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).

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List of the most influential people in History,

#5151

Robert W. Harms

#140980
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Robert W. Harms is an American historian and Henry J. Heinz Professor of History & African Studies at Yale University. He is a winner of the J. Russell Major Prize. Books Land of Tears: The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa, New York: Basic Books, 2019The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, New York: Basic Books, 2002Games Against Nature: An EcoCultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire Basin in the Era of the Slave and Ivory Trade, 1500-1891, New Haven...
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#5152

Eisha Stephen Atieno Odhiambo

#109871
Overall Influence
1945 - 2009 (64 years)
Eisha Stephen Atieno Odhiambo Odhiambo retired from Rice University due to illness and moved back with his wife to their home in Ndere, Siaya, Kenya, before his 2009 death at the Aga Khan Hospital in Kisumu.
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#5153

Rafael Núñez Florencio

#153041
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Rafael Núñez Florencio is a Spanish historian, philosopher, and critic. Works El terrorismo anarquista 1888–1909 Utopistas y autoritarios en 1900 El ejército español en el desastre de 1898 Tal como éramos: España hace un siglo Sol y sangre. La Imagen de España en el mundo Con la salsa de su hambre. Los extranjeros ante la mesa hispana Hollada piel de toro: del sentimiento de la naturaleza a la construcción nacional del paisaje Tierra y Libertad. Cien años de anarquismo en España, edited by Julián Casanova Ruiz El peso del pesimismo. Del 98 al desencanto
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#5154

Edward C. Papenfuse

Edward C. Papenfuse
#122325
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Edward C. Papenfuse is the retired Maryland State Archivist and Commissioner of Land Patentss. Papenfuse received his undergraduate degree from the American University, an M.A. from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University. He holds an honorary doctorate of letters from Washington College. His son Eric is the former mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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#5155

Lilly Kahil

#79685
Overall Influence
1926 - 2002 (76 years)
Lilly Louise Kahil was a Swiss-French archaeologist and classicist of Egyptian-German descent. She was the founder of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, an encyclopedia of ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman mythology.
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#5156

Steven Béla Várdy

#93180
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Steven Béla Várdy was McAnulty Distinguished Professor of European History at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Várdy was Director of Duquesne University History Forum, and former Chairman of its Department of History. He was an invited member of the International P.E.N., President of the Institute of German American Relations , and a Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .
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#5157

Filip Šimetin Šegvić

#172244
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (39 years)
Filip Šimetin Šegvić is a Croatian historian and teaching assistant at the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Biography Filip Šimetin Šegvić was born on February 11, 1986, in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated from Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb.
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#5158

Lucy Grig

Lucy Grig
#105369
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Lucy Grig is a Senior Lecturer in Roman History and Head of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. Career Grig was a lecturer at the University of Reading from 2000 to 2004, with a break during 2001 to 2002 to be a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome. She is a member of the Governing Board of the International Late Antiquity Network, and previously a member of the committee for the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Grig is an editor for Late Antiquity for the Oxford Classical Dictionary.
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#5159

Anne de Tinguy

#97237
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Anne de Tinguy is a French historian and political scientist. Since 2005 she has been a University Professor of contemporary history at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. She studies international relations, specializing in the foreign policy of Russia and Ukraine, as well as migration studies.
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#5160

Claude A. Buss

Claude A. Buss
#96445
Overall Influence
1903 - 1998 (95 years)
Claude Albert Buss was a professor emeritus of history and a key American diplomat in the Philippines during World War II. Although not formally counted as one of the State Department's "China Hands", he was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in Beiping and Nanjing prior to the war, and served in multiple U.S. government and policy advisory positions covering East Asia for almost seven decades. As an academic, he taught at the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and the Naval Postgraduate School. Buss authored multiple texts which became standard reference works in the fiel...
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#5161

Ida Östenberg

Ida Östenberg
#144592
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Ida Östenberg is a Roman historian, working in the areas of Roman political culture, Roman rituals, performances and spectacles, and Classical reception. She is known in particular for her work on the Roman triumph, and is an expert selected by the Swedish Research Council for inclusion in AcademiaNet. She is the 2018 winner of the Stora historiepriset, Sweden's largest history prize.
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#5162

Susan Porter Benson

#81140
Overall Influence
1943 - 2005 (62 years)
Susan Porter Benson was an American historian and academic, specializing in labor history and women's studies as well as public and cultural history. She taught at Bristol Community College , the University of Missouri , and the University of Connecticut . Her book Counter Cultures influenced the field of labor and women's history and consumer culture. Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, which she co-edited with Stephen Brier and Roy Rosenzweig, inspired the Temple University Press book series Critical Perspectives on the Past.
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#5163

