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,
#7151
Patrick Power
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Canon Patrick Power , was a noted historian of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He was born on 8 March 1862, in Callaghane, Co. Waterford and educated at the Catholic University School and St. John's College, Waterford.
Go to Profile#7152
John Cook
1608 - 1660 (52 years)
John Cook or Cooke was the first Solicitor General of the English Commonwealth and led the prosecution of Charles I. Following The Restoration, Cook was convicted of regicide and hanged, drawn and quartered on 16 October 1660. He is considered an international legal icon and progenitor of international criminal law for being the first lawyer to prosecute a head of state for crimes against his people.
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Juliusz Kleiner
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Juliusz Kleiner was a Polish historian and literary theorist. Education and early life Kleiner graduated from high school in Lwów and then studied Polish and German literature as well as philosophy at the University of Lwów. In 1908, Kleiner was awarded a doctorate in philosophy. In 1910 and 1911 he studied abroad in Germany and France.
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Daniël Heinsius
1580 - 1655 (75 years)
Daniel Heinsius was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance. His youth and student years Heinsius was born in Ghent. The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then to England, next at Rijwijk and lastly at Vlissingen. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker to study law under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598, he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa, Paulus ...
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Lucio Marineo Siculo
1444 - 1533 (89 years)
Lucio Marineo Siculo was a Sicilian humanist, historian and poet, known as a prominent figure of the Spanish Renaissance. He first taught Greek and Latin literature in Palermo. He moved to Spain and taught for twelve years at the University of Salamanca. His teaching and books influenced the development of the Spanish Renaissance, and his disciples included Alfono de Segura. King Ferdinand brought him to the royal court to serve as chaplain and chronicler. He was also charged with the education of the children of the nobility.
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Petro Yefymenko
1835 - 1908 (73 years)
Petro Yefymenko , was a Ukrainian ethnographer and historian, statistician by profession. Life and work Petro Yefymenko studied at Kharkiv University until his expulsion and Moscow University . As a student, he belonged to secret student societies, including Kharkiv-Kyiv Secret Society .
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Andrija Balović
1721 - 1784 (63 years)
Andrija Balović was a Roman Catholic priest, historian, writer, translator and theologian, native of Montenegro. Biography Born in Perast to a well-known patrician household Balovići, a family with six children. Andrija was the son of Marko Balović, and brother of Josip Balović, also the nephew of Julije Balović.
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Floris Van der Haer
1547 - 1634 (87 years)
Floris Van der Haer, also known as Florentius Haracus, was a clergyman from the Habsburg Netherlands and an author of historical works. He was born in Leuven in 1547 to a family from Utrecht. As a clergyman he was attached first to St. Gertrude's Abbey, Leuven, and later to a canonry in Lille, where he died on 6 February 1634.
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Gottfried Gabriel Bredow
1773 - 1814 (41 years)
Gottfried Gabriel Bredow was a German historian. He was born at Berlin, and became successively professor at the universities of Helmstedt , Frankfurt an der Oder and Breslau. He died at Breslau. Bredow's principal works are Handbuch der alten Geschichte, Geographie und Chronologie ; Chronik des 17. Jahrhunderts ; Entwurf der Weltkunde der Alten ; Weltgeschichte in Tabellen .
Go to Profile#7160
Sutemi Horiguchi
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
was an architect and a historian of Japanese architecture, and an expert of sukiya-zukuri architecture. In addition to designing modern buildings, he designed buildings in sukiya-zukuri, and buildings that fused both modern architectural and traditional Japanese architectural motifs.
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Johann Heinrich Acker
1647 - 1719 (72 years)
Johann Heinrich Acker was a German writer. He sometimes wrote under the name of Melissander. He was taught in his native city of Naumburg and at the regional school of Pforta . Beginning in 1669, he studied in Jena where he became magister and adjunct of the philosophical faculty. In 1673 he became adjunct and pastor in near Gotha, and in 1689 he became superintendent and court chaplain in Blankenhain. He resigned in 1717 due to an illness and moved to Gotha, where he died in 1719.
