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,
#7851
Edward Ambrose Burgis
1673 - 1747 (74 years)
Edward Ambrose Burgis was an English Dominican historian and theologian. Biography He was born in England 1673. When a young man he left the Church of England, of which his father was a minister, and became a Catholic, joining the Dominican Order at Rome, where he passed his noviceship in the convent of Saints John and Paul on the Caelian Hill, then occupied by the English Dominicans. After his religious profession he was sent to Naples to the Dominican school of St. Thomas, where he displayed unusual mental ability.
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Dmytro Bahalii
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Dmytro Ivanovych Bahalii was a Ukrainian historian and public and political figure, one of founding members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society since 1923. He was also a professor and rector at Kharkiv University , and mayor of Kharkiv .
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Jules Flammermont
1852 - 1899 (47 years)
Jules Gustave Flammermont was a French historian, largely known for his writings on history of the 18th century. He studied at the École pratique des Hautes Études and École des Chartes in Paris, receiving his diploma as an archivist-palaeographer in 1878. He worked as a librarian and archivist in the town of Senlis, and afterwards served as secretary to the Duke of Aumale at the Château de Chantilly. In 1883/84 he conducted archival research in Vienna and Berlin, and in 1884 received his doctorate of letters at the Sorbonne. He successively taught classes in history at the universities of Poitiers , Douai and Lille .
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Charles Alexander McMurry
1857 - 1929 (72 years)
Early life Charles Alexander McMurry was an American educator, pioneer in American Herbartianism, and brother to Frank Morton McMurry. In 1857, McMurry was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, but following the premature death of his father, his mother moved the family to rural Illinois where he and his siblings would begin attending Normal schools, specifically in Normal, Illinois. This is where Charles McMurry would meet Edmund J. James, a prominent educational figure in economics and academia throughout Illinois universities and schools.
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Helge Dahl
1926 - 1989 (63 years)
Helge Dahl was a Norwegian educationalist. He was born in Rjukan as the son of labourers. He finished his secondary education in his hometown in 1940 and graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1946 at the University in Oslo. From 1947 to 1957 he was a teacher at Tromsø Teacher's College, and took the dr.philos. degree in 1957 with the thesis Språkpolitikk og skolestell i Finnmark 1814–1905. He specialized in the history of education, and wrote Norsk lærerutdanning fra 1814 til i dag , Lærerutdanningen ved Universitetet i Oslo fra 1814 til i dag , Klassisisme og realisme. Den høgre skolen i Norge 1809–1869 , Norsk Lærerskolelag gjennom 75 år .
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Winston Churchill
1620 - 1688 (68 years)
Sir Winston Churchill , known as the Cavalier Colonel, was an English soldier, historian, and politician. He was the father of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and a direct ancestor and namesake of Winston, who served as British prime minister in the 20th century during the Second World War.
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Arrigo Pacchi
1933 - 1989 (56 years)
Arrigo Pacchi was an Italian historian of philosophy. He graduated in philosophy at the University of Milan with an academic thesis in Medieval Philosophy. He dedicated his studies in particular to the natural philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and to the influence of Cartesianism in England.
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Andrew Browning
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Andrew Browning, FBA was a Scottish historian. He was Professor of History at the University of Glasgow from 1931 to 1957. Early life and education Born in Dennistoun in Glasgow on 28 March 1889, Browning was the son of Daniel Browning, JP, the managing director of a picture frame manufacturing firm and the Liberal candidate for a Glasgow parliamentary constituency in the 1918 general election. Daniel Browning was a book collector, with over 4,000 volumes in his library. Among Andrew Browning's siblings was Robert, a journalist, and David, a lexicographer.
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David Keir
1895 - 1973 (78 years)
Sir David Lindsay Keir was a British historian and educator. From 1949 to 1965, he was Master of Balliol College, Oxford. Life Keir was born at Bellingham, Northumberland, the eldest of six children to William Keir and Elizabeth Keir. His Scottish father was a Presbyterian minister, originally from Aberuthven, and moved several times during Keir's childhood, from Bellingham to Newcastle, Birkenhead, and finally Glasgow, where Keir attended the Glasgow Academy, an independent school.
