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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#8451
Franz Xaver von Wegele
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Franz Xaver von Wegele was a German historian, largely known for his studies on the history of Thuringia, Franconia and the University of Würzburg. Education and career He studied history at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg, where his influences were Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, Ludwig Häusser and Georg Gottfried Gervinus. In 1849 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Jena, and two years later became an associate professor of history. In 1857 he relocated to the University of Würzburg as a full professor. In 1863 he was named university rector.
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Albert Pauphilet
1884 - 1948 (64 years)
Albert Pauphilet was a French university professor and medievalist. Biography Albert Pauphilet completed his secondary studies at the Lycée Condorcet, during which he obtained the honorary prize for French composition at the Concours Général. He obtained a baccalaureate in letters in 1902.
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Mose Janashvili
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
Mose Janashvili was a Georgian historian, ethnographer, and linguist. He was born into a Georgian Ingilo community at Qakh . Educated at Tbilisi and Kutaisi, he worked as a teacher for several years, from 1875 to 1920, and later served as a professor at the Tbilisi State University. He mostly engaged in study of medieval Georgian chronicles and hagiographic literature. As a linguist, Janashvili subscribed to the theory that linked Georgian with the Indo-European languages. He is buried at Mtatsminda Pantheon in Tbilisi.
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Edward John Thompson
1886 - 1946 (60 years)
Edward John Thompson was a British scholar, novelist, historian and translator. He is remembered for his translations from Bengali into English and his association with Rabindranath Tagore, on whom he wrote two books including a critical biography.
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Toussaint Hočevar
1927 - 1987 (60 years)
Toussaint Hočevar or Toussaint Hocevar was a Slovenian American economic historian. Biography Hočevar was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He spent his childhood in the small town of Vrhnika near Ljubljana, where his father served as mayor. Between 1937 and 1941 Toussaint attended an elite private Roman Catholic high school in the town of Bol on the Dalmatian island of Brač administered by the Dominican order. After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he moved back to Slovenia and continued his studies at the Bežigrad Grammar School in Ljubljana, graduating in 1945.
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Arvo Viljanti
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Arvo Kunto Viljanti was a Finnish historian. Viljanti had earned a PhD and from 1962 worked as a professor at the University of Åbo. He was specialized in Swedish–Finnish military history of the 16th and 17th centuries.
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Beatrice Fry Hyslop
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Beatrice Fry Hyslop was an American historian of France. Life and work Beatrice Fry Hyslop was born at home in New York on 10 April 1899 to James H. Hyslop, professor of philosophy and ethics at Columbia College and founder of the American Society for Psychical Research. Her mother, Mary Fry Hyslop, daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia merchant, was a pianist. She died when Beatrice was 18 months old. Beatrice attended the Barnard School for Girls from 1912 to 1915, before graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1919 as a Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in history and art. Hyslop taught at a private school for two years before starting graduate school at Columbia University.
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Ludwik Birkenmajer
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Ludwik Antoni Birkenmajer , Polish historian of science, physicist, astronomer, professor of the Jagiellonian University. Biography Descended from the German family settled in Galicia during the time of the Napoleon wars, later a part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire. He was the son of Józef Herman and Petronela de domo Stefanowski. Educated in the Franz Joseph High School in Lvov , than studied physics, chemistry and mathematics at the Kraków University till 1878. Supplementary studies in Vienna . In 1879 he defended his Ph. D. thesis in Kraków based on the study: On general methods of integration of the algebraic and transcendental functions .
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Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville
1661 - 1706 (45 years)
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville or Sieur d'Iberville was a French soldier, explorer, colonial administrator, and trader. He is noted for founding the colony of Louisiana in New France. He was born in Montreal to French colonist parents.
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Robert Kirk
1644 - 1692 (48 years)
Robert Kirk was a minister, Gaelic scholar and folklorist, best known for The Secret Commonwealth, a treatise on fairy folklore, witchcraft, ghosts, and second sight, a type of extrasensory perception described as a phenomenon by the people of the Scottish Highlands. Folklorist Stewart Sanderson and mythologist Marina Warner called Kirk's collection of supernatural tales one of the most important and significant works on the subject of fairies and second sight. Christian philosopher and religious studies scholar David Bentley Hart has praised Kirk for writing The Secret Commonwealth to defen...
