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,
#8651
Gloria Griffen Cline
1929 - 1973 (44 years)
Gloria Griffen Cline was an American historian of the Great Basin and professor at Sacramento State College. Biography She was born in San Francisco to parents Robert A. and Grace G. Griffen. In 1931 the Griffens moved to Reno, Nevada, where Gloria attended local grammar schools and Reno High School, graduating in 1947. She received her BA and MA in history from the University of Nevada in 1951, before going on to complete her Ph.D. in history at the University of California in 1958. She adapted her dissertation into the book Exploring the Great Basin .
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Peter Friedrich Arpe
1682 - 1740 (58 years)
Peter Friedrich Arpe was a German lawyer, historian and legal writer. He was also the founder of a huge collection of objects and manuscripts on the history of Schleswig-Holstein, though his collection also included banned theological works. He also wrote and collected under the Latinised form of his name, Petrus Fridericus Arpius.
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Anna Dean Kepper
1938 - 1983 (45 years)
Anna Dean Kepper was a historian and a curator of Nevada history and the history of Las Vegas who helped save historic structures in that city. Early life and education Born in Seattle, Washington, Kepper received master's degrees in both museology and American folk culture from the State University of New York at Oneonta. She earned a third master's degree in public administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas after moving to Las Vegas in 1973.
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Louise Brown
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Louise Brown was an American historian of Britain. Early life Louise Fargo Brown was born in 1878 in Buffalo, New York and received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1903. She was a member of Alpha Phi Women's Fraternity.
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Dominicus Baudius
1561 - 1613 (52 years)
Dominicus Baudius, a Latinised form of Dominique Baudier, was a French Neo-Latin poet, scholar and historian. From 1603 to 1613 he was a teacher at the University of Leiden. Life Baudius was born in a calvinistic family in the Southern Netherlands in Lille. His original name was probably Dominique Baudier, though sources only show his Latinised name Dominicus Baudius. As a result of the arrival of the new regent of the low countries, the Duke of Alba in 1568, Baudius moved to Aachen along with his parents and sister. After finishing at the local school he proceeded to study theology first in Leiden from 1578 to 1579 and then in Geneva in 1581.
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Adolf Leschnitzer
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Adolf Leschnitzer was a German-American writer-researcher, historian and teacher, specialising in Jewish and German studies. Biography Adolf Friedrich Leschnitzer was born in Posen before 19451864–1934secondary schoolsecondary school
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David Chytraeus
1531 - 1600 (69 years)
David Chytraeus or Chyträus was a German Lutheran theologian, reformer and historian. He was a disciple of Melancthon. He was born at Ingelfingen. His real surname was Kochhafe, which in Classical Greek is χύτρα, from where he derived the Latinized pseudonym "Chyträus".
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Heriger of Lobbes
925 - 1007 (82 years)
Herigerus was a Benedictine monk, often known as Heriger of Lobbes for serving as abbot of the abbey of Lobbes between 990 and 1007. Remembered for his writings as theologian and historian, Herigerus was a teacher to numerous scholars. His biography describes him as "skilled in the art of music", though no music theory treatise survives and neither do the two antiphons and one hymn attributed to him.
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A. C. F. Beales
1905 - 1974 (69 years)
Arthur Charles Frederick Beales was an historian. He was educated at King's College London, where his mentors included F. J. C. Hearnshaw and Eileen Power. Beales spent all but four years of his career at King's; for three years he was a schoolmaster and he worked for University College, Swansea, for a year. From 1964 until his retirement in 1972 he was Professor of History at King's. In 1935 he converted to Catholicism.
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Patrick Cumming
1741 - 1820 (79 years)
Patrick Cumming FRSE was a professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Glasgow, philologist and joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was, at that time, the longest served of any known Scottish professor.
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Reinhard H. Luthin
1905 - 1962 (57 years)
Reinhard Henry Luthin was a historian best known for his contribution to the study of President Abraham Lincoln. He was a professor of history at Columbia University, with a lifelong interest in facts regarding Lincoln's life and times.
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Friedrich Uhlhorn
1894 - 1978 (84 years)
Friedrich Uhlhorn was an honorary professor at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, whose scientific focus was on the history of the State of Hesse and was also known for his work outside Hesse. His special scientific interest was mainly focused on the problems of historical cartography. In collaboration with Edmund Ernst Stengel, he published the Geschichtlichen Atlas von Hessen, which is considered his major work. He also wrote the article Die deutschen Territorien. A: The West, which deals with the West German regional history. Likewise he was responsible as editor for the by Bruno Gebhardt.
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David Harris Willson
1901 - 1973 (72 years)
David Harris Willson was an American historian and professor who specialized in the history of 17th-century England. Early life and education Willson's progenitors bearing the Willson name first arrived from England in 1638, settling in Dedham, Massachusetts. Another English progenitor, John Harris, Sr., founded Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. David Harris Willson's parents were Thomas Harris Willson and Amelia Shryrock Willson. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Marion Thompson Wright
1904 - 1962 (58 years)
Marion Thompson Wright was an African-American scholar and activist. In 1940, Wright became the first African-American woman in the United States to earn her Ph.D. in history. Early life Marion Manola Thompson Wright was born in East Orange, New Jersey, on September 12, 1902, to Minnie Thompson and Moses R. Thompson. Wright was the youngest of four children, and had two older twin sisters and a brother who died at a young age.
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Mary Flug Handlin
1913 - 1976 (63 years)
Mary Flug Handlin was an American historian who was the editor of the Harvard University Center for the Study of the History of Liberty in America from 1958 to 1976. She co-authored six books on U.S. politics and society with her husband, Oscar Handlin.
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Ralph Pugh
1910 - 1982 (72 years)
Ralph Bernard Pugh was an historian and editor of the Victoria History of the Counties of England from 1949 to 1977. He was also a professor of English history at the University of London, a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, a teacher of palaeography, and an expert on medieval penology.
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Arthur McCandless Wilson
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Arthur McCandless Wilson was a professor of biography and government. He is known primarily for his two-volume biography of Diderot. Wilson graduated in 1922 with A.B. from South Dakota's Yankton College. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1926 with B.A., in 1927 with B. Litt., and in 1931 with M.A. . He married Julia Mary Tolford in 1927. At Harvard University he graduated with M.A. in 1930 and Ph.D. in 1933. In Dartmouth College's department of biography, he was appointed in 1933 instructor, in 1936 assistant professor, and in 1940 full professor, retiring in 1967 as professor emeritus.
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Keith Hancock
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Sir William Keith Hancock, , also known as W. K. Hancock, was a prominent Australian historian and academic. Hancock was an Anglican and keen admirer of the British Empire. Early life and education He was born in Melbourne, Colony of Victoria, the son of Archdeacon William Hancock. At the age of nine, he won the Royal Humane Society's medal for rescuing another child from drowning in the Mitchell River. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar School and later the University of Melbourne where he was resident at Trinity College from 1917, winning the Perry Scholarship, Trinity's most prestigious award.
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Vincent Desborough
1914 - 1978 (64 years)
Vincent Robin d'Arba Desborough, FBA, FSA was an English historian and archaeologist. His is credited with discovering the Greek Dark Ages. Life and career Born on 19 July 1914 at Tunbridge Wells, Desborough's father was Latvian and his mother British. He was schooled in France and Switzerland before attending St Augustine's in Ramsgate and Downside School. He then studied classics at New College, Oxford, from 1932, graduating in the second class in 1936. He completed the BLitt at Oxford under Sir John Myres's supervision. In 1937, he was awarded the Macmillan Studentship by the British Schoo...
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Julia de Lacy Mann
1891 - 1985 (94 years)
Julia de Lacy Mann was an English economic historian. She was principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, for 27 years, from 1928 to 1955. Early life and education Julia de Lacy Mann was born in London on 22 August 1891, the daughter of James Saumarez Mann, a classical scholar, and Amy Bowman Mann, the daughter of a classical scholar. Julia's only sibling, James Saumarez Mann, was killed by a sniper in Iraq in 1920.
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