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,
#7201
J. B. Black
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
John Bennett Black was a Scottish historian whose primary topic of study was of Elizabethan England. From 1930 to 1953 he was Burnett-Fletcher Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen where a prize is awarded each year in his name.
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Elwyn B. Robinson
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
Elwyn B. Robinson was an American historian of the North American Great Plains who focused on the US state of North Dakota. He was a professor of history at the University of North Dakota from 1953 until his retirement in 1970. He is notable both for his radio presentations “Heroes of Dakota” and for his comprehensive work History of North Dakota, which received the Award of Merit of the American Association for State and Local History. The history contained his most famous thesis, the six themes of North Dakota history, which were widely publicized and reprinted and proved to be a dominan...
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Hendrik Willem van Loon
1882 - 1944 (62 years)
Hendrik Willem van Loon was a Dutch-American historian, journalist, and children's book author. Life Van Loon was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the son of Hendrik Willem van Loon and Elisabeth Johanna Hanken. He immigrated to the United States in 1902 to study at Harvard University and then Cornell University, where he received his AB in 1905. In 1906 he married Eliza Ingersoll Bowditch , daughter of a Harvard professor, by whom he had two sons, Henry Bowditch and Gerard Willem. The newlyweds moved to Germany, where van Loon received his Ph.D. from the University of Munich in 1911 with a dissertation that became his first book, The Fall of the Dutch Republic .
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Ernesto Buonaiuti
1881 - 1946 (65 years)
Ernesto Buonaiuti was an Italian historian, philosopher of religion, Catholic priest and anti-fascist. He lost his chair at the University of Rome owing to his opposition to the Fascists. As a scholar in History of Christianity and religious philosophy he was one of the most important exponents of the modernist current.
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Frank Heywood Hodder
1860 - 1935 (75 years)
Frank Heywood Hodder was an American historian and a professor first at Cornell University and later at the University of Kansas. Biography Hodder took his degrees from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1883, studying under Charles Kendall Adams. He then served in the Federal government at Washington, D.C., through 1885. Hodder later studied in Germany at the universities of Göttingen and Freiburg, 1890-1891 and took a full professorship at Kansas in the early 1890s, and was elevated the chairman of the History Department in 1908. Hodder was a member of the Organization of America...
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Bogusław Leśnodorski
1914 - 1985 (71 years)
Bogusław Leśnodorski was a Polish historian, professor of the University of Warsaw and author of many books and articles. He was editor of "Kwartalnik Historyczny" from 1953 to 1974. Further reading Anna Rosner: Bogusław Leśnodorski. In: Profesorowie Wydziału Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 1808-2008. Grażyna Bałtruszajtys . Wyd. 1. Warszawa: Lexis-Nexis, 2008, s. 267-269. .
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Nicholas Adontz
1871 - 1942 (71 years)
Nicholas Adontz was an Armenian historian, specialising in Byzantine and Armenian studies, and a philologist. Adontz was the author of Armenia in the Period of Justinian, a highly influential work and landmark study on the social and political structures of early Medieval Armenia.
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Furio Jesi
1941 - 1980 (39 years)
Furio Jesi was an Italian historian, writer, archaeologist, and philosopher. Biography The only son of "war hero" Bruno Jesi, Furio Jesi was an independent scholar of myth, Egyptology, history of Mediterranean religions, philology and archeology, most notable for his work on extending the ideas of Károly Kerényi including studies of the science of myth and the difference between classic Myths and "Technified Myths".
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Boris Porshnev
1905 - 1972 (67 years)
Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev was a Soviet historian known for his works on popular revolts in Ancien Régime France and a doctor of social sciences working on psychology, prehistory, and neurolinguistics as relating to the origins of man.
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Joseph Vogt
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Joseph Vogt was a German classical historian, one of the leading 20th-century experts on Roman history. Following his studies at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin, he earned his doctorate in history in 1921 and his Habilitation in 1923. Subsequently he became Professor of Classical History at the University of Tübingen. He was Professor at the universities of Würzburg , Breslau , Tübingen and Freiburg im Breisgau , before he returned to Tübingen again in 1946 and taught there until his retirement in 1963.
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Hernán Ramírez Necochea
1917 - 1979 (62 years)
Hernán Ramírez Necochea was a Chilean Marxist historian. In 1968 he became director of the faculty of Philosophy and Education in the University of Chile. Following the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat he went to exile in Paris, France where he lectured in the Paris-Sorbonne University.
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Pinkhos Churgin
1894 - 1957 (63 years)
Pinkhos Churgin was an Israeli scholar who was the first President of Bar-Ilan University. Biography Churgin was born in Pohost, Belorussia, a shtetl near Pinsk. In 1907 he and his parents immigrated to Palestine, and settled in Jerusalem. In 1910 he went to study at the Volozhin Yeshiva. Churgin returned to Palestine in 1912. In 1915 he went to the United States and taught Hebrew. He studied as an undergraduate at Clark College, and then at Yale University, earning a Ph.D. in the field of Semitics, as a student of the famous researcher Charles C. Torrey. His dissertation, "Targum Jonathan to the Prophets", was published by Yale in 1927 and has since become a classic.
