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).

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

Clear Form

List of the most influential people in History,

#5301

Sabine von Heusinger

#177487
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Sabine von Heusinger is professor of medieval history at the University of Cologne. Early life Sabine von Heusinger was born 13 September 1964 in Rielasingen. She studied German, politics and history at the University of Konstanz and Università degli Studi dell 'Aquila. In 1991, her Magister followed. She earned her doctorate at the University of Konstanz with a thesis on "Der observante Dominikaner Johannes Mulberg und der Basler Beginenstreit". Her Habilitation took place in 2006 at the University of Mannheim with work on social groups in the city - the example of the guilds in Strasbourg.
Go to Profile
#5302

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse

#86072
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Hélène Carrère d'Encausse was a French political historian who specialised in Russian history. From 1999 up until her death in 2023, she served as the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Française, to which she was first elected in 1990.
Go to Profile
#5303

Stephen J Pyne

#177516
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#5304

Jean-Marc Dreyfus

#116066
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Jean-Marc Dreyfus is a French historian. His PhD thesis was about Jewish-owned banks in Aryanization and restitution. Dreyfus currently works as a reader in history at Manchester University. Works
Go to Profile
#5305

Naomi Standen

#177519
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Naomi Standen is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Birmingham and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford. She specialises in Eurasian history with a focus on regions within what is now China, North Korea and Mongolia. Standen joined the University of Birmingham in 2011, previously at Newcastle University from 2000 becoming a senior lecturer in 2007.
Go to Profile
#5306

David Reynolds

David Reynolds
#89852
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
David Reynolds, is a British historian. He is Emeritus Professor of International History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He attended school at Dulwich College on a scholarship and studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris.
Go to Profile
#5307

Lars Borgersrud

#112318
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Lars Borgersrud is a Norwegian military historian and government scholar. His work has largely centered on World War II in Norway. Borgersrud formed close relations with leading figures of the Norwegian Maoist movement beginning in the late 1960s.
Go to Profile
#5308

Paweł Sękowski

#161970
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
Paweł Sękowski is a Polish historian specializing in modern history, researcher at the Jagiellonian University, President of the Kuźnica Association from January 2018. Biography In 2009 he graduated from history studies at the Jagiellonian University. He was a scholarship holder of the Socrates-Erasmus program at the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and a scholarship holder of the Government of the French Republic .
Go to Profile
#5309

Alain Huetz de Lemps

Alain Huetz de Lemps
#108343
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (99 years)
Alain Huetz de Lemps is a French geographer and botanist. He is a lecturer at Bordeaux University and Honoris Causa professor of the University of Valladolid . He wrote a primary reference work on wine in Castile and León, Vinos y Viñedos de Castilla y León.
Go to Profile
#5310

John Obert Voll

#174815
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
John Obert Voll is an American scholar of Islam and Professor Emeritus of Islamic History at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Biography After graduating from Dartmouth College, Voll earned a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies and a doctorate in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. Before coming to Georgetown, he spent thirty years teaching Middle Eastern and international history at the University of New Hampshire. He has served as president of both the Middle East Studies Association and the New England Historical Association. Voll has served on the boar...
Go to Profile
#5311

Michael D. Behiels

#78641
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Michael Derek Behiels is a Canadian historian who served as a professor and University Research Chair in the Department of History at the University of Ottawa, specializing in twentieth-century Canadian politics. A student of Ramsay Cook, he is a prominent defender of Pierre Trudeau's conception of federalism: no special status for Quebec and maintenance of linguistic minority rights. In 1985, while a faculty member at Acadia University, his published doctoral dissertation Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution was nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction. Th...
Go to Profile
#5312

Doula Mouriki

#79351
Overall Influence
1934 - 1991 (57 years)
Doula Mouriki was a Greek Byzantinologist and art historian. She made important contributions to the study of Byzantine art in Greece. Education Doula Mouriki was born in 1934 at Ampelokepi . She earned degrees in history and archaeology in 1956 from the University of Athens. From 1956 to 1957, she received a scholarship to visit the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France, where she studied under André Grabar and Paul Lemerle. Afterwards, she returned to the University of Athens to earn a degree in French literature in 1958.
Go to Profile
#5313

