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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#8401
John Francis Bannon
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
John Francis Bannon was a Jesuit and a historian of the American West, especially of matters related to the Spanish borderlands. Bannon received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Saint Louis University. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Bannon was a professor at Saint Louis University for several years. Bannon's work The Spanish Borderland Frontier, 1513-1821, published in 1970, is the seminal work on the subject.
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Ferdinand II of León
1137 - 1188 (51 years)
Ferdinand II , was a member of the Castilian cadet branch of the House of Ivrea and King of León and Galicia from 1157 until his death. Life Family Born in Toledo, Castile, Ferdinand was the third but second surviving son of King Alfonso VII of León and Castile and Berenguela of Barcelona. His paternal grandparents were Count Raymond of Burgundy and Queen Urraca of León and his maternal grandparents were Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona, and Douce I, Countess of Provence. He had seven full-siblings, of whom only three survived infancy: the later King Sancho III of Castile, Constance a...
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Miloš Mladenović
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Miloš Mladenović was professor emeritus of History at McGill University in Montreal, and an expert on Cold War politics. Biography Miloš Mladenović was born in Valjevo, Serbia, in 1903. He studied at the University of Belgrade's Law School between 1922 and 1926, and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce and Law. At that time he seemed to be destined for a long, diplomatic career, however, World War II intervened. After World War II, Miloš Mladenović settled temporarily in Western Europe. Unwilling to return to Yugoslavia under a Communist regime, Mladenović chose to settle in Canada permanently.
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René Fülöp-Miller
1891 - 1963 (72 years)
René Fülöp-Miller, born Philip René Maria Müller was an Austrian cultural historian and writer. He was born to an Alsatian immigrant and a Serbian mother in Karánsebes, Austria-Hungary and died in Hanover, New Hampshire.
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Johann Gustav Gottlieb Büsching
1783 - 1829 (46 years)
Johann Gustav Gottlieb Büsching was a German antiquary. His knowledge of subjects pertaining to Germany in the Middle Ages was notable. Biography He was born in Berlin, the son of Anton Friedrich Büsching, a geographer and educator. He studied at the universities of Erlangen and Halle, was appointed royal archivist at Breslau in 1811, and in 1817 an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Breslau. He collected oral folk stories from the Uckermark region, which he published in Volks-Sagen, Märchen und Legenden .
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Platon Zhukovich
1857 - 1919 (62 years)
Platon Zhukovich was an Imperial Russian historian and theologian. Biography Born to a family of Russian Orthodox church official , in 1881 he graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy. He worked as a teacher at the Polotsk Theological School before moving to Vilna where he taught history of the Orthodox church at the local theological school.
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Arthur John Butler
1844 - 1910 (66 years)
Arthur John Butler , was an English scholar, editor, and mountaineer, professor of Italian language and literature at University College London. Apart from his work on Dante and other Italian poets, Butler translated books from German and French, including the memoirs of Bismarck, Thiébault, and Marbot, and work by Sainte-Beuve. He also contributed to the Cambridge Modern History and the Dictionary of National Biography and in the 1890s was editor of the Alpine Journal.
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Hans Gram
1685 - 1748 (63 years)
Hans Gram was a Danish academic, philologist and historian. Biography Gram was born at Bjergby in Hjørring on North Jutlandic Island, Denmark. His father was a parish priest. In 1703, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen. In 1708 he acquired a Master's Degree. In 1714 he became a professor of Greek at the University of Copenhagen. In 1730 he was named royal historian and royal librarian as well as manager of the Royal Library and the secretary of the Royal Archives. From 1740, he returned to the University of Copenhagen where he served as rector from 1744-1745.
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Wilhelm Ihne
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Joseph Anton Friedrich Wilhelm Ihne was a German historian who was a native of Fürth. He was the father of architect Ernst von Ihne . Life He studied philology at Bonn, obtaining his degree in 1843 with a thesis titled Quaestiones Terentianae. From 1847 to 1849 he was a teacher in Elberfeld, afterwards moving to England, where he taught school in Liverpool until 1863. He returned to Germany as a lecturer at the University of Heidelberg, where in 1873 he was appointed professor. He died in Heidelberg.
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Heinrich Schurtz
1863 - 1903 (40 years)
Heinrich Schurtz was a German ethnologist and historian. His most significant work is said to be Altersklassen und Männerbünde which emphasized the role gender and generational issues have in social institutions and argued that basing the society on the family was a step backwards. His notion of Männerbünde placed male associations, where he deemed masculinity more "unfettered", in opposition to the family which he saw as dominated by women. Notions of Männerbünde, though not just Schurtz's, would have an influence on Nazi Germany's SS while in a very different way his ideas on same-sex bond...
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Augustin Bunea
1857 - 1909 (52 years)
Augustin Bunea was an Austro-Hungarian ethnic Romanian historian and priest within the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church. Biography Origins and role in Blaj Bunea was born in Vad, a village in the Țara Făgărașului region of Transylvania, then part of the Austrian Empire. He attended primary school from 1864 to 1870, there and in nearby Ohaba. He went to a gymnasium in Brașov until the spring of 1877, when he was briefly transferred to Blaj. While in Brașov, he and classmate Andrei Bârseanu edited a magazine by hand; it was called Conversațiuni. Jurnal literar. In the magazine, Bunea published 9...
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Abraham Polak
1910 - 1970 (60 years)
Abraham Nahum Polak was an Israeli historian, a professor at the Tel Aviv University since its inception, professor of medieval history and founder of the department of Middle-Eastern History. His main areas of research were Jewish history, Arab history, nations of Islam and Africa and the history of the Khazars.
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Gustav Schnürer
1860 - 1941 (81 years)
Gustav Schnürer was a German-Swiss historian. Biography Gustav Schnürer was born in the Silesian village of Jätzdorf on 30 June 1860. He studied history, geography and philology at the universities of Berlin, Breslau and Münster, earning his doctorate in 1883 at Münster. Afterwards, he worked as an editorial assistant at Munich, later obtaining a professorship in medieval history at the University of Fribourg .
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Ivan Lappo
1869 - 1944 (75 years)
Ivan Ivanovich Lappo was a Russian historian. He specialized in history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, especially during the late medieval and early modern period. He shared the vision prevailing in Russian historiography, namely that the union between Lithuania and Poland was enforced by the latter. However, unlike most Russian scholars of the era, he kept maintaining that the Grand Duchy retained political autonomy and remained the subject of international politics. Throughout his career, he held academic seats at the universities of Tartu, Voronezh, Prague, Kaunas and Vilnius.
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Carl Salemann
1849 - 1916 (67 years)
Carl Hermann Salemann was a Russian Iranist scholar. He was an academician of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a director of Asiatic Museum of the Academy of Sciences . Biography Salemann was a Baltic German, born in Revel .
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Edward Ernest Hughes
1877 - 1953 (76 years)
Edward Ernest Hughes was the first professor of history at University College, Swansea. Life Hughes was born on 7 February 1877 in Tywyn, Merionethshire, Wales. As a result of a childhood accident, he was blind in one eye and his other eye was damaged; he compensated by developing his memory and hearing. After studying at Bala Grammar School, he obtained a first-class degree in history from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1898. He then obtained a second-class honours degree in modern history from Jesus College, Oxford in 1902. He taught history in the boys' school in Llane...
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Lon Tinkle
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
Julien Lon Tinkle was a historian, writer, book critic, and professor who specialized in the history of Texas. Tinkle spent most of his life in Dallas, Texas, where he graduated from and later taught at Southern Methodist University. In 1942 he became a book editor and critic for the Dallas Morning News. His first book, Thirteen Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo, was published in 1958. The book was well received and was later adapted into a made-for-television movie. Tinkle won awards for this book, and for a biography that he wrote of historian J. Frank Dobie. He is the namesake of...
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Mikhail Ovsyannikov
1915 - 1987 (72 years)
Mikhail Fedotovich Ovsyannikov was a Soviet philosopher and academic who concentrated on in-depth study of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Ovsyannikov was head of the Philosophy Department at Moscow State University from 1968 to 1974.
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Wilhelm Oechsli
1851 - 1919 (68 years)
Wilhelm Oechsli was a Swiss historian. Oechsli studied theology and history at Berlin and Zürich, under Theodor Mommsen among others. In 1887 he took up the new chair of Swiss history at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. From 1893 to 1919 he was professor of history at the University of Zürich. He tried to popularize critical historiography, challenging the legendary traditions about the Swiss national past:
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Louis Blanc
1811 - 1882 (71 years)
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French socialist politician, journalist and historian. He called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor. Although Blanc's ideas of the workers' cooperatives were never realized, his political and social ideas greatly contributed to the development of socialism in France. He wanted the government to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist enterprises. These cooperatives were to be associations of people who produced together and divided the profit accordingly.
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Marie Delcourt
1891 - 1979 (88 years)
Marie Delcourt was a Belgian classical philologist. She studied at the University of Liège , and obtained a PhD in classical philology in 1919. Under the German occupation of Belgium during World War I she was active in the Dame Blanche resistance network. She was the first female part-time lecturer at the ULg.
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Johannes Messenius
1579 - 1636 (57 years)
Johannes Messenius was a Swedish historian, dramatist and university professor. He was born in the village of Freberga, in Stenby parish in Östergötland, and died in Oulu, in modern-day Finland. Childhood He was the son of a miller named Jöns Thordsson. At an early age his brilliance caught the attention of a monastery priest named Magnus Andreae, who gave him guidance and taught him. Unbeknownst to the boy's parents, the priest sent him to the Jesuit school in Braunsberg, which was specialized in educating boys for winning Scandinavia back from Protestantism.
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Andreas Holmsen
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Andreas Holmsen was a Norwegian historian, author, and educator. He is most commonly associated with his textbook Norges historie fra de eldste tider til 1660 , which is a standard introduction to early Norwegian history.
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Marius Canard
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Marius Canard FBA was a French Orientalist and historian. Biography He was born in a small village in the region of Morvan, where his father was a school teacher. Canard studied at the Collège Bonaparte in Autun and completed his studies in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lyon, where he learned the Arabic, Turkish and Persian languages under the guidance of his coeval Gaston Wiet .
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Isaac Joslin Cox
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Isaac Joslin Cox, Ph.D. was an American professor of history. He was born at West Creek, Ocean Co., N. J. He graduated from Dartmouth College and for several years did research in Mexico. He then pursued postgraduate studies at the universities of Texas, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
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Kaarle Krohn
1863 - 1933 (70 years)
Kaarle Krohn was a Finnish folklorist, professor and developer of the geographic-historic method of folklore research. He was born into the influential Krohn family of Helsinki. Krohn is best known outside of Finland for his contributions to international folktale research. He devoted most of his life to the study of the epic poetry that forms the basis for the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
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Edith Wightman
1938 - 1983 (45 years)
Edith Mary Wightman FSA was a British ancient historian and archaeologist. She was Assistant-Professor and then Professor at McMaster University . Wightman was best known for her studies Roman Trier and Gallia Belgica.
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Michael VII Doukas
1050 - 1090 (40 years)
Michael VII Doukas or Ducas , nicknamed Parapinakes , was the senior Byzantine emperor from 1071 to 1078. He was known as incompetent as an emperor and reliant on court officials, especially of his finance minister Nikephoritzes, who increased taxation and luxury spending while not properly financing their army . Under his reign, Bari was lost and his empire faced open revolt in the Balkans. Along with the advancing Seljuk Turks in the eastern front, Michael also had to contend with his mercenaries openly turning against the empire. Michael stepped down as emperor in 1078 and later retired to ...
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Manuel II Palaiologos
1350 - 1425 (75 years)
Manuel II Palaiologos or Palaeologus was Byzantine emperor from 1391 to 1425. Shortly before his death he was tonsured a monk and received the name Matthew. His wife Helena Dragaš saw to it that their sons, John VIII and Constantine XI, became emperors. He is commemorated by the Greek Orthodox Church on July 21.
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Theodore Emanuel Schmauk
1860 - 1920 (60 years)
Theodore Emanuel Schmauk, D.D., LL.D. was an American Lutheran minister, educator, author and Church theologian. Theodore Emanuel Schmauk was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the son of a Lutheran minister, Rev. Benjamin W. and Wilhelmina C. Schmauk. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, being ordained by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in that year. In 1897, he received the degree of D.D. from Muhlenberg College and in 1910, the degree of LL.D. from Augustana College.
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Abraham Ruchat
1680 - 1750 (70 years)
Abraham Ruchat was a Swiss Protestant theologian and historian. He studied theology at the Academy of Lausanne, receiving his ordination in 1702. Later on, he served as a minister in the communities of Aubonne and Rolle . In 1721 he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the academy, where from 1733 up until his death, he taught classes in theology. In 1736–39 he served as school rector.
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Egon Ranshofen-Wertheimer
1894 - 1957 (63 years)
Egon Ferdinand Ranshofen-Wertheimer was a diplomat, journalist and doctor of laws. Early life Egon Ferdinand Ranshofen-Wertheimer was born as the son of the Catholic land owner and member of the Upper Austrian parliament Julius Wertheimer in near Braunau am Inn, Austria. His family had Jewish roots, so they fled Austria in 1938 because of the growing threat of the Nazi government. His town of birth, Braunau am Inn, was also the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.
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Robert Jacobus Forbes
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Robert Jacobus Forbes or Robert James Forbes was a Dutch chemist and historian of science and professor in the history of applied science and technology at the University of Amsterdam. In his days Forbes was internationally one of the best known and respected historian of technology, and recipient of the first Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the highest award by the Society for the History of Technology .
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Daniel Adam z Veleslavína
1546 - 1599 (53 years)
Daniel Adam z Veleslavína , was a Czech lexicographer, publisher, translator, and writer. Adam Veleslavín studied at the University of Prague, and from 1569 to 1576 he was professor there. When he married the daughter of the publisher Jiří Melantrich z Aventina , he was forced to leave the university . He started working at the print press and later took it over.
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Tadeusz Wałek-Czarnecki
1889 - 1949 (60 years)
Tadeusz Bronisław Wałek-Czarnecki was a Polish historian. Wałek-Czarnecki studied history and archaeology at the Jagiellonian University, as a pupil of Piotr Bieńkowski. In 1910 he went abroad and studied in Berlin under E. Meyet and A. Erman, and in Paris under A. Moret.
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Prithviraj Chauhan
1159 - 1192 (33 years)
Prithviraja III , popularly known as Prithviraj Chauhan or Rai Pithora, was a king from the Chauhan dynasty who ruled the territory of Sapadalaksha, with his capital at Ajmer in present-day Rajasthan. Ascending the throne as a minor in 1177 CE, Prithviraj inherited a kingdom which stretched from Thanesar in the north to Jahazpur in the south, which he aimed to expand by military actions against neighbouring kingdoms, most notably defeating the Chandelas.
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John Beaglehole
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
John Cawte Beaglehole was a New Zealand historian whose greatest scholastic achievement was the editing of James Cook's three journals of exploration, together with the writing of an acclaimed biography of Cook, published posthumously. He had a lifelong association with Victoria University College, which became Victoria University of Wellington, and after his death it named the archival collections after him.
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Conrad Varrentrapp
1844 - 1911 (67 years)
Conrad Varrentrapp was a German historian. He studied at the University of Göttingen as a pupil of Georg Waitz and at the University of Berlin as a student of Leopold von Ranke. In 1865 he received his doctorate at the University of Bonn under the direction of Heinrich von Sybel. In 1868 he obtained his habilitation at Bonn, where in 1873 he became an associate professor. From 1867 to 1874 he was an editor of Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift.
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Amenhotep II
1401 BC - 1401 BC (0 years)
Amenhotep II was the seventh pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Amenhotep inherited a vast kingdom from his father Thutmose III, and held it by means of a few military campaigns in Syria; however, he fought much less than his father, and his reign saw the effective cessation of hostilities between Egypt and Mitanni, the major kingdoms vying for power in Syria. His reign is usually dated from 1427 to 1401 BC. His consort was Tiaa, who was barred from any prestige until Amenhotep's son, Thutmose IV, came into power.
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Einar W. Juva
1892 - 1966 (74 years)
Einar Wilhelm Juva was a Finnish historian, professor at Turku University 1920–1955. His surname until 1935 was Juvelius. He was born in Raahe. He mainly outlined Finland's military and geopolitical position in the Swedish empire in the 18th century. He wrote also a survey in 10 parts on Finland's history: Suomen Kansan aikakirjat , in which he popularised the results of the historical research. The work should be regarded as a Finnish counterpart to the works of the Swedish historian Carl Grimberg. Juva also wrote a biography of P. E. Svinhufvud and Rudolf Walden.
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David L. Hoggan
1923 - 1988 (65 years)
David Leslie Hoggan was an American author of The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed and other works in the German and English languages. He was antisemitic, maintained a close association with various neo-Nazi groups, chose a publishing house run by an unregenerate Nazi, and engaged in Holocaust denial.
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Wilhelm Busch
1861 - 1929 (68 years)
Wilhelm Busch was a German historian who specialised in English sixteenth century history and German nineteenth century history. He later became, in addition, a university rector. Life and works Karl Eilhard Wilhelm Busch was born into a Protestant family in Bonn, where his father, also known as Wilhelm Busch, had been employed since 1855 as an increasingly senior university professor of surgery. His mother, born Agnes Sophie Friederike Mitscherlich, was a daughter of the distinguished chemist Eilhard Mitscherlich. He attended the town's "Gymnasium" school
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Nino Valeri
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Nino Valeri was an Italian historian. Biography Nino Valeri was born in Padua. His father, Silvio Valeri, was a pharmacist. His uncle, Diego Valeri , had built up a reputation in Italy as a poet, literary scholar and translator. Another uncle was the painter Ugo Valeri.
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Giorgi Tsereteli
1904 - 1973 (69 years)
Giorgi V. Tsereteli FRAS was a Georgian scientist and public benefactor, founder of the well-known Georgian scientific school of Oriental Studies. He founded both the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the Tbilisi State University the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences , the latter of which he was the first Director. He was also an Academician of GNAS, a Meritorious Scientific Worker of Georgia, a Doctor of Philological Sciences and a Professor.
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Michael Glykas
1125 - 1204 (79 years)
Michael Glykas or Glycas was a 12th-century Byzantine historian, theologian, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He was probably from Corfu and lived in Constantinople. He was a critic of Manuel I Komnenos, and was imprisoned and blinded due to his participation in a conspiracy against the emperor. He is also identified by modern scholarship with Michael Sikidites , who was condemned as a heresiarch in 1200.
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Karl Benrath
1845 - 1924 (79 years)
Karl Benrath was a German church historian. Benrath was educated in Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1871 went on a scientific tour of several years to Italy and England. From 1879 he was professor at Bonn, and from 1890 professor of church history at Königsberg.
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Ludwig Wachler
1767 - 1838 (71 years)
Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wachler was a German literary historian and theologian. He was the father-in-law of lexicographer Franz Passow. Biography Wachler studied theology from 1784 at the University of Jena, but due to consequences stemming from a duel, he was forced to leave Jena, and subsequently relocated to the University of Göttingen, where he became a student of philology. At Göttingen he was a pupil of Christian Gottlob Heyne, Ludwig Timotheus Spittler and Johann Christoph Gatterer. In 1788, Wachler became an associate professor at Rinteln, where he gave lectures in philology and church history.
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Pierre Boutroux
1880 - 1922 (42 years)
Pierre Léon Boutroux was a French mathematician and historian of science. Boutroux is chiefly known for his work in the history and philosophy of mathematics. Biography He was born in Paris on 6 December 1880 into a well connected family of the French intelligentsia. His father was the philosopher Émile Boutroux. His mother was Aline Catherine Eugénie Poincaré, sister of the scientist and mathematician Henri Poincaré. A cousin of Aline, Raymond Poincaré was to be President of France.
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Henri Daniel-Rops
1901 - 1965 (64 years)
Henri Jules Charles Petiot , known by the pen name Henri Daniel-Rops, was a French Roman Catholic writer and historian. Biography Daniel-Rops was the son of a military officer. He was a student at the Faculties of Law and Literature in Grenoble, receiving his Agrégation in History in 1922 at the age of 21, the youngest in France. He was a professor of history in Chambéry, then in Amiens and finally in Paris. In the late 1920s he began his literary career with an essay, Notre inquiétude , a novel, L'âme obscure , and several articles in journals such as Correspondent, Notre Temps and La Revue d...
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Leo Gershoy
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Leo Gershoy was a history professor at New York University from 1940 to 1975. In his name the American Historical Association awards an annual prize for the best new book on 17th- or 18th-century European history. An annual lecture at New York University is also named for him.
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