The Most Influential People Across History

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,

#6301

Robert Lee

#177411
Overall Influence
1959 - 2010 (51 years)
Robert James Lee was an English historian. Life and work Born on 30 October 1959, Lee was educated at Thorpe Grammar School. He worked for British Gas after leaving school, but was made redundant in 1995. He quickly decided to return to education, completing an undergraduate degree in English and history at Keele University in 1998. He then earned a Master of Arts degree in social history from the University of Leicester, where he stayed to complete a doctorate; his PhD was awarded in 2003 for his thesis "Encountering and managing the poor: rural society and the Anglican clergy in Norfolk, 18...
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#6302

Basil Cottle

#183091
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Arthur Basil Cottle was a British grammarian, historian and archaeologist. He lived most of his life in Bristol. Early life and education Cottle was born in Cardiff on 17 March 1917. He was the younger son of Arthur Bertram Cottle , a clerk, and Cecile Mary Bennett, a schoolmistress. He attended Howard Gardens Secondary School in Cardiff, where his precocious talents came to the notice of Evan Frederic Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar , Welsh poet, author, occultist and convert to Roman Catholicism, who gave Cottle the use of the extensive library at Tredegar House. A prolonged and severe bout ...
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#6303

Richard Carr

#117127
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (40 years)
Richard Carr is a historian, political commentator and academic. He has been a lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University since 2013 having previously served as a Research Fellow and Senior Visiting Fellow at think tank Localis and as a lecturer at the University of East Anglia.
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#6304

Alain Desreumaux

#101076
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Alain Desreumaux is a French historian of religion, specializing on Syrian and Aramaic christo-palestinian communities. He has uncovered manuscripts and inscriptions and published works on codicology and epigraphy.
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#6305

Milan Nakonečný

Milan Nakonečný
#79809
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Milan Nakonečný is Czech psychologist, professor of psychology and historian. During the normalization, Nakonečný was banned from teaching and publishing. Books Motivace lidského chování Psychologie osobnosti Encyklopedie obecné psychologie Lexikon magie Lexikon psychologie Novodobý český hermetismus Psychologie osobnosti Základy psychologie osobnosti Úvod do sociální psychologieMotivace pracovního jednání a její řízení Emoce a motivace Sociální psychologie Martinismus Základní otázky psychologie Sociální psychologie Základy psychologie Průvodce dějinami psychologie Lidské emoce...
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#6306

Eduard Nižňanský

Eduard Nižňanský
#182996
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Eduard Nižňanský is a Slovak historian who specializes in the study of the Slovak State and the Holocaust in Slovakia. Since 2002, he has worked for the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava.
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#6307

Lucy Mackintosh

#154505
Overall Influence
Lucy Mackintosh is a New Zealand historian, curator and author who is a senior research fellow of Tāmaki Paenga Hira/Auckland War Memorial Museum in Auckland, New Zealand. She is an honorary historian in the Faculty of Arts at the Waipapa Taumata Rau/University of Auckland and a researcher for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage working on the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Mackintosh is best known for her book, Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, which won the prestigious Ernest Scott Prize in 2022 and the Ian Wards Prize of the Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatang...
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#6308

Frank Peers

#166772
Overall Influence
1918 - 2016 (98 years)
Frank Wayne Peers was a Canadian political scientist and historian. He is a former Director of Information Programming at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who later taught at the University of Toronto in the Department of Political Economy. He is the author of two books and many articles about the politics of broadcasting in Canada.
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#6309

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby
#184667
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby is a professor in the Arts Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev , and currently serves as the Chair of the Arts department. Published works Ben Aryeh Debby has published numerous scientific papers and has supervised Ph.D. and master's students."Renaissance Florence in the Rhetoric of Two Popular Preachers: Giovanni Dominici and Bernardino da Siena " focuses on historical research of Dominican and Franciscan preachers and analyzes sermons. It also includes a large, critical edition of an unpublished manuscript of mendicant sermons."The Renaissance Pulpit: Art and Preaching in Italy, 1400-1550" which appeared in Italian as Il Pulpito Toscano tra 300 e 500.
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#6310

Mounir Farah

#167890
Overall Influence
Mounir A. Farah is a professor Emeritus of education and Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. Before that, he taught history and social science at New York University and Western Connecticut State University, as well as being a lecturer at international teacher's conferences and has a Ph.D. A strong advocate for history for, by, and about the Middle East, he served as a consultant for the Ministry of Education in Jordan and as a board member and past president of the Middle East Outreach Council. As an award-winning History Scholar-Teacher, he has written several his...
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#6311

Simone Schweber

#75849
Overall Influence
Simone Schweber is Goodman Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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#6312

