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).
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List of the most influential people in History,
#8051
James Orr
1844 - 1913 (69 years)
James Orr was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor of church history and then theology. He was an influential defender of evangelical doctrine and a contributor to The Fundamentals. Biography Orr was born in Glasgow and spent his childhood in Manchester and Leeds. He was orphaned and became an apprentice bookbinder, but went on to enter Glasgow University in 1865. In 1870, he obtained an M.A. in Philosophy of Mind, and after graduating from the theological college of the United Presbyterian Church, he was ordained a minister in Hawick. In 1885 he received a D.D. from Glasgow Univers...
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Johann Gottfried Hoche
1762 - 1836 (74 years)
Johann Gottfried Hoche was a German Protestant theologian and historian. He was the father of writer Louise Aston . He studied history and theology at the University of Halle, where his instructors included Johann Salomo Semler and Johann August Nösselt. In 1800 he was named second clergyman in the town of Gröningen, near Halberstadt. In 1805 he attained the positions of senior minister and superintendent, and soon afterwards, was appointed to the consistory in Halberstadt. Following the dissolution of Halberstadt consistory in 1816, he was offered a position in Magdeburg, but chose to remain...
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Lazar of Serbia
1329 - 1389 (60 years)
Lazar Hrebeljanović was a medieval Serbian ruler who created the largest and most powerful state on the territory of the disintegrated Serbian Empire. Lazar's state, referred to by historians as Moravian Serbia, comprised the basins of the Great Morava, West Morava, and South Morava rivers. Lazar ruled Moravian Serbia from 1373 until his death in 1389. He sought to resurrect the Serbian Empire and place himself at its helm, claiming to be the direct successor of the Nemanjić dynasty, which went extinct in 1371 after ruling over Serbia for two centuries. Lazar's programme had the full support ...
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António Cordeiro
1641 - 1722 (81 years)
António Cordeiro was a Portuguese Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus, Azorean historian, author of the classical chronicle Historia Insulana, and first to publish a public opinion on the form of governance for the archipelago of the Azores.
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Ludovic Lalanne
1815 - 1898 (83 years)
Ludovic Lalanne was a French historian and librarian. The engineer and politician Léon Lalanne was his brother. Biography Lalanne was a student at the lycée Louis-le-Grand and later at the École des Chartes, where he was graduated archivist paleographer in 1841. He was librarian of the Institut.
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John Capgrave
1393 - 1464 (71 years)
John Capgrave was an English historian, hagiographer and scholastic theologian, remembered chiefly for Nova Legenda Angliae . This was the first comprehensive collection of lives of the English saints.
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Ludwig Schmitz-Kallenberg
1867 - 1937 (70 years)
Ludwig Schmitz-Kallenberg was a German archivist and historian of Westphalia. He studied history at the University of Freiburg, Münster Academy and Leipzig University, receiving his doctorate in 1891. In 1893 he took a study trip to Rome via a scholarship from the Görres Society, and from 1896 worked as an archivist for the Historical Commission for Westphalia. In 1899 he became a lecturer at Münster, where in 1918 he was named an honorary full professor. From 1921 to 1932 he served as director of the state archives in Münster.
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Claude Jenkins
1877 - 1959 (82 years)
Claude Jenkins was an Anglican clergyman, theologian and historian. Biography He became Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical Historyat Oxford University in 1934. He was Lambeth Librarian from 1910 until 1952.
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Sima Guang
1019 - 1086 (67 years)
Sima Guang , courtesy name Junshi, was a Chinese historian, politician, and writer. He was a high-ranking Song dynasty scholar-official who authored the Zizhi Tongjian, a monumental work of history. Sima was a political conservative, who opposed the reforms of Wang Anshi.
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Christen Collin
1857 - 1926 (69 years)
Christen Christian Dreyer Collin was a Norwegian literary historian. He was born in Trondhjem as a son of Georg Fredrik Collin and Marie Fredrikke Dreyer . When his father died at the age of ten, Christen Collin was raised by his maternal grandfather in Tromsøe. He took the cand.philol. degree at the Royal Frederick University in 1887, and studied abroad while writing for Verdens Gang before returning home and founding the periodical Nyt Tidsskrift.
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James Anderson
1662 - 1728 (66 years)
James Anderson , Scottish antiquary and historian, was born at Edinburgh. His father was Patrick Anderson of Walston, a church minister, who was for some time imprisoned on the Bass Rock on the Firth of Forth in Haddingtonshire.
