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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in History,

#6101

Madeleine Giteau

#100770

Overall Influence

1918 - 2005 (87 years)

Madeleine Giteau was a French historian and member of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, who devoted a great part of her life to research involving Laotian and Cambodian art, especially Khmer sculpture and iconography.

#6102

Elizabeth Borgwardt

#87549

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Elizabeth Kopelman Borgwardt is an American historian, and lawyer. Life She graduated from Cambridge University with a BA and M.Phil., from Harvard Law School, with a J.D., and from Stanford University with a Ph.D. She worked as a mediator and arbitrator, and was a senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Negotiation at Stanford University. She also worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign. On June 26, 1993, she married Kurt Borgwardt. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

#6103

Sherry L. Smith

#188403

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Sherry Lynn Smith is an American historian, and University Distinguished Professor at Southern Methodist University. From 2008 to 2009, she was President of the Western History Association. Works

#6104

Judy Bennett

#188133

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Judith Ann Bennett is a New Zealand historian. She has been emeritus professor at the University of Otago since 2019. Academic career Bennett wrote a 1979 PhD thesis at Australian National University titled, 'Wealth of the Solomons: a history of trade, plantations and society, Solomon Islands, c.1800–1942' studying the colonial history of the Solomon Islands and has spent much of her career researching, writing and teaching about the Pacific and its history.

#6105

William McAllister-Johnson

#159291

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

William McAllister-Johnson was a Canadian scholar and Professor who was a specialist of the history of prints and printmaking, especially in 18th-century France. Biography McAllister-Johnson was a professor at the University of Toronto's Department of Art. He authored books and catalogues on art history and many other books, versified prints in 18th-century France, and 19th-century salon-era prints.

#6106

Alain Corbin

#188451

Overall Influence

#6107

John W. Barker

#165692

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

John Walton Barker, was an American historian and specialist in Byzantine history and classical music. He was the author of a number of works on Byzantine history, including Justinian and the Later Roman Empire and Manuel II Palaeologus: 1391-1425: A study in late Byzantine Statesmanship . Later in his career, he also wrote books on Richard Wagner, Wagner and Venice , Wagner and Venice Fictionalized: Variations on a Theme .

#6108

Chin-Shing Huang

#79297

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Chin-Shing Huang is a Taiwanese historian. Huang completed a doctorate from Harvard University in 1983, and began working as a research fellow at Academia Sinica soon after graduation. He has held adjunct and honorary professorships and chairs at several universities in Taiwan, among them National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, Taipei Medical University, and National Sun Yat-sen University. Huang was elected to membership within Academia Sinica in 2008.

#6109

David Hackett Fischer

#188474

Overall Influence

#6110

Peggy Brock

#170851

Overall Influence

1948 - 2023 (75 years)

Margaret Susan "Peggy" Brock was an Australian historian and writer. Her major areas of interest were colonial and Indigenous history in Australia, the Pacific and parts of Canada and Africa, with particular interest in Australian Aboriginal women. Her work continues to be cited in national and international debates over Indigenous policy. Born in Adelaide, she took up academic positions and was at the end of her career emeritus professor at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.

#6111

Leonardo León

#180007

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Leonardo León is a Chilean historian known for his work the Mapuche world, history of the frontier and more recently by the study of the lower classes during the Chilean War of Independence.

#6112

J. H. Shennan

#188492

Overall Influence

1933 - 2015 (82 years)

Joseph Hugh Shennan was a British historian who was Professor of European Studies and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Lancaster. One of the pioneers in European Studies, his research focussed primarily on the history of France during the Ancien Régime as well as on the history of early modern Europe.

#6113

Warren Goldstein

#141756

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Dr Warren Goldstein taught U.S.history and chaired the History Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Hartford. Over a 30-year academic and writing career, Goldstein published five books: Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball , A Brief History of American Sports. Co-authored with Elliott J. Gorn. Second Edition, University of Illinois, 2013. William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience. . Paperback, 2006. Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Co-authored with Christopher Gabrieli.

#6114

Raffaele Licinio

#173220

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Raffaele Licinio was an Italian historian, who, throughout his career, carried out extensive research into the medieval period in Southern Italy . He also taught medieval history at the University of Bari .

#6115

Marc R. Forster

#146733

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Marc Richard Forster is an American historian. He serves as the Henry B. Plant Professor of History at Connecticut College, where he was also appointed as the chair of its history department. In 2015, Forster served as the President of the Sixteenth Century Studies Society and Conference. In 2016, he was appointed as the College Marshall of Connecticut College.

