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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#7151
Mary C. Wright
1917 - 1970 (53 years)
Mary Clabaugh Wright was an American historian and sinologist who specialized in the study of late Qing dynasty and early twentieth century China. She was the first woman to gain tenure in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University, and subsequently the first woman to be appointed a full professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale.
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Constantine VI
771 - 797 (26 years)
Constantine VI was Byzantine emperor from 780 to 797. The only child of Emperor Leo IV, Constantine was named co-emperor with him at the age of five in 776 and succeeded him as sole Emperor in 780, aged nine. His mother Irene exercised control over him as regent until 790, assisted by her chief minister Staurakios. The regency ended when Constantine reached maturity, but Irene sought to remain an active participant in the government. After a brief interval of sole rule Constantine named his mother empress in 792, making her his official colleague.
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Andrey Shestakov
1877 - 1941 (64 years)
Andrey Vasilievich Shestakov was a Soviet historian, a specialist in the agrarian history of Russia. Professor , Doctor of Historical Sciences , Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union .
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William Macbride Childs
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
William Macbride Childs was an English academic administrator and historian, who was involved in the foundation of the University of Reading and who served briefly as its first vice-chancellor. Biography Childs was born, on 3 January 1869, in the village of Carrington, situated some north of Boston in Lincolnshire. He was the son of the Revd William Linington Childs, vicar of Carrington, and his second wife, Henrietta Fowles Bell. He had no brothers or sisters, but had a half-brother and two half-sisters by his father's first marriage. He attended Portsmouth Grammar School and graduated from...
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Alexander Khakhanov
1864 - 1912 (48 years)
Aleksandr Solomonovich Khakhanov born Aleksandre Khakhanashvili was a Georgian-Russian historian, archaeologist, and one of the most acclaimed scholars of Georgian literature. He was born in Gori, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, and studied at Tbilisi . Having graduated from Moscow University in 1888, he delivered lectures on Georgian language and literature at Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages since 1889 and at Moscow University since 1900. He authored numerous works on Georgian history and literature, including the resonant Очерки по истории грузинской словесности , published in Russian from 1895 to 1907.
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Elimar Klebs
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Elimar Klebs was a German historian of ancient history. He was the brother of botanist Georg Klebs. Biography Klebs was born in Braunsberg , Prussia. He studied in Berlin under Theodor Mommsen and Heinrich von Treitschke, receiving his doctorate in 1876 and his habilitation in 1883. Subsequently, he served as a privatdozent in Berlin.
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George Arnold Wood
1865 - 1928 (63 years)
George Arnold Wood was an English Australian historian notable for writing an early work on Australian history entitled The Discovery of Australia. Wood was born at Salford, England; he was educated at Owens College, Manchester, where he graduated B.A., and afterwards at Balliol College, Oxford, where in 1886 he won the Brackenbury history scholarship and in 1889 the Stanhope history essay prize. In 1891 he became Challis Professor of history at the University of Sydney and held this chair for the remainder of his life. Before coming to Australia his chief study had been in English and Europe...
Go to Profile#7158
Alfonso VI of León and Castile
1040 - 1109 (69 years)
Alfonso VI , nicknamed the Brave or the Valiant, was king of León , Galicia , and Castile . After the conquest of Toledo in 1085, Alfonso proclaimed himself . This conquest, along with El Cid's taking of Valencia would greatly expand the territory and influence of the Leonese/Castilian realm, but also provoked an Almoravid invasion that Alfonso would spend the remainder of his reign resisting. The Leonese and Castilian armies suffered defeats in battles at Sagrajas and Uclés , in the latter of which his only son and heir, Sancho Alfónsez, died, and Valencia was abandoned but Toledo remaine...
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Carl Russell Fish
1876 - 1932 (56 years)
Carl Russell Fish was a University of Wisconsin–Madison historian. Biography Born in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to Fredrick E. and Louisiana N. Fish on October 17, 1876. He claimed later in life that he wanted to be a professor since he was four years old. He graduated from Brown in 1897, and completed his Master's and Doctoral degree at Harvard University, finishing in 1898 and 1900, respectively. He was appointed Professor of History later that year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He served in a factory during World War I, then visited England in the fall of 1917 to direct the American University Club.
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John Fletcher Hurst
1834 - 1903 (69 years)
John Fletcher Hurst was an American bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and the first Chancellor of the American University in Washington, D.C. Biography Born on August 17, 1834, in Salem, Dorchester County, Maryland. Hurst graduated from Dickinson College in 1854 and in 1856 went to Germany to study at the University of Halle and the University of Heidelberg.
