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,
#8301
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.
Go to Profile#8302
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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Otto Liiv
1905 - 1942 (37 years)
Otto Liiv was an Estonian historian and archivist. He was one of the founders of Estonian archival science as well as one of the most prolific and respected historians in Estonia. Liiv attended school in Narva and Tallinn and enrolled at the University of Tartu in 1923 and graduated in 1927. He was the head of the Estonian State Central Archives from 1929 to 1942. He also lectured at the University of Tartu and was the chief editor of the journal "Ajalooline Ajakiri". Liiv had an academic interest in the history of the 17th century Estonia and contributed to the books "The Economic History of...
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Max Farrand
1869 - 1945 (76 years)
Max Farrand was an American historian who taught at several universities and was the first director of the Huntington Library. Early life He was born in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He graduated from Princeton .
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Austin Lane Poole
1889 - 1963 (74 years)
Austin Lane Poole, FBA was a British mediaevalist. Poole came from an academic lineage, being the son of Reginald Lane Poole , the nephew of Stanley Lane Poole , and the great-nephew of Reginald Stuart Poole .
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John Andrew Boyle
1916 - 1978 (62 years)
John Andrew Boyle , was a British orientalist and historian. Life and career He was born at Worcester Park, Surrey, England, on 10 March 1916. He graduated with first class honours in German at Birmingham University. He later pursued the studies of Oriental languages at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen.
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Peter Elmsley
1773 - 1825 (52 years)
Peter Elmsley was an English classical scholar. Early life and education Peter Elmsley was the younger son of Alexander Elmsley of St Clement Danes, Westminster, who had Scottish ancestry. He was educated at Westminster School and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated as a BA in 1794, later being promoted to a Master of Arts in 1797, and receiving the degrees of BD on 30 October 1823 and DD on 7 November 1823. He inherited a fortune in 1802 from his uncle, also named Peter Elmsley, a well-known bookseller in the Strand, and devoted himself to the study of classical authors and m...
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Myles Dillon
1900 - 1972 (72 years)
Myles Patrick Dillon was an Irish scholar whose primary interests were comparative philology, Celtic studies, and Sanskrit. Life Myles Dillon was born in Dublin; he was one of six children of John Dillon and his wife Elizabeth Mathew; James Dillon, the leader of Fine Gael, was his younger brother.
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Sergei Tokarev
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev was a Russian scholar, ethnographer, historian, researcher of religious beliefs, doctor of historical sciences, and professor at Moscow State University. Birth and education Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev was born in Tula on 29 December 1899. He graduated with honors from Tula grammar school and entered Moscow University. Immediately after the revolution, conditions in Moscow in 1918 were dangerous and difficult, and Tokarev went back to the apparent safety of his home province of Tula. He taught Russian and Latin in local schools for four years. Tokarev returned to Moscow University in 1922, where he began social and historical studies.
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Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney
1757 - 1820 (63 years)
Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney was a French philosopher, abolitionist, writer, orientalist, and politician. He was at first surnamed Boisgirais after his father's estate, but afterwards assumed the name of Volney .
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Felix Stähelin
1873 - 1952 (79 years)
Felix Stähelin was a Swiss historian of Basel. He studied ancient history and classical philology in Basel, Bonn and Berlin, completing a doctorate on the Galatians in 1897. He worked as a school teacher from 1902–1907, and as a lecturer at Basel from 1907, receiving tenure as professor of Ancient History in 1931, retiring in 1937.
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James Anthony Froude
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
James Anthony Froude was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel The Nemesis of Faith, drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best-known historians of his time for his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
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Pyotr Karyshkovsky
1921 - 1988 (67 years)
Petro Karyshkovsky-Ikar - Ukrainian Soviet historian, numismatist, a scholar and lexicographer. Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, since 1963 and until his last days he headed the department of ancient history and medieval Odesa University.
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John Sherren Brewer
1810 - 1879 (69 years)
John Sherren Brewer, Jr. was an English clergyman, historian and scholar. He was a brother of E. Cobham Brewer, compiler of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Birth and education Brewer was born in Norwich, the son of a Baptist schoolmaster. He matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford in 1827, graduating B.A. in 1833, M.A. 1835. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1837, and became chaplain to a central London workhouse. In 1839 he was appointed lecturer in classical literature at King's College London, and in 1858 he became professor of English language and literature and lecturer in modern history, succeeding FD Maurice.
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James MacCaffrey
1875 - 1935 (60 years)
Monsignor James MacCaffrey STL, PhD was an Irish priest, theologian and historian. Biography Monsignor MacCaffrey was born in 1875, at Fivemiletown, Co. Tyrone, he was the son of Francis MacCaffrey of Alderwood, Clogher, Co. Tyrone. He was educated at St. Macartan's Seminary, Monaghan, before going to St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, and was ordained there in 1899.
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Ross J. S. Hoffman
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Ross John Swartz Hoffman was an American historian, writer, educator, and conservative intellectual who specialized in Modern European History and International Affairs. Life and career Born on February 2, 1902, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Hoffman attended Lafayette College and the University of Pennsylvania . His doctoral dissertation , prepared under the supervision of William Ezra Lingelbach, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1933 and received the George Louis Beer Prize from the American Historical Association in 1934.
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Ephraim Emerton
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Ephraim Emerton was an American educator, author, translator, and historian prominent in his field of European medieval history. Early life and education Ephraim Emerton was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to James and Martha West Emerton. His elder brother was James Henry Emerton , naturalist and arachnologist.
