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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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in History,
#7101
Ruth Anna Fisher
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Ruth Anna Fisher was an American historian, archivist, and teacher who played a major role in collecting sources from British archives for the Carnegie Institution and Library of Congress. Early life Fisher was born in Lorain, Ohio, the daughter of David C. Fisher, a real estate investor and ice merchant, and Elizabeth Dorsey. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1906 and was offered a position at the Tuskegee Institute. Within a few months, however, she had a falling out with Booker T. Washington over matters of pedagogy and the school's requirement that she be involved in the Sunday School...
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Johann Ludwig Choulant
1791 - 1861 (70 years)
Johann Ludwig Choulant was a German physician from the Kingdom of Saxony who was a professor of Medicine at Dresden medical historian and contributed to the study of the history of medicine. He was the father of architect Ludwig Theodor Choulant . He trained initially in pharmacy before shifting to medicine. A student of classical languages, he examined old works on medicine and produced an influential history of medical illustration which was translated into English by Mortimer Frank and others in 1920.
Go to Profile#7103
Karl Faber
1773 - 1853 (80 years)
Karl Peter Andreas Faber was a Prussian archivist and historian. A native of Königsberg, East Prussia, Faber became chief archivist of the Prussian State Archive in 1808 after attending the University of Königsberg. Faber and Ernst Hennig were the first of Königsberg's archivists to approach the subject in a scientific manner. Faber made public letters from Martin Luther to Albert, Duke of Prussia in 1811. Works by Faber include his Taschenbuch für Königsberg in 1829 and Die Haupt- und Residenzstadt Königsberg in 1841. He also briefly produced a newspaper, Königsberger Abendzeitung, in 1831 and received an honorary doctorate from the philosophy faculty in 1837.
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Jean van der Poel
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Jean van der Poel was a South African historian. Education Van der Poel was born in Cape Town, Cape Colony. She studied at the University of Cape Town , completing her doctorate, on railways and customs policies, at the London School of Economics, for which she was awarded magnum cum laude and which won her the Royal Empire Society prize. Her doctorate studies were financed by the Donald Currie Memorial scholarship.
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Emory Holloway
1885 - 1977 (92 years)
Rufus Emory Holloway was an American literary scholar-educator most known for his books and studies of Walt Whitman. His Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative was the first biography of a literary figure to win the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1927.
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Hsu Dau-lin
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Hsu Dau-lin was a distinguished legal scholar who made substantial contributions to the study of Tang and Song Law and, especially for new republican states, of Constitutional Law. He devoted his prime years to the service of China as government official and as diplomat, and spent his later years teaching Chinese legal history in Taiwan, and Chinese literature and philosophy in America.
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Ernst Hermann Joseph Münch
1798 - 1841 (43 years)
Ernst Hermann Joseph Münch was a distinguished Roman Catholic historian of Germany. He was born in Rheinfelden on 25 October 1798. He studied at Freiburg, was in 1819 teacher at Aarau, in 1824 professor at Freiburg, in 1828 professor of Church history and canon law at Liege. In 1831 he accepted a call to Stuttgart as librarian to the king, and died on 9 June 1841.
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Michael Doeberl
1861 - 1928 (67 years)
Michael Doeberl was a German historian who specialized in Bavarian history. He studied philology and history at the University of Munich, obtaining his doctorate from the University of Erlangen in 1887. In 1894, he received his habilitation and in 1905 became an honorary professor. From 1917 to 1928, he held the chair of Bavarian history at the University of Munich.
Go to Profile#7109
Horst Bartel
1928 - 1984 (56 years)
Horst Bartel was a German historian and university professor. He was involved in most of the core historiography projects undertaken in the German Democratic Republic . His work on the nineteenth-century German Labour movement places him firmly in the mainstream tradition of Marxist–Leninist historical interpretation.
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Christian Wilhelm Niedner
1797 - 1865 (68 years)
Christian Wilhelm Niedner was a German church historian and theologian born in Oberwinkel, which today is part of the town of Waldenburg, Saxony. He studied theology at the University of Leipzig, where in 1826 he received his habilitation. In 1829 he was appointed associate professor, and in 1838 became a full professor of theology at Leipzig. From 1845 onward, he was head of the Leipzig Historical and Theological Society. In 1850 he resigned his professorship and moved to Wittenberg, where he focused on private studies. In 1859 Niedner was appointed professor of historical theology at Berlin...
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Frank Maloy Anderson
1871 - 1961 (90 years)
Frank Maloy Anderson was an author, historian and professor of history. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska and spent most of his adult life teaching and writing about American and Western European history. He was a prolific writer for The American Historical Review and is noted among American Civil War historians for his book The Diary of a Public Man.
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Ellen H. Johnson
1910 - 1982 (72 years)
Ellen Hulda Johnson was a distinguished art historian and professor of modern art at Oberlin College from 1945 to 1977, an organizer of important exhibitions, and an influential critic of contemporary American art.
