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,

#5451

José Murilo de Carvalho

#67791

Overall Influence

1939 - 2023 (84 years)

José Murilo de Carvalho was a Brazilian historian. He obtained his PhD in political science from Stanford University, defending a thesis on the Brazilian Empire. He was professor emeritus at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and also taught at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He was a visiting professor and researcher at the universities of Oxford, Leiden, Stanford, California , London, Notre Dame, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and at the Ortega y Gasset Foundation in Madrid.

#5452

Henryk Żaliński

#179401

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Prof. Dr. Hab. Henryk Żaliński is a Polish historian, professor at the Pedagogical University of Cracow. He is specializing in the history of Poland in the 19th century. He graduated from the National Higher College of Teacher Training in Cracow . He passed his habilitation in 1991. On 25 September 2009 he gained the title of professor.

#5453

Jennifer C. Ward

#170595

Overall Influence

Jennifer C. Ward was a British historian who was a specialist in medieval women and the history of Essex and East Anglia. Ward was a former senior lecturer in history at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

#5454

Umberto Meoli

#122408

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Umberto Meoli was an Italian historian of economics, known as a maverick of the Italian Left who eschewed Marxism in favour of British pragmatism. Biography Early life Meoli was born in Padua, one of nineteen brothers; his father was a pharmacist from a small town near Benevento, and his mother was from Padua.

#5455

Andrew W. Lewis

#61017

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

Andrew W. Lewis was an American historian and professor at Missouri State University. His areas of interest were medieval Europe and the Renaissance. Awards and honors Session 8: Autour du livre d'Andrew Lewis, Le Sang royal. La famille capétienne et l'Etat, France, Xe-XIVe siècles/ Royal Succession in Capetian France: Studies on Familial Order and the State, 1981MacArthur Fellows Program, 1984.John Nicholas Brown Prize, 1985.John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 1984–1989.International Medieval Society Annual Symposium, June 2008.

#5456

John Jeffries Martin

#139264

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

John Jeffries Martin is a historian of early modern Europe, with a special interest in the histories of religion and society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early life John Jeffries Martin grew up on St. Simons Island, Georgia and attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1982.

#5457

Leiv Mjeldheim

#152133

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

Leiv Mjeldheim was a Norwegian historian. He was born in Arna. He took the master's degree in political science in 1953. After a tenure as foreign affairs journalist in Bergens Tidende from 1955 to 1966 before being appointed as lecturer in history at the University of Bergen in 1966. He later served as professor from 1975 to his retirement in 1996, and was a specialist on Norwegian history around 1900. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#5458

Derek Keene

#157145

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Derek John Keene, FRHistS , was an English urban historian. He was founding director of the Centre for Metropolitan History from 1987 to 2002 at the Institute of Historical Research and then Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Metropolitan History until retirement in 2008; since which he was Emeritus Professor of Metropolitan History and an honorary fellow of the IHR.

#5459

Andres Briner

#129800

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Andres Briner was a Swiss music historian, academic and art journalist Life Briner was born in Zürich and educated at the University of Zurich. In musicology he was a student of Paul Hindemith. In 1953 he received his doctorate from Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez at the University of Zurich. From 1968, Briner was active at the as a member of the foundation board, and from 1986 to 1998 he was its president.

#5460

Madge Dresser

#139988

Overall Influence

Madge Judith Dresser FRHS FRSA is an English historian and academic, who was formerly an Associate Professor in History at the University of the West of England, and is currently Honorary Professor in the department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol. Her specialities are the history of slavery, national identity, women's history, and the position of religious and ethnic minorities in British society.

#5461

Laura Beers

#124771

Overall Influence

Laura D. Beers is an American author and historian. She is an associate professor of history at American University, where she researches modern Britain, mass media, and politics. Education Beers earned a bachelor of arts, summa cum laude, in history from Princeton University in 2000. In 2003, she completed a master of arts in history from Harvard University. She completed a Ph.D. in history at Harvard in 2007. From October 2007 to September 2008, she was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge through funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. Beers was a postdoctoral fe...