Margaret Alington

#97538
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Margaret Hilda Alington was a New Zealand librarian, historian and author. Life and career Alington was born and educated in Christchurch, New Zealand, the daughter of Henry Dan Broadhead and Hilda Innes Broadhead, née Stewart . Henry Broadhead was from Peebles, Scotland and came to New Zealand as a child with his family, settling in Christchurch, and rising to become an associate professor of classics at Canterbury University College. He was also an organist who in retirement was a "keen organ builder". Hilda Broadhead's father, James Wyse Stewart , was from Aberdeen, Scotland, settling in New Zealand at Templeton, Christchurch.
Go to Profile
#5314

Max Demeter Peyfuss

#143608
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
Maximilian Demeter Peyfuss , was an Austrian historian, translator and writer. Peyfuss specialized in Eastern European history and was a researcher and translator for Eastern and Southeastern Europe contemporary Romanian literature.
Go to Profile
#5315

Anahide Ter Minassian

Anahide Ter Minassian
#83147
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Anahide Ter Minassian born Anahide Kévonian was a French historian of Armenian origin who specialised in modern Armenian history, particularly the pre- and post-Soviet period of Armenian history, and the Armenian revolutionary movement.
Go to Profile
#5316

Simon Gunn

#171295
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Simon Alexander Lindsay Gunn is a historian who was Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester from 2006 to 2021. Career Gunn completed his doctor of philosophy of degree at the University of Manchester in 1992 for a thesis entitled Manchester middle class, 1850–1880. He was a fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, before teaching at the Universities of Manchester, Essex and Leeds Metropolitan, where he was appointed a Reader in History. In 2006, he moved to the University of Leicester as a Professor of Urban History. As of 2017, he is co-editor of the journal Urban History.
Go to Profile
#5317

Angela Wanhalla

#108925
Overall Influence
Angela Cheryl Wanhalla is a professor of history at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Her book about interracial marriage in New Zealand won the 2014 Ernest Scott Prize. Wanhalla was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2022.
Go to Profile
#5318

James T. Schleifer

#75148
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
James Thomas Schleifer is an American historian, and emeritus Dean of the Mother Irene Gill Memorial Library, and professor at the College of New Rochelle. Life He graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1972. He also lectures at Yale University.
Go to Profile
#5319

Michael Willrich

#160370
Overall Influence
Michael Willrich is an American historian. He is the Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University, and the author of three books. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015. Selected works
Go to Profile
#5320

Remieg Aerts

#170655
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Remieg A. M. Aerts is a Dutch historian and Professor of Dutch History at University of Amsterdam. Biography Aerts was born in Amsterdam. After secondary school he briefly considered studying Chinese, but instead of that he started studying history. After he finished his PhD, for which he took ten years, in 1997 at the University of Groningen Aerts became assistant professor in Philosophy of History at that same university. Later he became professor of Political History at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 2000 he won the Dr. Wijnaendts Francken-prijs for his work De letterheren. Liberale cultuur in de negentiende eeuw: het tijdschrift De Gids.
Go to Profile
#5321

Bryce Lyon

#156429
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
Bryce Dale Lyon was an American medievalist who taught at the University of Colorado, Harvard University, the University of Illinois, the University of California at Berkeley and Brown University. By the end of his career, Lyon wrote, co-authored, or edited over twenty books; published over fifty scholarly articles; and wrote over one hundred book reviews.
Go to Profile
#5322

Jennifer S. H. Brown

#113923
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Jennifer Stacey Harcourt Brown is an American–Canadian ethnohistorian. She is professor emerita of history at the University of Winnipeg and was a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair for Aboriginal Peoples in an Urban and Regional Context. In 2008, Brown was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile
#5323

Nelson Minnich

#142258
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Nelson Hubert Minnich is an American historian and author who specializes in Catholic history. Life Minnich completed his BA in philosophy and MA in history at Boston College and an STB in theology from the Gregorian University in 1970.
Go to Profile
#5324

Peter Machinist

#85032
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Peter Machinist is an American historian, currently the Hancock Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and other Oriental Languagess at Harvard University.
Go to Profile
#5325

Antony Copley

#88933
Overall Influence
1937 - 2016 (79 years)
Antony R. H. Copley was a British historian. He was an honorary professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and specialised in nineteenth century French history and modern Indian history. He was born on 1 July 1937 in Hertfordshire, the son of Alan Copley, a solicitor, and Iris Copley, and educated at Gresham's School and Worcester College, Oxford.
Go to Profile
#5326

