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,

#2851

Peter Sawyer

#49546

Overall Influence

1928 - 2018 (90 years)

Peter Hayes Sawyer was a British historian. His work on the Vikings was highly influential, as was his scholarship on Medieval England. Sawyer's early work The Age of the Vikings argued that the Vikings were "traders not raiders", overturning the previously held view that the Vikings' voyages were only focused on destruction and pillaging.

#2852

Todd Endelman

#41744

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Todd M. Endelman is the William Haber Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Michigan. He specializes in the social history of Jews in Western Europe and in Anglo-Jewish history. He is the author of The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830: Tradition and Change in a Liberal Society , Radical Assimilation in Anglo-Jewish History, 1656-1945 , and The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000 .

#2853

Peregrine Horden

#112859

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Peregrine Horden is professor in medieval history at Royal Holloway, University of London. Horden's research is in the area of Mediterranean cities and medicine in the Middle Ages. He is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

#2854

Craig J. Ostler

#93232

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Craig James Ostler is an American historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University . Ostler served a mission for the LDS Church in the Colombia Bogota Mission. Prior to joining the BYU faculty Ostler was an instructor with the Church Educational System. Ostler received his Ph.D. from BYU.

#2855

Frédéric Bozo

#55810

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Frédéric Bozo is a professor at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, where he teaches contemporary history and international relations. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Institut français des relations internationales where his focus is on Atlantic and European security issues. His prior teaching positions include the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris , the University of Paris X-Nanterre and the University of Marne-la-Vallée . He is also a member of the Centre de recherche sur l’histoire du monde Atlantique and of the Groupe français pour l’histoire de l’arme nucl...

#2856

James Barr

#68719

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

James Barr is a British author of a number of historical works on the Middle East. He is currently a visiting fellow at King's College London. Biography Barr read modern history at Lincoln College, Oxford.

#2857

Kathy Peiss

#59212

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kathy Lee Peiss is an American historian. She is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at The University of Pennsylvania. She is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

#2858

John H. Lienhard

John H. Lienhard

#24835

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

John Henry Lienhard IV is Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston. He worked in heat transfer and thermodynamics for many years prior to creating the radio program The Engines of Our Ingenuity. Lienhard is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

#2859

LaWanda Cox

#34173

Overall Influence

1909 - 2005 (96 years)

LaWanda Fenlason Cox was a pioneering historian of the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction. Cox was born on September 24, 1909, in Aberdeen, Washington. She attended Washington High School in Portland, Oregon. Later, she received her Bachelors at the University of Oregon in 1931, her masters from Smith College and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1941. Cox studied at Smith College with Merle Curti a social historian, and at Berkeley with John Schuster Taylor an economist. She was a member of the history faculty at Hunter College and the City University of New York's Graduate Center from 1940, until her retirement from teaching in 1971.

#2860

Jared Farmer

#94239

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Jared Farmer is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in environmental history, landscape studies, and the North American West. Biography Jared Farmer earned his BA from Utah State University in 1996, his MA from the University of Montana in 1999, and his PhD from Stanford University in 2005.

#2861

R. W. Johnson

#20963

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

R. W. Johnson is a British journalist, political scientist, and historian who lives in South Africa. Born in England, he was educated at Natal University and Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar. He was a fellow in politics at Magdalen College, Oxford, for 26 years and remains an emeritus fellow. His 2015 book Look Back in Laughter: Oxford's Postwar Golden Age is a memoir of his years at Magdalen, including his work with college president Keith Griffin to rescue the college's finances and buildings. In reviewing his memoirs, The Economist described Johnson as a "romantic contrarian liberal"...

#2862

James I. Robertson Jr.

James I. Robertson Jr.

#24848

Overall Influence

1930 - 2019 (89 years)

James Irvin "Bud" Robertson Jr. was an American historian on the American Civil War and professor at Virginia Tech. Early life and academic career Robertson was born on July 18, 1930, and raised in Danville, Virginia. He earned his bachelor's degree at Randolph-Macon College in 1955, and his master's degree and PhD. at Emory University in 1956 and 1959, respectively. He earned his Litt.D. at Randolph-Macon in 1980.

