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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,

#7851

T. S. Ashton

1889 - 1968 (79 years)

Thomas Southcliffe Ashton was an English economic historian. He was professor of economic history at the London School of Economics at the University of London from 1944 until 1954, and Emeritus Professor until his death in 1968. His best known work is the 1948 textbook The Industrial Revolution , which put forth a positive view on the benefits of the era.

#7852

Mark Dvorzhetski

Mark Dvorzhetski

1908 - 1975 (67 years)

Mark Dvorzhetski was an Israeli physician, historian and Holocaust survivor. Biography Mark Dvortzhetski was born in Lithuania . He immigrated to Israel after World War II. He authored a number of books on the Holocaust, in particular with reference to the Baltic States and the medical profession.

#7853

Gustave Cohen

1879 - 1958 (79 years)

Gustave Cohen was a French medievalist. Cohen was born and grew up in Brussels. He fought for the French army in World War I. He became professor of medieval literature at the Sorbonne, encouraging his students to put on dramatic productions of medieval material. After the Vichy government forced him to resign in 1940, Cohen emigrated to the United States. In February 1942 he helped found the New York École libre des hautes études with Henri Focillon and Jacques Maritain. He established the Entretiens de Pontigny, symposiums of French cultural activity held at Mount Holyoke College in 1942, 1...

#7854

Tadeusz Estreicher

Tadeusz Estreicher

1871 - 1952 (81 years)

Tadeusz Kazimierz Estreicher was a Polish chemist, historian and cryogenics pioneer. Life Tadeusz Estreicher was born in Kraków when the city was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. He grew up in the intellectual atmosphere of an influential dynasty of professors at the Jagiellonian University. His father, Karol Józef Estreicher, was a historian of literature and the chief librarian of the university. His brother, Stanisław, was a historian of law and his sister, Maria, was one of the first women in Austria-Hungary to earn a doctorate .

#7855

Aage Friis

1870 - 1949 (79 years)

Aage Friis was a Danish historian and professor at the University of Copenhagen. Biography Aage Friis was born in Korsør in Slagelse, Denmark. He was the son of Johan Frederik Friis and Juliane Marie Landkilde . His father was a parish priest who also taught his children together with other children from the village.

#7856

Robert Lee Wolff

1915 - 1980 (65 years)

Robert Lee Wolff was a Harvard history professor, known for his 1956 book The Balkans in our time and his library collection of English novels of the Victorian period with over 18,000 items. Wolff received his bachelor's degree and his master's degree from Harvard University, where he was a teaching fellow from 1937 to 1941, when he left Harvard to join the Office of Strategic Services . As a leading expert on the Balkans, he was assistant to the director of the Balkans section of the O.S.S. After the end of World War II, Wolff taught for four years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and then in 1950 became an associate professor in the Harvard history department.

#7857

Paul Monceaux

1859 - 1941 (82 years)

Étienne-Paul-Victor Monceaux was a 19th-20th-century French historian. A professor at the Collège de France from 1907 to 1937, he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1912. His major speciality was Christian Latinity in the Roman provinces of North Africa.

#7858

Ernest Staples Osgood

1888 - 1983 (95 years)

Ernest Staples Osgood was an American historian of the American West and Guggenheim Fellow best known for his book The Day of the Cattleman and for his work on the field notes of Captain William Clark.

#7859

Rodolphe Reuss

1841 - 1924 (83 years)

Rodolphe Ernest Reuss was a French historian from Alsace. He also published under the pseudonym Anton Schweidnitz. Biography Rodolphe Reuss was born to Protestant theologian Edouard Reuss and his wife Julie . He was educated at Strasbourg, receiving a bachelor at the Faculty of Arts in 1861. Subsequently, he spent three years at different universities in Germany, at first in Munich, then Jena, Berlin, and finally Göttingen, where he attended the lectures of German historian Georg Waitz and where he finished his PhD thesis on Count Ernst von Mansfeld in Bohemia in October 1864. He earned a Dr....

#7860

Georges Lacour-Gayet

Georges Lacour-Gayet

1856 - 1935 (79 years)

Georges Lacour-Gayet was a French historian who taught at the École Navale and the École Polytechnique. His books on the French navy under Louis XV and Louis XVI are much-quoted and were considered references when published, although they betray his patriotic bias. His master work was a four-volume biography of Talleyrand.

#7861

Herbert Butterfield

1900 - 1979 (79 years)

Sir Herbert Butterfield was an English historian and philosopher of history, who was Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He is remembered chiefly for a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History and for his Origins of Modern Science . Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past. Butterfield was a devout Christian and reflected at length on Christian influences in historical perspectives.

