The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in History,
#6801
Heinrich Ritter von Zeissberg
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Heinrich Ritter von Zeissberg was an Austrian historian. He studied history at the university of Vienna, receiving his PhD in 1862. In 1865, became a professor of history at the university of Lemberg, and in 1871 relocated as a professor to Innsbruck. In 1872, he was appointed professor at the university of Vienna, and here he was a tutor of history to the crown prince Rudolph. In 1892, he was named director of the Vienna institute for historical research, and in 1896 director of the imperial court library at Vienna. He resigned his professorial chair at Vienna in 1897.
Go to Profile#6802
W. L. Newman
1834 - 1923 (89 years)
William Lambert Newman, FBA was a British ancient historian and philosopher. Early life and education Born on 21 August 1834, Newman was the son of a solicitor from Cheltenham. In 1851, he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as a scholar ; he took first class honours in literae humaniores in 1855 and graduated the following year with a BA.
Go to Profile#6803
Laurence B. Packard
1887 - 1909 (22 years)
Laurence Bradford Packard was an American historian. Early life He was born in Brockton, Massachusetts in 1887. He studied at Brockton High School. In 1909, he completed his A.B. degree from Harvard University.
Go to Profile#6804
Gilbert Chinard
1881 - 1972 (91 years)
Gilbert Chinard was a French-American historian, professor emeritus, who authored over 40 books. Born on October 17, 1881, in Chatellerault, France, to Hilaire and Marie Chinard, educated at the Universities of Poitiers and Bordeaux, in 1908, he married Emma Blanchard, then moved to New York as a visiting instructor in French Literature, leading him in an American academic career, teaching positions at Brown University , the University of California, Berkeley , Johns Hopkins University , and Princeton University .
Go to Profile#6805
Francisco Cantera Burgos
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Don Francisco Cantera Burgos was a Spanish historian. He received worldwide recognition for his studies on Jewish culture in Spain. He studied law at the University of Valladolid and philosophy at Universidad Central de Madrid. He co-founded the Arias Montano Institute and the magazine Sepharad, where he published countless articles. Following the creation of the institute, he served as the first director of the Sephardic Museum in Toledo, Spain.
Go to Profile#6806
Theodore Plucknett
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
Theodore Frank Thomas Plucknett was a British legal historian who was the first chair of legal history at the London School of Economics. Plucknett was born on 2 January 1897 in Bristol. Plucknett completed his early education at Alderman Newton's School in Leicester and then Bacup and Rawstenstall school in Newchurch, Lancashire. He completed his degree in history at London University and graduated with second class honours. He later completed his master's degree at University College London before his twenty-first birthday. He was also awarded the Alexander prize of the Royal Historical Society.
Go to Profile#6807
Merritt Yerkes Hughes
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Merritt Yerkes Hughes Hughes was an expert in the literature of France, England and Italy. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1925, the first year they were given. Life Hughes was born May 24, 1893, in Philadelphia; he received a bachelor's degree from Boston University in 1915, a master's degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1918, a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1921 and a D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh in 1950.
Go to Profile#6808
Jérôme Carcopino
1881 - 1970 (89 years)
Jérôme Carcopino was a French historian and author. He was the fifteenth member elected to occupy seat 3 of the Académie française, in 1955. Biography Carcopino was born at Verneuil-sur-Avre, Eure, son of a doctor from a Corsican family related to Bonaparte, and educated at the École Normale Supérieure where he specialised in history. From 1904 to 1907 he was a member of the French School in Rome. In 1912 he was a professor of history in Le Havre. In 1912 he became a lecturer at the University of Algiers and inspector of antiquities in Algeria until 1920. His career was interrupted by World War I when he served in the Dardanelles.
Go to Profile#6809
George Sansom
1883 - 1965 (82 years)
Sir George Bailey Sansom was a British diplomat and historian of pre-modern Japan, particularly noted for his historical surveys and his attention to Japanese society and culture. Early life Sansom was born in London, where his father was a naval architect, but was educated in France and Germany, including the University of Giessen and the University of Marburg. He passed an examination for the Diplomatic Service in September 1903.
Go to Profile#6810
Francis Utley
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Francis Lee Utley was a folklorist, linguist, medievalist, scholar of onomastics and literature, educator, and author. Life and career Born and raised in Watertown, Wisconsin, Utley attended the University of Wisconsin, from which he graduated with honors in 1929. He did his graduate literary studies at Harvard, earning the M.A. in 1934 and the Ph.D. in 1936. At Harvard, he came under the influence of George Lyman Kittredge in English who encouraged Utley's study of folklore. In 1936, he married Ruth Alice Scott and they had three children: Philip Lee, Andrew Scott, and Jean Marie.
