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,

#5601

Anna Bravo

#102527

Overall Influence

1938 - 2019 (81 years)

Anna Bravo was an Italian social historian and feminist. She was an associate professor of social history at the University of Turin, and a member of the Italian Society of Female Historians. She listed her research interests as holocaust and genocide Studies, cosmology , and philology.

#5602

Sandra Elaine Greene

#171208

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Sandra Elaine Greene is an American historian of West Africa and professor. She is Stephen '59 and Madeline '60 Anbinder Professor of African History and Chair of the History Department at Cornell University.

#5603

Grzegorz Strauchold

Grzegorz Strauchold

#166913

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Grzegorz Strauchold is a Polish historian, specializing in the history of the 20th century. Biography He is a graduate and research fellow of the Institute of History, University of Wrocław. Doctoral degree in humanities in the history obtained in 1993 on the basis of work: Poland indigenous population of the western and northern regions. Study journalism years 1944-1948 under prof. Wojciech Wrzesiński. Received a postdoctoral degree on the work of Western thought and its implementation in People's Poland in the years 1945-1957.Deals with the historical geography, history: political thought, the most recent, Western and Northern Territories in Poland after 1945.

#5604

Janneke Raaijmakers

#137716

Overall Influence

1973 - 2021 (48 years)

Janneke Ellen Raaijmakers was a Dutch historian of the Middle Ages who specialized in the formation of monastic communities and the role of religious objects in the cult of the saints, with a particular focus on Fulda and the Fulda monastery, founded by Saint Boniface.

#5605

Carolyne Larrington

#60956

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Carolyne Larrington is a Professor of Medieval European Literature and Official Fellow of St John's College at the University of Oxford. Her research has primarily been on Old Norse and medieval Arthurian literature. Her areas of focus have included how emotion and women are portrayed.

#5606

Robert Muchembled

#175411

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Robert Muchembled is a French historian. In 1967, he passed the Agrégation in history. In 1985 he was awarded a doctorate for his thesis on attitudes to violence and society in Artois between 1440 and 1600. In 1986 he became Professor of Modern History at Paris 13 University. He has written notably about witchcraft, violence and sexuality. Some of his works have been translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Croatian, Modern Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese.

#5607

María Teresa López Beltrán

#162846

Overall Influence

1950 - 2012 (62 years)

María Teresa López Beltrán was a Spanish historian and medievalist, a professor at the University of Málaga. Biography Born in Tétouan on 13 June 1950, her family soon moved to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. There she earned a licentiate in geography and history at the University of La Laguna, publishing her thesis Régimen jurídico de los molinos en el Valle del Ebro . In 1973 she began working at the University of Granada, where she was an assistant professor of legal history for three academic years, and started a thesis on poverty in legal regulations in modern Spain, which she never completed.

#5608

John Belchem

#179534

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

John Belchem is an emeritus British professor whose work covers popular radicalism in 19th-century Britain, Irish migration, the Isle of Man, and modern history. He has a special interest in the history of Liverpool. He was made a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1987 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

#5609

Pippa Catterall

#117340

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Pippa Poppy Catterall is a British academic historian who, since 2016, has been Professor of History and Policy at the University of Westminster. Her research has focused on twentieth-century history and politics, the mass media, conflict studies and nationalism.

#5610

Oleh Kozerod

#142991

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Oleh Joshua Kozerod is a political scientist and history researcher. He came from a Polish aristocratic family Kosyrod de Pyser coat of arms. Biography Kozerod was born in Ukraine, and has become a political scientist and history researcher. For many years he worked as a European reporter for several news agencies, including the World Jewish News Agency. Kozerod graduated from Kharkiv University in 1993, M.A. , Dnipropetrovsk University in 1996, Ph.D. and Donetsk University in 2009, D.Litt. He is Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethno-national Studies of the National Academy of Scien...

