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,

#6351

Margaret R. Yocom

Margaret R. Yocom

#125172

Overall Influence

Margaret R. Yocom is a folklorist, and poet. Now emerita, she taught at George Mason University from 1977 to 2013 and founded the Folklore Studies Program there. She works in Maine. Early life and education Born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, United States, the eldest child of Betty Keck and Norman Davidheiser Yocom, she first pursued her interest in folklore at Pennsylvania State University where she majored in English She went on to University of Massachusetts Amherst where she completed an MA. in English and then a PhD in English with a concentration in Folklore. While at U Mass, she wrote h...

#6352

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu

#192094

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu is a historian and author of Turkish–Armenian origin. She is a faculty member at MIT. She works on the history of Armenians and Turks in the 20th century. Works

#6353

Michelle Bubenicek

Michelle Bubenicek

#122767

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Michelle Bubenicek is a French medievalist historian. She was appointed director of the École Nationale des Chartes on 1 September 2016. Works Books 2002: 2013: 2014: 2016: 2016: Pamphlet 1996: Awards Prix Madeleine-Lenoir 2002 de la Société de l'École des chartes pour Quand les femmes gouvernent, droit et politique au XIV.

#6354

Per Thomas Andersen

#134911

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Per Thomas Andersen is a Norwegian literary historian and novelist. He was appointed professor at the University of Tromsø from 1992, and at the University of Oslo from 1993. His thesis from 1992 treated the decadence of Scandinavian literature of the period from 1880 to 1900. Among his other scientific works are Stein Mehren – en logosdikter from 1982, Norsk litteraturhistorie from 2001, and Tankevaser from 2003. He published the novels Hold in 1985 and Arr in 1992. He is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#6355

Nathalie Beaux-Grimal

#121649

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Nathalie Beaux-Grimal is a French Egyptologist, a research associate at the Collège de France and the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo . She was educated at Yale University and obtained a Ph.D. in Egyptology under Jean-Claude Goyon in Lumière University Lyon 2 with a thesis on the Botanical Garden of the Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak . From 1997 to 2005, she was French coordinator of Egyptology in the Faculty of Archeology at Cairo University in Giza. As part of the excavations of the IFAO, she participated in an expedition to the site of Deir el-Bahari, in collaboration with Janusz Karkowski of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw .

#6356

Jerzy Snopek

#120900

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Jerzy Snopek is a Polish literary historian and translator. He served as an ambassador to Hungary from 2016 to 2022. Life Snopek graduated from Polish philology at the University of Warsaw. He gained there also doctoral degree. In 1993, he received his post-doctoral degree at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences, presenting a dissertation on the literary life in the Kraków area from 1750 to 1815.

#6357

Günter Philipp

#177375

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Günter Philipp was a German pianist, musicologist, composer and amateur painter. Life Born in Sohland an der Spree, Philipp grew up in Riesa, Oppach and Bautzen. Attracted by music and figure drawing, he was instructed by Rudolf Warnecke in nature study and visual art. In post-war Germany, forced labour damaged his left hand. Nevertheless, he became a student in Leipzig in 1947, a pupil of Hugo Steurer and Wilhelm Weismann . In 1948, he was able to enrol at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig and begin studying with Heinz Eberhard Strüning. For financial reasons, he had to break off his studies in 1949 and make a living as a freelance artist in Oppach.

#6358

Piero Camporesi

Piero Camporesi

#87215

Overall Influence

1926 - 1997 (71 years)

Piero Camporesi was an Italian historian of literature and an anthropologist. He was a professor of Italian literature at the University of Bologna. Works Il Brodo Indiano La casa dell'eternità Le officine dei sensi Il sugo della vita Bread of DreamsLa terra e la luna: alimentazione folclore societa "Petrarca 66: l'aer gravato e l'importuna nebbia" "Giuseppe D'Alessandro poeta barocco tra seicento e settecento" "Biltri, blittri" Il tema dell'Adynaton nel Canzoniere del Petrarca "Una lettera inedita di Lodovico di Breme al Ginguene" "Documenti per la storia del romanticismo italiano: pensieri...

#6359

Byrd Gibbens

#185858

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Byrd Gibbens is an American historian and professor. Career she was a professor of English at the University of New Mexico. Selected publications This is a Strange Country: Letters of a Westering Family, 1880-1906 Far from Home: Families of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel, Byrd Gibbens, and Elizabeth Hampsten

#6360

María del Carmen Rovira Gaspar

#187202

Overall Influence

1923 - 2021 (98 years)

María del Carmen Rovira Gaspar was a Spanish historian, researcher and academic. She arrived in Mexico in 1939, after the National victory in Spain.