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Paul ver Eecke
1867 - 1959 (92 years)
Paul-Louis ver Eecke was a Belgian mining engineer and historian of Greek mathematics. He produced influential French translations of the mathematical works of ancient Greece, including those of Archimedes, Pappus, and Theodosius.
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Edward I. Devitt
1840 - 1920 (80 years)
Edward Ignatius Devitt was a Canadian American priest, Jesuit, and historian of the American Catholic Church. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, he moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts, at a young age. He studied in public schools in the city before enrolling at the College of the Holy Cross. Devitt spent two years there, and then entered the Society of Jesus in 1859. He studied at the novitiate in Frederick, Maryland, and at the newly opened Woodstock College. He briefly taught at the Washington Seminary during his studies, and after graduating, was a professor for the next thirty...
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Walter Johnson
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
Walter Johnson was a noted historian of the United States and a political scientist, who believed that given political developments in post-Second World War America, there should be no strict separation between academics and politics. He was a political progressive who believed his generation had a special responsibility to democracy.
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Mihailo Dinić
1899 - 1970 (71 years)
Mihailo Dinić was a Serbian historian and member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts. He was among the key figures of the Serbian historiography of the 20th century. He was among many notable scholars in Serbia who bequeathed their personal libraries to the National Library of Serbia.
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John Agar-Hamilton
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
John August Ion Agar-Hamilton was a South African historian and Anglican priest. He was born in Cairo to Scottish parents who migrated to Transvaal Colony in 1906. He studied at Pretoria Boys High School and Transvaal University College, whence he obtained a BA in 1914. He may also have studied at the University of the Cape of Good Hope and Keble College, Oxford.
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Friedrich Dieterici
1821 - 1903 (82 years)
Friedrich Heinrich Dieterici was a German orientalist and historian. Biography He studied at the universities of Halle and Berlin, traveled extensively in the East, and in 1850 was appointed associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Berlin.
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Francis W. Kirkham
1877 - 1972 (95 years)
Francis Washington Kirkham was a prominent educator and the author of New Witness For Christ in America: Evidence of Divine Power in the "Coming Forth" of the Book of Mormon, one of the earliest book-length defenses of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
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Walter Blair
1900 - 1992 (92 years)
Walter Blair was a professor in the University of Chicago English department who was known for his study of American folklore, humor and tall tales. Born in Spokane, Washington, he graduated from Yale University undergrad in 1923 and got his Ph.D. in English from U of C in 1931. He taught at Chicago from 1929 to 1968, and served as the chairman of his department for nine of those years .
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Dominik Szulc
1797 - 1860 (63 years)
Dominik Szulc was a Polish philosopher, historian, and a significant precursor to Polish positivism. In 1814 he began studies at the University of Vilnius. In 1818 became a teacher of Polish language in high school in Vilnius, and from 1823 a teacher of eloquence and logic in the gymnasium of Bialystok . From 1835 he taught at the gymnasium of Lublin, since 1840 in schools in Warsaw. In 1853 he retired. A member of the Kraków Scientific Society correspondence, and the Russian Geographical Society. In his works he defended the thesis of the Polish character of Copernicus. He believed that the ...
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Harold Whetstone Johnston
1859 - 1912 (53 years)
Harold Whetstone Johnston was a classical historian and Professor of Latin at Indiana University, best known for writing The Private Life of the Romans. Personal life Johnston was the son of DeWitt Clinton Johnston and Margretta Hay . In 1882, he married Eugenia Hinrichsen.
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Martin Crusius
1526 - 1607 (81 years)
Martin Kraus , commonly Latinized as Crusius, was a German classicist and historian, and long-time professor at the University of Tübingen. He was a follower of Philip Melanchthon and wrote an epitome of Melanchthon's Elementorum rhetorices libro duo. Kraus also wrote a commentary on the Iliad.
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Natalya Osadcha-Yanata
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Natalya Tikhonovna Osadcha-Yanata was a Ukrainian botanist and folklorist noted for studying the medicinal plants of Ukraine and publishing some of her works in English. She was married to Ukrainian botanist Alexander Yanata.