#5611

Sabine Wichert

#125134

Overall Influence

1942 - 2014 (72 years)

Sabine Wichert , was a German born poet and historian who lived in Northern Ireland Biography Born Sabine Wichert on 8 June 1942 in Graudenz, West Prussia which is now Grudziadz, Poland, Wichert was educated in West Germany. She studied in Frankfurt, Marburg, FU Berlin and Mannheim. She also studied at the London school of Economics and Oxford University in Britain. She first came to Belfast as a tourist.

#5612

Audun Dybdahl

#170934

Overall Influence

1944 - 2021 (77 years)

Audun Dybdahl was a Norwegian historian of the Middle Ages. He was professor of history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . Career and work Audun Dybdahl studied at the universities of Oslo and Trondheim, and earned his cand.philol. degree in 1968 and his dr.philos. degree in 1980 with a dissertation on mediaeval estate owners in Trøndelag. He was a specialist on Norwegian mediaeval history, and his major works included Fosens historie, Trøndelags historie and Klima, uår og kriser i Norge gjennom de siste 1000 år, a monograph on changing climate and crises over the past mi...

#5613

Colleen Joy Shogan

#98302

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (50 years)

Colleen Joy Shogan is an American author and academic serving as Archivist of the United States since May 17, 2023, succeeding Acting Archivist Debra Wall. Prior to her confirmation as Archivist, Shogan was the director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for White House History at the White House Historical Association.

#5614

James Kirby Martin

James Kirby Martin

#145310

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

James Kirby Martin is Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor of History at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas. A nationally recognized scholar in United States history, he is well known for his writings on various aspects of American military and social history, specifically the American Revolution, and the study of alcohol-related issues in the United States. In addition to his scholarly work and publications, Martin has advised and appeared on television programs aired on the History Channel and also advises New York-based Talon Films on historical issues. Recently h...

#5615

Peter Bacon Hales

#156568

Overall Influence

1950 - 2014 (64 years)

Peter Bacon Hales was an American historian, photographer, author and musician specializing in American spaces and landscapes, the history of photography and contemporary art. Biography Hales graduated from Haverford College in 1972, earning a BA in English and American Literature. After spending some time in New York working as a photographer and musician, he moved to Texas in the mid-1970s to begin his graduate education under the photographers Russell Lee and Garry Winogrand. Hales completed both his MA and PhD at the University of Texas, specializing in American Civilization under the tutelage of cultural historians William H.

#5616

Keith M. Wilson

#125544

Overall Influence

1944 - 2018 (74 years)

Keith Malcolm Wilson was a historian and author who was Professor of International Politics in the School of History at the University of Leeds. Wilson received a DPhil for his thesis The role and influence of the professional advisers to the Foreign Office on the making of British foreign policy from December 1905 to August 1914. He has written a number of books on British foreign policy during the 19th and 20th century.

#5617

Angela V. John

#171286

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Angela V. John FRHistS FLSW is a Welsh historian known for her biographies, particularly of women. She is President of Llafur: The Welsh People's History Society. Life John was born in 1948 and she was brought up in Port Talbot.

#5618

Phillip S. Paludan

#96278

Overall Influence

1938 - 2007 (69 years)

Phillip Shaw Paludan, was a professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield, and a leading authority on the life and presidency of Abraham Lincoln. He was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the son of Paul and Marguerite Shaw Paludan. Receiving his BA and MA degrees from Occidental College, he took his doctorate from the University of Illinois, where he studied under Harold M. Hyman. He taught at the University of Kansas for more than thirty years, and held visiting appointments at Rutgers University-Camden and University College, Dublin, Ireland. During this period he wrote...

#5619

Ann Fabian

#166471

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Ann Fabian is an American historian. Life She was born and raised in California. Career Fabian completed her B.A. in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale University. She is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University.