#6361

Isaac Lipschits

#181686

Overall Influence

1930 - 2008 (78 years)

Isaac Lipschits was a Dutch-Jewish historian and political scientist. He survived World War II by hiding from the Nazis and their collaborators. He published many books from 1962 to 2008. Books 1962: La politique de la France au Levant 1939-1941 1966: Honderd jaar NIW: het Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad, 1865-19651967: Het kapitaal: kritiek van de politieke economie; Dl.1: Het productieproces van het kapitaal1971: Simulaties in de internationale politiek1977: Politieke stromingen in Nederland: inleiding tot de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse politieke partijen1977: Ontstaansgeschiedenis van de ...

#6362

Dagfinn Mannsåker

Dagfinn Mannsåker

#180132

Overall Influence

1916 - 1994 (78 years)

Dagfinn Mannsåker was a Norwegian archivist and historian. He was born at Ullensvang in Hordaland, Norway. He was the brother of Bergfrid Fjose. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1955, on the thesis Det norske presteskapet i det nittande hundreåret. Sosialhistoriske studiar. He worked as a school teacher from 1954 to 1959, lecturer at the University of Oslo from 1959 to 1965 and national archivist from 1965 to 1982. He edited the academic journal Historisk Tidsskrift for many years, and contributed to Norsk Biografisk Leksikon. From 1966 to 1972 he chaired the Norwegian Historical Association...

#6363

Jonathan R. Lyon

#192275

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Jonathan R. Lyon is an American historian of medieval Europe. He is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Bibliography Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100-1250, Cornell University Press, 2012

#6364

Luis Castro Leiva

#167974

Overall Influence

1943 - 1999 (56 years)

Luis Hernan Castro Leiva was a Venezuelan political philosopher, historian, writer and columnist. He is known for his televised speech on 23 January 1998 for the National Congress in which he warns against bolivarianism, cronyism and atavistic absolutism. He was one of the country's foremost advocates for democracy and an outspoken critic of Hugo Chávez, which he considered a populist. Castro is also credited with introducing rugby to Venezuela.

#6365

Halina Szwarc

#42015

Overall Influence

1923 - 2002 (79 years)

Halina Szwarc de domo Kłąb - was a member of the Polish resistance during the Second World War, working undercover first under the pseudonym Ryszard, then Jacek II. Postwar, she became a professor of medicine in gerontology, and in 1970/1971, the prorector of the Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw.

#6366

Patrick Johansson

#89486

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Patrick Johansson Keraudren is a French-born naturalized Mexican academic, researcher and professor of Nahuatl language. He is a Doctor of Letters from the University of Paris. Since 1979, he is a researcher of the Institute of Historical Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and associate professor of Miguel Leon-Portilla in the Seminario de Cultura Nahuatl. Since 1992, he has taught Nahuatl literature at the Faculty of Arts at the same university.

#6367

Alexander Anton

#169147

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Alexander Elder Anton, CBE, FBA , often known as Sandy Anton, was a Scottish legal scholar. Biography Anton was born on 2 July 1922. He served in the Gordon Highlanders from 1941 to 1945 and then attended the University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1946 and a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1949. He then practised as a solicitor in Aberdeen for four years before working as a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen from 1953 to 1959. Anton was Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow between 1959 and 1973.

#6368

Kåre Langvik-Johannessen

#168676

Overall Influence

1919 - 2014 (95 years)

Kåre Johannes Langvik-Johannessen was a Norwegian philologist, literary historian and translator. He was born in Onsøy as a son of manager Hans Johannessen and Betzy Langvik . He finished his secondary education in 1939 in Fredrikstad, and during the Second World War he studied piano and organ, and took commerce school. He enrolled in Norwegian studies at the University of Oslo in 1946, and graduated with the cand.mag. degree in 1948. The same year he travelled to the Hague to study Dutch language and literature. He took another degree at the University of Oslo in 1955 with the master's thesis Det bibelske drama i Nederlandene før Joost van den Vondel.

#6369

Peter Krečič

#63712

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Peter Krečič is a Slovenian historian of art and architecture. He is a specialist on the life and work of architect Jože Plečnik, and has published numerous books on this topic, including Plecnik:The Complete Works and Plecnik's Ljubljana. He is the father of the writer Jela Krečič.

