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,
#8151
J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton was an American historian of the South, author, and the founder of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he spent most of his academic career. He published books and articles about the history of Reconstruction but his most influential role was as an archivist, collecting manuscripts from around the South that form the core of the Southern Historical Collection.
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Ladislaus the Posthumous
1440 - 1457 (17 years)
Ladislaus V, more commonly known as Ladislaus the Posthumous , was Duke of Austria and King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. He was the posthumous son of Albert of Habsburg with Elizabeth of Luxembourg. Albert had bequeathed all his realms to his future son on his deathbed, but only the estates of Austria accepted his last will. Fearing an Ottoman invasion, the majority of the Hungarian lords and prelates offered the crown to Vladislaus III of Poland. The Hussite noblemen and towns of Bohemia did not acknowledge the hereditary right of Albert's descendants to the throne, but also did not elect...
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Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés
1478 - 1557 (79 years)
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés , commonly known as Oviedo, was a Spanish soldier, historian, writer, botanist and colonist. Oviedo participated in the Spanish colonization of the West Indies, arriving in the first few years after Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at the islands in 1492. Oviedo's chronicle Historia general de las Indias, published in 1535 to expand on his 1526 summary La Natural hystoria de las Indias , forms one of the few primary sources about it. Portions of the original text were widely read in the 16th century in Spanish, English, Italian and F...
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Matija Murko
1861 - 1952 (91 years)
Matija Murko, also known as Mathias Murko , was a Slovenian scholar, known mostly for his work on oral epic traditions in Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian. Life Murko was born in the small village of Drstelja near Ptuj, Lower Styria, in what was then the Austrian Empire and is now in Slovenia, and baptized Mathias Murko. He attended high school in Ptuj and Maribor. He studied Slavic and Germanic philology at the University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Franz Miklosich. After obtaining his PhD in Vienna in 1886, he went to postdoctoral studies to Moscow. From 1897 to 1902, he taught Slavic ph...
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Paolo Giovio
1483 - 1552 (69 years)
Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian, biographer, and prelate. Early life Little is known about Giovio's youth. He was a native of Como; his family was from the Isola Comacina of Lake Como. His father, a notary, died around 1500. He was educated under the direction of his elder brother Benedetto, a humanist and historian. Although interested in literature, he was sent to Padua to study medicine. He graduated in 1511.
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James Westfall Thompson
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
James Westfall Thompson was an American historian specializing in the history of medieval and early modern Europe, particularly of the Holy Roman Empire and France. He also made noteworthy contributions to the history of literacy, libraries and the book trade in the Middle Ages.
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Walter Schlesinger
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Walter Schlesinger was a German historian of medieval social and economic institutions, particularly in the context of German regional history . Schlesinger is widely recognized as one of the most influential and prolific scholars of medieval social history in the post-war period.
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Nikephoros I
760 - 811 (51 years)
Nikephoros I , also known as Nicephorus I, was the Byzantine emperor from 802 to 811. He began his career as genikos logothetēs under Empress Irene, but later overthrew her to seize the throne. Prior to becoming emperor, he was sometimes referred to as "the Logothete" and "Genikos" or "Genicus" , in recognition of his previous role.
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Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
1862 - 1932 (70 years)
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson , known as Goldie, was a British political scientist and philosopher. He lived most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group.
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Karolina Lanckorońska
1898 - 2002 (104 years)
Countess Karolina Maria Adelajda Franciszka Ksawera Małgorzata Edina Lanckorońska was a Polish noble, World War II resistance fighter, philanthropist, and historian. Lanckorońska bequeathed her family's enormous art collection to Poland only after her homeland became free from communism and Soviet domination during the Revolutions of 1989. The Lanckoronski Collection may now, for the most part, be seen in Warsaw's Royal Castle and Kraków's Wawel Castle.
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Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
1709 - 1785 (76 years)
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , sometimes known as Abbé de Mably, was a French philosopher, historian, and writer, who for a short time served in the diplomatic corps. He was a popular 18th-century writer.
