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.

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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,

#2251

Léon Strauss

#76897

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

Léon Strauss is a French historian and academic, specializing in nineteenth and twentieth century history of Alsace. He studied the history of trade unionism and the labor movement, and the history of the Left in Alsace. Strauss is Honorary Lecturer at the University of Strasbourg.

#2252

Nikita Petrov

#41532

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Nikita Vasilyevich Petrov is a Russian historian. He works at Memorial, a Russian organization dedicated to studying Soviet political repression. Petrov specializes in Soviet security services. The book about Nikolai Ezhov written by Nikita Petrov and Marc Jansen is based on the archives made accessible after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Petrov's part was tracking original archival documents, while Jansen worked with published sources.

#2253

Grzegorz Motyka

#47592

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Grzegorz Motyka is a Polish historian and author specializing in the history of Poland–Ukraine relations. Since 1992 he served at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Institute of National Remembrance.

#2254

Glanmor Williams

#31151

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Sir Glanmor Williams was one of Wales's most eminent historians. Sir Glanmor was born in Dowlais, into a working-class family, and was educated at Cyfarthfa Grammar School in Merthyr Tydfil. He studied at Aberystwyth alongside Alun Lewis and Emyr Humphreys, becoming a specialist in the early modern period of Welsh history. His long academic career included 37 years at the University of Wales, Swansea, between 1945 and 1982, and ten as vice-president of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

#2255

William M. Leary

#58472

Overall Influence

1934 - 2006 (72 years)

William Matthew "Bill" Leary, Jr. was an American academic and aviation historian. For 32 years, Leary taught at the University of Georgia from which he retired as the E. Merton Coulter Professor of History in 2005.

#2256

Donald Akenson

#54283

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Donald Harman Akenson is an American historian and author. Notably prolific, he has written at least 24 book-length, scholarly monographs, 4 jointly-authored scholarly books, 6 works of fiction and historical fiction, and 55 scholarly articles. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Historical Society . He is also a Molson Prize Laureate, awarded for a lifetime contribution to Canadian culture . He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, and in 1992 he won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, then the richest non-fiction book prize in the world. Akenson received his B.A.

#2257

Bernd Jürgen Fischer

#92403

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Bernd Jürgen Fischer is historian and professor of history at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was elected to the Albanian Academy of Science in 2006 and in 2007, he was appointed to position of special advisor to the Albanian Royal Court.

#2258

Anthony Goodman

#76355

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

Anthony Eric Goodman was an English professor emeritus of medieval and renaissance studies at the University of Edinburgh. His main field of interest was late medieval England, and he published books on subjects such as John of Gaunt and the Wars of the Roses.

#2259

James T. Campbell

#91264

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

James T. Campbell is an American historian. He is a professor of history at Stanford University. Campbell graduated from Yale University, in 1980, and from Stanford University, with a Ph.D. in 1989. He teaches at Stanford University, and formerly taught at Northwestern University and Brown University Campbell collaborated with Susan Smulyan of Brown, and Ernie Limbo of Tougaloo College in creating the "Freedom Now!" website.

#2260

Marcin Wodziński

#38339

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Marcin Wodziński is a professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wrocław, where he heads the Taube Department of Jewish Studies. His research is centered on the 19th century social history of Jews in Silesia and Eastern Europe , and particularly on Haskalah and the Hasidic movement within Judaism.

#2261

Steven C. Harper

#63971

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Steven Craig Harper is a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. He was a historian for the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From 2019, he is the Editor-in-Chief of BYU Studies Quarterly.

#2262

Rolf Hosfeld

#54830

Overall Influence

1948 - 2021 (73 years)

Rolf Hosfeld is the Academic Director of the Potsdam Lepsius House in Germany, a Research Center for Genocide Studies, and works as an independent writer and historian. After graduating the Johannes Althusius Gymnasium in Bad Berleburg, Hosfeld was trained in journalism at the newspaper Westfälische Rundschau. He studied German language and literature, political science, modern history, and philosophy in Frankfurt and West Berlin, completing an M.A. in West Berlin in 1976 and going on to earn a doctoral degree there. His doctoral dissertation on Heinrich Heine is widely considered to have pav...

#2263

Manouchehr Sotoudeh

Manouchehr Sotoudeh

#32415

Overall Influence

1913 - 2016 (103 years)

Manouchehr Sotoudeh was an Iranian geographer and scholar of Persian literature who was famously known for his studies on Iranian languages and ethnic groups. Sotudeh earned his Ph.D. from the University of Tehran after studying Persian language and literature.