#2863

Lech Trzeciakowski

Lech Trzeciakowski

#41512

Overall Influence

1931 - 2017 (86 years)

Lech Trzeciakowski was a Polish historian who served as director of the Western Institute in Poznań from 1974 to 1978. Born in Poznań, he also died there in 2017. Selected publications Lech Trzeciakowski, Kulturkampf w zaborze pruskim, Poznań 1970Lech Trzeciakowski, Pod pruskim zaborem 1850-1914, Warszawa 1973Lech Trzeciakowski, Walka o polskość miast Poznańskiego na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, Poznań 1964Lech Trzeciakowski, W dziewiętnastowiecznym Poznaniu, Poznań 1987

#2864

Richard E. Rubenstein

#35866

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Richard E. Rubenstein is an author and University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason University, holding degrees from Harvard University, Oxford University , and Harvard Law School. Rubenstein is from Woodmere, New York. He lives in Washington, D.C.

#2865

Karlene Faith

#29736

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Karlene Faith was a Canadian writer, feminist, scholar, and human rights activist. She was a professor emerita at the Simon Fraser University School of Criminology. Early life and career Karlene Faith was born in Aylsham, Saskatchewan in 1938. She was the oldest of six children and her father was a United Church Minister. After moving to a small town in Montana near a jail, Faith often witnessed police brutality.

#2866

Eric A. Johnson

#67720

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Eric A. Johnson is an American historian, social scientist, and professor of history at Central Michigan University. Dr. Johnson specializes in the history of crime and violence, the Holocaust, and the history of modern Germany.

#2867

Julia Zabłocka

#108245

Overall Influence

1931 - 1993 (62 years)

Rosalia Julianna Zabłocka was a Polish classical scholar, historian and archaeologist who pioneered research on the ancient history of the Middle East at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In the late 1970s, she participated in archaeology developments in Iraq and was particularly active in the excavations of the Novae Fortress in today's Bulgaria. In 1982 she published an authoritative history of the Near East in Antiquity. In 1984, she was appointed professor of ancient history at the Adam Mickiewicz University.

#2868

Leonid Alaev

#113702

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Leonid Borisovich Alaev was a Soviet and Russian historian and indologist, Doctor of Sciences in Historical Sciences, principal researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and honorary professor at the Pedagogical Institute of Irkutsk State University.

#2869

Evelynn M. Hammonds

#25572

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Evelynn Maxine Hammonds is an American feminist and scholar. She is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University, and former Dean of Harvard College. The intersections of race, gender, science and medicine are prominent research topics across her published works. Hammonds received degrees in engineering and physics. Before getting her PhD in the History of Science at Harvard, she was a computer programmer. She began her teaching career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later moving to Harvard.

#2870

Alexandra Walsham

#54086

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Alexandra Marie Walsham is an English-Australian academic historian. She specialises in early modern Britain and in the impact of the Protestant and Catholic reformationss. Since 2010, she has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and is currently a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She is co-editor of Past & Present and vice-president of the Royal Historical Society.

#2871

Alan F. Wilt

#97133

Overall Influence

1937 - 2005 (68 years)

Alan Freese Wilt was professor emeritus of history at Iowa State University. Biography He was born in Nappanee, Indiana. He received a B.A. in history from DePauw University, and an M.A. and Ph.D., both from the University of Michigan. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1960 to 1963, where he became a first lieutenant.

#2872

Robin Humphreys

#67002

Overall Influence

1907 - 1999 (92 years)

Robert Arthur Humphreys , known as Robin Humphreys, was a British historian, the first professor of Latin American studies in the United Kingdom, and the founder of the Institute of Latin American Studies at University College London. His books cover the emancipation of South America, British diplomacy in Central America, and the evolution of modern Latin America.

#2873

Lewis Sorley

#37126

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Lewis Stone "Bob" Sorley III is an American intelligence analyst and military historian. His books about the U.S. war in Vietnam, in which he served as an officer, have been highly influential in government circles.

#2874

Vincent Brown

#79612

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and African-American Studies, and Director of the History Design Studio at Harvard University. His research, writing, teaching, and other creative endeavors are focused on the political dimensions of cultural practice in the African Diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the early modern Atlantic world.

#2875

Émile Poulat

#40508

Overall Influence

1920 - 2014 (94 years)

Émile Poulat , was until 1954 a Catholic priest, associated with the Prêtres Ouvriers movement, and thereafter a French historian and sociologist. Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he was also director of research at CNRS and historian of the contemporary church. He was a founding member of the Group of Sociology of Religion, director and member of the editorial boards of several journals including Politica Hermetica. His research concentrated on the conflict between Catholic culture and modern culture in the history of contemporary Catholicism.

#2876

Edward L. Widmer

Edward L. Widmer

#69524

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Edward "Ted" Ladd Widmer is an American historian, writer, librarian, and musician who served as a speechwriter in the Clinton White House. He serves on boards of the Harvard Lampoon, Massachusetts Historical Society and The New England Quarterly.