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Charles Kittredge True
1809 - 1878 (69 years)
Charles Kittredge True was a United States Methodist Episcopal clergyman, educator, and author. Biography He was born in Portland, Maine. He graduated at Harvard in 1832, and was subsequently pastor of several Methodist churches. He entered the New England Conference, 1833; was agent of the New England Education Society, 1834; principal of Amenia Seminary, 1835; entered the New York Conference, 1836; was transferred to the New England Conference, 1838. In 1849 he received the degree of D.D. from Harvard. He served as professor of intellectual and moral science in Wesleyan University , and financial agent of Wesleyan .
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Matthäus Dresser
1536 - 1607 (71 years)
Matthäus Dresser, was a Lutheran German humanist, pedagogue, philosopher, and historian. Education and career Dresser attended school in Erfurt and Eisleben, and later studied at the University or Erfurt, where he attended lectures by Martin Seidemann. In Erfurt, records of Dresser go back to 1559, where he earned a Masters of Philosophy. In 1560, he learned Biblical Hebrew during his university studies. When the began construction in 1561, Dresser participated in the founding of the University, where he became a professor of Greek Literature. Dressner aspired to attend the University of Wi...
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Hans von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst
1845 - 1906 (61 years)
Hans von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst was a German historian. He was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied at the University of Graz, where he became a professor in 1885. He died in Graz. Südenhorst's principal writings are:Dorfleben im 18. Jahrhundert [Village Life in the eighteenth century] ;Hans Ulrich, Fürst van Eggenberg [Hans Ulrich, Prince of Eggenberg];Die Politik der Republic Venedig während des dreissigjährigen Krieges [The policy of the Venetian Republic during the Thirty Years' War];Venedig als Weltmacht und Weltstadt ;Kriegsbilder aus der Zeit der Landsknechte ;Die öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV.
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Andrew Forest Muir
1916 - 1969 (53 years)
Andrew Forest Muir was an American historian and university professor. Early life Andrew Forest Muir was born on January 8, 1916, in Houston to J.B. and Annie Jane Muir. He grew up in Houston and attended public schools. He enrolled at the Rice University and earned a baccalaureate degree in 1838.
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Ulrich Hugwald
1496 - 1571 (75 years)
Ulrich Hugwald was a Swiss humanist scholar and Reformer. Born in Wilen near Bischofszell, county of Thurgau, he was enrolled in the theological faculty in Basel University from 1519. He published critical pamphlets with Basel printer Adam Petri from 1520. He was in correspondence with a number of reformers, such as Vadianus, Michael Stifel, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Guillaume Farel. He also opened a private school of rhetorics in Basel. In 1524, he debated with Oecolampadius and Thomas Müntzer on the topic of believer's baptism. He joined the Basel Anabaptists in 1525, and was consequently imprisoned.
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Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs
1511 - 1579 (68 years)
Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs was an Austrian humanist, astronomer and Hebraist. Life He was born in Merckenstein, near Bad Vöslau in Lower Austria, and studied in Vienna, Ingolstadt and Tübingen. He became a student and friend of Sebastian Münster. Together they translated the Form of the Earth of Abraham bar Hiyya, with work of Elijah ben Abraham Mizrahi.
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Hristo Gandev
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Hristo Gandev was a Bulgarian professor and historian.
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Ignacio de Arbieto
1585 - 1670 (85 years)
Ignacio de Arbieto was a Jesuit philosopher and historian of Peru. Biography Arbieto was born in Madrid. He joined the Jesuit Order in 1603 and was ordained as a priest in Lima, Peru, in 1612. He was appointed chair of philosophy in Quito, Ecuador, then he went to Arequipa and finally back to Lima.
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Oscar Osburn Winther
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Oscar Osburn Winther was a history professor, specializing in the history of the western United States. He was the president of the Western History Association from 1963 to 1964 and the president of the Oral History Association from 1969 to 1970.
