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 …
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List of the most influential people in History,
#901
Hans Eberhard Mayer
#61240
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Hans Eberhard Mayer was a German medieval historian, specializing in the Crusades. Career Hans Eberhard Mayer is an international expert on the history of the Crusades. He is currently the Professor of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Kiel. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1978. He was honored in the work Montjoie: studies in Crusade history in honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer .
Go to Profile#902
Lisa Jardine
#6931
Overall Influence
1944 - 2015 (71 years)
Lisa Anne Jardine was a British historian of the early modern period. From 1990 to 2011, she was Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies and director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary University of London. From 2008 to January 2014 she was Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority .
Go to Profile#903
John A. Garraty
#25949
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
John Arthur Garraty was an American historian and biographer. He specialized largely in American political and economic history. Garraty earned an undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College in 1941 and completed his doctorate at Columbia University in 1948. During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine as a swimming instructor. His 1953 biography, Henry Cabot Lodge , was the first scholarly and authoritative life of the Massachusetts politician Henry Cabot Lodge ; a notable feature of that book was the set of footnotes written at Garraty's invitation by Lodge's grandson, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Go to Profile#904
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
#16308
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall was an American historian who focused on the history of slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America, Louisiana , Africa, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. Discovering extensive French and Spanish colonial documents related to the slave trade in Louisiana, she wrote Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century , studied the ethnic origins of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana, as well as the process of creolization, which created new cultures. She changed the way in which several related disciplines are researched...
Go to Profile#905
John S. Koliopoulos
#56500
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
John S. Koliopoulos was a Greek historian, born in the village of Votani, Kastoria in 1942. He was the author of Plundered loyalties: Axis occupation and civil strife in Greek West Macedonia, 1941-1949, Brigands with a Cause and other books on Greek history, and co-author of Greece: A Modern Sequel with Thanos Veremis, Professor of Political History at Athens University and President of the board of ELIAMEP.
Go to Profile#906
Luciano Canfora
#22086
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Luciano Canfora is an Italian classicist and historian. Born in Bari, Canfora obtained his first degree in Roman History in 1964 at Pisa University. He has since been Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of Bari. His specialty is ancient libraries and his book The Vanished Library, which is about the Library of Alexandria, has been translated into some 15 languages.
Go to Profile#907
Warren I. Cohen
#38304
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Warren I. Cohen is an American historian specializing in the diplomatic history of the United States. He is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Cohen formerly served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1984.
Go to Profile#908
Edward J. Larson
#22249
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Edward John Larson is an American historian and legal scholar. He is university professor of history and holds the Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. He was formerly Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law and Richard B. Russell Professor of American History at the University of Georgia. He continues to serve as a senior fellow of the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education, and is currently a professor at Pepperdine School of Law, where he teaches several classes including Property for the 1Ls.
Go to Profile#909
Andrei Lankov
#4632
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov is a Russian scholar of Asia and a specialist in Korean studies and Director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of NK News and NK Pro. Early life and education Lankov was born on 26 July 1963, in Leningrad, Soviet Union . He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University in 1986 and 1989, respectively. He also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University in 1985.
Go to Profile#910
Naomi Oreskes
#5269
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#911
Emma Donoghue
#7204
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Go to Profile#912
Russel Ward
#27159
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Russel Braddock Ward AM was an Australian historian best known for writing The Australian Legend , an examination of the development of the "Australian character", which was awarded the Ernest Scott Prize.
Go to Profile#913
Jack N. Rakove
#15231
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Jack Norman Rakove is an American historian, author, and professor at Stanford University. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Biography Rakove was born in Chicago to Political Science Professor Milton L. Rakove and his wife, Shirley. The elder Rakove taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Barat College .
Go to Profile#914
David A. Hounshell
#9583
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
David Allen Hounshell is an American academic. He is the David M. Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Department of History, and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work of the history of research and development and industrial research in the United States, particularly at DuPont.