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Anthony Steel
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Anthony Bedford Steel was a British historian, specialising in medieval England. He was a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, and principal of Cardiff University from 1949 to 1966. Among his publications were a monograph on the reign of Richard II, as well as a biography of the 19th-century writer Robert Smith Surtees, titled Jorrick's England. He also translated Albert Sorel's L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise into English .
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Wilhelm Junghans
1834 - 1865 (31 years)
Wilhelm Junghans was a German historian who was a native of Lüneburg. He studied under Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl at the University of Bonn, and with Georg Waitz at the University of Göttingen. In 1862 he was appointed professor at the University of Kiel, a position he held until his death in 1865 at the age of 30. At Kiel he was also secretary of the Schleswig-Holstein Historical Society.
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Abraham Halkin
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Abraham Solomon Halkin was a Jewish history professor who was the brother of Simon Halkin and cousin of Shmuel Halkin. Biography Halkin was born in 1904 in the Russian Empire, the younger brother of Simon Halkin. He is also the cousin of Shmuel Halkin.
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Jean Chapeauville
1551 - 1617 (66 years)
Jean Chapeauville was a theologian, historian and vicar general in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. Life Born in Liège, capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, Chapeauville made his philosophical studies at the University of Cologne and University of Louvain, and at the latter received the degree of Licentiate of Theology. He then entered the priesthood, and in 1578 was appointed one of the synodal examiners for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Liège, and in 1579 parish priest of St. Michael's in Liège. He performed the functions of the latter office for about ten years.
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Hugh Stewart
1884 - 1934 (50 years)
Hugh Stewart, was an academic, soldier and historian whose work had a major impact in both England and New Zealand. Born in Scotland, Stewart worked in Russia teaching English after completing his education. He then taught classical studies at the University of Liverpool in England and then at Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand. During the First World War, he volunteered for service abroad with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He participated in several engagements at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, and was decorated for bravery and leadership. He ended the war as a lieu...
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Zdzisław Kaczmarczyk
1911 - 1980 (69 years)
Zdzisław Kaczmarczyk was a Polish historian and director of the Western Institute in Poznań from 1964 to 1965. He was connected to the Western Institute for his whole adult life, studying there in the early 1930s and then becoming a voluntary assistant from where he climbed the academic hierarchy to become director. He remained with the institute until his death in 1980, treating it as his second home.
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Matthieu Petit-Didier
1659 - 1728 (69 years)
Matthieu Petit-Didier was a French Benedictine theologian and ecclesiastical historian. Life After studying at the Jesuit college at Nancy he joined the Benedictine Congregation of St-Vannes, in 1675, at the monastery of St-Mihiel. In 1682 he was appointed professor of philosophy and theology.
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Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt
1886 - 1964 (78 years)
Klara Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt was a German medievalist, professor of German philology at the University of Leipzig and head of the effort to publish the Old High German Dictionary. Biography Karg-Gasterstädt was the daughter of Karl Gasterstädt, a factory director from Swabia, and his wife, Sophie, née Schönleber. Klara attended a teachers' college in Stuttgart from 1909 to 1912, and after graduation she was allowed to teach middle and higher grades. From there she went on to work as a substitute teacher at the Königin-Katharina-Stift, and then became a full-time teacher at the Prieser Hig...
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Charles W. Jones
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Charles W. Jones was a medievalist scholar who served on the faculties of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is noted for his work on Bede, the development of the ecclesiastical calendar, medieval hagiography, and Carolingian aesthetics. At his death a major work titled The Age of the Book: Christian Foundations of Western Literature was left unfinished.
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Georges Appert
1850 - 1934 (84 years)
Georges Appert was a French historian, academic, writer and Japanologist. He was a legal scholar and professor of law at the University of Tokyo. Career Appert was a foreign government advisor in Meiji Japan from 1879 to 1889.