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Sten Lindroth
1914 - 1980 (66 years)
Sten Hjalmar Lindroth was a Swedish historian of learning and science. Lindroth was born in the university town of Lund in Southern Sweden, but grew up and went to school in Gothenburg after his father Hjalmar Lindroth had been appointed to the Chair of Nordic languages at Gothenburg University. After finishing school in Gothenburg at Göteborgs högre latinläroverk, he matriculated at Uppsala University in 1933 and eventually became a student of Johan Nordström, holder of the Emilia and Gustaf Carlberg Chair of the history of ideas and learning, the first of its kind at Uppsala. Lindroth event...
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Frederick York Powell
1850 - 1904 (54 years)
Frederick York Powell was an English historian and scholar. Biography He was born on 4 January 1850 at 43 Woburn Place, Bloomsbury, London, the son of Frederick Powell, a commissariat merchant, and his wife Mary Powell, daughter of Dr James Powell. He was educated at the Manor House School at Hastings, and Rugby School. He matriculated at the University of Oxford in 1868 as an unattached student, the following year joining Christ Church, where he took a first-class degree in law and modern history in 1872. Whilst at Oxford, he was a member of the exclusive Stubbs Society.
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Charles Cutler Torrey
1863 - 1956 (93 years)
Charles Cutler Torrey was an American historian, archaeologist and scholar. Career He is known for, presenting through his books, manuscript evidence supporting alternate views on the origins of Christian and Islamic religious texts. He founded the American School of Archaeology at Jerusalem in 1901.
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Élie Halévy
1870 - 1937 (67 years)
Élie Halévy was a French philosopher and historian who wrote studies of the British utilitarians, the book of essays Era of Tyrannies, and a history of Britain from 1815 to 1914 that influenced British historiography.
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Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis was a Dutch historian of science. Career Dijksterhuis studied mathematics at the University of Groningen from 1911 to 1918. His Ph.d. thesis was entitled "A Contribution to the Knowledge of the Flat Helicoid."
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Aleksandar Teodorov-Balan
1859 - 1959 (100 years)
Aleksandar Stoyanov Teodorov-Balan was a Bulgarian linguist, historian and bibliographer. Balan was born in the village of Kubey in the Russian Empire, today in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, to a Bessarabian Bulgarian family. The Bulgarian general Georgi Todorov was his brother. Balan studied in Prague and Leipzig graduating in Slavistics from the Charles University in Prague. In 1884 he settled in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria, spending four years working for the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment. He became professor of Slavic ethnography and dialectology and history of the Bul...
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Stanisław Arnold
1895 - 1973 (78 years)
Stanisław Arnold was a Polish historian, professor of the University of Warsaw, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, chief of Marksistowskie Zrzeszenie Historyków . Biography He was the son of Jan, director of a mine, and Romana née Bojanowski. In 1920 he defended his PhD thesis Władztwo biskupie na grodzie wolborskim w wieku XIII under supervision of Marceli Handelsman. Later he became an employee of the Warsaw University, with which he was connected until retirement in 1966. From 1924 to 1928 he was working as a history teacher at Gimnazjum im. Stefana Batorego in Warsaw.
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Kazimierz Piwarski
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Kazimierz Piwarski was a Polish historian, professor of Jagiellonian University in Kraków since 1946 and Poznań University in years 1953-1955, member of Polish Academy of Skills since 1945, and member of Polish Academy of Sciences since 1958.
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Theodore Saloutos
1910 - 1980 (70 years)
Theodore Saloutos was an American historian. His areas of research included agrarian politics and reform movements, immigration studies, and Greek immigration to the United States Early life Saloutos was born in Milwaukie, Wisconsin on August 3, 1910. His parents were immigrants from Greece.
