Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in History,

#3601

Bogumil Jewsiewicki

#45066

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Bogumil Jewsiewicki Koss is a Polish-Canadian historian and an Africanist specialising in the history of Central Africa, notably the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the social usage of visual memory.

#3602

Barlow Der Mugrdechian

#72850

Overall Influence

Barlow Der Mugrdechian is a historian and in the Armenian Studies Program at California State University, Fresno, where he teaches Armenian language, art, literature, history, and culture courses. His main area of research has been Armenian literature. He serves as the Berberian Coordinator of the Armenian Studies Program and the Director of the Center for Armenian Studies. He has published numerous articles on Armenian history, culture, and literature in many academic and professional journals worldwide.

#3603

John Everett Robbins

#29180

Overall Influence

1903 - 1995 (92 years)

John Everett Robbins was a Canadian educator and encyclopedia editor. He served as the director of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics and helped found Carleton College. Robbins was a former President of Brandon University and the first Canadian Ambassador to the Holy See.

#3604

Delma S. Arrigoitia

Delma S. Arrigoitia

#52101

Overall Influence

1945 - 2023 (78 years)

Delma S. Arrigoitia was a historian, author, educator, and lawyer whose written works covered the life and works of some of Puerto Rico's most prominent politicians of the early 20th century. After earning her doctorate in history at Fordham University in New York, she helped develop the graduate school for history at the University of Puerto Rico and taught there for many years.

#3605

Heiko Haumann

#75599

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Heiko Haumann is a German historian and retired academic scholar. Born in Attendorn, Haumann studied history, political science, sociology and education at the University of Marburg and the Goethe University Frankfurt. In 1969, he graduated with the Staatsexamen, and in 1971 he received his doctorate. After working at the University of Marburg and the University of Freiburg, from 1991 to 2010, he was Professor of Eastern European and Modern General History at the Department of History of the University of Basel.

#3606

Nikita Lomagin

#103365

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Nikita Andreevich Lomagin is a Russian historian, economist and international relations expert, known for his comprehensive studies of socio-economic aspect of the Siege of Leningrad. Academic career Nikita Lomagin graduated from the Faculty of History of the Saint-Petersburg State University in 1986, briefly worked for the Russian Academy of Sciences and then returned to his alma mater to join the newly-founded Faculty of International Relations as professor of Global Policy. In 1997 he also graduated from the Faculty of Law of his University, since 1999 - professor of Global Economics in the Department of Economics of his alma mater.

#3607

Steven Fine

#74843

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Steven Fine is a historian of Judaism in the Greco-Roman World and a professor at Yeshiva University. Education Fine received a BA in Religious Studies from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979, an MA in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Southern California in 1984, and a PhD in Jewish History from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1993.

#3608

Rosalind Rosenberg

#68469

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Rosalind Rosenberg is an American historian. Life She graduated from Stanford University, with a BA and Ph.D., in 1974. She began her teaching career at Columbia University in 1974 and taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut from 1982 to 1984 before joining the faculty at Barnard College, where she became the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History. At Barnard she has served as Chair of the Women’s Studies Department, the American Studies Program, and the History Department, while contributing to the graduate program at Columbia University. She has been a member of the executive committee ...

#3609

Jonathan Green

#43003

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Jonathan Green is an American writer, historian of photography, curator, teacher, museum administrator, photographer, filmmaker and the founding Project Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts. A recognized authority on the history of American photography, Green’s books Camera Work: A Critical Anthology and American Photography: A Critical History 1945–1980 are two notable commentaries and frequently referenced and republished accounts in the field of photography. At the same time Green’s acquisitions, exhibitions and publications consistently drew from the edges of established photographic practice rather than from its traditional center.

#3610

Elzbieta Ettinger

#22946

Overall Influence

1925 - 2005 (80 years)

Elżbieta Ettinger was a Polish-American Jewish writer. Early life and education The daughter of Emmanuel Ettinger and Regina Stahl, she was born in Łódź. Along with her family, she was transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto but in 1942, she was able to escape the ghetto with the help of her mother and, using forged identity papers, adopted the name Elżbieta Chodakowska. She worked with the Polish resistance during World War II. In 1946, she received a degree in English and German philology from Jagellonian University and, in 1949, a MA in English philology from Warsaw University. In 1966, she earne...

