The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in History,
#7551
Robert von Pöhlmann
1852 - 1914 (62 years)
Robert von Pöhlmann was a German ancient historian . From 1870 to 1874 he studied classical philology and history at the universities of Munich, Göttingen and Leipzig. While a student his influences included Georg Waitz at Gottingen and Wilhelm Roscher at Leipzig University. In 1884 he became an associate professor at the University of Erlangen, where in 1886 he attained a full professorship. From 1901 onward, he was a professor of ancient history at the University of Munich.
Go to Profile#7552
Carl von Noorden
1833 - 1883 (50 years)
Carl Friedrich Johannes von Noorden was a German historian who was a native of Bonn. He was a grandson to psychiatrist Christian Friedrich Nasse and the father of pathologist Carl von Noorden . Biography He studied at the Universities of Marburg, Berlin and Bonn, where he was a pupil of Heinrich von Sybel . In 1868 he became a professor of history at the University of Greifswald. Afterwards he served as a professor at Marburg , Tübingen , Bonn and Leipzig . At the University of Leipzig, one of his students was Karl Lamprecht . After his death, his position at Leipzig was filled by his frie...
Go to Profile#7553
Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Mitrofan Viktorovich Dovnar-Zapol'skiy was a historian, ethnographer, and diplomat of Belarusian origin. He hailed from the family of land-less smaller nobility and was the son of Collegiate Secretary.
Go to Profile#7554
Wacław Tokarz
1873 - 1937 (64 years)
Wacław Tokarz was a Polish historian and military officer. A Colonel of the Polish Army and a professor of both the Warsaw University and Jagiellonian University, he authored numerous books on the 19th century military history of Poland, notably two monumental monographs on the Battle of Warsaw and the Warsaw Uprising of 1794.
Go to Profile#7555
Hayim Hillel Ben-Sasson
1914 - 1977 (63 years)
Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson Books A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976,
Go to Profile#7556
Thomas Dempster
1579 - 1625 (46 years)
Thomas Dempster was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish highlands and the Scottish lowlands, he was sent abroad as a youth for his education. The Dempsters were Catholic in an increasingly Protestant country and had a reputation for being quarrelsome. Thomas' brother James, outlawed for an attack on his father, spent some years as a pirate in the northern islands, escaped by volunteering for military service in the Low Countries and was drawn and quartered there for insubordination. Thomas' father lost the ...
Go to Profile#7557
George Elliott Howard
1849 - 1928 (79 years)
George Elliott Howard was an American educator and author. He was a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1889 to 1891, and a professor at Stanford from 1891 to 1901. He was also the president of the American Sociological Society in 1917.
Go to Profile#7558
Guðni Jónsson
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Guðni Jónsson was an Icelandic professor of history and editor of Old Norse texts. Life and career Guðni was born at Gamla-Hraun at Eyrarbakki into a poor family who had a total of 17 children. He was raised by relatives at Leirubakki until he was twelve, worked two seasons as a fisherman and then was taken in by his married sister in Reykjavík, enabling him to attend evening school there. He received a middle school certificate in Flensburg in 1921 and a school certificate from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1924. In 1923 he served as president of the student society Framtíðin. He then attended the University of Iceland, first in theology and then in the faculty of Old Norse studies.
Go to Profile#7559
James Alton James
1864 - 1962 (98 years)
James Alton James was an American educator and historian. Biography James was born on September 17, 1864, in Jefferson, Wisconsin. He spent two years at the Platteville Normal School, and then, after teaching high school two years to pay for the university, entered the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated as valedictorian with an LL.B. in 1888. He received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1893.
Go to Profile#7560
Julius von Pflugk-Harttung
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Julius von Pflugk-Harttung was a German historian, best known as an authority on Papal and medieval history. Biography He was born at Wernikow, and served as a soldier during the Franco-Prussian War. He studied history and philology at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Göttingen. In 1877 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Tübingen, where shortly afterwards he became an associate professor. In 1886, he was named a professor of history at Basel. Thence he went to Berlin, where in 1893 he became head of the Secret State Archives.