#7862

Michael Tangl

1861 - 1921 (60 years)

Michael Tangl was an Austrian scholar of history and diplomatics, and one of the main editors of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, for whom he published the correspondence of Saint Boniface, an edition still used by scholars and considered the definitive edition.

#7863

Gilbert Ballet

1853 - 1916 (63 years)

Gilbert Ballet was a French psychiatrist, neurologist and historian who was a native of Ambazac in the department of Haute-Vienne. He studied medicine in Limoges and Paris, and subsequently became Chef de clinique under Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière. In 1900 he became a professor of psychiatry, and in 1904 established the department of psychiatry at Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. In 1909 he succeeded Alix Joffroy as chair of clinical psychiatry and brain disorders at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne.

#7864

Henry V of England

Henry V of England

1386 - 1422 (36 years)

Henry V , also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his death in 1422. Despite his relatively short reign, Henry's outstanding military successes in the Hundred Years' War against France made England one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Immortalised in Shakespeare's "Henriad" plays, Henry is known and celebrated as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England.

#7865

Vladimir Minorsky

1877 - 1966 (89 years)

Vladimir Fyodorovich Minorsky was a Russian academic, historian, and scholar of Oriental studies, best known for his contributions to the study of history of Iran and the Iranian peoples such as Persians, Laz people, Lurs, and Kurds.

#7866

Firishta

1560 - 1620 (60 years)

Firishta or Ferešte , full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi , was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was born in 1570 and died in 1620. The name Firishta means 'angel' in Persian.

#7867

Gerhard Friedrich Müller

Gerhard Friedrich Müller

1705 - 1783 (78 years)

Gerhard Friedrich Müller was a Russian–German historian and pioneer ethnologist. Early life Müller was born in Herford and educated at Leipzig. In 1725, he was invited to St. Petersburg to co-found the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

#7868

Michael the Brave

Michael the Brave

1558 - 1601 (43 years)

Michael the Brave , born as Mihai Pătrașcu, was the Prince of Wallachia , Prince of Moldavia and de facto ruler of Transylvania . He is considered one of Romania's greatest national heroes. Since the 19th century, Michael the Brave has been regarded by Romanian nationalists as a symbol of Romanian unity, as his reign marked the first time all principalities inhabited by Romanians were under the same ruler.

#7869

Cochise

1812 - 1874 (62 years)

Cochise was the leader of the Chiricahui local group of the Chokonen and principal nantan of the Chokonen band of a Chiricahua Apache. A key war leader during the Apache Wars, he led an uprising that began in 1861 and persisted until a peace treaty was negotiated in 1872. Cochise County is named after him.

#7870

Peter II of Russia

Peter II of Russia

1715 - 1730 (15 years)

Peter II Alexeyevich was Emperor of Russia from 1727 until 1730, when he died at the age of 14. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich and Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Lüneburg. After Catherine I's death, Alexander Menshikov controlled Peter II, but was thwarted by his opponents and exiled by Peter. Peter was also influenced by favorites like Prince Aleksey Dolgorukov, leading to a neglect of state affairs and the tightening of serfdom. Peter's reign was marked by disengagement, disorder, and indulgence. He was engaged to Ekaterina Dolgorukova, but died suddenly of smallpox bef...

#7871

Joseph Jacobs

1854 - 1916 (62 years)

Joseph Jacobs was a New South Welsh-born British-Jewish folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore.

#7872

William Camden

1551 - 1623 (72 years)

William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Annales, the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

#7873

Horemheb

1350 BC - 1292 BC (58 years)

Horemheb, also spelled Horemhab or Haremhab , was the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt . He ruled for at least 14 years between 1319 BC and 1292 BC. He had no relation to the preceding royal family other than by marriage to Mutnedjmet, who is thought to have been the daughter of his predecessor Ay; he is believed to have been of common birth.

#7874

Theopompus

400 BC - 320 BC (80 years)

Theopompus was an ancient Greek historian and rhetorician. Biography Theopompus was born on the Aegean island of Chios. In early youth, he seems to have spent some time at Athens, along with his father, who had been exiled on account of his Laconian sympathies. Here he became a pupil of Isocrates, and rapidly made great progress in rhetoric; we are told that Isocrates used to say that Ephorus required the spur but Theopompus the bit.

#7875

Charles Seignobos

Charles Seignobos

1854 - 1942 (88 years)

Charles Seignobos was a French scholar of historiography and a historian who specialized in the history of the French Third Republic, and was a member of the Human Rights League. Personal life and education Seignobos was born to a Republican Protestant family in 1854 at Lamastre in the Ardèche department of France, the son of Charles-André Seignobos, the deputy for Ardèche from 1871 to 1881 and again from 1890 to 1892 and also the Councillor of Lamastre from 1852–1892. He passed his baccalaureat in 1871 at Tournon, where he studied with the French Symbolist poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé. ...