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Jan Zawidzki
1866 - 1928 (62 years)
Jan Wiktor Tomasz Zawidzki was a Polish physical chemist and historian of chemistry. He researched mainly chemical kinetics, thermochemistry and autocatalysis. Zawidzki was a professor of the Akademia Rolnicza in Dublany , Jagiellonian University , University of Warsaw , rector of the University of Warsaw , member of the Academy of Learning , co-founder of the Polish Chemical Society and magazine Roczniki Chemii.
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Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich was a German novelist and historian of the classical period. As a writer she concerned herself with two distinct cultures: that of Ancient Greece and that of the "North American Indians" . As an East German academic she was an influential authority on Ancient Greece. Away from the university she wrote novels concerned with the North American Indians which became classics of East German children's literature.
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Boris Eikhenbaum
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum was a Russian Empire and Soviet literary scholar and historian of Russian literature. He is a representative of Russian formalism. Biography Eikhenbaum was born in Voronezh, the grandson of Jewish mathematician and poet Jacob Eichenbaum. His childhood and adolescence were spent there. After finishing elementary school in 1905, Eikhenbaum went to Petersburg and enrolled in the Military Medical Academy, soon thereafter in 1906, he enrolled in the biological faculty of the Free High School of P. F. Lesgaft. In parallel he studied music . In 1907 Eikhenbaum left this school and enrolled in the Musical school of E.
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Nalini Kanta Bhattasali
1888 - 1947 (59 years)
Nalini Kanta Bhattasali was an Indian Bengali historian, archaeologist, numismatist, epigraphist and antiquarian. Career Bhattasali completed his master's degree in 1912. He then joined the Comilla Victoria College as a teacher in history. After that he joined Balurghat High School as its headmaster. In July 1914, he joined Dhaka Museum as its curator, a position he held until his death in 1947. He wrote reports and research papers on the contribution of important objects to the history and chronology of ancient Bengal. East Bengal was his special field of study.
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Ruth Ann Musick
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Ruth Ann Musick was an American writer and folklorist specializing in West Virginia. She was the sister of artist Archie Musick and niece of writer John R. Musick. Biography Youth and education Born in Kirksville, Missouri, to Levi Prince Musick and Zada Goeghegan, Musick received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Kirksville State Teacher's College in 1919. From September 1919 to June 1921 Musick taught at Luana High School, Luana, Iowa, before moving to Garwin, Iowa, in 1921, where she taught at Garwin High School until June 1922. She then continued her education at the State University of Iowa, graduating with a Master of Science in mathematics in 1928.
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Paul Kluke
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
Professor Paul Otto Alfred Kluke was director of the German Historical Institute London from August 1975 to July 1977.
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Lawrence Henry Yaw Ofosu-Appiah
1920 - 1990 (70 years)
Lawrence Henry Yaw Ofosu-Appiah was a Ghanaian academic who taught classics at the University of Ghana and was subsequently Director of the Encyclopedia Africana. Background Ofosu-Appiah was born in a village called Kukua near Adawso in the Eastern Region of Ghana. His parents were Seth Fianko — a teacher and a descendant of the royal family of Kubease, Larteh, Ghana — and Agnes Fianko — also a teacher and a descendant of the royal family of Akropong, Akwapim, Ghana. His education started at Adawso Presbyterian Primary School. In January 1932, he joined Achimota Secondary School for his secondary education.
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Peter Berglar
1919 - 1989 (70 years)
Peter Berglar was a German historian, professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cologne, and was known for his many publications. His biography of Thomas More is considered one of the best.
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Maurice Garland Fulton
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Maurice Garland Fulton was an American historian and English professor. He was a professor of English and History at the New Mexico Military Institute for three decades. He was the author or editor of several books, and "an authority on the Lincoln County War and Southwestern history."
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Paul Wentzcke
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Paul Wentzcke was a German academic, archivist, and historian. He proposed a national flag for West Germany in 1948. The flag that Paul Wentzcke proposed for West Germany, called the "Republican Tricolour"
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Julian P. Boyd
1903 - 1980 (77 years)
Julian Parks Boyd was an American professor who was Professor of history at Princeton University. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1964. For his efforts in preserving the site of the Battle of Hastings, he was appointed an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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Arthur Maheux
1884 - 1967 (83 years)
Monsignor Joseph Thomas Arthur Maheux, SM, OBE, FRSC was a Canadian priest and historian. He was a leading proponent of Canadian unity as well as a trenchant critic of Quebec society. He was president of the Société du parler français au Canada from 1924 to 1925 and president of the Canadian Historical Association from 1948 to 1949.
