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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#7801
Stepanos Nazarian
1812 - 1879 (67 years)
Stepanos Nazarian was an Armenian-Russian publisher, enlightener, historian of literature and orientalist. Biography He was born in the family of a priest. Graduated from the department of philosophy in the University of Tartu in 1840. In 1849 he became a professor of Persian and Arab literature in Moscow in the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. He published a number of scholarly works and earned his doctoral dissertation on a work analyzing Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
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Jean-François Lemarignier
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
Jean-François Marie Joseph Louis Lemarignier was a French medieval historian. Biography Born into a legal family in Paris in 1908, Lemarignier graduated with a licenciate in law in 1929, before entering the École des Chartes on the advice of Paul Fournier. Graduating archivist-paleographer in 1933. He became librarian-archivist at the Conseil d'État in 1934. After military service in 1939–1940, he passed the agrégation in legal history in 1941.
Go to Profile#7803
Guion Griffis Johnson
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
Guion Griffis Johnson was an American historian. Life Born Frances Guion Griffis in Wolfe City, Texas, on April 11, 1900, she was raised in Greenville, Texas. She married Guy Benton Johnson, a sociologist, and together they had two sons, Guy Benton, Jr. and Edward. She died at the age of 89 on 12 June 1989.
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Colmar Grünhagen
1828 - 1911 (83 years)
Colmar Grünhagen was a German archivist and historian. Almost all of his considerable published output concerns the History of Silesia. Life and works Colmar Grünhagen was born in Trebnitz and grew up in Breslau before 1944/45. His father was an apothecary. Between 1841 and 1847 he was a pupil initially at Breslau's St. Maria Magdalena Gymnasium and then at the Elizabeth Gymnasium . On completing his schooling he moved on to study Classical Philology and History at the University of Jena. He moved again to pursue his studies at Berlin where he was influenced by Leopold von Ranke. During...
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Émile-Guillaume Léonard
1891 - 1961 (70 years)
Émile-Guillaume Léonard was a French historian. He was director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études and specialist in the history of Protestantism. Biography Émile-Guillaume Léonard did his secondary studies at the Lycée in Montpellier then Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He entered the National School of Charters in 1911. His studies were interrupted by the First World War. He was seriously wounded during the Battle of Verdun and suffered serious damage to his arm. He befriended Guillaume Apollinaire, who dedicated his poem "À Nîmes" to him.
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Leopoldo Artucio
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Leopoldo Artucio was an Uruguayan architect and architectural historian. Artucio was also Dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Montevideo. Selected publications Montevideo y la arquitectura moderna .
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Giuseppe Ferrari
1811 - 1876 (65 years)
Giuseppe Ferrari was an Italian philosopher, historian and politician. Biography He was born at Milan, studied law at Pavia and graduated in 1831. A follower of Romagnosi and Giovan Battista Vico, his first works were an article in the Biblioteca Italiana entitled "Mente di Gian Domenico Romagnosi" , and a complete edition of the works of Vico, prefaced by an appreciation .
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Constant-Philippe Serrure
1805 - 1872 (67 years)
Constant-Philippe Serrure was a prolific Belgian historian and collector who taught at Ghent University. He was a founding member and active contributor of the Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, which published editions of medieval Flemish texts.
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Walther Hubatsch
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
Walther Hubatsch was a German military historian. He was born in Königsberg in East Prussia. During World War II he served in the German Army. He was appointed professor in Göttingen from 1949, and from 1956 at the University of Bonn. Among his works is a treatment of Operation Weserübung, the German attack on Denmark and Norway in 1940.
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Józef Siemieński
1882 - 1941 (59 years)
Józef Siemieński was a Polish archivist, historian of law. Siemieński was from 1925 until 1939 director of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw and professor at the Jagiellonian University since 1938.
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Alessandro Cutolo
1899 - 1995 (96 years)
Aldo Alessandro Cutolo was an Italian academic, television presenter, actor and historian. Born in Naples, after studying under Benedetto Croce and teaching medieval history at the University of Rome, in 1928 Cutolo was commissioned to "provide to the direction, the system and the enhancement of the Historical Archive of City of Naples." In 1935 he moved to Milan where he became professor of Bibliography and Library Science at the University of Milan.
