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.

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in History,

#5251

Matthew C. Whitaker

#121021

Overall Influence

Matthew C. Whitaker is an American historian. He was an associate professor of history and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University; in January 2016 ASU announced that he had resigned these positions.

#5252

Edward T. Cone

#88661

Overall Influence

1917 - 2004 (87 years)

Edward Toner Cone was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist. Life and career Cone was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. He studied composition under Roger Sessions at Princeton University, receiving his bachelor's in 1939 . Cone and Milton Babbitt were the first to earn graduate degrees in musical composition from Princeton . He studied piano with Karl Ulrich Schnabel and Edward Steuermann. During the Second World War, Cone served first in the army and later in the Office of Strategic Services. Beginning in 1946, he taught at Princeton. He was the co-editor o...

#5253

Susan Bordo

#176885

Overall Influence

#5254

Judith C. Brown

#117432

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Judith C. Brown is a historian and a Professor Emerita of History at Wesleyan University. A specialist on the Italian Renaissance, she is considered a pioneer in the study of the history of sexuality whose work explored the earliest recorded examples of lesbian relationships in European history.

#5255

Leslie Mitchell

#71519

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Dr Leslie Mitchell MA, DPhil, FRHistS is an academic historian specialising in British history. Mitchell is currently an Emeritus Fellow of University College and a member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford, England. He has been Dean of the college, appeared in the Univ Revue, recruited students for work in the intelligence services and was editor of the University College Record, an annual publication for former members of the college. Mitchell is counted among a talented generation of post-war historians, including Maurice Keen, Alexander Murray and Henry Mayr-Harting.

#5256

David Patterson

#113424

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

David Patterson is a historian and professor at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas. Patterson's areas of expertise are Holocaust, Jewish Thought, Anti-Semitism and Israel. He is the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies. Patterson is author of a study of Holocaust memoir literature and said that reading of first person testimonials has a function, the reader "must become not an interpreter of texts but a mender of the world, a part of the recovery that this memory demands".

#5257

Charles Iain Hamilton

#101115

Overall Influence

Charles Iain Hamilton is a naval historian at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Early life Hamilton took a BA at Keele University and a PhD at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1974 with a thesis on “The Royal Navy, Seapower, and the Screwship of the Line, 1845-1860”.

#5258

E. Dale LeBaron

#163388

Overall Influence

1934 - 2009 (75 years)

Elwin Dale LeBaron was a Canadian scholar of the Latter Day Saint movement and a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University . He is known for his work on the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Africa, where he served as mission president when the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood was announced and compiled hundreds of interviews from African locals.

#5259

David Farber

#174922

Overall Influence

David Farber is an American historian. He is the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas. Life He received a BA from the University of Michigan, and earned a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago. He has also taught at Barnard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of New Mexico, and Temple University. His research encompasses twentieth-century American history, especially the second half of the century.

#5260

Myles Jackson

#95773

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Myles W. Jackson is currently the inaugural Albers-Schönberg Professor in the History of Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and lecturer with the rank of professor of history at Princeton University. He was the inaugural Albert Gallatin Research Excellence Professor of the History of Science at New York University-Gallatin, professor of history of the faculty of arts and science of New York University, professor of the division of medical bioethics of NYU-Langone School of Medicine, faculty affiliate of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, NYU School of Law, and director of science and society of the college of arts and science at NYU.

#5261

Jean-Yves Mollier

#99973

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Jean-Yves Mollier is a French contemporary history teacher. Biography Mollier is teacher at the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University. He is specialized in the history of publishing. He has dedicated his doctoral thesis in French literature at Noël Parfait and his PhD in History to "political and cultural history at the heart of the French nineteenth-century" .

#5262

Sivert Langholm

#124290

Overall Influence

1927 - 2022 (95 years)

Sivert Langholm was a Norwegian historian. Life and career Sivert Langholm was born in Haugesund, and was the brother of Odd Langholm. He was a cand.philol. by education, and was appointed professor at the University of Oslo in 1976. His main areas of research were 19th-century social history and the history of the university. Langholm also headed the editorial committee of the five-volume work Oslo bys historie, covering the history of Oslo. The five volumes were penned by Arnved Nedkvitne and Per G. Norseng , Knut Sprauten , Jan Eivind Myhre , Knut Kjeldstadli and Edgeir Benum respectivel...