#6116

Tony Parker

#157433

Overall Influence

1923 - 1996 (73 years)

Tony Parker was an oral historian whose work was dedicated to giving a voice to British and American society's most marginalised figures, from single mothers to lighthouse keepers to criminals, including murderers.

#6117

Anne Gerritsen

#183289

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Anne Gerritsen is professor of history at the University of Warwick. Between 2013 and 2018 she held the Kikkoman Chair in the study of Asia-Europe Exchange, with special attention to art, material culture and human dynamics at Leiden University.

#6118

Lothar Mosler

#178788

Overall Influence

1913 - 1995 (82 years)

Lothar Mosler was a mainstream East German historian who arrived at his university career through the political route. Between 1953 and 1961 he served as director of the Franz Mehring Institute for training teachers in Marxist-Leninist Sociological Studies, which was a core base module for students at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig. Between 1958 and his retirement in 1978 Prof. Mosler taught the History of the German Labour Movement at the university.

#6119

James Huffman

#171200

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

James L. Huffman is an American historian. Huffman obtained a bachelor of arts degree at Indiana Wesleyan University, and studied journalism at Northwestern University before he completed graduate study at the University of Michigan, earning a master's degree in Asian studies and a doctorate in history. Huffman worked as a journalist prior to teaching at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Indiana Wesleyan University, Williams College, and Dartmouth College. He joined the faculty of Wittenberg University, where he was named H. Orth Hirt Professor of History and taught for three decades until his retirement in May 2007.

#6120

Bogdan Zakrzewski

#107015

Overall Influence

1916 - 2011 (95 years)

Bogdan Zakrzewski was a Polish historian and researcher of Polish literature. He was a professor of the University of Wrocław , editor-in-chief of Pamiętnik Literacki , member of the Polish Academy of Learning .

#6121

Peter Edward Lionel Russell

#101034

Overall Influence

1913 - 2006 (93 years)

Sir Peter Edward Lionel Russell, FBA was a British historian whose main area of study was Spain and Portugal in the medieval period. Early life and military Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 24 October 1913, Russell moved to the UK at the age of 12 with his mother and brothers, he received his schooling at Cheltenham College and studied French, Spanish and Portuguese as an undergraduate at Queen's College, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1935. His doctoral research focused on the Plantagenet involvement in the Iberian Peninsula and was guided by Maurice Powicke and V. H. Galbraith but...

#6122

René Rebuffat

#124320

Overall Influence

1930 - 2019 (89 years)

René Rebuffat was a French historian and archaeologist, specializing in ancient Africa. He conducted archaeological excavations at Thamusida in Morocco, to in Libya, and in the Sebou basin in Morocco. He also worked on archaeological sites of Aléria and Jublains.

#6123

Kenneth Norrie

#103328

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Kenneth Harold Norrie is a Canadian economic historian specializing in the economy of Western Canada at the turn of the century. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Norrie received his undergraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan and his PhD from Yale University. He spent much of his career at the University of Alberta, serving as chair of the Department of Economics and then as dean of the Faculty of Arts . He was provost of McMaster University from January 1, 2002, succeeding psychologist Harvey Weingarten who had left to become president of the University of Calgary. On September ...

#6124

Robert Heuston

#83204

Overall Influence

1923 - 1995 (72 years)

Robert Francis Vere Heuston, QC , FBA , sometimes given as R. F. V. Heuston, was an Irish legal scholar and legal historian. He is best known for his Lives of the Lord Chancellors. Heuston was born in Dublin, the eldest son of Vere Douglas Heuston, general manager of the Guinness Brewery, and of Dorothy Helen Heuston, née Coulter. He was related to the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet. He was educated at St Columba's College, Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, where he read Law and obtained first-class honours. He was also auditor of the College Historical Society.

#6125

Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo

#92421

Overall Influence

1919 - 2001 (82 years)

Stanisław Bóbr-Tylingo was a Polish-born historian who specialized in 19th-century Polish history, a Polish resistance fighter who after 1945 had to live his life in exile in Britain and Canada, and a decorated veteran of the Polish Warsaw Uprising in August–September 1944. For most of his adult life, he was a professor of history at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

#6126

Julie M. Weise

#182207

Overall Influence

Julie Meira Weise is an American historian. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon. After graduating from Yale University, Weise taught at California State University, Long Beach for four years before accepting a placement at the University of Oregon.