#5620

Muhammad Ishaq

#96481

Overall Influence

1910 - 2005 (95 years)

Muhammad Ishaq was a Bangladeshi historian and academic. Biography Ishaq was born in 1910, into a Bengali Muslim family in Hashimpur, Kandirpara, Ramganj, then part of the Noakhali District in Bengal Presidency. He completed his postgraduate studies in from University of Dhaka in 1937. He came into contact with Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, Kalika Ranjan Kanungo, Nalini Kanta Bhattasali, Mohitlal Majumdar, Charuchandra Bandopadhyay and Muhammad Shahidullah. He was the cultural secretary of the Salimullah Muslim Hall. He was the editor of his hall magazine too. During his student life he won the championship in the All India and Burma Inter University Debating Competition.

#5621

John W. Cell

#131362

Overall Influence

1901 - 2001 (100 years)

John W. Cell was an American historian. He was a professor of history at Duke University, and the author of several books, including one comparing segregation in South Africa and the United States. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986.

#5622

Miroljub Jevtić

Miroljub Jevtić

#27832

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Miroljub Jevtić is Serbian Politologist of religion and professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade. Career Jevtić graduated from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He received a master's degree from the University of Belgrade's Law School; his thesis was entitled ”Islamic understanding of war and the role of the Islamic Conference in preserving the peace”. Jevtić studied for his doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia. His thesis was titled ”Modern Jihad and war”. Jevtić began his academic ca...

#5623

Chandra de Silva

#98567

Overall Influence

Professor Chandra Richard de Silva is a Sri Lankan academic, historian and author. A lecturer of history at the Old Dominion University, de Silva has written a number of books on Sri Lankan history. Early life and family After his secondary education at St. Peter's College, Bambalapitiya, Chandra De Silva was educated at the University of Ceylon from where he received a BA degree in history in 1962. He received a Ph.D degree in 1968 from the University of London.

#5624

Eleanor Parker

#140786

Overall Influence

Eleanor Catherine Parker is a British historian and medievalist. Career Parker studied Old and Middle English and Old Norse Literature at the University of Oxford. she is lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford, and was previously a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities . She is a columnist at History Today. In May 2018, she published her first book, Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England. Her second book, Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England, was published in 2022, and was selected by The Times as one of the best books of 2022.

#5625

Durand Echeverria

#119149

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

Durand Echeverria was an American historian, studying and writing about French writers and eighteenth-century ideas about democracy. He also translated several historically-important French documents into English.

#5626

Russell Peck

#126336

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (92 years)

Russell A. Peck was an American medievalist, scholar of medieval literature, and author. At the time of his retirement in 2014, he was John Hall Deane Professor of English at the University of Rochester, where he began teaching in 1961.

#5627

Yu Dunkang

#130500

Overall Influence

1930 - 2019 (89 years)

Yu Dunkang was a Chinese philosopher and historian of Chinese philosophy, known for his research on Xuanxue and the I Ching. Denounced as a "rightist" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, he was banished from academia for twenty years. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, he became a research professor at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences , and was elected an honorary academician of the CASS.

#5628

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara

#151927

Overall Influence

1966 - 2015 (49 years)

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara was a historian and professor at Tufts University, where he held the Prince of Asturias endowed chair. He previously taught at Fordham University, where he held Magis Distinguished Professor and associate chair of the history department at Fordham University. He was a member of Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University until his death "of a pulmonary embolism caused by sepsis, which was related to a short but virulent and undiagnosed staph infection." At the time of his death researching on Spanish prisoners of war during the resistance ag...

#5629

Ori Kritz

#84321

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Ori Kritz is an Associate Professor and head of the Hebrew Language and Literature program at the University of Oklahoma, a part of the Judaic Studies department. She is a multilingual writer and speaker, specializing in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Jewish literature and in Jewish and Israeli humor.

#5630

Helen Gregory

#147031

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Helen Gregory is a prominent historian, author and retired public servant in and of Brisbane, Queensland Australia and its surrounds. She holds a BA from the University of Queensland and is a former adjunct professor of that institution.

#5631

Ross Gregory

#178983

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (92 years)

Ross Gregory is an American historian. Life He served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. He graduated from Indiana University earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. His doctoral advisor was the historian Robert H. Ferrell. He taught at West Virginia University Institute of Technology, and at Western Michigan University from 1966 to 2005.

