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,

#5051

Joy Harvey

#97631

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

Joy Dorothy Harvey is an American historian of science. Life Harvey gained a PhD from Harvard University in 1983. She has been an associate editor of the Darwin Correspondence Project, and written a biography of Clémence Royer, Darwin's first French translator. She and Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie collaborated on the multi-volume Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science.

#5052

Zdeněk Kárník

#139679

Overall Influence

1931 - 2011 (80 years)

Prof. PhDr. Zdeněk Kárník, DrSc. was a Czech historian and pedagogue. Life Zdeněk Kárník was born to the family of eastern Bohemian tradesman František Kárník. His early influences include his elder brother František who worked as a lecturer and later as an assistant professor at Vysoká škola politických a hospodářských věd and was a resolute patriot and an anti-nazi resistance supporter during World War II; he died prematurely at age 38. Zdeněk Kárník graduated from the Reálné gymnázium F. M. Pelcla in Rychnov nad Kněžnou and was a student of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the UPES from...

#5053

Raymond G. Stokes

#103802

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Raymond G. Stokes Ph.D FAcSS, , is an American academic historian and the current Chair of Business History and Director of the Centre for Business History in Scotland at the University of Glasgow. Early life Raymond G. Stokes was born in 1956. He holds a Ph.D from the Ohio State University.

#5054

Jacques Stiennon

#150522

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Jacques Stiennon was a Belgian medievalist who worked as a librarian and a professor of history at the University of Liège. His main research interests were in the history of the principality of Liège and of Wallonia, especially with regard to monastic history, art and archaeology.

#5055

Valters Nollendorfs

Valters Nollendorfs

#75785

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (94 years)

Valters Nollendorfs is board chair of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and a professor emeritus of German language and literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Nollendorfs was born 22 March 1931 in Riga, Latvia, where his father, Kārlis Nollendorfs, was a police officer in the Old Town. At the age of thirteen, together with his family, he fled Latvia to Westphalia, Germany, where he spent almost six years in a displaced persons camp. In 1950 he emigrated to Texas. In 1954 he received a B.S. in pedagogy at the University of Nebraska, and in 1955 he completed an M.A. in German language and literature there.

#5056

Michèle Cointet

#140471

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Michèle Cointet is a French historian. She is a professor of 20th century history at the University of Poitiers. She is the recipient of two prizes from the Académie française: the Prix François Millepierres for Vichy capitale, 1940-1944 in 1994, and the Prix François Millepierres for L’Église sous Vichy. La repentance en question in 1999.

#5057

Andrea Riccardi

#76105

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Andrea Riccardi is an Italian historian, professor, politician and activist, founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio. He served as minister for international cooperation without portfolio in the Monti Cabinet.

#5058

Richard Grayson

Richard Grayson

#64244

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Professor Richard Sean Grayson is a British historian. He is currently the Head of School of Education, Humanities and Languages at Oxford Brookes University. Education He was educated at Lime Walk Primary School, Hemel Hempstead School, the University of East Anglia , and The Queen’s College, Oxford .

#5059

Noël Coulet

#133923

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Noël Coulet was a French academic and medieval historian. Biography Born on 4 October 1932, Coulet took preporatory classes at the , where he was notably taught by and Marc Soriano. During his doctoral studies, he was a student of Georges Duby. After his thesis titled Aix-en-Provence, espace et relations d'une capitale, mi-XIVe - mi-XVe s., he researched Provence during the 14th and 15th Centuries and particularly focused on religious history. He was a professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Provence.

#5060

Angela McShane

#107501

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Angela McShane is a senior research fellow and Head of Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the V&A/Sheffield University Research and External Engagement Fellow, and an Associate Fellow of Early Modern History at Warwick University.

#5061

Clifford Flanigan

#97313

Overall Influence

1941 - 1993 (52 years)

Clifford Flanigan was an American professor of English, medievalist, and theatre historian. Life and career Charles Clifford Flanigan grew up as an only child in Baltimore, Maryland, in a family descended from German and Irish immigrants. He graduated from Baltimore City College a year early, at the age of 16. Seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, he began theological studies at Concordia College in Bronxville, New York and then continued them at Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His master's degree was granted by Concordia Seminary near St. Louis, Missouri, in 1967. Although a ...

#5062

Tristram P. Coffin

Tristram P. Coffin

#104724

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Tristram Potter Coffin was an American folklorist and leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century. Coffin spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of English and a co-founder of the Folklore Department. He was the author of 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles and reviews.