#6127

Nancy Kollmann

#140354

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

#6128

Linda Waggoner

#186622

Overall Influence

Linda M. Waggoner is an independent researcher and author whose work focuses on Native American history and anthropology. She has written about Red Wing, William Henry Dietz , the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, and Angel De Cora.

#6129

Dungkar Lozang Trinlé

#175606

Overall Influence

1927 - 1997 (70 years)

Dungkar Lozang Trinlé was one of the most important Tibetan historians of the 20th century. He was born in the south-eastern district of Kongpo. At the age of four he was recognised as the eighth incarnation of Dungdkar Rinpoche, the Lama of Dungdkar Monastery. He left the monastic life after obtaining a geshé degree from Sera Monastery.

#6130

Mary Ting Yi Lui

#180863

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Mary Ting Yi Lui is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University and head of Yale's Timothy Dwight College. She is Yale's first tenured professor specializing in Asian American Studies and the first Asian American female to serve as head of a Yale residential college. A former director of undergraduate studies and director of graduate studies for Yale University's American Studies program, she is also affiliated with Yale's Ethnicity, Race, and Migration program and its Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. Lui is the author of The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Misc...

#6131

Kay Slocum

#183620

Overall Influence

Kay Brainerd Slocum is an American musician and historian who has published books in music and medieval history. Slocum is currently the Gerhold Professor of History and Humanities at Capital University, Ohio, prior to which she taught music history and viola at Kent State University. A violist, Slocum has performed with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Erie Philharmonic, and the Youngstown Symphony. She currently plays with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra.

#6132

Deric Daniel Waters

#131256

Overall Influence

1920 - 2016 (96 years)

Deric Daniel Waters or Dan Waters was a British educator, scholar of building science and heritage conservationist. He was the founding principal of the Morrison Hill Technical Institute in Hong Kong from 1969 to 1972, Assistant Director , Education Department of Hong Kong from 1974 to 1980. Waters retired in 1980 and obtained his MPhil from Loughborough University in 1982 and PhD in 1985. He was a Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Directors, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building, Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health and an Associate Member of the British Institute of Ma...

#6133

István Rév

#127866

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

István Rév is professor of history and political science at Central European University in Budapest and director of the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives. He is member of the Open Society Foundations Global Board.

#6134

Joe Cain

#169530

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Joe Cain is a historian of science who specialises in the history of evolutionary biology. He is currently Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology at University College London , and from 2011 to 2019 he was Head of Department of UCL's Department of Science and Technology Studies. He was also editor of BSHS Monographs, a series published by the British Society for the History of Science.

#6135

Emily Abel

#173546

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Emily K. Abel is a public health and medical historian, author and professor emerita at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health where she was a Professor of Health Services and Women’s Studies. Abel earned a B. A. from Swarthmore College, M.A. in history from Columbia University, her Ph.D. in history from the University of London, and her M.P.H. from the UCLA School of Public Health.

#6136

Amy Sueyoshi

#173703

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Amy Sueyoshi is the provost of San Francisco State University. Sueyoshi is a trained historian specializing in sexuality, gender, and race. Her publications and lectures focus on issues regarding race and sexuality such as cross-dressing, pornography, and marriage equality.

#6137

Miliana Kaimakamova

#188807

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Miliana Vasileva Kaimakamova is a Bulgarian medieval historian, whose work on Bulgarian medieval historiography is foundational to the discipline. She is Professor of History at Sofia University. Biography Kaymakamova was born on 22 January 1951 in Smolyan. In 1973 she graduated with a degree in History & Archaeology from Sofia University. In 1985 she was awarded the scientific title of associate professor. From 1972 to 1979 she was an assistant professor of medieval Bulgarian history in the Faculty of History at Sofia University. In 1979 she defended her dissertation on "Historical and chron...

#6138

Robert Blobaum

#187396

Overall Influence

Robert Blobaum is an American historian who is the Eberly Professor of History at West Virginia University. In 2018, he was elected president of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America for the 2018-2021 term, the first scholar of non-Polish origin to attain the post.

#6139

Robert Peckham

#185342

Overall Influence

Robert Peckham is a British writer and historian of science, technology, and medicine. His most recent academic appointment was at the University of Hong Kong as MB Lee Professor in the Humanities and Medicine, Chair of the Department of History, and Director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine. He is the founder of Open Cube, "an organisation that promotes the integration of the arts, science, and technology for health."