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Gerardus Vossius
1577 - 1649 (72 years)
Gerrit Janszoon Vos , often known by his Latin name Gerardus Vossius, was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian. Life He was the son of Johannes Vos, a Protestant from the Netherlands, who fled from persecution into the Electorate of the Palatinate and briefly became pastor in the village near Heidelberg where Gerardus was born, before friction with the strict Lutherans of the Palatinate caused him to settle the following year at the University of Leiden as student of theology, and finally became pastor at Dordrecht, where he died in 1585. Here in Dordrecht the son received his education,...
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Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol was a Romanian historian, philosopher, professor, economist, sociologist, and author. Among his many major accomplishments, he is the Romanian historian credited with authoring the first major synthesis of the history of the Romanian people. His daughter Margareta Xenopol became a well-known Romanian composer.
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Christian Molbech
1783 - 1857 (74 years)
Christian Molbech was a Danish historian, literary critic, writer, and theater director. He was a professor of literature at the University of Copenhagen and was the founding editor of Historisk Tidsskrift
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David Feuerwerker
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
David Feuerwerker was a French Jewish rabbi and professor of Jewish history who was effective in the resistance to German occupation the Second World War. He was completely unsuspected until six months before the war ended, when he fled to Switzerland and his wife and baby went underground in France. The French government cited him for his bravery with several awards. After the war, he and his wife re-established the Jewish community of Lyon. He settled in Paris, teaching at the Sorbonne. In 1966, he and his family, grown to six children, moved to Montreal, where he developed a department of ...
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John Joseph Saunders
1910 - 1972 (62 years)
John Joseph Saunders was a British historian whose work focused on medieval Islamic and Asian history. Born in Alphington, Devon, he was educated at Exeter University. He was a lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Geoffrey Rice wrote of him: John Saunders was an only child, and books were his best companions from an early age. He also displayed artistic ability with pen and ink drawing, having something of a gift for cartoons and caricature. At school at Mount Radford in Exeter he showed particular aptitude for languages, literature and history. One of the masters who noticed his potential, Theodore Vine, became a lifelong friend.
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Militsa Nechkina
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Militsa Vasilyevna Nechkina was a Soviet historian. She taught at Moscow State University and extensively studied the Decembrist revolt of 1825. Biography Nechkina was born in Nizhyn, Russian Empire. She attended Kazan University, graduating in 1921. She began teaching history at Moscow State University in 1924 and became a doctor of historical sciences in 1936. She specialized in the study of the Decembrist revolt and was the first historian to write in detail about the social and ideological aspects of the revolt. As a historian, she also contributed to Soviet history topics in the Great So...
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Geoffrey Bruun
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Geoffrey Bruun was a historian and biographer who taught at New York University from 1927 until 1941. He was born in Montreal, Quebec and received a bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia, and master's and doctoral degrees from Cornell University. After retiring as a professor of history from N.Y.U., he was a visiting professor at Cornell, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of Illinois, and Georgetown University.
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Şihabetdin Märcani
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
Şihabetdin Märcani was a Tatar Hanafi Maturidi theologian and historian. He studied in madrassas of Tashkichu , Bukhara and Samarkand. Beginning in 1850 he served as the imam of the First Cathedral Mosque. Later, in 1867, he became a muhtasib of Kazan. At the same time, in 1876-1884 he lectured on religion in the Tatar Teachers' School. Märcani became the first Muslim member of The Society for Archaeology, History and Ethnography at Kazan State University. In his papers he illustrated his ideas about the renovation and the perfection of the Tatar educational system. As a historian, he was the...
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James Schouler
1839 - 1920 (81 years)
James Schouler was an American lawyer and historian best known for his historical work History of the United States under the Constitution, 1789–1865. Biography Schouler was born in West Cambridge , Massachusetts. He was the son of William Schouler, who from 1847 to 1853 edited the Boston Atlas, one of the leading Whig journals of New England. The son graduated at Harvard in 1859, studied law in Boston and was admitted to the bar there in 1862. In 1869 he removed to Washington, where for three years he published the United States Jurist.