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Max Cetto
1903 - 1980 (77 years)
Max Ludwig Cetto was a German-Mexican architect, historian of architecture, and professor. Life Born in Koblenz, Germany, Max Cetto studied at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Munich and Berlin. At the latter he studied with Hans Poelzig, graduating as an engineer–architect in 1926 and worked then for the New Frankfurt project. After 1929 he taught also some years at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach.
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C. R. L. Fletcher
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
Charles Robert Leslie Fletcher was an English historian. He was the son of Alexander Pearson Fletcher and Caroline Anna . From 1868 to 1876 he was King's Scholar at Eton College. He gained a first class degree in modern history from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1880. He was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford the year after. He was tutor of Magdalen from 1883 to 1906, becoming a Fellow in 1889. He married Alice Merry in 1885 and they had three sons.
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James G. Randall
1881 - 1953 (72 years)
James Garfield Randall was an American historian specializing in Abraham Lincoln and the era of the American Civil War. He taught at the University of Illinois, , where David Herbert Donald was one of his students and continued his work.
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Friedrich Wolters
1876 - 1930 (54 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Wolters was a German historian, poet and translator; one of the central figures in the George-Kreis. Life and work He was the son of Friedrich Wolters, a businessman, and received his primary education in Rheydt and graduated from a gymnasium in Munich. In 1891, he began studying history, linguistics and philosophy at the University of Freiburg but, after one semester, returned to Munich. From 1899, he studied history and economics at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, with and Gustav von Schmoller. In 1900, he spent some time in Paris, attending lectures at the Sorbonne.
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Christian Pfister
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Christian Pfister, name sometimes given as Chrétien Pfister was a French historian. He was the author of numerous writings associated with Alsace and Lorraine. He received his education at the École Normale Supérieure, and in 1881 obtained his agrégation in history. Afterwards, he worked as a lecturer at the universities of Besançon and Nancy . From 1887 to 1902 he was a professor of history at the University of Nancy. From 1904 he served as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, then in 1919 relocated to the University of Strasbourg, where in 1927 he was named academic rector.
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Abraham ibn Daud
1110 - 1180 (70 years)
Abraham ibn Daud was a Spanish-Jewish astronomer, historian and philosopher; born in Córdoba, Spain about 1110; who was said to have died in Toledo, Spain, a martyr about 1180. He is sometimes known by the abbreviation Rabad I or Ravad I. His maternal grandfather was Isaac Albalia . Some scholars believe he was the Arabic-into-Latin translator known as Avendauth.
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Russell Meiggs
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Russell Meiggs was a British ancient historian. He did extensive research on the Roman port city of Ostia. Early life and education Meiggs was born at Balham, south London, son of William Herrick Meiggs , sometime self-styled "general merchant" declared bankrupt in 1916, and his wife Mary Gertrude . William Meiggs was the son of railroad builder John Gilbert Meiggs , of Chelsea, formerly of New York, USA, younger brother of railroad builder Henry Meiggs; William's sister, Helen, married Sir James Rhoderic Duff McGrigor, 3rd Baronet. The former success of the Meiggs family was diminished by th...
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Richard Carew
1555 - 1620 (65 years)
Richard Carew was a British translator and antiquary. He is best known for his county history, Survey of Cornwall . Life Carew belonged to a prominent gentry family, and was the eldest son of Thomas Carew: he was born on 17 July 1555 at East Antony, Cornwall. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a contemporary of Sir Philip Sidney and William Camden, and then at the Middle Temple. He made a translation of the first five cantos of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered , which was more correct than that of Edward Fairfax. He also translated Juan de la Huarte's Examen de Ingenios, basing...
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Tsatur Aghayan
1911 - 1982 (71 years)
Tsatur Pavel Aghayan was a Soviet-Armenian historian, a professor at Yerevan State University, an academician of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, the editor of the journal Lraber Hasarakakan Gitutyunneri, and a renowned scientist of the Armenian SSR . Aghayan was born in the village of Pip, Dashkesan.
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Alma Söderhjelm
1870 - 1949 (79 years)
Alma Söderhjelm was a Swedish-speaking Finnish historian and the first female professor in Finland. Academic career After gaining an M.A. in history, Söderhjelm spent three years in Paris, preparing her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Alphonse Aulard. This was a study of journalism during the French Revolution and it was published as Le Régime de la presse pendant la Révolution française. She was awarded a doctorate in 1900.
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Nabia Abbott
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Nabia Abbott was an American scholar of Islam, papyrologist and paleographer. She was the first woman professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She gained worldwide recognition for her researches into the emergence of the Arabic script and the oldest written documents of Islam. She was also a pioneer in the study of early Muslim women. Especially noteworthy was her biography of Aisha, one of the wives of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
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Alexander Presnyakov
1870 - 1929 (59 years)
Alexander Yevgenyevich Presnyakov was a Russian historian who attempted to reform the Saint Petersburg school of imperial historiography after the Russian Revolution. He was elected into the Russian Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member in 1920.
