Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

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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 History,

#5001

David Feldman

#108749

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

David Feldman is a professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. Feldman is director of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism. His research relates to the history of minorities and their place in British society from 1600 to the current time.

#5002

Gregory D. Smithers

#172350

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Gregory D. Smithers is a professor of American history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. An ethnohistorian, Smithers specializes in Native American and African American histories.

#5003

Rosalind Thomas

#129531

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Rosalind Thomas FBA is a Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Balliol College, Oxford University and professor of Ancient Greek history. She focuses on ancient literacy, oral tradition and performance culture as well as Greek law and society, Greek historiography, Greek relations with the Persians, and the Greek polis. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020.

#5004

Kolbjørn Skaare

Kolbjørn Skaare

#128486

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

Kolbjørn Skaare was a Norwegian numismatist. Early and personal life Skaare was born on 6 April 1931 in Strinda to Sevald Skaare and Thora Rogne, and grew up in Vang, Hedmark, where his father was assigned with the agricultural research farm of . He married Marit Olafsdatter Bjørnstad in 1959. He died in Oslo on 3 June 2017.

#5005

Robert Griffith

#90391

Overall Influence

1940 - 2011 (71 years)

Robert W. Griffith was an American historian. Life Robert W. Griffith was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Evansville, Indiana. He graduated from DePauw University, 1964, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, 1967, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He taught at the University of Georgia, and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. He taught history and was chair of the history department at American University.

#5006

Lillian Schlissel

#143644

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (95 years)

Lillian Schlissel is an American historian, professor and author. Life and career Schlissel was born on 22 February 1930 in New York City. She was raised in New York City. She is currently a professor emerita of English and American studies at Brooklyn College-CUNY.

#5007

David M. Pletcher

#151603

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

David Mitchell Pletcher was an American historian, considered an expert in his field. He was a history professor at Indiana University from 1965 to 1990. Biography Pletcher was born June 14, 1920, in Faribault, Minnesota He attended the University of Chicago, earning three degrees in history: a B.A. and an M.A. in 1941, and a Ph.D. in 1946.

#5008

Jean Charles Biaudet

#120638

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Jean Charles Biaudet was a historian, director of the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne and teacher at the University of Lausanne. Early life Jean Charles Biaudet was born in Territet, Montreux, Switzerland on 19 February 1910. He grew up in Algeria and Paris. He conducted his university studies in Lausanne and obtained his degree in political science in 1936, and his doctorate in letters in 1940. In 1943, he was appointed archivist at the Vaud Cantonal Archives, replacing Louis Junod. He was then promoted to director.

#5009

Johan Henrik Schreiner

#173580

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Johan Henrik Schreiner was a Norwegian historian of Ancient Greek history, in particular the Greek polis and the Battle of Marathon. Selected bibliography Aristotle and Pericles: a study in historiography, 1968Antikkens historie, 1985To gode keisere? Roma under Traianus og Hadrianus, 1996, with Knut ØdegårdHellanikos, Thukydides and the era of Kimon, 1997Two battles and two bills: Marathon and the Athenian fleet, 2004

#5010

Achsah Guibbory

#100730

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Achsah Guibbory is an American academic currently serving as the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English at Barnard College. Her primary areas of focus are seventeenth century literature, religious history, and the works of both John Donne and John Milton; she has served as president of both the John Donne Society and the Milton Society of America.

#5011

Eric Jager

#35644

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Eric Jager is an American literary critic and a specialist in medieval literature. He is a professor in the department of English at University of California, Los Angeles, received his B.A. from Calvin College in 1979, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1987. He has also taught at Columbia University as an associate professor.

#5012

Alice M. Hoffman

#95082

Overall Influence

Alice M. Hoffman is an American labor and oral historian. Career Alice M. Hoffman was an associate professor of labor history at Penn State, where she founded the Labor Archives and Oral History Project. After retiring, she taught oral history methodology at Bryn Mawr College. She was the principal consultant for the Bicentennial Labor History Exhibit for the Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO. She was Assistant to the Deputy Secretary for Labor and Industry for the State of Pennsylvania.