David Grant Walker

#140436
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
David Grant Walker FSA FRHS was a British historian of the University of Swansea and the former chancellor of Brecon Cathedral. He was married to Margaret, with whom he had two children, Catherine and Richard.
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#6313

Lucy Robinson

#191308
Overall Influence
Lucy Robinson is an academic historian whose work examines the history of sexuality, identity politics, youth cultures and the political Left in the twentieth century. She is Professor in Collaborative History at the University of Sussex, as of 2018.
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#6314

Nazan Maksudyan

#191466
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Nazan Maksudyan is a historian and academic. Works
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#6315

Muhammad Husayn Zaydan

#188397
Overall Influence
Muhammad Husayn Zaydan is a Saudi historian, poet, and philosopher born in Medina in 1906. Muhammad first learned how to read in al-Haraj market, then went to school in the Yanbu sea area. He then studied at the Hashemite
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#6316

Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie

#190767
Overall Influence
Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie , is a British historian and professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Education Born in London, Kerr-Ritchie was educated at Kingston University in England, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, United States.
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#6317

Else Mundal

#75366
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Else Olaug Mundal is a Norwegian philologist. She was born in Vanylven and graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1971. She was appointed as a docent in Norse philology at the University of Oslo in 1977. Being promoted to professor in 1985, she was a professor at the University of Bergen from 1994. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2017 she was appointed a knight of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon in connection with the state visit of Iceland's president to Norway.
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#6318

William G. Saywell

#182289
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
link title William George Gabriel Saywell is a Canadian historian. He is the former president and Vice-Chancellor of Simon Fraser University Early life and education Saywell was born in 1936 in Regina, Saskatchewan to parents John Ferdinand Tupper Saywell and Vera Marguerite Saywell, alongside his elder brother John Saywell. In 1937, the family moved to British Columbia as his father had received a job position to become Lake Cowichan first high school principal. He attended the University of Toronto for his Bachelor of Arts, Master's degree, and PhD. While in his second year at U of T, Sayw...
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#6319

A. Jeyaratnam Wilson

A. Jeyaratnam Wilson
#106376
Overall Influence
1928 - 2000 (72 years)
Alfred Jeyaratnam Wilson was a Sri Lankan Tamil academic, historian and author. He began his academic career as a lecturer in economics and political science at the University of Ceylon and was the founding professor of political science at the University of Ceylon . Later he moved to Canada and was professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick. University of New Brunswick.
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#6320

Clemens Scholten

#152429
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Clemens Scholten , the major contemporary authority on the works of the sixth century Christian Alexandrian philosopher John Philopon, teaches in the Catholic Theology and Philosophy departments of the University of Cologne. Earlier publications were devoted to Nag Hammadi and the Alexandrian Catechetical School. Scholten has also recently edited a work of Theodoret.
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#6321

Paul Goodman

#191541
Overall Influence
1934 - 1995 (61 years)
Paul Goodman was a historian of American and Jewish history, and professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis. Works The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts Essays in American Colonial History The American Constitution Towards a Christian Republic: Antimasonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826–1836 Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality
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#6322

Barbara K. Altmann

#68763
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Barbara K. Altmann is a Canadian academic and college administrator. She became the 16th president of Franklin & Marshall College, and she is the first female to fill that role. Altmann was previously a provost at Bucknell University.
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#6323

Pierre de Senarclens

#86156
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Pierre de Senarclens is Swiss humanitarian. He is honorary professor of international relations at the University of Lausanne, former vice-president of the Swiss Red Cross, former director of the human rights and peace division at UNESCO and one of the founders of the World Organization Against Torture.
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#6324

Joseph M. Hall Jr.

#191586
Overall Influence
Joseph McLean Hall Jr. is a professor, writer, and historian at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where he specializes in early modern American and Atlantic history, particularly focusing on Native American, European, and environmental interactions in North America. He is a nationally recognized historian for his research in Native American history and in addition to his work in academia, he often writes articles that contribute to newspapers and gives presentations to public audiences. Hall is currently working on a book project concerning the Maine Coast and the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area in collaboration with Bates faculty in the natural sciences.
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#6325

Thomas Cheney

#190727
Overall Influence
1901 - 1993 (92 years)
Thomas Edward Cheney was an American folklorist who made contributions to the field of Mormon folklore. As one of the first Mormon folklorists, he collected folk songs in Utah and Idaho and authored books and articles on Utah, Idaho, and Mormon folklore. He served as president of the Folklore Society of Utah from 1963 to 1964. Cheney also compiled songs for the American Folklore Society, which were published in 1968. Along with books on Mormon Folklore, Cheney wrote a book about J. Golden Kimball, which was considered controversial. He was also a professor of English at Brigham Young Universi...
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#6326