#7876

Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich

1901 - 1979 (78 years)

Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich was a German novelist and historian of the classical period. As a writer she concerned herself with two distinct cultures: that of Ancient Greece and that of the "North American Indians" . As an East German academic she was an influential authority on Ancient Greece. Away from the university she wrote novels concerned with the North American Indians which became classics of East German children's literature.

#7877

Boris Eikhenbaum

1886 - 1959 (73 years)

Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum was a Russian Empire and Soviet literary scholar and historian of Russian literature. He is a representative of Russian formalism. Biography Eikhenbaum was born in Voronezh, the grandson of Jewish mathematician and poet Jacob Eichenbaum. His childhood and adolescence were spent there. After finishing elementary school in 1905, Eikhenbaum went to Petersburg and enrolled in the Military Medical Academy, soon thereafter in 1906, he enrolled in the biological faculty of the Free High School of P. F. Lesgaft. In parallel he studied music . In 1907 Eikhenbaum left this school and enrolled in the Musical school of E.

#7878

Nalini Kanta Bhattasali

Nalini Kanta Bhattasali

1888 - 1947 (59 years)

Nalini Kanta Bhattasali was an Indian Bengali historian, archaeologist, numismatist, epigraphist and antiquarian. Career Bhattasali completed his master's degree in 1912. He then joined the Comilla Victoria College as a teacher in history. After that he joined Balurghat High School as its headmaster. In July 1914, he joined Dhaka Museum as its curator, a position he held until his death in 1947. He wrote reports and research papers on the contribution of important objects to the history and chronology of ancient Bengal. East Bengal was his special field of study.

#7879

Ruth Ann Musick

1897 - 1974 (77 years)

Ruth Ann Musick was an American writer and folklorist specializing in West Virginia. She was the sister of artist Archie Musick and niece of writer John R. Musick. Biography Youth and education Born in Kirksville, Missouri, to Levi Prince Musick and Zada Goeghegan, Musick received a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Kirksville State Teacher's College in 1919. From September 1919 to June 1921 Musick taught at Luana High School, Luana, Iowa, before moving to Garwin, Iowa, in 1921, where she taught at Garwin High School until June 1922. She then continued her education at the State University of Iowa, graduating with a Master of Science in mathematics in 1928.

#7880

Paul Kluke

1908 - 1990 (82 years)

Professor Paul Otto Alfred Kluke was director of the German Historical Institute London from August 1975 to July 1977.

#7881

Lawrence Henry Yaw Ofosu-Appiah

1920 - 1990 (70 years)

Lawrence Henry Yaw Ofosu-Appiah was a Ghanaian academic who taught classics at the University of Ghana and was subsequently Director of the Encyclopedia Africana. Background Ofosu-Appiah was born in a village called Kukua near Adawso in the Eastern Region of Ghana. His parents were Seth Fianko — a teacher and a descendant of the royal family of Kubease, Larteh, Ghana — and Agnes Fianko — also a teacher and a descendant of the royal family of Akropong, Akwapim, Ghana. His education started at Adawso Presbyterian Primary School. In January 1932, he joined Achimota Secondary School for his secondary education.

#7882

Peter Berglar

1919 - 1989 (70 years)

Peter Berglar was a German historian, professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cologne, and was known for his many publications. His biography of Thomas More is considered one of the best.

#7883

Maurice Garland Fulton

1877 - 1955 (78 years)

Maurice Garland Fulton was an American historian and English professor. He was a professor of English and History at the New Mexico Military Institute for three decades. He was the author or editor of several books, and "an authority on the Lincoln County War and Southwestern history."

#7884

Paul Wentzcke

1879 - 1960 (81 years)

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Paul Wentzcke was a German academic, archivist, and historian. He proposed a national flag for West Germany in 1948. The flag that Paul Wentzcke proposed for West Germany, called the "Republican Tricolour"

#7885

Julian P. Boyd

1903 - 1980 (77 years)

Julian Parks Boyd was an American professor who was Professor of history at Princeton University. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1964. For his efforts in preserving the site of the Battle of Hastings, he was appointed an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

#7886

Arthur Maheux

1884 - 1967 (83 years)

Monsignor Joseph Thomas Arthur Maheux, SM, OBE, FRSC was a Canadian priest and historian. He was a leading proponent of Canadian unity as well as a trenchant critic of Quebec society. He was president of the Société du parler français au Canada from 1924 to 1925 and president of the Canadian Historical Association from 1948 to 1949.

