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,
#6551
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.
Go to Profile#6553
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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Jurgis Baltrušaitis
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Jurgis Baltrušaitis was a Lithuanian art historian, art critic and a founder of comparative art research. He was the son of the poet and diplomat Jurgis Baltrušaitis. Most of his works were written in French, although he always stressed his Lithuanian origin. After Lithuania was occupied by the USSR in 1945, he served as a diplomat in exile.
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H. B. Thom
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
Hendrik Bernardus Thom was a Afrikaner professor and former Rector of the Stellenbosch University. Life and career Thom was born in Jamestown, Cape Colony, and grew up in Burgersdorp, South Africa. Because he was the 5th grandchild of his grandfather and namesake with the first names Hendrik Bernardus, his parents decided to call him by the nickname Quintus to distinguish him from his cousins; he was known as Quintie Thom throughout his life. He matriculated at Burgersdorp High School and studied at Stellenbosch University . He continued his studies in history in Germany at the Friedrich Wil...
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Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon
1854 - 1917 (63 years)
Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon was a Norwegian linguist and historian. He was a professor of Semitic Languages at the University of Oslo from 1907. Knudtzon was born in Trondheim, the son of consul Hans Nicolay Knudtzon and his wife Catharina née Trampe. Having finished his secondary education in 1872, he enrolled at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania. After a short spell at the Cathedral School in Trondheim, he returned to Christiania to study Semitic languages, in particular Akkadian, Arabian and Hebrew, the last of which he also gave lectures on. His first scholarly contribution was Textkritische Bemerkungen zu Lay 17,18, which was published in 1882.
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Johannes Isacius Pontanus
1571 - 1639 (68 years)
Johan Isaaksz Pontanus was a Dutch historiographer. Pontanus was the son of Margaretha van Delen and Isaac Pietersz, the Dutch consul to Denmark stationed in Helsingør. The painter Pieter Isaacsz was his older brother. In 1578 his family returned to the Netherlands and Pontanus grew up in Amsterdam. In 1589 he enrolled as a medical student at the University of Franeker and in 1592 at Leiden University as "Joannes Hellespontius Danus", predating the apparent contraction "Pontanus" . The next year he defended his Dissertatio de rationalis animas facilitate and traveled to Rome, visiting German scholars on his return trip.
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Josef Matoušek
1906 - 1939 (33 years)
Josef Matoušek was a Czechoslovak historian. He was one of nine people executed by the Nazis for participating in the funeral of the student Jan Opletal. Biography Matoušek was born on 13 January 1906 in Hořice. He studied under Josef Šusta. His research focused on two periods: the Reformation and early Counter-Reformation, and modern history. He wrote a book, The Turkish War in European Politics in the Years 1592–94. He also published on Karel Sladkovksý, a 19th-century Czech politician. In 1939, he was a docent in history at Charles University in Prague.
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Charles Hardwick
1821 - 1859 (38 years)
Charles Hardwick was an English historian and a priest of the Church of England who became the Archdeacon of Ely. Life Hardwick was born in Slingsby, North Yorkshire, the son of Charles Hardwick, a joiner. After receiving some instruction at Slingsby, Malton, and Sheffield, he acted for a short time as an usher at schools in Thornton and Malton and as an assistant to the Revd Henry Barlow at Shirland rectory in Derbyshire.
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Ivan Duichev
1907 - 1986 (79 years)
Ivan Simeonov Duichev was a Bulgarian historian and paleographer with a focus on Bulgarian and Byzantine medieval history. Throughout his scientific and research life he has followed the maxim of his teacher Vasil Zlatarski that Bulgarian history is inextricably linked and incomprehensible without Byzantine history. Adopted as the father of Bulgarian archival studies.
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Charles VIII of Sweden
1409 - 1470 (61 years)
Charles VIII , contemporaneously known as Charles II and called Charles I in Norwegian context, was king of Sweden and king of Norway . Regnal name Charles was the second Swedish king by the name of Charles . Charles VIII is a posthumous invention, counting backwards from Charles IX who adopted his numeral according to a fictitious history of Sweden. Six others before Charles VII are unknown to any sources before Johannes Magnus's 16th century book , and are considered his invention. Charles was the first Swedish monarch of the name to actually use a regnal number as Charles II , on his wife...
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Frédéric de Reiffenberg
1795 - 1850 (55 years)
Frédéric Auguste Ferdinand Thomas de Reiffenberg was a baron, Belgian writer, historian-medievalist, and linguist. He was also a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, as well as a member of the Academic Senate and professor at the State University of Leuven.
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Charles Wendell David
1885 - 1984 (99 years)
Charles Wendell David was a noted American bibliophile, medievalist and librarian. He worked tirelessly both to reconstruct Europe's war-torn repositories and to establish new libraries in the United States.
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Silas Marcus MacVane
1842 - 1914 (72 years)
Silas Marcus MacVane was a Canadian-American historian, the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History at Harvard University starting in 1887 after the death of Ephraim Whitman Gurney . He was a professor at Harvard from 1873 until 1911.
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Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland
1805 - 1865 (60 years)
Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Ferland was a French Canadian historian. Life He studied at the college of Nicolet and was ordained 1828. He ministered to country parishes until 1841, when he was made director of studies in the college of Nicolet. He became its superior in 1848. Being named a member of the council of the Bishop of Quebec, he took up his residence in that city, where he was also chaplain to the English garrison. From his college days he had devoted himself to the study of Canadian history; the numerous notes which he collected had made him one of the most learned men of the country. It ...
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Herman Daniel Paul
1827 - 1885 (58 years)
Herman Daniel Paul was a German-born musician and lecturer in German at the University of Helsinki, who translated the Kalevala into German, among other works. Life Paul's father was a government councilor, Johann Paul, and his mother was Dorothea Paul. He attended high school in Berlin, studied music, and then held various positions in music, circling the violin countries of the Baltic Sea region from 1858 to 1862. Paul moved to Helsinki in 1859, founded a music store there in 1862 and worked as a concert reviewer. He was an adjunct professor of German at the University of Helsinki from 1869 to 1885 and taught German and Russian at various educational institutions in Helsinki.
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Adolf Chybiński
1880 - 1952 (72 years)
Adolf Chybiński was a Polish historian, musicologist, and academic. Early life and education Adolf Eustachy Chybiński was the son of the industrialist Adolf and Maria z Górskich. He was educated at a gymnasium in Kraków, and studied German, classical philology and law at Jagiellonian University .
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Friedrich Rühs
1781 - 1820 (39 years)
Friedrich Rühs was a German historian of Scandinavian and Germanic history. At the time of the Liberation War he wrote xenophobic anti-French and anti-Jewish nationalist texts, and is seen as a forerunner of volkish antisemitism.
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Eugenio Manni
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Eugenio Manni was an Italian ancient historian. Having graduated from the University of Turin, he specialised at the end of the 1940s in ancient history, particularly ancient Greece, Rome and the history of Sicily in the period before the Greeks.
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