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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#6451
Alfred Götze
1865 - 1948 (83 years)
Alfred Götze was a German prehistorian. Götze may have received the first doctorate in the field of prehistory and early history, and later became one of the first scientists active in the field. He worked for a long time in the Archaeological Preservation in Berlin and Brandenburg and was founder and long-time director of the Steinsburg Museum in Römhild.
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John Spencer Bassett
1867 - 1928 (61 years)
John Spencer Bassett was an American historian. He was a professor at Trinity College , and is best known today for the "Bassett Affair" in 1903 when he publicly criticized racism among Southern elites, and called Booker T. Washington, "all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in 100 years." Despite widespread outrage, the college trustees refused to accept Bassett's resignation by a vote of 18 to 7. After Trinity, he became a professor of history at Smith College in Massachusetts. and was the executive director of the American Historical Association for many years.
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Ilia Abuladze
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Ilia Vladimiri dze Abuladze was a distinguished Georgian historian, philologist and public figure, a Corresponding Member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences , Meritorious Science Worker of Georgia , Doctor of Philological Sciences , and professor .
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Władysław Heinrich
1869 - 1957 (88 years)
Władysław Heinrich was a Polish historian of philosophy, psychologist, professor at Kraków University and member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Life Władysław Heinrich studied mathematics, the natural sciences and philosophy. In philosophy he was a student of Richard Avenarius at the University of Zurich and applied his radical positivism to psychology: Heinrich pointed out that the new experimental psychology of the time was based on metaphysical concepts and premises, on constructions and introjections. In opposition to it, he proposed a psychology based on pure experiment .
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Szymon Starowolski
1588 - 1656 (68 years)
Szymon Starowolski was a writer, scholar and historian in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was probably born near Pruzhany, and died near Kraków. He was a very prolific writer, and left behind over 70 works, mostly in Latin. Some of them survived until its translation into Polish.
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Reginald Bassett
1901 - 1962 (61 years)
Reginald Bassett was an English historian and Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. Career Having left school to become a solicitor's clerk, at the age of 25 Bassett won a scholarship to study for a diploma at Ruskin College, Oxford, and from there proceeded to New College, Oxford. He was a lecturer under the Extra-Mural Studies Delegacy of the University of Oxford, lecturing mainly in Sussex. From 1945-50 he was a tutor at the London School of Economics for a course designed for students from trade unions. He was lecturer in political science from 1950 to 1953, Re...
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Martin Lintzel
1901 - 1955 (54 years)
Martin Lintzel was a German historian, specialising on medieval German history. He studied at the University of Halle during 1919–1925, under Albert Werminghoff. His dissertation on the medieval institution of the Hoftage was published in 1924, supervised by Robert Holtzmann. He was a lecturer at Halle from 1931. In March 1935, he was elected as professor for medieval and modern history at the University of Kiel, but was sent back to Halle in 1936, following a political dispute with the National Socialist press and student organisations in Kiel. He entered military service for two months during 1944, but was discharged due to suffering from depression.
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Peter III of Aragon
1239 - 1285 (46 years)
Peter III of Aragon was King of Aragon, King of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. At the invitation of some rebels, he conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and became King of Sicily in 1282, pressing the claim of his wife, Constance II of Sicily, uniting the kingdom to the crown.
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Orin Grant Libby
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Orin Grant Libby was an American historian. Biography Libby was the son of farmer Asa Libby and his wife Julia Libby. As well as farming, his father held several local government positions, and worked in several skilled crafts. In 1886, Libby received a diploma from River Falls State Normal School, and then taught in high schools until 1890, when he entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a junior. He received a bachelor's degree from Wisconsin in 1892, and stayed to continue his studies in history. In 1893, he submitted a master's thesis with an emphasis on economic history entitled “De Witt Clinton and the Erie Canal — A State Enterprise.” He ultimately received a Ph.D.
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Paul Hazard
1878 - 1944 (66 years)
Paul Gustave Marie Camille Hazard , was a French professor and historian of ideas. Biography Hazard was the son of a school teacher. Starting in 1900, he attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1910 and became famous for his Ph.D. dissertation La Révolution française et les lettres italiennes .
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Wilhelm Arndt
1838 - 1895 (57 years)
Wilhelm Ferdinand Arndt was a German historian. Biography He graduated from the University of Göttingen and became connected with the University of Leipzig . Works For many years he was a collaborator on the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica .
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Maria Luisa Righini-Bonelli
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Maria Luisa Righini-Bonelli was an Italian science historian and educator. The daughter of General Luigi Bonelli and Adele Giamperoli, she was born Maria Luisa Bonelli in Pesaro. She studied Spanish language and literature and then taught in the faculty of political science at the University of Florence from 1948 to 1968. She worked with at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza beginning in 1942. In 1961, she became director of the institute after Corsini died. Righini-Bonelli saved most of the important treasures of the institute during the Flood of Florence in 1966. She was a profes...