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Viola Florence Barnes
1885 - 1979 (94 years)
Viola Florence Barnes was an American historian and writer, one of the most prominent female historians in the US in the first half of 20th century. Life Born in Albion, Nebraska, Barnes was educated at the University of Nebraska and Yale University. She taught at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College . In 1940, she was honored by the Women's Centennial Congress as one of a hundred successful women in fields formerly closed to women.
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Leland Sage
1899 - 1989 (90 years)
Leland Livingston Sage was an American professor emeritus of history at the University of Northern Iowa. He was deeply interested in Iowa history, and wrote two books on it, both of which won national recognition from the American Association for State and Local History. In 1983, Sage was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
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Henry V of England
1386 - 1422 (36 years)
Henry V , also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his death in 1422. Despite his relatively short reign, Henry's outstanding military successes in the Hundred Years' War against France made England one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Immortalised in Shakespeare's "Henriad" plays, Henry is known and celebrated as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England.
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Vladimir Minorsky
1877 - 1966 (89 years)
Vladimir Fyodorovich Minorsky was a Russian academic, historian, and scholar of Oriental studies, best known for his contributions to the study of history of Iran and the Iranian peoples such as Persians, Laz people, Lurs, and Kurds.
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Firishta
1560 - 1620 (60 years)
Firishta or Ferešte , full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi , was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was born in 1570 and died in 1620. The name Firishta means 'angel' in Persian.
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Gerhard Friedrich Müller
1705 - 1783 (78 years)
Gerhard Friedrich Müller was a Russian–German historian and pioneer ethnologist. Early life Müller was born in Herford and educated at Leipzig. In 1725, he was invited to St. Petersburg to co-found the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
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Michael the Brave
1558 - 1601 (43 years)
Michael the Brave , born as Mihai Pătrașcu, was the Prince of Wallachia , Prince of Moldavia and de facto ruler of Transylvania . He is considered one of Romania's greatest national heroes. Since the 19th century, Michael the Brave has been regarded by Romanian nationalists as a symbol of Romanian unity, as his reign marked the first time all principalities inhabited by Romanians were under the same ruler.
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Cochise
1812 - 1874 (62 years)
Cochise was the leader of the Chiricahui local group of the Chokonen and principal nantan of the Chokonen band of a Chiricahua Apache. A key war leader during the Apache Wars, he led an uprising that began in 1861 and persisted until a peace treaty was negotiated in 1872. Cochise County is named after him.
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Peter II of Russia
1715 - 1730 (15 years)
Peter II Alexeyevich was Emperor of Russia from 1727 until 1730, when he died at the age of 14. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich and Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Lüneburg. After Catherine I's death, Alexander Menshikov controlled Peter II, but was thwarted by his opponents and exiled by Peter. Peter was also influenced by favorites like Prince Aleksey Dolgorukov, leading to a neglect of state affairs and the tightening of serfdom. Peter's reign was marked by disengagement, disorder, and indulgence. He was engaged to Ekaterina Dolgorukova, but died suddenly of smallpox bef...
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Joseph Jacobs
1854 - 1916 (62 years)
Joseph Jacobs was a New South Welsh-born British-Jewish folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore.
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William Camden
1551 - 1623 (72 years)
William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Annales, the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.
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Horemheb
1350 BC - 1292 BC (58 years)
Horemheb, also spelled Horemhab or Haremhab , was the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt . He ruled for at least 14 years between 1319 BC and 1292 BC. He had no relation to the preceding royal family other than by marriage to Mutnedjmet, who is thought to have been the daughter of his predecessor Ay; he is believed to have been of common birth.
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Theopompus
400 BC - 320 BC (80 years)
Theopompus was an ancient Greek historian and rhetorician. Biography Theopompus was born on the Aegean island of Chios. In early youth, he seems to have spent some time at Athens, along with his father, who had been exiled on account of his Laconian sympathies. Here he became a pupil of Isocrates, and rapidly made great progress in rhetoric; we are told that Isocrates used to say that Ephorus required the spur but Theopompus the bit.
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Charles Seignobos
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
Charles Seignobos was a French scholar of historiography and a historian who specialized in the history of the French Third Republic, and was a member of the Human Rights League. Personal life and education Seignobos was born to a Republican Protestant family in 1854 at Lamastre in the Ardèche department of France, the son of Charles-André Seignobos, the deputy for Ardèche from 1871 to 1881 and again from 1890 to 1892 and also the Councillor of Lamastre from 1852–1892. He passed his baccalaureat in 1871 at Tournon, where he studied with the French Symbolist poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé. ...
