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,
#1301
Arif Dirlik
#15673
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Arif Dirlik was a Turkish-American historian who published on historiography and political ideology in modern China, as well as issues in modernity, globalization, and post-colonial criticism. Dirlik received a BSc in Electrical Engineering at Robert College, Istanbul in 1964 and a PhD in History at the University of Rochester in 1973.
Go to Profile#1302
Thomas Charles-Edwards
#41490
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Mowbray Charles-Edwards is an emeritus academic at the University of Oxford. He formerly held the post of Jesus Professor of Celtic and is a Professorial Fellow at Jesus College. Biography He was educated at Ampleforth College before reading History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied for a doctorate after taking the Diploma in Celtic Studies under Sir Idris Foster. He studied at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies from 1967 to 1969. He then was a junior research fellow and then a fellow in history at Corpus Christi College before being appointed to the chair of ...
Go to Profile#1303
Christian Gerlach
#25912
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Hans Christian Gerlach is professor of Modern History at the University of Bern. Gerlach is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Genocide Research and author of multiple books dealing with the Hunger Plan, the Holocaust, and genocide.
Go to Profile#1304
Dorothy Thompson
#27322
Overall Influence
1923 - 2011 (88 years)
Dorothy Katharine Gane Thompson was a social historian, a leading expert on the Chartist movement. She and her famous husband E. P. Thompson became well-known in left-wing intellectual circles. Early life Dorothy Towers was born in Greenwich, south-east London, daughter of professional musicians Reginald and Kathleen Towers, who met at the Royal Academy of Music. To supplement their income, they were teachers and ran shops selling musical instruments, and later televisions. They were supporters, but not members, of the Labour Party. Her paternal grandfather, a shoemaker, had settled in London.
Go to Profile#1305
Amy S. Greenberg
#19094
Overall Influence
Amy S. Greenberg is an American historian, and Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Women's Studies, at Pennsylvania State University. Life She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned her PhD at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#1306
Alice Kessler-Harris
#52030
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Alice Kessler-Harris is R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University, and former president of the Organization of American Historians, and specialist in the American labor and comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.
Go to Profile#1307
Morton Horwitz
#16684
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Morton J. Horwitz is an American legal historian and law professor at Harvard Law School. The recent past dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, relates that during her time at law school, students often nicknamed him as "Mort the Tort" since he taught the first-year subject Torts.
Go to Profile#1308
José María Jover
#48770
Overall Influence
1920 - 2006 (86 years)
José María Jover Zamora was a Spanish historian. Career He was the most influential figure in developing contemporary Spanish historiography. In 1949, he became professor of "Universal History of the Modern Age" and "General Cultural History" at the University of Valencia. Later, he moved to the Complutense University of Madrid. In the mid-1960s, Jover was attracted to the new historiographical trends in Europe. The Annales School and the Catalán historian Jaume Vicens Vives were his major influences. Among his students are many famous historians, such as Javier Tusell, Elena Hernández Sandoi...
Go to Profile#1309
Luisa Passerini
#44150
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Luisa Passerini is an Italian cultural historian. Formerly Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turin, she is an external Professor of History at the European University Institute, Florence, and Visiting Professor in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University, New York.
Go to Profile#1310
Klaus Zimmermann
#78541
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Klaus Zimmermann is a German ancient historian. Klaus Zimmermann, son of Medievalist Gerd Zimmermann, completed his abitur at E.T.A. Hoffmann-Gymnasium Bamberg in 1983. After his military service, Zimmermann began his studies at the University of Bamberg in 1985/6. He achieved his master's in 1993. From 1994 until 1998 he was scholarly assistant at the Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy in the German Archaeological Institute in Munich. In 1998 he received his doctorate from Werner Huß for his dissertation Libyen. Das Land südlich des Mittelmeers im Weltbild der Griechen . From 1998 until 2006 he was wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the University of Jena.
Go to Profile#1311
Clay S. Jenkinson
#45577
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Clay Straus Jenkinson is an American humanities scholar, author and educator. He is currently the director of The Dakota Institute, where he co-hosts public radio's The Thomas Jefferson Hour, and creates documentary films, symposia, and literary projects. He lectures at Dickinson State University and Bismarck State College.
Go to Profile#1312
Heiko Oberman
#22099
Overall Influence
1930 - 2001 (71 years)
Heiko Augustinus Oberman was a Dutch historian and theologian who specialized in the study of the Reformation. Life Oberman was born in Utrecht on 15 October 1930. He earned his doctorate in theology from the University of Utrecht in 1957 and joined the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School in 1958. There he rose rapidly from instructor to associate professor and, in 1963, to professor of church history. He was appointed Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School in 1964 and continued teaching there until 1966. He then accepted a chair in the theology faculty at the ...