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Nikolay Ustryalov
1805 - 1870 (65 years)
Nikolay Gerasimovich Ustryalov was a Russian Imperial historian who elaborated the Official Nationality Theory. His outline of Russia's history was awarded the Demidov Prize for the best Russian history textbook and was highly regarded by Nicholas I himself.
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Christoph Daniel Ebeling
1741 - 1817 (76 years)
Christoph Daniel Ebeling was a scholar of Germany who studied the geography and history of North America. Biography Ebeling was born near Hildesheim, Hanover. He studied theology at Göttingen, but devoted himself to geographical studies, and for 33 years taught history and Greek in the Hamburg gymnasium. He was also superintendent of the Hamburg library, and collected about 10,000 maps and nearly 4,000 books relating to America. Ebeling's magnum opus was a Geography and History of North America , forming a continuation of Büsching's General Geography. He received a vote of thanks from the Uni...
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James Seaton Reid
1798 - 1851 (53 years)
James Seaton Reid MA DD was an Irish presbyterian minister and church historian. Life Born in Lurgan, County Armagh, he was son of Forest Reid, master of a grammar school there, and Mary Weir, his wife. Left fatherless at an early age, James spent much of his youth at Ramelton, County Donegal, under the care of his brother Edward, minister of the Presbyterian congregation there. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Glasgow, where he graduated M.A. in 1816, and afterwards attended the divinity hall.
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Wilhelm Altmann
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Wilhelm Altmann was a German historian and musicologist. Altmann was born in Adelnau , Province of Posen, and died in Hildesheim. Wilhelm Altmann and his wife Marie née Louis are buried in Hildesheim, Peiner Straße on the cemetery Nordfriedhof . The couple had three children: Ulrich , Ursula and Berthold .
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James R. Newman
1907 - 1966 (59 years)
James Roy Newman was an American mathematician and mathematical historian. He was also a lawyer, practicing in the state of New York from 1929 to 1941. During and after World War II, he held several positions in the United States government, including Chief Intelligence Officer at the US Embassy in London, Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of War, and Counsel to the US Senate Committee on Atomic Energy. In the latter capacity, he helped to draft the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. He became a member of the board of editors for Scientific American beginning in 1948. He is also credited for co...
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Richard G. Salomon
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Richard Georg Salomon was an historian of eastern European medieval history and historian of the Episcopal Church in the United States, who taught at the University of Hamburg in Germany and at Kenyon College and its Episcopal Church seminary Bexley Hall in Ohio USA.
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Charles-André Julien
1891 - 1991 (100 years)
Charles-André Julien was a French journalist and historian specialised in the history of the Maghreb, his most famous work is Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord : Des origines à 1830 . Charles-André Julien was born in Caen, northern France and emigrated with his family to Algeria at the age of 15, where he picked up an interest in the history of the region. Julien's History of North Africa served as the standard reference work on the subject for decades. His political commitments and specialized knowledge of North Africa contributed to his place on the Popular Front's Haut Comité méditerranéen et...
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Henri-Irénée Marrou
1904 - 1977 (73 years)
Henri-Irénée Marrou was a French historian. A Christian humanist in outlook, his work was primarily in the spheres of Late Antiquity and the history of education. He is best known for his work History of Education in Antiquity. He also edited, for Sources Chrétiennes, the early Christian work Letter to Diognetus, the only manuscript of which perished in a fire at the University of Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian War. Marrou edited the collection Patristica Sorbonensia, published by Le Seuil. His work has been criticised by the philosopher Ilsetraut Hadot. Marrou also wrote under the pseudonym of Henri Davenson.
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Julius Krohn
1835 - 1888 (53 years)
Julius Leopold Fredrik Krohn was a Finnish folk poetry researcher, professor of Finnish literature, poet, hymn writer, translator and journalist. He was born in Viipuri and was of Baltic German origin. Krohn worked as a lecturer on Finnish language in Helsinki University from the year 1875 and as a supernumerary professor from 1885. He was one of the most notable researchers into Finnish folk poetry in the 19th century. His native language was German.
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Ismar Elbogen
1874 - 1943 (69 years)
Ismar Elbogen was a German rabbi, scholar and historian. Biography Yitzhak Moshe Elbogen was born in Posen. He was taught by his uncle, Jacob Levy, author of the "", and then attended the gymnasium and the Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau. He earned his doctorate from the Breslau University and was ordained as a rabbi in 1899.
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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.
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Crane Brinton
1898 - 1968 (70 years)
Clarence Crane Brinton was an American historian of France, as well as a historian of ideas. His most famous work, The Anatomy of Revolution likened the dynamics of revolutionary movements to the progress of fever.