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Robert Simms
1761 - 1843 (82 years)
Robert Simms was an Irish radical, and a founding member in Belfast of the Society of United Irishmen. A Presbyterian born in Belfast, Simms was the owner of a paper mill in Ballyclare with his brother William Simms, one of twelve proprietors of the Northern Star newspaper. A close friend of Wolfe Tone who nicknamed him 'the Tanner', he was one of the founders of the Society of United Irishmen in Belfast in 1791 and the author of "Declaration and Resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast." Simms served as the first Secretary of the Society, drafting many of its early letters, ...
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Joan I of Navarre
1273 - 1305 (32 years)
Joan I was ruling Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne from 1274 until 1305. She was also Queen of France by marriage to King Philip IV. She founded the College of Navarre in Paris in 1305. Joan never ruled Navarre in person, it being overseen by French governors. Having direct control over the County of Champagne, she raised an army to face the invasion of the county by Henry, Count of Bar, even capturing and imprisoning the count. She died in childbirth in 1305.
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Paulus Svendsen
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Paulus Svendsen was a Norwegian professor and literary historian. He is mainly remembered for his biographies of notable thinkers of Western philosophy. Biography He was born in Egersund, Norway. He was the son of Oscar Svendsen , and his wife, Dagmar Marie Steffensen . His father was a Methodist priest. He started studying at the University of Oslo in 1923, and graduated with a cand.philol. degree seven years later. In 1940, he defended a thesis titled Gullalderdrøm og utviklingstro, which earned him a dr.philos. degree in the subsequent year.
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Max Margolis
1866 - 1932 (66 years)
Max Leopold Margolis was a Lithuanian Jewish and American philologist. Son of Isaac Margolis; educated at the elementary school of his native town, the Leibniz gymnasium, Berlin, and Columbia University, New York City . In 1891 he was appointed to a fellowship in Semitic languages at Columbia University, and from 1892 to 1897 he was instructor, and later assistant professor, of Hebrew language and Biblical exegesis at the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati. In 1897 he became assistant professor of Semitic languages in the University of California; in 1898, associate professor; and from 1902 the head of the Semitic department.
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Robert Steele
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Robert Steele was a British scholar, best known for editing between c. 1905 and 1941 the 16-volume Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Bacon. Early in his life Steele was a disciple of William Morris, who was apparently influential in directing young Steele's attention towards studying medieval writings, and also attracted Steele's political views towards socialism. After studying chemistry, Steele was for a brief time a teacher of this subject at Bedford School. He soon abandoned this job and moved to London where he worked as a freelance journalist, writing for various literary and socialist publications.
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Patrick Kennedy
1801 - 1873 (72 years)
Patrick Kennedy was a folklorist from County Wexford, Ireland. An educator turned bookseller, who also contributed various articles and reviews as a writer, he eventually became best-known as a collector and publisher of Irish folktales and folklore, particularly from his native County Wexford.
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Henry Corbin
1629 - 1676 (47 years)
Henry Corbin was an emigrant from England who became a tobacco planter in the Virginia colony and served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, in the House of Burgesses representing Lancaster County before the creation of Middlesex County on Virginia's Middle Neck, then on the Governor's Council.
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György Fejér
1766 - 1851 (85 years)
György Fejér was a Hungarian author, Provost – Canon, and Director of the Library, was born at Keszthely, in the county of Zala in Hungary. He studied philosophy at Pest, and theology at Pressburg. In 1808, he obtained a theological professorship at Pest University. In 1818, he became chief director of the educational circle of Győr , and in 1824 was appointed librarian to the University of Pest. Fejér's works, which are nearly all written either in Latin or Hungarian, exceed one hundred and eighty.
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Letitia Woods Brown
1915 - 1976 (61 years)
Letitia Woods Brown was an American researcher and historian. Earning a master's degree in 1935 from Ohio State University, she served as a researcher and historian for over four decades and became one of the first black women to earn a PhD in history from Harvard University.
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Shoshenq I
1000 BC - 924 BC (76 years)
Hedjkheperre Setepenre Shoshenq I —also known as Shashank or Sheshonk or Sheshonq I—was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt. Of Meshwesh ancestry, Shoshenq I was the son of Nimlot A, Great Chief of the Ma, and his wife Tentshepeh A, a daughter of a Great Chief of the Ma herself; Shoshenq was thus the nephew of Osorkon the Elder, a Meshwesh king of the 21st Dynasty. He is generally presumed to be the Shishak mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and his exploits are carved on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak.
