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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in History,
#8351
John Carl Parish
1881 - 1939 (58 years)
John Carl Parish was an American historian of American history. Parish was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He earned a degree from the Iowa State Normal School in 1902, and then from the University of Iowa in 1905. In 1908 he earned a Ph.D., also from the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#8352
Frank Card Bourne
1914 - 1983 (69 years)
Frank Card Bourne was an American classicist. Life He was born on 17 July 1914. His parents were Moses Avander and Grace Winchester. He died in 1983. Career He graduated from Princeton University with his bachelor's degree in 1936 and a PhD in 1941. He was the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature there from 1946 to 1976.
Go to Profile#8353
Janko Lavrin
1887 - 1986 (99 years)
Janko Lavrin was a Slovene novelist, poet, critic, translator, and historian. He was Professor Andrej Jelenc DiCaprio of Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham. An enthusiast for psycho-analysis, he wrote what he called 'psycho-critical studies' of Ibsen, Nietzsche and Tolstoy.
Go to Profile#8354
Cyril Falls
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Cyril Bentham Falls CBE was a 20th Century British military historian, journalist, and academic, noted for his works on the First World War. Early life Falls was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 2 March 1888, the eldest son of Sir Charles Falls, an Ulster landowner in County Tyrone. He received his formal education at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, and London University. At the age of 27, he published his first book, 'Rudyard Kipling: A Critical Study' .
Go to Profile#8355
R. B. Merriman
1876 - 1945 (69 years)
Roger Bigelow Merriman was an American historian and a practitioner of scientific historiography developed by German historians. He is known especially for his multivolume history of the Spanish Empire.
Go to Profile#8356
Werner Leibbrand
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Werner Leibbrand was a German psychiatrist and medical historian. He showed an early talent and affection for music and languages. As a young man he considered a career as a pianist and he spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Yiddish. His father however, influenced him to study medicine and philosophy. After becoming a medical doctor he specialized in psychiatry. In the crisis years around 1930 he joined Verein Sozialistischer Ärzte and co-founded a center for drug addicts. He fell into disgrace and was persecuted by the Nazis.
Go to Profile#8357
Erich Bessel-Hagen
1898 - 1946 (48 years)
Erich Bessel-Hagen was a German mathematician and a historian of mathematics. Erich Paul Werner Bessel-Hagen was born in 1898 in Charlottenburg, a suburb, later a district in Berlin. He studied at the University of Berlin where in 1920 he obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics under the direction of Constantin Carathéodory.
Go to Profile#8358
Maurice Séguin
1918 - 1984 (66 years)
Maurice Séguin is a Canadian historian who, along with Michel Brunet and Guy Frégault, is credited with creating the Montreal School of Canadian history.
Go to Profile#8359
Carlos Castañeda
1896 - 1958 (62 years)
Carlos Castañeda was a historian, specializing in the history of Texas, and a leader in the push for civil rights for Mexican-Americans. Born in Mexico, Castañeda immigrated to the United States with his family in 1908. He gained an undergraduate and master's degree in history from the University of Texas at Austin, and then spent several years teaching Spanish at the College of William and Mary. Castañeda returned to Texas in 1927, serving as the first curator of the Latin American collection at the University of Texas. While he worked as a librarian, Castañeda pursued his doctorate in histo...
Go to Profile#8360
William Reddaway
1872 - 1949 (77 years)
William Fiddian Reddaway was an academic and author in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries. Reddaway was educated at The Leys School and King's College, Cambridge. He was a Fellow of King's from 1897; and a Tutor at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge from 1898 to 1907. He was also University Lecturer in History and Director of Scandinavian Studies; and Censor of Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge from 1907 to 1924.
Go to Profile#8361
Nathan Huggins
1927 - 1989 (62 years)
Nathan Irvin Huggins was a distinguished American historian, author and educator. As a leading scholar in the field of African American studies, he was W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of History and of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University as well as director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 62.