Go to Profile#915
Robin Blackburn
#9874
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Robin Blackburn is a British historian, a former editor of New Left Review , and emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University. Background Blackburn was educated at Hurstpierpoint College, Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Between 2001 and 2010 he was distinguished visiting professor of historical studies at The New School in New York City. He is an emeritus professor in the department of sociology at Essex University. He has been a regular contributor to New Left Review since 1962.
Go to Profile#916
Wm. Roger Louis
#25967
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
William Roger Louis CBE FBA , commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire, a former president of the American Historical Association , a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.
Go to Profile#917
Kathryn Hughes
#13037
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Kathryn Hughes is a British academic, journalist and biographer. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University and the University of East Anglia ; her doctorate in Victorian history was developed into her first book, The Victorian Governess. She is the Director of Creative Non-Fiction at the University of East Anglia,
Go to Profile#918
Donald Bloxham
#33921
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Donald Bloxham FRHistS is a Professor of Modern History, specialising in genocide, war crimes and other mass atrocities studies. He is the editor of the Journal of Holocaust Education. He completed his undergraduate studies at Keele and postgraduate studies at Southampton, where he received PhD in history. He worked as Research Director of the London-based Holocaust Educational Trust. He is Richard Pares Professor of European History at the University of Edinburgh, having previously been lecturer of Twentieth Century History at the university.
Go to Profile#919
Nikolaus Wachsmann
#36319
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Nikolaus Daniel Wachsmann is a professor of modern European history in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Academic career Wachsmann was born in Munich. He graduated from the London School of Economics with a Bachelor of Science degree, from the University of Cambridge with a taught Master of Philosophy degree, and from the University of London with a Doctor of Philosophy degree. His doctoral thesis, which he completed in 2001, was titled "Reform and Repression: Prisons and Penal Policy in Germany, 1918–1939".
Go to Profile#920
Dai Yi
#19743
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Dai Yi is a Chinese historian who primarily focuses on the Qing dynasty's history. He is a professor at Renmin University of China. He is also the honorary director of the university's Qing dynasty's history institute as well as a doctoral student supervisor. Additionally, he is a member of the Communist Party of China.
Go to Profile#921
Daniel Lord Smail
#25722
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Daniel Lord Smail is Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History at Harvard University, he teaches the history of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600 and in special the French city of Marseille. He also studies deep history and History of Debt. He was a featured speaker at Beyond Belief @ University of San Diego, sponsored by The Science Network.
Go to Profile#922
Hellmut Diwald
#40620
Overall Influence
1924 - 1993 (69 years)
Hellmut Diwald was a German historian and Professor of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1965 to 1985. He was originally from southern Moravia, the son of an Austrian engineer and a Czech mother, and went to school in Prague before the family relocated to Nuremberg in Bavaria in 1938. During World War II, he served in the German Army. After the war, he went on to study mechanical engineering in Nuremberg before he studied philosophy, German and history at the universities of Hamburg and Erlangen. He earned a doctorate in history in 1952 and completed his Habilitation in 1958.
Go to Profile#923
John-Paul Himka
#24591
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
John-Paul Himka is an American-Canadian historian and retired professor of history of the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Himka received his BA in Byzantine-Slavonic Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 1971 and 1977 respectively. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation was Polish and Ukrainian Socialism: Austria, 1867–1890. As a historian Himka was a Marxist in the 1970s–80s, but became influenced by postmodernism in the 1990s. In 2012 he defined his methodology in history as "eclectic".
Go to Profile#924
Bryan Ward-Perkins
#36034
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Bryan Ward-Perkins is an archaeologist and historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the transitional period between those two eras, an historical sub-field also known as Late Antiquity. Ward-Perkins is a fellow and tutor in history at Trinity College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#925
Mamadou Diouf
#13901
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies, the Director of Institute for African Studies, and a professor of Western African history at Columbia University. He also serves as director of the Institute of African Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and has been instrumental in its recent reorganization. Diouf holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Prior to teaching at Columbia, he taught at the University of Michigan and before that at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. Diouf also serves on...
