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.
List of the most influential people in History,
#5501
Prodosh Aich
#50663
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (92 years)
Dr. Prodosh Aich is a retired Bengali-Indian professor, formerly of the University of Oldenburg, and the author of several books. He is chiefly known for his German language publication Lies With Long Legs, , that questions the foundations and veracity of Indology, Indologists, Aryans, Sanskrit, Hinduism, Indo-European-language families and race along with many more.
Go to Profile#5502
Rosemary Morris
#162362
Overall Influence
Rosemary Morris is a British historian specializing in Byzantium. Morris taught medieval history at the University of Manchester from 1974 to 2003, and subsequently became a visiting fellow at the University of York.
Go to Profile#5503
John Sadler
#136801
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
John Sadler is a British historian specialising in the Anglo-Scottish Border conflicts during the Middle Ages. Sadler is a regular contributor to military and historical journals and has published a number of books on the subject. Some of his books were written in collaboration with Rosie Serdiville. He has taught and tutored history as well.
Go to Profile#5504
Ze'ev Safrai
#94038
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Ze'ev Safrai is an Israeli Professor in the Department for Israel Studies in Bar Ilan University, as well as an author, lecturer and researcher of Israel in the Second Temple era. His main project is his authorship of the socio-historical commentary to the Mishnah called Mishnat Eretz Yisrael , which he began together with his late father Professor Shmuel Safrai and his late sister Professor Chana Safrai.
Go to Profile#5505
Ann Kettle
#157979
Overall Influence
Ann Julia Kettle is a historian and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Career Kettle has a BA and MA from the University of Oxford. She taught medieval history at the University of St Andrews for more than 40 years, during which her research focussed on English local history, history of women in the Middle Ages, and the social structure of mediaeval England. She was a member of the Scottish National Committee for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, published in 1997.
Go to Profile#5506
Thomas Goldstein
#122892
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Thomas Eugen Goldstein was a German-born American historian who wrote serial history books under the title of Dawn of Modern Science. He is also co-founder of the Society for the History of Discoveries. He left Berlin and moved to the United States during the Nazi regime in his early years.
Go to Profile#5507
Lyce Jankowski
#148712
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (43 years)
Lyce Jankowski is a numismatist, specialising in East Asia, and an art historian, specialising in Chinese material culture. Career Jankowski graduated in Classics , in Chinese , in Antiquity and in Art History .
Go to Profile#5508
Anya Jabour
#175350
Overall Influence
Anya Jabour is an American historian and Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana. She is known for her works on history of family and U.S. women's history. Jabour received the Helen and Winston Cox Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000.
Go to Profile#5509
Michael Brooks
#130856
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Michael Brooks is an American historian and investigative journalist. Brooks earned his PhD at the University of Toledo. Journalism As a journalist he wrote for the Toledo Free Press, which ceased publication in 2015, and his work has been published in a variety of local, regional and national periodicals.
Go to Profile#5510
Aline Helg
#147397
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Aline Helg is a historian, specializing in the history of slavery. She is known for her research and books on the history of revolutions, the Americas, the African diaspora, civil rights, racism and ethnicity.
Go to Profile#5511
Katie Stevenson
#171789
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Katie Stevenson PhD FRHistS FSA FSAScot is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and a professor of history, at Monash University. She is former Vice-Principal at the University of St Andrews, Keeper of Scottish History and Archaeology at National Museums Scotland, and former director of the Institute of Scottish Historical Research at the University of St Andrews. She has written several books on medieval Scotland including the New History of Scotland book, Power and Propaganda, Scotland 1306-1488 at Edinburgh University Press. In 2014 she was awarded a research medal for the Humanities and Creative Arts from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#5512
Dalenda Larguèche
#94196
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Dalenda Bouzgarrou-Larguèche , better known as Dalenda Larguèche, is a Tunisian historian specializing in the early modern period and women in Islamic societies. She is also a longtime political activist, particularly focused on the rights of women and other marginalized people.
Go to Profile#5513
Matthew Morgenstern
#57576
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Matthew Morgenstern, also known as Moshe Morgenstern , is an Israeli linguist and religious studies scholar known for his work on Eastern Aramaic languages, especially Mandaic. He is currently Full Professor in the Department of Hebrew Language and Semitic Linguistics at Tel Aviv University.
Go to Profile#5514
Amos Goldberg
#98334
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Amos Goldberg is a professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, also sitting on the institute's editorial board. He opposes the Working Definition of Antisemitism, saying that "It has become a tool to silence any criticism of Israeli politics, it has become a tool to silence free speech". Instead, he supports the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.
Go to Profile#5515
Mordecai Paldiel
#69087
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Mordecai Paldiel is a lecturer at Stern College and Queens College in New York. Early life and education Paldiel was born into a Hasidic family of Szlomo Wajsfeld, a diamond trader originally from Miechów near Kraków and Hinde from Uhnów as one of their five children before World War II. Thanks to a Catholic Priest who was able to smuggle them across the border, the family fled from Nazi occupied Belgium via France to Switzerland in 1940 when he was 3 years old. Later after the war the family emigrated to New York.
Go to Profile#5516
Peter Howell
#89423
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Peter Adrian Howell is a British academic and historian. Career Howell began his career in 1964 as an assistant lecturer at the University of London; he later was promoted to lecturer in the Latin Department at Bedford College, where he remained until 1985. He moved to the Classics Department of the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College as lecturer from 1985 until 1994, and as senior lecturer from 1994-99.
Go to Profile#5517
Alastair Hamilton
#82676
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Alastair Andrew Hamish Hamilton FBA is an English historian. Education The only son of the publisher Hamish Hamilton and his second wife Yvonne Vicino Pallavicino, Hamilton was educated at Eton College and read Modern Languages at King's College, Cambridge, proceeding MA in 1967. He received his PhD in Divinity in 1982.
Go to Profile#5518
Mel Byars
#100940
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Mel Byars , is an American design historian. Byars studied journalism in the 1950s at the University of South Carolina. He subsequently settled in New York City and eventually became active as an art director or creative director for a number of publishers, such as Prentice-Hall and McGraw-Hill, and for advertising agencies, including Leber Katz Partners . In the early 1980s, he studied anthropology under Stanley Diamond in the master's-degree program of The New School for Social Research. And, previously there, he was enrolled in the School of Media Studies.
Go to Profile#5519
Vera von Falkenhausen
#148638
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Vera von Falkenhausen is a German Byzantinist who lives and works in Italy. Life Vera von Falkenhausen pursued Byzantine studies at the University of Munich, where she made her thesis in 1966 under Hans-Georg Beck. She then spent the years 1968–1970 at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C., on a scholarship. Since 1974 she has been active as a professor of Byzantine history and literature at the universities of Pisa, Basilicata , Chieti, and finally at Rome Tor Vergata. Since 2007 she is a professor emerita.
Go to Profile#5520
Borisz de Balla
#176218
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Borisz de Balla , also known as Borisz Balla de Iregh, was a Hungarian journalist, historian, diplomat, novelist, and educator who taught in the United States after World War II. Born on August 19, 1903, in Petervarad, Hungary de Balla attended the University of Pécs, where he received the B.A. and Ph.D. , as well as Eötvös Loránd University, where he received an M.A. . His older brother, Valentine de Balla, was a political scientist at Loyola College in Maryland. His parents were Aladar de Balla and Dora Paul de Balla. Aladar was a former Minister of the Interior, member of parliament, an...
Go to Profile#5521
Anne Philomena O'Brien
#103840
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Anne Philomena O'Brien is an Australian historian and author who is a professor at the University of New South Wales. Early life Anne Philomena O'Brien was born in 1954 in Glenelg, South Australia, Australia. Her parents were Paul and Mary O'Brien. Anne was their fifth and youngest daughter.
Go to Profile#5522
Chia Youyee Vang
#91466
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Chia Youyee Vang is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research and writing deals with the Hmong diaspora, other Southeast Asian diasporas and refugees and on community-building efforts among Hmong people in the United States.
Go to Profile#5523
Carroll Van West
#172068
Overall Influence
Carroll Van West is an American historian. He is the Tennessee State Historian and a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author or editor of several books about Montana and Tennessee.
Go to Profile#5524
Emilie Savage-Smith
#65446
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Emilie Savage-Smith is an American-British historian of science known for her work on science in the medieval Islamic world and medicine in the medieval Islamic world. Education and career Savage-Smith was born on 20 August 1941, in the US, and became a dual citizen of the UK and US in 2003. She was an undergraduate at DePauw University, graduating in 1962, and completed her Ph.D. in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her doctoral dissertation, Galen on Nerves, Veins and Arteries, was a critical edition of book 16 of Galen's De usu partium corporis humani, including a translation f...
Go to Profile#5525
Robert M. Kingdon
#151107
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Robert M. Kingdon was an American historian of the Protestant Reformation. "Bob" Kingdon was born in Chicago and spent many of his early years in Hawaii. He completed his undergraduate education at Oberlin College before moving on to Columbia University where he earned a doctorate under the noted Tudor historian Garrett Mattingly.
Go to Profile#5526
W. Allyn Rickett
#114397
Overall Influence
1921 - 2020 (99 years)
W. Allyn Rickett was an American historian, and a professor emeritus of Chinese and Asian and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a published author. Rickett was an intelligence officer of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the end of World War II. Later, from 1948 he and his wife, Adele studied and gathered intelligence in Beijing until they were arrested by the Communists. They spent four years in prison in China and later published a book about their experiences under the title Prisoners of Liberation in 1957. The book was translated into many languages a...
Go to Profile#5527
J. Bruce Jacobs
#102506
Overall Influence
1943 - 2019 (76 years)
Jeffrey Bruce Jacobs was an American-born Australian orientalist who specialized in Taiwan studies. He taught at La Trobe University before joining the faculty at Monash University as professor of Asian languages and studies, where he was granted emeritus status upon retirement. In Taiwan, he was known as Chia Po , a simplified transliteration of his surname, or by the nickname Big Beard .
Go to Profile#5528
Lars Ivar Hansen
#180501
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Lars Ivar Hansen is a Norwegian historian. He was employed at the University of Tromsø in 1976 and took the dr.philos. degree, specializing in Sami history. He became professor in 1991. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#5529
Roger Lawrence Williams
#120838
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Roger Lawrence Williams , was an American historian with major interests in French political history, particularly the Second Empire associated with Napoleon III. He served on the faculty in History departments at several universities, becoming department head at three. He was a founding member of the Society for French Historical Studies. In later years he developed a keen interest in botany, and wrote extensively on that subject, especially its early history in France. Williams did not marry and left his estate to the Wyoming Community Foundation.
Go to Profile#5530
Char Miller
#152053
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Franklin Lubbock "Char" Miller IV is an American historian and environmental analysis scholar. He is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College and the director of the Claremont Colleges' environmental analysis program.
Go to Profile#5531
Dorothy Y. Ko
#117636
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Dorothy Ko is a Professor of History and Women's Studies at the Barnard College of Columbia University. She is a historian of early modern China, known for her multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional research. As a historian of early modern China, she has endeavored to engage with the field of modern China studies; as a China scholar, she has always positioned herself within the study of women and gender and applied feminist approaches in her work; as a historian, she has ventured across disciplinary boundaries, into fields that include literature, visual and material culture, science and te...
Go to Profile#5532
Matthew Smith Anderson
#168411
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Matthew Smith Anderson was professor emeritus of international history at the London School of Economics. Selected publications Britain's Discovery of Russia 1553–1815 War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime, 1618–1789. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919Historians and eighteenth-century Europe, 1715–1789 Peter the Great Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713–1783 The Origins of the Modern European State System
Go to Profile#5534
Phyllis Richmond
#169838
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Phyllis Allen Richmond was a historian of science and librarian recognized for her work in classification and cataloging. Her dissertation "Americans and the Germ Theory of Disease" was a leading theory of history of medicine for nearly 40 years and she later published seminal work in classification theory.
Go to Profile#5535
Arnold R. Highfield
#143120
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Arnold Ray Highfield was an American professor, historian, writer, and poet, best known for his historical works on the Danish West Indies and the United States Virgin Islands. Early life and personal life Arnold Highfield, the eldest of two children, was born in New Boston, Ohio, to Arnold Ray Highfield, a steelworker, and his wife Hazel Nichols Highfield. His father died in an auto accident in November 1941; Arnold and his brother were raised by their mother and paternal grandparents, Clarence Riley Highfield and Roxie Frye Highfield. Highfield earned a BA in Social Sciences and History from Ohio State University in 1964 and an MA in [Medieval History] in 1966.
Go to Profile#5536
Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos
#142473
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos is an Israeli historian who researches early modern Europe. As of 2020, she is an associate professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Biography Krausman Ben-Amos is a social and cultural historian of early modern Europe, particularly early modern England. She studied for a BA and MA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and she gained her Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1986. Her topics of interest include the history of childhood and family, networks, social interactions and reciprocity, gift exchange, poverty, welfare and the history of the ...
Go to Profile#5537
Kathleen M. Brown
#180594
Overall Influence
#5538
Bahia Shehab
#107928
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Bahia Shehab is an Egyptian multidisciplinary artist, designer, historian, creative director, educator and activist based in Cairo. Her work is concerned with identity and cultural heritage, and uses Islamic art history and in particular Islamic calligraphy and graphic design to explore contemporary Arab politics, feminist discourse and social issues.
Go to Profile#5539
Henry Robert Frankel
#172352
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
Henry Robert Frankel was an American philosopher and historian of science noted for his historical and philosophical analysis of the continental drift controversy and subsequent discovery of plate tectonics. He was emeritus professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Frankel earned his Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and his PhD from the Ohio State University. == Work ==
Go to Profile#5540
Hugh Segal
#89533
Overall Influence
1950 - 2023 (73 years)
Hugh Segal was a Canadian political strategist, author, commentator, academic, and senator. He served as chief of staff to Ontario Premier Bill Davis and later to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Segal resigned from the Senate of Canada on June 15, 2014, as a result of his appointment as master of Massey College in Toronto.
Go to Profile#5541
Kenneth F. Schaffner
#89856
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Kenneth Francis Schaffner is an emeritus Distinguished University Professor, University Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He specializes in the history and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#5542
John E. Flint
#160484
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
John E. Flint was an historian of Dalhousie University who was known for his work on the history of colonialism in Africa. Early life John Edgar Flint was born in Montreal, Canada. He received his advanced education in England, graduating from Cambridge University and London University .
Go to Profile#5543
Keith A. P. Sandiford
#90049
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Keith Arlington Patrick Sandiford GCM is a Barbadian-born Canadian historian. He has been professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba since 2002. Life and career Keith Sandiford was born in Barbados and educated at Combermere School in Bridgetown. He received a BA from the University College of West Indies in 1960, an MA from the University of Toronto in 1961, and a PhD from the University of Toronto in 1966. He married Lorraine Small in 1963, and they have two children.
Go to Profile#5544
Samuel Preston Bayard
#110709
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Samuel Preston Bayard was an American folklorist and musicologist. He received a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1934 and later earned an M.A. from Harvard University. He collected fiddle and fife tunes in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia from 1928 to 1963. He is known for his interest in the melodies of traditional music at a time when often only the texts were collected. He introduced the concept of "melodic families", which are groups of tunes that appears to be structurally related. He traced the origins of many traditional American fiddle tun...
Go to Profile#5545
Joseph Adebowale Atanda
#155688
Overall Influence
1932 - 1996 (64 years)
Joseph Adebowale Atanda was a Nigerian native of Eruwa, in Oyo State, Nigeria. He obtained his B.A. in History in 1964 from the University of London and a PhD. in history in 1967 from the University of Ibadan.
Go to Profile#5546
Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt
#100796
Overall Influence
Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Sr., is a historian. He has been a professor at the University of Iowa since 1975. For most of his academic career, he has focused his research and writing on the historical mystery: "the end of shorter hours,” asking why after over a century of steady work reductions, during which work hours were cut nearly in half, shorter hours were considered an essential part of human progress, and most people expected the process to continue, did working hours stop getting shorter and the dream of increasing free time disappear?
Go to Profile#5547
Quentin Anderson
#64952
Overall Influence
1912 - 2003 (91 years)
Quentin Anderson was an American literary critic and cultural historian at Columbia University. His research focused on 19th-century American authors, especially Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, and their attempts to define American identity as both connected to and differentiated from European precedents.
Go to Profile#5548
Sonja Brentjes
#60745
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Sonja Brentjes is a German historian of science, historian of mathematics, and historian of cartography known for her work on mapmapking and mathematics in medieval Islam. Education and career Brentjes is the daughter of archaeologists, orientalists, and Islamists and Helga Wilke Brentjes.
Go to Profile#5549
Damon Mayaffre
#63414
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Damon Mayaffre born in 1970 is a French academic, historian and linguist, specializing in the analysis of political discourse. He is the author of several books on contemporary French presidential speeches evaluated scientifically and statistically via software-supported analysis.
Go to Profile#5550
Bridglal Pachai
#121675
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Bridglal Pachai was a South African-born Canadian educator, historian and author. Born in Umbulwana, Natal, he went to school in nearby Ladysmith, and later graduated with a doctorate in 1963. Career Pachai earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from the University of South Africa and a Ph.D. in History, from the University of Natal. His thesis was the twenty-one years that Mahatma Gandhi spent in South Africa from 1893 to 1914. From 1947 to 1962 he worked as a school teacher for the Department of Education in Natal, South Africa.
Go to Profile