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,

#5901

Cathérine Jami

#117006

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Catherine Jami is a French historian of mathematics specializing in Chinese mathematics. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , affiliated with the Centre for Studies on Modern and Contemporary China at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. She is the former president of the Association française d’études chinoises and of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine.

#5902

Kärin Nickelsen

#177204

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Kärin Nickelsen is a German historian of science whose works have included books on eighteenth-century botanical illustration, photosynthesis, and life-support systems for human spaceflight. She is a professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

#5903

David E. Kyvig

#169618

Overall Influence

1943 - 2015 (72 years)

David Edward Kyvig was an American historian, and Distinguished Research Professor at Northern Illinois University. Life Kyvig graduated from Kalamazoo College cum laude in 1966, and from Northwestern University with a Ph.D. in 1971. He taught at Kalamazoo College, University of Tromsø, the University of Akron, and Northern Illinois University.

#5904

Thomas J. Finan

#177404

Overall Influence

Thomas J. Finan, , is an American medieval historian and archaeologist, and presently Chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. He is formerly the Associate Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Director of the Walter J. Ong, S.J. Center for Digital Humanities and the Director of the Center for International Studies at Saint Louis University. Finan is a specialist in the history and archaeology of medieval Ireland, and has appeared in a number of popular formats as well as an Emmy-nominated documentary, True Gaelic, conce...

#5905

Patricia Hayes

#135624

Overall Influence

Patricia Hayes is a professor of the University of the Western Cape who focuses on various subjects tied to colonial photography. She has done work on colonial Namibian history and is currently researching political and documentary photography in South Africa while teaching African History, Gender and History, and Visual History.

#5906

Giselle Byrnes

#152820

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Giselle Margaret Byrnes is a New Zealand historian. She is the provost and assistant Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, New Zealand. Previous employment included the Waitangi Tribunal and as lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington.

#5907

Ronald Edsforth

Ronald Edsforth

#171453

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Ronald Edsforth is a visiting professor of history, and chair of globalization studies in the MALS Department at Dartmouth College. Edsforth has published several books, including The New Deal: America's Response to the Great Depression. He has also acted a consultant for the PBS documentary, America on Wheels.

#5908

Renate Howe

#147167

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Renate Thelma Howe is an Australian academic and historian. Her research and writing focuses on Australian social, urban and religious history. Howe was born in Melbourne, Victoria in 1939. She was educated at East Kew State School and University High School, matriculating in 1956. Her tertiary education included a BA from the University of Melbourne and further studies at University of Chicago. During her student years she was active in the Student Christian Movement and the ALP Club. She also spent two years on the Students' Representative Council. She was awarded a PhD in 1972.

#5909

Loida Figueroa Mercado

Loida Figueroa Mercado

#173843

Overall Influence

1917 - 1996 (79 years)

Loida Figueroa Mercado was an Afro-Puerto Rican intellectual who was a member of the mid-twentieth century movement known as the Generation of the 50s. She was one of the founders of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party's Pro-Independence Movement and a prominent member of the Central Committee of the party. After being asked to teach a course on Puerto Rican history and discovering there were no textbooks for students to study, she wrote a three volume history of the island, which is considered her most important work. She also wrote several texts questioning the methodology historians used to develop social histories of Caribbean nations.

#5910

Traugott Lawler

#96473

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

Traugott Francis Lawler is an American medievalist. He is an authority on English poet William Langland and Medieval English. Lawler is a professor emeritus of English at Yale University, where he served as the master of Ezra Stiles College and also as a lecturer in religion and literature.

#5911

John Brenkman

#143337

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

John Brenkman is an American historian of American literature, currently a Distinguished Professor and Department Chair at Baruch College of the City University of New York, and also a published author. He is also a founding editor of the Duke University journal Social Text.

#5912

Jayanta Kumar Ray

Jayanta Kumar Ray

#88919

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

Jayanta Kumar Ray was an Indian historian and National Research Professor. Awards and recognition Eminent Teacher Awards, University of Calcutta, 2014 National Research Professor, 2015 Selected publications Transfer of Power in Indonesia 1942-49, Bombay: Manaktalas, 1967.Security in the Missile Age, Bombay: Allied, 1967.Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1968.Portraits of Thai Politics, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972.Public Policy and Global Reality, New Delhi: Radiant, 1977.Administrators in a Mixed Polity, New Delhi: Ma...

#5913

Peter Coclanis

#182218

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Peter A. Coclanis is an American historian, currently the Albert Ray Newsome Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His current concerns are business history and has studied places such as the American South and Southeast Asia.

#5914

Jorge Rodriguez Beruff

#83254

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Dr. Jorge Rodriguez Beruff is a Puerto Rican historian who served as Dean of the College of General Studies of the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico . He previously chaired the Social Sciences Department in the same college. A graduate of York University in England, where he obtained his Ph.D. in political science, and UPR, where he obtained his B.A., also in political science, Dr. Rodríguez Beruff has written and edited numerous books, the most recent of which is having edited the Spanish-language edition of Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell's book The Stricken Land, originall...

#5915

Miguel Artola Gallego

#74664

Overall Influence

1923 - 2020 (97 years)

Miguel Artola Gallego was a Spanish intellectual and historian. He was born in San Sebastián, and died, aged 96, in Madrid. Artola Gallego was elected to medalla nº 34 of the Real Academia de la Historia on 20 March 1981 and took up his seat on 2 May 1982.

#5916

Susan Foley

#177622

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Susan Kathleen Foley is an Australian historian who specialises in French history, particularly in relation to French gender history, feminism and socialism. From 1992 to 2000, she published under her married name of Susan K. Grogan.

#5917

John Haywood

#93644

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

John Haywood is a British historian and author. A graduate of the universities of Lancaster, Cambridge and University of Copenhagen, Haywood has served as a lecturer at the University of Lancaster. He is the author of a number of books on the early history of Europe, and is considered an authority on Vikings and the Celts. Haywood is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

#5918

J. A. G. Roberts

#185731

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

John Anthony George Roberts is a British historian and a principal lecturer in history at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He has lectured extensively on the histories of China and Japan and has a special interest in Western perceptions of Chinese and Japanese society. He is the author of A History of China and China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West .

#5919

Bee Scherer

#20649

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Bee Scherer is a professor of Buddhist studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Previously, Scherer was professor of gender studies and religious studies at Canterbury Christ Church University. Scherer is the director of INCISE , which facilitates social justice research, and founded Queering Paradigms.

#5920

F. R. H. Du Boulay

#169778

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Francis Robin Houssemayne Du Boulay, FBA was a distinguished medieval historian and Fellow of the British Academy. Education Known as Robin Du Boulay, he was born at Chislehurst on 19 December 1920. He lived in Alexandria, Egypt, until he was 8 years old, where his father worked. He then gained a place at Christ's Hospital, and was subsequently awarded an exhibition to read history at Balliol College, Oxford.

#5921

Atina Grossmann

#110292

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Atina Grossmann is a professor at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Her research relates to transnational Jewish refugee stories "Soviet Central Asia, Iran, and India: Sites of Refuge and Relief for European Jews During World War II."

#5922

Judy Green

#87364

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Judith Green is an American logician and historian of mathematics who studies women in mathematics. She is a founding member of the Association for Women in Mathematics; she has also served as its vice president, and as the vice president of the American Association of University Professors.

#5923

Marjan Schwegman

Marjan Schwegman

#177414

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Maria Janna "Marjan" Schwegman is a Dutch historian who was managing director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies from March 2007 to 18 February 2016. Besides that, she is a professor in Politics and Culture in the 20th century at the faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University.

#5924

Keir Waddington

#178364

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Keir Waddington is professor of history at Cardiff University. He is a specialist in medical and environmental history. He is the joint editor of the Social Histories of Medicine monograph series. Selected publications An introduction to the social history of medicine: Europe since 1500. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2011.The bovine scourge: neat, tuberculosis and public health, 1850-1914. Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2006.Medical education at St. Bartholomew's hospital, 1123 - 1995. Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2003.Charity and the London Hospitals, 1850-1898. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2000.

#5925

Laura Toti Rigatelli

#96323

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Laura Toti Rigatelli was an Italian historian of mathematics, founder of the Center for Medieval Mathematics at the University of Siena, biographer of Évariste Galois, and author of many books on the history of mathematics.

#5926

Joan Hoff

#184103

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

Joan Hoff , also known as Joan Hoff-Wilson, is an American historian, research professor, editor, and author. She specializes in U.S. foreign policy, U.S. political history, biographies, women's history, and law history. Hoff is the former director of the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University. She has worked at California State University, Sacramento; Arizona State University; Indiana University; and Montana State University. She retired in 2001 and lives between Big Sky, Montana and New York City, as of 2003.

#5927

Frédéric Rousseau

#168233

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

see Frederick Rousseau, for the French new age musician, Frederic Rousseau for the Flemish biologistFrédéric Rousseau is a French historian, specializing in the social history of soldiers in World War I. He is notable as one of the first historians to discuss the suppression of sexuality in combatants, and early use of the term and view "demodernization" . He teaches at the University of Montpellier, and is a director of Laboratoire CRISES .