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Ursul Philip Boissevain
1855 - 1930 (75 years)
Ursul Philip Boissevain was a Dutch historian and professor. Biography Boissevain was born in Amsterdam as the fifth and youngest son of Henri Jean Arnaud Boissevain and Petronella Drost. He was named after Ursuline Philippine Baroness of Verschuer , wife of theologian Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrugge. He studied in Leiden where he wrote his dissertation in 1879. He also studied in Berlin. After his studies Boissevain traveled through Europe and lived in Italy for a number of years. In 1882 he started teaching classical languages at the Erasmus Gymnasium in Rotterdam. Two years later Boissevain ...
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Friedrich Engel-Janosi
1893 - 1978 (85 years)
Friedrich Engel-Jánosi was an Austrian historian. Born Friedrich Engel von Jánosi, he wrote under the name Engel-Janosi. A leading expert on the relationship between the Holy See and the Hapsburg monarchy, he also wrote on Italian history, on the history of historiography, and on more general topics.
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Karl Hopf
1832 - 1873 (41 years)
Karl Hopf or Carl Hermann Friedrich Johann Hopf was a historian and an expert in Medieval Greece, both Byzantine and Frankish. Career Hopf graduated from the University of Bonn, where he received his Ph.D. in the medieval history of Greece. He worked as a professor and librarian in the University of Greifswald and the University of Königsberg. He frequently visited Italian and Greek medieval archives to find sources for his works.
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Johannes Loccenius
1598 - 1677 (79 years)
Johannes Loccenius was a German jurist and historian, known as an academic in Sweden. Life He was born at Itzehoe, Holstein, the son of a tradesman, and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He went to study at Rostock and Helmstedt in 1616, and in 1617 was in Leiden. After a period at Hamburg, where he encountered in particular Holstenius, he returned to Leiden in 1624, where he received a doctorate in law.
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Hilda Johnstone
1882 - 1961 (79 years)
Hilda Johnstone FRHS was a British historian, and one of the first female professors in the London university system. Life Hilda Johnstone, born in 1882 to Herbert and Sarah Anne Johnstone, was educated at Manchester High School for Girls from 1894 to 1899 and read History at Manchester University, graduating M.A. in 1906. She had two sisters, Edith and Mary ; both attended Manchester High School for Girls. From 1906 to 1913 she was Assistant Lecturer in History at the Victoria University of Manchester, in 1913 becoming Reader in History at King's College London. During the First World War she worked in the War Trade Intelligence Department.
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Robert Holtzmann
1873 - 1946 (73 years)
Robert Holtzmann was a German Medievalist historian. He was something of a pioneer for what became an important post-war historiographical approach, respected among historians, in particular, as an authority on the Ottonians and their times, both during his life and for many years following his death.
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Anne King Gregorie
1887 - 1960 (73 years)
Anne King Gregorie was a South Carolina historian, and professor of history at Arkansas College and at the University of South Carolina where some of her papers are deposited. Anne King was known as a "local historian" and can be marked as a member of society who was quite loyal and here for the good of South Carolina. She was a woman who cared deeply about South Carolina. Although she was not born in South Carolina, she enriched herself in the cultures and heritage, it being a part of her, and shared stories of the state through books and writings.
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Amédée Gosselin
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
Amédée Gosselin was a Canadian historian, academic administrator and Roman Catholic priest. Early life On September 30, 1863, Gosselin was born in Saint-Charles-de-Bellechasse, Canada East. Education Gosselin studied the classical course and theology from 1878 until 1890 at the Petit Séminaire de Québec and the Grand Séminaire de Québec.
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William Culp Darrah
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
William Culp Darrah was an American professor of biology at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He also had an interest in, and published several works on, 19th-century photography. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, his was a specialist in paleobotany. Darrah was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well a member of Sigma Xi and the Botanical Society of America.
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Václav Chaloupecký
1882 - 1951 (69 years)
Václav Chaloupecký was a Czech historian, a student of prominent Czech historian Josef Pekař and the main representative of historians in mid-war Slovakia. Life He had studied at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague . Then he had worked as an archivist and librarian in Roudnice nad Labem . In 1919, he became a state inspector of Slovak archives and libraries . In the same time, he was also a docent and professor of the Czechoslovak history at Comenius University. He held several academic positions e.g. dean and vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts, rector and vice-rector of the university.