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Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia
1850 - 1908 (58 years)
Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia was the fifth child and the fourth son of Alexander II of Russia and his first wife Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. Chosen for a naval career, Alexei Alexandrovich started his military training at the age of seven. By the age of 20 he had been appointed lieutenant of the Imperial Russian Navy and had visited all Russia's European military ports. In 1871, he was sent as a goodwill ambassador to the United States and Japan.
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William Buell Sprague
1795 - 1876 (81 years)
William Buell Sprague was an American Congregational and Presbyterian clergyman and compiler of Annals of the American Pulpit , a comprehensive biographical dictionary of the leading American Protestant Christian ministers who died before 1850.
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Chaeremon of Alexandria
10 - 90 (80 years)
Chaeremon of Alexandria was a Stoic philosopher and historian who wrote on Egyptian mythology from a "typically Stoic" perspective. All of Chaeremon's works are lost, though a number of fragments are quoted by later authors. Three titles are preserved: the History of Egypt, Hieroglyphika, and On Comets, with another fragment quoted from an unknown grammatical treatise of his. According to the Suda, he was the head of the Alexandrian school of grammarians, and he may also have been head of the Museion.
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John Foster Kirk
1824 - 1904 (80 years)
John Foster Kirk was an American historian, journalist, educator and bibliographer. Kirk was educated privately in Nova Scotia and came to the United States in 1842. From 1847 to 1859 he was secretary to the historian William H. Prescott, accompanying Prescott to Europe in 1850 and editing Prescott's works after his death. He contributed to the North American Review, the Atlantic Monthly, and other periodicals. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1864. In 1870 he moved to Philadelphia, where he edited Lippincott's Monthly Magazine from 1870 to 1886. In 1886, he became lecturer in European History at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Géraud de Cordemoy
1626 - 1684 (58 years)
Géraud de Cordemoy was a French philosopher, historian and lawyer. He is mainly known for his works in metaphysics and for his theory of language. Biography Géraud de Cordemoy was born in a family of ancient nobility coming from Auvergne . He was the third of four children. His father was a master in arts at the University of Paris named Géraud de Cordemoy who died when he was nine years old. His mother was named Nicole de Cordemoy. As for Géraud, he was a private tutor and a linguist and practised as a lawyer.
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Edward Schröder
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Edward Schröder was a Germanist and mediaevalist who was a professor at the University of Göttingen and published editions of numerous texts. Life and career Born in Witzenhausen and educated in Kassel, Schröder studied German studies at the Universities of Strasbourg and Berlin and was a docent at the University of Göttingen and then at Berlin. In 1889 he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg and in 1902 at Göttingen, where he spent the rest of his career and died in 1942. His PhD thesis was on the early Middle High German Anegenge; his main work for his Habilitation, which wa...
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Thutmose IV
1500 BC - 1400 BC (100 years)
Thutmose IV was the 8th Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled in approximately the 14th century BC. His prenomen or royal name, Menkheperure, means "Established in forms is Re." He was the son of Amenhotep II and Tiaa.
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Alexander Mackenzie
1838 - 1898 (60 years)
Alexander Mackenzie, was a Scottish historian, author, magazine editor and politician. He was born on a croft, in Gairloch. He had little opportunity for education and initially earned his living as a labourer and ploughman. In 1861 he became apprenticed in the clothes trade selling Scottish cloth in Colchester. In 1869 he settled in Inverness, where he and his brother set up a clothes shop in Clach na Cudainn House. From his business premises he derived his nickname 'Clach na Cudainn' or simply 'Clach'. He later became an editor and publisher of the Celtic Magazine, and the Scottish Highlander.
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Benedykt Zientara
1928 - 1983 (55 years)
Benedykt Zientara was a Polish historian. He had been working at the Warsaw University since 1950. Zientara defended his PhD thesis under supervision of Marian Małowist. In 1961 he passed his habilitation. In 1971 he gained the title of professor.
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Ericus Olai
1401 - 1486 (85 years)
Ericus Olai was a Swedish theologian and historian. He served as a professor of theology at Uppsala University and dean at Uppsala Cathedral. Ericus Olai was the author of the chronicle Chronica regni Gothorum and was an early proponent of Gothicismus.