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Basilius Amerbach the Younger
1533 - 1591 (58 years)
Basilius Amerbach was a lawyer, professor and collector from Basel. He was the only son of Bonifacius Amerbach. He began to study law in 1552 at the University of Tübingen. In 1553 he studied at the University of Padua where his lecturer was Marcus Mantua Benavidius. 1552, he became a law clerk at the Imperial Chamber Court in Speyer. During this time, Basilius surprised his father by choosing to live with Jacob zur Glocke, a goldsmith, rather than a lawyer. After one year as a clerk, he became a professor at the University of Basel.
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W. H. Marwick
1894 - 1982 (88 years)
William Hutton Marwick was a Scottish economic historian, specialising in the labour movement. Marwick's parents were Scottish missionaries for the United Presbyterian Church, and he was born near Calabar in Nigeria, then grew up in Jamaica. He then moved to Edinburgh and studied at George Watson's College and the University of Edinburgh. He was a conscientious objector during World War I, serving a prison term in Wormwood Scrubs, then joining the Home Office Work Scheme at Wakefield and in Wales, and from 1918 serving with the Friends' War Victims Relief.
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Antoni Knot
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Antoni Knot was a Polish scholar, historian, librarian and teacher. In 1929 he gained Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Lwów. In 1965 he became professor . From 1947 to 1949 Knot was the chief librarian of Ossolineum.
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Erna Lesky
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Erna Lesky was an Austrian pediatrician and historian of medicine. She was the first woman on the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, and was named as "one of the most illustrious medical historians of the twentieth century" by Owen Harding Wangensteen.
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César-Egasse du Boulay
1600 - 1678 (78 years)
César-Egasse du Boulay , known as Bulaeus, was a French historian. Life He was born at the beginning of the seventeenth century at Saint-Ellier, Mayenne. After teaching humanities in the College of Navarre he occupied important positions in the University of Paris, including those of rector and historian of the university. He died on 16 October 1678.
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Otto Sutermeister
1832 - 1901 (69 years)
Friedrich Gottlieb Otto Sutermeister was a Swiss folklorist and professor at the University of Berne who collected and revised numerous folk taless, legends, fables, and proverbs. Strongly influenced by the Brothers Grimm, Sutermeister emphasized the didactic aspect of Swiss folklore and rewrote many of the tales to suit young readers. He also was editor of the works of Jeremias Gotthelf and of the "Swiss Idioticon".
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Ding Dyason
1919 - 1989 (70 years)
Diana Joan "Ding" Dyason was a highly respected Australian lecturer and historian of medicine with major teaching and life-long research interests in public health and germ theory. She is most notable in the significant impact she had in her scholarly discipline. As a woman who firstly worked in the traditional roles of research assistant and demonstrator in the non-traditional discipline of science, Dyason progressed to become a leader at a major Australian university, overcoming barriers of gender and culture at a national and international level, receiving awards and honors in the process....
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Johann Wilhelm Ridler
1772 - 1834 (62 years)
Johann Wilhelm Ridler was an author, historian and university professor. For the final twenty years of his life he was head librarian at the Vienna University Library. Biography Johann Wilhelm Ridler was born at Leitmeritz 1945
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Édouard Ardaillon
1867 - 1926 (59 years)
Édouard Muller Ardaillon was a French historian, archaeologist and geographer. Career After graduating from the Boys' Catholic College of Sainte-Marie in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, he undertook a Bachelor of Arts. He was a scholar of the lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1884 to 1887. In 1887, he enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure where he achieved the Agrégation in 1890; he then joined the École française d'Athènes .
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Robert Johnson
1583 - 1633 (50 years)
Robert Johnson was an English composer and lutenist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras. He is sometimes called "Robert Johnson II" to distinguish him from an earlier Scottish composer. Johnson worked with William Shakespeare providing music for some of his later plays.