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Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack
1834 - 1917 (83 years)
Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack was a Dutch legal scholar, economist and historian, who is best known for his work De socialisten: Personen en stelsels . Biography Quack, born in Zetten to a beer brewer and his wife, commenced studies at Utrecht in 1853, followed by law studies at the Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustre. In Amsterdam, he attended lectures by Jeronimo de Bosch Kemper and Martinus des Amorie van der Hoeven, both Christian critics of liberalism. Following the example of his professors, Quack became convinced that liberalism could not address the social problems of his day. He submitted a...
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Aleksije Jelačić
1892 - 1941 (49 years)
Aleksije Jelačić was a Serbian historian. Jelačić was born in Kiev to a family of South Slavic descent; reportedly his ancestors moved to Russia in the 18th century from the Habsburg Empire. His ancestors came from Croatia.
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William Wells Newell
1839 - 1907 (68 years)
William Wells Newell was an American folklorist, school teacher, minister and philosophy professor. Biography Newell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. After trying his hand at ministry, he was a faculty member at the new philosophy department at Harvard University for a few years. However, the bulk of Newell's career was as a school teacher. He taught at the Wells Schoolfounded by his grandfather, William Wellssituated on Elmwood Avenue. Newell founded the American Folklore Society in 1888 where he edited the Journal of American Folklore.
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Joseph Spence
1699 - 1768 (69 years)
Joseph Spence was a historian, literary scholar and anecdotist, most famous for his collection of anecdotes that are an invaluable resource for historians of 18th-century English literature . Early life Spence was born on 28 April 1699, at Kingsclere, Hampshire, the son of Joseph and Mirabella .
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Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani
1896 - 1956 (60 years)
Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani was an Iranian literary scholar, historian, translator, and man of letters. Eqbal Ashtiani was born in Ashtian. He was educated at Dar ul-Funun in Tehran and University of Paris. In 1944 Eqbal founded the monthly periodical Yādgār. Eqbal Ashtiani died in Rome, Italy and was buried at the Shah-Abdol-Azim shrine in Rey, Iran.
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Beryl Smalley
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Beryl Smalley was an English historian best known for her work The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, originally published in 1941, but revised many times, a book that laid the foundations of modern study of the medieval popular Bible.
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Johann Daniel Ritter
1709 - 1775 (66 years)
Johann Daniel Ritter was a German historian. In 1732 he received his magister degree from the University of Leipzig, where in 1735 he became an associate professor of philosophy. In 1742 he was appointed professor of history at the University of Wittenberg.
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Menassa Youhanna
1899 - 1930 (31 years)
Father Menassa Youhanna was a Coptic priest, historian and theologian, most noted for his work on the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Biography He was born in August, 1899 in Mallawi in Upper Egypt and died on Friday May 16, 1930, at the age of 30. Born in a Coptic Orthodox family, his father was also a priest.
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Antonio Schinella Conti
1677 - 1749 (72 years)
Antonio Schinella Conti , also known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist. He was born in Padua on 22 January 1677 and died there on 6 April 1749.
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Henry Sheldon
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Henry Davidson Sheldon was an American educator and historian. Sheldon was born while his parents were en route to Oregon from the New York area. He was educated at the University of the Pacific and Stanford University. He continued his education at Clark University, where he received a doctorate in education.
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Emanuel Rostworowski
1923 - 1989 (66 years)
Emanuel Mateusz Rostworowski was a Polish historian, professor at Kraków's Jagiellonian University, and member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He specialized in 18th-century history. In 1965-89 he was editor-in-chief of Polski Słownik Biograficzny.
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Albert Houtin
1867 - 1926 (59 years)
Albert Houtin was a French Catholic theologian and historian with a focus on the history of doctrine and on modernism in French religion. Born in La Flèche, he grew up to become a priest and was ordained in 1891. Following the turn of the century, he became disenchanted with religion and came to regard all religious belief systems as fraudulent. In 1907, he had attended the Fourth International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston, which had been organised by Unitarians.
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Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko
1884 - 1973 (89 years)
Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko was one of the foremost Ukrainian historians of the 20th century. She was a wife of the Ukrainian academician of history and statesman Mykola Vasylenko. Life and career Polonska-Vasylenko belonged to Russian nobility; her father was a Russian Imperial officer Dmytro Menshov . Polonska-Vasylenko studied history under Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky at Kyiv University and from 1912 was a member of the Kyiv-based Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler. From 1916, she was a lecturer at Kyiv University and Director of its archeological museum. During the 1920s, the most l...