Raquel Barros

Raquel Barros
#100462
Overall Influence
1919 - 2014 (95 years)
Raquel Barros Aldunate was a Chilean folklorist, noted for her studies and dissemination of . Biography In 1952 Raquel Barros founded the Folkloric Association of Chile, of which she was the director for many years. This group, currently called the Raquel Barros Folkloric Group of Chile, is the oldest such group in the country. Between 1958 and 1980 she was a researcher at the University of Chile at the Institute of Musical Research and then at the Music Department. Barros was vice-dean and assistant dean of the Faculty of Musical Sciences and Arts and Performance of that house of studies between 1974 and 1975.
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#6327

Kristian Williams

#156761
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Kristian Williams is an American anarchist author. He is best known as the author of Our Enemies In Blue: Police and Power in America. Publications Williams, Kristian. Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2004. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 583 librariesWilliams, Kristian. American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2006, . According to WorldCat, the book is held in 309 librariesWilliams, Kristian, scott crow. Witness To Betrayal/Profiles of Provocateurs. AK Press / Emergency Hearts Press. 2015, Williams, Kristian, William Munger, and Lara Messersmith-Glavin.
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#6328

Dejan Ajdačić

Dejan Ajdačić
#74938
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Dejan Ajdačić , is a Serbian Slavist, philologist, folklorist, ethnolinguist, literary critic, translator and editor. Biography Education He grew up in Belgrade. Both of his parents were physiochemists. He attended the Primary School "Drinka Pavlović", the Fifth Belgrade Grammar School and Music High School "Stanković" . He studied at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade at the Department of Yugoslav Literature and World Literature. He graduated in 1984 with the paper "On Colours in Serbian National Poetry". He defended his Masters thesis under the title "Images of Love and Beauty in the Poet...
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#6329

George Helon

George Helon
#188897
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
George Helon , also known under the pen names George Wieslaw Helon and Jerzy Wieslaw Helon, is an Australian author, businessman, and historian of Polish descent. Helon is on the board of directors of the Polish Nobility Association Foundation.
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#6330

Josephine Laffin

#116776
Overall Influence
Josephine Dene Laffin is an Australian historian and a senior lecturer at Australian Catholic University. She is known for her research on Australian saints and clergymen, particularly Matthew Beovich.
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#6331

Fernando Sabsay

#189215
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Fernando Sabsay was an Argentine historian and teacher.
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#6332

Paul-Alexis Mellet

#179241
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Paul-Alexis Mellet is a French early modern historian and expert in the political and religious ideas from early modernity. He is a professor at the University of Geneva and a member of the Institute of Reformation History. Formerly, he was a professor at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, and at the University of Tours .
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#6333

Giovanni Battista Bronzini

#88215
Overall Influence
1925 - 2002 (77 years)
Giovanni Battista Bronzini was an Italian anthropologist and historian of Italian folk traditions. He was a student at the University of Rome, where he learned from Paolo Toschi, a famous philologist and historian of folk traditions. He then became Professor Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bari and, from 1974, he became director of anthropological studies journal Lares, until his death in 2002.
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#6334

Jean-Louis Flandrin

Jean-Louis Flandrin
#175784
Overall Influence
1931 - 2001 (70 years)
Jean-Louis Flandrin was a French historian. His fields of study were family, sexuality, and, in particular, food. He introduced new analytical methods and examined a range of sources including church penitentials, cookbooks, and even traditional proverbs over a wide historical time-frame, from the High Middle Ages to the 20th century. At the time of his death, Flandrin was Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris VIII and Head of Research at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.
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#6335

Florentino Rodao

#176981
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Florentino Rodao García is a Spanish historian and Japanologist. His historical research deals with Asian studies and international relations. He is full professor of the Complutense University of Madrid .
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#6336

Helen Cowie

#185648
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (44 years)
Helen Louise Cowie is a British historian who is a Professor of Early Modern History at the University of York. Her research addresses cultural history, the history of science, animal history, and the history of Latin America.
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#6337

Jesús Alturo i Perucho

Jesús Alturo i Perucho
#190261
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Jesús Alturo i Perucho is a Catalan palaeographer, philologist and cultural historian. Academic career Alturo is professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, initially in Latin Philology and later in palaeography, codicology and diplomatics , as chair and replacing his teacher,Anscari M. Mundó.
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#6338

James H. Madison

#179996
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
James H. Madison is an American writer who is an emeritus professor at the Indiana University. Career Previously, he has served as a Fulbright professor at Hiroshima University and the University of Kent.
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#6339

Robert Whealey

#185656
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Robert H. Whealey is an American historian with expertise on the Spanish Civil War and how it was influenced by Hitler. He is Professor Emeritus of Ohio University He also wrote for the History News Service.
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#6340