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Ronald Crane
1886 - 1967 (81 years)
Ronald Salmon Crane was a literary critic, historian, bibliographer, and professor. He is credited with the founding of the Chicago School of Literary Criticism. Early life Ronald Crane was born in Tecumseh, Michigan. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1908 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911. That same year he became an instructor of English at Northwestern University. He was soon promoted to assistant professor, and then to associate professor in 1920. He continued to teach there until 1924, when he moved to the University of Chicago.
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Higashionna Kanjun
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
Higashionna Kanjun also Higaonna Kanjun was an Okinawan scholar who specialized in the history of Okinawa. Alongside Iha Fuyū and Majikina Ankō, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern Okinawan studies. After reading Japanese history at Tokyo Imperial University, where he wrote his dissertation on the approach of the Shimazu clan towards the Ryūkyū Kingdom, his subsequent career included posts at Hosei University and Takushoku University and travels in Southeast Asia and India. His extensive body of writings, collected as Higashionna Kanjun zenshū in ten volumes, centre around Ryukyuan history and culture, personal and place names, and classics such as the Omoro Sōshi.
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Paul Woolley
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Paul Woolley was professor of Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary from its inception in 1929 until his retirement in 1977. Woolley studied at Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, but left to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936.
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Al-Suyuti
1445 - 1505 (60 years)
Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti , or Al-Suyuti, was an Egyptian Sunni polymath. Considered the Mujtahid and Mujaddid of the Islamic 10th century. Foremost leading muhaddith , mufassir , faqīh , usuli , sufi , theologian, grammarian, linguist, rhetorician, philologist, lexicographer and historian, who authored works in virtually every Islamic science. For this reason, he was honoured one of the most prestigious and rarest titles; Shaykh al-Islām.
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Robert Ensor
1877 - 1958 (81 years)
Sir Robert Charles Kirkwood Ensor was a British writer, poet, journalist, liberal intellectual and historian. He is best known for England: 1870-1914 , a volume in the Oxford History of England series edited by George Clark.
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Jean-Jacques Dessalines
1758 - 1806 (48 years)
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a Haitian revolutionary, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1805 constitution. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines was later named Emperor of Haiti as Jacques I by generals of the Haitian Revolution Army and ruled in that capacity until being assassinated in 1806. He has been referred to as the father of the nation of Haiti.
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Jalmari Jaakkola
1885 - 1964 (79 years)
Kaarle Jalmari Jaakkola was a Finnish historian and a professor of Finnish history at the University of Helsinki between 1932 and 1954. Jaakkola is known as a historian who primarily researched medieval history and sought to put forth that Finland existed as an entity already during that period. Some of Jaakkola's hypotheses are today considered to be overtly nationalist and outdated, but his influence during his lifetime remains undisputed.
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Petrus Johannes Blok
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Petrus Johannes Blok was a Dutch historian. Biography Born in Den Helder, Blok studied at the Latin School of Alkmaar and read classics at Leiden University, receiving his doctorate for a study of Sextus Pompeius. After this, he got a position at the Leiden Latin School, and published two books on the city's Medieval and Burgundian history.
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Aleksandr Zimin
1920 - 1980 (60 years)
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zimin was one of the most prolific and well-known Soviet medievalists. His area of expertise was late medieval Muscovy. Zimin was born in a noble family in Moscow. In the 1950s, Zimin edited the official historical series dedicated to the history of Moscow. However, at least seven of his monographs were not published during his lifetime. His 1964 essay attempted to prove that The Song of Igor's Campaign was fabricated in the 1770s. It met skepticism and hostility from the academic community and was eventually banned from being printed.
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Svend Grundtvig
1824 - 1883 (59 years)
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested in Danish folk songs. He began the large project of editing Danish ballads. He also co-edited Icelandic ballads. He was the son of N. F. S. Grundtvig.
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Norman H. Baynes
1877 - 1961 (84 years)
Norman Hepburn Baynes was a 20th-century British historian of the Byzantine Empire. Career Baynes was Professor of Byzantine History at University College London from 1931 until 1942. He was given the title of Emeritus Professor in 1943 and Doctor of Literature honoris causa in 1951. His work included two fully annotated volumes of Hitler's pre-war speeches.