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Carel Hendrik Theodoor Bussemaker
1864 - 1914 (50 years)
Carel Hendrik Theodoor Bussemaker was a Dutch historian who held chairs in history at the University of Groningen and the University of Leiden. Personal life Bussemaker was the son of the brewer Barend Barlagen Bussemaker and Gertruda Bertha Gerarda Elisabeth Resius. After his school years in his native city of Deventer he studied Dutch literature at the University of Leiden, where he achieved his master's degree in record time in 1886, despite being very active in extracurricular activities, especially in the Leiden Studentencorps . He married Elisabeth Hendrika Hermance Vervoort on 27 July 1887.
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William Macdonald
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
William Macdonald was an American historian and journalist. William Macdonald was from Providence, Rhode Island. He attended Harvard University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1892. In 1895 he received an honorary doctorate from Union College. Macdonald's first professorship was in history and economics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute from 1892 to 1893, and he then went to Bowdoin College from 1893-01 as a professor of political science and history. From 1901 to 1917 Macdonald was a professor of history at Brown University. Macdonald was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1902.
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Mark Hovell
1888 - 1916 (28 years)
Mark Hovell was a lecturer in history at the Victoria University of Manchester and the Workers Educational Association. He was an officer in The Sherwood Foresters during the First World War and was killed in action in only his second time in the trenches, after he fell down a shaft which had been used to explode a mine under the German lines. His book on Chartism, which he had begun before the war, was completed and published posthumously in 1918. It was one of the first scholarly works on the subject and one of the first to have been written by someone who was not a first-hand witness to ev...
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Thomas Witherow
1824 - 1890 (66 years)
Thomas Witherow was an Irish Presbyterian minister and historian. Life The son of Hugh Witherow, a farmer at Aughlish, near Dungiven, County Londonderry, and his wife Elizabeth Martin, he was born at Ballycastle on 29 May 1824. He received his early education at Ralliagh church school, and then studied with James Bryce. Later on he went to Belfast Academy and the Royal Academical Institution.
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Arthur Aspinall
1901 - 1972 (71 years)
Arthur Aspinall, CVO was a British historian. Early life He was born in the West Riding, Yorkshire and educated at Manchester University, where he studied history. Academic career He was appointed lecturer in history at the University of Rangoon in 1925, which he held until 1931. Here, he authored a book on Lord Cornwallis's career in India, Cornwallis in Bengal.
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Samuel Ebbe Bring
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Samuel Ebbe Bring was a Swedish librarian and historian. Biography Bring was born in Vinslöv Parish, Kristianstad County, to Ebbe Lars Bring and Klara Dorotea Bergman. From 1908 to 1909 he taught at the Palmgrenska samskolan. He became second librarian at the Royal Library of Sweden in 1909 and a doctor of philosophy at Lund University in 1912. From 1914 to 1944 he held the role of first librarian at Uppsala University Library. Among Bring's extensive writings are the history of the Trollhätte Canal , the Uppsala County Royal Agricultural Society , the history of the Göta Canal , the history ...
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Robert Lacour-Gayet
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Robert Lacour-Gayet was a French banking official, historian, author, and educator who taught in the United States after World War II. Life and career Lacour-Gayet came from a family of intellectuals, teachers, and historians. His maternal grandfather was Paul Janet, a French philosopher. His father, Georges Lacour-Gayet, was a historian who published a famous biography of Talleyrand. His brother, , was an economic historian with whom he frequently collaborated. His half-sister, Georgette Elgey, also became a historian.
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Antoni Rubió i Lluch
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
Antoni Rubió i Lluch was a Spanish historian and intellectual, and a Catalan patriot influenced by the Catalan Renaissance. A Hellenist and a medievalist, he left his mark on the study of the Catalan presence in fourteenth-century Greece.
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Rudolf Usinger
1835 - 1874 (39 years)
Rudolf August Usinger was a German historian born in Nienburg. He studied history at the University of Göttingen, where he was a pupil of Georg Waitz . In 1863 he became a lecturer at Göttingen, and afterwards a professor of history at the Universities of Greifswald and Kiel . Also, he was secretary of the Association for Schleswig-Holstein History.