#5632

Frank W. Stahnisch

#126241

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Frank W. Stahnisch is a historian of medicine and neuroscience at the University of Calgary in Canada, where he holds the endowed Alberta Medical Foundation/Hannah Professorship in the History of Medicine and Health Care. He is jointly appointed in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, and the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, and is a member of the Calgary Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the O'Brien Institute for Public Health. He has also received an adjunct professorship in the Department of Classics and Religion of the Faculty of Arts. His research ...

#5633

Andreas Pečar

#179313

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Andreas Pečar is a German historian of the Early modern period and a lecturer at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Life Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Pečar studied history and German language and literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the University of Cologne with a master's degree in 1997. From 1999 to 2001 he was a research assistant at the University of Cologne. He received his doctorate in 2002 with a thesis on the courtly nobility at the imperial court of Charles VI. His academic teacher was Johannes Kunisch. From 2001 to 2009 he was assistant at the Univ...

#5634

Daniel L. Overmyer

#115586

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Daniel L. Overmyer was a Canadian historian of religion and academic who was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Asian Studies and the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. Overmyer was a pioneer in the study of Chinese popular thought, religion, and culture; popular religious sects of the late traditional and modern periods and their texts; and local rituals and beliefs practiced in villages, especially North China.

#5635

Arthur Keppel-Jones

#166116

Overall Influence

1909 - 1996 (87 years)

Arthur Keppel-Jones was a South African and Canadian historian and science fiction writer. He was a senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand until he emigrated to Canada. Selected works

#5636

Yoaz Hendel

#90915

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (50 years)

Yoaz Hendel is an Israeli politician, journalist, author, publicist and public activist. Hendel served as Israel's Minister of Communications, as a member of Israel's Security Cabinet and Ministerial Committee for Legislation, a Member of Knesset and as Chairman of his Party . As of January 2023, Hendel is on a break from politics. He was originally elected as a member of the Blue and White alliance in 2019, before leaving to form Derekh Eretz and serve as its Chairman in March 2020. A military historian by training, Hendel previously worked as a journalist, was the chairman of the Institute for Zionist Strategies , and taught academic courses at Bar-Ilan University.

#5637

Fiona Paisley

#153984

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Fiona Kerr Paisley is a Scottish-born Australian cultural historian at Griffith University. Her research and writing focuses on Australian Indigenous, feminist and transnational history. Paisley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1958. During her childhood she moved with her family between Scotland and Australia. She settled in Melbourne where she completed a BA and DipEd at Monash University and then worked as a high school teacher, before studying for a MEd at the University of Melbourne. She then undertook a PhD at La Trobe University, successfully submitting her thesis, "Ideas Have Wings:...

#5638

Małgorzata Dąbrowska

#120188

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Małgorzata Dąbrowska is a Polish historian, Byzantinist, dean of the History Department at the University of Łódź. She specializes in Byzantine studies, specifically the topics of Byzantium and the West in 13th-15th centuries, mixed marriages in the Imperial family of the Palaiologoi, rivalry between the Palaiologoi and Kantakouzenoi families, the Empire of Trebizond and the Pontus, the relationship between Kingdom of Poland and Byzantium, as well as Polish contemporary history.

#5639

Liu Ts'ui-jung

#106344

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Liu Ts'ui-jung is a Taiwanese historian. Born in 1941, Liu attended National Changhua Girls' Senior High School in her hometown of Changhua. She graduated from National Taiwan University with a bachelor's degree in history in 1963, and commenced graduate study at NTU, earning her first master's degree in 1966. Liu worked as a research fellow at Academia Sinica until receiving a scholarship from the Harvard–Yenching Institute. She earned a second master's degree, followed by a doctorate at Harvard University. Liu returned to Academia Sinica after finishing her doctoral studies. She has taught...

#5640

Guy Pedroncini

#77771

Overall Influence

1924 - 2006 (82 years)

Guy Pedroncini was a French academic and military historian specialising in the First World War, and notable as the biographer of Philippe Pétain and for his work on the French army mutinies of 1917. He was born in Paris on 17 May 1924 and died on 11 July 2006, at the age of 82.

