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Ideas & Media
Journalists, publishers, scholars, teachers and preachers who shaped what Americans knew and believed.
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Journalism & Mass Media
Scholars & Public Intellectuals
Education
Religion & Religious Movements
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Author 71
Educator 55
Journalist 49
Activist 31
Religious Leader 28
Broadcaster 27
Economist 24
Philosopher 13
Publisher 12
Psychologist 11
Social Scientist 11
Historian 9
Founder 7
Novelist 6
Central Banker 5
Executive 5
Lawyer 5
11 people
W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963Scholars & Public IntellectualsSociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate.
Noam Chomsky b. 1928Scholars & Public IntellectualsLinguist and political activist whose theories revolutionized the study of language and cognitive science.
Margaret Mead 1901–1978Scholars & Public IntellectualsCultural anthropologist whose studies of Pacific Island societies shaped 20th-century social science.
Franz Boas 1858–1942Scholars & Public IntellectualsFounded American academic anthropology and argued against racial determinism from Columbia University.
Thorstein Veblen 1857–1929Scholars & Public IntellectualsFounded institutional economics and coined conspicuous consumption in The Theory of the Leisure Class.
Herbert A. Simon 1916–2001Scholars & Public IntellectualsPolymath whose theories of bounded rationality and pioneering artificial-intelligence research transformed economics and decision science.
Ruth Benedict 1887–1948Scholars & Public IntellectualsAdvanced culture-and-personality anthropology through Patterns of Culture and wartime studies of Japan.
Francis Fukuyama b. 1952Scholars & Public IntellectualsPolitical scientist whose The End of History and the Last Man sparked global debate on liberal democracy.
Samuel Huntington 1927–2008Scholars & Public IntellectualsPolitical scientist whose Clash of Civilizations thesis shaped post-Cold War foreign policy discourse.
Elinor Ostrom 1933–2012Scholars & Public IntellectualsPolitical economist who showed how communities can govern shared resources without relying solely on markets or centralized states.
Linda Darling-Hammond b. 1951EducationEducation researcher and Stanford professor who shaped teacher preparation and assessment policy.