#5063

Jenny Gregory

#131147

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Jennifer Anne Gregory is an Australian academic and historian. Her research and writing focuses on the history of Western Australia. she is professor emerita at the University of Western Australia.

#5064

Birgitta Fritz

#153268

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Birgitta Fritz was a longtime associate professor of history at the Stockholm University. In 1972, she completed her Ph.D. thesis Hus, land och län. Förvaltningen i Sverige 1250-1434, which became one of the most important works concerning Swedish history.

#5065

Steven M. Gillon

#173217

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Steven M. Gillon is the Scholar-in-Residence at HISTORY, Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma, and Senior Faculty Fellow at the Miller Center for the Study of the Presidency at the University of Virginia.

#5066

Mostafa El-Abbadi

#45870

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Mostafa Abdel-Hamid el-Abbadi was a prominent Egyptian historian, public intellectual and professor specialized in Greco-Roman studies. He died on 13 February 2017, at the age of 88, in Alexandria. Education El-Abbadi was educated in Egypt and the United Kingdom. He completed his undergraduate BA at Alexandria University. At age 22, he was awarded a scholarship from the Egyptian government to study at the University of Cambridge. He graduated with special BA and PhD in ancient history at Cambridge. He received an honorary doctorate from the Université du Québec à Montréal .

#5067

Elena Isayev

#162423

Overall Influence

Elena Isayev is Professor of Ancient History and Place in the Classics and Ancient History Department at the University of Exeter. She is an expert on migration, hospitality and displacement, particularly in ancient Mediterranean contexts. She works with Campus in Camps in Palestine and she is a Trustee of the charity Refugee Support Devon.

#5068

Edwin Adams Davis

#82745

Overall Influence

1904 - 1994 (90 years)

Edwin Adams Davis was an American historian who specialized in studies of his adopted state of Louisiana. A long-time professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, he was particularly known for two textbooks, Louisiana: A Narrative History and Louisiana: The Pelican State, the latter for middle schools and coauthored with Joe Gray Taylor of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana .

#5069

Jean de Viguerie

#116415

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Jean de Viguerie was a French historian. He specialized in the history of education and of the Catholic Church in the Enlightenment period. Biography After his university studies were finished in 1956, de Viguerie completed his agrégation d'histoire in 1959. He then served in Algeria with the French military from 1961 to 1962.

#5070

Seema Alavi

#151795

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Seema Alavi is an Indian historian. She is a professor of history at Ashoka University, India and specializes in medieval and early modern South Asia. Career Alavi completed her doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge, and has been the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, as well as fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard University, and the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. She is an editor with Modern Asian Studies. She was a professor of history at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India, and has also taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Delhi.

#5071

Nicholas Crowson

#170570

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Nicholas Julian Crowson, FRHistS, is an academic historian. He is Professor of Contemporary British History at the University of Birmingham. Married to Charlotte Crowson with two children, Clementine Emily Crowson and Alfred Neville Crowson.

#5072

Alma Carlisle

#93121

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (98 years)

Alma Fairfax Carlisle , is an American architect and architectural historian who worked in Los Angeles. Her work led to the preservation of many historic districts and sites in the city of Los Angeles.

#5073

Harry Armytage

#129017

Overall Influence

1915 - 1998 (83 years)

Walter Harry Green Armytage was a social historian and historian of education at the University of Sheffield. He was later the Gerald Read Professor of Education at Kent State University in Ohio. Early life Walter Harry Green Armytage was born in Kimberley, South Africa, on 22 November 1915. He graduated with first class honours in the historical tripos from Cambridge University in 1937 and then completed a Certificate in Education and a master's degree.

#5074

Jan Jacek Bruski

#174804

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Jan Jacek Bruski is a Polish historian. His specialization is a history of 20th Century. In 1999 he gained his PhD . In 2011 he passed his habilitation . Bruski is working at the Jagiellonian University.

#5075

Benedict Carton

#174811

Overall Influence

Benedict Carton is associate professor of history at George Mason University. He is a specialist in the history of Southern Africa and the author of Blood from Your Children: Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa .

#5076

Gilbert Kaenel

#123689

Overall Influence

1949 - 2020 (71 years)

Gilbert Kaenel , known as "Auguste", was a Swiss archaeologist and historian specialising in the protohistoric and classical periods. He was the director of the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History from 1985 to 2014 and a professor at the University of Geneva. Kaenel was known for his research on the La Tène culture in Switzerland, including his excavations at the eponymous site of La Tène.