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Wolfgang Lazius
1514 - 1565 (51 years)
Wolfgang Laz, better known by his Latinized name Wolfgang Lazius , was an Austrian humanist who worked as a cartographer, historian, and physician. Lazius was born in Vienna, and first studied medicine, becoming professor in the medical faculty at the University of Vienna in 1541. He later became curator of the imperial collections of the Holy Roman Empire and official historian to Emperor Ferdinand I. In that capacity, he authored a number of historical works, in research for which he traveled widely, amassing documents from numerous monasteries and other libraries. He also produced maps of Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, and Greece, now considered important in the history of cartography.
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Ignace Gelb
1907 - 1985 (78 years)
Ignace Jay Gelb was a Polish-American ancient historian and Assyriologist who pioneered the scientific study of writing systems. Early life Born in Tarnów, Austria-Hungary , he earned his PhD from the University of Rome in 1929, then went to the University of Chicago where he was a professor of Assyriology until his death.
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Harvey Goldberg
1922 - 1987 (65 years)
Harvey Goldberg was an American historian and political activist. Biography Harvey Goldberg was born in Orange, New Jersey. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1943. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1951; the subject of his dissertation Jaurès and French foreign policy, was French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès.
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Ilmari Salomies
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Ilmari Johannes Salomies, previously Salonen , was the Archbishop of Turku, and the spiritual head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland between 1951 and 1964. Biography Salomies was born on 17 July 1893 in Mikkeli, the son of Edvard Salonen and Hedvig Sofia Salonen.
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Joseph Aschbach
1801 - 1882 (81 years)
Joseph Ritter von Aschbach was a German historian who studied the Visigoths, writing "Geschichte der Westgoten" in 1827. Aschbach was born in Höchst . He initially studied theology and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but his focus soon turned to history, being influenced by Friedrich Christoph Schlosser. Since 1823 he was professor at the gymnasium of Frankfurt.
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Auguste Bouché-Leclercq
1842 - 1923 (81 years)
Auguste Bouché-Leclercq was a French historian. Life Auguste Bouché-Leclercq was born in 1842 at Francières, Oise as son of Louis-Thomas Bouché and Marie-Joséphine Leclercq. His parents were farmers. He was educated at seminaries and took his school-leaving exam in 1861 in Paris. Later he travelled as private tutor several months through Italian and German cities. In 1866 he was grammar school teacher at Meaux. In 1872 he received his doctorate in philosophy and was from 1873-1878 professor of ancient literature at the philosophical faculty of Montpellier. In 1876 he married Marie Julie Guillaume and had with her three sons and one daughter.
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N. H. Gibbs
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Norman Henry Gibbs was Chichele Professor of the History of War at Oxford University for 24 years from 1953 to 1977, the longest tenure of all who have held the chair since its establishment in 1909.
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Robert Fruin
1823 - 1899 (76 years)
Robert Jacobus Fruin was a Dutch historian. A follower of Leopold von Ranke, he introduced the scientific study of history in the Netherlands when he was professor of Dutch national history at Leiden University.
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Veit Valentin
1885 - 1947 (62 years)
Veit Valentin was a German historian who was Professor of History at the University of Freiburg. In comments that caused a storm of controversy in Germany, Valentin attacked Ernst Graf zu Reventlow's Deutschlands Auswärtige Politik in 1916: "It is a classic example of historiographical demagogy and we have no choice but to warn the public against the book and its author". During the First World War, Gustav Stresemann tried to have Valentin sent to court for alleged treasonable utterances.
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Henri Cordier
1849 - 1925 (76 years)
Henri Cordier was a French linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, editor and Orientalist. He was President of the Société de Géographie in Paris. Cordier was a prominent figure in the development of East Asian and Central Asian scholarship in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Though he had little actual knowledge of the Chinese language, Cordier had a particularly strong impact on the development of Chinese scholarship, and was a mentor of the noted French sinologist Édouard Chavannes.
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