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Johann Georg Neumann
1661 - 1709 (48 years)
Johann Georg Neumann was a German Lutheran theologian and church historian. Born in Mörz and educated in Zittau, Neuman enrolled in Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 15 May 1680, receiving the rank of magister in less than a year, on 25 April 1681 and he became a member of the philosophical faculty in 1684, and full professor for poetics in 1690. Neumann then decided to study theology and began to hold sermons. He received his doctorate in theology in 1692 and became ordinary professor of theology in Wittenberg. Neumann was a pronounced opponent of Pietism and outspoken critic...
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Reidar Omang
1897 - 1964 (67 years)
Reidar Omang was a Norwegian historian, librarian and archivist. Reidar Omang was born in Kristiania , Norway. His father, Simen Oscar Fredrik Omang , was a noted botanist. Omang took matriculation from the Skien public school in 1916. He took his Cand.mag. degree at the University of Oslo in 1924 and Cand. philol. in 1930.
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Anders Leonard Bygdén
1844 - 1929 (85 years)
Anders Leonard Bygdén was a Swedish historian and author. He founded the in 1880. Biography He was born on 3 March 1844 in Spånga, Sweden to Olof Bygdén. Bygdén enrolled at Uppsala University in 1863 and graduated with a B.A. in 1870 and Ph.D. in 1872. The university then hired him as an associate professor of philosophy. He founded the with Henrik Schück in 1880. He was made a member of the in 1890 and the in 1899. He published from 1923 to 1928. He died on 22 November 1929 in Uppsala, Sweden.
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Axel von Harnack
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Friedrich Hermann Julius Axel von Harnack was a German librarian, historian and philologist. He was the cousin of Arvid and Falk Harnack and worked to get Arvid and his wife, Mildred Harnack released from Nazi detention after they were arrested in connection with the Red Orchestra. He was the first in the family to be told of Arvid and Mildred's arrest, which had been kept secret by the Nazis. In 1947, he published a memoir of the trial that convicted Arvid and Mildred Harnack of high treason and sentenced them to death.
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Rudolf Reicke
1825 - 1905 (80 years)
Rudolf Reicke was a German historian and scholar of Immanuel Kant. From 1847 to 1852 he studied at the University of Königsberg, where his influences included Karl Rosenkranz and Friedrich Wilhelm Schubert. From 1858 he was associated with the university library and was named head librarian in 1894. In 1864, he founded the , a journal for "Kantiana".
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Richard White of Basingstoke
1539 - 1611 (72 years)
Richard White was an English jurist and historian, in later life an expatriate scholar who became a Catholic priest. Life He was son of Henry White of Basingstoke, Hampshire, who died at the siege of Boulogne in 1544. His mother was Agnes, daughter of Richard Capelin of Hampshire. He was born at Basingstoke, entered Winchester School in 1553, and was admitted perpetual fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1557. He took the degree of B.A. on 30 May 1559. On the advice of John Boxall he travelled abroad to study law; his fellowship was declared void in 1564.
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Isobel D. Thornley
1893 - 1941 (48 years)
Isobel Dorothy Thornley FRHS FSA was a British historian of medieval England who compiled and edited works on legal history, the Yorkists, Richard II, and medieval sanctuary. She was a lecturer at University College London and later an independent scholar editing medieval law reports. She died when her home was hit by a bomb during the London Blitz. She left money to the University of London who award grants from her bequest for the publication of books that would not otherwise be published and to support candidates registered for a PhD at the university.
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George William Daniels
1878 - 1937 (59 years)
George William Daniels was a British political economist and historian who was vice-president of the Chetham Society and President of the Manchester Statistical Society. Career Daniels was born in Manchester and educated at the Victoria University of Manchester where he gained his Master of Arts and Master of Commerce degrees and was later appointed Stanley Jeavons Professor of Political Economy. He worked with the economists John Jewkes and Harry Campion.
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William H. Leary
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
William Henry Leary was the Dean of the University of Utah College of Law, now known as the S.J. Quinney College of Law, from 1915 to 1950. Leary was born in Hatfield, Massachusetts in 1881. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in 1903, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1908.