#5462

Barbara Hanawalt

#170384

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Barbara Ann Hanawalt is an American historian and bestselling author. She specializes in English medieval social history. Life She was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her father was a university professor and her mother was a schoolteacher.

#5463

Bryan Keith-Lucas

#97828

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Bryan Keith-Lucas was an English political scientist. Education The son of Alys Hubbard Lucas and Keith Lucas, professor of physiology at Cambridge and an instrument designer, Keith-Lucas was born at Fen Ditton and educated at Gresham's School, Holt, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read history and economics. In his Tripos he gained an upper Second in history and a lower Second in economics. While at Cambridge, he took a great interest in government, especially social policy and the problems of housing, thanks to two priests, Father Jellicoe and Father Scott, who had begun the St Pancras Housing Society.

#5464

Frederick W. Marks

#126253

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Frederick W. Marks III is an American historian and Catholic apologist. As a scholar, he has written and taught extensively on American diplomatic history. As a proponent of Roman Catholicism, he has written dozens of articles and tracts and spoken extensively in public.

#5465

Daniel E. Sutherland

#116934

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Daniel E. Sutherland is an American historian who has written books about 19th century America. He wrote a book titled The Confederate Carpetbaggers about southerners who moved north after the American Civil War.

#5466

Øivind Larsen

#112765

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Øivind Larsen is a Norwegian physician and Professor Emeritus of history of medicine at the University of Oslo. He became a docent in medical history in 1971 and was promoted to Professor in 1985. He is currently chairman of the Norwegian Medical Society .

#5467

Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia

Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia

#111227

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia is a French-American ethicist, historian, and political scientist best known for her research on immigration and security studies. She is a professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration and the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University - Newark.

#5468

Reed C. Durham

#141981

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (95 years)

Reed Connell Durham, Jr. is a historian of the Latter Day Saint movement and former director of the Institute of Religion in Salt Lake City, Utah for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Durham is remembered for a controversial speech given in 1974 about Freemasonry and the Latter Day Saint movement.

#5469

Jacob Myron Price

#177227

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Jacob "Jack" Myron Price, FBA, FRHS, was a historian known for his detailed studies of the early modern Atlantic economy. He was closely associated with the Institute of Historical Research of London University.

#5470

T. Jack Thompson

T. Jack Thompson

#105598

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

T. Jack Thompson was an Irish mission historian and scholar of African Christianity. Biography After studying history at Queen's University Belfast, Thompson taught history and religious education at Regent House School in Newtownards. Thompson and his wife Phyllis first travelled to Malawi as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland in 1970. He later developed an academic interest in the study of missions history and Christianity in Africa.

#5471

Marilyn Deegan

#114982

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Marilyn Deegan is the former Director of Research Development at the former Centre for Computing in the Humanities, now the Department of Digital Humanities Deegan was Editor of the Literary and Linguistic Computing journal, Oxford University Press.

#5472

Derek R. Peterson

#83849

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Derek R. Peterson is an American historian specializing in the cultural history of East Africa. He is currently a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan. He was the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" in 2017.

#5473

Vanessa Harding

#169293

Overall Influence

Vanessa Harding is professor of London history at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research has focused on death and burial in London and Paris and she has written widely on the subject in academic journals and in book form.

#5474

Bohdan Osadchuk

Bohdan Osadchuk

#82996

Overall Influence

1920 - 2011 (91 years)

Bohdan Osadchuk was a Ukrainian diaspora historian and journalist. Osadchuk was born in Kolomyia. He was a professor at the Free University of Berlin, one of the most senior members of the Ukrainian Free University of Munich, and a long-standing freelance writer for Kultura, a Polish emigre magazine published in Paris . In 2009 he was awarded a Bene Merito Honour medal by Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in recognition of scientific achievements and efforts to Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation.

#5475

Paul Maddrell

#170053

Overall Influence

Dr. Paul Maddrell is a British Historian and lecturer in History at Loughborough University in the Politics, History and International Relations department. He is an internationally known expert on spying in post-war Germany as well as on the participation of German nuclear physicists in the Soviet atomic bomb project.