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Jeanne Wier
1870 - 1950 (80 years)
Jeanne Elizabeth Wier was a teacher, historian, and founder of the Nevada Historical Society. Early life Jeanne Wier was born in Grinnell, Iowa on April 8, 1870 to parents Adolphus William Wier and Elizabeth Greenside Rood Wier. She graduated as class valedictorian from Clear Lake High School, in Clear Lake, Iowa in 1886. She entered the didactics program at the Iowa State Normal School in Cedar Falls, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1893. In the 1890s, Wier’s family left Iowa and moved to Heppner, Oregon, where she was an assistant principal of the high school from 1893 to 1895. In...
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Jerry Gershenhorn
1900 - Present (126 years)
Jerry Gershenhorn is an American historian who currently holds the Julius L. Chambers Professorship in American History at North Carolina Central University. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Alberto Guglielmotti
1812 - 1892 (80 years)
Alberto Guglielmotti was a Dominican order priest and writer. He was best recognized for his histories about the naval battles and exploits of seamen from the Italian peninsula. He was born in Civitavecchia, baptized al secolo as Francesco Maria Guglielmotti. he father was an officer of the Marine, who served as councillor in Ragusa, Sicily and Civitavecchia. After attending seminary in Rome, he served as professor of physics and mathematics at the Minerva school. He later became librarian of the Biblioteca Casanatense.
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Cyriacus Spangenberg
1528 - 1604 (76 years)
Cyriacus Spangenberg was a German theologian, Protestant reformer and historian, son of the reformer . Cyriacus was born in Nordhausen. As a student, he was a fellow tenant of Martin Luther in Wittenberg, later became a minister in Eisleben, and in 1559 the General Dean of the Grafschaft Mansfeld.
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Harry S. Crowe
1922 - 1981 (59 years)
Harry Sherman Crowe was a history professor, university administrator, and labour researcher. In 1958, his firing by United College gained national attention in Canada. In raising questions about the security of academic freedom and tenure in Canada, Crowe's case became a catalyst in solidifying the work of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in defending academic freedom and ensuring scholarly rights for academic staff in Canada.
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Otto Stobbe
1831 - 1887 (56 years)
Johann Ernst Otto Stobbe was a German historian and law professor born in Königsberg. He studied history, philology and jurisprudence at the University of Königsberg, earning his law degree in 1853. He continued his education in Leipsic and Göttingen, and in 1856 received his habilitation. Soon afterwards he became a professor of German law at Königsberg, later holding similar positions at the Universities of Breslau and Leipzig .
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Heinrich Sproemberg
1889 - 1966 (77 years)
Heinrich Sproemberg was a German historian. The focus of his research was on the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early modern period. He made a notable contribution to the historiography of the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands and the territories that became known after 1830 as Belgium.
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Jonas Totoraitis
1872 - 1941 (69 years)
Jonas Totoraitis was a Roman Catholic priest and historian. Education Totoraitis studied at the Theological Seminary of Sejny. He went on to Freiburg University in Switzerland, where he published his doctoral dissertation on the life of King Mindaugas, Die Litauer unter dem König Mindowe bis zum Jahre 1263, the first such work by a Lithuanian scholar.
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Cornplanter
1732 - 1836 (104 years)
John Abeel III known as Gaiänt'wakê or Kaiiontwa'kon in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, was a Dutch-Seneca chief warrior and diplomat of the Seneca people. As a war chief, Cornplanter fought in the American Revolutionary War on the side of the British. After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix , the Treaty of Canandaigua , and other treaties. He helped ensure Seneca neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
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Louis-Pierre-Eugène Sédillot
1808 - 1875 (67 years)
Louis-Pierre-Eugène Amélie Sédillot , was a French orientalist and historian of science and mathematics. Biography His father, , orientalist and astronomer, worked alongside Delambre and Laplace. His older brother, Charles-Emmanuel Sédillot, became a renowned surgeon. Louis-Pierre-Eugene also showed predispositions towards study. He began his career as a history teacher before becoming Secretary of the Collège de France and the School of Oriental Languages in 1832.