#5263

Frédéric Encel

#32507

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Frédéric Encel is a French writer and scholar of geopolitics. He received his DEA in geopolitics from the Centre of Geopolitical Analysis and Research at the University of Paris VIII in 1992. He remained there studying under Yves Lacoste and earned his doctorate in geopolitics in 1997. He teaches international relations at the ESG Management School. He frequently points out the Iranian danger in French press.

#5264

Ludwig Eiber

#148337

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Ludwig Eiber is a German historian and author. He is widely acknowledged as an expert on the post-World War II Allied war crimes trials of the Nazis. In particular, he has expertise in the Dachau trials.

#5265

Mona Lisa Saloy

#102629

Overall Influence

Mona Lisa Saloy is an American poet and folklorist. She is the Poet Laureate of Louisiana since 2021. Biography Mona Lisa Saloy was born in New Orleans and got her education in the University of Washington, where she graduated in 1979 with a BA in English. She then went to San Francisco State University and left with her MA in creative writing and English in 1982. She then went to Louisiana State University, which she left with a PhD in English and MFA in creative writing in 2005 and 1988. Saloy is the Conrad N. Hilton Endowed Professor of English at Dillard University.

#5266

H. Shelton Smith

#32164

Overall Influence

H. Shelton Smith was a scholar of Christianity and professor at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Education and Career H. Shelton Smith received his B.A. from Elon College , was ordained as a minister by the United Church of Christ, and served in 1918–1919 as first lieutenant and chaplain with the American Expeditionary Force in France. He received his graduate training at Yale University and went on to serve as Associate Professor of Religious Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Associate Professor of Religious Education at Yale University. Three years later...

#5267

Rob Meens

#167852

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Robert Marie Joseph "Rob" Meens is a Dutch historian and professor at Utrecht University. Meens got his Ph.D. from Nijmegen University in 1994. He was a fellow at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University in 1997-1998, and taught at the University of Vienna before an appointment as professor in history in Utrecht.

#5268

Paul Joannides

#167118

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

#5269

Jean-Pierre Delville

Jean-Pierre Delville

#122094

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Jean-Pierre Delville is a Belgian prelate of the Catholic Church who has been the Bishop of Liège since 2013. His earlier career was devoted to church history and teaching, which he always combined with pastoral activity. He has been associated with the Saint Egidio Community since 1978.

#5270

John K. Davies

#140058

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

John Kenyon Davies, is a British classical historian and retired academic. Between 1977 and 2003, he was Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool.

#5271

Heather A. Williams

#100644

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Heather A. Williams is a scholar of African American studies and lawyer. She serves as Presidential Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Heather Andrea Williams moved to the United States from Jamaica when she was 11 years old. She attended Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, then Harvard College, graduating in 1978, then earned a J.D. from Harvard in 1981. She practiced law in the public sector, serving as an assistant attorney general and section chief for the State of New York and as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. De...

#5272

Sigrid Jahns

#146327

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Sigrid Jahns is a German historian. Until 2009 she was professor of early modern history at the Department of History of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Born in Malente, the daughter of a physician, after her Abitur in Osnabrück in 1965, Jahns began studying history, philology, philosophy and pedagogy, which she continued at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in 1967 and at the Goethe University Frankfurt in 1968. In 1972, she received her doctorate in philosophy from Friedrich Hermann Schubert in Frankfurt with a dissertation entitled Frankfurt, Reformation and Sc...

#5273

Nicolae Bocșan

#95588

Overall Influence

1947 - 2016 (69 years)

Nicolae Bocșan was a Romanian historian who specialized in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Banat and Transylvania and who also wrote extensively about the Revolution of 1848 in Transylvania. He was a member of the history faculty of the Babeș-Bolyai University and served as rector of the university 2004–2008.

#5274

Leonard Patrick Harvey

#124363

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (96 years)

Leonard Patrick Harvey was a British historian and professor. He held lectureships in Spanish at Oxford University , Southampton , and Queen Mary College, London , was Head of the Spanish Department at Queen Mary College from 1963 to 1973 and Cervantes Professor of Spanish at King's College, London, in 1983, until his retirement in 1990.

#5275

Trevor Burnard

#123084

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Trevor Graeme Burnard is professor of history at the University of Hull. He is a specialist in the history of slavery in the Atlantic world. He was formerly at the University of Warwick. and the University of Melbourne.

