Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#1701

Gregory Hanlon

#57715

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Gregory Hanlon , is a Canadian behavioural and military historian of early modern Europe. Biography Hanlon was educated in France at the Université de Bordeaux, and since 1989 he has taught at Dalhousie University with teaching stints at the University of California Berkeley, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne and the Université Laval .

#1702

Ludmilla Jordanova

#23112

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ludmilla Jane Jordanova is a British historian and academic. She is Professor of Visual Culture in the Department of History at Durham University. Jordanova was born to a Bulgarian father and English mother. Educated at Oxford High School and New Hall, Cambridge, Professor Jordanova has taught at the universities of Oxford, Essex, York, East Anglia, Cambridge and King's College London. Previously she held the position of Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities , University of Cambridge and was Professor of Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia....

#1703

Marcel van der Linden

Marcel van der Linden

#30409

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Marcel Marius van der Linden was director of research at the International Institute of Social History until 2014, is now Senior Researcher at the Institute, and also holds a professorship dedicated to the history of social movements at the University of Amsterdam.

#1704

Howard Markel

#9189

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Howard Markel is an American physician and medical historian. Markel is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and Director of the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine. He is also a professor of psychiatry, health management and policy, history, and pediatrics and communicable diseases. Markel writes extensively on major topics and figures in the history of medicine and public health.

#1705

James S. Pula

#57850

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

James S. Pula is a Polish-American historian, professor, author, and Polonia activist. He is a professor at Purdue University North Central, and specializes in ethnic and immigration studies and 19th-century American history.

#1706

Ronald C. White

Ronald C. White

#50061

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Ronald Cedric "Ron" White Jr. is an American historian, author, and lecturer. He has written bestselling and award-winning biographies and books on Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. He is a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.

#1707

Ida Blom

#62525

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Ida Blom was a Norwegian historian. She graduated from the University of Bergen in 1961, and then took her doctorate there in 1972 while working as a research assistant. She was a professor in women's history at the University of Bergen from 1985 to 2001, and later a professor emeritus at the same school.

#1708

Kenneth Setton

#62672

Overall Influence

1914 - 1995 (81 years)

Kenneth Meyer Setton was an American historian and an expert on the history of medieval Europe, particularly the Crusades. Early life, education and awards Setton's childhood and adolescence were not easy. He supported himself from the age of 13. Setton received his bachelor's degree in 1936 as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Boston University. He received his master's degree in 1938 and PhD in 1941 at Columbia University. His dissertation Christian Attitude Toward the Emperor in the Fourth Century was written under the direction of Lynn Thorndike. He also received honorary degrees from Boston University and the University of Kiel.

#1709

Gordon Wright

#33823

Overall Influence

1912 - 2000 (88 years)

Gordon Wright was an American historian. He focused on modern European history and was the pre-eminent historian on modern French history. He has been recognized nationally and internationally for his work and his method of teaching.

#1710

Yohuru Williams

#54948

Overall Influence

Yohuru R. Williams is an American academic, author and activist. Williams is a Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. He was previously the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas . He was previously a professor of history and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University and former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Williams is a notable scholar of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In 2009, Diverse magazine n...

#1711

Peter Salway

#57467

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Peter Salway, FSA is a British historian, who specialises in Roman Britain. He lectured at the universities of Durham, Cambridge, Bristol and Oxford, before becoming Professor of the History and Archaeology of Roman Britain at the Open University.

#1712

Antoinette Burton

#41641

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Antoinette M. Burton is an American historian, and Professor of History and Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. On November 23, 2015, Burton was named Chair of the University of Illinois' search for a permanent Chancellor after the resignation of Phyllis Wise.

#1713

Anthony Reid

#38941

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Anthony Reid is a New Zealand-born historian of Southeast Asia. His doctoral work at Cambridge University examined the contest for power in northern Sumatra, Indonesia in the late 19th century, and he extended this study into a book The Blood of the People on the national and social revolutions in that region 1945–49. He is most well known for his two volume book "Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce", developed during his time at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University in Canberra. His later work includes a return to Sumatra where he explored the historical...

#1714

Polly O'Hanlon

#29377

Overall Influence

Rosalind O’Hanlon is an early modern historian and specialist in the colonial history of India. She is a retired Professor in Indian History and Culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. O'Hanlon is an Emeritus Fellow of Clare College. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020.

#1715

Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão

#58528

Overall Influence

1925 - 2020 (95 years)

Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão was a Portuguese historian. Serrão was a Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Letters of Lisbon University, was dean of the University of Lisbon from 1973 to 1974, and president of the Portuguese Academy of History between 1975 and 2006. He received the Príncipe de Asturias Prize for Social Science in 1995.

#1716

Thomas D. Clark

#36584

Overall Influence

1903 - 2005 (102 years)

Thomas Dionysius Clark was an American historian. Clark saved from destruction a large portion of Kentucky's printed history, which later became a core body of documents in the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Often referred to as the "Dean of Historians" Clark is best known for his 1937 work, A History of Kentucky. Clark was named Historian Laureate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1991.

#1717

K. K. N. Kurup

#37397

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

K. K. N. Kurup is an historian of India and a former vice-chancellor of the University of Calicut. He has specialised in the history of the Malabar region of South India. Kurup obtained a B.A. from the University of Delhi and then studied for his M.A. and PhD at the University of Calicut. He was awarded the latter in 1976. He had been teaching at Calicut since 1972 and continued in various positions there. In 1983, he was a professor and the head of the history department at the University of Mangalore and was also awarded a professorship at Calicut. He was appointed head of the history depar...

#1718

Keith Robbins

#44462

Overall Influence

1940 - 2019 (79 years)

Keith Gilbert Robbins was a British historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter. Professor Robbins was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and Magdalen and St Antony's College, Oxford.

#1719

Wilson Jeremiah Moses

#36802

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Wilson Jeremiah Moses is an African-American historian. He is Professor of American History at Pennsylvania State University. Career Wilson J. Moses obtained his A.B. and M.A. in British Literature at Wayne State University, and his Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown University. He held the Walter L. Ferree professorship in the middle period of American History at Pennsylvania State University before that, and he currently is Professor Emeritus at Penn State. He has in the past held a series of posts at other American Universities:Assistant Professor of History at the University of Iowa;...

#1720

Carlos Seco Serrano

#58147

Overall Influence

1923 - 2020 (97 years)

Carlos Seco Serrano was a Spanish historian who specialised in the contemporary era. Biography He was born in Toledo, and died, aged 96, in Madrid, a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. He studied Philosophy and Letters at the Central University, obtaining a bachelor's degree, with an extraordinary prize, in 1945. In 1950 he obtained a doctorate in History with the presentation of the thesis entitled Diplomatic relations between Spain and Venice in the time of Philip III, achieving the highest qualification and—again—the extraordinary prize. He had Ciriaco Pérez Bustamante and, above all, Jesús ...

#1721

Arianne Chernock

#8195

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Arianne Jessica Chernock is an American historian specialized in modern Britain and the history of Europe. She has written two books on women's rights and the history of women in the United Kingdom. Chernock is a professor at Boston University.

#1722

Eric Ives

#31389

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Eric William Ives was a British historian who was an expert on the Tudor period, and a university administrator. He was Emeritus Professor of English History at the University of Birmingham. Early life Ives was born on 12 July 1931, Essex, England into a Plymouth Brethren family. He was educated at Brentwood School, then an all-boys public school in Brentwood, Essex. He studied history at Queen Mary College, London, graduating with Bachelor of Arts . He then went on to complete his Doctor of Philosophy from the same university.

#1723

John Calvert

#21715

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

John Calvert is the holder of the Henry W. Casper, SJ Associate Professorship in History at Creighton University. He is the author of several academic works on radical Islam, most notably one on the Islamist intellectual Sayyid Qutb entitled Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism.

#1724

Saul David

#33487

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Julian Saul David is a British academic military historian and broadcaster. He is best known for his work on the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Anglo-Zulu War, as well as for presenting and appearing in documentaries on British television covering imperial and military themes.

#1725

Vernon Burton

#64935

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Orville Vernon Burton is a professor of history at Clemson University, the director of its Clemson CyberInstitute, and an author. He formerly served as director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science and professor of history and sociology at the University of Illinois. He is also a senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where he is associate director for humanities and social sciences.

#1726

Andrew Walls

#31208

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Andrew Finlay Walls was a British historian of missions, best known for his pioneering studies of the history of the African church and a pioneer in the academic field of World Christianity. Biography Walls was born in 1928 in New Milton, England. He studied theology at Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a first-class degree in 1948, and completed his graduate studies in the early Church in 1956 under the patristics scholar Frank Leslie Cross.

#1727

Rachel Maines

#16339

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rachel Pearl Maines is an American scholar specializing in the history of technology. Since 2015 she has been a visiting scientist at Cornell University's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her book The Technology of Orgasm won the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award. The book was also the inspiration for the film Hysteria and the play In the Next Room. However, one of the main claims of the book has been debunked as false.

#1728

Simon Kitson

#16342

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Simon Kitson is a British historian. Life Kitson did his undergraduate studies at the University of Ulster and his post-graduate studies at the University of Sussex, under the supervision of Roderick Kedward. His doctoral thesis on the Marseille Police, was examined by Mark Mazower and Clive Emsley.

#1729

Andrzej Walicki

Andrzej Walicki

#20901

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Andrzej Stanisław Walicki was a Polish historian. He was a professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, United States. He specialized in philosophy of sociopolitics, history of Polish and Russian philosophy, Marxism and liberal thought. He was one of the scholars who formed the "Warsaw School of the History of Ideas".

#1730

Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A. Farber

#14046

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Daniel A. Farber is an American lawyer, law professor, author, and historian. He is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Life and work Born in Chicago, Illinois, Farber graduated from the University of Illinois, earning his B.A. , M.A. , and J.D. degrees. He graduated summa cum laude from the College of Law, where he was class valedictorian. After graduating from law school, Farber clerked for Judge Philip Willis Tone on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court.

#1731

Richard Landes

#23714

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Richard Allen Landes is an American historian and author who specializes in medieval millennial thinking. Until 2015 he taught at Boston University, and then began working at Bar-Ilan University, where his current interests include defending the politics of Israel in the light of what he calls media manipulation by Palestinians.

#1732

Sverre Bagge

#29605

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Sverre Håkon Bagge is a Norwegian historian. He took his doctorate with the thesis Den politiske ideologi i Kongespeilet, published in 1979. From 1974 to 1991 he worked as an associate professor at the University of Bergen, and he became a professor there in 1991. Since 2003 he is the leader of the Centre for Medieval Studies, Bergen.

#1733

Barbara Duden

#54717

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Barbara Duden is a German medical historian, scholar of gender studies, and emeritus professor of the University of Hannover. Her work figures significantly in the currents that established the body as a site for historical inquiry. She is one of the founders of the journal Courage, which was in publication from 1976 to 1984. Courage primarily circulated in West Berlin where it played an extensive role in informing the women's movement at the time. Her father is also the great-grandson of the German philologist Konrad Duden.

#1734

Marco Spallanzani

#85002

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Marco Spallanzani is an economic historian who previously taught economic history at the University of Florence. For some time he has conducted research in the Tuscan archives on the production and trade of goods considered to be ‘minor arts,’ examining, through various products from the east, the moment of their importation from the lands of Islam or faraway China. He has published articles on the presence of these much sought-after furnishings by the Medici and the most important families of the 14th–16th centuries. He has also edited an edition of Medici family inventories of the quattrocento .

#1735

Jack Simmons

#51425

Overall Influence

1915 - 2000 (85 years)

Jack Simmons was an English transport historian and emeritus professor of history at University of Leicester, known as a specialist in railway history. Biography Born on 30 August 1915 at Isleworth, Middlesex, Jack Simmons was the only child of Seymour Francis Simmons, a hosiery maker then serving in the Royal Fusiliers, and his wife, Katherine Lillias, daughter of Thomas Finch, a doctor from Babbacombe, Devon. His father was killed on the Somme in France in 1918. He and his mother settled after several years in Carshalton, Surrey. They continued to live together until her death in 1971. Sim...

#1736

Richard S. Levy

#48212

Overall Influence

1940 - 2021 (81 years)

Richard Simon Levy was a professor of Modern German History at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1971 until his retirement in 2019. He is most noted for his contributions to history in debunking several antisemitic myths, as well as uncovering many others. Levy was featured on a TV documentary concerning The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Deadly Deception, which aired on the History Channel on May 11, 1999. Levy died of prostate cancer at his home on June 23, 2021, at the age of 81.

#1737

Antonio Domínguez Ortiz

#32968

Overall Influence

1909 - 2003 (94 years)

Antonio Domínguez Ortiz was a Spanish historian, one of the leading specialists in the history of the Spanish Antiguo Régimen of the 16th through 18th centuries, in particular in social history. He was also expert historian of Andalusia, with a particular emphasis on the history of the Moriscos.

#1738

Ram Nath

#38476

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Ram Nath is an Indian historian who specializes in Mughal architecture. He obtained a doctorate from the Agra University, and later taught at the University of Rajasthan. He is regarded as one of India's leading art historians.

#1739

Claude Lecouteux

#30815

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Claude Lecouteux is a French philologist and medievalist who specializes in Germanic studies. He is Professor Emeritus and Chair of the Literature and Civilization of Medieval Germanic Peoples at Sorbonne University.

#1740

Gintaras Beresnevičius

#22541

Overall Influence

1961 - 2006 (45 years)

Gintaras Beresnevičius was a Lithuanian historian of religions specializing in Baltic mythology. He together with Norbertas Vėlius is considered to be the best specialist in Lithuanian mythology. In 1984 he graduated from Vilnius University, Faculty of History. Since 1986 he worked at various universities. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. He published over 100 scientific articles. Beresnevičius worked with journal "Naujasis Židinys" and weekly "Šiaurės Atėnai" . In 2001 he received an award from the President of Lithuania for his collection of essays on history of Lithuania called "Ant laiko aš...

#1741

Harriet Ritvo

#61921

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Harriet Ritvo is an American historian who specializes in British history, particularly environmental history and the history of natural history. Ritvo is the Arthur J. Connor Professor of History at MIT and a member of the Program in Science, Technology and Society, and she was the head of MIT's History Faculty from 1999-2006.

#1742

Robert A. Doughty

#26055

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Robert Allan Doughty is an American military historian and retired United States Army officer. Early life Doughty was born in Tullos, Louisiana, on November 4, 1943, to parents John and Georgia Doughty.

#1743

Christine Stansell

#34135

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Christine Stansell is an American historian in women's and gender history; antebellum US social and political history; American cultural history; history of human rights; and post-catastrophic societies. She received her PhD from Yale University in 1979. She recently retired from teaching history at the University of Chicago, where she had lectured since 2007.

#1744

Nina Garsoïan

#46209

Overall Influence

1923 - 2022 (99 years)

Nina G. Garsoïan was a French-born American historian specializing in Armenian and Byzantine history. In 1969 she became the first female historian to get tenure at Columbia University and, subsequently, became the first holder of Gevork M. Avedissian Chair in Armenian History and Civilization at Columbia. From 1977 to 1979, she served as dean of the Graduate School of Princeton University.

#1745

Stevan K. Pavlowitch

#34771

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Stevan Kosta Pavlowitch was a Yugoslav and British historian, emeritus professor of Balkan history at the University of Southampton, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Biography Stevan Kosta Pavlowitch was born in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 7 September 1933, into a well-known Serbian family of diplomats from the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His father Kosta St. Pavlović was a diplomat, who was personal secretary of Vojislav Marinković, the Yugoslav Foreign Minister; his grandfather, also named Stevan K. Pavlović, was an influential lawyer, interpreter an...

#1746

Donna Halper

#33530

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Donna Lee Halper is a Boston-based historian and radio consultant. Beginning in 1968, Halper worked as a radio disc jockey and music director, and is credited with discovering the progressive rock band Rush while at WMMS in Cleveland in 1974. She has taught courses in broadcasting, media criticism, and media history, and is author of a number of books, including the first book-length study devoted to the history of women in American broadcasting, Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting. In March 2023, it was announced that she would be inducted into the Massachuse...

#1747

Claudia Koonz

#36519

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Claudia Ann Koonz is an American historian of Nazi Germany. Koonz's critique of the role of women during the Nazi era, from a feminist perspective, has become a subject of much debate and research in itself. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award, and a National Book Award finalist. Koonz has appeared on the podcasts Holocaust, hosted by University of California Television, and Real Dictators, hosted by Paul McGann. In the months before the 2020 United States presidential election, Koonz wrote about the risks of autocracy in the United States for History News Network and the New Schoo...

#1748

Madeleine Herren

#60130

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Madeleine Herren-Oesch is a Swiss historian. Madeleine Herren-Oesch studied history and German literature at the University of Bern. She wrote her licentiate about "Aspekte cisleithanischer Sozialpolitik" and in 1989 her dissertation about "Internationale Sozialpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg aus der Perspektive der Dritten Französischen Republik" . In 1997 she was promoted to professor with "Hintertüren zur Macht - Internationalismus und modernisierungsorientierte Außenpolitik in Belgien, der Schweiz und den USA 1865–1914" . Between 2004 and 2013, Madeleine Herren-Oesch was professor for modern history at the University of Heidelberg.

#1749

Victor S. Mamatey

#55698

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Victor Samuel Mamatey was an American professor of history. Biography Mamatey was born in North Braddock, Pennsylvania. His father, Albert Mamatey, was a Slovak immigrant to the United States, active in Slovak immigrant organizations in the United States.

#1750

Nicholas Atkin

#39058

Overall Influence

1960 - 2009 (49 years)

Nicholas "Nick" James Atkin was professor of modern European history at the University of Reading. Early life Nicholas James Atkin was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on 18 September 1960. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School.

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