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Sergei Bershadski
1850 - 1896 (46 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Bershadski was a Russian Empire historian and jurist. Life He graduated from the Gymnasium of Kerch in 1868, and from the University of Odessa in 1872; he lectured at the University of St. Petersburg on the history of the philosophy of jurisprudence, from 1878 to 1883; and was appointed in 1885 assistant professor. At the Lyceum he delivered lectures also on the history of Russian jurisprudence; and at the Military Law School of St. Petersburg, on general jurisprudence. His famous work on the Lithuanian Jews, Litovskie Yevrei, published in 1883, is the first attempt in t...
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James Orr
1844 - 1913 (69 years)
James Orr was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor of church history and then theology. He was an influential defender of evangelical doctrine and a contributor to The Fundamentals. Biography Orr was born in Glasgow and spent his childhood in Manchester and Leeds. He was orphaned and became an apprentice bookbinder, but went on to enter Glasgow University in 1865. In 1870, he obtained an M.A. in Philosophy of Mind, and after graduating from the theological college of the United Presbyterian Church, he was ordained a minister in Hawick. In 1885 he received a D.D. from Glasgow Univers...
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Johann Gottfried Hoche
1762 - 1836 (74 years)
Johann Gottfried Hoche was a German Protestant theologian and historian. He was the father of writer Louise Aston . He studied history and theology at the University of Halle, where his instructors included Johann Salomo Semler and Johann August Nösselt. In 1800 he was named second clergyman in the town of Gröningen, near Halberstadt. In 1805 he attained the positions of senior minister and superintendent, and soon afterwards, was appointed to the consistory in Halberstadt. Following the dissolution of Halberstadt consistory in 1816, he was offered a position in Magdeburg, but chose to remain...
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Lazar of Serbia
1329 - 1389 (60 years)
Lazar Hrebeljanović was a medieval Serbian ruler who created the largest and most powerful state on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian Empire. Lazar's state, referred to by historians as Moravian Serbia, comprised the basins of the Great Morava, West Morava, and South Morava rivers. Lazar ruled Moravian Serbia from 1373 until his death in 1389. He sought to resurrect the Serbian Empire and place himself at its helm, claiming to be the direct successor of the Nemanjić dynasty, which went extinct in 1371 after ruling over Serbia for two centuries. Lazar's programme had the full support ...
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António Cordeiro
1641 - 1722 (81 years)
António Cordeiro was a Portuguese Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus, Azorean historian, author of the classical chronicle Historia Insulana, and first to publish a public opinion on the form of governance for the archipelago of the Azores.
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Ludovic Lalanne
1815 - 1898 (83 years)
Ludovic Lalanne was a French historian and librarian. The engineer and politician Léon Lalanne was his brother. Biography Lalanne was a student at the lycée Louis-le-Grand and later at the École des Chartes, where he was graduated archivist paleographer in 1841. He was librarian of the Institut.
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John Capgrave
1393 - 1464 (71 years)
John Capgrave was an English historian, hagiographer and scholastic theologian, remembered chiefly for Nova Legenda Angliae . This was the first comprehensive collection of lives of the English saints.
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Ludwig Schmitz-Kallenberg
1867 - 1937 (70 years)
Ludwig Schmitz-Kallenberg was a German archivist and historian of Westphalia. He studied history at the University of Freiburg, Münster Academy and Leipzig University, receiving his doctorate in 1891. In 1893 he took a study trip to Rome via a scholarship from the Görres Society, and from 1896 worked as an archivist for the Historical Commission for Westphalia. In 1899 he became a lecturer at Münster, where in 1918 he was named an honorary full professor. From 1921 to 1932 he served as director of the state archives in Münster.
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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 ...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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John Le Patourel
1909 - 1981 (72 years)
John Herbert Le Patourel was a British medieval historian and professor at the University of Leeds. Biography Le Patourel was born on 29 July 1909 in Guernsey, where his father, Herbert Augustus Le Patourel, was the procureur from 1929 to 1934. He was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey and Jesus College, Oxford where he obtained a BA in Modern History in 1931 followed by a DPhil. In 1939 he married Jean Bird , who became an expert in medieval ceramics and was a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leeds from 1967 to 1980. They had a daughter and three sons. His brother, Herbe...
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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.
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Nora K. Chadwick
1891 - 1972 (81 years)
Nora Kershaw Chadwick CBE FSA FBA was an English philologist who specialized in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Old Norse studies. Early life and education Nora Kershaw was born in Lancashire in 1891, the first daughter of James Kershaw and Emma Clara Booth, married in 1888. Nora's sister Mabel, born in 1895, converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite nun.