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Adolf Holm
1830 - 1900 (70 years)
Adolf Holm was a German historian of antiquity. Biography Adolf Holm was the son of a producer and distributor of tobacco in Lübeck and was born in a house located between Braunstraße and Holstenstraße by the Trave. He studied at Leipzig and Berlin and obtained a doctorate in 1851. Immediately thereafter he was employed by the Katharineum, a grammar school in Lübeck founded in 1531 for the study of ancient languages. He worked on history and geography of ancient Sicily and Greece and wrote a work in several volumes on the History of Sicily in ancient times. At Lübeck he held several conferenc...
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Douglass Adair
1912 - 1968 (56 years)
Douglass Greybill Adair was an American historian who specialized in intellectual history. He is best known for his work in researching the authorship of disputed numbers of The Federalist Papers, and his influential studies in the history and influence of republicanism in the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—the era of the Enlightenment. His most famous essay, "Fame and the Founding Fathers," introduced the pursuit of fame as a new motivation for understanding the actions for the Framers.
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Clemens Baeumker
1853 - 1924 (71 years)
Clemens Baeumker was a German historian of philosophy. Baeumker was born in Paderborn to a gymnasium teacher. He studied philosophy, theology, and philology in Paderborn and later at the University of Münster, from which he obtained a doctorate in 1877. From 1879 he was a gymnasium lecturer in Münster.
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Degory Wheare
1573 - 1647 (74 years)
Degory Wheare, also spelt Digory Whear was an historian, the first Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford. Life He was born in Jacobstow, Cornwall, at the mansion of Berry Court. He matriculated at Broadgates Hall, Oxford, on 6 July 1593, graduated B.A. on 5 February 1597, and proceeded M.A. on 16 June 1600. He was a contemporary of Francis Rous, a lifelong friend; and he was tutor at Broadgates Hall to John Pym . Another Oxford friend was Charles Fitzgeoffrey.
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Matvei Lyubavsky
1860 - 1936 (76 years)
Matvey Kuzmich Lyubavsky was a Russian and Soviet historian, professor, academic and rector of the Moscow University from 1911 to 1917. Biography Lyubavsky was born in to the family of a village deacon. He lost his left eye in an accident during childhood. Lyubavsky graduated from the faculty of History of the Imperial Moscow University in 1882 and received his doctorate in 1901 and became a professor at the Moscow University.
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Carl Brinkmann
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Carl Brinkmann was a German sociologist and economist, focusing on socioeconomics and the history of political economy. Brinkmann was born in Tilsit, East Prussia, now in Kaliningrad, and died in Oberstdorf, Allgäu. In 1904 he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at The Queen's College, Oxford. He taught as a professor at the Heidelberg University , Berlin University , and Tübingen University .
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Lucy Maynard Salmon
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Lucy Maynard Salmon was an American historian. She was a professor of history at Vassar College from 1889 until her death. She was the first woman to be a member of the executive committee of the American Historical Association. She published widely in historical journals and general magazines, and was highly active in civic affairs, supporting civil service reform and world and women suffrage.
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Tommaso Fazello
1498 - 1570 (72 years)
Tommaso Fazello was an Italian Dominican friar, historian and antiquarian. He is known as the father of Sicilian history. He is the author of the first printed history of Sicily: De Rebus Siculis Decades Duae, published in Palermo in 1558 in Latin. He was born in Sciacca, Sicily and died in Palermo, Sicily.
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Norman Davis
1913 - 1989 (76 years)
Norman Davis was a New Zealand-born professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford. Early life and career Davis was born in 1913 at Dunedin, New Zealand. He received his education at Otago Boys' High School and the University of Otago, where he was taught by Professor Herbert Ramsay. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, in 1934 and studied comparative philology. From 1937 to 1938, he lectured in English at the University of Kaunas in Lithuania, and then at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria, 1938–39.
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Fred Albert Shannon
1893 - 1963 (70 years)
Fred Albert Shannon was an American historian. He had many publications related to American history, and he won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865 .
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Georges Haupt
1928 - 1978 (50 years)
Georges Haupt, also known as George or Gheorghe Haupt , was Romanian and French a historian of socialism, politically active in the Romanian Communist Party and the French Section of the Workers' International.
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Alexander Soloviev
1890 - 1971 (81 years)
Alexander Vasilievich Soloviev was a Russian émigré jurist, slavist, and historian of Serbia and Serbian law. His academic activity included research on the Bogumils, Serbian heraldry, philately and archeology, and he also published translations from Russian and French into Serbian. Having fled from Russia not long after the October Revolution, he settled in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where he became a professor at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law . After the end of World War II he briefly served as the first dean of the Sarajevo Law School , before Communist repressi...
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Dana Carleton Munro
1866 - 1933 (67 years)
Dana Carleton Munro was an American historian, brother of Wilfred Harold Munro, born at Bristol, R.I. He was educated at Brown and in Europe at Strassburg and Freiburg. He taught at Penn , at Wisconsin until 1915, then at Princeton. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1901. Brown gave him the degree of Doctor of humane letters in 1912. He edited Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of History . He was co-author of Mediœval Civilization and Essays on the Crusades .
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Gustave Lanctot
1883 - 1975 (92 years)
Gustave Lanctot , also spelled Gustave Lanctôt, was a Canadian historian and archivist. Born in Saint-Constant, Quebec, he studied law at Université de Montréal and was called to the Quebec Bar in 1907. A Rhodes Scholar, he studied political science and history from 1909 to 1911 while at Oxford University. He was also a member of the Oxford Canadians ice hockey team. In 1912, he joined the National Archives of Canada. During World War I, he served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
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