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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#6701
Robert Kerr Hannay
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
Robert Kerr Hannay was a Scottish historian. He served as Historiographer Royal for Scotland and Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh. He collected and calendared the letters of both James IV and James V, and wrote The Early History of the Scottish Signet.
Go to Profile#6702
Pyotr Polevoy
1839 - 1902 (63 years)
Pyotr Nikolayevich Polevoy was a Russian writer, playwright, translator, critic, editor and literary historian. The prominent journalist and editor Nikolai Polevoy was his father. A Saint Petersburg University graduate, for a decade Polevoy taught Russian literature and philology first at his alma mater, then at Novorossiysk and Warsaw Universities. In 1871 he turned professional writer and in the course of the next thirty years published numerous historical novels and novellas as well as plays and critical and historical essays.
Go to Profile#6703
Hakob Manandian
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
Hakob Hamazaspi Manandian was an Armenian historian, philologist, and member of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . His most important work is A Critical Survey of the History of the Armenian People . He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
Go to Profile#6704
Fred Kupferman
1934 - 1988 (54 years)
Fred Kupferman was a French historian. He was Jewish, and he was forced to wear a yellow badge during World War II. He lost his father in the Holocaust. Kupferman was a professor of history at Sciences Po and the University of Paris. He was the author of several history books about Vichy France. He also co-wrote two children's books with his wife. Kupferman had a wife, Sigrid. He died on 27 April 1988 in Paris, France.
Go to Profile#6705
Herbert Tuttle
1846 - 1894 (48 years)
Herbert Tuttle was an American historian. Biography Herbert Tuttle was born in Bennington, Vermont on November 29, 1846. He graduated in 1869 from the University of Vermont. From 1880 to 1881 he was a lecturer on international law at the University of Michigan, and in the latter year was appointed to the chair of politics and international law at Cornell University. He was subsequently transferred to the chair of European history in the Department of History.
Go to Profile#6706
Richard Fester
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Richard Fester was a German historian. Life Richard Fester was born in Frankfurt where his father, Dr. Anselm Fester, worked as a lawyer-notary. Richard attended secondary school in the city until 1881 and then volunteered for a year of military service.
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Henry Cadbury
1883 - 1974 (91 years)
Henry Joel Cadbury was an American biblical scholar, Quaker historian, writer, and non-profit administrator. Life A graduate of Haverford College, Cadbury was a Quaker throughout his life, as well as an agnostic. Forced out of his teaching position at Haverford for writing an anti-war letter to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 1918, he saw the experience as a milestone, leading him to larger service beyond his Orthodox Religious Society of Friends. He was offered a position in the Divinity School at Harvard University, from which he had received his Ph.D., but he first rejected its teacher...
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Henri Omont
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Henri Auguste Omont was a French librarian, philologist, and historian. Life In 1881 he wrote a thesis De la ponctuation and graduated from the École Nationale des Chartes. As a librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, he participated in compiling the "general catalogue of the manuscripts of the public libraries of France" . At the same time, he undertook research on ancient libraries and the history of printing and books. Omont became a member of the Société des Antiquaires de France and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1900. Between 1900 and 1921, Omont was pr...
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Józef Kallenbach
1861 - 1929 (68 years)
Józef Henryk Kallenbach , born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, was a Polish historian of literature. Kallenbach graduated from the IV Public Male Gymnasium Jan Długosz of old-classical type in Lwów. He was a professor of Polish literary history at Lwów University and Jagiellon University. He was also a professor at the universities in Freiburg, Warsaw, and Wilno, a member of the Akademia Umiejętności, and a director of the Czartoryski Museum and Library in Kraków.
Go to Profile#6710
Hector Munro Chadwick
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Hector Munro Chadwick was an English philologist. Chadwick was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and the founder and head of the Department for Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies at the University of Cambridge. Chadwick was well known for his encouragement of interdisciplinary research on Celts and Germanic peoples, and for his theories on the Heroic Age in the history of human societies. Chadwick was a tutor of many notable students and the author of numerous influential works in his fields of study. Much of his research and teaching was conducted in cooperation with his wife...
Go to Profile#6711
Thomas William Shore
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Thomas William Shore, sometimes given as William Thomas Shore was an English geologist and antiquarian. Life Born on 5 April 1840 at Wantage, he was son of William Shore, architect, by his wife Susannah Carter. Brought up at Wantage, he became organising secretary to the East Lancashire Union of Institutions at Burnley. In 1867 he was sent by the Science and Art Department to the Paris Exhibition to report on scientific and technical education, and gave evidence on the subject before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1868.