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LeRoy R. Hafen
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
LeRoy Reuben Hafen was a historian of the American West and a Latter-day Saint. For many years he was a professor of history at Brigham Young University . Biography He was born on December 8, 1893, in Bunkerville, Nevada to John George Hafen, a polygamist, and Mary Ann Stucki. He attended high school in Cedar City, Utah for two years and then at the St. George Stake Academy in St. George, Utah. It was in St. George that Hafen met his wife, Ann Woodbury. They were married on 3 September 1915 in the St. George Temple. He received his bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University. After this he taught school in Bunkerville and then was the principal of Virgin Valley High School.
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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.
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Earl Lewis
1900 - Present (126 years)
Earl Lewis is the founding director of the Center for Social Solutions and professor of history at the University of Michigan. He was president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 2013 to 2018. Before his appointment as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lewis served for over eight years as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and as the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of History and African American Studies at Emory University. He was the university's first African-American provost and at the time the highest-ranking African-American administrator in the...
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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.
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Władysław Czapliński
1905 - 1981 (76 years)
Władysław Czapliński was a Polish historian, a professor of the University of Wrocław, author of many popular books about Polish history. He finished his studies at the Jagiellonian University in 1927 in the Second Polish Republic, and for the next several years he was a teacher of history. During the Second World War he took part in the underground education in Poland during World War II. After the war he moved to Wrocław, where he worked at the local university until his retirement in 1975.
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Charles Farwell Edson Jr.
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Charles Farwell Edson Jr. was an American scholar of Ancient History. Edson was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1905 as the son of poet and musician Charles Farwell Edson and social activist and feminist Katherine Philips Edson, and the great nephew of prominent Chicago businessman John V. Farwell and Senator Charles B. Farwell. Edson received the degree of A.B. in Classics from Stanford University in 1929 . He went on to earn his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University in 1939 with a dissertation entitled “Five Studies in Macedonian History" directed by Professor William Scott Ferguson . ...
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Johannes Tropfke
1866 - 1939 (73 years)
Johannes Tropfke was a German mathematician and teacher, who is best remembered for his influential work on the history of mathematics Geschichte der Elementarmathematik, which consists of seven volumes.
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Philip Wayne Powell
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Philip Wayne Powell was an American historian specializing in the Spanish colonial history of the American Southwest. He was born in Chino, California, attended Occidental College and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his B.A. in 1936. He undertook graduate studies at Berkeley, taking Hispanic studies with Herbert I. Priestley and Herbert E. Bolton. Powell completed his Ph.D. in 1941, and joined the Army.
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Alfons Dopsch
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Alfons Dopsch was an Austrian social and economic historian who specialised in the history of medieval Europe. He studied at Institut fur Osterreichische Geschichtsforschung and was a professor at the University of Vienna from 1898 to 1936.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hermann Strasburger
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Hermann Strasburger was a German ancient historian. He was the son of the internist Julius Strasburger and grandson of the botanist Eduard Strasburger.
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Dexter Perkins
1889 - 1984 (95 years)
Dexter Perkins was a historian who served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of American History at the University of Rochester, before leaving for Cornell. Biography Born in Boston, and educated at Boston Latin School, Perkins received his A.B. and PhD from Harvard University, where he was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa. In his doctoral studies, Archibald Cary Coolidge was a formative influence.
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Howard Hayes Scullard
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Howard Hayes Scullard was a British historian specialising in ancient history, notable for editing the Oxford Classical Dictionary and for his many published works. Life and career Scullard's father was Herbert Hayes Scullard, a minister, and his mother Barbara Louisa Dodds.
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Charles Higounet
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Charles Higounet was a French historian medievalist, specialising in bastides and the Middle Ages in the south-west of France. Biography Charles Higounet was a French medievalist who taught in Bordeaux III University from 1946 to 1979, where a research center was named after him. He used to be a specialist of bastides and the history of south-west France, and he was especially noticed after his history of Bordeaux, for which he won the historical prize, Grand prix Gobert, in 1973. He also led a team that worked on a historical atlas for French cities. He also wrote a volume of the "Que sais-je?" on various forms of writing.
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Hugh Seton-Watson
1916 - 1984 (68 years)
George Hugh Nicolas Seton-Watson, CBE, FBA was a British historian and political scientist specialising in Russia. Early life Seton-Watson was one of the two sons of Robert William Seton-Watson, the activist and historian. He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, graduating in 1938 with First Class Honours in 'Modern Greats' .
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Clarence H. Haring
1885 - 1960 (75 years)
Clarence Henry Haring was an important historian of Latin America and a pioneer in initiating the study of Latin American colonial institutions among scholars in the United States. Early life and education The son of a businessman, Henry Getman Haring, and Amelia Stoneback, Clarence Haring received his bachelor of arts degree in modern languages from Harvard University in 1907. Selected for a Rhodes Scholarship in 1907, he studied under Professor Sir Charles Harding Firth at Oxford University from 1907 to 1910, where he was a member of New College. Under Firth's guidance, Haring produced his first book on The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century.
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