#2264

John Gillis

#65298

Overall Influence

1939 - 2021 (82 years)

John Randall Gillis was an American historian. He was Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University. Biography John R. Gillis received his B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University under the direction of Gordon A. Craig.

#2265

Guillermo Morón

Guillermo Morón

#62728

Overall Influence

1926 - 2021 (95 years)

Guillermo Morón Montero was a Venezuelan writer and historian. Guillermo Morón has won awards including the Municipal Prize of Literature , and the National Prize for Literature . Published works El libro de la fe Los Cronistas y la Historia Los borradores de un Meditador Historia de Venezuela Historia política de José Ortega y Gasset Imágenes y nombres Microhistorias Textos sobre Lisandro Alvarado Historia de Francisco y otras maravillas El gallo de las espuelas de oro Homenaje a Don Rómulo Gallegos Ciertos animales criollos Los más antiguos Son españoles Los presidentes de Venezuela El ca...

#2266

Roger Chickering

#79587

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Roger Chickering is an American historian of the German Empire and World War I. He was a professor at Georgetown University, retiring in 2010. Education Chickering received his doctorate in 1968 at Stanford University, where he studied with Gordon A. Craig. Imperial Germany and a World Without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892-1914, published in 1975, was based on his dissertation.

#2267

Jane Ridley

#35466

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

The Honourable Jane Ridley FRSL is an English historian, biographer, author and broadcaster, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham. Ridley won the Duff Cooper Prize in 2002 for The Architect and his Wife, a biography of her great-grandfather Edwin Lutyens.

#2268

Serge Berstein

#22558

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Serge Berstein is a French historian, well known as a specialist of the French Third Republic. He is a teacher at Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.

#2269

Peter Baumgart

#84102

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Peter Baumgart is a German historian. Life Born in Berlin, Baumgart was promoted D. ph in 1956 in historical thinking at the Free University of Berlin with a work supervised by Carl Hinrichs on Zinzendorf. He was Hinrichs' research assistant at the and habilitated in 1964 on the former Braunschweig-wolfenbüttelsche University of Helmstedt. The habilitation thesis remained unpublished. From 1967 until his retirement, Baumgart taught as full professor of modern history at the University of Würzburg.

#2270

Wang Ling

#36787

Overall Influence

1917 - 1994 (77 years)

Wang Ling , 1917 or 1918–1994 Biography Wang Ling was born in Nantong, China, and graduated in history from National Central University , which had moved from Nanjing to Chongqing during the Sino-Japanese war. In 1943, while working as a junior researcher at the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology in Lizhuang, Wang met Needham, a British biochemist who had been sent by the Royal Society and British Government to head the Sino-British Science Cooperation Office, whose mission was to assist the universities of China.

#2271

John Fabian Witt

#39405

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the 2013 Bancroft Prize in history of the Americas and, in 2020, American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19.

#2272

André Chastagnol

#44400

Overall Influence

1920 - 1996 (76 years)

André Chastagnol was a French historian, specializing in Latin epigraphy and literature. After teaching at the Universities of Algiers, Rennes and Paris-X, he finished his career as a professor at the Paris-Sorbonne University. His two theses were devoted to the Praefectus urbi. He succeeded Hans-Georg Pflaum at the head of the Latin epigraphy seminar of the École pratique des hautes études where Michel Christol, Xavier Loriot, and François Jacques were among his students.

#2273

Ian Inkster

#80480

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ian Inkster was a global historian, author and columnist. He was professor of international history at Nottingham Trent University, a prolific writer, editor of the History of Technology book series since 2002 and frequent contributor to Taiwan's Taipei Times, and South China Morning Post. Beginning in the early 1970s, he wrote many books and articles on the influence of scientific and technological change on the course of global history since the 18th century, with particular focus on the UK and Japan, and was a frequent commentator on international relations.

#2274

Giuli Alasania

#17769

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Giuli Alasania is a Georgian historian and public figure. Her publications include 130 papers and 10 monographs. She is the mother of the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. Biography She graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the Tbilisi State University and in 1973 received a Ph.D. degree in History. In 1987 she received a degree of a Doctor of Historical Sciences.

#2275

Sigurd Schmidt

#75827

Overall Influence

1922 - 2013 (91 years)

Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt was a Russian historian, ethnographer and teacher. Biography Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt was born on May 15, 1922, in Moscow. His father was the mathematician Otto Schmidt, and his mother was the literary critic Margarita Golosovker. Schmidt graduated from the Faculty of History at the Moscow University in 1944.