Go to Profile#7561
Thomas Gordon
1788 - 1841 (53 years)
Major-General Thomas Gordon was a British army officer and historian. He is remembered for his role in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s and 1830s and his History of the war published in 1832.
Go to Profile#7562
Shmuel Sambursky
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Shmuel Sambursky, or Samuel Sambursky Hebrew: שמואל סמבורסקי was a German, Palestinian, and Israeli physicist, professor, and author during the respective epochs of his country —Germany, Mandatory Palestine, and Israel.
Go to Profile#7563
Heinrich Rückert
1823 - 1875 (52 years)
Heinrich Rückert was a German historian and Germanist. He was the son of orientalist and poet Friedrich Rückert . From 1840 to 1844 he studied classical and German philology at the universities of Erlangen, Bonn and Berlin. In 1845 he obtained his habilitation for German history and archaeology at the University of Jena, and later on, relocated to Breslau, where in 1852 he became an associate professor . In 1852 he was a founding member of the Verein für Thüringische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde .
Go to Profile#7564
Sigmund von Riezler
1843 - 1927 (84 years)
Sigmund Riezler or Siegmund Riezler was a German historian. Biography He was educated at the University of Munich, and became a docent in 1869, and after ten years as head of the archives and library of Donaueschingen was made court and city librarian in Munich, in 1883, and director of the Maximilianeum in 1885.
Go to Profile#7565
Ulysse Chevalier
1841 - 1923 (82 years)
Ulysse Chevalier was a French bibliographer and historian. Born in Rambouillet, he published many works on the history of Dauphiné, e.g. the cartularies of the church and the town of Die , of the abbey of Saint André le-Bas at Vienne , of the abbey of Notre Dame at Bonnevaux in the diocese of Vienne , of the abbey of Saint Chaifre at Le Monestier , the inventories and several collections of archives of the dauphins of Viennais, and a Bibliothèque liturgique in six volumes , the third and fourth volumes of which constitute the Repertorium hymnologicum, containing more than 20,000 articles.
Go to Profile#7566
Yevgeni Pakhomov
1880 - 1965 (85 years)
Yevgeni Alexandrovich Pakhomov was a Russian, Georgiann and Azerbaijani numismatist and archaeologist and a recognized authority in the numismatics of the Caucasus. Biography Born in Stavropol, he graduated from the Tiflis Realschule in 1896, the St. Petersburg Archeological Institute in 1900, and the St. Petersburg Technological Institute in 1902. In 1920, he helped to organize the Museum of Azerbaijani History and was elected to the Academic Association of the University of Baku where he chaired the Department of Archeology and Numismatics from 1922 to 1930. He attained to the title of Pro...
Go to Profile#7567
Herbert L. Osgood
1855 - 1918 (63 years)
Herbert Levi Osgood was an American historian of colonial American history. As a professor at Columbia University he directed numerous dissertations of scholars who became major historians. Osgood was a leader of the "Imperial historians" who studied, and often praised, the inner workings of the British Empire in the 18th century.
Go to Profile#7568
Zhang Xuecheng
1738 - 1801 (63 years)
Zhang Xuecheng was a Chinese historian and philosopher during the Qing dynasty. His father and his grandfather had been government officials, but, although Zhang achieved the highest civil service examination degree in 1778, he never held high office. Zhang's ideas about the historical process were revolutionary in many ways and he became one of the most enlightened historical theorists of the Qing dynasty, but he spent much of his life in near poverty without the support of a patron and, in 1801, he died, poor and with few friends. It was not until the late 19th century that Chinese scholars began to accept the validity of Zhang's ideas.
Go to Profile#7569
Antti Aarne
1867 - 1925 (58 years)
Antti Amatus Aarne was a Finnish folklorist. Background Aarne was a student of Kaarle Krohn, the son of the folklorist Julius Krohn. He further developed their historic-geographic method of comparative folkloristics, and developed the initial version of what became the Aarne–Thompson classification system of classifying folktales, first published in 1910 and extended by Stith Thompson first in 1927 and again in 1961.