#7887

Viola Florence Barnes

1885 - 1979 (94 years)

Viola Florence Barnes was an American historian and writer, one of the most prominent female historians in the US in the first half of 20th century. Life Born in Albion, Nebraska, Barnes was educated at the University of Nebraska and Yale University. She taught at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College . In 1940, she was honored by the Women's Centennial Congress as one of a hundred successful women in fields formerly closed to women.

#7888

Leland Sage

1899 - 1989 (90 years)

Leland Livingston Sage was an American professor emeritus of history at the University of Northern Iowa. He was deeply interested in Iowa history, and wrote two books on it, both of which won national recognition from the American Association for State and Local History. In 1983, Sage was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

#7889

Jan Długosz

1415 - 1480 (65 years)

Jan Długosz , also known in Latin as Johannes Longinus, was a Polish priest, chronicler, diplomat, soldier, and secretary to Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Kraków. He is considered Poland's first historian.

#7890

G. M. Trevelyan

G. M. Trevelyan

1876 - 1962 (86 years)

George Macaulay Trevelyan was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University.

#7891

Bruno Bauer

1809 - 1882 (73 years)

Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and theologian. As a student of G. W. F. Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism. Bauer investigated the sources of the New Testament and, beginning with Hegel's analysis of Christianity's Hellenic as well as Jewish roots, concluded that early Christianity owed more to ancient Greek philosophy than to Judaism.

#7892

Shiratori Kurakichi

Shiratori Kurakichi

1865 - 1942 (77 years)

Shiratori Kurakichi was a Japanese historian and Sinologist who was one of the pioneers of the field of "Oriental History". Biography Shiratori graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and joined the staff of Gakushūin University in 1890. He later returned to Tokyo Imperial University where he became a professor. Kurakichi had, at one time, studied under Ludwig Riess, who was himself a former student of Leopold von Ranke. In 1905, he founded the Asia Research Society .

#7893

Kalhana

Kalhana was the author of Rajatarangini , an account of the history of Kashmir. He wrote the work in Sanskrit between 1148 and 1149. All information regarding his life has to be deduced from his own writing, a major scholar of which is Mark Aurel Stein.

#7894

Chandragupta Maurya

Chandragupta Maurya

340 BC - 297 BC (43 years)

Chandragupta Maurya was the founder of the Maurya Empire, a geographically-extensive empire based in Magadha. He reigned from 320 BCE to 298 BCE. The Magadha kingdom expanded to become an empire that reached its peak under the reign of his grandson, Ashoka the Great, from 268 BCE to 231 BCE. The nature of the political formation that existed in Chandragupta's time is not certain. The Mauryan empire was a loose-knit one with large autonomous regions within its limits.

#7895

Emperor Taizong of Tang

Emperor Taizong of Tang

598 - 649 (51 years)

Emperor Taizong of Tang , previously Prince of Qin, personal name Li Shimin, was the second emperor of the Tang dynasty of China, ruling from 626 to 649. He is traditionally regarded as a co-founder of the dynasty for his role in encouraging his father Li Yuan to rebel against the Sui dynasty at Jinyang in 617. Taizong subsequently played a pivotal role in defeating several of the dynasty's most dangerous opponents and solidifying its rule over China proper.

#7896

Ralph Abernathy

Ralph Abernathy

1926 - 1990 (64 years)

Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was ordained in the Baptist tradition in 1948. As a leader of the civil rights movement, he was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. He collaborated with King and E. D. Nixon to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery bus boycott, and co-created and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference . He became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968; he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., as well as other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans.

#7897

Hugh Capet

940 - 996 (56 years)

Hugh Capet was the King of the Franks from 987 to 996. He is the founder of and first king from the House of Capet. The son of the powerful duke Hugh the Great and his wife Hedwige of Saxony, he was elected as the successor of the last Carolingian king, Louis V. Hugh was descended from Charlemagne's son Pepin of Italy through his mother and paternal grandmother, respectively, and was also a nephew of Otto the Great.

#7898

Thomas Cromwell

Thomas Cromwell

1485 - 1540 (55 years)

Thomas Cromwell , briefly Earl of Essex, was an English statesman and lawyer who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charges for the execution.

#7899

Walter Rodney

1942 - 1980 (38 years)

Walter Anthony Rodney was a Guyanese historian, political activist and academic. His notable works include How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, first published in 1972. Rodney was assassinated in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1980.

#7900

Orosius

385 - 418 (33 years)

Paulus Orosius , less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Roman priest, historian and theologian, and a student of Augustine of Hippo. It is possible that he was born in Bracara Augusta , then capital of the Roman province of Gallaecia, which would have been the capital of the Kingdom of the Suebi by his death. Although there are some questions regarding his biography, such as his exact date of birth, it is known that he was a person of some prestige from a cultural point of view, as he had contact with the greatest figures of his time such as Augustine of Hippo and Jerome of Stridon. In orde...

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