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,

#6051

Piotr Iwaszkiewicz

Piotr Iwaszkiewicz

#157272

Overall Influence

1959 - 2021 (62 years)

Piotr Ignacy Iwaszkiewicz was a Polish political historian, translator and diplomat, serving as ambassador to Uzbekistan . Life Piotr Iwaszkiewicz was born in 1959 in Lublin. In 1984, he earned his master's degree in classical philology at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of History. Between 1980 and 1983 he was president of the Faculty students' union. Between 1981 and 1992 he was member of the Solidarity trade union.

#6052

Arthur Norberg

#141246

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Arthur Lawrence Norberg was an American historian of science and technology who had been Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota since 2005. Previously, he held the ERA Land-Grant Chair in History of Technology at the University of Minnesota, where he was a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Charles Babbage Institute. Much of his research is on the history of computing. In June 2006, to commemorate Norberg's retirement as director of the Charles Babbage Institute, a symposium was held at the Institute in his honor; some of the papers presented there were later publish...

#6053

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser

#179641

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Elizabeth DePalma Digeser is an American scholar of Ancient Roman history, with an emphasis on late antiquity. After earning a B.A. in Psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1981 and a M.A. in Psychology at the Johns Hopkins University in 1983, she moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara where she earned her Ph.D. in History

#6054

Seth Rockman

#182381

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Seth Rockman is an American historian. He is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the recipient of the Merle Curti Award and the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for his 2009 book Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore.

#6055

Beth Holmgren

#177210

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Beth Holmgren is an American literary critic and a cultural historian in Polish and Russian studies. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University. Recognised for her scholarship in Russian women's studies and Polish cultural history , she is working on a multicultural history of fin-de-siecle Warsaw. Before coming to Duke, she taught at the University of California-San Diego and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . She earned her B.A at Grinnell College, and two master's degrees and and her doctoral doctorate at Harvard Univer...

#6056

Antonella Romano

#173587

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Antonella Romano is a French historian of science known for her research on science and the Catholic Church, and in particular on the scientific and mathematical work of the Society of Jesus in the Renaissance. She is full professor at the for research in the history of science at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, the former director of the center, and a vice-president of EHESS.

#6057

Hélène Cuvigny

#170057

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Hélène Cuvigny, , is a French papyrologist, specialist of the eastern Egyptian desert in Roman times. Biography As part of a research project of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo, she was entrusted in 1994 with the exploration of the Roman garrisons network marking out the paths connecting Qift , on the Nile, to the ports of Qusayr al-Qadîm and Berenice on the Red Sea.

#6058

Emil Cesar

#169060

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Emil Cesar was a Slovenian literary historian, editor, and a former professor at the University of Ljubljana. Life and work Emil Cesar was born on 16 August 1927 in Ljubljana as the son of Jernej Cesar, a locomotive engineer from Kal pri Mirni Peči, and Marija Cesar . He graduated in 1947 and furthered his studies at the University of Ljubljana, where he graduated in Slovene language and literature in 1953. After his graduation he became a middle school teacher. In 1977 he started lecturing contemporary Slovene literature at the Faculty of Education at the University of Ljubljana. He completed his Ph.D.

#6059

Luce López-Baralt

#100294

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Luce López-Baralt is a prominent Puerto Rican scholar and essayist and a professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. Academic career Many of her books and articles present for discussion the mystical literature and religious practices of Spain, renaissance and medieval , i.e., both Christian and Muslim. She acknowledges the influence of the early 20th century Spanish Arabist, the Rev. Miguel Asín Palacios, among others. In particular, she has followed traces of the trail that show a fruitful interaction between Muslims and Christians in Iberia, e.g., as it affected San Juan de la Cruz and Santa Teresa de Ávila.

#6060

John A. DeNovo

#141913

Overall Influence

1916 - 2000 (84 years)

John August DeNovo was an American historian. He was a leading scholar in the field of U.S.-Middle East relations. Biography He was born in Galva, Illinois in 1916, and attended Knox College for his B.A., graduating in 1938. He then attended the University of Minnesota and received an M.A. in history in 1940. He served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during World War II, and was for a time Port Director in Nouméa, New Caledonia. Following the war he attended Yale University for his PhD under the direction of Samuel Flagg Bemis, and graduated in 1948.

#6061

Norman Ravitch

#183307

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Norman Ravitch is a professor emeritus of history at University of California, Riverside. He has written books, as well as occasional pieces for the Rockwell Foundation and other libertarian think-tanks.