#6370

Hans Georg Beck

#89006

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Hans-Georg Beck FBA was a German scholar, specializing in Byzantine studies. Biography He was born in Schneizlreuth, Bavaria in 1910. In 1929 he graduated from high school in Ettal. In 1930 he entered the Ludwig-Maximilian University, where in 1936 he defended his doctoral thesis in theology, "Vorhersehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der Byzantiner" , which was published in Rome the following year as volume 114 of the Orientalia Christiana Analecta series. In 1949 he defended his habilitated work "Theodoros Metochites. Die Krise des byzantinischen Weltbildes im 14. Jahrhundert" .

#6371

Michael Foster

#192389

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

#6372

Bjarne Hodne

#190695

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Bjarne Hodne is a Norwegian folklorist. He defended his dr.philos. degree in 1973 with the thesis Personalhistoriske sagn. En studie i kildeverdi. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Oslo from 1975 to 1976, docent from 1976 to 1984 and professor from 1985. He was the dean of the Historical-Philosophical Faculty from 1991 to 1997. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2007 he became leader of the trade union Norwegian Association of Researchers.

#6373

Chester W. New

1882 - 1960 (78 years)

Chester William New, FRSC was a Canadian historian, known for his biographies of Lord Durham and Henry Brougham. New was educated at the University of Toronto, McMaster University, and the University of Chicago, having also been ordained a Baptist minister before his graduate studies. He taught at Brandon College from 1913 and McMaster University from 1920 to 1950, where he was Professor of History and sometime head of the Department of History.

#6374

Martin Broszat

1926 - 1989 (63 years)

Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history. As director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich from 1972 until his death, he became known as one of the world's most eminent scholars of Nazi Germany.

#6375

Józef Mitkowski

1911 - 1980 (69 years)

Józef Mitkowski was a Polish historian. In 1969 he gained the title of professor. Mitkowski collaborated with the Western Institute. Publications Pomorze Zachodnie w stosunku do Polski, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Zachodniego 1946.Początki klasztoru cystersów w Sulejowie: studia nad dokumentami, fundacją i rozwojem uposażenia do końca XIII w., Poznań: nakł. Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk 1949.Śląsk w okresie formowania i utrwalania się państwa polskiego : do roku 1138, Opole: Instytut Śląski 1966.Kancelaria Kazimierza Konradowica, księcia kujawsko-łęczyckiego 1233-1267, Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im.

#6376

Dieter Cunz

1910 - 1969 (59 years)

Dieter Cunz was an emigre from Nazi Germany first to Switzerland and then to the U.S. who taught German language and literature as a professor at the University of Maryland from 1939 to 1957 and at Ohio State University from 1957 until his death in 1969. He authored a number of fictional and non-fictional works.

#6377

Walter Adams

1906 - 1975 (69 years)

Sir Walter Adams was a British historian and educationalist. Adams was educated at University College London, and was a lecturer in history at the same institution from 1926 to 1934. He was a Rockefeller Fellow in the United States from 1929 to 1930, and the organising secretary of the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in 1931.

#6378

Klaus Scholder

1930 - 1985 (55 years)

Klaus Scholder was a German ecclesiastical historian, professor of history at the University of Tübingen. Life Scholder was the son of Erlangen professor of Chemistry Rudolf Scholder. After his high school graduation, he studied Germanistics and Theology at the University of Tübingen and at Göttingen. After his academic promotion and his ordination as an evangelical pastor, he worked for the FDP's Bundestag faction. In 1958 he took up a post with the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg and at first was a parish steward at Bad Überkingen, only to move on to the Evangelical Priory of Tübingen in 1959.

#6379

George W. F. Hallgarten

1901 - 1975 (74 years)

George W. F. Hallgarten, or Georg Wolfgang Felix Hallgarten , was a German-born American historian. Hallgarten was a student of Max Weber in the University of Munich for a short time. In 1925 he became Dr. phil. in Munich, taught by Hermann Oncken and Karl Alexander von Müller. In 1933, he moved to Paris to flee the Nazis, mainly due to his Marxist approach and his pacifist conviction, as his mother was the German pacifist Constanze Hallgarten.

#6380

Florence Harmer

1890 - 1967 (77 years)

Florence Elizabeth Harmer FBA was an English historian, specializing in the Anglo-Saxon period. Translating from Old English and Latin, she edited a number of primary sources for early English history, and her Anglo-Saxon Writs remains a standard text.