Go to Profile#7570
Ignaz Aurelius Fessler
1756 - 1839 (83 years)
Ignaz Aurelius Fessler, aka Feßler was a Hungarian ecclesiastic, politician, historian, and freemason. Biography Fessler was born in the village of Zurndorf in the Hungarian Moson County. In 1773, he joined the order of Capuchin friars, and in 1779 was ordained priest. He had meanwhile continued his classical and philological studies, and his liberal views brought him into frequent conflict with his superiors.
Go to Profile#7571
Wilhelm Wachsmuth
1784 - 1866 (82 years)
Wilhelm Gottfried Wachsmuth was a German historian and academic. From 1803 to 1806 he studied philology and theology at the University of Halle, and following graduation he worked as a teacher at the monastery school in Magdeburg. In 1815 he became an associate professor of philology at Halle. He was Professor ordinarius of classical philology at the University of Kiel from 1820 to 1826, and Professor ordinarius of history of philosophy at the University of Leipzig from 1826 to 1865. On seven separate occasions he was dean to the faculty of philosophy at Leipzig and in 1835/36 he served as un...
Go to Profile#7572
Vladimir Ikonnikov
1841 - 1923 (82 years)
Vladimir Stepanovich Ikonnikov was a Russian Imperial historian specializing in study of the Russian historiography. Ikonnikov was an academician of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a professor and a dean of the History and Philology faculty of the Kiev University.
Go to Profile#7573
Peter Young
1915 - 1988 (73 years)
Brigadier Peter Young, was a British Army officer who, during the Second World War, served with distinction with the British Commandos. Subsequently, he commanded a regiment of the Arab Legion, then returned to England in staff appointments. In 1959 he retired from the army as a brigadier and became head of Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
Go to Profile#7574
Eugene Kosminsky
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Eugene Alekseyevich Kosminsky was a Soviet historian and medievalist, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . He was a professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University , first Head of the Department of History of the Middle Ages at MSU Faculty of History from 1934 to 1949. Laureate of the 1942 Stalin Prize.
Go to Profile#7575
Andronikos I Komnenos
1118 - 1185 (67 years)
Andronikos I Komnenos , Latinized as Andronicus I Comnenus, was Byzantine emperor from 1183 to 1185. He was the son of Isaac Komnenos and the grandson of the emperor Alexios I. In later Byzantine historiography, Andronikos I became known under the epithet "Misophaes" in reference to the great number of enemies he had blinded.
Go to Profile#7576
Konrad Maurer
1823 - 1902 (79 years)
Konrad Maurer, since 1876 Konrad von Maurer was a German legal historian. He was the son of legal historian and statesman Georg Ludwig von Maurer . Maurer is considered one of the most significant researchers of Nordic legal and constitutional history.
Go to Profile#7577
Abraham Berliner
1833 - 1915 (82 years)
Abraham Berliner was a German theologian and historian, born in Obersitzko, in the Grand Duchy of Posen, Prussia. He was initially educated by his father, who was the teacher in Obersitzko. He continued his education under various rabbis, later studying at the University of Leipzig where he received the degree of doctor of philosophy.
Go to Profile#7578
Max Koch
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Max Koch was a German historian and literary critic. Biography He studied at the University of Munich as a pupil of Michael Bernays, receiving his PhD in 1878. Subsequently, he continued his education in Berlin, London and Paris, and became a docent at the University of Marburg in 1879. He was appointed an assistant professor of literary history at the University of Breslau in 1890, where in 1895 he became a full professor. In 1918 he was named university rector.
Go to Profile#7579
Wilbur Cortez Abbott
1869 - 1947 (78 years)
Wilbur Cortez Abbott was an American historian and educator, born at Kokomo, Indiana. He graduated from Wabash College in 1892. Afterward, he studied at Cornell University and at Oxford in 1897 where he received the degree of B.Litt.
Go to Profile#7580
Rasmus Nyerup
1759 - 1829 (70 years)
Rasmus Nyerup was a Danish literary historian, philologist, folklorist and librarian. Biography He was born at the village of Nyrup near Glamsbjerg on Funen, Denmark. After graduating from Odense Lærde Skole, Nyerup studied philology and theology and took exams in resp. 1779 and 1780. He was assistant at the Royal Library from 1778, and its secretary during 1709–1803. In the period 1790–1797, he was editor of the literary-critical journal Kiøbenhavnske lærde Efterretninger. He became a professor of literary history at the University of Copenhagen in 1796. From 1803, he was head librarian ...
Go to Profile#7581
Johann Matthias Schröckh
1733 - 1808 (75 years)
Johann Matthias Schröckh was an Austrian-German historian and literary scholar born in Vienna. He was a grandson to Pietist preacher Matthias Bel . In 1751 he began his studies at the University of Göttingen, where he had as instructors, church historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim and Orientalist Johann David Michaelis . He continued his education at the University of Leipzig, earning his master's degree in 1755. During the following year he received his habilitation, and in 1762 became an associate professor of philosophy. Later he relocated to the University of Wittenberg, where in 1775 he ...
Go to Profile#7582
Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch
1746 - 1812 (66 years)
Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch was a German historian who was a native of Quakenbrück. He was the father of political publicist Franz Hermann Hegewisch . Hegewisch studied theology and history at the University of Göttingen. Following graduation he was a private tutor, then later worked as a newspaper editor in Hamburg. From 1782 to 1812 he was a full professor of history at the University of Kiel. In 1805 he was appointed Etatsrat by the Danish monarchy.
Go to Profile#7583
Jean Guiraud
1866 - 1953 (87 years)
Jean-Baptiste Guiraud was a French historian and journalist. For many years he was co-editor of the Catholic journal La Croix. He was a prolific author and wrote many books on historical and other subjects.
Go to Profile#7584
Adrienne Koch
1913 - 1971 (58 years)
Adrienne Koch was an American historian. Her specialty was American history of the eighteenth century. Education After her bachelor's degree from New York University, Koch took her master's degree and a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia.
Go to Profile#7585
Philip V of France
1293 - 1322 (29 years)
Philip V , known as the Tall , was King of France and Navarre from 1316 to 1322. Philip engaged in a series of domestic reforms intended to improve the management of the kingdom. These reforms included the creation of an independent Court of Finances, the standardization of weights and measures, and the establishment of a single currency.
Go to Profile#7586
Konstantin Zel'in
1892 - 1983 (91 years)
Konstantin Konstantinovich Zel'in was a Soviet Russian historian of classical antiquity, Doctor of Sciences in Historical Sciences . Biography He graduated from the Moscow University in 1916. He studied under Professors Robert Wipper and Dmitry Petrushevsky.
Go to Profile#7587
Robert Kerr Hannay
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
Robert Kerr Hannay was a Scottish historian. He served as Historiographer Royal for Scotland and Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh. He collected and calendared the letters of both James IV and James V, and wrote The Early History of the Scottish Signet.
Go to Profile#7588
Pyotr Polevoy
1839 - 1902 (63 years)
Pyotr Nikolayevich Polevoy was a Russian writer, playwright, translator, critic, editor and literary historian. The prominent journalist and editor Nikolai Polevoy was his father. A Saint Petersburg University graduate, for a decade Polevoy taught Russian literature and philology first at his alma mater, then at Novorossiysk and Warsaw Universities. In 1871 he turned professional writer and in the course of the next thirty years published numerous historical novels and novellas as well as plays and critical and historical essays.
Go to Profile#7589
Hakob Manandian
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
Hakob Hamazaspi Manandian was an Armenian historian, philologist, and member of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union . His most important work is A Critical Survey of the History of the Armenian People . He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
Go to Profile#7590
Fred Kupferman
1934 - 1988 (54 years)
Fred Kupferman was a French historian. He was Jewish, and he was forced to wear a yellow badge during World War II. He lost his father in the Holocaust. Kupferman was a professor of history at Sciences Po and the University of Paris. He was the author of several history books about Vichy France. He also co-wrote two children's books with his wife. Kupferman had a wife, Sigrid. He died on 27 April 1988 in Paris, France.
Go to Profile#7591
Herbert Tuttle
1846 - 1894 (48 years)
Herbert Tuttle was an American historian. Biography Herbert Tuttle was born in Bennington, Vermont on November 29, 1846. He graduated in 1869 from the University of Vermont. From 1880 to 1881 he was a lecturer on international law at the University of Michigan, and in the latter year was appointed to the chair of politics and international law at Cornell University. He was subsequently transferred to the chair of European history in the Department of History.
Go to Profile#7592
Richard Fester
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Richard Fester was a German historian. Life Richard Fester was born in Frankfurt where his father, Dr. Anselm Fester, worked as a lawyer-notary. Richard attended secondary school in the city until 1881 and then volunteered for a year of military service.
Go to Profile#7593
Henry Cadbury
1883 - 1974 (91 years)
Henry Joel Cadbury was an American biblical scholar, Quaker historian, writer, and non-profit administrator. Life A graduate of Haverford College, Cadbury was a Quaker throughout his life, as well as an agnostic. Forced out of his teaching position at Haverford for writing an anti-war letter to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 1918, he saw the experience as a milestone, leading him to larger service beyond his Orthodox Religious Society of Friends. He was offered a position in the Divinity School at Harvard University, from which he had received his Ph.D., but he first rejected its teacher...
Go to Profile#7594
Henri Omont
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Henri Auguste Omont was a French librarian, philologist, and historian. Life In 1881 he wrote a thesis De la ponctuation and graduated from the École Nationale des Chartes. As a librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, he participated in compiling the "general catalogue of the manuscripts of the public libraries of France" . At the same time, he undertook research on ancient libraries and the history of printing and books. Omont became a member of the Société des Antiquaires de France and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1900. Between 1900 and 1921, Omont was pr...
Go to Profile#7595
Józef Kallenbach
1861 - 1929 (68 years)
Józef Henryk Kallenbach , born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, was a Polish historian of literature. Kallenbach graduated from the IV Public Male Gymnasium Jan Długosz of old-classical type in Lwów. He was a professor of Polish literary history at Lwów University and Jagiellon University. He was also a professor at the universities in Freiburg, Warsaw, and Wilno, a member of the Akademia Umiejętności, and a director of the Czartoryski Museum and Library in Kraków.
Go to Profile#7596
Hector Munro Chadwick
1870 - 1947 (77 years)
Hector Munro Chadwick was an English philologist. Chadwick was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and the founder and head of the Department for Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies at the University of Cambridge. Chadwick was well known for his encouragement of interdisciplinary research on Celts and Germanic peoples, and for his theories on the Heroic Age in the history of human societies. Chadwick was a tutor of many notable students and the author of numerous influential works in his fields of study. Much of his research and teaching was conducted in cooperation with his wife...
Go to Profile#7597
Thomas William Shore
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Thomas William Shore, sometimes given as William Thomas Shore was an English geologist and antiquarian. Life Born on 5 April 1840 at Wantage, he was son of William Shore, architect, by his wife Susannah Carter. Brought up at Wantage, he became organising secretary to the East Lancashire Union of Institutions at Burnley. In 1867 he was sent by the Science and Art Department to the Paris Exhibition to report on scientific and technical education, and gave evidence on the subject before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1868.
Go to Profile#7598
Émile Amann
1880 - 1948 (68 years)
Émile Amann was a French historian of the Church. After studying at the major seminary of Nancy, Émile Amann continued his training at the Catholic Institute in Paris. He was mobilized in 1914 and fought during the four years of First World War. After his demobilization, he joined the faculty of Catholic theology of the University of Strasbourg , where he taught the ancient history of the Church until his death.
Go to Profile#7599
Mikhail Artamonov
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov was a Soviet and Russian historian and archeologist, who came to be recognized as the founding father of modern Khazar studies. Biography Artamonov was born into a peasant family in Tver Governorate. He moved to Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the Russian Revolution.
Go to Profile#7600
Władysław Smoleński
1851 - 1926 (75 years)
Władysław Smoleński was a Polish historian, author of many books and articles, and a professor of the Warsaw University. Further reading External links
Go to Profile