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,
#7601
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.
Go to Profile#7602
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.
Go to Profile#7603
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.
Go to Profile#7604
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.
Go to Profile#7605
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...
Go to Profile#7606
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.
Go to Profile#7607
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 .
Go to Profile#7608
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...
Go to Profile#7609
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.
Go to Profile#7610
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...
Go to Profile#7611
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.
Go to Profile#7612
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.
Go to Profile#7613
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.
Go to Profile#7614
Arthur Piaget
1865 - 1952 (87 years)
Arthur Piaget was a Swiss historian, archivist and Romance philologist. He was the father of psychologist Jean Piaget. In 1888 he received his PhD from the University of Geneva, and in 1890 obtained his degree for history and philology at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. During his stay in Paris, he was influenced by the teachings of Gaston Paris and Gabriel Monod. From 1894 to 1938 he was a professor of Romance languages and literature at the Academy of Neuchâtel . In 1909–11 he served as university rector.
Go to Profile#7615
Solomon Gandz
1883 - 1954 (71 years)
Solomon Gandz was a historian of science. Gandz published on the history of mathematics and astronomy in medieval Jewish and Islamic civilizations. From 1915 to 1919, Gandz was professor of Jewish theology and Jewish history in the gymnasium and realschule in Vienna.
Go to Profile#7616
Péter Bod
1712 - 1769 (57 years)
Péter Bod or Peter Bod was a Hungarian theologian and historian. Biography Bod was born on 22 February 1712 in Felső-Csernáton, in Transylvania. He studied at Nagy-Enyed, where he also was appointed librarian and professor of Hebrew. In 1740 he went to Leyden to complete his theological studies. After his return, in 1743, he was appointed chaplain to the countess Teleki, and in 1749 he was called to Magyar-Igen as pastor of the Reformed Church, and died there in 1768.
Go to Profile#7617
Abram Ranovich
1885 - 1948 (63 years)
Abram Borisovich Ranovich was a Soviet scholar of classical antiquity and religion. Ranovich authored several publications on the history of Judaism and early Christianity. He was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour.
Go to Profile#7618
Erich Brandenburg
1868 - 1946 (78 years)
Arnold Otto Erich Brandenburg was a German historian. His main work Die Reichsgründung covers the origins of the modern German national movement and the founding of the Second Empire by Bismarck. The German historian Hans Herzfeld calls it "critical and reliable in its judgment" and Herbert Helbig in Neue Deutsche Biographie "objective, deliberate and not without a critical attitude towards the problems of Bismarck's Empire" .
Go to Profile#7619
Eadmer
1060 - 1120 (60 years)
Eadmer or Edmer was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic. He is known for being a contemporary biographer of his archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his Vita Anselmi, and for his Historia novorum in Anglia, which presents the public face of Anselm. Eadmer's history is written to support the primacy of Canterbury over York, a central concern for Anselm.
Go to Profile#7620
Laonikos Chalkokondyles
1423 - 1490 (67 years)
Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Latinized as Laonicus Chalcocondyles was a Byzantine Greek historian from Athens. He is known for his Demonstrations of Histories in ten books, which record the last 150 years of the Byzantine Empire.
Go to Profile#7621
Sallust
86 BC - 35 BC (51 years)
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust , was a Roman historian and politician from a plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became a partisan of Julius Caesar , circa 50s BC. He is the earliest known Latin-language Roman historian with surviving works to his name, of which Conspiracy of Catiline , The Jugurthine War , and the Histories remain extant. As a writer, Sallust was primarily influenced by the works of the 5th-century BC Greek historian Thucydides. During his political career he amassed great and ill-gotten wealth from his...
Go to Profile#7622
John Strype
1643 - 1737 (94 years)
John Strype was an English clergyman, historian and biographer from London. He became a merchant when settling in Petticoat Lane. In his twenties, he became perpetual curate of Theydon Bois, Essex and later became curate of Leyton; this allowed him direct correspondence with several highly notable ecclesiastical figures of his time. He wrote extensively in his later years.