#2276

Lucio Russo

#20727

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Lucio Russo is an Italian physicist, mathematician and historian of science. Born in Venice, he teaches at the Mathematics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Among his main areas of interest are Gibbs measure of the Ising model, percolation theory, and finite Bernoulli schemes, within which he proved an approximate version of the classical Kolmogorov's zero–one law.

#2277

Jaap R. Bruijn

#85901

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Jacobus Ruurd "Jaap" Bruijn , was a Dutch maritime historian. He was professor of maritime history at the University of Leiden from 1979 until his retirement in 2003. During his 41-year teaching career as The Netherlands' only university professor of maritime history, he guided the doctoral theses of at least 49 graduate students.

#2278

Laurent Dubois

#61134

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Laurent Dubois is the John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History & Principles of Democracy. A specialist on the history and culture of the Atlantic world who studies the Caribbean , North America, and France, Dubois joined the University of Virginia in January 2021, and will also serve as the Democracy Initiative’s Director for Academic Affairs. In this role, Dubois will spearhead the Democracy Initiative’s research and pedagogical missions and will serve as the director and lead research convener of the John L. Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab—the permanent core lab of the Initiative which will operate as the connecting hub for the entire project.

#2279

Beatrice Forbes Manz

#37424

Overall Influence

Beatrice Forbes Manz is an American historian of the Middle East and Central Asia who specializes in nomads and the Timurid dynasty. She currently works as a professor of history at Tufts University. Her 1989 book The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane is considered one of the most authoritative accounts of the career of the conqueror Timur.

#2280

Kim Jung-bae

#62176

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Kim Jung-bae is an ancient historian and archaeologist, university professor emeritus, and former President of Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. Kim currently serves as the Chairman of the Goguryeo Research Society.

#2281

Maurice Beresford

#50630

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Maurice Warwick Beresford, was an English economic historian and archaeologist specialising in the medieval period. He was Professor of Economic History at the University of Leeds. Early life and education Beresford was born on 6 February 1920 in Sutton Coldfield, then in Warwickshire. He was the only child of Harry Bertram Beresford and Nora Elizabeth Beresford . His father died in 1934, aged 46, and Maurice's mother continued to live with him until her death in 1966, aged 79.

#2282

Carlos Marichal

#72058

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Carlos Marichal is a Mexican economic historian who currently works at El Colegio de México, where he has taught since 1989. He has done research and published widely on the economic and financial history of Latin America.

#2283

Gabrielle M. Spiegel

#45471

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Gabrielle Michele Spiegel is an American historian of medieval France, and the current Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University where she served as chair for the history department for six years, and acting and interim dean of faculty. She also served as dean of humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004–2005, and, from 2008 to 2009, she was the president of the American Historical Association. In 2011, she was elected as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#2284

Werner Riess

#91933

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Werner Riess is a German Ancient Historian. Life Riess studied History, German literature and language as well as Romance languages at the universities of Augsburg, Germany and Tours, France from 1990 through 1996. In 2000, he received his doctorate in Ancient History from the University of Heidelberg, Germany for a dissertation titled "Apuleius und die Räuber. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung." This study was awarded the Ruprecht-Karls-Prize of the University of Heidelberg. Riess was "Wissenschaftlicher Angestellter" in the Seminar für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik of th...

#2285

David Starkey

#35145

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

David John Starkey is a specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British maritime history. His research focuses on shipping, seafaring, privateering, fisheries and marine environmental history.

#2286

Yair Auron

#20536

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Yair Auron is an Israeli historian, scholar and expert specializing in Holocaust and genocide studies, racism and contemporary Jewry. Since 2005, he has served as the head of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication of The Open University of Israel and an associate professor.

#2287

Rhys Isaac

#47434

Overall Influence

1937 - 2010 (73 years)

Rhys Llywelyn Isaac was a South African-born Australian historian of American history who also worked in the United States. Isaac and his twin brother Glynn were born in Cape Town, South Africa, to William Edwyn Isaac and Frances Margaret Leighton, both professional botanists.

#2288

Mark McKenna

#59249

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Mark McKenna is a professor of history at the University of Sydney, noted for his work on Aboriginal history, a biography of Manning Clark and the history of republicanism in Australia. Biography Early life and education McKenna was born in 1959 and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Toongabbie. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, he lived in Europe for a period and then taught in high schools in Sydney before completing his PhD at the University of New South Wales in 1996.

#2289

Alan Gallay

#42275

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Alan Gallay is an American historian. He specializes in the Atlantic World and Early American history, including issues of slavery. He won the Bancroft Prize in 2003 for his The Indian Slave Trade: the Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717.

#2290

Peter Dendle

#23837

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English , and the monstrous . Dendle has written books and articles on a number of topics, including cryptozoology, philology, the demonic in literature, zombie movies, and Medieval plants and medicine. His work on zombies was featured by NPR.

#2291

Jon Latimer

#47106

Overall Influence

1964 - 2009 (45 years)

Jonathan David Latimer was a historian and writer based in Wales. His books include Operation Compass 1940 , Tobruk 1941 , Deception in War , Alamein , Burma: The Forgotten War and 1812: War with America which won a Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History and was shortlisted for the George Washington Book Prize.

#2292

Ulrich Muhlack

#52793

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Ulrich Muhlack is a German historian. Life Born in Königsberg, From 1960 to 1965 Muhlack studied history and Latin at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Göttingen. In 1965 he passed the first Staatsexamen for the teaching profession at grammar schools. The following year he received his doctorate in Frankfurt with a dissertation on ""France in the politics of the Prussian statesman Wilhelm von Humboldt". From 1972 he was professor for general historical methodology and at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He retired in the summer semester of 2006. Among others Gerrit Walther belonged to Muhlack's academic students.

#2293

Theodore S. Hamerow

#75642

Overall Influence

1920 - 2013 (93 years)

Theodore Stephen Hamerow was a Polish-born American historian, focusing on modern history, especially German history of the 19th and 20th century. Life and career Born to Jewish parents in Warsaw, Hamerow moved via France to the United States with his family in 1930. He earned his bachelor's degree from City College of New York in 1942, followed by a master's from Columbia University in 1947. In 1951, he earned his doctorate under supervision of Hajo Holborn at Yale University.

#2294

Haruko Wakita

#41120

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

was a Japanese academic, editor and expert in medieval Japanese women's history. Early life Since the age of six, Wakita was interested in Noh drama; and she regularly performs on stage. The insight gained from her lifelong study and practice of this medieval theatrical art informs her historical research.

#2295

Klaus Mühlhahn

#65710

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Klaus Mühlhahn is a German historian and sinologist who was a Professor and Vice President of the Free University of Berlin. Since 2020 he serves as president of Zeppelin University. He was awarded the John K. Fairbank Prize in 2009 for his book Criminal Justice in China: A History.

#2296

Jennifer Homans

#74036

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Jennifer A. Homans is an American historian, author, and dance critic. Her book Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010. Early life and education Homans was raised in Chicago, Illinois, where she trained as a ballerina from the age of eight. By the time she was a teenager, Homans had enrolled in dance classes at the University of Chicago and eventually left the state for more serious training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and School of American Ballet. After dancing professionally with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Homans decided to enroll in Columbia University at the age of 26.

#2297

Nevra Necipoğlu

#13451

Overall Influence

Nevra Necipoğlu is a Turkish historian of the Byzantine Empire who is a professor of history at Boğaziçi University. Early life and education She was educated and graduated from Robert College. She then graduated from Wellesley College with a double major in History and Economics in 1982. She received her Ph.D. in Byzantine History from Harvard University in 1990. She is the sister of Gülru Necipoğlu, who is the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and director of the Aga Khan Program of Islamic Architecture at Harvard University.

#2298

Denise Spellberg

Denise Spellberg

#77320

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Denise A. Spellberg is an American scholar of Islamic history. She is professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life and education Spellberg holds an A.B. in History from Smith College and an M.A., M. Phil., and a PhD in Middle Eastern History from Columbia University.

#2299

Jay R. Berkovitz

#66094

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jay R. Berkovitz is Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Jay Berkovitz completed his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1983. He taught at Spertus College in Chicago, Bar Ilan University, Hebrew College, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Touro College, Trinity College, and the University of Connecticut Storrs. At Amherst he is an adjunct member of both the History Department and the Department of French and Italian Studies.

#2300

Andrea Pető

#33634

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Andrea Pető is a Hungarian historian. She is a professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University and a Doctor at Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She writes on political extremism and how it shapes the collective memory of society. Pető's work evaluates contemporary society from an inter-disciplinary and gendered perspective. She has analyzed the effects of Nazism and Stalinism on Hungary and Eastern Europe, as well as the participation of women in those movements. Pető has been recognized for her contributions with the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian ...

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