Go to Profile#6712
Émile Amann
1880 - 1948 (68 years)
Émile Amann was a French historian of the Church. After studying at the major seminary of Nancy, Émile Amann continued his training at the Catholic Institute in Paris. He was mobilized in 1914 and fought during the four years of First World War. After his demobilization, he joined the faculty of Catholic theology of the University of Strasbourg , where he taught the ancient history of the Church until his death.
Go to Profile#6713
Mikhail Artamonov
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov was a Soviet and Russian historian and archeologist, who came to be recognized as the founding father of modern Khazar studies. Biography Artamonov was born into a peasant family in Tver Governorate. He moved to Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the Russian Revolution.
Go to Profile#6714
Władysław Smoleński
1851 - 1926 (75 years)
Władysław Smoleński was a Polish historian, author of many books and articles, and a professor of the Warsaw University. Further reading External links
Go to Profile#6715
Cosmo Innes
1798 - 1874 (76 years)
Cosmo Nelson Innes FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, historian and antiquary. He served as Advocate-Depute, Sheriff of Elginshire, and Principal Clerk of Session. He was a skilled decipherer of ancient Scottish records and helped to compile, edit and index Acts of the Scottish Parliament 1124–1707. He was said to be tall, handsome but shy. He was accused of being a Catholic sympathiser whilst it remained illegal, and joined the Scottish Episcopal Church, closer in some practices to the Catholic Church. Dean Ramsay, head of the Episcopal Church, was one of his friends.
Go to Profile#6716
Alice Margaret Cooke
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
Alice Margaret Cooke was a British historian and writer. Cooke catalogued the books in the John Rylands Library and she helped in the development of higher education for women in Manchester. Life Cooke was born in Hulme in Lancashire in 1867 to John and Eliza Anderson Cooke. Following private education she went to Manchester High School for Girls where she was identified as academic. She could attend Owens College, Manchester , since the college had allowed women to attend a few years before and she was able to live with her parents. The university had limited provisions for co-educational education.
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Nikoloz Berdzenishvili
1894 - 1965 (71 years)
Nikoloz Aleksandres dze Berdzenishvili was a Soviet and Georgian historian who served as a Vice President of the Georgian Academy of Sciences from 1951 to 1957 and chaired the Department of History at Tbilisi State University from 1946 to 1956.
Go to Profile#6718
Louis Pelzer
1879 - 1946 (67 years)
Louis Pelzer was a professor of history at the University of Iowa and namesake of the Louis Pelzer Award, given annually by the Organization of American Historians for an essay in any period or topic in the history of the United States.
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De Lacy O'Leary
1872 - 1957 (85 years)
De Lacy Evans O'Leary was a British Orientalist who lectured at the University of Bristol and wrote a number of books on the early history of Arabss and Copts. Personal life De Lacy Evans O'Leary was born in Devon in 1872, the eldest child of Henry O'Leary , a Mauritius-born Anglo-Irish former captain in the New Zealand militia, and Julia Hornsey . On his father's side, O'Leary was descended from Irish Catholics of Limerick, and included one of the generals in Wellington's Peninsular Campaign. Brought up as a Protestant and educated at Bristol Grammar School, O'Leary converted to Roman Cathol...
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Werner Kaegi
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Werner Kaegi was a Swiss historian. He is best known for a single work, a biography of Jacob Burkhardt. This appeared in seven volumes, from 1947 to 1982. He was the recipient of the Gottfried-Keller-Preis and the Erasmus Prize.
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Egon Friedell
1878 - 1938 (60 years)
Egon Friedell was a prominent Austrian cultural historian, playwright, actor and Kabarett performer, journalist and theatre critic. Friedell has been described as a polymath. Before 1916, he was also known by his pen name Egon Friedländer.
Go to Profile#6722
Johann Heinrich Gelzer
1813 - 1889 (76 years)
Johann Heinrich Gelzer was a Swiss historian and diplomat who was a native of Schaffhausen. He was the father of philologist Heinrich Gelzer . He studied history and theology at the Universities of Zurich, Jena, Halle and Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1836 at Jena. In 1839 he received his habilitation at Basel, where he was a lecturer of literary history.