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James Bass Mullinger
1834 - 1917 (83 years)
James Bass Mullinger , sometimes known by his pen name Theodorus, was a British author, historian, lecturer and scholar. A longtime university librarian and lecturer at St. John's College, Cambridge, Mullinger was the author of several books detailing the college's history and similar academic subjects. He was also a contributor to many periodicals of the Victorian era, most especially, Cambridge History of Modern Literature, the Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopædia Britannica.
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José Antonio Maravall
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
José Antonio Maravall Casesnoves was a Spanish historian and essayist associated with the Generation of '36 movement. Biography Maravall studied philosophy and law at the University of Murcia, where he completed his final degree in political science and economics at the Central University, where he was a student of Jose Ortega y Gasset. He became a university professor in Spain and abroad. Maravall was head of the department at the University of La Laguna and the Complutense University of Madrid. He also became a member of the Real Academia de la Historia and the president of the Spanish A...
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Eduard Winkelmann
1838 - 1896 (58 years)
Eduard Winkelmann was a German historian. Biography He was born at Danzig in the Province of Prussia. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen, worked at the Monumenta Germaniae historica, and in 1869 became professor of history at the University of Bern, and four years later at Heidelberg. He also spent some time in the Russian Empire, where he was headmaster at the knight and chapter school in Reval beginning in 1860, and was later appointed professor at the University of Dorpat . He died at Heidelberg.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany
1807 - 1876 (69 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany was a German Lutheran theologian, historian, librarian and publicist. His rationalist outlook, influenced by Georg Friedrich Daumer, forced him to retire from his post as vicar at St. Aegidius parish in Nuremberg. He became city librarian in Nuremberg in 1841. His early publications are pamphlets against Lutheran bigotry, specifically agitating against the Old Lutheran president of the Lutheran assembly in Munich, Friedrich von Roth. In 1855, Ghillany moved to Munich, but he did not succeed in finding employment as a civil servant or diplomat, and he went on to publish multi-volume works on European history.
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Johann Georg Graevius
1632 - 1703 (71 years)
Johann Georg Graevius was a German classical scholar and critic. He was born in Naumburg, in the Electorate of Saxony. Life Graevius was originally intended for the law, but made the acquaintance of Johann Friedrich Gronovius during a casual visit to Deventer, under whose influence he abandoned jurisprudence for philology. He completed his studies under Daniel Heinsius at Leiden, and among others under the Protestant theologian David Blondel at Amsterdam.
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Tadeusz Sulimirski
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Tadeusz Joseph Sulimirski was a Polish-born British historian and archaeologist, who emigrated to the United Kingdom soon after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Sulimirski was a pioneer and leading expert in the study of the archaeology of steppe nomads, particularly the Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians.
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Karl Theodor von Heigel
1842 - 1915 (73 years)
Karl Theodor von Heigel was a German historian. He was the brother of novelist Karl August von Heigel. He studied history at the University of Munich, obtaining his habilitation for history in 1873. In 1879 he became an associate professor, and several years later, a full professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Munich. In 1885 he was appointed professor and director of the historical seminary at the university.
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Louise Nalbandian
1926 - 1974 (48 years)
Louise Ziazan Nalbandian was an American Armenian historian and professor in the History Department at California State University, Fresno from 1964 to 1974. She was the author of The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties Through the Nineteenth Century.
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Dušan Pirjevec
1921 - 1977 (56 years)
Dušan Pirjevec, known by his nom de guerre Ahac , was a Slovenian Partisan, literary historian and philosopher. He was one of the most influential public intellectuals in post–World War II Slovenia.
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Pierre Huard
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Pierre Huard was a French physician , historian of medicine and anthropologist, long in post in Indochina, dean of several faculties of medicine , rector of the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a pioneer in the history of medicine.
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Axel Olrik
1864 - 1917 (53 years)
Axel Olrik was a Danish folklorist and scholar of mediaeval historiography, and a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative. Olrik was born in Frederiksberg, the son of the artist Henrik Olrik. Artist Dagmar Olrik, judge Eyvind Olrik, historian Hans Olrik and cultural historian Jørgen Olrik were siblings of his.
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Karl Obermann
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Karl Obermann was a German historian. He became the first director of the Historical Institute of the German Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Life Karl Obermann was born in Cologne. His father was a factory worker. There was no money for him to progress to a university level education so after leaving secondary school he undertook an apprenticeship in technical drawing. Obermann became unemployed in 1928. He was able to attend lectures at the university in Sociology and Economic History as a "guest attendee". During this time he was supporting himself, at least in part, throug...
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Taharqa
800 BC - 664 BC (136 years)
Taharqa, also spelled Taharka or Taharqo , was a pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and qore of the Kingdom of Kush , from 690 to 664 BC. He was one of the "Black Pharaohs" who ruled over Egypt for nearly a century.