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Johann Jakob Hottinger
1783 - 1860 (77 years)
Johann Jakob Hottinger was a Swiss historian. He was a great-grandson of philologist Johann Heinrich Hottinger . He studied theology at the Carolinum in Zürich, receiving his ordination in 1804. Afterwards, he taught classes in an upper Töchterschule and at an art school in Zürich. In 1833 he became an associate professor, then from 1844 to 1859, was a full professor of history at the University of Zürich.
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M. H. Krishna
1892 - 1947 (55 years)
Mysore Hatti Krishna Iyengar was an Indian historian, archaeologist, epigraphist and authority in Indian numismatics. He pioneered the new field of Indology involving the study of Indian culture, history, music and traditions from a historical perspective. He is credited with the discovery of one of the oldest Kannada inscriptions, the Halmidi inscription, dating back to 350 A. D. He also discovered the remains of the city of Isila near Brahmagiri during his excavations at Chandravalli, Chitradurga. The forgotten tomb of Shahaji was traced by M. H. Krishna during his years at the Mysore Archaeological Department.
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Franz Boll
1805 - 1875 (70 years)
Franz Christian Boll was a Lutheran theologian and historian. He was the father of physiologist Franz Christian Boll , and the brother of naturalist Ernst Boll , with whom he collaborated throughout his career.
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Hugo Willrich
1867 - 1950 (83 years)
Hugo Willrich was a German teacher and classical historian of the Hellenistic era and Roman era. He was also a scholar of Hellenistic Judaism, albeit from a secular German Protestant perspective. He was born in Pomerania, but spent most of his life living in Göttingen. He eventually became a firm anti-Semite who advocated harsh measures against German Jews, and was active in organizing local anti-Semitic groups in Göttingen.
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Robert Flacelière
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Robert Flacelière was a scholar of Classical Greek. He was educated at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, the Lycée Henri IV and the École Normale Supérieure. From 1925 to 1930, he was a member of the French School in Athens and from 1932-1948 a Professor of the Faculty of Letters at University of Lyon. He was then appointed to the Chair of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Paris, a post he held until 1963 when he was appointed Director of the École Normale Supérieure.
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George Edward Ellis
1814 - 1894 (80 years)
George Edward Ellis was a Unitarian clergyman and historian. Biography Ellis was born and died in Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1833, and then from the Divinity School in 1836. After two years' travel in Europe, he was ordained, on 11 March 1840, as pastor of the Harvard Unitarian Church, Charlestown, Massachusetts. From 1857 until 1863, he was a professor of systematic theology in Harvard Divinity School. In 1864 he delivered before the Lowell Institute a course of lectures on the “Evidences of Christianity,” in 1871 a course on the “Provincial History of Massachusetts,” and in 1879 a course on “The Red Man and the White Man in North America” .
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Hermann Greive
1935 - 1984 (49 years)
Hermann Greive was a West German professor of Jewish studies. He was shot dead by a former student with mental issues. Life Hermann Greive was born in Walstedde, a small town in the Warendorf district, a short distance to the east of Münster. He received his doctorate in theology in 1967 and his habilitation from Cologne University.
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David Cassel
1818 - 1893 (75 years)
David Cassel was a German historian and Jewish theologian. Life Cassel was born in Gross-Glogau, a city in Prussian Silesia with a large Jewish community. He graduated from its gymnasium. His brother was Selig Cassel.
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Otakar Odložilík
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Otakar Odložilík was a Czechoslovak historian and archivist who wrote numerous books and papers on the history of Protestantism in Bohemia and Moravia. His scholarly interests included the history of the Hussite movement and the Unity of the Brethren, and he published studies of Jan Milíč, Andrzej Rej and the history of Charles University in Prague.
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C. R. Cheney
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Christopher Robert Cheney was a medieval historian, noted for his work on the medieval English church and the relations of the papacy with England, particularly in the age of Pope Innocent III. Life Cheney was born on 20 December 1906 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, to parents George Gardner Cheney and Christina Stapleton Bateman. He was educated at Banbury County School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in 1928.
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Caspar Abel
1676 - 1763 (87 years)
Caspar Abel was a German theologian, historian and poet. Abel was born in Hindenburg in der Altmark, the son of a pastor, and gained his theological education in Braunschweig and Helmstedt. In 1696 he became rector in Osterburg, in 1698 at the Johannisschule in Halberstadt. In 1718 he became pastor in Westdorf near Aschersleben where he died in 1763. His son Joachim Gottwalt Abel also became a pastor.