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Eric W. Cochrane
1928 - 1985 (57 years)
Eric Willam Cochrane Jr. was an American academic who specialized in the Italian Renaissance. Cochrane was from Berkeley, California. He was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship from 1951 to 1953, and completed his doctorate at Harvard University in 1954. Cochrane then taught at Stanford University before serving in the United States Army. Upon his discharge, Cochrane joined the University of Chicago faculty. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, and the University of Chicago's Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1965. He fell ill on a train traveling from Florence to Bologna on November 27, 1985, and died.
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Karl Heinz Bremer
1911 - 1942 (31 years)
Karl Heinz Bremer was a German historian who died during the Second World War. He had taught German at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale before the Second World War. He joined the Nazi Party 1 May 1937. Following the fall of France, Bremer was the associate director of the German Institute in Paris, from its creation in the fall of 1940 until he was sent to the Russian front 27 February 1942. The German Institute was responsible for editing the French press, and for controlling newly published French books during the occupation.
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Philip Nelson
1872 - 1953 (81 years)
Philip Nelson was a 20th century physician, antiquary and collector of ancient cuneiform tablets, coins and stained glass most of which is now held together at the Liverpool Museum under the title of the Nelson Collection.
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Max Simon
1844 - 1918 (74 years)
Maximilian Simon was a German historian of mathematics and mathematics teacher. He was concerned mostly with mathematics in the antiquity. Born into a Jewish family, he studied from 1862 to 1866 at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, obtaining his Ph.D. from Karl Weierstrass und Ernst Eduard Kummer He was a mathematics teacher in Berlin from 1868 to 1871, and in Strasbourg from 1871 to 1912, where he became an honorary professor of the university.
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Henry Adams Bellows
1885 - 1939 (54 years)
Henry Adams Bellows was a newspaper editor and radio executive who was an early member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. He is also known for his translation of the Poetic Edda for The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
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Helge Groth
1913 - 1966 (53 years)
Helge Otto Aars Groth was a Norwegian literary historian and diplomat. He was born in Stavanger, and took the cand.philol. degree in 1938. He was a lecturer in European literature at the University of Oslo from 1939 to 1953, and also as held lectures on foreign affairs in Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation radio from 1946 to 1953. Books include Hovedlinjer i mellomkrigstidens norske litteratur and Olav Aukrust, Problematikk og utvikling .
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James Monroe Smith
1888 - 1949 (61 years)
James Monroe Smith was an American educator and academic administrator in Louisiana. In 1931, he was appointed president of Louisiana State University by Huey Long. Smith was referred to as "Jimmy the Stooge" by students of the university.
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Ernst Weyden
1805 - 1869 (64 years)
Ernst Weyden was a scholar and member of the Faculty at the University of Cologne. Publications All publications in German, unless otherwise noted.Cöln's Vorzeit: Geschichten, Legenden und Sagen Cöln's nebst einer Auswahl cölnischer Volkslieder. Cöln a. Rh: Schmitz, 1826. Aventures merveilleuses de Siegfried Sagas. Paris: L. Janet, 1833. Fréderic et Gela. Sagas. Paris: L. Janet, 1833. Drachenfels et Rolandsech. Sagas. Paris: L. Janet, 1833. Loreley Sagas. Paris: L. Janet, 1833. La dame Richmodis. Sagas. Paris: L. Janet, 1833. Germain Joseph. Sagas. P. 43-47: [1] f. de pl, 1833. Albertus Magnus.
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Adam Szelągowski
1873 - 1961 (88 years)
Adam Wiktor Szelągowski was a Polish historian, teacher and professor of the Jan Kazimierz University. Szelągowski was a member of the National League. Works Najstarsze drogi z Polski na Wschód: w okresie bizantyńsko-arabskim, Kraków 1909.Dzieje powszechne i cywilizacyi. Vol. I. Egipt. Babilon i Assyrya. Syrya i Palestyna. Azya Mniejsza. Iran i Turan. Indye, Chiny i Pacyfik. Warszawa 1913.Dzieje powszechne i cywilizacyi. Vol. II. Grecya archaiczna. Grecya bohaterska. Grecya wolna. Panowanie Grecyi nad światem. Warszawa 1914.Dzieje powszechne i cywilizacyi. Vol. III. Rzym – miasto. Rzym – państwo.
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