#5013

Mario Azevedo

#102643

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Mario Joaquim Azevedo is a Mozambican novelist, historian, professor, and epidemiologist. A refugee, Azevedo, esteemed as one of the most remarkable Mozambican voices during the years of the War of Independence from Portugal, emigrated from his native country to the United States, where he received his B.A. from The Catholic University of America, his M.A., his Ph.D. from Duke University, from American University, and his M.P.H from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#5014

Estelle Freedman

#106972

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Estelle Freedman is an American historian. She is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1969 and her Master of Arts and PhD in history from Columbia University. She has taught at Stanford University since 1976 and is a co-founder of the Program in Feminist Studies. Her research has explored the history of women and social reform, including feminism and women's prison reform, as well as the history of sexuality, including the history of sexual violence.

#5015

Yusuf Halaçoğlu

#128761

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Yusuf Halaçoğlu is a Turkish historian and politician. He is a former president of the Turkish Historical Society and was a member of the Turkish Parliament from 2011 to 2017 representing the electoral district of Kayseri for the Nationalist Movement Party and from 2017 for the Good Party.

#5016

Bess Lomax Hawes

#91451

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax and John Lomax Jr. Early life and education Born in Austin, Texas, Bess grew up learning folk music from a very early age, since her father, a former English professor and twice president of the American Folklore Society, was Honorary Curator of American folk song at the Library of Congress from 1935 to 1948. As a child, she excelled at classical piano, under the tutelage of her mother, and later she learned to play the ...

#5017

Margaret Tennant

#144306

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Margaret Anne Tennant is a New Zealand historian, currently Professor Emeritus at Massey University. Tennant's master's thesis, completed in 1976 at Massey University, was called Matrons with a mission, and was a study of women's organisations 1893–1915. Her doctoral thesis was completed in 1981, and concerned the charitable aid system in New Zealand.

#5018

Michael C. Keith

#96554

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Michael C. Keith is an American media historian and author. He has served as a faculty member of the Boston College Communication Department since 1993 and is the author of some two dozen books on media. He is one of the country's foremost authorities on the social impact and role of radio in American culture. He has lectured in Russia, Spain, Tanzania, and at several institutions in the U.S. and Canada. He was appointed emeritus professor in 2017 upon retiring from Boston College.

#5019

David Vumlallian Zou

#130921

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

David Vumlallian Zou is a historian of modern South Asia with special interest in north-east India. His research interests reflect an interdisciplinary orientation that includes colonial history, book history, gender history, ethno-history, indigenous identities and historical geography.

#5020

Patrick Major

#142546

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Patrick N. Major is Professor of History at the University of Reading. Major is a specialist in the history of modern Germany, the World Wars, the Cold War, film history and popular cultural history.

#5021

Gregory Kaplan

#84577

Overall Influence

Gregory Kaplan is an American historian of Spanish Studies, currently a Distinguished Lindsay Young Professor at the University of Tennessee.

#5022

Richard Unger

#139153

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Richard W. Unger is a professor of Medieval History at the University of British Columbia and a specialist in European maritime history in the medieval period. He served as Second Vice-President of the Medieval Academy of America in 2011, First Vice-President in 2012, and President in 2013.

#5023

Charles D. Wrege

#77828

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Charles D. Wrege was an American management historian, and Professor at Rutgers University. He is known for his contributions to management history, especially his critical work on Frederick W. Taylor and scientific management.

#5024

Joyce Aiken

#108143

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (94 years)

Joyce Aiken is an American feminist art historian, artist, and educator. Aiken taught the subject for over 20 years at California State University, Fresno, and assisted her students in opening a feminist art gallery. This helped put Fresno, California on the map as a key place for the feminist art movement. Most recently, she served as the director of the Fresno Arts Council.

#5025

Robin E. Baker

#125658

Overall Influence

Robin E. Baker is an American historian and academic administrator, currently serving as the 12th President of George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. Since he took office in 2007, George Fox has grown to become the third-largest private university in Oregon.

#5026

M. E. Chamberlain

#124762

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

Muriel Evelyn Chamberlain was emeritus professor of history at the University of Wales, Swansea . She was a specialist in European colonisation and de-colonisation and British foreign policy in the nineteenth century. Chamberlain was one of the general editors of the Historical Association Studies book series, vice-chair of the Historical Association and editor of its journal The Historian.

#5027

Antoni Malet

#122721

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Antoni Malet is a Catalan historian of mathematics. He is a professor of history of science at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. His research interests are mostly in the history of mathematics and optics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

#5028

John Saywell

#79394

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

John Tupper Saywell was a Canadian historian specializing in the fields of politics and constitution. Early life and education John Tupper Saywell was born on April 3, 1929, to parents John Ferdinand Tupper Saywell and Vera Marguerite Saywell in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.