Edith Marold

#133372
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Edith Marold is an Austrian philologist who specializes in Germanic studies. Biography Edith Marold was born in Salzburg, Austria on 2 July 1942. He received her Ph.D. in Germanic studies at the University of Vienna in 1967 with a thesis on blacksmiths in Germanic Antiquity. Marold subsequently worked at the Saarland University, where she habilitated in Germanic and Nordic philology in 1977. She subsequently served as Head of the Old Germanic Department of the Institute for Germanic Studies of the Saarland University. Since 1989, Marold was Professor of Old Germanic and Nordic Philology at the University of Kiel.
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#6341

James Loehlin

#151418
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
James N. Loehlin, was an American literary historian, professor, stage director, actor, and writer from Austin, Texas who served as the Shakespeare at Winedale Regents Professor of English and director of the Shakespeare at Winedale program at University of Texas at Austin. He was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and earned joint Ph.D. in Drama and Humanities at Stanford. He taught in the Drama Department at Dartmouth College. He was the son of the Psychology Professor and Behavior Geneticist John Loehlin.
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#6342

François Joyaux

#191545
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
François Joyaux is emeritus professor of East Asian civilization at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales where he created the diplôme des hautes études internationales. He has also taught at the université de Paris I, the École nationale d'administration and the Instituts d'études politiques of Paris and Grenoble. He is a member of the Société Asiatique.
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#6343

Andrew Edmund Goble

#191951
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Andrew Edmond Goble is a professor of Japanese history at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. Publications Notes and references External links Biography at the Department of History at the University of Oregon
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#6344

Ralph-Johannes Lilie

#166354
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Ralph-Johannes Lilie is a German Byzantinist. Life He graduated from Munich University in 1975 with a dissertation entitled 'The Byzantine Reaction to the Arab Invasions – Studies on the Transformation of Government Structures in the Byzantine States in the 7th and 8th Century' and habilitated in 1982–83 at the Byzantinisch-Neugriechischen Seminar of the Free University of Berlin, where from 1984 to 2005 he was extraordinary professor. Since 1992 he has been working on the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His w...
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#6345

Karl Heinrich Kaufhold

#132619
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Karl Heinrich Kaufhold was a German economic historian. He worked for the University of Göttingen. Works Das Handwerk der Stadt Hildesheim im 18. Jahrhundert. Eine wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studie Das Metallgewerbe der Grafschaft Mark im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert Das Gewerbe in Preußen um 1800 Bergbau und Hüttenwesen in und am Harz Mittelalter und frühe Neuzeit Historische Statistik der preußischen Provinz Ostfriesland Europäische Montanregion Harz Preise im vor- und frühindustriellen Deutschland. Nahrungsmittel – Getränke – Gewürze – Rohstoffe und Gewerbeprodukte Die Wirtschafts- und So...
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#6346

Daniel Sharfstein

#191509
Overall Influence
Daniel J. Sharfstein is a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt University and a legal scholar who has written books and articles about the legal history of the United States and African Americans as well as Oliver Otis Howard and the war against Nez Perce. He was a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
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#6347

Robyn Arianrhod

#176335
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Robyn Arianrhod is an Australian historian of science known for her works on the predecessors to Albert Einstein, on Émilie du Châtelet and Mary Somerville, and on Thomas Harriot. Education In the 1970s, Arianrhod left her honours program in mathematics to join a radical counterculture community, without electricity, running water, or communications. She returned to school, earned a bachelor's degree from Melbourne, Australia-based Monash University in 1993, and a doctorate from Monash University in 2003. She remains affiliated with Monash University as an honorary research associate in the m...
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#6348

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman

#191915
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Sarah L. Wilkerson Freeman is an American historian and curator who is a professor of history at Arkansas State University. She co-edited Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times, a two-volume series with historian Beverly Greene Bond and has written on Southern women's activism from the Progressive Era to the McCarthy Era. Her curatorial work has focused on little-known chapters in Southern history, which included the fluidity of race, gender, and sexuality in 1950s New Orleans and Japanese internments in Arkansas in the 1940s.
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#6349

Alastair Macdonald

#191856
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Dr Alastair Macdonald is a Scottish historian. He is the Mackie Lecturer in History at the University of Aberdeen. His field of research is Scotland-England relations during the late medieval period , particularly the development of "Frontier societies" and Scotland's place in the wider world during this period. His current research is "to examine the nature and impact of war on state and society in later medieval Scotland".
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#6350

Yoshiaki Ishizawa

#92604
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Yoshiaki Ishizawa is a Japanese academic and a professor at Sophia University. He is a recipient of Ramon Magsaysay Award 2017 for "restoration of Angkor Wat since the time of civil war nurturing human resources and specialists of Cambodia to conserve the heritage site resulting Cambodian people to regain the pride for their own cultural heritage".
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