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Theodor Schott
1835 - 1899 (64 years)
Theodor Schott was a German Protestant theologian, historian and librarian, known for his studies involving the history of French Protestantism. From 1853 he studied theology and philosophy at Tübinger Stift in Tübingen, and after finishing his studies, spent two years as a curate at parishes in Württemberg. From 1859 he taught classes at Hofwyl near Bern, and later on, worked as a religious instructor at the gymnasium in Stuttgart. In 1867 he became a pastor of a parish in Berg, a suburb of Stuttgart. From 1873 up until his death, he served as a librarian at the royal public library in Stutt...
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Johannes Nauclerus
1425 - 1510 (85 years)
Johannes Nauclerus was a 16th-century Swabian historian and humanist. He was born Johann Vergenhans to a noble man of the same name. As was the fashion of the time, the family's name had been Latinized, with nauclerus, meaning "skipper," being a close translation of Vergenhans, meaning "ferryman." The family's coat of arms depicted a man on a sailing ship.
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William Roy Smith
1876 - 1938 (62 years)
William Roy Smith was an American academic historian. Career Smith studied first at the University of Texas , and went on to complete a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1902, as a student of William Archibald Dunning. He joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr College in 1902, and became professor of history in 1914. He married Marion Parris on 11 June 1912 in Manhattan, New York. He died in Bryn Mawr Hospital in February 1938.
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Griffith Hartwell Jones
1859 - 1944 (85 years)
Rev. Griffith Hartwell Jones was a Welsh academic and Anglican clergyman. He was born in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Denbighshire. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, where he was a scholar, and became professor of Latin at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, lecturing on historical and philological topics and writing extensively. He was also chairman of the National Eisteddfod Association, chairman of the council of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion and a member of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. He died in hospit...
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Charles-François-Maximilien Marie
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Charles-François-Maximilien Marie was a French mathematician, historian of mathematics. He was the author of History of the Mathematics and Theory of the variable imaginary functions , relating to the imaginary unit.
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John Russell
Sir John Russell of Kingston Russell in Dorset, England, was a household knight of King John , and of the young King Henry III , to whom he also acted as steward. He served in this capacity as custodian of the royal castles of Corfe and Sherborne in Dorset and of the castles of Peveril and Bolsover in Derbyshire. He served as Sheriff of Somerset in 1223-1224. He was granted the royal manor of Kingston Russell in Dorset under a feudal land tenure of grand serjeanty. Between 1212 and about 1215 he acquired a moiety of the feudal barony of Newmarch, the caput of which was at North Cadbury, So...
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Peter Bogaevsky
1866 - 1929 (63 years)
Peter Mikhailovich Bogaevsky See also List of Russian legal historiansScholars in Russian law
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Emily Coddington Williams
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
Emily Coddington Williams was an American historian of mathematics, translator, novelist, playwright, and biographer. Early life and education Coddington was born on October 21, 1873, in New York City; her parents were of well-off colonial stock. Her father, a lawyer, died in 1876, and she came to live in Midtown Manhattan with her mother and grandmother. She passed the entrance examination for Harvard University in 1891, allowing her to study at the Harvard Annex, a precursor to Radcliffe College. Instead, she went to the University of London from 1894 to 1896, and earned a bachelor's degree there.
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Wayne Andrews
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Wayne Andrews was an American historian and architectural photographer. He was the author of numerous books, including Battle for Chicago, and Siegfried`s Curse: The German Journey from Nietzsche to Hesse.
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James McKinnon
1900 - 1945 (45 years)
James McKinnon FRSE was a writer on history and church history. He was Professor of Church History at the University of Edinburgh from 1908 to 1930. Life He was born on 15 July 1860 on the Ardmiddle estate near Turriff in northern Aberdeenshire, the son of Barbara Hay Black and her husband Alexander MacKinnon, the land steward of the estate.