Go to Profile#1313
Runoko Rashidi
#30210
Overall Influence
1954 - 2021 (67 years)
Runoko Rashidi was a historian, essayist, author and public lecturer based in Los Angeles, California, and Paris, France. He is the author of Introduction to the Study of African Classical Civilizations] and the editor of Unchained African Voices, a collection of poetry and prose by Death Row inmates at California's San Quentin maximum-security prison. He was a member of the editorial board of Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies , and he held an honorary doctorate of divinity from Amen-Ra Theological Seminary . He also supported the work of controversial scholars like the late Iva...
Go to Profile#1314
Franz W. Seidler
#41230
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Franz Wilhelm Seidler is a German historian, author and expert on German military history. From 1973 to 1998, he was a professor of Modern History at the Bundeswehr University Munich. Since retirement, he has published works of revisionist nature in extreme right-wing publishers, such as Pour le Mérite Verlag.
Go to Profile#1315
Yaacov Shavit
#41497
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Yaacov Shavit is an emeritus professor at the Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University. His main fields of study are the history of modern Israel and modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. Shavit has also written about the Afrocentrism movement in the African American community. He is married to Zohar Shavit.
Go to Profile#1316
Roberto de Mattei
#41056
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Roberto de Mattei is an Italian Roman Catholic historian and author. His studies mainly concern European history between the 16th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the history of religious and political ideas. As traditionalist Catholic, he is known for his anti-evolutionist positions, also publicised in institutional circles, for his critique of relativism and the lines of thought established in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.
Go to Profile#1317
Edward S. Shapiro
#33560
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Edward S. Shapiro is a historian of American history and American Jewish history. He received his BA at Georgetown University and his PhD at Harvard University. His doctoral dissertation was The American Distributists and the New Deal. Most of Shapiro's career was spent as professor of American history at Seton Hall University. He is the father of Marc B. Shapiro.
Go to Profile#1318
Robert G. Hoyland
#33345
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Robert G. Hoyland is a historian, specializing in the medieval history of the Middle East. He was a student of historian Patricia Crone and was a Leverhulme Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. He is currently Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, having previously been Professor of Islamic history at the University of Oxford's Faculty of Oriental Studies and a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews and UCLA.
Go to Profile#1319
John Rao
#66497
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
John C. Rao is a former associate professor of history at St. John's University, director of the Roman Forum/Dietrich von Hildebrand Institute, and former president of Una Voce America. In 1977 Rao received his D.Phil. in Modern European History from Oxford University. Works include Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States, Removing the Blindfold, and Periphery. He was a central interview subject for a PBS documentary on the annual Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage by traditionalist Catholics from around the world.
Go to Profile#1320
David S. Reynolds
#25129
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David S. Reynolds is an American literary critic, biographer, and historian who has written about American literature and culture. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, on the Civil War era—including figures such as Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Lippard, and John Brown. Reynolds has been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Book Award, the John Hope Franklin Prize , and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Go to Profile#1321
Zeus A. Salazar
#14401
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Zeus Atayza Salazar is a Filipino historian, anthropologist, and philosopher of history, best known for pioneering an emic perspective in Philippine history called Pantayong Pananaw , earning him the title "Father of New Philippine Historiography." He is a major player in the indigenization campaign in the Philippines. Salazar spent 30 years teaching at University of the Philippines Diliman and held both history department chair and college dean positions.
Go to Profile#1322
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
#15047
Overall Influence
1941 - 2007 (66 years)
Elizabeth Ann Fox-Genovese was an American historian best known for her works on women and society in the Antebellum South. A Marxist early on in her career, she later converted to Roman Catholicism and became a primary voice of the conservative women's movement. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2003.
Go to Profile#1323
Oleg Khlevniuk
#27406
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Oleg Vitalyevich Khlevniuk is a Russian historian and a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Much of his writing on Stalinistist Soviet Union is based on newly released archival documents, including personal correspondence, drafts of Central Committee paperwork, new memoirs, and interviews with former functionaries and the families of Politburo members. Gleb Pavlovsky has characterized him as a "leading Russian historian of Stalinism." He also a corresponding fellow of Royal Historical Society.
Go to Profile#1324
John Rigby Hale
#23800
Overall Influence
1923 - 1999 (76 years)
Sir John Rigby Hale was a British historian and translator, best known for his Renaissance studies. Biography Hale was born in Ashford, Kent. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford . He also attended Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University .
