The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in History,
#2451
Gunther E. Rothenberg
#37264
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Gunther Erich Rothenberg was an internationally known military historian, best known for his publications on the Habsburg military and Napoleonic Wars. He had a fifteen-year military career, as a British Army soldier in World War II, a Haganah officer in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and in the United States Air Force during the Korean War.
Go to Profile#2452
John Vincent
#36499
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
John Russell Vincent was a British historian and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Early life and education Vincent was educated at Bedales School and Christ's College, Cambridge. Academic career Vincent joined the University of Bristol in 1970 as Professor of Modern History, from 1984 Professor of History, until his retirement in 2002 when he became Emeritus Professor. He subsequently became Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia.
Go to Profile#2453
Gunnar S. Paulsson
#51354
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Gunnar Svante Paulsson is a Swedish-born Canadian historian, university lecturer, and author who has taught in Britain, Canada, Germany, and Italy. He specializes in history of The Holocaust and has been described as "an expert on that period". He is best known for his 2002 book, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940-1945.
Go to Profile#2454
Marcia Chatelain
#23954
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Marcia Chatelain is an American academic who serves as the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, for which she also won the James Beard Award for Writing in 2022. Chatelain was the first black woman to win the latter award.
Go to Profile#2455
Christian Habicht
#48819
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Christian Habicht was a German historian of ancient Greece and an epigrapher in Ancient Greek. Biography After his Promotion at the University of Hamburg in 1952, Habicht was an assistant professor there and after his Habilitation degree in 1957 Privatdozent. In 1961, he became ordentlicher Professor at the University of Marburg and then in 1965 moved to the University of Heidelberg. In 1973, Habicht went as a faculty professor to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he had already belonged, since the previous year, as a permanent member. At Heidelberg he remained "Honorar" professor.
Go to Profile#2456
Friedrich Stadler
#18607
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Friedrich Stadler is an Austrian historian and philosopher and professor for history and philosophy of science at the University of Vienna. He is the founder and long-time director of the Institute Vienna Circle, which was established as a Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the Vienna University in May 2011. Currently he is a permanent fellow of this department and serves at the same time as the Director of the co-operating Vienna Circle Society, which is the continuation of the former Institute Vienna Circle as an extra-university institution.
Go to Profile#2457
John Blair
#85048
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
William John Blair, is an English historian, archaeologist, and academic, who specialises in Anglo-Saxon England. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. He gave the 2013 Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#2458
Andrey Sakharov
#95973
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Andrey Nikolayevich Sakharov was an anti-Normanist Russian historian. Career Sakharov was born in Kulebaki. In 1993, he was appointed Director of the Russian History Institute, affiliated with the Academy of Sciences. He initiated a campaign to purge the institute of his Normanist opponents. It came under much criticism, forcing Sakharov into retirement in 2010.
Go to Profile#2459
R. G. Tiedemann
#47486
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Rolf Gerhard Tiedemann , better known as R. G. Tiedemann or Gary Tiedemann , was a German historian of Christianity in China. Biography Born in Hartenholm, Schleswig-Holstein in wartime Germany, Tiedemann left school as a teenager. At 21 he settled with family in Wisconsin, and was later drafted to train in the US army's Medical Training Unit in Texas during the Vietnam War. He completed a BA at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, followed by an MA and a PhD at SOAS University of London. After taking several part-time posts, Tiedemann spent twenty years teaching Modern History of China in SOAS's Department of History, including a sabbatical at the Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco.
Go to Profile#2460
Raphael Sealey
#71404
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Raphael Sealey was a classical scholar and ancient historian. Sealey studied at University College, Oxford in England under George Cawkwell, receiving an M.A. from Oxford University in 1951. Raphael Sealey was Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley in California, United States, from 1967 to 2000, specialising in Ancient Greek history and law. On retirement, he became an Emeritus Professor. Before coming to Berkeley, he had taught at the University College of North Wales, at Queen Mary College, University of London, and at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Go to Profile#2461
Vojtech Mastny
#40277
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Vojtech Mastny is an American historian of Czech descent, professor of political science and international relations, specializing in the history of the Cold War. He has been considered one of the leading American authorities on Soviet affairs. Mastny received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and has been professor of history and international relations at Columbia, University of Illinois, Boston University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, as well as professor of strategy at U.S. Naval War College, Fulbright professor at the University of Bonn, senior researc...
Go to Profile#2462
Jan Zaprudnik
#52676
Overall Influence
1926 - 2022 (96 years)
Jan Zaprudnik was a Belarusian-American historian and publicist. He was also one of the leaders of the Belarusian community in the United States and an honoured member of the Belarusian PEN-centre. Biography Jan Zaprudnik was born into a family of school teachers in what was then the Second Polish Republic. During the Occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany, Zaprudnik graduated from the Gymnasium in Baranavičy and studied at a high school there.