#5641

Steven Wilf

#84862

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Steven R. Wilf is a professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is an expert on intellectual property law, historical jurisprudence, and legal history. Education and career Born in Philadelphia, Wilf earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and his Ph.D. from the Yale Department of History in 1995. He has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and DADD guest professor at the Free University of Berlin. Most recently, he has served as Maurice Greenberg Visiting Professor at Yale Law School.

#5642

Edgeir Benum

#177770

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Edgeir Reidar Benum is a Norwegian historian. He was born in Verdal, and is the younger brother of athlete Pål Benum. He graduated from the University of Oslo with a cand.philol. degree in 1967, and worked as a scholarship holder there from 1968 to 1972. He then became a professor in history at the University of Tromsø from 1972 to 1980 and then at the University of Oslo since 1980. He has twice been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#5643

Ann Moyal

#58268

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Ann Veronica Helen Moyal AM FRSN FAHA was an Australian historian known for her work in the history of science. She held academic positions at the Australian National University , New South Wales Institute of Technology, and Griffith University, and later worked as an independent scholar.

#5644

Magnus Nyman

#181792

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Magnus Nyman is a Swedish historian and a Roman Catholic priest. Biography Nyman defended his thesis in 1988 in the history of ideas and learning at Uppsala University the thesis Press against freedom: Opinion formation in the Swedish newspapers and opinion breaks on minorities 1772–1786. His later research has, among other things, dealt with how the enlightenment was reported in Swedish press and about the Catholics' situation in Sweden during and after the Reformation. In addition to his academic career, Nyman has also worked as a priest, first in the Church of Sweden since 1973. In 1984 Ny...

#5645

Krzysztof Kościelniak

#100795

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Krzysztof Kościelniak – a Catholic priest, full Professor of History . Currently, a full professor at the Jagiellonian University, 1994-2021 the researcher and lecturer at the John Paul II Pontifical Academy in Kraków and in the Seminary of the Pauline Fathers in Kraków.

#5646

Robert Ashton

#146192

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

Professor Robert 'Bob' Ashton, FRHistS was a British historian specialising in early modern England. A leading authority on the House of Stuart, he was Professor of English history at the University of East Anglia. In addition, at various points in his academic career, he lectured at the University of Nottingham, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Oxford.

#5647

Emily Cockayne

#175029

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Emily Cockayne is a British historian, known for her work on sensory nuisance and material culture. Education Cockayne was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she took a first-class degree in history in 1994. She received the Members' History Prize in 1997. She wrote a doctoral thesis at Jesus College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Robert W. Scribner and Keith Wrightson, and was awarded her PhD in 2000. She was a Prize Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards lectured at the Open University. She is currently Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the Univers...

#5648

David Newbury

#137590

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

David Starr Newbury is the Gwendolen Carter professor of African studies at Smith College, Massachusetts. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1979 for thesis titled Kings and clans on Ijwi Island , c. 1780-1840 under the supervision of Jan Vansina. His academic work has three major foci within East and Central Africa. The first was pre-colonial societal transformation in the Kivu Rift Valley. The second was how a Rwandan famine in the late 1920s reinforced colonial rule. The final major focus was the transformation of a hunter-gatherer society in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo into an agricultural economy.

#5649

Josef Joachim Menzel

#172043

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Josef Joachim Menzel was a German historian. He was born on June 19, 1933, in Mühlsdorf near Neustadt, Germany . After 1945 he lived with his family in Münsterland. He graduated from high school in Recklinghausen, then he studied history, classical philology and German at the University of Münster and Heidelberg University. Later Menzel worked at the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. He obtained his PhD in 1962.

#5650

Jean-Claude Perrot

#149608

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Jean-Claude Perrot was a French historian. He specialized in urban history, economic politics, demography, and statistics. His studies focused around 18th-century France and he was a professor at the Sorbonne University Association and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He was also President of the French Institute for Demographic Studies.

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