Go to Profile#1325
Helmut Walser Smith
#46852
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Helmut Walser Smith was named in 2004 to the Martha Rivers Ingram chair as Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. His teaching and writing focus on modern German history, especially the long nineteenth century. He has served on the editorial boards of Central European History and the Journal of Modern History and in 2011–12 was past president of the Conference Group on Central European History of the American Historical Association. From 2005 to 2008, he was Director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt and in 2014 received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#1326
Marilyn Lake
#42892
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Marilyn Lee Lake, is an Australian historian known for her work on the effects of the military and war on Australian civil society, the political history of Australian women and Australian racism including the White Australia Policy and the movement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human rights. She was awarded a personal chair in history at La Trobe University in 1994. She has been elected a Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Go to Profile#1327
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
#30694
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is an American historian specializing in modern Russian and Soviet history and the relations between Russia, Japan, and the United States. He taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was director of the Cold War Studies program until his retirement in 2016.
Go to Profile#1328
Owen Dudley Edwards
#23840
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Owen Dudley Edwards is an Irish historian and former Reader in Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Life He is the son of Professor Robert Dudley Edwards and brother to the Irish writer, Ruth Dudley Edwards. He is the general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes series, and is a recognised expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde.
Go to Profile#1329
James L. Gelvin
#26084
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
James L. Gelvin is an American scholar of Middle Eastern history. He has been a faculty member in the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles since 1995 and has written extensively on the history of the modern Middle East, with particular emphasis on nationalism and the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East.
Go to Profile#1330
Alexander Dobrokhotov
#22437
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Alexander Lvovich Dobrokhotov is a Russian philosopher, historian of philosophy, historian of culture, and university professor. He specialises in the history of Russian culture, history of philosophy, metaphysics, Russian philosophy, ancient and medieval philosophy, Kant and German Idealism, and philosophy of culture.
Go to Profile#1331
Tomasz Strzembosz
#45200
Overall Influence
1930 - 2004 (74 years)
Tomasz Strzembosz was a Polish historian and writer who specialized in the World War II history of Poland. He was a professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences Institute of Political Studies, in Warsaw; and, from 1991, at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Strzembosz was a resident of Warsaw, Poland.
Go to Profile#1332
Melvyn Dubofsky
#28065
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Melvyn Dubofsky is professor emeritus of history and sociology, and a well-known labor historian. He is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the Binghamton University. Dubofsky helped advance the field of "new labor history," which focuses on the experiences of workers and social movements rather than institutions.
Go to Profile#1333
Hartmut Boockmann
#61717
Overall Influence
1934 - 1998 (64 years)
Hartmut Boockmann was a German historian, specializing in medieval history. Boockmann was born in Marienburg, East Prussia, Germany, after 1945 Malbork Poland. He received his Ph.D. in 1965. Boockmann was professor for medieval and modern history in Kiel from 1975 to 1982, then in Göttingen, between 1992 and 1995 at the Humboldt-University of Berlin, and thereafter until his death in Göttingen again. Boockmann was specialized in the German Late Middle Ages. He died in Göttingen.
Go to Profile#1334
Françoise Thébaud
#36949
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Françoise Thébaud is a French historian, professor emeritus of history, and specialist in the history of women. In 2017, she was awarded the Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. Early life and education Françoise Thébaud was born in 1952.
Go to Profile#1335
Andreas Tietze
#20549
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Andreas Tietze was an Austrian scholar of Turkish lexicography and language. Biography Tietze was born on April 26, 1914, in the early months of World War I to art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat.
Go to Profile#1336
Serhy Yekelchyk
#41403
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Serhy Yekelchyk is a Ukrainian Canadian historian, who has published widely on modern Ukrainian and Russian history and Russian-Ukrainian relations. Education and career Yekelchyk received his B.A. from the University of Kyiv and his M.A. from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He conducted research in Australia in the early 1990s, then moved to Edmonton to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in 2000. He was a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan the following year. Since 2001, he has taught at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Go to Profile#1337
Arthur Burns
#71163
Overall Influence
Arthur Burns was a British historian who was Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. Early life and education Arthur Burns was born in Barnard Castle, County Durham on 7 February 1963. He was educated at Ludlow College and then read modern history at Balliol College, Oxford. He received a BA in 1984, later promoted to MA in 1989. He was awarded a PhD by Oxford in 1990 for a thesis entitled The Diocesan Revival in the Church of England c.1825-1865.
Go to Profile#1338
John Wansbrough
#18474
Overall Influence
1928 - 2002 (74 years)
John Edward Wansbrough was an American historian and professor who taught at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies , where he was vice chancellor from 1985 to 1992. Wansbrough is credited with founding the so-called Revisionist school of Islamic studies through his fundamental criticism of the historical credibility of the Quran and other early Islamic texts, especially regarding the classical Islamic narratives concerning the early history of Islam and his attempt to develop an alternative, historically more credible version of Islam's beginnings. He argued in gen...