Go to Profile#2463
Rudolf Schieffer
#89677
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Rudolf Schieffer was a German historian specializing in medieval history. From 1994 to 2012 he was president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Biography Rudolf Schieffer was the son of the historian Theodor Schieffer. He graduated from high school in 1966, and studied history and Latin between 1966 and 1971 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and the Philipps-Universität Marburg. He received his doctorate in 1975 in Bonn, his dissertation, Die Entstehung von Domkapiteln in Deutschland, supervised by Eugen Ewig. From 1975 to 1980 he worked at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica .
Go to Profile#2464
Valerie Flint
#58451
Overall Influence
1936 - 2009 (73 years)
Valerie Irene Jane Flint was a British scholar and historian, specialising in medieval intellectual and cultural history. Biography Early life Flint was born in Derby. She was a pupil at the Rutland House School; and although her family was not Catholic, Flint was also educated by the Sisters of Mercy at their Doncaster convent school. Upon winning a scholarship, she matriculated to Lady Margaret Hall at the University of Oxford. Focusing on the 12th century, Flint studied for an MPhil under Beryl Smalley, Richard Southern, Richard Hunt and Lorenzo Minio-Paluello.
Go to Profile#2465
Gregory Areshian
#25198
Overall Influence
1949 - 2020 (71 years)
Gregory Areshian was an Armenian-American archeologist and historian who was a professor at American University of Armenia. He was the co-director of the international team of archeologists who, led by Boris Gasparyan, found the 5,500 years old shoe in and the oldest winery in Areni of which Areshian said:
Go to Profile#2466
Clara Lida
#26917
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Clara Eugenia Lida is an Argentinian historian, well known for her work on social movements, anarchism and socialisms in the 19th century, and on Spanish emigration and Republican exile. First years Daughter of philologist Raimundo Lida , she studied with Silvio Zavala, in Mexico, and Vicente Llorens, at Princeton University. Her formal education as a historian started at Brandeis University , where she obtained her BA in 1963. She continued her higher education at El Colegio de México and Princeton University , where she obtained her PhD in history and literature. She taught at Wesleyan Uni...
Go to Profile#2467
Jed Buchwald
#31023
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jed Zachary Buchwald is Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at Caltech. He was previously director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2011.
Go to Profile#2468
Kim Plofker
#27179
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Kim Leslie Plofker is an American historian of mathematics, specializing in Indian mathematics. Education and career Born in Chennai, India, Plofker received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Haverford College. She received her Ph.D. in 1995 while studying with adviser David Pingree from Brown University, where she conducted research and later joined as a guest professor.
Go to Profile#2469
Katharine Keats-Rohan
#81165
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Dr Katharine Stephanie Benedicta Keats-Rohan is a British history researcher, specialising in prosopography. She has produced seminal work on early European history, and collaborated with, among others, Christian Settipani. Keats-Rohan is widely regarded as one of the founders of modern prosopographical and network analysis research, which has become highly computer-dependent.
Go to Profile#2470
Sara Sefchovich
#23242
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Sara Sefchovich is a Mexican writer. Biography She studied sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , earning a master's degree in 1987 and a doctorate degree in 2005 in History of Mexico. Later, she also did research at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales of the institution. She has written articles for the magazines Fem, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Cuadernos de Comunicación, Los Universitarios, Revista de la Universidad de México, Casa del Tiempo, La Semana de Bellas Artes, La Cultura en México, Sábado and the newspapers La Jornada and El Universal.
Go to Profile#2471
Ann Williams
#57510
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Ann Williams is an English medievalist, historian and author. Before retiring she worked at the Polytechnic of North London, where she was Senior Lecturer in Medieval History. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a research fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her numerous works include:A Biographical Dictionary of Dark Age Britain: England, Scotland, and Wales, c.500–c.1050, Routledge , with Alfred P. Smyth and D. P. Kirby. Williams wrote the English entries.The English and the Norman Conquest Land, Power and Politics: the family estates and patronage of Odda of Deerhurst Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c.
Go to Profile#2472
Louis R. Harlan
#69485
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Louis Rudolph Harlan was an American academic historian who wrote a two-volume biography of the African-American educator and social leader Booker T. Washington and edited several volumes of Washington materials. He won the Bancroft Prize in 1973 and 1984, once for each volume, and the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for the second volume.
Go to Profile#2474
Igor Danilevsky
#57748
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Igor Nikolaevich Danilevsky is a Russian historian and a specialist on the history of Kievan Rus and Muscovy until the end of the 16th century. Professor, Doctor of Historical Sciences. Biography Igor Nikolaevich Danilevsky was born on 20 May 1953 in Rostov-on-Don. From 1970 to 1975 he studied at the Faculty of History of Rostov State University.