#2877

Warren Dean

#92379

Overall Influence

1932 - 1994 (62 years)

Warren Dean was a prize-winning historian of modern Latin America, specializing in Brazil as well as environmental history. Following his accidental death by asphyxiation due to a defective gas line in his rented apartment, the Warren Dean Prize was established by the Conference on Latin American History in 1995.

#2878

Michael Hunter

#84426

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Michael Cyril William Hunter is emeritus professor of history in the department of history, classics and archaeology and a fellow of Birkbeck, University of London. Hunter is interested in the culture of early modern England. He specialises in the history of science in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, particularly the work of Robert Boyle. In Noel Malcolm's judgement, Hunter "has done more for Boyle studies than anyone before him ".

#2879

Vladislav Zubok

Vladislav Zubok

#19090

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

#2880

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

#27525

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an American historian and cultural critic. She is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders. Ben-Ghiat is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. Biography Born in the United States to an Israeli-born Sephardi father and a Scottish mother, she grew up in Pacific Palisades, California. She graduated in history at UCLA and obtained a PhD in comparative history at Brandeis University. A member of the American Historical Association since 1990, she is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. She regularly writes for CNN, The A...

#2881

Aira Kemiläinen

#55586

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Aira Tellervo Kemiläinen was a Finnish historian who received her Ph.D. in 1957. In the 1950s and 1960s, Kemiläinen taught history at a number of different schools in Helsinki. In 1961 she became associate professor at University of Helsinki, and became professor at University of Jyväskylä as well in 1971. She retired in 1986.

#2882

Paul Gootenberg

#89044

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Paul Eliot Gootenberg is a historian of Latin America who specializes in the history of the Andean drug trade, the fields of Peruvian and Mexican history, as well as historical sociology. He earned an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago , and is currently a professor of history and co-director of Latin American Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has been both a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow. Along with the historian Herman Lebovics and the sociologist Daniel Levy, he is a coordinator of the Stony Brook Initiativ...

#2883

Frank Tipton

#83372

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Frank Ben Tipton is an Australian historian and Emeritus Professor at The University of Sydney Business School. He is known for his works on Modern history of Germany and Economic history. Bibliography Tipton FB 1976 'Regional Variations in the Economic Development of Germany during the Nineteenth Century', Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut, United StatesTipton, F. and Robert Aldrich. An Economic and Social History of Europe , two volumesTipton FB 1992 'Storia economica [Economic history]', Milan: Jaca Book. French translation: Histoire Économique. Paris: Editions Mentha, Milan and Paris, ItalyFrank B.

#2884

Rościsław Żerelik

#114827

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Rościsław Żerelik is a Polish historian specializing in medieval history, history of supporting science, and the history of Silesia in the Middle Ages. External links Ludzie nauki

#2885

Zaza Aleksidze

#70498

Overall Influence

1935 - 2023 (88 years)

Zaza Aleksidze was a Georgian historian and linguist who specialized in Armenian and Oriental studies. He is best known internationally for deciphering the Caucasian Albanian script. Biography Zaza Aleksidze was born on 18 October 1935 in Telavi in then-Soviet Georgia, into the family of agricultural scientist Nikoloz Aleksidze and his wife, pianist Eugenia Aleksidze. He graduated from Tbilisi State University with a degree in history in 1958 and earned a doctorate in 1969 and a post-doctorate in 1984.

#2886

Glenn Anthony May

#81835

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Glenn Anthony May was a professor of history at the University of Oregon, where he worked from 1983 to the 2010s. His area of study included Southeast Asian history , foreign relations of the United States, and Chicano history.

#2887

Norman Pollack

#56239

Overall Influence

1933 - 2017 (84 years)

Norman Pollack was an American historian. He was an emeritus professor of history at Michigan State University, where he taught for most of his career. After his retirement, Pollack was a prolific essayist whose writing was informed by his scholarship in the fields of populism and social theory, but were often focused on a structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. His books included, The Populist Mind , The Populist Response to Industrial America , The Just Polity: Populism, Law, and Human Welfare , and The Humane Economy: Populism, Capitalism, and Democracy , Capitalism, Hegemony and V...

#2888

Mary L. Dudziak

Mary L. Dudziak

#23214

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mary Louise Dudziak , is an American legal theorist, civil rights historian, educator, and a leading foreign policy and international relations expert. She is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University.