#6062

Akira Nakamura

#163250

Overall Influence

1934 - 2010 (76 years)

Akira Nakamura was a Japanese academic of English literature and self-trained historian specialising in Japan's wartime role in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Tokyo, Nakamura studied English literature and graduated from University of Tokyo in March 1959. He worked as a senior high school teacher of English until he clashed with the school principal. From April 1964 onwards he lectured at the newly founded Dokkyo University on a full-time basis until his retirement in March 2005 to become an emeritus professor. A representative of Showa History Research Institute, he frequently jo...

#6063

Rachel Koopmans

#103623

Overall Influence

Rachel M. Koopmans is an American–Canadian academic and author specializing in medieval history. She is an associate professor of history at York University and a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada. She was part of a research team that discovered that two stained glass panels at the Canterbury Cathedral, thought to be late Victorian panels, instead dated to the 1180s.

#6064

Alan Powell

#174912

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Alan Walter Powell was a historian and author of Northern Territory history. Career Alan Powell was the Dean of the Arts Faculty at the Northern Territory University, now Charles Darwin University, and later Emeritus Professor of History and Political Science at CDU.

#6065

Nicholas J. Miller

#186098

Overall Influence

Nicholas J. Miller is an American Professor of History at Boise State University. Miller received a B.A. in History from UC Santa Barbara and his M.A. and PhD from Indiana University. Miller's work and research focuses on the lands of the former Yugoslavia. He has received fellowships from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has written articles on Croatian and Serbian history.

#6066

Jacques de Caso

#100635

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (97 years)

Jacques de Caso is a French-born American historian who specializes in the literature and history of pre-modern art in Europe, principally late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and German neo-classicism and Romanticism.

#6067

Jan Láníček

#168895

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (44 years)

Jan Láníček is a Czech historian who studies Czechoslovak Jewish history in the twentieth century and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. He graduated from Palacký University Olomouc and received his doctorate from the University of Southampton . He is currently a lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is the co-editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies. He was the Vice-President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies.

#6068

Kathryn Gleadle

#185166

Overall Influence

Kathryn Jane Gleadle is an academic historian specialising in the experiences of British women in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In 2015, she was appointed a Professor of Gender and Women's History by the University of Oxford.

#6069

Duncan Tanner

#116205

Overall Influence

1958 - 2010 (52 years)

Duncan Tanner was a political historian and academic. His best-known work covered the British Labour Party and voting in the early 20th century. He held the post of director of the Welsh Institute for Social and Cultural Affairs at Bangor University.

#6070

Martin Conway

#155841

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Martin Conway is British historian with a focus on the history of Europe in the 20th century. He is a Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford. His research has also focused on the political history of Belgium. He is the MacLellan-Warburg Fellow and a Tutor at Balliol College, Oxford, and a Fellow of Aberystwyth University. Conway is also a researcher on the history of democracy.

#6071

Denyse Baillargeon

#183568

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Denyse Baillargeon, born in Verdun in 1954, is a Canadian historian and specialist in the social history of women, the family, and health in Québec. She was a professor of history at the Université de Montréal from 1994 to 2018.

#6072

Nicholas Watson

#114706

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Nicholas Watson is an English-Canadian medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author. He is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard English Department.

#6073

Douglas Bruster

#178596

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Douglas Bruster is an American literary critic and Shakespeare scholar. He is the Mody C. Boatright Regents Professor of American and English Literature and Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas at Austin where he researches the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

#6074

Beth Bailey

#187179

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Beth Bailey is an American historian who writes about U.S. military history and the history of gender and sexuality. Bailey is currently a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, where she teaches in the department of history and directs the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies, which she founded in 2015.

#6075

Julian Chrysostomides

#170955

Overall Influence

1928 - 2008 (80 years)

Julian Chrysostomides was a Greek historian of Istanbul. She lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London for nearly 30 years, and was instrumental in establishing it as a centre of Byzantine studies. She served for ten years as director of the Hellenic Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, transforming it into a centre for interdisciplinary research into Greek and Byzantine history.

#6076

Yvonne Dold-Samplonius

Yvonne Dold-Samplonius

#59960

Overall Influence

1937 - 2014 (77 years)

Yvonne Dold-Samplonius was a Dutch mathematician and historian who specialized in the history of Islamic mathematics during the Middle age. She was particularly interested in the mathematical methods used by Islamic architects and builders of the Middle Ages for measurements of volumes and measurements of religious buildings or in the design of muqarnas.