#5476

John Blaxland

#87590

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

John Charles Blaxland is an Australian historian, academic, and former Australian Army officer. He is a Professor in Intelligence Studies and International Security at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

#5477

Bridget Griffen-Foley

#87145

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Bridget Griffen-Foley is a professor in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature, Macquarie University, New South Wales. She is author, co-author or editor of a large number of reference works and published articles on a wide range of topics relating to the histories of Australian newspapers, radio, and television outlets.

#5478

Ralph Keen

#171985

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Ralph Keen is an American historian of religion and an academic administrator at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Trained in classics as an undergraduate with graduate work in the history of Christianity, Keen has since 2010 been professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and since 2015 he has been dean of the Honors College there.

#5479

Gerhard Ammerer

#158079

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Gerhard Ammerer is an Austrian historian and professor at the University of Salzburg. Career Born in Salzburg, Ammerer studied history and German language and literature at the universities of Salzburg and Innsbruck from 1975 to 1981.

#5480

Steve Hochstadt

#152018

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Steven Lawrence Hochstadt is a professor emeritus of history at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. He has done extensive research on Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai. Influenced by his grandparents, Viennese Jews who fled the Holocaust and immigrated to Shanghai, Hochstadt conducted 100 interviews with former refugees living in the United States and Europe. Based on his studies he wrote several books about the Holocaust and especially about Jewish refugees in Asia.

#5481

Harry S. Stout

#169388

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Harry S. Stout is an American historian of religion, who is currently the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale Divinity School. He is the editor of the 27 volume series The Works of Jonathan Edwards and the co-editor with Jon Butler of the 17-volume Religion and American Life series, which is aimed at high school students. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

#5482

Rimvydas Petrauskas

#86560

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Rimvydas Petrauskas is a Lithuanian historian, and the current Rector of the Vilnius University since 2020. For his outstanding scientific research, he received a variety of awards, including the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas , Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland , Lithuanian Science Prize .

#5483

John Beckett

#158440

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

John Vincent Beckett is an English local historian who has been Professor of English Regional History at the University of Nottingham since 1990. Career and research Beckett was born on 12 July 1950 to William Vincent Beckett and his wife, Kathleen Amelia, née Reed. He completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Lancaster in 1971, which awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy degree four years later for his thesis Land Ownership in Cumbria, c. 1680–c. 1750.

#5484

Daniel Waley

#143577

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Daniel Philip Waley was a British historian, manuscript specialist, and professor. He was best known for his enduring textbooks on medieval Italy and Europe. Biography Waley began his education in Dorking. He graduated in 1938 from Dauntsey's School near Devizes, where he developed a life-long passion for cricket, and won a scholarship to study history at King's College, Cambridge. In his first year of university , he took the six-month Cours de Civilisation Française at the Sorbonne, where he met his future wife, a student from Kent. After completing his History Prelims at King's in 1940, Waley volunteered for military service and joined the Buffs Regiment.

#5485

Esther Barazzone

#122359

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Esther Barazzone is an independent American consultant in higher education governance and leadership, and president emerita of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As president of Chatham from 1992 to 2016, when she retired, she was one of the longest-serving university presidents in the U.S. She maintains roles in several organizations supporting international and U.S. higher learning, women’s leadership, and sustainability.

#5486

Klaus Larres

#115782

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Klaus W. Larres is a German-born historian and political scientist, currently the Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina, and also an author. Larres was educated at the University of Cologne and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Before moving to the United States, Larres spent almost 18 years in the United Kingdom. Along with previously holding the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at Library of Congress, he is a member of the Royal Historical Society, International Institute for Strategic Studies and A...

#5487

Arnór Hannibalsson

#96731

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Arnór Hannibalsson was an Icelandic philosopher, historian, and translator. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland. He completed a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Moscow and a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

#5488

Joan Judge

#128380

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Joan Judge is a Professor in the Department of History at York University. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. Her academic focus is on Chinese history. Education Judge earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta before attending Columbia University for her Master's degree and PhD. Her dissertation was titled "Print and politics: Shibao and the formation of the public sphere in late Qing China, 1904-1911." ProQuest listed her dissertation as one of the most accessed dissertations and theses of December 2013.

#5489

George Garnett

#131510

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

George Stephen Garnett is a British academic historian, specialising in late Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. In 2014, the University of Oxford awarded him the title of Professor of Medieval History.

#5490

Timothy Hampton

#105166

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Timothy Hampton is an American historian of French studies and history, currently the Aldo Scaglione and Marie M. Burns Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Bob Dylan's Poetics: How the Songs Work.

#5491

Frederick C. Luebke

#131435

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Frederick Carl Luebke was an American historian who served as Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1968, was promoted to full professor there in 1972, and was named the Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor of History there in 1987. He retired in 1994. As a professor, his scholarship was in the field of American history, with a particular focus on the history of the Great Plains and Nebraska, among other topics.

#5492

Benjamin Frommer

#96049

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Benjamin Frommer is an American historian, focused on history of Central Europe in 20th century. His work has concerns topics of genocide and ethnic cleansing, collaboration and resistance, transitional justice, and Central/Eastern European nationalism. Much of his work focuses on The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is currently the Charles Deering McCormick Professor and was formerly the Wayne V. Jones Research Professor of History at Northwestern University. He is fluent in Czech, French, German, and Slovak and has reading knowledge of Russian.

#5493

Waldo Martin

#153758

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Waldo E. Martin is an American historian. Life He received his BA degree from Duke University and his PhD from University of California Berkeley. Career He is currently the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of American History and Citizenship at the University of California in Berkeley.

#5494

Joel F. Harrington

#112425

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Joel Francis Harrington is an American historian of pre-modern Germany. He is currently Centennial Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He has published books for both scholarly and general audiences, and his work has been translated into thirteen foreign languages.

#5495

Craig Stockings

Craig Stockings

#146000

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Craig Anthony John Stockings is an Australian historian with research interests in military and defence history. Since 2016, Stockings has been Official Historian and general editor of the Official History of Australian Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Australian Peacekeeping Operations in East Timor, based at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Prior to this appointment, Stockings was an officer in the Australian Army and professor of history at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, working out of the Australian Defence Force Academy.

#5496

Raymond Wolters

#141486

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Raymond Reilly Wolters was an American historian. He was the Thomas Muncy Keith Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware, where he taught from 1965 until his retirement in 2014. He authored seven books. In 1985, his book The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel award, a decision that proved controversial because the book was accused of being racist.

#5497

Peter Caddick-Adams

#114267

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Peter Caddick-Adams TD, VR, FRHistS, FRGS is a British academic historian, author and broadcaster who is specialized in military history. He is known for books on 20th-century warfare, television work, and battlefield tours.

#5498

Tu Cheng-sheng

#119431

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Tu Cheng-sheng is a Taiwanese politician and historian. Tu served as the Minister of Education of the Republic of China during Chen Shui-bian's second term as President. Education and career Tu Cheng-sheng graduated from the Provincial Tainan Normal University in 1966. He also attended the National Taiwan University in 1970 and majored in history . He is a specialist in the history of ancient Chinese society, culture and medicine.

#5499

R. Lanier Britsch

#137589

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Ralph Lanier Britsch was a history professor at Brigham Young University who specialized in the history of missionary work by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , particularly in the Pacific Islands and Asia.

#5500

Sunhild Kleingärtner

Sunhild Kleingärtner

#172985

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Sunhild Kleingärtner is a German historian and archaeologist, specialising in maritime history and maritime archaeology. Career Kleingärtner was born in Wolfsburg, and began her studies at the University of Kiel in 1994. Her research focused on prehistoric archaeology, classical archaeology and art history. In 2000 she gained a Master of Arts degree, and thereafter worked as a research assistant at the Kiel Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology , where she took over the management of terrestrial and subaquatic excavations. In 2004 Kleingärtner gained her PhD from the University of Kiel, with a study of the archaeological finds at Hedeby harbour .

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions