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.

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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,

#1951

Perez Zagorin

#46173

Overall Influence

1920 - 2009 (89 years)

Perez Zagorin was an American historian who specialized in 16th- and 17th-century English and British history and political thought, early modern European history, and related areas in literature and philosophy. From 1965 to 1990, he taught at the University of Rochester, New York, retiring as the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus.

#1952

Robert V. Bruce

Robert V. Bruce

#24620

Overall Influence

1923 - 2008 (85 years)

Robert Vance Bruce was an American historian specializing in the American Civil War, who won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 . After serving in the Army during World War II, Bruce graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. He received his Master of Arts in history and his Doctor of Philosophy from Boston University, where he was later a professor. He also taught at the University of Bridgeport, Lawrence Academy at Groton, and the University of Wisconsin....

#1953

Peter Oliver Loew

Peter Oliver Loew

#80469

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Peter Oliver Loew is a German historian, translator, and scholar, specializing in the History of Poland. Biography Loew was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied Eastern European history, Slavistics and economics at the University of Nuremberg, University of Freiburg and the Free University of Berlin. In 2001, he graduated on the historical culture of Danzig between 1793 and 1997.

#1954

Michele Gillespie

#87538

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Michele Gillespie is the Provost and Presidential Endowed Professor of Southern History at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She specializes in American history, focusing on gender, race, class, and region in the American South. In 2005, she served as president of the Southern Association for Women Historians. She is series co-editor of New Directions in Southern History, published by the University Press of Kentucky, with William Link.

#1955

Linda Heywood

#75992

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Linda Marinda Heywood is an American historian and professor of African American studies and history at Boston University. Heywood has a BA from Brooklyn College and a PhD from Columbia University. In 2008, she shared the Herskovits Prize for her book Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.

#1956

William S. Dudley

#67157

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

William Sheldon Dudley is a naval historian of the United States Navy, who served as Director of Naval History and Director, Naval Historical Center, Washington, D.C. from 1995 to 2004. Early life and education The son of William Henry Dudley and his wife Dorothy Lawson Dudley, he attended Williams College, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1958. After graduation, he joined the United States Naval Reserve serving from 1959 to 1963 in the grades of ensign to lieutenant. On leaving active service, Dudley became a history teacher at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, New Yor...

#1957

John Darwin

#49264

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Gareth John Darwin is a British historian and academic, who specialises in the history of the British Empire. From 1984 to 2019, he was the Beit Lecturer in Commonwealth History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was a lecturer in history at the University of Reading between 1972 and 1984.

#1958

Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

#13782

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Michael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. Most recently, he was rector and President of Central European University; he held this position from 2016 until July 2021.

#1959

Branko Petranović

Branko Petranović

#63870

Overall Influence

1927 - 1994 (67 years)

Branko Petranović was a Serbian historian and a Belgrade University professor specializing in history of Yugoslavia. Career Branko Petranović was born in Cetinje, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Primary and secondary school education he finished in Kotor, Cetinje and Belgrade. From January 1944 he joined Tito's partisans. He finished undergraduate studies at Belgrade University: at the Faculty of Law in 1950 and at the Faculty of Philosophy in 1956. From 1958 he dedicated himself to historiography and started his academic career as a researcher at the History Department of the Institute of Social Sciences .

#1960

Peter Dobkin Hall

#46008

Overall Influence

1946 - 2015 (69 years)

Peter Dobkin Hall was an American author and historian. He was Professor of History and Theory in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

#1961

Anton Schindling

#73781

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

Anton Schindling was a German historian. He held chairs at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt , the University of Osnabrück and the University of Tübingen . Thematically he worked on the history of education, the age of Confessionalization and the Holy Roman Empire. He was one of the leading early modern researchers in Germany.

#1962

Bradford Perkins

#63658

Overall Influence

1925 - 2008 (83 years)

Bradford Perkins was an American historian who spent the bulk of his career at the University of Michigan. He was the son of the historian Dexter Perkins. Life Perkins was born in Rochester, New York, in 1925, where his father was a professor at the University of Rochester. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the European theater. He received his A.B. in 1947 from Harvard University, and completed his doctoral work there in 1952 under the direction of Frederick Merk.

#1963

Marvin S. Hill

#52183

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Marvin Sidney Hill was a professor of American history at Brigham Young University and a historian of the Latter Day Saint movement. Biography Born on August 28, 1928, Hill completed his Master of Arts in history at BYU in 1955. He received a PhD in American intellectual history from the University of Chicago in 1968 and studied under Martin E. Marty and wrote his dissertation on Christian primitivism and Mormonism. Hill attended the University of Chicago at the same time as Dallin H. Oaks, and their mutual interest in the murder of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith in Illinois led to a ten-year research effort.

#1964

William Gienapp

#55346

Overall Influence

1944 - 2003 (59 years)

William E. Gienapp was an American historian, noted for his writing on the period of the American Civil War. His prize-winning The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 was based on original research and revised the traditional understanding of the political party's origins. Later he wrote Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography . He co-authored a widely-used United States history textbook, Nation of Nations, and compiled one of the most widely-used documentary readers on the era of the Civil War, The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection . Many years after h...

#1965

David Edgerton

#61403

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

David Edgerton FBA is an English historian and educator. He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and Imperial College London. After teaching the economics of science and technology and the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester, he became the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College, London, and Hans Rausing Professor. He has held a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. In 2013, he led the move of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine to the Department of Hi...

#1966

Johannes Fried

#61106

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Johannes Fried is a German historian, professor, and medievalist. Biography Fried studied at the University of Heidelberg, where he obtained his doctorate in 1970 and his habilitation in 1977. He was professor at the University of Cologne 1980–1983 and has held the Chair of Medieval History at the University of Frankfurt am Main since 1983. He was a visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1995 to 1996.

#1967

John Dittmer

#52164

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

John Dittmer is an American historian, and Professor Emeritus of DePauw University. Life John Dittmer is from Seymour, IN. He graduated from Shields High School in Seymour in 1957, being inducted into SHS Wall of Fame in 2006. He later graduated from Indiana University with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

#1968

David N. Myers

#42656

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

David N. Myers is a professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History. Myers was the president and CEO of the Center for Jewish History from July 2017 to August 2018. He serves as the President of the New Israel Fund Board.

#1969

Mikhail Iampolski

#29047

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Mikhail Beneaminovich Iampolski is a full professor of comparative literature and Russian and Slavic studies at New York University. He is the author of The Memory of Tiresias. Life and work Iampolski gained a BA in 1971 at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute and a PhD in French Philosophy in 1977 at the Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.

#1970

Justin Champion

#64077

Overall Influence

1960 - 2020 (60 years)

Justin Champion was a British historian and educator. He was head of the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London between 2005 and 2010. Early life and education Champion was born in Gloucester, where his father was a designer for a local aircraft manufacturer. His father won a scholarship to study at Cambridge, where he read English and became president of the Junior Common Room at King's College. This experience left an enduring impression on the young Champion who went on to study at Churchill College, Cambridge.

#1971

Andrés Reséndez

#44861

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

<onlyinclude> </onlyinclude> In 2017, Reséndez won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy for The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Early life Reséndez grew up in Mexico City.

#1972

Robert Colls

#51253

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Robert Colls is Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University, Leicester. Before that he was Professor of English History at Leicester University. He is married with two adult children. Personal History He was born in 1949 in South Shields, where he attended Laygate Lane Junior School and the Grammar Technical School for Boys. His father worked as a driller at the Tyne Dock Engineering Company, a ship repair yard. His mother worked at Harton Hospital as a ward assistant - a job she loved. Colls says that the Westoe Methodist Young People's Fellowship taught him how to reflect, and T...

#1973

Arther Ferrill

#67045

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Arther Ferrill , now a professor emeritus of history at the University of Washington at Seattle, is a respected expert on Ancient Rome and military history. He has written four books and is a regular contributor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and other periodicals, as an author and in review of other authors.

#1974

A. K. Narain

#63174

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Awadh Kishore Narain was an Indian historian, numismatist and archaeologist, who published and lectured extensively on the subjects related to South and Central Asia. He was well known for his book, The Indo-Greeks, published by Clarendon Press in 1957, in which he discussed the thesis of British historian Sir William Woodthorpe Tarn.