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Edward Tanjore Corwin
1834 - 1914 (80 years)
Edward Tanjore Corwin D.D. Litt.D. was an American clergyman, writer, and historian of the Reformed Dutch church. He was born in New York City, July 12, 1834; graduated at the College of the City of New York in 1853, and at the Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, N. J. in 1856.
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Johannes Micraelius
1597 - 1658 (61 years)
Johannes Micraelius, actually Johannes Lütkeschwager, was a German poet, philosopher, and historiographer. Life Johannes Micraelius was a son to Joachim Lütkeschwager , who originated from Jamund and was an archdeacon in Köslin. As usual among the humanists of his time, Joachim adopted a Latin family name, in the form of . Esther , Johannes' sister, was married to the famous theologian Jacobus Fabricius.
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George Hadow
1712 - 1780 (68 years)
George Hadow was professor of Hebrew and oriental languages at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, Scotland from 1748 to 1780. He was the son of Principal James Hadow, also of St Andrews' University.
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Hans Naumann
1886 - 1951 (65 years)
Hans Naumann was a German literary historian and folklorist . Naumann was the first historian to describe the Ottonian period as a medieval renaissance. Naumann was born in Görlitz and died in Bonn. Being a member of the Nazi Party, Naumann was a strong proponent of the book burning.
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Halfdan Olaus Christophersen
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
Halfdan Olaus Christophersen was a Norwegian historian, literature researcher and non-fiction writer. Personal life Christophersen was born at Drammen in Buskerud, Norway. He was the son of Tollef Christophersen and Emma Langager . After graduating artium in Arendal in 1921 he began studying philology at the University of Kristiania.
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Craterus
320 BC - 300 BC (20 years)
Craterus the Macedonian was a Macedonian historian, who produced a compilation of fifth century BC Athenian inscriptions. Life In the 19th century, Meineke, Cobet, and Krech identified Craterus with the son of Alexander the Great's general Craterus and his wife Phila. This individual became the stepson of Demetrius Poliorcetes and the half-brother of Antigonus II Gonatas following his mother's third marriage. When Antigonus became king of Macedon, Craterus was made governor of Corinth and Chalcis. He loyally ruled Corinth from 280 BC until his death. Craterus had a son named Alexander who ach...
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Kathleen Mary Tyrer Atkinson
Kathleen Mary Tyrer Atkinson, née Chrimes was an ancient historian and archaeologist working in Britain, Greece, and Cyprus; she was the first woman professor at Queen's University Belfast, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
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Simon Fraser
1246 - 1306 (60 years)
Sir Simon Fraser of Oliver and Neidpath was a Scottish knight who fought in the Wars of Scottish Independence, for which he was hanged, drawn, and quartered in 1306. Life Simon Fraser was the son of Simon Fraser, Sheriff of Peebles and Keeper of the forests of Selkirk and Traquair , and his wife Maria.
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Donald Dean Jackson
1919 - 1987 (68 years)
Donald Dean Jackson was an American journalist, historian, and professor of American history involving early America and the Civil War mostly. He was the founding editor of the University of Virginia's George Washington Papers project. Apart from his editing and publishing of those papers, Jackson was also noted for his consulting and editorship in the Lewis and Clark project, gathering and compiling related manuscripts into one comprehensive study. Jackson was also considered an expert historian of the American West and its exploration and authored many books and journals in that area of stu...
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Lyle S. Shelmidine
1906 - 1966 (60 years)
Lyle Stanton Shelmidine was an American Professor of History and a Naval Intelligence Officer during World War II. Born in Spencer, Iowa, Shelmidine was one of nine children. Shelmidine was a professor and the Chairman of the Department of History at the College of Puget Sound .He received his Bachelor of Arts from Grinnell College, and his MA and PHD at the University of Iowa. Shelmidine was also a member of the American Historical Association.
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Willard Rouse Jillson
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Willard Rouse Jillson was a Kentucky historian, academic, and geologist who authored numerous books on Kentucky politicians and geology matters pertaining to the State. Jillson taught geology in Lexington at the University of Kentucky in 1918 and later at Transylvania University in 1947. He served in various government positions, notably as Kentucky State Geologist and director of the Sixth Kentucky Geological Survey.