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Jean-Noël Paquot
1722 - 1803 (81 years)
Jean-Noël Paquot was a Belgian theologian, historian, Hebrew scholar and bibliographer. Life Paquot was born in Florennes in 1722. In 1738 he enrolled at the University of Louvain, graduating Licentiate of Theology in 1751. From 1755 to 1771 he taught Hebrew at the Collegium Trilingue in Leuven, where he was also librarian. He was stripped of his position after a sodomy trial. In subsequent years he lived in Brussels and Gembloux. In 1782 he was stripped of his pension as court historiographer to Empress Maria Theresa, for having denied that the Austrian government had a historical claim to S...
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Demetrius I of Bactria
300 BC - 180 BC (120 years)
Demetrius I Anicetus , also called Damaytra was a Greco-Bactrian and later Indo-Greek king , who ruled areas from Bactria to ancient northwestern India. He was the son of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom's ruler Euthydemus I and succeeded him around 200 BC, after which he conquered extensive areas in what is now southern Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and India.
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Karl Uhlirz
1854 - 1914 (60 years)
Karl Uhlirz was an Austrian historian and archivist. He studied history at the University of Vienna, and from 1877 worked as an employee of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica under Theodor von Sickel. From 1882 he served as a caretaker at the Vienna city archives, where in 1889 he became its director. In 1888 he obtained his habilitation for history of the Middle Ages and historical auxiliary sciences. In 1903 he succeeded Franz Krones as professor of Austrian history at the University of Graz.
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Franz Krones
1835 - 1902 (67 years)
Franz Krones Ritter von Marchland was an Austrian historian. He studied history at the University of Vienna, where from 1854 he attended classes at the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung . After graduation, he taught classes at the Rechtsakademie in Kaschau and at the gymnasium in Graz. In 1864 he became an associate professor, and during the following year, was named a full professor of Austrian history at the University of Graz. On two separate occasions he was dean at the university and in 1876/77 he served as rector.
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Wolfgang Clemen
1909 - 1990 (81 years)
Wolfgang Clemen was an eminent German literary scholar who helped reestablish English Studies in Germany after World War II. His father, Paul Clemen, was a well-known art historian. Biography/Career Clemen studied from 1928 to 1934 at the Universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin, München, Bonn and Cambridge. Among his academic teachers were Ernst Robert Curtius, Carl Vossler, and Hugo Friedrich. He received his doctorate in 1936 with a doctoral dissertation on Shakespeare’s images, and his post-doctoral degree with a study of Geoffrey Chaucer. After a short period as Lecturer for literary history at the University of Cologne, he moved to the University of Kiel.
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Fritz Schulz
1879 - 1957 (78 years)
Fritz Schulz was a German jurist and legal historian. He was one of the 20th centuries' most important scholars in the field of Roman Law. The Nazis forced him to leave Germany and to emigrate to England due to his political stance and his Jewish origins.
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Alfred Wood
1896 - 1968 (72 years)
Alfred Cecil Wood was Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham from 1951 to 1960. Life Wood was born on 7 February 1896 and educated at Liverpool College and Jesus College, Oxford. He was a Second Lieutenant in the King's Liverpool Regiment and the Cheshire Regiment during the First World War. He was wounded and left permanently disabled. After the war, he studied at Jesus College, Oxford, obtaining a first-class degree in Modern History in 1921 and a BLitt in 1923. In 1926, he was appointed as a lecturer at University College, Nottingham , rising to Reader in 1946. He...
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Erik Arup
1876 - 1951 (75 years)
Erik Ipsen Arup was a Danish historian and educator. He was most known as the pioneer of radical-liberal history writing in Denmark. Biography Arup was born at Slangerup in Frederikssund Municipality, Denmark. He was the son of the physician Peter Michael Christian Arup and Malvina Cathrine Ipsen . He was raised in a cultured home and was the cousin of Danish-English structural engineer Ove Arup . He was educated as both a theologian and a historian. Arup attended the University of Copenhagen and was awarded his dr.phil. in 1907.
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John Meier
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
John Meier was a German folklorist and philologist. He founded both the and also the Swiss Volksliedarchiv. Meier was born in Vahr, a part of Bremen, and died in Freiburg at the age of 88. Career Meier studied German, Romance and English philology, history and anthropology at the Universities in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen. In 1888 he obtained his doctorate at Freiburg with the Dissertation Researches concerning the poet and the language of the 'Iolande' . In 1891 there followed his formal faculty admission to the University of Halle with the work Studies in the Linguistic and Literar...
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