Siobhán McHugh

#102695
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Siobhán McHugh is an Irish-Australian author, podcast producer and critic, oral historian, audio documentary-maker and journalism academic. In 2013 she founded RadioDoc Review, the first journal of critical analysis of crafted audio storytelling podcasts and features, for which she received an academic research award. She is Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Wollongong . and Associate Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her latest book, The Power of Podcasting: telling stories through sound, was published by NewSouth Books in February 2022.
Go to Profile
#5327

Janet Polasky

#157282
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Janet Polasky is Presidential Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. Polasky earned a B.A., at Carleton College in 1973, and a Ph.D from Stanford University in 1978. Books Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World Reforming Urban Labor: Routes to the City, Roots in the CountryEmile Vandervelde, Le PatronThe Democratic Socialism of Emile Vandervelde: Between Reform and RevolutionRevolution in Brussels, 1787-1793
Go to Profile
#5328

Kåre Tønnesson

Kåre Tønnesson
#132905
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Kåre Dorenfeldt Tønnesson was a Norwegian historian and professor at the University of Oslo. He finished his secondary education at Valler in 1944. After enrolling in philological studies at the University of Oslo in 1945 he graduated with the cand.philol. degree in history in 1952. His master's thesis delved into causality in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1959 Tønnesson took the dr.philos. degree with the thesis La défaite des sans-culottes, "The Defeat of the Sans-culottes".
Go to Profile
#5329

James J. Fox

#80911
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
James Joseph Fox is an American anthropologist and historian of Indonesia. He was educated at Harvard University and Oxford University in where he was a Rhodes Scholar. The title of his doctoral thesis was The Rotinese: A study of the social organisation of an eastern indonesian people
Go to Profile
#5330

Frank Andre Guridy

#134483
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Frank Andre Guridy is an American historian, author and scholar. He was born, raised and resides in New York City, where he is the associate professor of history, specializing in Sport History, Urban History and the history of the African Diaspora in the Americas at the Columbia University.
Go to Profile
#5331

H. James Burgwyn

#135750
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
H. James Burgwyn is an American historian. He is a West Chester University emeritus professor of history, and an authority on the foreign policy and military strategy of Italy in the period from World War I to World War II.
Go to Profile
#5332

Carlos Forcadell

Carlos Forcadell
#176617
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Carlos Forcadell Álvarez is a Spanish historian, Professor Emeritus of Contemporary History of the University of Zaragoza . The scope of his academic research includes the history of the labor movement in Spain, the public use of history, political cultures in Spain, historiography as well as the history of Aragon.
Go to Profile
#5333

Warren Dockter

Warren Dockter
#165413
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (43 years)
Warren Dockter is an author and historian. He was a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and a lecturer at Aberystwyth University in International Politics. Dockter is a former member of the council of the British Institute at Ankara. Dockter now serves as the President and CEO of the East Tennessee Historical Society in Knoxville, TN.
Go to Profile
#5334

Roberto Gargiani

#93597
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Roberto Gargiani is an Italian architectural historian and a full professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . Biography Gargiani was born in September 1956 in Poggio a Caiano, Italy. He graduated in architecture in 1983 and received his PhD in 1992 at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence.
Go to Profile
#5335

Miles Taylor

#131140
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Miles Taylor, FRHistS is a historian of 19th-century Britain, and an academic administrator. Since 2004, he has been a professor of history at the University of York and between 2008 and 2014 he was director of the University of London's Institute of Historical Research.
Go to Profile
#5336

Alan Ward

#76325
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Alan Dudley Ward was a New Zealand historian, particularly known for his research into customary land tenure by Māori in New Zealand. Biography Born in Gisborne, New Zealand in 1935, Ward was raised in rural Poverty Bay. Initially intending to be a school teacher, Ward attended Victoria University College and Auckland Teachers' College, but he was drawn to the subject of history and graduated Master of Arts with first-class honours from Victoria in 1958. His thesis was entitled The history of the East Coast Maori Trust.
Go to Profile
#5337

Keith Snell

#165079
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Keith David Malcolm Snell, FRAI, is an Anglo-Welsh academic historian who holds a personal chair as Professor of Rural and Cultural History at the University of Leicester. He was born in Tanganyika , and brought up in rural Wales and many tropical African countries, notably Tanzania, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, the Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Go to Profile
#5338

Melissa J. Brown

#111903
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Melissa J. Brown is an American sociocultural anthropologist and historian specializing in China and Taiwan. She earned a bachelor's and a master's degree from Stanford University, and completed doctoral study at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile
#5339