#5077

William Stubbs

#45104

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

Sir William Hamilton Stubbs is a Scottish educator. He was Rector of the University of the Arts, London. Stubbs was born in Hillhead, Glasgow, the son of Joseph Stubbs and Mary Nichol. He was educated at St Aloysius' College, Glasgow and University of Glasgow.

#5078

Steve Murdoch

#162850

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Steve Murdoch is an academic and writer. He is author on the history of Scotland and the Wider World in general and of Scotland and Scandinavia in particular. His monographs include Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart, 1603-1660 ; Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603-1746 and the book The Terror of the Seas? Scottish Maritime Warfare, 1513-1713 . In 2014 he published the co-authored book Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648. He has edited several volumes including Scotland and the Thir...

#5079

Nigel Davies

#122247

Overall Influence

1920 - 2004 (84 years)

Dr. Claude Nigel Byam Davies was a British anthropologist and historian who specialised in the study of the cultures of pre-Columbian America, publishing 12 academic works on the Aztec, Inca and Toltec societies. In addition to his academic work, Davies also served with the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, briefly sat as an MP for Epping and as the managing director of Windowlite Ltd.

#5080

Jan Eivind Myhre

#111889

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Jan Eivind Myhre is a Norwegian historian. He was a professor II at the University of Tromsø from 1991 to 2001, became a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 1994 and then at the University of Oslo in 1996.

#5081

Xu Yong

#173644

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Xu Yong is a Chinese historian and professor at Peking University. He was a member of the Japan-China Joint History Research Committee established by Chinese and Japanese governments in 2006. Some of Xu's work is controversial. He has argued in research papers and symposiums that the issue of sovereignty over Okinawa is unsettled. His view is that the approval of the Qing Dynasty of China was needed when Japan abolished the Kingdom of Ryukyu and set up Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. A series of historical events are highlighted by Xu's argument, includingthe abolition of the kingdom by the Me...

#5082

Kazys Varnelis

#53589

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Kazys Varnelis is an American historian and theorist of architecture, specialising in network culture. He is Director of the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a founding member of conceptual architecture practice AUDC.

#5083

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker

#99263

Overall Influence

1948 - 2012 (64 years)

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker was an American diplomat, writer and diplomatic historian of the Georgetown University, specializing in American-East Asian relations, particularly United States relations with China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. She had distinguished meritorious service as the first Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytic Integrity and Standards and Analytic Ombudsman in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, for which she was awarded the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement in 2007. She also served in the Department of State for several assignments ...

#5084

Daniele Macuglia

#99621

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (41 years)

Daniele Macuglia is an Italian physicist and historian of science. He is currently assistant professor of the history of science at Peking University. Before moving to Beijing, he was a research fellow at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago.

#5085

Evgeny Pchelov

#151677

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Eugeny Vladimirovich Pchelov is a Russian specialist in history, heraldry and genealogy. He has published several monographs on the history, such as Rurikides. History of dynasty , Romanov. History of dynasty , Old Russian princely genealogy , State symbols of Russia: Coat of Arms, Flag, Anthem and others.

#5086

Nicolas Rasmussen

#72048

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Nicolas "Nic" Rasmussen is a historian of modern life sciences, and a professor in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales. With major interests in the history of amphetamines, the history of drug abuse, and the history of clinical trials, he has higher degrees in history and philosophy of science, developmental biology, and public health.

#5087

Gabriel Cevallos García

Gabriel Cevallos García

#96794

Overall Influence

1913 - 2004 (91 years)

Gabriel Cevallos García was an Ecuadorian writer, historian, professor, and philosopher. He was the rector of the University of Cuenca from 1964 to 1968 and founder, professor, and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the university.

#5088

Francisco Lluch Mora

#96982

Overall Influence

1924 - 2006 (82 years)

Francisco José Antonio Lluch Mora was a Puerto Rican historian, poet, writer, school teacher and college professor. He is best known for his legendary book "Orígenes y Fundación de Ponce y Otras Noticias Relativas a su Desarrollo Urbano, Demográfico y Cultural ".

#5089

Peter Monteath

#154307

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Peter David Monteath is an Australian historian and academic. He is a professor in Modern European History at Flinders University in South Australia. Monteath's research interests are in modern European and Australian history. He has a particular interest in prisoners of war, internment, and the German presence in Australia and has written extensively on these subjects.

#5090

Sam Bass Warner Jr.

#101081

Overall Influence

1928 - 2023 (95 years)

Sam Bass Warner Jr. was an American historian and author. He taught at M.I.T., Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Michigan, Boston University, and Brandeis University. Early life and death Warner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 6, 1928, and died in Needham, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2023, at the age of 94.