#6077

Abraham Bos

#81515

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Abraham P. Bos is a retired professor in Ancient and Patristic philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, specializing in the philosophy of Aristotle His doctoral thesis in 1971 was "Een onderzoek naar de kosmologie van Aristoteles in de eerste jaren van zijn wijsgerige activiteit" His inaugural lecture in 1976 was "Providentia Divina: The Theme of Divine Pronoia in Plato and Aristotle"

#6078

Elżbieta Trela-Mazur

Elżbieta Trela-Mazur

#121730

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Elżbieta Trela-Mazur is a Polish historian, author, Doctor of Humanities in contemporary history, and Professor in the Department of International Relations at Opole University, specializing in political history of modern world with emphasis on the history of Germany, Russia and the Soviet Union; totalitarianism, Sovietization of the Eastern Borderlands, Polish diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, as well as Central and Eastern Europe in general.

#6079

Bojan Dimitrijević

#178424

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Bojan B. Dimitrijević is a Serbian historian and politician. A former member of the Democratic Party , he was a vice-president of Serbia Centre from 2022 to 2023. Early life and education Dimitrijević was born in 1968 in Belgrade, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia. In 1994, he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade and obtained his master's degree with a thesis titled "The Yugoslav Army in the Homeland in the Valjevo Region 1941-1945". He obtained another master's degree in 1996 at the Central European University in Budapest with a thesis titled "Royalist Resistance in Northwestern Serbia 1941—1945".

#6080

Marilyn J. Boxer

#177978

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (95 years)

Marilyn J. Boxer is a historian in the field of women's studies, one of the earliest in that field. She served as chair of the women's studies program at San Diego State University, the first program of its kind in the U.S., and later in various academic and administrative leadership roles there and at San Francisco State University.

#6081

Margaret Hayes-Robinson

#180187

Overall Influence

Margaret Hayes-Robinson was a British historian and the head of Royal Holloway's History Department between 1899 and 1911. Life and education Margaret Hayes Robinson was born April 7, 1876, to Reverend Richard Hayes Robinson in Bath, England. She later attended the prestigious Cheltenham Ladies' College in Gloucestershire.

#6082

Hu Zhaoxi

#181022

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Hu Zhaoxi was a Chinese historian who specialized in the history of Sichuan and the history of the Song dynasty. He was a professor at Sichuan University, where he served as Dean of the Graduate School, Director of the Sichuan University Library, and President of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences.

#6083

Henk van Nierop

#185719

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Hendrik Frans Karel van Nierop is a historian of early-modern Holland and professor emeritus of the University of Amsterdam. Career Nierop took part in student demonstrations in Amsterdam in May 1969, occupying the university's administrative centre. He graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1974 and in 1984 obtained a doctorate from Leiden University with a thesis on the transformation of Holland's ruling class between 1500 and 1650. He taught at the University of Amsterdam, where in 1999 he was appointed Professor of Early Modern History. He was the director of the Amsterdam Centre f...

#6084

O. A. Akinyeye

#178404

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Olajompo Abayomi Akinyeye is a Nigerian professor of history at University of Lagos, Nigeria. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of military history, strategic studies, international relations and diplomacy, comparative foreign policy, and regional integration. He is a widely published author, with several monographs, and dozens of scholarly articles appearing in various edited volumes and high-impact academic journals.

#6085

David Walker

#161729

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

David Robert Walker is an Australian academic historian who has been the professor of Australian studies at Deakin University since 1991. He is a leading authority in the study of Australian perceptions of Asia.

#6086

Jim Dingley

#166654

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Jim Dingley is a researcher and promoter of Belarusian culture in the UK as well as a translator of Belarusian literature. Early life Dingley was born in Leeds on 24 March 1942. After studies of Russian and other Slavonic languages at the University of Cambridge, he became a lecturer at the University of Reading and then the University of London.

#6087

Annie Nicolette Zadoks-Josephus Jitta

#185113

Overall Influence

1904 - 2000 (96 years)

Annie Nicolette Zadoks-Josephus Jitta was a Dutch numismatist and archaeologist. Early life and education Annie Nicolette Josephus Jitta was born in Amsterdam in 1904. Her Jewish family originated in Bamberg in Bavaria, but moved to Amsterdam in 1812, where her ancestor Nathan Joseph adopted the surname Jitta in response to Louis Bonaparte's edict that all inhabitants of the Low Countries should be registered with a family name. She attended schools in Amsterdam , Utrecht and The Hague, before taking an art history degree at the University of Leiden. She gained her PhD in 1932 under the supervision of Professor G.

#6088

Qiu Shusen

#182844

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Qiu Shusen was a Chinese historian who specialized in the history of the Mongols and the Yuan dynasty, and the history of China's ethnic minorities, especially the Hui people. He served as Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Nanjing University, North Minzu University, and Jinan University.