#5928

John Charlton

#174120

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

John Charlton , is a British historian working in the Marxist tradition. He was a founding member of the Newcastle Branch of the International Socialists and has been a member of the IS and Socialist Workers Party in York, Leeds and Newcastle. He is a visiting fellow in history at the University of Newcastle.

#5929

Léon-Ernest Halkin

#172924

Overall Influence

1906 - 1998 (92 years)

Léon-Ernest Emmanuel Marie Joseph Halkin was a Belgian historian, a supporter of the Walloon Movement, and a member of the Resistance during World War II. Life Léon-Ernest Halkin was born in Liège on 11 May 1906, the son of the classicist Léon Halkin and Elvire Courtoy. He was raised in an academic milieu, with both his father and his uncle Joseph Halkin professors at University of Liège, and was educated under the Jesuits at the Collège Saint-Servais. He matriculated at the university in 1923. In 1928 he won a travel bursary, using it to spend a year in Paris, where he followed the classes o...

#5930

Wojciech Paszyński

Wojciech Paszyński

#168943

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (40 years)

Wojciech Lucjan Paszyński is a Polish historian specializing in the history of science. Education Paszyński studied at the Jagiellonian University and at the Adam Mickiewicz University, where he obtained a PhD in history .

#5931

Lesley Cormack

#73947

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Lesley B. Cormack is a Canadian historian of science and academic administrator specializing in the history of mathematics and of geography. She is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of British Columbia's Okanagan Campus.

#5932

K. Tsianina Lomawaima

#185929

Overall Influence

#5933

Nadine Akkerman

#160237

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (47 years)

Nadine Akkerman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her published work has been concerned with the life and letters of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, and early modern espionage, and she has made a major contribution to studies of that Queen, the Thirty Years War, and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, by revisiting and editing original manuscript sources and letters.

#5934

Martha Hodes

#112496

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Martha Elizabeth Hodes is an American historian. She is a professor of History at New York University, and the author of several books. She won the Lincoln Prize in 2016. Early life and education Hodes was born on June 12, 1958. At the age of 12, she was taken hostage with her sister and hundreds of other people as part of the hijacking of TWA Flight 741 in September 1970. She and the rest of the hostages were eventually released.

#5935

Zhang Hongjie

#170072

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Zhang Hongjie is a Chinese writer and historian who works in the Institute of Qing History, Renmin University of China. He is a member of the China Writers Association. Biography Zhang was born in Jianchang County, Liaoning in April 1972. He completed his bachelor's degree in economic in Dongbei University of Finance and Economics. He earned his doctor's degree in history from the Institute of Chinese Historical Geography, Fudan University. He did post-doctoral research at the Department of History, Tsinghua University.

#5936

Olivia Remie Constable

#176700

Overall Influence

1960 - 2014 (54 years)

Olivia Remie Constable was an American historian. She was the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. Early life and education Remie Constable was born on June 13, 1961, in Boston to parents Evhy and Giles Constable. At the age of 16, she participated in an archaeological dig at the New Mexican Salmon Ruins as one of the youngest workers there. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from Yale University in 1983 and her PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1989.

#5937

Henning Albrecht

#180361

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Henning Albrecht is a German historian. Life From 2003 to 2006, Albrecht was a research assistant at of the University of Hamburg and was awarded his doctorate there in 2007 with his dissertation Antiliberalismus und Antisemitismus: Hermann Wagener und die preußischen Sozialkonservativen 1855–1873. He is a freelance scientific consultant for the magazine Geo and has published numerous books as a writer since 2008. In 2016, Albrecht published a comprehensive biography of the Hamburg 6, artist Horst Janssen, for which he did five years of research.

#5938

Rachel Judith Weil

#128452

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Rachel Judith Weil is a teacher and scholar, specializing in gender and culture in 17th and 18th century England. She is currently a professor of early modern English political and cultural history in the Department of History at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

#5939

Nils Kristian Heyerdahl

#157930

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Nils Kristian Heyerdahl is a Norwegian historian of ideas, theatre director and non-fiction writer. He was theatre director of Radioteatret in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation from 1991 to 2011, and is President of the Norwegian Academy from 2011.

#5940

Anna Schober

#168216

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Anna Schober is an Austrian historian and University Professor of Visual Culture at the Institute for Cultural Analysis of the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt. Biography Schober studied history, art history and political science in Vienna, Frankfurt and Colchester. In 2009 she got her postdoctoral habilitation at the University of Vienna with a thesis on aesthetic tactics as a means of political emancipation in modernity and the present.