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Gaston Bonet-Maury
1842 - 1919 (77 years)
Amy Gaston Charles Auguste Bonet-Maury was a French Protestant historian. He studied at the University of Strasbourg, graduating 1867, then was a Protestant pastor at Dordrecht, 1869–1872; followed by Beauvais, 1872–1876, and Saint-Denis, 1877. He then became lecturer, then professor of church history at the newly opened Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris in the buildings of the Collège Rollin.
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Dora Askowith
1884 - 1958 (74 years)
Dora Askowith was a Lithuanian-born American college professor, author and historian. She was director of the Women’s Organization for the American Jewish Congress. Life Askowith received her primary education at Winthrop School, in Roxbury, Boston and attended high school at Girls' High School. She was born in Kovno. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University. From 1912 to 1957, she taught at Hunter College.
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Andreas Brandrud
1868 - 1957 (89 years)
Andreas Brandrud was a Norwegian professor, theologian and church historian. Biography He was born in Sør-Fron as a son of farmer and merchant Torsten Brandrud and Anna Bleken . In February 1897 he married dean's daughter Anna Broch Martens .
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Luigi Ferri
1826 - 1895 (69 years)
Luigi Ferri was an Italian philosopher born in Bologna. His education was obtained mainly at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where his father, a painter and architect, was engaged in the construction of the Théâtre Italien. From his twenty-fifth year he began to lecture in the colleges of Évreux, Dieppe, Blois and Toulouse. Later, he was lecturer at Annecy and Casal-Montferrat, and became head of the education department under Mamiani in 1860.
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Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer
1813 - 1901 (88 years)
Johann Heinrich Joseph Düntzer was a German philologist and historian of literature. Biography He was born at Cologne. After studying philology and especially ancient classics and Sanskrit at Bonn and Berlin , he took the degree of doctor of philosophy and established himself in 1837 at Bonn as privatdozent for classical philology. He had already, in his Goethes Faust in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit and Goethe als Dramatiker , advocated a new critical method in interpreting the German classics, which he wished to see treated like the ancient classics.
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Charles Rogers
1825 - 1890 (65 years)
Charles Rogers was a 19th-century Scottish minister and prolific author. In the second half of his life, he repeatedly ran into trouble for setting up publication societies from which he gained financial benefit.
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Louis Ellies du Pin
1657 - 1719 (62 years)
Louis Ellies du Pin or Dupin was a French ecclesiastical historian, who was responsible for the . Childhood and education Dupin was born at Paris, coming from a noble family of Normandy. His mother, a Vitart, was the niece of Marie des Moulins, grandmother of the poet Jean Racine. When ten years old he entered the college of Harcourt, where he graduated M.A. in 1672. At the age of twenty, he accompanied Racine, who made a visit to Nicole for the purpose of becoming reconciled to the gentlemen of Port Royal. But, while not hostile to the Jansenists, Dupin's intellectual attraction was in another direction; he was the disciple of Jean Launoy, a learned critic and a Gallican.
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Jakob Middendorp
1537 - 1611 (74 years)
Jakob Middendorp was a Dutch Catholic theologian and churchman, academic and historian. Life Middendorp was born about 1537 in Oldenzaal, or perhaps Ootmarsum, as he called himself Otmersensis on the title page of his work . He studied the humanities at the Fragerherren gymnasium of Zwolle, philosophy and jurisprudence at Cologne University, where he became doctor of philosophy and both branches of law, and also licentiate of theology; he also taught peripatetic philosophy at the Montanum gymnasium there.
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Michael Freund
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Michael Freund was German historian and Professor at the University of Kiel. Freund's view was that Louis Napoleon was the only real revolutionist in 1848. Freund wrote, "After the solemn republican respectablity of 1848 it seemed that only with the Napoleonic experiment did a great revolutionary élan appear on the stage of history". "The state created by Napoleon was anti-socialist, but it was not the laissez-faire state of capitalism. The social ideals of the disciples of Saint-Simon were given by Napoleon, for the first time, a military and authoritarian aspect."