Go to Profile#926
Pat Thane
#26266
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Pat Thane is a professor of Contemporary History at King's College London as well as a general historian. She teaches on the MA in Politics and Contemporary History: modules on Welfare and the State in Britain 1900–1945, 1945–present and contributes to modules on politics and society since . She was the Leverhulme Professor of Contemporary British History in 1998–2001 at the Institute of Historical Research and a professor at the University of Sussex from 1994 until 2001.
Go to Profile#927
Alan Axelrod
#20728
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Alan Axelrod is a prolific author of history, business and management books. As of October 2018, he had written more than 150 books. Axelrod resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Axelrod received his doctorate in English from the University of Iowa in 1979, specializing in the literature and culture of colonial America and the early republic of the United States. He has taught at Lake Forest College and Furman University, worked as a publishing executive, and has been a consultant to historical museums, cultural institutions, television's Civil War Journal, the WB Network, and the Discovery Channel.
Go to Profile#928
Manfred Berg
#36463
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Manfred Berg is a German historian who serves as the Curt Engelhorn Chair in American History at Heidelberg University. He has also served as Heidelberg University's dean of faculty. He previously taught at the Free University of Berlin and served at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C.
Go to Profile#929
Thongchai Winichakul
#12092
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Thongchai Winichakul , is a Thai historian and researcher of Southeast Asian studies. He is professor emeritus of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a chief senior researcher at the Japanese Institute of Developing Economies. He was the president for the Association for Asian Studies in 2013. He has had a major impact on the concept of Thai nationalism.
Go to Profile#930
William C. Davis
#19214
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
William Charles "Jack" Davis is an American historian who was a professor of history at Virginia Tech and the former director of programs at that school's Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. Specializing in the American Civil War, Davis has written more than 40 books on that subject and other aspects of early southern U.S. history, such as the Texas Revolution. He is the only three-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Prize for Confederate history and was awarded the Jules and Frances Landry Award for Southern History. His book Lone Star Rising has been called "the best one-volume history of...
Go to Profile#931
Thomas P. Hughes
#8514
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Thomas Parke Hughes was an American historian of technology. He was an emeritus professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor at MIT and Stanford. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1953.
Go to Profile#932
Christopher Duggan
#20533
Overall Influence
1957 - 2015 (58 years)
Christopher John Hesketh Duggan was a British historian and academic. He specialised in the political, social and cultural history of modern Italy. He began his career as a research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and then at All Souls College, Oxford. In 1987, he moved to the University of Reading where he remained until his death. He was Professor of Modern Italian History from 2002.
Go to Profile#933
Wendy Davies
#40209
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Wendy Elizabeth Davies is an emeritus professor of history at University College London, England. Her research focuses on rural societies in early medieval Europe, focusing on the regions of Wales, Brittany and Iberia.
Go to Profile#934
Tulio Halperín Donghi
#13473
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Tulio Halperin Donghi was an Argentine historian. After earning a Ph.D in history and a law degree at the University of Buenos Aires, he taught at the institution's Faculty of Arts from 1955 to 1966. Halperin Donghi then moved to the National University of the Litoral, where he was named dean. He later taught at Oxford University, and became a faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley in 1972.
Go to Profile#935
Kauko Pirinen
#37457
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
Kauko Antero Pirinen , was a Finnish historian, professor in church history at Helsinki University from 1961, and professor in general church history 1963–80. Pirinen was one of the leading 20th-century historians in Finland and one of the country's excellent church historians. His specialty was Finland's medieval history, Savonian and Karelian history, and church law.
Go to Profile#936
Barrington Moore Jr.
#9747
Overall Influence
1913 - 2005 (92 years)
Barrington Moore Jr. was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore. He is well-known for his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy , a comparative study of modernization in Britain, France, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India. The book puts forth a neo-Marxist argument that class structures and class alliances at particular points in time can account for the kinds of social revolutions that occurred and did not occur in those countries, putting some countries on a path to democracy, whereas others were put on a path to authoritarianism or communism.