Go to Profile#6811
John Edwin Pomfret
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
John Edwin Pomfret was an American academic and administrator who served as the director of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery and the twentieth president of the College of William & Mary.
Go to Profile#6812
Hans-Joachim Schoeps
1909 - 1980 (71 years)
Hans-Joachim Schoeps was a German-Jewish historian of religion and religious philosophy. He was professor of religions and religious history at the University of Erlangen. Prior to World War II, Schoeps was leader of The German Vanguard , an organization of 150 Jewish students, national conservative anti-Zionists who sought total assimilation into the German nation.
Go to Profile#6813
Cornelis de Kiewiet
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Cornelis Willem de Kiewiet was a Dutch-born American historian most notable for having served as president of Cornell University and the University of Rochester. Biography De Kiewiet was born in the Netherlands, but grew up in South Africa, where his father went as a diamond and gold-seeker and later worked as an employee of the Transvaal Republic's Railway. In the early 1920s, Cornelis earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in history from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and, in 1927, he earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of London.
Go to Profile#6814
Marshall Hodgson
1922 - 1968 (46 years)
Marshall Goodwin Simms Hodgson , was an Islamic studies academic and a world historian at the University of Chicago. He was chairman of the interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought in Chicago. Life Marshall Hodgson was born in Richmond, Indiana in April 11, 1922. He was a practicing Quaker and a strict vegetarian. He worked in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector from 1943 to 1946. In 1951, he received his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he later became professor, receiving tenure in 1961, becoming chairman of the Committee in Social Thought in 1964 and the newly established Committee on Near Eastern Studies in the same year.
Go to Profile#6815
C. L. Mowat
1911 - 1970 (59 years)
Charles Loch Mowat was a British-born American historian. Biography Mowat was educated at Marlborough College and St John's College, Oxford. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States, where he became an American citizen. From 1934 until 1936 he taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1936 he took up a position at the University of California, Los Angeles. His opposition to McCarthyism led to him leaving UCLA and taking a post at the University of Chicago in 1950. In 1958 he returned to Britain to be professor of history at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, a post he held until ...
Go to Profile#6816
Antony Andrewes
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Antony Andrewes, was an English classical scholar and historian. He was Wykeham Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford from 1953 to 1977. Early life Andrewes was born in Tavistock, Devon, England, on 12 June 1910. He was educated at Winchester College from 1923 to 1929. He studied at New College, Oxford, between 1929 and 1933.
Go to Profile#6817
William Abel Pantin
1902 - 1973 (71 years)
William Abel Pantin was a historian of medieval England who spent most of his academic life at the University of Oxford. Life Pantin was born in Blackheath, south London, on 1 May 1902. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a first-class degree in Modern History in 1923. He undertook research at the University of Oxford after winning a Bryce Research Studentship.
Go to Profile#6818
Frank Underhill
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Frank Hawkins Underhill, SM, FRSC was a Canadian journalist, essayist, historian, social critic, and political thinker. Biography Frank Underhill, born in Stouffville, Ontario, was educated at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford in which he was a member of the Fabian Society. He was influenced by social and political critics such as George Bernard Shaw and Goldwin Smith. He taught history at the University of Saskatchewan from 1914 until 1927 with a long interruption during World War I during which he served as an officer in the Hertfordshire Regiment of the British Army on the Western Front.
Go to Profile#6819
Eric Thomas Stokes
1924 - 1981 (57 years)
Eric Thomas Stokes was a historian of South Asia, especially early-modern and colonial India, and of the British Empire. Stokes was the second holder of Smuts Professorship of the History of the British Commonwealth at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#6820
Carlton J. H. Hayes
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes was an American historian, educator, diplomat, devout Catholic and academic. A student of European history, he was a leading and pioneering specialist on the study of nationalism. He was elected as president of the American Historical Association over the opposition of liberals and the more explicit Anti-Catholic bias that defined the academic community of his era. He served as United States Ambassador to Spain in World War II. Although he came under attack from the CIO and others on the left that rejected any dealings with Francoist Spain, Hayes succeeded in his...
Go to Profile#6821
William Appleman Williams
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
William Appleman Williams was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist historians of American diplomacy. He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the department of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is considered to be the foremost member of the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history.
Go to Profile#6822
David M. Potter
1910 - 1971 (61 years)
David Morris Potter was an American historian specializing in the study of the American Civil War, especially the Confederacy, and the American South in general. His best known book is The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, which was completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher and published posthumously in 1976.