Vadym Rubel

Vadym Rubel
#136041
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Vadym A. Rubel is a Ukrainian historian of the history of Japan, the civilizations of the Classic East and pre-Columbian America and the political history of the Far East. Doctor of science , professor . Graduated from faculty of history of Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev.
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#5164

Harry Oster

#58994
Overall Influence
1923 - 2001 (78 years)
Dr. Harry Oster was an American folklorist and musicologist. Biography Oster was the firstborn of Jacob and Sarah, Russian-Polish Jews, who emigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. After one year in college, he was enlisted in January 1943 to serve as a weather observer, graduated from Columbia Business School with an MBA and became a firm manager. He went on to Harvard University to receive a BA , and to Cornell University for an MA and PhD in English . He worked as an assistant in the Cornell department and helped to organize folk-themed public events.
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#5165

J. Rogers Hollingsworth

J. Rogers Hollingsworth
#94731
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Joseph Rogers Hollingsworth was an American historian and sociologist and emeritus professor of history and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, known for his work on the governance of capitalist economies, especially the American economy.
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#5166

Einhart Lorenz

#112225
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Einhart Lorenz is a German-Norwegian historian, and professor emeritus at the University of Oslo. Among his publications are his thesis from 1978, in , Willy Brandt in Norwegen , Exil in Norwegen and Willy Brandt. Deutscher-Europäer-Weltbürger , in from 1989, Samefolket i historien from 1991, Det er ingen sak å få partiet lite. NKP 1923-1931 , Veien mot Holocaust , Jødisk historie, kultur og identiteter and Willy Brandt. Et politisk liv . He was the first Henrik Steffens Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1998 to 2001.
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#5167

Steven Fielding

#109410
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Steven Fielding is an academic in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham where he is professor of political history and director of the Centre for British Politics. His most recent work A State of Play sets out the qualified constructivist view that how individuals regard real politics can be shaped by fictional works about politics.
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#5168

Peter Edwards

#112348
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Peter Geoffrey Edwards, AM is an Australian diplomatic and military historian. Educated at the University of Western Australia and the University of Oxford, Edwards worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide before being appointed Official Historian and general editor of The Official History of Australia's Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948–1975 in 1982. The nine-volume history was commissioned to cover Australia's involvement in the Malayan Emergency, Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation and Vietnam War. Edwards spen...
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#5169

David Brophy

#82057
Overall Influence
David John Brophy is an Australian historian of Modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney where he is Senior Lecturer. He is noted for his work on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and his contribution to the debate in Australia on the Sino-Australian relationship, for which Brophy has received significant press coverage.
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#5170

Laurent Warlouzet

#101901
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (47 years)
Laurent Warlouzet is a French academic who is currently Professor of European History at Paris Sorbonne University. Background Professor Warlouzet was educated at Paris 4 University. He was appointed associate professor at the Université d'Artois and subsequently full professor at University of the Littoral, before moving to Sorbonne University in 2019. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the European University Institute in Florence and at LSE, where he taught in the MSc History of International Relations.
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#5171

Wolf Gruner

#101214
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Wolf Gruner is a German academic who has been the Founding Director of the Center for Advanced Genocide Research at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation since 2014. He currently holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and is also Professor of History at USC. Since 2017, he is a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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#5172

Derek Croxton

#121918
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Charles Derek Croxton is an American historian. He authored several articles on military and diplomatic aspects of the Thirty Years' War. Croxton wrote Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and The Congress of Westphalia, 1643–1648. He also worked as Adjunct Professor at Madonna College and has taught at Ohio State University and at Columbus State Community College.
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#5173

Colin A. Palmer

#116179
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
Colin Alphonsous Palmer was a Jamaican American historian. He was a Dodge Professor of History and African American studies at Princeton University. Palmer was an author of several monographs pertaining to the history of diasporic Africans. His work mainly focused on the effects of the enslavement and colonization of Africans. The effects that he discusses are known as the African Diaspora . Palmer attended the University of the West Indies for his bachelor's degree, followed by a masters and PH.D from the University of Wisconsin. He went on to teach at several institutions including Oakland University, the University of North Carolina, and the City University of New York.
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#5174

Dolly Jørgensen

#146444
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (53 years)
Dolly Jørgensen is Professor of History at University of Stavanger, Norway and co-editor in Chief of Environmental Humanities. She served as president of the European Society for Environmental History, 2013–2017. Her research ranges from medieval to contemporary environmental issues, approached through environmental history, history of technology, and environmental humanities perspectives. Her primary areas of interest are human-animal relations, the urban environment, and environmental policymaking. Her research has been covered in media such as The New Yorker and Bioscience. She holds a PhD...
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#5175

