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Daniel Bertaux is a French sociologist. He uses biographies in the study of sociology, and studies social mobility and life histories. He has been active in the International Sociological Association, European Sociological Association and French Sociological Association . He edited Biography and Society , texts presented in the World Congress of Sociology in Uppsala 1978. After the fall of the Soviet Union he collected and analysed life stories in Russia.
Go to Profile#499
Gadis Arivia
#20868
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Gadis Arivia is an Indonesian feminist philosopher, lecturer, scholar, and activist. While teaching feminism and philosophy at the University of Indonesia, Arivia founded , Indonesia's first feminist journal, in 1996. She was arrested by the Suharto government for protesting against the regime in 1998.
Go to Profile#500
Alfred McClung Lee
#28572
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
Alfred McClung Lee was an American sociologist whose research included studies of American journalism, propaganda, and race relations. Biography Lee was born in Oakmont, Pennsylvania in 1906. He obtained an undergraduate and master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. from Yale University .
Go to Profile