Go to Profile#6823
Tyler Dennett
1883 - 1949 (66 years)
Tyler Dennett was an American historian and educator. He received the 1934 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his 1933 book John Hay: From Poetry to Politics. Early career and education Born in Wisconsin, but raised in Rhode Island, Dennett graduated high school as valedictorian from the Moses Brown School in Providence. In 1900, Dennett enrolled at Bates College and then transferred to Williams College as a sophomore. At Williams, he was a member of the football team. After his graduation in the spring of 1904 and a year of work in Williamstown, Massachusetts he attended the Union Theological Seminary, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Divinity in 1908.
Go to Profile#6824
Marcel Bataillon
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Marcel Édouard Bataillon, was a French Hispanicist who specialized in the philosophy and spirituality of sixteenth-century Spain. Career He began his studies in 1913 at the École Normale Supérieure. This was followed by a term at l’École des Hautes Études Hispaniques in Madrid where he was a delegate to the "International Committee of Allied Propaganda". From 1916 to 1919 he was a lieutenant in the French artillery. He emerged from these experiences as a confirmed pacifist.
Go to Profile#6825
Julius W. Pratt
1888 - 1983 (95 years)
Julius William Pratt was a United States historian who specialized in foreign relations and imperialism. Noted for his studies of the origins of the War of 1812 and the war with Spain in 1898, he also wrote a two-volume biography of Cordell Hull. He was the historian who rediscovered John L. O'Sullivan and his role in originating the idea of Manifest Destiny.
Go to Profile#6826
Franz Altheim
1898 - 1976 (78 years)
Franz Altheim was a German classical philologist and historian who specialized in the history of classical antiquity. During the 1930s and 1940s, Altheim served the Nazi state as a member of Ahnenerbe, a think tank controlled by the Schutzstaffel , the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, and as a spy for the SS.
Go to Profile#6827
C. Bradford Welles
1901 - 1969 (68 years)
C. Bradford Welles was an American Classicist and ancient historian, born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. His academic career was at Yale University. He received a B.A. in 1924, a Ph.D. in 1928, became an instructor in 1927, an assistant professor in 1931, an associate professor in 1939 and professor in 1940. At his death he was professor of ancient history and curator of the Yale Collection of Papyri. He was profoundly influenced by the great ancient historian Michael I. Rostovtzeff, who arrived at Yale in 1925.
Go to Profile#6828
Dumas Malone
1892 - 1986 (94 years)
Dumas Malone was an American historian, minister, and biographer. A professor by occupation, Malone spent the majority of his career teaching at the University of Virginia , where he served as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History.
Go to Profile#6829
Edward Togo Salmon
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Edward Togo Salmon was an ancient historian best known for his work on the Samnites and the Romanization of Italy. Life Salmon was born in London, England, and was given his middle name after Admiral Togo who sank the Russian Fleet in 1905.
Go to Profile#6830
Thomas A. Bailey
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Thomas Andrew Bailey was a professor of history at his alma mater, Stanford University, and wrote many historical monographs on diplomatic history, including the widely used American history textbook, The American Pageant. He was known for his witty style and clever terms he coined, such as "international gangsterism." He popularized diplomatic history with his entertaining textbooks and lectures, the presentation style of which followed Ephraim Douglass Adams. Bailey contended foreign policy was significantly affected by public opinion, and that current policymakers could learn from history.
Go to Profile#6831
John Eyler
John M Eyler is an eminent author, academic and historian. He has an Emeritus position at the University of Minnesota. He has a B.A. in history and a Ph.D. in the history of science . He worked on the history of medicine sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, after which he taught for a year at Northwestern University. In 1974, he joined the History of Medicine Program at Minnesota.
Go to Profile#6832
George Clark
1890 - 1979 (89 years)
Sir George Norman Clark, was an English historian, academic and British Army officer. He was the Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford from 1931 to 1943 and the Regius Professor of Modern History at The University of Cambridge from 1943 to 1947. He served as Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, from 1947 to 1957.
Go to Profile#6833
Bernadotte Everly Schmitt
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Bernadotte Everly Schmitt was an American historian who was professor of Modern European History at the University of Chicago from 1924 to 1946. He is best known for his study of the causes of World War I, in which he emphasized Germany's perceived responsibility and rejected revisionist arguments.
Go to Profile#6834
Frank Stenton
1880 - 1967 (87 years)
Sir Frank Merry Stenton FBA was an English historian of Anglo-Saxon England, a professor of history at the University of Reading , president of the Royal Historical Society , Reading University's vice-chancellor .
Go to Profile#6835
George Wynn Brereton Huntingford
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
George Wynn Brereton Huntingford was an English linguist, anthropologist and historian. He lectured in East African languages and cultures at SOAS, University of London from 1950 until 1966. In 1966, Huntingford went to Canada to organise the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton, and retired to Málaga the next year, where he lived after his retirement.