Go to Profile#937
Wallace Terry
#17282
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
Wallace Houston Terry, II was an African-American journalist and oral historian, best known for his book about black soldiers in Vietnam, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War , which served as a basis for the 1995 crime thriller Dead Presidents and the 2020 Spike Lee movie Da 5 Bloods.
Go to Profile#938
Allen Weinstein
#15305
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Allen Weinstein was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. He served as the Archivist of the United States from February 16, 2005, until his resignation on December 19, 2008. After his resignation, he returned to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems as a senior strategist and was a visiting faculty member at the University of Maryland.
Go to Profile#939
Sergio Villalobos
#20031
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Sergio Villalobos Rivera is a Chilean historian, and Chilean National History Award in 1992. Among his most significant works is the Historia del pueblo Chileno .
Go to Profile#940
John Henry Coatsworth
#16582
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
John Henry Coatsworth is an American historian of Latin America and the former provost of Columbia University. From 2012 until June 30, 2019, Coatsworth served as Columbia provost. From 2007 until February 2012 Coatsworth was the dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs , and served concurrently as interim provost beginning in 2011. Coatsworth is a scholar of Latin American economic, social and international history, with an emphasis on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.
Go to Profile#941
Carl Benedikt Frey
#3119
Overall Influence
Carl Benedikt Frey is a Swedish-German economist and economic historian. He is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Fellow of Mansfield College, University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School.
Go to Profile#942
Paul Bew
#15622
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew , is a British historian from Northern Ireland and a life peer. He has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991.
Go to Profile#943
Mahesh Rangarajan
#47054
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Mahesh Rangarajan is a researcher, author and historian with a special interest in environmental history and colonial history of British and contemporary India. He has taught Environmental Studies and History at Ashoka University and Krea University, and served as the Vice Chancellor of Krea University. He appears frequently on Indian television as a political analyst. He is also a columnist in the print media writing on wildlife conservation, political and environmental issues. In 2010, he chaired the Elephant Task Force of the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. The Task Force was ...
Go to Profile#944
Tvrtko Jakovina
#25963
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Tvrtko Jakovina is a Croatian historian. Jakovina is a full time professor at the Department of History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. Biography Early life Tvrtko Jakovina was born in the eastern Croatian town of Požega where he finished elementary school and high school, and also completed his compulsory military service.
Go to Profile#945
Lucian Boia
#22582
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian. He is mostly known for his debunking of historical myths about Romania, for purging mainstream Romanian history from the deformations due to ideological propaganda. I.e. as a fighter against pseudohistory.
Go to Profile#946
Holger Herwig
#20357
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Dr. Holger H. Herwig is a German-born Canadian historian and professor. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 and The Origins of World War I, written with Richard F. Hamilton. His research focuses on World War I and German military and political history. Dr. Herwig holds a dual position at the University of Calgary as Professor of History and as Canada Research Chair in the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.
Go to Profile#947
Gregory S. Aldrete
#36127
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Gregory S. Aldrete is a Professor Emeritus of history and humanistic studies at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. He was the Frankenthal Professor of History and Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, where he had been teaching since 1995. His emphasis is on rhetoric and oratory, floods in Rome, ancient Greek and Roman history, and daily life in the Roman world. He earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of Michigan. Aldrete speaks Latin, ancient Greek, Spanish, and can read texts in Italian, French, and...
Go to Profile#948
Catherine Clinton
#48269
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Catherine Clinton is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She specializes in American History, with an emphasis on the history of the South, the American Civil War, American women, and African American history.
Go to Profile#949
Robert N. Proctor
#5687
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Robert Neel Proctor is an American historian of science and Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, where he is also Professor by courtesy of Pulmonary Medicine. While a professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, he became the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry.
Go to Profile#950
William V. Harris
#44616
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
William Vernon Harris was the William R. Shepherd Professor of History at Columbia University until December 2017. He is the author of numerous groundbreaking monographs on the Greco-Roman world, he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2008.
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