#5276

Claire Cross

#171562

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

M. Claire Cross is a British historian and professor emeritus in history at the University of York. She was president of the Ecclesiastical History Society from 1989 to 19990. Education Cross studied at the University of Cambridge before becoming county archivist for Cambridgeshire. Cross also studied at the Huntingdon Library in California, then held a research fellowship at the University of Reading before becoming lecturer at the University of York .

#5277

Hilary Wayment

#87462

Overall Influence

1912 - 2005 (93 years)

Hilary Godwin Wayment OBE, FSA was a British author and historian of stained glass. Early life Wayment was born in Woolwich, east London on 23 April 1912, the son of Alfred Wayment, headmaster of the local church school. His godfather Eric Milner-White, a curate at the church of St Mary Magdalen Woolwich, was later Dean of King's College, Cambridge from 1918 to 1941, and became a strong influence on Wayment's life, leading him a near lifelong study of stained glass, particularly the windows of King's College.

#5278

Josep Maria Fradera

Josep Maria Fradera

#172015

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Josep Maria Fradera Barceló is a Spanish historian, professor of Contemporary History at the Pompeu Fabra University. Specialised in the colonial system of the late Spanish Empire, he has also studied the history of Catalonia.

#5279

George Ivany

#55254

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

J. W. George Ivany was President of the University of Saskatchewan from 1989 to 1999. Biography Born in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland and Labrador, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and physics from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1960, a Master of Arts degree in physics education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1962, and a Ph.D. in 1965 from the University of Alberta.

#5280

Wolfgang Ernst

#85611

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Wolfgang Ernst is a German media theorist. He is Professor for Media Theories at Humboldt University of Berlin and a major exponent of media archaeology as a method of scholarly inquiry. Biography Ernst studied history, archaeology and classics at the University of Cologne, University of London, and Ruhr University Bochum. He wrote his dissertation on the aesthetic history of collections and work as an assistant at the Studienstiftung. He held positions in Leipzig, Kassel, Rome, Cologne, Weimar, Bochum, Paderborn and Berlin. Wolfgang Ernst collaborated with bootlab Berlin and developed alter...

#5281

Cathryn Carson

#98137

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Cathryn Leigh Carson is a historian of science, known for her biography of Werner Heisenberg. She holds the Thomas M. Siebel Presidential Chair in the History of Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

#5282

Roderick Weir Home

#128910

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Roderick Weir "R.W." Home , is an Australian academic and historian of Science. Home has been Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne from 1975 to 2002 on his retirement. Previously he was lecturer and then senior lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

#5283

Manousos Manousakas

#128681

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Manousos Ioannou Manousakas , was a Greek Byzantinist and Modern Greek scholar. Life Manousakas was born in Rethymno, Greece to Ioannis Manousakas and Anna Petroulaki. His father was a lawyer who hailed from the villages of Argyroupoli and Imbros in Sfakia on his father's side. After attending high school in his home town, he studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens from 1932 to 1937. From 1938 to 1941 he was the secretary of the editorial committee of the Society for Cretan Studies. In 1942 he was appointed editor of the Medieval Archive, the later Research Center for ...

#5284

Lucy Noakes

#171928

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Lucy Caroline Noakes is a British historian. Since 2017, she has been Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex. Biography Noakes has said that she became interested in history through left-wing politics; she was inspired by E. P. Thompson's speeches at CND rallies and by his book The Making of the English Working Class to uncover the lives of ordinary people, especially women . She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Sussex and stayed there to complete a Doctor of Philosophy degree, which was awarded in 1996 for her thesis Gender and British Na...

#5285

Peter Way

#173492

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Peter Way is a Canadian historian of America and the Atlantic world. Life Born in Belleville, Ontario, he graduated from Trent University in 1981, Queen's University with an M.A. in 1983, and University of Maryland, College Park with a Ph.D., in 1991.

#5286

Leah DeVun

#151395

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Leah DeVun is an American contemporary artist and historian who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA and PhD from Columbia University and is an associate professor at Rutgers University, where she teaches women's and gender history.

#5287

Françoise Dunand

#85908

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

Françoise Dunand is a French historian, professor emeritus of the University of Strasbourg. She is a specialist in Greek and Roman Egypt. Career Since 1981, Françoise Dunand has been leading the "Alpha Necropolis" team to excavate the necropolises at the Kharga Oasis in Egypt. She is a former member of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo, she has published a number of books and articles on late Egyptian religious beliefs and practices. Since 1983 she has directed IFAO archaeological excavations at the necropolis at the village of in Egypt's western desert. The findings at...