#6089

Peter Lewis Allen

#125773

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Peter Lewis Allen is an American former academic, whose research concerns included culture, history, and sexuality. Education and career Allen earned a B.A. in classics and English from Haverford College, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Chicago. He taught literature for a time at institutions including Princeton University, the University of Southern California, and Pomona College. He went back to earn an M.B.A. from the Wharton School in 2000, at which time he left academia for the business world. He has held positions at McKinsey & Company, at Google Universi...

#6090

Onésimo Díaz Hernández

Onésimo Díaz Hernández

#188281

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Onésimo Díaz Hernández is a Spanish historian known for his publications regarding the history of Spain in the twentieth century. Career Díaz studied History at the Complutense University in Madrid, the University of Navarra , and the University of the Basque Country and holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Basque Country as well as a Ph.D. in Church History from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome .

#6091

Marie Favereau

#186253

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Marie Favereau Doumenjou is a French historian and writer. She currently teaches medieval history at Paris Nanterre University, and specialises in the history of the Mongol Empire and Islamic history. She has published several books. Her 2021 book, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World, was published to critical acclaim, being nominated for the Cundill Prize, the Prose Award in World History by the Association of American Publishers, and listed as a notable book of the year by several publications.

#6092

Eric W. Robinson

#144873

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Eric W. Robinson is an American historian of ancient Greece, specializing in early democracy. He is currently a professor at Indiana University. In 1986, he graduated with a BA from Yale University. After studying under noted historian Donald Kagan as an undergraduate, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. From 1999 to 2006, Robinson was an associate professor at Harvard University, where he won the Roslyn Abramson Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching.

#6093

Petr Druzhinin

#174988

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Petr A. Druzhinin ; Russian–Israeli historian and author, an expert in rare books and manuscripts; PhD in history. Research fellow of the Tel Aviv University and Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

#6094

Michel Laurencin

#160775

Overall Influence

1944 - 2023 (79 years)

Michel Laurencin was a French academic and historian who specialized in the history of Touraine. Biography After earning an agrégation and a doctorate in literature, Laurencin became a teacher at the Lycée d'Amboise before moving to the in 1972. In 1975, he became a professor at Cairo University, at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni in 1978, the Prytanée national militaire in 1984, and the in 1996.

#6095

Caroline Ford

#186507

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Caroline Cole Ford is an American historian. She is a Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Early life and education Ford was born in Baghdad, Iraq but raised in Europe. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and her PhD in modern European history from the University of Chicago.

#6096

Albrecht Fuess

#176874

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

Albrecht Fuess is a German scholar of Islam and the history of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean. He is the professor of Islamic Studies at University of Marburg. Education Fuess studied history and Islamic studies at the University of Cologne, where his 1996 master's thesis researched the German community in Egypt between the World Wars. During his graduate work, he also studied at Cairo University. As a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation he completed his doctorate in Cologne in 2000 with a thesis on the Syro-Palestinian coast in the Mamluk period . With the suppo...

#6097

Ron Chepesiuk

#186660

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Ronald Joseph Chepesiuk is a former academic and full university professor. He is currently an author, publisher, radio host, film producer and screenwriter. Documentary producer, writer and director The Frank Matthews Story Ike Atkinson, Kingpin. In his Own Words Superfly: The True Untold Story of Frank Lucas, American Gangster

#6098

Robert Hymes

#177548

Overall Influence

Robert P. Hymes is an American historian and sinologist whose work has focused on the socio-cultural history of early modern China. Hymes is the Horace Walpole Carpentier Professor of Oriental Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

#6099

Annaclara Cataldi Palau

#187648

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Annaclara Cataldi Palau is an Italian palaeographer specialising in Greek mediaeval and renaissance palaeography and history of the book. Life Annaclara Cataldi was born in Genoa and studied Classics in the University of Genoa, then she lived several years in Paris and studied Greek palaeography at the Sorbonne. Her studies there culminated in a ‘Doctorat’ in Greek Palaeography. In 1994 she was commissioned to catalogue the Greek manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, published 2011. She was Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics at King's College London 2000-2005 and Visiting ...

#6100

Laura Briggs

#171766

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Laura Briggs is a feminist critic and historian of reproductive politics and US empire. She works on transnational and transracial adoption and the relationship between race, sex, gender, and US imperialism. Her 2012 book Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption won the James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for best book on the history of US race relations and has been featured on numerous college syllabi in the US and Canada. Briggs serves as professor and chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at the Universit...

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