Go to Profile#7623
Fran Zwitter
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Fran Zwitter was a Slovenian historian. Together with Milko Kos, Bogo Grafenauer, and Vasilij Melik, he is considered the co-founder of the Ljubljana School of Historiography. Life and work He was born in the village of Bela Cerkev near Novo Mesto in what was then the Duchy of Carniola, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of Martin Zwitter, a Carinthian Slovene judge. After his death in 1918, the family decided to stay in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . After finishing grammar school in Novo Mesto, he enrolled at the University of Ljubljana, where he studied history and geography. Between 1926 and 1928, he studied also at the University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#7624
Wilhelm Drumann
1786 - 1861 (75 years)
Wilhelm Karl August Drumann was a German classical historian. From 1805, he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Halle, receiving his doctorate at Helmstedt in 1810. Following graduation, he worked as a teacher at the Pädagogium of the Francke Foundations in Halle. In 1812, he obtained his habilitation for ancient history, and five years later became an associate professor at the University of Königsberg. In 1820, he was named third librarian at the university library, and during the following year attained a full professorship.
Go to Profile#7625
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee
1747 - 1813 (66 years)
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who was a Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#7626
Ottokar Lorenz
1832 - 1904 (72 years)
Ottokar Lorenz was an Austrian-German historian and genealogist. He was born in Iglau and died in Jena. He was the father of chemist Richard Lorenz . He studied philology, history and philosophy in Vienna, where his instructors included Hermann Bonitz, Joseph Aschbach and Albert Jäger. From 1861 to 1885, Lorenz was a professor of history at the University of Vienna, being appointed rector in 1880. Afterwards, he was a professor at the University of Jena.
Go to Profile#7627
Paul Fridolin Kehr
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Paul Fridolin Kehr was a German historian and archivist. In 1893 he was appointed professor of history and auxiliary sciences at the University of Marburg, and two years later, procured the same title at the University of Göttingen .
Go to Profile#7628
George Prothero
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Sir George Walter Prothero was an English historian, writer, and academic who served as president of the Royal Historical Society from 1901 to 1905. Life and writings Prothero was born in Wiltshire to George Prothero, and was educated at Eton, studying classics at King's College at the University of Cambridge, and at the University of Bonn. He went on to become a Fellow of King's College, working as a history lecturer there from 1876. In 1894, he became the first Professor of Modern History at the University of Edinburgh. During his time in Edinburgh he spent a year as a Council member of th...
Go to Profile#7629
Juan Bautista Muñoz
1745 - 1799 (54 years)
Juan Bautista Muñoz was an 18th-century Spanish philosopher and historian. Biography Born in Museros in 1745, Juan Bautista Muñoz was the third of four sons. After the death of his father in 1751, his mother placed him under the tutelage of his uncle, the Dominican friar Gabriel Ferrandis at the convent of Pilar de Valencia, where he began to receive his first formal education. From 1753 to 1757, Muñoz was enrolled at the Jesuit seminary in Valencia, where he came under the influence of the polymath Antonio Eximeno Pujades, and began to take an interest in mathematics and modern philosophy...
Go to Profile#7630
Peter Hume Brown
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Peter Hume Brown, FBA was a Scottish historian and professor who played an important part in establishing Scottish history as a significant academic discipline. In addition to teaching and writing, he spent 16 years as editor of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, and served as Historiographer Royal.
Go to Profile#7631
Carlile Aylmer Macartney
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
Carlile Aylmer Macartney FBA was a British academic specialising in the history and politics of East-Central Europe and in particular the history of Austria and Hungary. He was also a supporter of Hungarian interests and causes in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#7632
Dinesh Chandra Sen
1866 - 1939 (73 years)
Rai Bahadur Dinesh Chandra Sen was a Bengali writer, educationist and researcher of Bengali folklore from the Indian subcontinent. He was the founding faculty member and the Ramtanu Lahiri Research Fellow of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature of the University of Calcutta. He died in Calcutta in 1939.