#2889

Keith Laybourn

#59993

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Keith Laybourn is Diamond Jubilee Professor of the University of Huddersfield and Professor of History. He is a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century specialising in labour history and the working class in Britain. He has published extensively, and has authored over 46 books on subjects including women's history, social policy and administration, and policing. In 2012 he took over presidency of the Society for the Study of Labour History following the death of the previous president, Eric Hobsbawm. He has also appeared on television, including Who Do You Think...

#2890

Mark Monmonier

#17289

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Mark Stephen Monmonier is a Distinguished Professor of Geography and the Environment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. He specializes in toponymy, geography, and geographic information systems.

#2891

Murdo J. MacLeod

#79698

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Murdo J. MacLeod is a Scottish historian of Latin America, publishing extensively on the history of colonial-era Central America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. His monograph Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History is a major contribution to the field.

#2892

Konrad Tuchscherer

#50631

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Konrad Tuchscherer is an educator, scholar, writer, and public intellectual. Tuchscherer currently serves as the Co-Director of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in Cameroon and is Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at St. John's University .

#2893

J. Mordaunt Crook

J. Mordaunt Crook

#37869

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Joseph Mordaunt Crook, , generally known as J. Mordaunt Crook, is an English architectural historian and specialist on the Georgian and Victorian periods. He is an authority on the life and work of the Victorian architect William Burges, his biography published in 1981, and reissued in 2013, has been described as "one of the most substantial studies of any Victorian architect".

#2894

Else Roesdahl

#52278

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Else Roesdahl is a Danish archaeologist, historian and educator. She has mediated the history of the Vikings for most of her life, including coordination of notable exhibitions on the Viking Age and authoring several books on the subject. Roesdahl's books have been translated into several languages.

#2895

Leni Yahil

#57165

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

Leni Yahil , née Leni Westphal, was a German-born Israeli historian, specializing in the Holocaust and Danish Jewry. Early life Leni was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1912, and was raised in Potsdam, Germany. She was a sixth-generation descent of Moses Mendelssohn's family, as well as a granddaughter of James Simon. Her father, Ernst Westphal, was a judge. Yahil studied history at the universities of Munich and Berlin. Afterwards, she was accepted into the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, but had her education interrupted by the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933. She joined a Jewish youth movement called Werkleute and eventually became one of its leaders.

#2896

Delmer Brown

#59025

Overall Influence

1909 - 2011 (102 years)

Delmer Myers Brown was an American academic, historian, writer, translator and Japanologist. He was a professor of Japanese history at the University of California at Berkeley. Early life, education, and personal life Brown was born on November 20, 1909, in Harrisonville, Missouri, and grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1925, he moved with his family to Santa Ana, California. He attended Santa Ana Junior College and then Stanford University, where he graduated with a degree in history in 1932.

#2897

Daud Ali

#72111

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Daud Ali is an American historian of Indian descent. Early life Daud Ali was born in Calcutta, India, to a Bengali father and an American mother. Career Daud Ali's Bengali father and his own interest in Indian philosophy led him to study South Asian history in college. He went on to study Sanskrit, Tamil and Indian philosophy. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature and religious studies at the College of William & Mary and then obtained a Master of Arts degree in the history of religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was a student of Ron Inden. His thesis on medieval South Indian history led him to a Ph.D.

#2898

Eric Tagliacozzo

#77033

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, where he teaches Southeast Asian history. He is the director of Cornell's Comparative Muslim Societies Program, the director of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, and the contributing editor of the journal Indonesia. Tagliacozzo received his B.A. from Haverford College in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999. Tagliacozzo studied with Ben Kiernan, James C. Scott, and Jonathan Spence in the History Department at Yale University.

#2899

Philip Sabin

#59701

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Philip A. G. Sabin is a British military historian who is currently Professor of Strategic Studies in the War Studies Department of King's College London. Biography Sabin is a member of the CAS Air Power Workshop, a small working group of scholars and other theorists convened by the Chief of Air Staff. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies. His books on modern warfare include: The Future of United Kingdom Air Power . His works on ancient warfare include: Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World , which ...

#2900

Christopher Allmand

#75341

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

Christopher Thomas Allmand FSA was an English historian, who specialised in the Late Middle Ages in England and France. His particular research and teaching interests lay in the Hundred Years' War. He spent most of his teaching career at the University of Liverpool, becoming Professor of Medieval History, until his retirement in 1998. Among many publications, he produced a much-used monograph on the Hundred Years' War and the leading biography of King Henry V.

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