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Yu the Great
2297 BC - 2197 BC (100 years)
Yu the Great or Yu the Engineer was a legendary king in ancient China who was famed for "the first successful state efforts at flood control," his establishment of the Xia dynasty which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and his upright moral character. He figures prominently in the Chinese legend of "Great Yu Controls the Waters" .
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John Robert Seeley
1834 - 1895 (61 years)
Sir John Robert Seeley, KCMG was an English Liberal historian and political essayist. A founder of British imperial history, he was a prominent advocate for the British Empire, promoting a concept of Greater Britain. This he expounded in his most widely known book The Expansion of England . While he was an early advocate of the establishment of political science as a distinct academic discipline, he retained a theological approach in which this was embedded.
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Edward the Elder
874 - 924 (50 years)
Edward the Elder was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 899 until his death in 924. He was the elder son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. When Edward succeeded to the throne, he had to defeat a challenge from his cousin Æthelwold, who had a strong claim to the throne as the son of Alfred's elder brother and predecessor, Æthelred I.
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Henry I of England
1068 - 1135 (67 years)
Henry I , also known as Henry Beauclerc, was King of England from 1100 to his death in 1135. He was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and was educated in Latin and the liberal arts. On William's death in 1087, Henry's elder brothers Robert Curthose and William Rufus inherited Normandy and England, respectively, but Henry was left landless. He purchased the County of Cotentin in western Normandy from Robert, but his brothers deposed him in 1091. He gradually rebuilt his power base in the Cotentin and allied himself with William Rufus against Robert.
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Stilicho
359 - 408 (49 years)
Stilicho was a military commander in the Roman army who, for a time, became the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. He was of Vandal origins and married to Serena, the niece of emperor Theodosius I. He became guardian for the underage Honorius. After nine years of struggle against barbarian and Roman enemies, political and military disasters finally allowed his enemies in the court of Honorius to remove him from power. His fall culminated in his arrest and execution in 408.
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Ferdinand II of Aragon
1452 - 1516 (64 years)
Ferdinand II was King of Aragon from 1479 until his death in 1516. As the husband of Queen Isabella I of Castile, he was also King of Castile from 1475 to 1504 . He reigned jointly with Isabella over a dynastically unified Spain; together they are known as the Catholic Monarchs. Ferdinand is considered the de facto first king of Spain, and was described as such during his reign, even though, legally, Castile and Aragon remained two separate kingdoms until they were formally united by the Nueva Planta decrees issued between 1707 and 1716.
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Hamdallah Mustawfi
1281 - 1339 (58 years)
Hamdallah Mustawfi Qazvini was a Persian official, historian, geographer and poet. He lived during the last era of the Mongol Ilkhanate, and the interregnum that followed. A native of Qazvin, Mustawfi belonged to family of mustawfis , thus his name. He was a close associate of the prominent vizier and historian Rashid al-Din Hamadani, who inspired him to write historical and geographical works. Mustawfi is the author of three works; Tarikh-i guzida , Zafarnamah and Nuzhat al-Qulub , respectively. A highly influential figure, Mustawfi's way of conceptualizing the history and geography of Iran...
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Tiridates III of Armenia
255 - 330 (75 years)
Tiridates III , also known as Tiridates the Great or Tiridates IV, was the Armenian Arsacid king from to . In the early 4th century , Tiridates proclaimed Christianity as the state religion of Armenia, making the Armenian kingdom the first state to officially embrace Christianity.
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Philip IV of Spain
1605 - 1665 (60 years)
Philip IV , also called the Planet King , was King of Spain from 1621 to his death and King of Portugal from 1621 to 1640. Philip is remembered for his patronage of the arts, including such artists as Diego Velázquez, and his rule over Spain during the Thirty Years' War.
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François Victor Alphonse Aulard
1849 - 1928 (79 years)
François Victor Alphonse Aulard was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. His major achievement was to institutionalise and professionalise the practice of history in France. He argued:From the social point of view, the Revolution consisted in the suppression of what was called the feudal system, in the emancipation of the individual, in greater division of landed property, the abolition of the privileges of noble birth, the establishment of equality, the simplification of life. [...] The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being no...
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John III Sobieski
1629 - 1696 (67 years)
John III Sobieski was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1674 until his death in 1696. Born into Polish nobility, Sobieski was educated at the Jagiellonian University and toured Europe in his youth. As a soldier and later commander, he fought in the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the Russo-Polish War and during the Swedish invasion known as the Deluge. Sobieski demonstrated his military prowess during the war against the Ottoman Empire and established himself as a leading figure in Poland and Lithuania. In 1674, he was elected monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth following the su...
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Eli Heckscher
1879 - 1952 (73 years)
Eli Filip Heckscher was a Swedish political economist and economic historian who was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. He is known for the Heckscher–Ohlin theorem, an influential model of international trade that predicts that capital-abundant countries export capital-intensive goods, while labor-abundant countries export the labor-intensive goods.
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