Go to Profile#8362
Robert McNutt McElroy
1872 - 1959 (87 years)
Robert McNutt McElroy was a professor of history at Princeton University. He became a jingoistic advocate of a strong national defense during World War I, working with the Republican Party and the National Security League . A popular historian in his day, he published biographies of Grover Cleveland and Jefferson Davis, and respected histories of the states of Kentucky and Texas and the conquest of the American West, none of which are much cited today.
Go to Profile#8363
Ernest Gordon Rupp
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Ernest Gordon Rupp was a Methodist preacher, historian and Luther scholar. Early life and education Rupp was born on 7 January 1910 in London and attended Owen's School in Islington. He studied history at King's College London, theology at Cambridge's Wesley House, and in Strasbourg and Basel during 1936–1937.
Go to Profile#8364
Edmund Curtis
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Edmund Curtis , was born in Lancashire to Irish parents. He worked in a rubber factory until he was 15 when he continued with his education. His education was paid for through donations when it was heard that poems he had published when he was 14 and later in London in June 1896 were from a factory worker.
Go to Profile#8365
Leo Santifaller
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Leo Santifaller was an Austrian historian of South Tyrolean origin. He was director-general of the National Archives of Austria. Santifaller was director of the Bolzano State Archives , professor at the University of Breslau and at the University of Vienna , head of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research , General Director of the Austrian State Archives , Director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in Rome , founder of specialist journals, honorary doctorate at four universities and member of numerous scientific organizations such as the Austrian Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#8366
Stanley Bindoff
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
Stanley Thomas Bindoff was an English historian who specialised in the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. He was the first professor of history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He was the editor of The History of Parliament for the parliaments of 1509–1558, published in 1982.
Go to Profile#8367
Gustave Lanson
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
Gustave Lanson was a French historian and literary critic. He taught at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. A dominant figure in French literary criticism, he influenced several generations of writers and critics through his teachings, which were anti-systematic and promoted a scrupulous and erudite approach to texts via extensive firsthand research, inventorying, and in-depth historical investigation.
Go to Profile#8368
Oliver Morton Dickerson
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Oliver Morton Dickerson was an American historian, author, and educator. Like his fellow historians Charles McLean Andrews and Lawrence Henry Gipson, Dickerson was a proponent of the "Imperial school" of historians who believed that the American colonies could not be studied or understood except as part of the British Empire. Among his publications were works on the British Board of Trade, the Navigation Acts, and Boston under military rule.
Go to Profile#8369
Karol Maleczyński
1897 - 1968 (71 years)
Karol Maleczyński was a Polish historian. Karol Maleczyński was born October 28, 1897, in Grębowo near Tarnobrzeg. He was son of Stefan and Józefina. Maleczyński attended to gimnazjum in Stanisławów and Lwów from 1907 to 1915. He enrolled at the University in Lwów, but was enlisted to the Austrian Army. Later he served in the Polish Army. After demobilisation he again enrolled at the University in Lwów, where he study history. He graduated in March 1924.
Go to Profile#8370
Robert H. McDowell
1894 - 1980 (86 years)
Robert Harbold McDowell was an American historian and intelligence officer who worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. McDowell, an expert on the Near East, was a professor of Balkan history at the University of Michigan. During World War II he was an OSS desk officer in Cairo and between August and November 1944 a member of an American mission Ranger, to the Chetniks, where he participated in negotiations with Germans to surrender their troops to Chetniks and Americans, and in Operation Halyard, to organize transport of the Allied pilots rescued by Chetniks. In some...
Go to Profile#8371
Rembert W. Patrick
1909 - 1967 (58 years)
Rembert Wallace Patrick was a historian, longtime University of Florida history professor, and prolific author of works on Florida's history, particularly the Reconstruction Era. The Florida Historical Society gives out an award named in his honor.
Go to Profile#8372
Jason Sokol
1900 - Present (126 years)
Jason Sokol is an American historian and an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. Sokol is the author of three books on the history of the civil rights movement. External links Jason Sokol's websiteFaculty Profile: Jason Sokol
Go to Profile#8373
May McKisack
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
May McKisack was a British medieval historian. She was professor of history at Westfield College in London and later professor of historiography at the University of Oxford and an honorary fellow of Somerville College Oxford. She is today chiefly remembered for writing The Fourteenth Century in George Clark's Oxford History of England.