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Patrick Power
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Canon Patrick Power , was a noted historian of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He was born on 8 March 1862, in Callaghane, Co. Waterford and educated at the Catholic University School and St. John's College, Waterford.
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John Cook
1608 - 1660 (52 years)
John Cook or Cooke was the first Solicitor General of the English Commonwealth and led the prosecution of Charles I. Following The Restoration, Cook was convicted of regicide and hanged, drawn and quartered on 16 October 1660. He is considered an international legal icon and progenitor of international criminal law for being the first lawyer to prosecute a head of state for crimes against his people.
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Juliusz Kleiner
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Juliusz Kleiner was a Polish historian and literary theorist. Education and early life Kleiner graduated from high school in Lwów and then studied Polish and German literature as well as philosophy at the University of Lwów. In 1908, Kleiner was awarded a doctorate in philosophy. In 1910 and 1911 he studied abroad in Germany and France.
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Daniël Heinsius
1580 - 1655 (75 years)
Daniel Heinsius was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance. His youth and student years Heinsius was born in Ghent. The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then to England, next at Rijwijk and lastly at Vlissingen. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker to study law under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598, he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa, Paulus ...
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Lucio Marineo Siculo
1444 - 1533 (89 years)
Lucio Marineo Siculo was a Sicilian humanist, historian and poet, known as a prominent figure of the Spanish Renaissance. He first taught Greek and Latin literature in Palermo. He moved to Spain and taught for twelve years at the University of Salamanca. His teaching and books influenced the development of the Spanish Renaissance, and his disciples included Alfono de Segura. King Ferdinand brought him to the royal court to serve as chaplain and chronicler. He was also charged with the education of the children of the nobility.
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Petro Yefymenko
1835 - 1908 (73 years)
Petro Yefymenko , was a Ukrainian ethnographer and historian, statistician by profession. Life and work Petro Yefymenko studied at Kharkiv University until his expulsion and Moscow University . As a student, he belonged to secret student societies, including Kharkiv-Kyiv Secret Society .
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Andrija Balović
1721 - 1784 (63 years)
Andrija Balović was a Roman Catholic priest, historian, writer, translator and theologian, native of Montenegro. Biography Born in Perast to a well-known patrician household Balovići, a family with six children. Andrija was the son of Marko Balović, and brother of Josip Balović, also the nephew of Julije Balović.
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Floris Van der Haer
1547 - 1634 (87 years)
Floris Van der Haer, also known as Florentius Haracus, was a clergyman from the Habsburg Netherlands and an author of historical works. He was born in Leuven in 1547 to a family from Utrecht. As a clergyman he was attached first to St. Gertrude's Abbey, Leuven, and later to a canonry in Lille, where he died on 6 February 1634.
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Gottfried Gabriel Bredow
1773 - 1814 (41 years)
Gottfried Gabriel Bredow was a German historian. He was born at Berlin, and became successively professor at the universities of Helmstedt , Frankfurt an der Oder and Breslau. He died at Breslau. Bredow's principal works are Handbuch der alten Geschichte, Geographie und Chronologie ; Chronik des 17. Jahrhunderts ; Entwurf der Weltkunde der Alten ; Weltgeschichte in Tabellen .
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Sutemi Horiguchi
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
was an architect and a historian of Japanese architecture, and an expert of sukiya-zukuri architecture. In addition to designing modern buildings, he designed buildings in sukiya-zukuri, and buildings that fused both modern architectural and traditional Japanese architectural motifs.
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Johann Heinrich Acker
1647 - 1719 (72 years)
Johann Heinrich Acker was a German writer. He sometimes wrote under the name of Melissander. He was taught in his native city of Naumburg and at the regional school of Pforta . Beginning in 1669, he studied in Jena where he became magister and adjunct of the philosophical faculty. In 1673 he became adjunct and pastor in near Gotha, and in 1689 he became superintendent and court chaplain in Blankenhain. He resigned in 1717 due to an illness and moved to Gotha, where he died in 1719.
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