Go to Profile#7633
James Phinney Baxter III
1893 - 1975 (82 years)
James Phinney Baxter III was an American historian, educator, and academic, who won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Scientists Against Time . He was also the author of The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship .
Go to Profile#7634
Livia
59 BC - 29 (88 years)
Livia Drusilla was Roman empress from 27 BC to AD 14 as the wife of emperor Augustus. She was known as Julia Augusta after her formal adoption into the Julian family in AD 14. Livia was the daughter of senator Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus and his wife Alfidia. She married Tiberius Claudius Nero around 43 BC, and they had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. In 38 BC, she divorced Tiberius Claudius Nero and married the political leader Octavian. The Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus in 27 BC, effectively making him emperor. Livia then became the Roman empress. In this role, she served as...
Go to Profile#7635
Mario Góngora
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
Mario Góngora del Campo was a Chilean historian considered "one of the most important Chilean historians of the 20th century". Though his work he examined the history of the inquilinos, the encomentaderos, rural vagabondss and Indian Law . He was in charge of university courses on medieval history.
Go to Profile#7636
Joseph Gregor
1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Joseph Gregor was an Austrian writer, theater historian and librettist. He served as director of the Austrian National Library. Life and career Joseph Gregor was born in Czernowitz. He studied musicology and philosophy at Vienna University, graduating in 1911. He worked under Max Reinhardt as assistant director and from 1912-1914 as a lecturer in music at the Franz-Josephs-University of Chernivtsi. He was employed at the Austrian National Library in Vienna in 1918. There he founded the Theater Collection in 1922, in which he included film after 1929. He also taught from 1932–1938 and 1943–1945 at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar for actors, being granted the title "Professor" in 1933.
Go to Profile#7637
Paul Sabatier
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Charles Paul Marie Sabatier , was a French clergyman and historian who produced the first modern biography of St. Francis of Assisi. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Life Sabatier was born at Saint-Michel-de-Chabrillanoux in Ardèche, and was educated at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. In 1885 he became vicar of St Nicolas, Strasbourg, but in 1889, declining an offer of preferment which was conditional on his becoming a German subject, he was expelled.
Go to Profile#7638
Miskawayh
932 - 1030 (98 years)
Ibn Miskawayh , full name Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb Miskawayh al-Rāzī was a Persian chancery official of the Buyid era, and philosopher and historian from Parandak, Iran. As a Neoplatonist, his influence on Islamic philosophy is primarily in the area of ethics. He was the author of the first major Islamic work on philosophical ethics entitled the Refinement of Character , focusing on practical ethics, conduct, and the refinement of character. He separated personal ethics from the public realm, and contrasted the liberating nature of reason with the deception and temptation of nature.
Go to Profile#7639
Whitney Cross
1913 - 1955 (42 years)
Whitney Rogers Cross , was a mid-20th-century historian, best known as the author of The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800 – 1850 .
Go to Profile#7640
Ubbo Emmius
1547 - 1625 (78 years)
Ubbo Emmius was a German historian and geographer. Early life Ubbo Emmius was born on 5 December 1547 in Greetsiel, East Frisia. From the ages of 9 to 18 Emmius studied in a Latin school, before having to leave on the death of his father, a Lutheran preacher. After studying at Rostock, at the age of 30, Emmius took classes in Geneva with Theodorus Beza, a Calvinist who influenced Emmius greatly.
Go to Profile#7641
Thomas Tout
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Thomas Frederick Tout was a British historian of the medieval period. He was one of the founders of the Historical Association in 1906. Early life Born in London, he was a pupil of St Olave's Grammar School, still then at Southwark, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and a fellow of Pembroke, but failing to obtain permanent fellowships at All Souls and Lincoln, his first academic post was at St David's University College, Lampeter , where his job title was 'Professor of English and Modern Languages'.
Go to Profile#7642
Edmond Privat
1889 - 1962 (73 years)
Edmond Privat was a Francophone Swiss Esperantist. A historian, university professor, author, journalist and peace activist, he was a graduate of the University of Geneva and a lecturer for the World Peace Foundation. His collective works consist of original dramas, poems, stories, textbooks and books about the Esperanto movement.
Go to Profile#7643
Ashkharbek Kalantar
1884 - 1942 (58 years)
Ashkharbek Kalantar was an Armenian archaeologist and historian who played an important role in the founding of archaeology in Armenia. Born into the Armenian noble families of Loris-Melikov and Arghutians, he graduated St. Petersburg University in 1911 under Nicholas Marr. He was appointed a Fellow of the Archaeological Institute, of Imperial Russian Archaeological Society and the keeper of the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg. He was one of the founders of Yerevan State University. Ashkharbek Kalantar authored more than 80 scholarly articles.
Go to Profile#7644
Moriz Carrière
1817 - 1895 (78 years)
Moriz Carrière was a German philosopher and historian. Carrière was born in Griedel near Darmstadt, Germany. After studying at Giessen, Göttingen and Berlin, he spent a few years in Italy studying the fine arts, and established himself in 1842 at Giessen as a teacher of philosophy. In 1853 he was appointed professor at the University of Munich, where he lectured mainly on aesthetics. In the academy in Munich, he lectured on art history.
Go to Profile#7645
Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill
948 - 1022 (74 years)
Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill , also called Máel Sechnaill Mór or Máel Sechnaill II , was a King of Mide and High King of Ireland. His great victory at the Battle of Tara against Olaf Cuaran in 980 resulted in Gaelic Irish control of the Kingdom of Dublin.
Go to Profile#7646
Lev Karsavin
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Lev Platonovich Karsavin was a Russian religious philosopher, historian-medievalist, and poet. Biography Early years Lev Platonovich Karsavin was born into the family of Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin, a ballet actor at the Mariinsky Theatre, and his wife Anna Iosifovna, née Khomyakova, the daughter of the cousin of Aleksey Khomyakov, a famous Slavophile. He was the brother of the ballerina Tamara Karsavina.
Go to Profile#7647
Giorgi Chubinashvili
1885 - 1973 (88 years)
Giorgi Chubinashvili was a Georgian art historian. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia he studied psychology at the universities of Leipzig and Halle , and Georgian-Armenian-Persian philology at the Petrograd University . Returning to Georgia, he served as a professor at the Tbilisi State University . He was one of the founding fathers and the first rector of Tbilisi State Academy of Arts
Go to Profile#7648
Denis Jean Achille Luchaire
1846 - 1908 (62 years)
Denis Jean Achille Luchaire was a French historian. Biography Luchaire was born in Paris. In 1879 he became a professor at Bordeaux and in 1889 professor of mediaeval history at the Sorbonne; in 1895 he became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, where he obtained the Jean Reynaud prize just before his death.
Go to Profile#7649
James Alexander Robertson
1873 - 1939 (66 years)
James Alexander Robertson was an American academic historian, archivist, translator and bibliographer. He is most noted for his contributions to the history and historiography of the Philippines and other former territorial possessions of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Go to Profile#7650
Stanisław Kutrzeba
1876 - 1946 (70 years)
Stanisław Marian Kutrzeba was a Polish historian and politician who was Professor of the Jagiellonian University from 1908, and then until the end of his life the Chair of Studies in Polish law. He was chair of the Law Department , university's rector , General Secretary of Polish Academy of Learning and its president . He was one of many professors of Jagiellonian University arrested by Nazis during Sonderaktion Krakau in 1939. After being freed in 1940, he took part in the underground education. In 1945, he was deputy to the State National Council.
Go to Profile