Go to Profile#8374
Henri Grégoire
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Henri Grégoire was an eminent scholar of the Byzantine Empire, virtually the founder of Byzantine studies in Belgium. Grégoire spent most of his teaching career at the Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1938, he taught at the New School for Social Research and during the Second World War, joined the École libre des hautes études at the New School.
Go to Profile#8375
Eduard Castle
1875 - 1959 (84 years)
Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Castle [kastle] was an Austrian-German Germanist and literary historian . He participated in the establishment of the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. He taught as a professor at Vienna University . He retired in 1949.
Go to Profile#8376
Walther Judeich
1859 - 1942 (83 years)
Walther Judeich was a German ancient historian. His grandfather on his mother's side was publisher Heinrich Brockhaus . He studied history at the Universities of Tübingen, Leipzig and Strasbourg. From 1886 to 1888 he took part in archaeological excavations in Greece and Asia Minor, followed by research in Rome, Pompeii and Sicily . Later on, he taught classes at the Universities of Marburg, Czernowitz and Erlangen. From 1907 to 1931 he was a professor of ancient history at the University of Jena. His successor at Jena was Fritz Schachermeyr.
Go to Profile#8377
Vasily Zubov
1900 - 1963 (63 years)
Vasily Pavlovich Zubov was a Russian and Soviet philosopher who wrote on architecture, art, and the history of science based on studies of texts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He received a posthumous George Sarton medal from the history of science society in 1963.
Go to Profile#8378
Costa Chekrezi
1892 - 1959 (67 years)
Costa Chekrezi , also known as Constantin Anastas Chekrezi was an Albanian patriot, historian, and publicist. Biography Chekrezi was born on 31 March 1892 in Ziçisht village, in the Upper Devoll region located near Korça . After finishing a 5-year school in his native village, he finished the Greek high school in the town of Korça on June 12, 1910. The school documents show he was awarded as "excellent student in all subjects", and earned a scholarship from the Ottoman government to attend the law school in Thessaloniki, now Greece. The studies were interrupted by the start of the First World War.
Go to Profile#8379
Garry Tregidga
1900 - Present (126 years)
Garry Harcourt Tregidga is a Cornish academic, director of the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, UK, and editor of the journal Cornish Studies. He lives in Bugle, near St Austell, and was named as a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh for services to Cornish history, taking the name "Map Rosvean" - "Son of Rosevean".
Go to Profile#8380
Johan Carel Marinus Warnsinck
1882 - 1943 (61 years)
J.C.M. Warnsinck was a Dutch naval officer and naval historian. Johan Carel Marinus Warnsinck was the son of the notary Cornelis Warnsinck and his wife, Tettje Halbertsma. He entered the Royal Naval Academy at Den Helder in 1899 and was commissioned an officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1903, eventually rising to the rank of captain in 1930. In 1919, he married Catarina Elisabeth Delprat and they had one son and a daughter.
Go to Profile#8381
Effie Mona Mack
1888 - 1969 (81 years)
Effie Mona Mack was an American historian, educator, and textbook co-author. She is said to be the only person to have received a Doctorate degree in History of Nevada. The Mack Social Science building at the University of Nevada, Reno is named in her honor. She received a bachelor's degree from Smith College, a Master's at the University of Nevada , and a Ph.D. from the University of California . She taught at the University of Nevada, Reno, and at Nevada Southern, which became the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Go to Profile#8382
Hubert Essame
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Major General Hubert Essame, was a British Army officer who fought in the First and Second World Wars. He was also a military lecturer, historian and broadcaster. Military career Born on 24 December 1896, Hubert Essame was the son of Ernest H. Essame of Wokingham. He was educated at Nottingham High School.
Go to Profile#8383
Bibhutibhushan Datta
1888 - 1958 (70 years)
Bibhutibhushan Datta was a historian of Indian mathematics. Datta came from a poor Bengali family. He was a student of Ganesh Prasad, studied at University of Calcutta and secured the master's degree in mathematics in 1914 and doctorate degree in 1920 in applied mathematics. He taught at Calcutta University where he was lecturer at University Science College, and from 1924 to 1929 he was Rhashbehari Ghosh Professor of Applied Mathematics. During the 1920s and 1930s he created a reputation as an authority on the history of Indian mathematics. He was also deeply interested in Indian philosophy and religion.