#5029

Janusz Spyra

#168616

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Dr Hab. Janusz Jan Spyra is a Polish historian. He is specializing in history of Cieszyn Silesia. He graduated from the Jagiellonian University. In 1994 he gained a Ph.D. from the University of Silesia. In 2007 Spyra passed his habilitation. In 2017 he gained a title of professor.

#5030

Jacqueline Eales

#98456

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Eales is a professor of early modern history at Canterbury Christ Church University and was appointed president of the Historical Association in 2011. She was educated at the University of London, where under the supervision of Conrad Russell she completed a PhD on the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the English Civil War, which was later published under Cambridge University Press. She then taught at the University of London and the University of Kent, before taking up a post at what was then Canterbury Christ Church University College, now Canterbury Christ Church University. Her re...

#5031

Jay Kinsbruner

#174150

Overall Influence

1939 - 2007 (68 years)

Jay Kinsbruner was a professor and professor emeritus of history at Queens College, City University of New York. Kinsbruner worked initially on early national Chile, but subsequently studied Latin American independence processes with a comparative approach. His books include:Diego Portales: Interpretative Essays on the Man and Times Bernardo O'Higgins The Spanish-American Independence Movement Chile: A Historical Interpretation Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment Petty Capitalism in Spanish America: The Pulperos of Puebla, Mexico City, Caracas, and B...

#5032

Ádám Anderle

#168864

Overall Influence

1943 - 2016 (73 years)

Ádám Anderle was a Hungarian historian, hispanist, full professor, professor emeritus of Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged . He was active in research of the relationship between Latin America and Hungary for decades. He was fluent in Hungarian and Spanish.

#5033

Andrew Saint

#97762

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Andrew John Saint is an English architectural historian. Saint worked as the architectural editor of the Survey of London and then as a historian for Historic England 1986–95. He lectured in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and at University College London from May 2006.

#5034

Pål Thonstad Sandvik

#170034

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Pål Thonstad Sandvik is a Norwegian historian. He is professor in economic and business history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He has published extensively on the modern history of Norway. Among his most well-known work is his contribution to the commissioned history about the large Norwegian company Norsk Hydro, which sparked considerable controversy upon publication.

#5035

Ralph F. Young

#105253

Overall Influence

1942 - 1999 (57 years)

Ralph F. Young is an American historian. He is the author of the popular textbook Dissent in America: Voices that Shaped a Nation and teaches history at Temple University. Biography Young grew up outside New York City and attended Houghton College. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Michigan State University. Young's dissertation was about Puritans in the 1600s and their impact on England. He protested the Vietnam War.

#5036

Johann Jakob Burckhardt

#76916

Overall Influence

1903 - 2006 (103 years)

Johann Jakob Burckhardt was a Swiss mathematician and crystallographer. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1936 in Oslo. Biography Johann Jakob Burckhardt came from an old Basel family. His ancestors include a brother of Jacob Bernoulli and Johann Bernoulli. The son of a lawyer and legal advisor to the German consulate in Basel, J. J. Burckhardt attended in Basel the Gymnasium am Münsterplatz and the Oberrealschule. In 1922 he matriculated at the University of Basel.

#5037

Alexis Peri

#78616

Overall Influence

Alexis Peri is an American historian. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and currently teaches Russian and Soviet history at Boston University. Her book The War Within , based on diaries from the Siege of Leningrad, won the 2018 Pushkin House Book Prize and the 2018 University of Southern California Book Prize in Literary and Cultural Studies. It also received an Honorable Mention for the 2018 Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History. Her next major project is tentatively titled Dear Unknown Friend: Soviet and American Women Discover the Power of the Personal and exp...

#5038

Aboubacry Moussa Lam

#106203

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Aboubacry Moussa Lam, also known as Boubacar Lam, was born in 1953 and is a Peul Senegalese historian, disciple of Cheikh Anta Diop, who was his primary advisor on his major work, De l'Origine Égyptienne des Peuls, and a professor of Egyptology in the Department of History at the Cheikh Anta Diop University. Lam has been credited with being the most important Diop scholar and being "most helpful and inspiring in defining the nature of the Afrocentric school of thought." Boubacar has been active in seeking to recenter Africans back in their own historical and social context. Lam was also a signatory to an appeal to preserve the Timbuktu Manuscripts.