#5091

Seta Dadoyan

#131834

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Seta Dadoyan is an Armenian scholar who specializes in medieval Armenian political and intellectual history in their interactive aspects with the Near Eastern world. She was a professor of Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Art at the American University of Beirut between 1986 and 2005. She has also taught at other universities including the Haigazian University , Columbia University , St. Nerses Seminary , the University of Chicago She has written over fifty articles and ten books, and is believed to be the first Armenian woman to have received a Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy focusing on the history of Armenian philosophy.

#5092

Hannele Klemettilä

#108529

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Hannele Klemettilä is a Finnish historian, medievalist, and author living in Manhattan, New York, and the medieval village of Sonning-on-Thames in the county of Berkshire. She studied cultural history at the University of Turku, earned a Ph.D. in medieval history from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher of the Academy of Finland in 2008–2010. She is an adjunct professor of cultural history at the University of Turku, and a Life Member at the Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. She published Epitomes of Evil , and other books on late medieval cultural history.

#5093

Ulrich von Hehl

#129181

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Ulrich von Hehl is a German historian and university professor. He has published extensively, mostly on German history in the twentieth century, and with a particular focus on the role played by the Roman Catholic church and its interaction with politics.

#5094

Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald

#111657

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald is a historian of modern physical science and the Robert M. Abbey Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology . Education Kormos-Buchwald received her bachelor's degree from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1981, and her master's degree from Tel Aviv University in 1983. She received an A.M. from Harvard University in 1985 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1990. At Caltech, Kormos-Buchwald was Instructor from 1989 to 1990, Assistant Professor from 1990 to 1996, Associate Professor from 1996 to 2005, and Professor from 2005 to 2017. Kormos-Buchwald was appointed Robert M.

#5095

W. Burlie Brown

#112319

Overall Influence

1922 - 2005 (83 years)

William Burlie Brown was a historian at Tulane University, in New Orleans, for more than three decades. W. Burlie Brown, who never used his first name, was a native of New Orleans. He entered Tulane as a pre-law student to please his parents. He was the first in his family to go to college. After two years in the Pacific during World War II, as part of the Marines, Brown received his law degree from Tulane. He married Rosel George, science fiction writer and specialist in ancient Greece, in 1947; they had two children. He practiced law for two years, but eventually went back to school as a st...

#5096

Marcus Merriman

#106939

Overall Influence

1940 - 2006 (66 years)

Marcus Homer Merriman was a historian and academic researching Anglo-Scottish relations in the 16th century and their European context. Background Merriman was born in Baltimore on 3 May 1940. Educated at Bowdoin College, Maine, and the University of Grenoble, he spent a year at Edinburgh University, then completed his PhD at the Institute of Historical Research, London University in 1971.

#5097

Tammy M. Proctor

#127814

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Tammy M. Proctor is an American academic historian; since 2013, she has been at Utah State University , having previously been H. O. Hirt Endowed Professor of History at Wittenberg University . Biography Proctor grew up in Kansas City and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and journalism at University of Missouri in 1990. She then completed a doctorate in history at Rutgers University in 1995.

#5098

Norman Calder

#50030

Overall Influence

1950 - 1998 (48 years)

Norman Calder was a British historian. Life Norman Calder was born in Buckie, Moray, Scotland, United Kingdom. In 1969 Calder went to Wadham College, Oxford, and received a first in Arabic and Persian language in 1972. Then he went to the Middle East for four years where he worked as an English teacher. Back in Britain, he joined the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS in London and made his Ph.D. under John Wansbrough. In 1980 he went to the University of Manchester to the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. There, he was Senior Lecturer in Arabic until his death. As a student of W...

#5099

Sophie T. Ambler

#99192

Overall Influence

Sophie Ambler is a medieval historian, focussing on politics, ethics, and warfare, often through the lens of the Crusades. She undertook her PhD at King's College London, supervised by David A. Carpenter. Since 2021, she has been Reader in Central & Later Medieval History at Lancaster University, and before that was Lecturer since 2017. Earlier in her career, Ambler worked at the University of East Anglia. In 2020, Ambler was one of the recipients of the Philip Leverhulme Prize. Ambler frequently contributes to TV and radio, like her piece on the Second Barons' War as part of In Our Time.

#5100

Lance Banning

#127559

Overall Influence

1942 - 2006 (64 years)

Lance Banning was an American historian who specialized in studying the politics of the United States' Founding Fathers. He taught mostly at the University of Kentucky. Life Banning was a native of Kansas City, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Missouri, and from Washington University in St. Louis with a master's and PhD.

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