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Tom Peete Cross
1879 - 1951 (72 years)
Tom Peete Cross was an American Celticist and folklorist. Education and career Cross did his undergraduate education at Hampden–Sydney College, receiving his B.A. in 1899. He went on to Harvard University to pursue an M.A. and Ph.D. . After receiving his Ph.D., he spent a year studying in Dublin, Ireland, then returned to the United States in 1910 to take up a position as an instructor at Harvard. In 1911 he became the head of the English department at Sweet Briar College. Following that, he spent his next year at the University of North Carolina, and in 1913 became the chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.
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Dafydd ap Gruffydd
1238 - 1283 (45 years)
Dafydd ap Gruffydd , was Prince of Wales from 11 December 1282 until his execution on 3 October 1283 on the orders of King Edward I of England. He was the last native Prince of Wales before the conquest of Wales by Edward I in 1283 and English rule in Wales that followed, until Owain Glyndŵr held the title during the Welsh Revolt of 1400–1415.
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Heinrich Schreiber
1793 - 1872 (79 years)
Heinrich Schreiber was a German Catholic theologian and historian, known for his writings about the city of Freiburg. He studied at the University of Freiburg and in 1815 received his ordination as a priest. Later on, he taught classes at the gymnasium in his hometown, then worked as a librarian at the university. In 1821 he obtained his habilitation, and five years later became a professor of moral theology at the university. In 1836 he switched from the theological to the philosophical faculty, and thus gave lectures in German literature and ethics.
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Wolfgang Michael
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Wolfgang Michael was a German historian. He specialised in British history and was Professor of History at the University of Freiburg. Works Cromwell .'The Treaties of Partition and the Spanish Succession' in A. W. Ward, G. W. Prothero and Stanley Leathers , The Cambridge Modern History, Volume V: The Age of Louis XIV , pp. 372–400.England under George I: The Beginnings of the Hanoverian Dynasty .England under George I: The Quadruple Alliance .
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Hieronymus Megiser
1553 - 1618 (65 years)
Hieronymus Megiser was a German polymath, linguist and historian. Career From 1571 he studied at the University of Tübingen, and was a favourite student of the humanist and philologist Nicodemus Frischlin. In 1577 he graduated there with a master's degree. In 1581 he moved as a private tutor to Ljubljana . From 1582 he studied jurisprudence in Padua and was then active as a private tutor of young noblemen from Croatia and Styria. In 1588/89 he travelled to Italy and Malta, and in 1591 to North Germany, the Netherlands and England.
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Agostino Mascardi
1590 - 1640 (50 years)
Agostino Mascardi was an Italian rhetorician, historian and poet. Expelled from the Jesuit Order by his superiors, Mascardi pursued a successful career as a secretary for various important figures, and became a renowned writer and professor of rhetoric at the Sapienza University of Rome. He was a member of several learned societies and wrote a seminal treatise, "Dell'arte historica" advocating history as a powerful instrument of ethical and religious persuasion and largely focusing on the interplay between truth and believability.
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Olof Palme
1884 - 1918 (34 years)
Olof Palme , was a Swedish historian and the organizer of the voluntary Swedish Brigade in the 1918 Finnish Civil War. He was the uncle of Olof Palme, the prime minister of Sweden, who was murdered in 1986.
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Heinrich Suter
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Heinrich Suter was a historian of science specializing in Islamic mathematics and astronomy. Education and career After graduation from the Industrie Schule at Zürich, Suter studied in Berlin and at ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich. He received in 1871 from the University of Zürich his Promovierung with dissertation Geschichte der mathematischen Wissenschaften von den ältesten Zeiten bis Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts. His dissertation was published in 1872 as a book and was subsequently translated into Russian.
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Ignaz Jastrow
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
Ignaz Jastrow was a German economist and historian. Biography He was educated at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, and Göttingen. He became a university docent at Berlin in 1885 and was Leopold von Ranke's assistant in historical work. In 1904 he pursued industrial investigations in the United States, and in 1905 became professor of Administrative Science at Berlin. One daughter, Elisabeth Jastrow, was a classical archaeologist; the other Beate Jastrow Hahn, was an accomplished horticulturalist and author of 5 books. His granddaughter, Cornelia Oberlander was a highly respected landscape ...
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Charles Terlinden
1878 - 1972 (94 years)
Charles Terlinden was a Belgian historian, professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, and papal chamberlain. Life Terlinden was born in Schaerbeek on 6 July 1878. He studied law at Saint-Louis University Faculty in Brussels, and at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Louvain. After completing a doctorate in law, he began historical studies under Alfred Cauchie, with a thesis on Pope Clement IX and the War of Candia . He followed this in 1906 with a second thesis on William I of the Netherlands and the Catholic Church in Belgium, making him a triple doctor.
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Édouard Perroy
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Édouard Perroy was a French medieval historian and member of the French Resistance. Life Born in Grenoble, Perroy passed his agrégation in 1924, and was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow from 1924 to 1934. He defended his thesis on the religious policy of Richard II in 1934. The following year, he was appointed maître de conférences at Lille University, where he became a professor, before moving to the Sorbonne as a professor in 1949, retiring in 1971.
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Thomas Smart Hughes
1786 - 1847 (61 years)
Thomas Smart Hughes was an English cleric, theologian and historian. Life Born at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, on 25 August 1786, he was the eldest surviving son of Hugh Hughes, curate of Nuneaton, and rector of Hardwick, Northamptonshire. He received his early education from John Spencer Cobbold, first at Nuneaton grammar school, and later as a private pupil at Wilby, Suffolk. In 1801 he was sent to Shrewsbury School, then under the head-mastership of Dr. Samuel Butler, and in October 1803 entered as a pensioner of St John's College, Cambridge. His university career was distinguished. Besides col...
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Henry Cotton
1789 - 1879 (90 years)
Ven. Henry Cotton was an English Anglican divine, ecclesiastical historian and author. Life Cotton born in Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, the son of Rev. William C. Cotton, vicar of Chicheley. His mother was Charlotte Elizabeth Barrett, daughter of Rev. Thomas Barrett, Vicar of Stanton Harcourt and Southleigh.
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Andreas Buchner
1776 - 1854 (78 years)
Joseph Andreas Buchner was a German historian. He was the author of a highly regarded multi-volume work on Bavarian history. He studied theology at the Georgianum in Munich, and was ordained as a priest in 1799. From 1804 he taught classes in philosophy at the lyceum in Dillingen, then in 1811 relocated as a professor of history to the lyceum in Regensburg. In 1825 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and during the following year, was named a professor of Bavarian history at the University of Munich.
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Victor Goldschmidt
1914 - 1981 (67 years)
Victor Goldschmidt was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. Born in Germany, he came to France in 1933. Before the war he studied at the Sorbonne and at the École pratique des hautes études under Henri Marguerite.
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Ioan D. Caragiani
1841 - 1921 (80 years)
Ioan D. Caragiani was a Romanian folklorist and translator. He was one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy. Caragiani was an Aromanian.
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Johann Philipp Palthen
1672 - 1710 (38 years)
Johann Philipp Palthen was a Western Pomeranian historian and philologist. Life Palthen was born in Wolgast, a port in what was then Swedish Pomerania. His father was Johann Palthen, a senior official at the court, and his mother, born Dorothea Hoppe, also came from one of the town's leading families. The boy attended the Gymnasium in Greifswald, moving on to Greifswald University where he studied between 1688 and 1691.
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Stepanos Nazarian
1812 - 1879 (67 years)
Stepanos Nazarian was an Armenian-Russian publisher, enlightener, historian of literature and orientalist. Biography He was born in the family of a priest. Graduated from the department of philosophy in the University of Tartu in 1840. In 1849 he became a professor of Persian and Arab literature in Moscow in the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages. He published a number of scholarly works and earned his doctoral dissertation on a work analyzing Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
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Jean-François Lemarignier
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
Jean-François Marie Joseph Louis Lemarignier was a French medieval historian. Biography Born into a legal family in Paris in 1908, Lemarignier graduated with a licenciate in law in 1929, before entering the École des Chartes on the advice of Paul Fournier. Graduating archivist-paleographer in 1933. He became librarian-archivist at the Conseil d'État in 1934. After military service in 1939–1940, he passed the agrégation in legal history in 1941.
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