Go to Profile#1339
Jerzy Topolski
#49776
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Jerzy Topolski was a Polish historian specializing in economic history, history of material culture, the early modern period, and theory and methodology of history. Member of Polish Academy of Sciences, professor of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, he wrote over 1.100 articles and about 30 books.
Go to Profile#1340
Georg von Rauch
#70822
Overall Influence
1904 - 1991 (87 years)
Georg Alexander Kornelius Erich von Rauch was a Baltic German historian specializing in Russia and the Baltic states. Rauch was born in Pskov, the son of Kornelius Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Rauch, an officer in the Russian army. In 1911 the family moved to Sangaste in Governorate of Livonia. Rauch graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in history in 1927, leaving for Germany in 1939. He joined the staff of the University of Marburg, where he taught Russian history, in 1946, becoming a professor in 1953. In 1958 he accepted an offer from the University of Kiel, where he became head of the Institute on East European History.
Go to Profile#1341
William W. Freehling
#33236
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
William Wilhartz Freehling is an American historian, and Singletary Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. Early life Freehling was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 26, 1935, a son of Norman Freehling and Edna Freehling. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1958. He wrote his undergraduate honors thesis under noted U.S. historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. He received his M.A. in 1959 and his Ph.D. in 1964, from the University of California, Berkeley, with historian Kenneth M. Stampp serving as his dissertati...
Go to Profile#1342
James Penton
#38465
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
James Penton is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada and the author of three books on the history of Jehovah's Witnesses. Although raised in the religion, he was expelled in 1981 on the grounds of apostasy after criticizing some of the teachings and conduct of the religion's leadership. His expulsion gained national media attention.
Go to Profile#1343
Edmund Burke III
#64220
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Edmund Burke III is Professor Emeritus of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research areas include Islamic history, modern Middle Eastern and North African history, Mediterranean history, French history, orientalism, European imperialism, and world history. From 2003–2007 he was presidential chair and director of the Center for World History. He received his PhD from Princeton University.
Go to Profile#1344
Patricia Buckley Ebrey
#30379
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Patricia Buckley Ebrey is an American art historian and sinologist specializing in cultural and gender issues during the Chinese Song Dynasty. Ebrey obtained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1968 and her Masters and PhD from Columbia University in 1970 and 1975, respectively. Upon receiving her PhD, Ebrey was hired as visiting assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She became an associate professor in 1982 and a full professor three years later. Subsequently, in 1997, she accepted a Professor of History position at the University of Washington, from which she retired in July 2020.
Go to Profile#1345
L. Carl Brown
#45062
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Leon Carl Brown was a professor of history at Princeton University. Biography Brown was the Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs, Emeritus, and professor of Near Eastern studies, emeritus, at Princeton University. He was a member of the Princeton faculty from 1966 to 1993 and served for many years as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and director of the interdisciplinary Program in Near Eastern Studies. Brown trained many leading scholars in Middle East studies.
Go to Profile#1346
Andrej Mitrović
#55979
Overall Influence
1937 - 2013 (76 years)
Andrej Mitrović was a Serbian historian, professor and author. A specialist of the contemporary history of Serbia and Yugoslavia, he was head of the Contemporary History Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Mitrović wrote extensively about the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference, interwar Europe as well as articles on economic, social, cultural history and historiography.
Go to Profile#1347
Michael Crawford
#32024
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Michael Hewson Crawford, is a British ancient historian and numismatist. Having taught at Christ's College, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge, he was Professor of Ancient History at University College London from 1986 until he retired in 2005.
Go to Profile#1348
Peter S. Onuf
#48252
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Peter S. Onuf is an American historian and professor known for his work on U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and Federalism. In 1989, he was named the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of the University of Virginia, a chair he held until retiring in 2012. The chair's previous occupants included Jefferson biographers Dumas Malone and Merrill D. Peterson; he was succeeded by Alan Taylor.
Go to Profile#1349
Gyanendra Pandey
#31408
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Gyanendra Pandey is a historian and a founding member of the Subaltern Studies project. Early life and career Pandey did his schooling in Sherwood College, Nainital, and completed his B.A. in history at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, ranking first in the first class. He completed his D.Phil. in South Asian history under the supervision of Tapan Raychaudhuri as a Rhodes Scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was a research fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later at Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1974 to 1978.
Go to Profile#1350
François Ewald
#15235
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
François Ewald is a French philosopher. An assistant to Michel Foucault in the 1970s, he has overseen the publication of much of Foucault's literary estate. Ewald's own work has applied Foucault's notion of governmentality to a history of the welfare state.
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