#5941

Daniel Moulinet

#178864

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Daniel Moulinet is a French priest and historian, professor of contemporary history at the Catholic University of Lyon. Works Les Classiques païens dans les collèges catholiques ? Le combat de Mgr Gaume, , Paris, Le Cerf, 1995, 485 p.Sources et méthodes en histoire religieuse, Lyon, Profac, 2000, 192 p.Béatifiés de l’an 2000. Pie IX, Jean XXIII, Guillaume-Joseph Chaminade, Dom Columba Marmion, Tommaso Reggio, Paris, , 2000, 204 p.Guide bibliographique des sciences religieuses, Paris, Salvator, 2000, 488 p.Le Concile Vatican II, , Paris, Éditions de l’Atelier, 2002, 192 p.La Séparation des Égl...

#5942

Andrew Godley

#177250

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Andrew Godley is a British economist, and a professor of Management and Business History at the Henley Business School at University of Reading, where he is also Pro Dean of Resources and Partnerships. He is a Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University and Wharton School and Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

#5943

Saki Dockrill

#169342

Overall Influence

1952 - 2009 (57 years)

Professor Saki Ruth Dockrill , née Saki Kimura was a Japanese-British historian of modern international affairs, and Professor at King's College London. Born in Kyoto, she obtained an LLM from Kyoto University in 1976, a Masters in International Relations from the University of Sussex in 1982, and then joined the Department of War Studies at King's College London where she did her PhD on West Germany and its relationship with NATO. Her thesis was later published as Britain's Policy for West German Rearmament, 1950-1955. She then moved to be one of the first Olin Fellows at Yale University for...

#5944

B. R. Rees

#113622

Overall Influence

1919 - 2004 (85 years)

Brinley Roderick Rees was a Welsh academic. He wrote extensively on classics, particularly the study of the Greek language. His early work was devoted to Greek papyri; a later publication was devoted to the life and letters of Pelagius.

#5945

Louise Edwards

#176387

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Louise Edwards FHKAH is an Australian sinologist. Her work has focused on women and gender issues in China and Asia. As of 2022, she is Emeritus Professor of Chinese History at the University of New South Wales and an honorary professor at both the Australia-China Research Institute and the University of Hong Kong.

#5946

Lidia Milka-Wieczorkiewicz

#168030

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Lidia Anna Milka-Wieczorkiewicz is a Polish historian and diplomat, ambassador to Algeria and Tunisia . Life Education and academic work Milka-Wieczorkiewicz was born on 29 May 1956 in Niegoszowice. She graduated from high school in Dąbrowa Górnicza. Following her studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice, in 1979, she graduated in history from the University of Warsaw. She started academic career there. In 1988, she defended her doctoral thesis on France–Morocco relations. As a scientist, she has been interested in history of Middle East and North Africa countries. She has been carr...

#5947

Howard H. Bell

#153426

Overall Influence

1913 - 2012 (99 years)

Howard Holman Bell was a scholar of African American history. His book Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830-1864 was published in 1969. He wrote an introduction to the 1970 edition of Black Separatism in the Caribbean, 1860. Several of his articles were published in the Journal of Negro Education. He worked at the Library of Congress, Texas Southern University, Dillard University, Morgan State University, and Howard University.

#5948

Alison Brown

#186120

Overall Influence

Alison Brown is emerita professor in the department of history at Royal Holloway, University of London. Brown is a specialist in the history of Renaissance Italy. Selected publications Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, Chancellor of Florence: the humanist as bureaucrat. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1979.The Renaissance. London, Longman, 1988. Language and images of Renaissance Italy. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995. Contested Space: Street Trading, Public Space, and Livelihoods in Developing Countries. Rugby, ITDG Publishing, 2006.The return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambr...

#5949

Charles R. Hale

#161775

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Charles R. Hale is a scholar of Latin America, Africa, and the African diaspora. He was appointed Dean of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2018 and professor of global studies. He is a past president of the Latin American Studies Association . He earned an A.B. in Social Studies at Harvard College and his doctorate at Stanford University. His publications include two single-author books, which have been translated to Spanish, “…más que un indio ”: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala; and Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indian...

#5950

Henry Horwitz

#140517

Overall Influence

1938 - 2019 (81 years)

Henry Horwitz was an American historian specialising in late seventeenth century English politics. Academic career Horwitz was awarded a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1963 and a J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1982. He started working for Iowa University in 1963 and retired in April 2004.

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