Itzchak Weismann

Itzchak Weismann
#50561
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Itzchak Weismann is an Israeli historian and associate professor in the Department of the History of the Middle East at Haifa University. He was director of the Jewish-Arab Center in 2010-2013 and a member of the university Senate in 2012–2014. Weismann's work focuses on modern Islam and his research interests include the Salafis, the Muslim Brothers and the Sufis in the Middle East and South Asia, religious preaching and interfaith dialogue. He is scientific editor of the Crescent Series of Islamic Thought of Resling Press and a board member of the Journal of Sufi Studies. His photo exhibiti...
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#5176

John Burnett

#88911
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
John Burnett was a social historian who was a professor at Brunel University between 1972 and 1990. His research examined the day-to-day lives of ordinary British people in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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#5177

Robert Morris

#127437
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Robert John Morris, FRHistS , known professionally as R. J. Morris, was an English historian and Emeritus Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh. Life and career Morris studied politics, philosophy and economics at Keble College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965. He spent the following three years completing graduate study at Nuffield College, Oxford, and obtained a doctorate of philosophy from the university. In 1968, he joined the Department of Economic History in the Social Science Faculty of Edinburgh University and taught there until he retired, eventually being appointed professor of economic and social history.
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#5178

Peter Alter

#167161
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Peter Alter is emeritus professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and a specialist in nationalism and the twentieth century history of the United Kingdom. He is a former research fellow and deputy director of the German Historical Institute London.
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#5179

Karin Wulf

#153792
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Karin A. Wulf is an American historian and the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island. She was the executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia from 2013 through 2021. She is also one of the founders of Women Also Know History, a searchable website database of women historians. Additionally, Wulf worked to spearhead a neurodiversity working group at William & Mary in 2011. She is currently writing a book about ge...
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#5180

Igor Dubov

#136081
Overall Influence
1947 - 2002 (55 years)
Igor Vasilievich Dubov was a Russian archaeologist who excavated one of the largest settlements on the Volga trade route, Timerevo. Dubov was born in Leningrad but spent his young years in Yaroslavl. He studied in the Leningrad University under Mikhail Artamonov and later was a professor there. In 1972 he went to study the kurgans near Yaroslavl. It was Dubov's expedition that found in Timirevo the largest hoard of 9th-century Arabic dirhams in Eastern Europe.
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#5181

Jane Landers

#165851
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Jane Gilmer Landers is an historian of colonial Latin America and the Atlantic World who specializes in the history of Africans and their descendants. She is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies, and former associate dean of the college of arts & science.
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#5182

Robert L. Bireley

#114752
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Robert L. Bireley was an American Jesuit historian of Counter-Reformation Central Europe. Life Bireley was born in Evanston, Illinois, on July 26, 1933. He joined the Jesuits in 1951, making his final vows in 1974. He was ordained a priest in Germany in 1964.
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#5183

Margaret Mac Curtain

#99917
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Margaret Mac Curtain was a Dominican sister, Irish historian, writer, and educator. Career Mac Curtain was a native of County Cork, Ireland. She was the daughter of Sean and Ann Mac Curtáin, who raised her in Cork City. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950 from University College Cork , where she won the Peel Prize and turned down an opportunity to study with J. R. R. Tolkien prior to joining the Dominican Order. She joined the teaching staff at Sion Hill, Blackrock and she held several positions including Prioressess of Sion Hill Convent . In 1964, she earned a Ph.D. in history and was a lecturer in the Irish History Department of University College Dublin from 1964 to 1994.
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#5184

Olufemi Vaughan

Olufemi Vaughan
#160931
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Chief Olufemi O. Vaughan is a Nigerian academic whose research and teaching focuses on African Political and Social History, African Politics, Diaspora Studies, African Migrations and Globalization, Religion and African States. He is currently the Alfred Sargent Lee '41 and Mary Ames Lee Professor of African Studies at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.
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#5185

İsmet Miroğlu

#152684
Overall Influence
1944 - 1997 (53 years)
İsmet Miroğlu was a Turkish academic. He was a full professor at the Department of History of Istanbul University. Professor Miroğlu was born in the Bayburt province of Turkey. He was a graduate of the Department of History of Istanbul University in 1969 and was recruited as a research assistant within the same department. In 1974 he gained a degree of doctor of history by his dissertation titled "The Sandjak of Bayburt in the 16th Century" . In 1981, Miroğlu became an associate professor of history by his dissertation on the Sandjak of Kemah. In 1989 he became a full professor.
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#5186

Joseph Hamburger

#176273
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Joseph Hamburger was an American historian. His academic career at Yale University spanned 35 years, from 1957 to 1992. In 1990 he was appointed the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science. His work focused on nineteenth century Britain, with studies on James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Macaulay. His obituarists claimed that he made an immense contribution to historical knowledge through his work on nineteenth century intellectual history and called him a sturdy advocate of "the fundamental principles of individual liberty and representative democracy".
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#5187

Catherine Kerrison

Catherine Kerrison
#127817
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Catherine M. Kerrison is an American historian, and professor of history at Villanova University. Her work examines the role and life of American women, with the assistance of primary sources, oral history and written biographies.
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#5188

James Horgan

#176307
Overall Influence
1940 - 1997 (57 years)
James J. Horgan was an American historian, academic and author. He was a history professor at Saint Leo University in St. Leo, Florida for 35 years, a historical society president, a Florida Historical Society board member, a prolific author and an NAACP chapter founder. He is listed as a Great Floridian.
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#5189

Michael Alram

#175379
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Michael Alram is an Austrian historian and a numismatist. He obtained his doctorate in the University of Vienna in 1982, in Ancient Numismatics and Classical Archaeology. He has been Director of the Vienna Coin Cabinet at the Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1982. He is also a member of the Numismatic Commission of the Austrian Academy of Science.
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#5190

Jarosław Suchoples

#127639
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Jarosław Edward Suchoples is a Polish historian, serving as an ambassador to Finland . Life Jarosław Suchoples holds an M.A. in history from the University of Gdańsk. Following doctorate studies there, in 2000, he defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Department of History, University of Helsinki. His doctoral advisor was Matti Klinge. He has been studying also at the University of California, Berkeley .
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#5191

Zvi Elpeleg

Zvi Elpeleg
#51738
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Zvi Elpeleg was an academic, author, and a senior researcher at the Dayan Institute at Tel Aviv University. Born in Poland, Elpeleg served as a colonel in the Israeli army and later received an ambassadorial appointment.
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#5192

Jakob Sverdrup

#97003
Overall Influence
1919 - 1997 (78 years)
Jakob Sverdrup was a Norwegian historian. Personal life He was born in Bergen as a son of the professor of religious studies Georg Johan Sverdrup . He was a nephew of philologist Jakob Sverdrup, a first cousin once removed of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup and Leif Sverdrup, a grandson of bishop and politician Jakob Sverdrup, a great-grandson of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, Sr, a grandnephew of Georg Sverdrup and Edvard Sverdrup and a second cousin of Harald Sverdrup.
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#5193

Marla Miller

#170207
Overall Influence
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#5194

Axel Gotthard

#119749
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Axel Gotthard is a German historian of modern age and university teacher. Gotthard was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd. He studied at the University of Würzburg and the University of Tübingen. He works at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg as university teacher.
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#5195

Della Dumbaugh

#44966
Overall Influence
Della Jeanne Dumbaugh is an American mathematician and historian of mathematics, focusing on the history of algebra and number theory. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Richmond, and the editor-in-chief of The American Mathematical Monthly.
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#5196

Harold J. Cook

#120093
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Harold John Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University and was director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College, London from 2000 to 2009, and was the Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor of History at Columbia University in New York during the 2007–2008 academic year.
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#5197

Birgitta Eder

#155409
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Birgitta Eder is an Austrian archaeologist and Mycenologist. She is the director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at Athens. Education Eder studied ancient history and classical archaeology at the University of Vienna from 1980 until 1986, followed by postgraduate study at University College London in 1988/89. She completed her PhD at the University of Vienna in 1995. During this period she also worked as a research assistant in the Mycenaean Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
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#5198

Marie-Louise Nosch

#77920
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Marie-Louise Bech Nosch is a Professor in the University of Copenhagen and an expert in the interdisciplinary study of prehistoric textiles. Her main research focus is on the evidence for textile production in Mycenaean Greece provided by the Linear B tablets; she has also published widely on the cross-cultural study of textiles from across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
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#5199

Susanna Elm

#144015
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Susanna K. Elm is a German historian and classicist. She is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History at the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include the history of the later Roman Empire, late Antiquity and early Christianity. She is Associate Editor of the journals Church History and Studies in Late Antiquity and is a member of the editorial board for Classical Antiquity.
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#5200

Jennifer Summit

#120892
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Jennifer Summit is an American scholar of medieval and Renaissance English literature and was a professor of English at Stanford University, where she was chair of the English department between 2008 and 2011. In 2013, Summit became dean of undergraduate studies at San Francisco State University. Summit is currently the provost at San Francisco State University.
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