#5288

Elisheva Carlebach Jofen

#106103

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Elisheva Carlebach Jofen is an American scholar of early modern Jewish history. Career Carlebach obtained her bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College. In 1986 she completed her PhD in Jewish History at Columbia University. Subsequently, she was a professor of Jewish History at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, in New York City. Since 2008 she has been the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish history, culture and society at Columbia University.

#5289

Manuel Pérez Vila

#88768

Overall Influence

1922 - 1991 (69 years)

Manuel Pérez Vila was a Venezuelan historian and professor. Bibliography Una biografía de José Rafael Revenga Vida de Daniel Florencio O'Leary, primer edecán del Libertador Las campañas periodísticas del Libertador La Caricatura Política En El Siglo XIX Para acercarnos a Bolívar

#5290

Ebba Lund

#69358

Overall Influence

1923 - 1999 (76 years)

Ebba Lund was a Danish Resistance fighter during World War II, a chemical engineer, and a microbiologist. Early life Ebba Lund was born in 1923 to parents Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Anna Petrea Lindberg . Her father was an engineer. The Copenhagen community in which she grew up was considered to be very conservative.

#5291

William Gervase Clarence-Smith

#106530

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Professor of the Economic History of Asia and Africa at SOAS, University of London. He received an M.A. from Cambridge, a DipPol from the University of Paris and a Ph.D. from London University.

#5292

Shula Marks

#177397

Overall Influence

#5293

Hilde Waage

#138284

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Hilde Henriksen Waage is a Norwegian historian and peace researcher. She is Professor of History at the University of Oslo and was acting Director of Peace Research Institute Oslo from 1992 to 1993. Waage is an expert on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Norway–Israel relations.

#5294

Douglas Cole

#120450

Overall Influence

1938 - 1998 (60 years)

Douglas Lowell Cole was an American-Canadian historian. Cole specialized in the art and culture of the Northwest Pacific Coast, and from 1966 until 1997 served as a professor in the history department at Simon Fraser University.

#5295

Patrick Cabanel

#95654

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Patrick Cabanel is a French historian, director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études and holder of the chair in Histoire et sociologie des protestantismes. He mainly writes on the history of religious minorities, the construction of a secularised French Republic and French resistance to the Shoah.

#5296

A. Veluppillai

#101044

Overall Influence

1936 - 2015 (79 years)

Alvappillai Veluppillai was a Sri Lankan Tamil academic, historian and author. Early life and family Veluppillai was born on 21 November 1936 in Puloly in northern Ceylon. He was the son of Veluppillai Alvappillai. He was educated at Puttalai Tamil School , Puloly Boys' English School and Hartley College . After school he joined the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1955, graduating in 1959 with a first class BA honours degree. He was a student of K. Kanapathypillai. He received a PhD degree from the university in 1962 after producing a thesis titled A Study of the Language of Tamil Inscriptions of Catavarman Cuntarapantiyan and Maravarman Kulacekaran .

#5297

Ronald W. Walker

Ronald W. Walker

#147130

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

Ronald Warren Walker was an American historian of the Latter Day Saint movement and a professor at Brigham Young University and president of the Mormon History Association. His work, acclaimed by the Mormon History Association, dealt with the Godbeites, the Utah War, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, among other topics.

#5298

Yaacov Oved

#105717

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (96 years)

Yaacov Oved is a historian and Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Tel Aviv University, member of Kibbutz Palmachim, research fellow at Yad Tabenkin: the institute of research and documentation of the kibbutz movement, researcher of the history of communes in the world and co- founder of the International Communal Studies Association.

#5299

Steven Mansbach

#177471

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Steven Mansbach is an American historian, currently a Distinguished University Professor in History of 20th-century art at University of Maryland. He is also the Founding Dean and Director of the American Academy in Berlin.

#5300

Richard Pierce

#98213

Overall Influence

1918 - 2004 (86 years)

Richard Austin Pierce was an American historian and publisher who specialized in the Russian era of Alaska's history. He was involved in the publishing of more than 60 volumes on Alaska's history, in the capacity of author, translator, editor and publisher, and was considered one of the foremost authorities on Russian America.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions