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).

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List of the most influential people in History,

#5551

Arietta Papaconstantinou

#175578

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Arietta Papaconstantinou is Reader in Classics at the University of Reading and Associate Faculty Member in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is an expert in the religious, social and economic history of Egypt and the Near East during the transition from the Roman Empire to the Caliphate.

#5552

Paul A. Lombardo

Paul A. Lombardo

#23956

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Paul A. Lombardo is an American legal historian known for his work on the legacy of eugenics and sterilization in the United States. Lombardo’s foundational research corrected the historical record of the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell. He found Carrie Buck’s school grades and the grades of her child Vivian. He was the last person to interview her, and he discovered the pictures of all three generations of the Buck family. In 2002, he sponsored and paid for a memorial plaque that was installed in Buck’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.

#5553

Christopher Harvie

#135766

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Professor Christopher Harvie is a Scottish historian and a Scottish National Party politician. He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament for Mid Scotland and Fife from 2007 to 2011. Before his election, he was Professor of British and Irish Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

#5554

Diana Paton

#131568

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Diana Paton, is a British historian and academic. She specialises in the history of the Caribbean, including slavery, crime and punishment, gender history, and religion. Since 2016, she has been William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh. She previously worked at The Queen's College, Oxford and Newcastle University, where she rose to be Professor of Caribbean History before moving to Edinburgh.

#5555

Jane Whittle

#174654

Overall Influence

Jane C. Whittle, FRHistS, is a British agricultural historian, who has been Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Exeter since 2012. Career Whittle completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Manchester, graduating with a first-class degree in history in 1991. She then carried out her doctoral studies at the University of Oxford; her DPhil was awarded in 1995 for her thesis "The development of agrarian capitalism in England from c. 1450–c. 1580." She was then appointed to a lectureship in economic and social history at the University of Exeter in 1995, and ...

#5556

Peter M. Jones

#118702

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Peter M. Jones is professor of French history at the University of Birmingham. He is a specialist in the French Revolution, rural France, science and technology in the 18th century, and the history of Birmingham and the West Midlands in the 18th century.

#5557

Joseph Fornieri

#104299

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Joseph R. Fornieri is an American political historian and Professor of Political Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is an expert on the political ideology of Abraham Lincoln. Although Fornieri is primarily professionally focused on Lincoln, his works often contain echoes of ancient Greek society, Christian values, and allusions to significant Rochester figures .

#5558

Margarita Ivanovna Filanovich

Margarita Ivanovna Filanovich

#154860

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

Margarita Ivanovna Filanovich is a Soviet historian, archaeologist, and leader of a Tashkent archaeological expedition . Filanovich's research interests include history, the archeology of ancient and medieval Central Asia, the historical topography of cities, and the study of religious cults of the corresponding era. She drew attention to the settlement of Shashtepa as a promising object for the study of ancient urban culture in Tashkent .

#5559

Matt Delmont

#115567

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Matt F. Delmont is an American professor of history and author. He is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College and former Professor of History at Arizona State University and Scripps College.

#5560

Erik Kwakkel

#126877

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Erik Kwakkel is a Dutch scholar who specializes in medieval manuscripts, paleography, and codicology. He is a member of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine and, from 2012 through 2017, was a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences .

#5561

Wojciech Śleszyński

#138792

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Wojciech Śleszyński is a Polish historian and Dean of the History and Sociology Faculty at the University of Białystok. Director of the since 2017. Biography In 1996, he graduated from the History Department at the Białystok campus of the University of Warsaw. In 2001 he received his PhD at the Faculty of History and Sociology of the University of Białystok, based on the dissertation Propaganda i indoktrynacja władz sowieckich na Białostocczyźnie w latach 1939–1941 . In 2008 he received his habilitation at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with a dissertat...

#5562

Asad Q. Ahmed

#149886

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Asad Q. Ahmed is an American scholar who is the Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Culture and Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

#5563

David Steinmetz

#163396

Overall Influence

1936 - 2015 (79 years)

David Curtis Steinmetz was an American historian of late medieval and early modern Christianity. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Steinmetz received his BA in English from Wheaton College in Illinois and his BD from Drew University . In 1961 he was ordained an elder in the Methodist Church. He moved to Harvard University, where he took a Th.D. under the direction of the prominent Dutch Reformation historian Heiko Oberman. Before coming to Duke University, where he spent most of his academic career, he taught for five years at Lancaster Theological Seminary. At the Duke Divinity School, he served a...

#5564

Jeffrey Weeks

#115021

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Jeffrey Weeks is a gay activist and an historian and sociologist specialising in work on sexuality. Career Weeks is among the academics in the early period of gay men's studies in Britain that emerged from the Gay Liberation Front which he joined in 1970 and the Gay Left of which he was a founding member.

#5565

Graham Loud

#145983

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Graham Anthony Loud is a professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Leeds. Loud is a specialist in the history of southern Italy during the Central Middle Ages , and also in German history in the Staufen period.

#5566

Chris Ealham

#105297

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Chris Ealham is a British historian and hispanist. He is specialised in the history of anarchism in Spain. Biography Born in Kent in 1965. He earned a PhD in 1995 from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, reading a dissertation titled Policing the Recession: Unemployment, Social Protest and Law-and-Order in Republican Barcelona, 1930-1936, supervised by Paul Preston.

#5567

Klaus Zechiel-Eckes

#86979

Overall Influence

1959 - 2010 (51 years)

Klaus Zechiel-Eckes was a German historian and medievalist. Klaus Zechiel-Eckes graduated high school in 1978. From 1979 to 1990 he studied history and Romance and Middle Latin philology in Saarland University and the University of Freiburg. At Freiburg he was a student of Hubert Mordek's. In 1985 he sat the State Examination. In 1990 he received his doctorate in Freiburg in Medieval history with a thesis on the Concordia canonum of Cresconius. In 1998 he completed his habilitation in Freiburg in the fields of Medieval History and the historical sciences, with a focus on Florus of Lyon. He fo...

#5568

Bill Lubenow

#99431

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

William Cornelius Lubenow holds the chair of History at Stockton University, New Jersey. He serves as President of the North American Conference on British Studies, and Chairman of the American Associates Committee of Parliament History. Lubenow is also a member of the Reform Club. His many academic distinctions include: Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

#5569

Phyllis Weliver

Phyllis Weliver

#111102

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Phyllis Weliver is an American academic specializing in Victorian literature and music history. Career Weliver completed first degrees at Oberlin College, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the University of Cambridge, and her doctoral studies at the University of Sussex. She taught at Wilkes University, and is now Professor of English at Saint Louis University.

#5570

Apollos Okwuchi Nwauwa

Apollos Okwuchi Nwauwa

#171012

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Apollos Okwuchi Nwauwa is a Nigerian-born historian and professor of Africana Studies. He is currently the Director of Africana Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Nwauwa earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the then Bendel State University Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada, in 1989 and 1993 respectively. Nwauwa is a members of many learned societies and served as President of the Igbo Studies Association from 2010-2014. He is the current editor of OFO: Journal of Transatlantic Studies.

#5571

Tyler E. Stovall

#128285

Overall Influence

1954 - 2021 (67 years)

Tyler Edward Stovall was an American academic and historian. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 2017. Biography For me, history is the record not only of how things change, but how people make things change, how they act individually and collectively to create a better world. Stovall earned a degree in history from Harvard University in 1976. He earned a master's degree in 1978 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he also earned a doctorate in 1984 with a thesis that eventually was published as a book called The rise of the Paris Red Belt. He served as a...

#5572

Charles Cameron Ludington

#165517

Overall Influence

Charles Cameron Ludington FRHS is Visiting Associate Professor of Food Studies at New York University and formerly was Teaching Associate Professor at North Carolina State University. He specialises in the history of the wine industry in Britain, Ireland, and France.

#5573

Elizabeth Harvey

#181071

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Elizabeth Harvey is a British historian of 20th-century Germany. Harvey received her PhD in 1987 from the University of Oxford. Since 1987 she has held positions at the Universities of Salford, Dundee, Liverpool, and, more recently, Nottingham.

#5574

Sabine Holtz

#113088

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Sabine Holtz is a German historian who holds the position of Chair of Regional History at the University of Stuttgart. Since 2015, she has also been the head of the . Selected works

#5575

Otto Sibum

#161288

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Heinz Otto Sibum is a German historian of science, Hans Rausing Professor and Director of the Office for History of Science at the University of Uppsala. Biography H. Otto Sibum holds a doctoral degree in physics from Oldenburg University and his habilitation in history from the TU Braunschweig . He has been Director of Research at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin as well as Research Associate at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University . He was awarded best teacher at British Universities for his teaching of history of science at...

#5576

Rosemary A. Stevens

#91858

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

Rosemary A. Stevens is a historian of American medicine and health policy. Education Stevens received her Bachelor of Arts from St. Hilda's College and Master of Arts from Oxford University. She received her MPH in health services administration and policy and Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale University.

#5577

Ákos Moravánszky

#146047

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Ákos Moravánszky , is a Swiss-Hungarian architect, theorist, historian and Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Architectural Theory at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Moravánszky is regarded as one of the world's leading architecture historians of Central European architecture.

#5578

Rebe Taylor

#135149

Overall Influence

Rebe Taylor is an English-born Australian historian and author specialising in southeast Australian indigenous peoples and European settlement. Early life Taylor was born in London and came to live in Adelaide, South Australia with her family at the age of five. As a child she had several film roles, including in For the Term of His Natural Life and the Scott Hicks film, Sebastian and the Sparrow .

#5579

Laurence D. Smith

#136438

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Laurence D. Smith is an American psychologist, historian of psychology, philosopher of science, and emeritus professor at the University of Maine. He was trained in history and philosophy of science at Indiana University and history of psychology at the University of New Hampshire .

#5580

Sasha Turner

#175508

Overall Influence

Sasha Deborah Turner is a Jamaican-American historian who is an associate professor of history of at the Johns Hopkins University Department of the History of Medicine. Her research considers the history of the Caribbean, with a particular focus on enslavement and colonialism. She is co-president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History.

#5581

William O. Aydelotte

#126696

Overall Influence

1910 - 1996 (86 years)

William Osgood Aydelotte was an American historian focused on the British Parliament, a pioneer in applying the statistics to historical research. Aydelotte was one of the first historians elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The New York Times called him "an authority on British history". The National Academies Press called him "A leading figure in the development of social science history in the United States". Aydelotte served as the chairman of the University of Iowa history department.

#5582

Davison M. Douglas

#133549

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Davison McDowell Douglas is an American historian and jurist. From 2009 to 2020, he served as dean of the oldest law school in the United States, William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he has served on the faculty since 1990.

#5583

Dina Rizk Khoury

#140543

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Dina Rizk Khoury is a Lebanese-American historian, Guggenheim Fellow, Professor of History and International Affairs, at George Washington University and former President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

#5584

Musa Najafi

#38736

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Musa Najafi is an Iranian professor, historian, and author. He is the director of the Department of Political Thought and Philosophy at Islamic Azad University and directs the Ph.D. group in political science at Imam Khomeini Educational Research Institute, with a focus on issues in Iran. Najafi also heads the Research Institute of Culture and Islamic Civilization and Revolution, where he is head of the Department of Islamic Revolution Theory. Najafi is a former faculty member of the Department of the Political science at Tehran University.

#5585

Renate Tobies

#75568

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Renate A. Tobies is a German mathematician and historian of mathematics known for her biographies of Felix Klein and Iris Runge. Education and career Tobies grew up in East Germany, and studied mathematics and chemistry at Leipzig University. She completed a doctoral dissertation on the history of chemistry education, Die Entwicklung des allgemeinbildenden Chemieunterrichts auf dem Gebiet der DDR unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der ideologischen Erziehung , there in 1975. After briefly teaching pharmacy, she took a position in Leipzig's Institute for the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences, specializing in the history of mathematics.

#5586

James A. Field Jr.

#181211

Overall Influence

1916 - 1996 (80 years)

James Alfred Field Jr. was an American historian. He taught at Swarthmore College from 1947 to 1986, where he was the Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and International Relations. He specialized in American naval history and US foreign relations. He served in the US Navy from 1942 to 1946, and saw combat in the Pacific theater. He received his BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Harvard University.

#5587

Thomas E. Jeffrey

Thomas E. Jeffrey

#175461

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Thomas Edward Jeffrey was an adjunct professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he taught American History from the time period of the French-Indian War up until the Civil War. He is now retired from the National Park Service and the Edison Papers.

#5588

Laura A. M. Stewart

#181291

Overall Influence

Laura A. M. Stewart, FRHistS, FSA Scot, is a historian specialising in early modern British history, especially Scottish political culture, Anglo-Scottish relations and the Civil War. She is Professor in Early Modern History at the University of York.

#5589

Debora Shuger

#95443

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Debora Kuller Shuger is a literary historian and scholar. She studies early modern, Renaissance, late 16th- and 17th century England. She writes about Tudor-Stuart literature; religious, political, and legal thought; Neo-Latin; and censorship of that period.

#5590

Albert Prago

#104026

Overall Influence

1911 - 1993 (82 years)

Albert Prago was an American historian. Biography Albert Prago was born in 1911 in New York City in Latvian-Jewish family. In 1934 he joined the Communist Party and was involved in the battle of Belchite in March 1938 during the Spanish Civil War. In there, he served under Lincoln Brigade as an Anglo-American editor and interpreter. He was wounded in his thigh during the second battle and spent more than a year in a hospital with osteomyelitis. He came back to New York same year but still was politically active. He got his Ph.D. in history by the time he turned 65 from Union University and la...

#5591

Mark Ormrod

#99920

Overall Influence

1957 - 2020 (63 years)

William Mark Ormrod, was a Welsh historian who specialised in the Later Middle Ages of England. Born in South Wales, he studied at King's College, London, and then earned his Doctor of Philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford. He was employed at a number of institutions, eventually settling at the University of York where he became Dean of the History Faculty and director of the Centre for Medieval Studies. He researched and published widely, including nine books and over 80 book chapters. Ormrod retired in 2017 and died of cancer in 2020.

#5592

Helen Willa Samuels

#103772

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Helen Willa Samuels is an American archivist and scholar in archival studies. She is best known for her essay "Who Controls the Past", which introduced the concept of archival documentation strategy, and her book Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities.

#5593

Vincent Lemire

#149557

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Vincent Lemire is a French historian. In 1998 Lemire obtained the Agrégation for History. He received his doctorate in 2006 with his work La Soif de Jerusalem , which was published as a book in 2011. His book Jerusalem 1900, published in 2013, was translated into several languages. Lemire works as lecturer at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and director of the European Open Jerusalem project, funded by the European Research Council.

#5594

Frances Andrews

#179818

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Frances Elizabeth Andrews is a British historian who is professor of medieval history at the University of St Andrews. She is a specialist in the medieval church and its networks. Life Andrews is the managing editor of Brill's Medieval Mediterranean series and also the series editor for Boydell and Brewer's Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. She was President of the Ecclesiastical History Society .

#5595

Naman Ahuja

#69162

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Naman P. Ahuja is an art historian and curator based in New Delhi. He is Professor of Indian Art and Architecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where his research and graduate teaching focus on Indian iconography and sculpture, temple architecture and Sultanate-period painting. He is also the Editor of Marg, India’s leading quarterly magazine and journal on the arts, published from Mumbai. His studies on privately owned objects—terracottas, ivories and small finds—have drawn attention to a wide range of ritual cultures and transcultural exchanges at an everyday, quotidian level. ...

#5596

Matthew Hilton

#178669

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Matthew J. Hilton, FRHistS, is an academic social historian. Since 2016, he has been Vice-Principal for Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, where he holds a professorship.

#5597

Andrey Baykov

#42157

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (41 years)

Andrey Anatolievich Baykov is a Russian international relations scholar, Vice-Rector of Moscow State University of International Relations , editor-in-chief of the International Trends, Director of the Academic Forum on International Relations.

#5598

James R. Davila

#68297

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

James R. Davila is an American biblical scholar. He is Professor of Early Jewish Studies and former Principal of St Mary's College, St Andrews. A specialist in Second Temple Judaism and Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Davila is a Participant at the Enoch seminar and a member of the Advisory Board of the Journal Henoch.

#5599

Boubacar Barry

#167337

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Boubacar Barry is a Senegalese Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. He was the recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Studies Association, and he was selected as the 2016 honorary member of the American Historical Association.

#5600

George Rupp

#181425

Overall Influence

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