#1975

Jean Mawhin

#66510

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Jean L. Mawhin is a Belgian mathematician and historian of mathematics. Mawhin received his PhD in 1969 under Paul Ledoux at the University of Liège, where he had studied since 1962 and received his licentiate in mathematics in 1964. He was assistant professor at Liège from 1964 and maitre de conferences from 1969 to 1973. From 1970 he was assistant professor and from 1974 professor of mathematics at the Université catholique de Louvain . In 2008 he retired.

#1976

Bob Coats

#72942

Overall Influence

1924 - 2007 (83 years)

Alfred William "Bob" Coats was a British economist, economic historian and historian of economic thought. He made important contributions to the study of the history, methodology, sociology, professionalisation and internationalisation of economics, and was for many decades a central figure in professional societies in these specialised fields.

#1977

Samuel Totten

#13691

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Samuel Totten is an American professor of history noted for his scholarship on genocide. Totten was a distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville where he taught from 1987 to 2012 and served as the chief editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention. He is a Member of the Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem.

#1978

Jackie Huggins

#22710

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Jacqueline Gail "Jackie" Huggins is an Aboriginal Australian author, historian, academic and advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians. She is a Bidjara/Pitjara, Birri Gubba and Juru woman from Queensland.

#1979

Kevin Boyle

#39171

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Kevin Boyle is an American author and the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. His 2004 book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, won the National Book Award.

#1980

Jonathan Sarna

#26637

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

#1981

John D. Hargreaves

#56782

Overall Influence

1924 - 2015 (91 years)

John Desmond Hargreaves was the Burnett-Fletcher Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen. Hargreaves was noted for his work on the history of Africa; its colonisation and de-colonisation. His career at Aberdeen began in 1954 when he was appointed as a lecturer in History. Hargreaves received his chair in 1962.

#1982

Soledad Loaeza

#24190

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Dr. María Soledad Loaeza Tovar is a Mexican academic who specializes in the process of democratization and the transformations of society in Mexico. Biography Soledad Loaeza completed her high school studies at UNAM's Vidal Castañeda y Najera National "Plantel 4" high school. She received a degree in international relations from the College of Mexico , obtaining the title in 1972 with the thesis La política exterior del general Charles de Gaulle, 1962-1970 . She traveled to Europe to study for an international relations specialization at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut in Munich and a doctora...

#1983

David Rock

#24569

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

David Peter Rock is an English academic who specializes in the history of Argentina. He is a retired professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who now lives in England.

#1984

Julia M. H. Smith

#66846

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Julia Mary Howard Smith, is Chichele Professor of Medieval History at All Souls College, Oxford. She was formerly Edwards Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. She is a graduate of Newnham College, University of Cambridge , and Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford .

#1985

Kurt Kluxen

#74313

Overall Influence

1911 - 2003 (92 years)

Kurt Kluxen was a German historian. From 1963 to 1979 Kluxen taught as a full professor for middle and modern history at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He became known to a wider audience mainly through his History of England.

#1986

Susan Mann

#15259

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Susan Mann Trofimenkoff is a Canadian historian and was president of York University from 1992 to 1997. Mann is the sister of politician Gretchen Brewin. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Mann received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern History in 1963 from the University of Toronto, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1965, and a PhD from Université Laval in 1970. As professor, she has taught at the Université de Montréal , University of Calgary , and the University of Ottawa . She was chair of the Department of History at the University of Ottawa from 1977 to 1980. From 1984 to 1990 she was Vice-Rector Academic.

#1987

Alfredas Bumblauskas

Alfredas Bumblauskas

#52472

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Alfredas Bumblauskas is a professor at Vilnius University and one of the best known Lithuanian historians, specializing in the research of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Biography After graduating from Žemaitė school in Telšiai, he enrolled in Vilnius University in 1974. Bumblauskas received his doctoral degree in 1987, and was mentored by Edvardas Gudavičius. He was formerly dean of the Faculty of History and now heads the Department of Theory of History and Cultural History at Vilnius University. He has sponsored and participated in several TV shows about history and culture . Bumblauskas ha...

#1988

Bob Allen

#36291

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

#1989

John Thornton

#52150

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

John K. Thornton is an American historian specializing in the history of Africa, the African Diaspora and the Atlantic world. He is a professor in the history department at Boston University. Biography

#1990

Richard English

#15881

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Richard Ludlow English is a Northern Irish historian and political scientist from Northern Ireland. He was born in Belfast. He studied as an undergraduate at Keble College, Oxford, and subsequently at Keele University, where he was awarded a PhD in History. He was first employed by the Politics Department at Queen's University Belfast in 1990 and became a professor in 1999. In 2011, he took up an appointment at the University of St Andrews but five years later returned as pro-vice chancellor for internationalisation and engagement.

#1991

Marjorie Reeves

#51128

Overall Influence

1905 - 2003 (98 years)

Marjorie Ethel Reeves, was a British historian and educationalist. She served on several national committees and was a major contributor to the education of history in Britain. She helped create St Anne's College as part of Oxford University in 1952, and she led a revival of interest in the work of Joachim of Fiore.

#1992

Gillian Evans

#59290

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gillian R. Evans is a British philosopher, and emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at University of Cambridge. Evans was educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham, followed by a degree in history from St Anne's College, Oxford, and a postgraduate diploma in education. She earned her PhD from Reading University writing about Anselm of Canterbury.

#1993

Ferenc Fejtő

#24444

Overall Influence

1909 - 2008 (99 years)

Ferenc Fejtő , also known as François Fejtő, was a Hungarian-born French journalist and political scientist specializing in Eastern Europe. Biography He was born in Nagykanizsa to a well-off Jewish Hungarian family of booksellers and publishers. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. Following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, several members of his family became Yugoslavian, Italian, Czechoslovak and Romanian citizens.

#1994

Manuel Caballero

#32105

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

Manuel Antonio Caballero Agüero was a notable Venezuelan historian, journalist, best-selling author and professor of contemporary Venezuelan History at the Central University of Venezuela. Biography Caballero was born in Barquisimeto, studied history at the Central University of Venezuela and obtained a PhD at University College London. With the publication of his PhD dissertation he became the first Venezuelan author to be published by Cambridge University Press. In 1989 he was invited to teach at Universitá degli Studi di Napoli in Italy. He received the National Award on Journalism and th...

#1995

Gideon Greif

#38747

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Gideon Greif is an Israeli historian who specializes in the history of the Holocaust, especially the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and particularly the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz. He served as a visiting lecturer for Jewish and Israeli History at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the academic year 2011–2012. He headed a commission that issued a controversial report in July 2021 that denied that the killing of Bosnian Muslims at and around Srebrenica in July 1995 constituted genocide.

#1996

Rex A. Wade

#64793

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Rex Arvin Wade is an American historian and author who has written extensively about the 1917 Russian Revolution. He has taught courses in Russian and Soviet history at George Mason University since 1986.

#1997

Jill Mulvay Derr

#63808

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jill Mulvay Derr was a senior research historian in the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2005 to 2011. She previously served as Managing Director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University , where she was also Associate Professor of Church History . Her research and publications have focused on the history of Mormon and Utah women, and she is past president of the Mormon History Association .

#1998

Albert Marrin

#76221

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Albert Marrin is an American historian, professor of history and author of more than forty juvenile non-fiction books. Life He was born in New York City. He graduated from City College of New York, Yeshiva University and Columbia University. He taught in the public schools New York City. He is chairman of the history department at Yeshiva University.

#1999

Richard Beeman

#50337

Overall Influence

1942 - 2016 (74 years)

Richard Roy Beeman was an American historian and biographer specializing in the American Revolution. Life Born in Seattle, Beeman published multiple books, and was the John Walsh Centennial Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Beeman was the 2003-4 Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History. He also served as the director of the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, on the board of trustees of the National Constitution Center, and as the editor of American Quarterly.

#2000

Ole Moen

#42914

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Dr. Ole O. Moen is professor emeritus in American Civilization at the University of Oslo, Norway, with a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota . He was born in Hell, Nord-Trøndelag. Moen has a Cand. Philol. degree in English from the University of Oslo and an M.A. degree in American Studies from the University of Minnesota . He is a member of the American academic merit organization Phi Kappa Phi.

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