Go to Profile#8384
Kurt Köster
1912 - 1986 (74 years)
Kurt Köster, also spelled Koetser , was a German librarian and historian. Life and work Köster was the son of Daniel Köster and his wife Emilie, née Loev. In 1930 he graduated from the Wiesbaden high school on Zietenring and then attended the Pedagogical Academy in Frankfurt am Main. Köster worked as a primary school teacher from 1932 to 1939 then studied history, historical auxiliary sciences, German and musicology in Frankfurt and Munich. On 9 September 1942 he was drafted into the German army. He received his doctorate on 12 February 1944 in Frankfurt on the subject of "The Colmar historical sources of the thirteenth century".
Go to Profile#8385
L. P. Wenham
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
Leslie Peter Wenham FSA was a British archaeologist, historian, and professor who excavated in York, on Hadrian's Wall and Malton. He was the first to produce a comprehensive report of a Romano-British Cemetery.
Go to Profile#8386
Noboru Niida
1904 - 1966 (62 years)
Noboru Niida was a Japanese academic, historian of Chinese legal history and Professor Emeritus of Oriental Laws at the University of Tokyo . Biography In 1925, Niida began his studies at the University of Tokyo, where he would eventually be awarded his doctorate. Niida was a professor and legal history scholar at the University of Tokyo. Among the students he influenced was Denis Twitchett, who studied with him in Tokyo in 1953-54. He is known for having written Chinese legal System which has been the subject of a multi-year process of translation into English.
Go to Profile#8387
Audrey Beecham
1915 - 1989 (74 years)
Helen Audrey Beecham was an English poet, teacher and historian. She was born in Weaverham in 1915. Her grandfather was Sir Joseph Beecham, 1st Baronet, eldest son of Thomas Beecham, who had created a fortune with Beecham's Pills. Her uncle was the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and her father devoted time to spending his inheritance. She took PPE at Somerville College in Oxford. She left with a second class degree and went to live in Paris in the group that included Henry Miller. She made a lasting friendship with the writers Lawrence Durrell and Anais Nin.
Go to Profile#8388
Antonio Oliver
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Antonio Oliver was a Spanish writer, poet, literary critic and historian of Spanish art. He was also a part of the Generation of '27, a group of artists and poets that specialized in the avant-garde.
Go to Profile#8389
Helen Sutermeister
1943 - 1979 (36 years)
Helen Sutermeister was a historian and archaeologist involved in the program of Industrial Archaeology in Ontario. Sutermeister was Curatorial Assistant in the Canadiana Department of Royal Ontario Museum, and was a founding “member of the Norwich Survey within the Centre of East Anglian Studies”. Since her early death , the Helen Sutermeister Memorial Fund was created and Helen Sutermeister memorial lectures are given at the Centre of East Anglian Studies of the University of East Anglia. After returning from Canada she married and settled in Loddon Norfolk whilst working at the University ...
Go to Profile#8390
Leicester Bodine Holland
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Leicester Bodine Holland was an American architect, art historian and archaeologist and holder of the Carnegie Chair at the Library of Congress. Holland was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Dr. James W. Holland and Mary Boggs Holland. His father was the Dean of the Jefferson Medical College; and when he graduated from William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia in 1898 Leicester Holland originally intended to also become a doctor. However, instead he went into architecture and after he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1902 he gained a further Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture in 1904.
Go to Profile#8391
Louis Kollros
1878 - 1959 (81 years)
Louis Kollros was a Swiss mathematician. From 1909 to 1948 he was a professor ordinarius of geometry at ETH Zurich. Kollros, the son of a baker, was from 1896 as a student of mathematics and physics at the Zurich Polytechnikum, where he was a fellow student of Albert Einstein and Marcel Grossmann. After graduating in 1900, Kollros taught mathematics from 1900 to 1909 in secondary school in his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds. In 1903–1904 to 1909 he studied in Göttingen with Hermann Minkowski and David Hilbert. From 1904 to 1909 Kollross was a privat-docent at the University of Neuchâtel. He ...