Go to Profile#6723
Eric A. Walker
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Eric Anderson Walker was an English historian who served as King George V Professor of History at the University of Cape Town and Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge. He was a pioneer in writing the history of South Africa and later an important historian of the British Empire, though by the end of his life his work was seen as dated and Eurocentric.
Go to Profile#6724
Ivan L. Rudnytsky
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky was a historian of Ukrainian socio-political thought, political scientist and scholar publicist. He significantly influenced Ukrainian historical and political thought by writing over 200 historical essays, commentaries and reviews, and also serving as editor of several book publications. He has been praised one of the most influential Ukrainian historians of the twentieth century. He is sometimes referred to as Ivan Łysiak-Rudnytsky, but the surname he used was his mother’s name Rudnytsky.
Go to Profile#6725
Baltazar Adam Krčelić
1715 - 1778 (63 years)
Baltazar Adam Krčelić was a Croatian historian, theologian and lawyer. After Vitezović, he was the most prominent figure in the Croatian cultural life of the time. Biography He was born in Šenkovec near Zagreb on 5 February 1715 and was schooled in Zagreb, Vienna and Bologna, where he gained a degree in theology and law. In 1747, he was the canon of Zagreb and rector of the Collegium Croaticum Viennense in Vienna. In 1755, at the prompting of the court in Vienna, he composed a draft for the administrative reform in Croatia. His first published work is the biography of medieval Bishop of Zagreb Augustin Kažotić, which was written in Kajkavian.
Go to Profile#6726
Karl Hampe
1869 - 1936 (67 years)
Karl Ludwig Hampe was a German historian of the Middle Ages, particularly the history of the Holy Roman Empire in the High Middle Ages. Hampe was born in Bremen and graduated from Berlin in 1893. Following graduation, he spent five years as an employee of the Monumenta Historica Germaniae. In Bonn Hampe met his later wife Charlotte Rauff, daughter of Heidelberg geologist Hermann Rauff. On 2 March 1903 he married at the age of 34, Rauff . They had four sons and three daughters. Among them architect Hermann Hampe and archaeologist Roland Hampe. In 1903 he was appointed to a professorship in medieval history and historical auxiliary sciences at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#6727
Theodor Hirsch
1806 - 1881 (75 years)
Theodor Hirsch was a German historian who was a native of Altschottland, Danzig. He was a cousin to historian Siegfried Hirsch . Life and career Born Jewish, he converted to Christianity and studied history and theology at Berlin, and in 1833 became a teacher at a secondary school in Danzig, where he would teach history for the next 32 years. At Danzig he focused on the local history of the city, and in 1850 was responsible for re-arrangement and supervision of the municipal archives. In 1865 Hirsch became an associate professor at the University of Greifswald and director of Greifswald Unive...
Go to Profile#6728
Alfred Francis Pribram
1859 - 1941 (82 years)
Alfred Francis Pribram was a British historian of Austrian descent. Life He was born on 1 September 1859 in London, England, the son of Heinrich Pribram and Sophie Pribram. He died on 7 May 1942 in London.
Go to Profile#6729
Archibald Main
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
Archibald Main, was a Scottish ecclesiastical historian, Church of Scotland minister, military chaplain, and academic. From 1915 to 1922, he was Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of St Andrews. From 1922 to 1942, he was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Glasgow. He served as Chaplain to the King from 1925 and as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland from 1939 to 1940.
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Henry Francis Pelham
1846 - 1907 (61 years)
Henry Francis Pelham, FSA, FBA was an English scholar and historian. He was Camden Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford from 1889 to 1907, and was also President of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1897 to 1907.
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Edward Washburn Hopkins
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D. , an American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated at Columbia College in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1881, was an instructor at Columbia , and professor at Bryn Mawr , and became professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology in Yale University in 1895.
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A. P. Newton
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Arthur Percival Newton was a historian of the British Empire who was Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King's College London from 1920 to 1938. He was a general editor of The Cambridge History of the British Empire.
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Sven Ulric Palme
1912 - 1977 (65 years)
Sven Ulric Adalvard Palme was a Swedish historian and professor at Stockholm University. He was the son of the historian Olof Palme and Ola Palme . His historical research was broad, from Swedish Middle Age to modern political history. The political history was his focus, concentrating on political parties, decision-making processes and key actors in these processes. ¶ In the 1930s he was active in the conservative political debate. But eventually he distanced himself from the conservative ideas and became closer to the Social Democratic tradition. He was contrary to common views of histor...
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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...
Go to Profile#6750
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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