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Sherburne F. Cook
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Sherburne Friend Cook was an American physiologist and demographist, who served as professor and chairman of the department of physiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was notable as a pioneer in population studies of the native peoples of North America and Mesoamerica and in field methods and quantitative analysis in archaeology.
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Albrecht Goetze
1897 - 1971 (74 years)
Albrecht Ernst Rudolf Goetze was a German-American Hittitologist. Goetze was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1897. His father, Rudolf Goetze, was a psychiatrist. He began studies in Munich in 1915, but left to fight in World War I. Returning in 1918, he received his degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1922 and taught there for five years.
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A. H. M. Jones
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Arnold Hugh Martin Jones FBA , known as A. H. M. Jones or Hugo Jones, was a prominent 20th-century British historian of classical antiquity, particularly of the later Roman Empire. Biography Jones's best-known work, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602 , is sometimes considered the definitive narrative history of late Rome and early Byzantium, beginning with the reign of the Roman tetrarch Diocletian and ending with that of the Byzantine emperor Maurice. One of the most common modern criticisms of this work is its almost total reliance on literary and epigraphic primary sources, a methodology which mirrored Jones's own historiographical training.
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Kenneth Scott Latourette
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Kenneth Scott Latourette was an American historian and professor, specialized in Chinese studies, Japanese studies, and the history of Christianity. His formative experiences as a Christian missionary and educator in early 20th-century Imperial China shaped his life's work. Although he did not learn the Chinese language, he became known for his study of the history of China, the history of Japan, his magisterial scholarly surveys on world Christianity, and of American relations with East Asia.
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Lynn Thorndike
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Lynn Thorndike was an American historian of medieval science and alchemy. He was the son of a clergyman, Edward R. Thorndike, and the younger brother of Ashley Horace Thorndike, an American educator and expert on William Shakespeare, and Edward Lee Thorndike, known for being the father of modern educational psychology.
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Margot Finn
Margot C. Finn, is a British historian and academic, who specialises in Britain and the British colonial world during the long nineteenth century. She has been Professor of Modern British History at the University College, London since 2012. Finn was previously the President of the Royal Historical Society and a trustee of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
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J. R. Partington
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
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Mircea Eliade
1907 - 1986 (79 years)
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. A leading interpreter of religious experience, he established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential. One of his most instrumental contributions to religious studies was his theory of eternal return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but actually parti...
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Carter G. Woodson
1875 - 1950 (75 years)
Carter Godwin Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History . He was one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora, including African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been called the "father of black history." In February 1926, he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week," the precursor of Black History Month. Woodson was an important figure to the movement of Afrocentrism, due to his perspective of placing people of Afr...
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Jill Harries
Jill Diana Harries is Professor Emerita in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. She is known for her work on late antiquity, particularly aspects of Roman legal culture and society. Career Jill Harries studied Literae Humaniores at Somerville College, Oxford and completed her PhD in 1981. Harries was appointed Lecturer in Ancient History at St Andrews in 1976, and Professor in 1997. She served as the head of the School of Classics 2000-2003. Harries retired in 2013 and her retirement was marked by a conference in her honour.
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Charles A. Beard
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Charles Austin Beard was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the fields of history and political science. His works included a radical re-evaluation of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whom he believed to be more motivated by economics than by philosophical principles. Beard's most influential book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States , has been the subject of great controversy ever since its publication.
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George Sarton
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
George Alfred Leon Sarton was a Belgian-American chemist and historian. He is considered the founder of the discipline of the history of science as an independent field of study. His most influential works were the Introduction to the History of Science, which consists of three volumes and 4,296 pages and the journal Isis. Sarton ultimately aimed to achieve an integrated philosophy of science that provided a connection between the sciences and the humanities, which he referred to as "the new humanism".
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Joseph Needham
1900 - 1995 (95 years)
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, initiating publication of the multivolume Science and Civilisation in China. A focus of his was what has come to be called the Needham Question of why and how China had ceded its leadership in Science and Technology to Western countries.
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Arnaldo Momigliano
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, KBE, FBA was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history in the ancient world".
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Merle Curti
1897 - 1996 (99 years)
Merle Eugene Curti was an American progressive historian who influenced peace studies, intellectual history and social history, including by using cliometrics . At Columbia University and for decades at the University of Wisconsin, Curti directed 86 finished Ph.D. dissertations and had a wide range of correspondents. He was known for his commitment to democracy, as well as the Turnerian thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought and character.
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Allan Nevins
1890 - 1971 (81 years)
Joseph Allan Nevins was an American historian and journalist, known for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of such figures as Grover Cleveland, Hamilton Fish, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller, as well as his public service. He was a leading exponent of business history and oral history.
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