Go to Profile#6836
Richard B. Morris
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Richard Brandon Morris was an American historian best known for his pioneering work in colonial American legal history and the early history of American labor. In later years, he shifted his research interests to the constitutional, diplomatic, and political history of the American Revolution and the making of the United States Constitution.
Go to Profile#6837
Arthur N. Holcombe
1884 - 1977 (93 years)
Arthur Norman Holcombe was an American political scientist and educator who taught at Harvard University from 1910 until his retirement in 1955. He was known for his studies of government structure.
Go to Profile#6838
Avery Craven
1885 - 1980 (95 years)
Avery Odelle Craven was an American historian who wrote extensively about the nineteenth-century United States, the American Civil War and Congressional Reconstruction from a then-revisionist viewpoint sympathetic to the Lost Cause as well as democratic failings during his own lifetime.
Go to Profile#6839
George E. Mowry
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
George Edwin Mowry was an American historian focusing primarily on the Progressive Era. As a professor at UCLA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he taught large classes and directed over 50 PhD dissertations. Mowry published five books, co-authored six others and edited three books. He published 10 book chapters, over 50 encyclopedia articles and over 100 book reviews in magazines and professional journals. He joined John Donald Hicks as coauthor of a highly successful university textbook. He was active in many organizations, especially the Organization of American Historians.
Go to Profile#6840
Joseph Strayer
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Joseph Reese Strayer was an American medievalist. He was a student of Charles Homer Haskins. Life Strayer graduated from Princeton University and Harvard University . Strayer taught at Princeton University for many decades, starting in the 1930s. He was chair of the history department and president of the American Historical Association in 1971. Strayer has been credited with training a large percentage of the American medievalist profession with liberal fashion; many of his students are still teaching and active. Notable students include Teofilo Ruiz, William Chester Jordan, and Richard W.
Go to Profile#6841
Henry Guerlac
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Henry Edward Guerlac was an American historian of science. He taught at Cornell University where he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of History and a member of the Department of History. Biography Guerlac earned his PhD in European history from Harvard in 1941.
Go to Profile#6842
Michael Rostovtzeff
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev , was a Russian historian whose career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and who produced important works on ancient Roman and Greek history. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#6843
Salo Wittmayer Baron
1895 - 1989 (94 years)
Salo Wittmayer Baron was an Austrian-born American historian, described as "the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century". Baron taught at Columbia University from 1930 until his retirement in 1963.
Go to Profile#6844
James T. Shotwell
1874 - 1965 (91 years)
James Thomson Shotwell was a Canadian-born American history professor. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the International Labour Organization in 1919, as well as for his influence in promoting inclusion of a declaration of human rights in the UN Charter.
Go to Profile#6845
Herbert Heaton
1890 - 1973 (83 years)
Herbert Heaton was a British-born economic historian. He held posts at the University of Tasmania, Queen's University, Kingston, and the University of Minnesota, where he was head of the Department of History from 1954 until his retirement in 1958. Heaton was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1945.
Go to Profile#6846
Paul Herman Buck
1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Paul Herman Buck was an American historian. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1938 and became the first Provost of Harvard University in 1945. Biography Buck was born in Ohio. He received a Bachelor's degree and an MA from Ohio State University. While an undergraduate, Buck was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In 1922 he published his first book Evolution of the National Parks System. He went to Harvard University for his graduate studies, and received a Master's degree in 1924. After studying for one year in Britain and France under a Sheldon traveling fellowship, he joined Harvard as an instructor in history in 1926.
Go to Profile#6847
Marcus Cunliffe
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
Marcus Falkner Cunliffe was a British scholar who specialized in cultural and military American Studies. He was particularly interested in comparing how Europeans viewed Americans and how Americans viewed Europeans.
Go to Profile#6848
Câmara Cascudo
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
Luís da Câmara Cascudo was a Brazilian anthropologist, folklorist, journalist, historian, lawyer, and lexicographer. He was born in Natal, Northeast Brazil. He lived his entire life in Natal and dedicated himself to the study of Brazilian culture and he was a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. He was also interested in music and was a co-founder of the Natal Instituto de Música in 1933. The institute of anthropology there now bears his name.
Go to Profile#6849
Arthur H. Cole
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Arthur Harrison Cole was an American economic historian and was the head of the Harvard University Business School's library. Cole created the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History that was addressed by Joseph Schumpeter, and that had as participants several graduate students who later went on to distinguished careers in economic history.
Go to Profile#6850
William Scott Ferguson
1875 - 1954 (79 years)
William Scott Ferguson was a Canadian-American classical scholar. Biography William Scott Ferguson was born in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island on November 11, 1875, the son of Senator Donald Ferguson.
Go to Profile