Go to Profile#2475
Lin Foxhall
#51453
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Lin Foxhall, FSA, MBE, is a Professor of archaeology and ancient Greek History. She has written on women, men, and gender in the classical world. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Leicester, and in 2017 she was appointed to the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool.
Go to Profile#2476
Michael Les Benedict
#70476
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Michael Les Benedict is an American historian, who taught at Ohio State University from 1970 until his retirement in 2005. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois and his PhD from Rice University. His expertise is principally in constitutional and legal history, civil rights and civil liberties, and the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Benedict brings a political science approach to his analysis of historical events. Benedict has contributed several works to the field of Civil War and Reconstruction studies including The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johns...
Go to Profile#2477
Traian Stoianovich
#53294
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Traian Stoianovich was an American historian and a professor of history at Rutgers University. He specialized in the history of the Balkans. Biography Born Trajan Stojanović in Gradešnica, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , his family moved to Rochester, New York, where he was brought up. At a time when it was difficult for working-class people and immigrants to achieve higher education, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester. After serving in the United States Army during World War II , he took a master's degree at New York University and ...
Go to Profile#2478
D. H. Pennington
#77020
Overall Influence
1919 - 2007 (88 years)
Donald Henshaw Pennington was a historian of 17th-century England. He taught at Manchester and Oxford universities, becoming a tutor at Balliol College, Oxford in 1965. Donald was born in Marple, Greater Manchester, near Stockport. His father, Frederick Pennington, was the Headmaster of the Albert Schools in Marple when Donald was born. His mother Gladys also taught at Marple School. Donald's mother was a sister of Frederick's first wife, Clara Prentice. Frederick and Clara Prentice were married on the third of August 1905 at Marple, however, Clara died in 1915. Donald's parents were then married in Marple on the 30th of August 1918.
Go to Profile#2479
Lionel Kochan
#64941
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Lionel Edmond Kochan was a British historian, journalist and publisher. He is best known for his work in Jewish history, having become an academic historian in his 30s and formerly specialising in European history.
Go to Profile#2480
Linnda R. Caporael
#14120
Overall Influence
Linnda Caporael is a professor at the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Educational background Linnda R. Caporael is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the department of Technical Studies and Science. She received her PhD in Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and she also studied human ethology at the Institute of Child Development at the University of London. She is a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar and a visiting scientist in the Dept. of Invertebrate Paleontology and in the Dept. of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History.
Go to Profile#2481
Ian N. Wood
#55389
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ian N. Wood, is an English scholar of early medieval history, and a professor at the University of Leeds who specializes in the history of the Merovingian dynasty and the missionary efforts on the European continent. Patrick J. Geary called him "the leading British historian of Francia".
Go to Profile#2482
Jean-Pierre Filiu
#19521
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Jean-Pierre Filiu is a French professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, Paris School of International Affairs, an orientalist and an arabist. Life and career Before joining Sciences Po in 2006, Jean-Pierre Filiu was a career-diplomat who served as a junior officer in Jordan and the US, before becoming the French Deputy Chief of Mission in Syria and in Tunisia . Filiu was also diplomatic adviser to the French minister of Interior , the minister of Defense and the Prime Minister . He was one of the ten independent experts that President François Hollande designated to contribute to th...
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John B. Boles
#87831
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
John B. Boles is an American historian. He retired as the William P. Hobby Professor of American History at Rice University in 2019. Early life John B. Boles was born on October 20, 1943, in Houston, Texas, to Billie and Mary Boles. After WWII ended, his parents returned to their hometown of Center, Texas, a rural, racially segregated Bible Belt town. They raised cotton and later, chickens; Mr. Boles also drove a taxi. The family was staunchly Baptist in a town permeated with evangelical Christianity. This background--and his lack of awareness of other lifestyles--informed Boles' later histor...
Go to Profile#2484
Julian Swann
#86361
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Julian Swann FRHS is a British historian and academic, a professor of early modern history at Birkbeck, University of London, where he has taught since 1989. Swann specialises in early modern French and European history.
Go to Profile#2485
Arnold Suppan
#85085
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Arnold Suppan is an Austrian historian who studies Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. He is a faculty member at Andrássy University Budapest and University of Vienna. He was secretary-general of the Austrian Academy of Sciences from 2009–2011 and vice president from 2011–2013. He was director of the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna since 2002.
Go to Profile#2486
Henrik Meinander
#87121
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Carl Henrik Meinander , is a Finnish historian, PhD 1994. From 2002 Meinander is the keeper of the Swedish-speaking professorship in history at Helsinki University. He is the son of the famous archaeologist Carl Fredrik Meinander.