#5039

Aaron Sachs

#155104

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Aaron Sachs is a historian and Cornell University professor who primarily studies American environmental and cultural history. Life He graduated from Harvard University in 1992 with a B.A. in history and literature, and from Yale University, with a Ph.D. in American Studies, in 2004. He currently is Professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

#5040

James Rodger Fleming

#104907

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

James Rodger Fleming, is a historian of science and technology, and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Emeritus at Colby College, and author of the book Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.

#5041

Tamás Szmrecsányi

#132850

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Tamás József Károly Márton Szmrecsányi was a Brazilian economist, historian and professor. He fled as a child with his family as a refugee to Brazil when he was 14 years old, fleeing from the conflict of World War II. He studied philosophy at the University of Sao Paulo, earned a doctoral degree and a post-doctorate in economics at the State University of Campinas and the University of Oxford, respectively. He has written not only on economics, but also on the History of Brazil, Agricultural Economics, History of Economic Thought and the History of Science. He has worked as a professor in the...

#5042

Martin Clark

#100340

Overall Influence

1939 - 2017 (78 years)

Martin Clark was a British historian noted for his work on modern Italy. After obtaining his degree at Cambridge, Clark gained his PhD at Birkbeck College. In 1965 he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. He remained there at the politics department until his retirement in 2001. Clark published at least four books, but is best known for Modern Italy, 1871 to the Present first published by Longman in 1984. Described as 'authoritative' it was revised twice. For the last two years of his life, Clark suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

#5043

Meredith Lake

#143387

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (45 years)

Meredith Lake is an Australian author, historian of religion and broadcaster. Early life and education Lake grew up in Sydney in a devout Anglican household. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney, exploring religious narratives about land in colonial Australia, with a 2008 thesis titled "'Such Spiritual Acres': Protestantism, the land and the colonisation of Australia 1788–1850."

#5044

Dominique Varry

#73323

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Dominique Varry is a French historian of books and professor at École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques, part of the University of Lyon. Biography Dominique Varry began his career as an auditor in the 4th section of the École pratique des hautes études and at the École Nationale des Chartes, as well as a professor of history. He quickly left secondary teaching to become a researcher with the Department of Books and Reading at the Ministry of Culture . His research thesis on the history of private libraries at the end of the "Old Regime" was supervised by ...

#5045

Amy Singer

#122073

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Amy Singer is a Professor of Ottoman and Islamic History at Brandeis University. Her major research areas are agrarian relations, philanthropy, and the city of Edirne. Education Singer took her BA at Swarthmore College . She completed a Phd in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University in 1989.

#5046

Vasudeva

#140092

Overall Influence

Vasudeva was an Indian king belonging to the Chahamana dynasty of Shakambhari . He ruled the Sapadalaksha country in present-day Rajasthan. Ignoring Chahamana, the mythical founder of the dynasty, Vasudeva is the earliest known ruler of the dynasty. According to the Prabandha-Kosha of the 14th century Jain scholar Rajashekhara Suri, Vasudeva ascended the throne in 551 CE . The historical accuracy of this statement is not certain.

#5047

Slobodan Prosperov Novak

#64372

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Slobodan Prosperov Novak , is a Croatian literature historian, comparativist and theatrologist. Biography Prosperov Novak was born in Belgrade, but spent his childhood in Dubrovnik. He graduated comparative literature in 1973 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, receiving his M.A. in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1978. He worked as a journalist in a periodical Vjesnik u srijedu .

#5048

Arnold McMillin

#110306

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Arnold Barratt McMillin is a British scholar of Belarusian and Russian studies, Emeritus Professor of Russian Literature, and the author of the first English-language history of Belarusian literature.

#5049

John Langdon

#142748

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

John L. Langdon was a British-born Canadian economic and social historian of medieval England. Career Langdon undertook his doctoral work at the University of Birmingham, UK under the supervision of Christopher Dyer. He worked at the University of Alberta, Canada , being appointed assistant professor of British medieval history in 1984. Beloved by his students, he ranked 4.6 out of 5 on RateMyProfessors.com.

#5050

Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez

#174452

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Douglass Sullivan-Gonzalez is an researcher and writer on Central American history, particularly in the 19th century. He is the author of Piety, Power and Politics: Religion and National Formation in Guatemala, 1821-1871. He also co-edited, with Charles Reagan Wilson, The South and the Caribbean .

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