Julian Kwiek

#143004
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Julian Kwiek is Polish scientist and historian, who graduated from the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań. In 1989 he received his Ph.D. in history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Kwiek is an Adjunct at the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences of the AGH University of Science and Technology. The scope of his professional interests include modern Poland with special focus on legal status of Polish minorities after 1945, the workings of the Polish underground organizations after World War II and the Polish political crises of communism. He is the author of over a dozen scientific papers, and books of Polish postwar history.
Go to Profile
#5340

George Reid Andrews

#150309
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
George Reid Andrews is an American historian of Afro-Latin America, and currently a distinguished professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Published works The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800–1900 Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 The Social Construction of Democracy, work coedited with Herrick Chapman Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000 Blackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay Afro-Latin America: Black Lives, 1600–2000
Go to Profile
#5341

Stjepan Krasić

Stjepan Krasić
#84091
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Stjepan Krasić is Croatian historian, theologian and Roman Catholic friar of the Order of Preachers, member of the Croatian Dominican Province and member of the International Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile
#5342

Gregory Weeks

#118417
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Gregory Weeks is a lecturer at the International Relations Department at Webster University in Vienna, Austria. He was the Head of the International Relations Department from 2005 until 2011. Weeks teaches and researches civil-military relations, genocide prevention, and twentieth century Austrian and German diplomatic and military history.
Go to Profile
#5343

Gaetano Quagliariello

#98788
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Gaetano Quagliariello is an Italian politician, former Minister of Constitutional Reforms and current leader of Identity and Action party. Biography Toti was born in Naples in 1960. During the University he was a member of the youth wing of the Italian Republican Party. In 1980s he became a member of the Radical Party led by Marco Pannella.
Go to Profile
#5344

Claire Potter

#159669
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Claire Bond Potter is an American historian. She is a professor of history at The New School. She is co-executive editor of the journal Public Seminar. Potter received a BA from Yale University, where she studied English literature and worked for the Yale Daily News, and a PhD from New York University.
Go to Profile
#5345

Janko Kos

Janko Kos
#45893
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (94 years)
Janko Kos is a Slovenian literary historian, theoretician, and critic. Early life He was born in Ljubljana in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the son of the painter and sculptor Tine Kos. His father was a liberal and freethinker , while his mother was a devout Roman Catholic.
Go to Profile
#5346

Paul Joseph Ward

#138128
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Paul Ward was Head of the Department of English, History and Creative Writing and Professor of Public History and Community Heritage at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire. He was Professor of Modern British History at the University of Huddersfield until 2018. He received both his BA and PhD from Queen Mary and Westfield College. He has taught at London Guildhall University, Middlesex University, University of Westminster and Royal Holloway. In 2004, he was visiting lecturer at the University of A Coruña; in 2004–5, he was Fulbright-Robertson Professor of British History at Westminster College, Missouri.
Go to Profile
#5347

Sabine Doering-Manteuffel

#130231
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Sabine Doering-Manteuffel is a German ethnologist. On 1 October 2011 she became the first woman to accept the appointment as president of the University of Augsburg. She thereby became the first president/rector of a university in Bavaria.
Go to Profile
#5348

Abosede George

#162729
Overall Influence
Abosede George is an associate professor of history and Africana studies at Barnard College. Her academic focus are in the areas of African history, childhood and youth studies, social reform in Africa, urban history, girl studies, women's studies, and migration studies. She is the incumbent President of the Nigerian Studies Association, an affiliate organization of the African Studies Association.
Go to Profile
#5349

Li Ling

#156392
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Li Ling is a Chinese historian and archaeologist. Biography Li Ling was born in Xingtai, Hebei in 1948. His original family home was located in Wuxiang County, Shanxi, and Ling grew up in Beijing. He worked in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia for 7 years as a sent-down youth after graduation from high school.
Go to Profile
#5350

Richard Morris

Richard Morris
#89976
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Richard Morris, OBE is an English archaeologist and historian who specialises in the study of churchyard and battlefield archaeology. Having been involved in the discipline since the early 1970s, he has worked at a number of British universities, including the University of Leeds and the University of Huddersfield, as well as publishing a series of books on the subject of archaeology. He has also held a number of significant positions within the British archaeological community. He was director of the Council for British Archaeology from 1991 to 1999, and was Commissioner of English Heritage...
Go to Profile