#6381

Adolph B. Benson

1881 - 1962 (81 years)

Adolph B. Benson, born Adolph Berndt Bengtsson, was an American scholar, educator and literary historian. Adolph Benson's research focused primarily on the study of Swedish-American culture. Biography Adolph Benson was born in Skåne, Sweden as the eldest of nine children. He emigrated to the United States during 1892 settling in Berlin, Connecticut. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut , . He taught at Columbia University, 1909-1911, at Dartmouth College 1911-1914 and at Sheffield Scientific School 1914-1920. In 1920, he became extraordinary professor of German and Scandinavian languages and literature at Yale University.

#6382

Isaiah Sonne

1887 - 1960 (73 years)

Isaiah Sonne, sometimes also Isaia Sonne, was a Jewish historian and bibliographer. Born in Galicia in 1887, he was educated in Switzerland and Italy, spending much of his career in the latter country as a teacher at Jewish colleges. After the implementations of the Italian Racial Laws in 1938, Sonne migrated to the United States where he taught at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he died in 1960.

#6383

Ernst Ekman

1926 - 1981 (55 years)

Ernst Ekman was a specialist in Scandinavian history at the University of California Riverside. Born in Chicago of Swedish descent, Ekman was multi-lingual, a meticulous historian, and an advocate of the benefits of a broad education in the history of Western Civilisation.

#6384

Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz

1906 - 1967 (61 years)

Hieronymus Christoph Jan Eugen Franz Gottfried Maria Freiherr von Pölnitz, known as Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz was a German social historian, economic historian and archivist.

#6385

F. J. C. Hearnshaw

1869 - 1946 (77 years)

Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw was an English professor of history, specializing in medieval history. He was noted for his conservative interpretation of the past, showing an empire-oriented ideology in defence of hierarchical authority, paternalism, deference, the monarchy, Church, family, nation, status, and place. He was a Tory Democrat who sought to realize Disraeli's goal of preserving invaluable historic traditions while encouraging timely reforms. He believed that a meritocratic, small, effective elite should lead the weaker majority.

#6386

Bill Airey

1897 - 1968 (71 years)

Willis Thomas Goodwin Airey , commonly known as Bill Airey, was a New Zealand university professor, historian and peace activist. Early life, family and education Airey was born in Auckland on 7 January 1897, three months after the death of his father, school inspector Walter Henry Airey. Walter Airey's death left his widow, Margaret, struggling to raise seven children. Willis Airey was an outstanding student at Remuera Primary School and Auckland Grammar School. In 1914 he won a scholarship to Auckland University College, where he excelled in English and Latin.

#6387

George Matthew Dutcher

1874 - 1959 (85 years)

George Matthew Dutcher was an American historian and professor at Wesleyan University. He was born on 16 September 1874, in Pleasant Valley, New York. He received a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he studied under historian George Lincoln Burr, as well as an LL.D. from Allegheny College in 1939.

#6388

Herodotus

484 BC - 425 BC (59 years)

Herodotus was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He is known for having written the Histories – a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Herodotus was the first writer to perform systematic investigation of historical events. He is referred to as "The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero.

#6389

Charlemagne

748 - 814 (66 years)

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor from 800, all until his death. Charlemagne succeeded in uniting the majority of Western and Central Europe, and he was the first recognized emperor to rule Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's rule saw a program of political and societal changes that had a lasting impact on Europe in the Middle Ages.

#6390

Strabo

64 BC - 23 (87 years)

Strabo was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Life Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus in around 64BC. His family had been involved in politics since at least the reign of Mithridates V. Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather, had served Mithridates VI during the Mithridatic Wars. As the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pontic fortresses over to the Romans.

#6391

Plutarch

40 - 120 (80 years)

Plutarch was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus .

#6392

Voltaire

1694 - 1778 (84 years)

François-Marie Arouet , known by his nom de plume M. de Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher , satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

#6393

Tacitus

54 - 120 (66 years)

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus , was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories —examine the reigns of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors . These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian , although there are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts.

#6394

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

356 BC - 323 BC (33 years)

Alexander III of Macedon , commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20, and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.

#6395

Thucydides

460 BC - 395 BC (65 years)

Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.

#6396

David Hume

1711 - 1776 (65 years)

David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature , Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiric...

#6397

Livy

59 BC - 17 (76 years)

Titus Livius , known in English as Livy , was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own lifetime. He was on good terms with members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and was a friend of Augustus, whose young grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, he encouraged to take up the writing of history.

#6398

Joan of Arc

1412 - 1431 (19 years)

Joan of Arc is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Claiming to be acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a savior of France.

#6399

Edward Gibbon

1737 - 1794 (57 years)

Edward Gibbon was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organised religion.

#6400

Josephus

37 - 100 (63 years)

Flavius Josephus was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing The Jewish War, he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

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