#6140

Miodrag Popović

Miodrag Popović

#94671

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Miodrag Popović was a Yugoslav and Serbian historian. Works Monographies Vuk Stefanović Karadžić 1787-1864, 1964Istorija srpske književnosti – romantizam I – III, 1968 — 1972Romantizam I – III, drugo skraćeno i prerađeno izdanje, Nolit, Beograd, 1975,Istorija srpske književnosti – romantizam I i II, 1985

#6141

David R. Chesnutt

#181005

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

David Rogers Chesnutt was an American historian and editor. Life Chesnutt was born in Athens, Alabama, and earned academic degrees at University of Alabama , Auburn University and the University of Georgia .

#6142

Mary Claire Engstrom

#184108

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Mary Claire Engstrom was an American writer and historian. She is best known for her active role in preserving the historic town of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Biography Mary was born in Kansas City, and was the daughter of Lester L. Randolph and Florence Alberta Toynbee Randolph. She earned a PhD at University of North Carolina in English literature in 1939, and did postdoctoral research at Harvard and Yale, specializing in 18-century satire.

#6143

Katherine Clarke

#180757

Overall Influence

Katherine J. Clarke is a British ancient historian, specialising in Greek historiography and geography. She is Professor in Ancient History in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford.

#6144

Lesley Johnson

#173980

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Lesley Ruth Johnson is an Australian cultural historian, whose research has focused on gender studies and the sociology of education. She is professor emeritus at Griffith University. Early life and education Johnson was born in Sydney, New South Wales on 12 April 1949. She was educated in the public school system at Denistone East Public School and then Ryde High School. She won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study at the University of Sydney and graduated with a BA in 1968. She moved to Brisbane where she undertook a Master of Education at the University of Queensland . Johnson won a Common...

#6145

Ifeoma Ajunwa

#108240

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (45 years)

Ifeoma Yvonne Ajunwa is a Nigerian-American writer, AI Ethics legal scholar, sociologist, and tenured professor of law at the University of North Carolina School Of Law in the United States. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project and she has been a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School since 2017. From 2021–2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria where she studied the role of law for tech start-ups. At UNC Law, she is the Founding Director of the AI Decision-Making Research Program at UNC Law where she designed and created the first ever clearinghouse for scholarship and research on AI and the Law.

#6146

James L. Larson

#180711

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

James L. Larson was an American historian and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Work Larson earned his PhD at Berkeley with a dissertation entitled, "Speculation and experience: an inquiry into systematic description in the work of Carl von Linne." He completed his dissertation in 1965.

#6147

W. Royal Stokes

#118742

Overall Influence

1930 - 2021 (91 years)

W. Royal Stokes was an American writer, music journalist, and music historian. Books The Jazz Scene: An Informal History from New Orleans to 1990. Oxford University Press, 1991Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about Their Careers in Jazz. Oxford University Press, 2000Growing Up With Jazz: Twenty-Four Musicians Talk About Their Lives and Careers. Oxford University Press, 2005The Essential W. Royal Stokes: Jazz, Blues, and Beyond. Hannah Books, 2020

#6148

Leslie Pressnell

#176186

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Leslie Pressnell was a British monetary historian. He taught at the University of Exeter, University College London, his alma mater the London School of Economics, City, University of London, and finally the University of Kent, where he was Professor of Economic and Social History. He authored several books.

#6149

Meg Twycross

#186575

Overall Influence

Margaret "Meg" Ann Twycross is a literary scholar and historian specialising in medieval theatre and iconography. She is Emeritus Professor at Lancaster University. Career After a Quaker childhood spent in Lancashire, Trinidad, and Barking , Twycross went to Somerville College, Oxford. After time spent living in Chile and the Arabian Gulf, she returned to Oxford as college lecturer at both Worcester College and St Edmund Hall before, in 1974, moving to Lancaster University where she has been for the rest of her academic career.

#6150

Javaregowda

#148988

Overall Influence

1915 - 2016 (101 years)

Devegowda Javaregowda , known as De Ja Gou or simply Javaregowda, was an Indian Kannada writer, folklorist, researcher, scholar and academic. He was disciple of authors T.N. Srikantaiah and Kuvempu. His literary career spans over decades in which he wrote over thirty-four biographies in Kannada language and other works including children's literature. He campaigned for the promotion of Kannada language. He had received Pampa Prashasti , Padma Shri and the Karnataka Ratna awards for his contributions in literature and education. He became a centenarian in 2015 and died on 30 May 2016.

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