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Adrianus Barlandus
1486 - 1538 (52 years)
Adriaan van Baarland or Adrianus Barlandus or Hadrianus Barlandus was a Dutch historian of merit. He was born in the village of Baarland, from which he took his name. He studied at Ghent and Leuven, at which latter place he was elected professor of eloquence at the Collegium Trilingue in 1526, after a stay of some years in England. He died in Leuven in 1538, and was succeeded at the Collegium Trilingue by Conrad Goclenius.
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William Parker
William Parker was an English captain and privateer, and also Mayor of Plymouth. He was born near Plymouth and was a member of the lesser gentry but he became one of the owners of the Merchants house & in 1601 became mayor of Plymouth before becoming a privateer in the services of Queen Elizabeth. In 1587 he sailed in consort with Sir Francis Drake during Drake's raid on raid on Cadiz, Spain.
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Kinnosuke Ogura
1885 - 1962 (77 years)
Kinnosuke Ogura was a Japanese mathematician and historian of mathematics. He graduated in 1905 from Tokyo College of Science , and was a lecturer there from 1910 to 1911. He was assistant at the Department of Mathematics of the new Tohoku Imperial University from 1911 to 1917, and received his Ph.D. in 1916 with a thesis on trajectories in the conservative field of force. He did research in France for two years, from 1919 to 1922. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1920 at Strasbourg.
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Christoph Brouwer
1559 - 1617 (58 years)
Christoph Brouwer was a Jesuit priest of the Netherlands, and ecclesiastical historian. He is particularly known for his contribution to the history of the Archdiocese of Trier. Life Brouwer was born in Arnhem, The Netherlands. In 1580 he entered the Society of Jesus, and after a thorough humanistic training, devoted himself especially to the study of church history. His attainments in other branches of learning are shown by his appointment as professor of philosophy at Trier; later he was appointed rector, first at Fulda, and then at Trier. His chief work was entitled: Antiquitates et annales Trevirenses et episcoporum Treverensis ecclesiae suffragorum.
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Ludwig Häusser
1818 - 1867 (49 years)
Ludwig Häusser was a German historian. Biography Häusser was born at Cleebourg, in Alsace. Studying philology at Heidelberg in 1835, he was led by F. C. Schlosser to give it up for history, and after continuing his historical work at Jena and teaching in the gymnasium at Wertheim he made his mark by his Die teutschen Geschichtsschreiber vom Anfang des Frankenreichs bis auf die Hohenstaufen . Next year appeared his Sage von Tell.
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Arthur May
Arthur James May was an historian, a professor, and "an authority on the history of modern Europe." May was born in Rockdale, Pennsylvania. He received a Bachelor's Degree from Wesleyan University and a Master's and Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. "He taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University" before he came to the University of Rochester in 1925.
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Robert Granville Caldwell
1882 - 1976 (94 years)
Robert Granville Caldwell was an American historian, author, and diplomat who served as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Portugal and to Bolivia, and held teaching posts at Rice University, MIT, and other institutions.
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Svante Dahlström
1883 - 1965 (82 years)
Svante Dahlström was a Finland-Swedish historian. He married music educator Greta Dahlström in 1925 and was the father of musicologist . Dahlström was born in Turku, Finland, in 1883 to Johan Edvard Dahlström and Augusta Charlotta Hallqvist. After graduating in 1901, he received his bachelor of philosophy in 1910 and worked for the national archive from 1912 to 1917. He was the first administrative director of the Åbo Academy Foundation from 1917 to 1920 and secretary of the academy's consistory from 1918 to 1944. At the University of Helsinki, Dahlström was the secretary of the student socie...
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Felix Stieve
1845 - 1898 (53 years)
Felix Stieve was a German historian. He was the father of anatomist Hermann Stieve . He studied history at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, Innsbruck and Munich, obtaining his habilitation at the latter institution in 1874. In 1878 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and from 1886, taught classes as a professor at the Technische Hochschule in Munich.
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Leopold Prowe
1821 - 1887 (66 years)
Leopold Friedrich Prowe was a German historian and gymnasium instructor, born as the son of a town councillor of Thorn in West Prussia , the town where in 1473 the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born. Prowe compiled a comprehensive German language biography of Copernicus, titled Nicolaus Coppernicus.
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