Go to Profile#2487
Itamar Singer
#37244
Overall Influence
1946 - 2012 (66 years)
Itamar Singer was an Israeli author and historian of Jewish-Romanian origin. He is known for his research of the Ancient Near East and as a leading Hittitologist, pioneering the study of this ancient Anatolians culture in Israel and elucidating the tensions which brought about its demise.
Go to Profile#2488
Susan L. Mann
#43409
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Susan Louise Mann is an American historian of China best known for her work on the Qing dynasty and the role of women and gender in Chinese history. She was professor of History at University of California, Davis from 1989 until her retirement in 2010.
Go to Profile#2489
Roman Wapiński
#73417
Overall Influence
1931 - 2008 (77 years)
Roman Wapiński was a Polish historian, lecturer at the University of Gdańsk. He specialized in the history of the Second Polish Republic and right-wing National Democracy political camp, being the foremost historian of National Democracy. Wapiński was considered one of the foremost Polish historians.
Go to Profile#2490
Jeffrey S. Gurock
#41814
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jeffrey S. Gurock is Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University in New York City. Biography Gurock earned a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York and a master's degree from Columbia University. He served as associate editor to American Jewish History from 1982 to 2002.
Go to Profile#2491
Alexei I. Miller
#85086
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Alexei I. Miller is the Russian professor of history at Central European University and formerly research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, senior fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen.
Go to Profile#2492
George Athan Billias
#45991
Overall Influence
1919 - 2018 (99 years)
George Athan Billias was an American historian. Early life Billias was born in Lynn, Massachusetts and graduated from Lynn English High School in 1937. He received his B.A. from Bates College in 1948 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1958. He joined the United States Army in 1941 and became a medical administrative officer in 1942. During World War II, he received the Bronze Star for gallantry in evacuating wounded from the Remagen bridgehead during the Battle for the Ludendorf Bridge across the Rhine River in March 1945. He served as a civilian National Defense Historian with the Uni...
Go to Profile#2493
Khaled Fahmy
#61201
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Khaled Fahmy is an historian and the Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East at Tufts University. Biography In 2010, Fahmy returned to Egypt where he was a professor in the Department of History at the American University in Cairo. In 2014-2015 he was an Arcapita Visiting Professor at the Middle East Institute, Columbia University. In 2015-2016 he was the Shawwaf Visiting Professor in Modern Middle East History at Harvard University. After serving as His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa’id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies, and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, he moved ...
Go to Profile#2494
Ignacio M. Garcia
#85980
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ignacio M. Garcia is a Mexican American author and educator. He is the Lemuel H. Redd Jr. professor of Western American History at Brigham Young University. He has written seven books related to Mexican-American politics and history. In 2019 he became the president of the Mormon History Association. Brigham Young University has named a scholarship in his honor.
Go to Profile#2495
Deborah Cohen
#92120
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Deborah Anne Cohen is an American historian of modern Europe and Britain. She is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Northwestern University. Education and career Cohen is of Ukrainian Jewish descent and grew up the daughter of a lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky. Her interest in British history stems from her father's interest in British modernist literature, and her feminist approach to history was influenced by Harvard University professors Susan Pedersen, Alexandra Owen, and Olwen Hufton. She graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1990, and completed her Ph.D.
Go to Profile#2496
David Beers Quinn
#71551
Overall Influence
1909 - 2002 (93 years)
David Beers Quinn was an Irish historian who wrote extensively on the voyages of discovery and colonisation of America. Many of his publications appeared as volumes of the Hakluyt Society. He played a major role in assisting the presentation of the historical aspects during the quadricentennial celebrations of the first establishment of a colony at Roanoke Island.
Go to Profile#2497
Dieter Geuenich
#79877
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Dieter Geuenich is a German historian who specializes in the history of Germanic peoples. Biography Dieter Geuenich was born on 17 February 1943 in Bad Honnef, Germany. He studied history, Germanistics, theology and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Münster, and received his PhD at Münster in 1972 under the supervision of Karl Schmid. From 1972 to 1982, Geuenich was a research assistant in history at the University of Freiburg. He gained his habilitation at Freiburg in 1981, and subsequently served as Professor of Medieval History at the University of Freiburg from 1982 to 1987. He was appointed Chair of Medieval History at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 1989.
Go to Profile#2498
Michael B. Katz
#107468
Overall Influence
#2499
Julia Barrow
#85543
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Julia Steuart Barrow, is an English historian and academic, who specialises in medieval and ecclesiastical history. Since 2012, she has been Professor in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds and previously served as the Director of the University's Institute for Medieval Studies.
Go to Profile#2500
Erik-Jan Zürcher
#46204
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Erik-Jan Zürcher is a Dutch Turkologist. He is a professor of Turkish studies at Leiden University since 1997. From 2008 to 2012 he served as director of the International Institute of Social History. His book Turkey: a Modern History is considered a standard work. Zürcher frequently comments on current issues related to Turkey.
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