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Gottfried Bernhardy
1800 - 1875 (75 years)
Gottfried Bernhardy , German philologist and literary historian, was born at Landsberg an der Warthe in the Neumark. Life He was the son of Jewish parents in reduced circumstances. Two well-to-do uncles provided the means for his education, and in 1811 he entered the Joachimsthal gymnasium at Berlin. In 1817 he went to Berlin University to study philology, where he had the advantage of hearing F.A. Wolf , August Böckh and Philipp Karl Buttmann. In 1822, he took the degree of doctor of philosophy at Berlin, and in 1825 became an associate professor. In 1829, he succeeded Christian Carl Reisi...
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Nicolae Dobrescu
1874 - 1914 (40 years)
Nicolae Dobrescu was a Romanian church historian and theologian within the Romanian Orthodox Church. Biography He was born into a peasant family in Celeiu, Romanați County, a village later merged into Corabia town and located in the Oltenia region. His father was named Dobre D. Deaconu, and the surname Dobrescu was assigned to him at the village primary school. After finishing there, he attended the central seminary in the national capital Bucharest from 1888 to 1896. After graduating, he enrolled in two faculties at the University of Bucharest, theology and literature, completing both in 1902.
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Georg Witkowski
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Georg Witkowski was a German literary historian. Literary works Die Handlung des zweiten Teils von Goethes Faust - Akademische Antrittsvorlesung, 1898, Dr. Seele & Co., LeipzigGoethe, 1899Das deutsche Drama des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1903Goethes Faust, 1906Die Entwicklung der deutschen Literatur seit 1830, 1911
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Oskar Loorits
1900 - 1961 (61 years)
Oskar Loorits was an Estonian folklorist. Life Loorits was born in Suure-Kõpu Parish, Viljandi County. He initially studied folklore at the University of Tartu and obtained his doctorate in 1926. Between 1927 and 1941, he was a lecturer in Estonian and Comparative Folklore. Also during that period he was a director of the Estonian Folklore Archives. In 1938 he became a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. In 1944, he fled the Soviet occupation to Sweden and worked there until 1947 as an archive assistant. From then until shortly before his death he held a position in the folk archives of the University of Uppsala.
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William Parker
1821 - 1891 (70 years)
William Parker was an American former slave who escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania, where he became an abolitionist and anti-slavery activist in Christiana. He was a farmer and led a black self-defense organization. He was notable as a principal figure in the Christiana incident , 1851, also known as the Christiana Resistance. Edward Gorsuch, a Maryland slaveowner who owned four slaves who had fled over the state border to Parker's farm, was killed and other white men in the party to capture the fugitives were wounded. The events brought national attention to the challenges of enforcing th...
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Johann Theodor Katerkamp
1764 - 1834 (70 years)
Johann Theodor Katerkamp was a German Catholic church historian born in Ochtrup. Life Johann Theodor Katerkamp was the son of a wealthy farmer, Johann Heinrich Eberhard and his wife Maria. Johann Theodor received his early education at the Progymnasium of the Franciscan Order in Rheine. In 1781 he went to the Gymnasium Paulinum in Münster. He studied theology and philosophy at the University of Münster from 1783 to 1787.
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Trudpert Neugart
1742 - 1825 (83 years)
Trudpert Neugart was a Benedictine historian. Of middle-class origin, Neugart studied in the classical schools of the Benedictine Abbeys of St George and St. Blasien, entered the order at the latter monastery in l759, and was ordained priest 1765; in 1767 he was appointed professor of Biblical languages at the University of Freiburg. In 1770, however, he returned to St. Blasien where he professed theology.
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Charles Henry Hull
1864 - 1936 (72 years)
Charles Henry Hull was an American economist and historian. He worked at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York. In 1900, he was appointed professor of American History. In 1899, he published The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty in two volumes. This edition has become the standard source for referring to the economic writings of Sir William Petty .
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Caroline Skeel
1872 - 1951 (79 years)
Caroline Anne James Skeel was a British historian. She was a professor of history at Westfield College, and is remembered for her work in Welsh social and economic history. The library at Westfield was named after her in 1971.
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Alfons Huber
1834 - 1898 (64 years)
Alfons Huber was an Austrian historian. Life After finishing his gymnasium studies in Hall and Innsbruck, he studied history under Julius von Ficker at the University of Innsbruck . While still young he had become interested in history from Joseph Annegarn's Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. In 1859 he was appointed lecturer of history at Innsbruck, where he became professor in 1863, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in 1867, full member in 1872, and in 1887 professor at the University of Vienna, succeeding Ottokar Lorenz.
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Colin Robert Chase
1935 - 1984 (49 years)
Colin Robert Chase was an American academic. An associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. His best-known work, The Dating of Beowulf, challenged the accepted orthodoxy of the dating of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf—then thought to be from the latter half of the eighth century—and left behind what was described in A Beowulf Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude".
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Erik Peterson
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Erik Peterson Grandjean was a German Catholic theologian,patrologist and Church historian. Biography Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world.
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