Go to Profile#8392
Victor Tcherikover
1894 - 1958 (64 years)
Victor A. Tcherikover was a Russian-born Israeli scholar. Biography Born in Russia, he settled in Palestine in 1925. He was one of the first teachers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and headed the departments of general history and classical studies. He specialized in Jewish history in Palestine and Egypt during the Graeco-Roman period.
Go to Profile#8393
Milada Paulová
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Milada Paulová was a Czech historian and Byzantologist, and the first female professor at Charles University, Prague. Early life and education Paulová was born in Loukov in Bohemia. Her mother died when she was three years old, and her father was the director of a sugarcane factory. When the factory went bankrupt, the family moved to Prague, where she completed her education at the teachers' school for girls. As the leaving exam for this school was not recognized by the university, she studied independently to take the final exam for Prague Grammar School, which she passed.
Go to Profile#8394
R. C. Majumdar
1888 - 1980 (92 years)
Ramesh Chandra Majumdar was a historian and professor of Indian history. Majumdar is a noted historian of modern India. He was a former Sheriff of Kolkata. Early life and education Coming from a Baidya family, Majumdar was born in Khandarpara, Gopalganj, Bengal Presidency, British India on 4 December 1888, to Haladhara Majumdar and Bidhumukhi. In 1905, he passed his Entrance Examination from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. In 1907, he passed F.A. with first class scholarship from Surendranath College and joined Presidency College, Calcutta. Graduating in B.A. and M.A. in 1909 and 1911, respecti...
Go to Profile#8395
Garnie W. McGinty
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
Garnie William McGinty was a historian whose career was principally based for thirty-five years at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana. Biography McGinty was born in Bienville Parish in north Louisiana between Ringgold and Bienville to Alonzo Eugene McGinty and the former Maude Leshe. He was educated in local schools and attended Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College in Pineville and received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches. He procured the Master of Arts degree from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. He also studied at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Chicago in Illinois before he received his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#8396
Ephraim Douglass Adams
1865 - 1930 (65 years)
Ephraim Douglass Adams was an American educator and historian, regarded as an expert on the American Civil War and British-American relations. He was known as a great teacher, with the ability to inspire teachers and researchers, and his presentation style was copied by Stanford historian Thomas A. Bailey.
Go to Profile#8397
J. A. C. Chandler
1872 - 1934 (62 years)
Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler , usually cited as J. A. C. Chandler, was an American historian, author and educator. He is best known as the 18th president of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he served as the successor to retiring fellow educator and author Lyon Gardiner Tyler. Dr. Chandler is credited with transforming the institution from a small, struggling liberal arts college for men into a modern coeducational institution of higher learning.
Go to Profile#8398
Joseph Bradfield Thoburn
1866 - 1941 (75 years)
Joseph Bradfield Thoburn was an educator, civic leader, writer, and historian. Education In 1893, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in agriculture from Kansas State University, and was largely self-trained in a variety of other fields, such as archaeology and journalism. In 1896, he moved to Oklahoma City. He did scholarship on the history of Oklahoma, joined the History faculty at the University of Oklahoma, served for 38 years, and was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#8399
Charles Rowley
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Charles Dunford Rowley was an Australian public servant and academic. Early life and education Rowley was born in Rylstone, New South Wales on 13 October 1906 and grew up in country towns of central New South Wales. Attending the University of Sydney, he graduated with a BA with first-class honours in English and history in 1926, and also gained first-class honours for his Masters thesis in 1939. He taught in State secondary schools from 1928 to 1938, when he was appointed a lecturer at Sydney Teachers' College.
Go to Profile#8400
Veselin Beshevliev
1900 - 1992 (92 years)
Veselin Ivanov Beshevliev was a Bulgarian historian and philologist. He was a correspondent member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from 1941 to his death. He was the author of Old Bulgarian Inscriptions.
Go to Profile