#3611

Pierre Laborie

#69196

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

Pierre Laborie was a French historian who was best known for his studies of French public opinion during World War II. Biography Pierre Laborie was born in Bagnac-sur-Célé, Lot on 4 January 1936. The area was profoundly marked by the violent repression of the resistance activity by German forces during World War II. He initially taught history and geography at school level while also conducting his own research with the support of the Comité d’histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. He later gained a doctorate in History in 1978 with a thesis on public opinion in the Lot during the conflict which drew heavily on linguistics.

#3612

Mary Ann Caws

#21904

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (92 years)

Mary Ann Caws is an American author, translator, art historian and literary critic. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, and on the film faculty. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature, having written biographies of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, has written biographies of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, and edited the diaries, letters, and source material of Joseph Cornell.

#3613

Harald Kleinschmidt

#100813

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Harald Kleinschmidt is a German historian and scholar of international relations. He completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Göttingen. Kleinschmidt is currently a professor of history at the University of Tsukuba.

#3614

Simon Russell Beale

Simon Russell Beale

#44867

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Sir Simon Russell Beale is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation".. He has received two BAFTA Awards, three Olivier Awards, and a Tony Award. For his services to drama, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

#3615

Mao Peiqi

#118798

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Mao Peiqi is a Chinese historian, expert in the history of the Ming Dynasty, a professor at the School of History, Renmin University of China. Mao became popular in China for his lectures on Ming's history in the CCTV-10 program Lecture Room in 2005. Based upon his CCTV lecture, Mao published a book, The Seventeen Emperors of the Ming Dynasty in 2006.

#3616

Heide Wunder

#75808

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Heide Wunder is a German historian. Life and work Wunder studied history, English and philosophy at the Universität Hamburg. In 1964 she was awarded a doctorate and in 1965, she passed the first state examination for teachers at secondary schools. After that she was a research associate with Gerhard Oestreich and assistant to Rainer Wohlfeil. In 1977, she was appointed Professor of Social and Constitutional History of the Early Modern Period at the University of Kassel. In 2004 she retired, becoming a professor emeritus. She is married to Dieter Wunder and has a daughter.

#3617

H. T. Dickinson

#73705

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Harry Thomas Dickinson FRSE is an English historian specialising in British eighteenth century politics. He obtained his BA and MA from the University of Durham and his PhD from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was Reader in History and later Richard Lodge Professor of British History at the University of Edinburgh. He was editor of the journal History from 1993 to 2000. Isaac Kramnick wrote that of the biographies of Lord Bolingbroke, Dickinson's was the "most reliable". In the opinion of David Armitage, Dickinson's life of Lord Bolingbroke "replaced all earlier accounts".

#3618

Jean-Jacques Glassner

#52420

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Jean-Jacques Glassner, born 1944 in Bischwiller is a French historian, specialist of the Mesopotamian world and cuneiform script. Biography During his studies at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, he devoted himself to assyriology. He later taught at the universities of Geneva, Poitiers, Strasbourg, Jerusalem. A professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales , he is also directeur de recherche at the CNRS where he heads the Unit of archaeology and sciences of ancient times in Paris West University Nanterre La Défense.

#3619

Þór Whitehead

#52966

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Þór Whitehead is an Icelandic historian. He is currently a professor at the University of Iceland. Thor has written extensively on the history of Iceland during World War II and the Cold War. His best known work is the multi-volume series Ísland í síðari heimsstyrjöld . He has also written about other episodes in Icelandic history, such as the Icelandic government's rejection of Jewish refugees during the war, and the racist policies of banning black soldiers from the American-garrisoned Naval Air Station Keflavik.

#3620

Paul Spickard

#40405

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Paul R. Spickard is an American historian and the author of several books on the subject of race and ethnicity, particularly multiracialism. His work was formative in rearticulating and moving beyond a black-white paradigm of race and mixed-race relations in the U.S.

#3621

Elisabeth Labrousse

#64835

Overall Influence

1914 - 2000 (86 years)

Elisabeth Labrousse was a French philosopher, historian, and academic. She became known for her work on Pierre Bayle and the history of French Protestantism. Early life and education Elisabeth Goguel was born in Paris on 10 January 1914. She was the daughter of Maurice Goguel, a specialist in early Christianity and professor at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris, director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études, and Professor at the Sorbonne. Her siblings included François Goguel, French constitutional expert, and Jean Goguel, geologist.

#3622

Harry Lintsen

#53806

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

Harry Lintsen is a Dutch scientist. He is professor in history of technology at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, and researcher on microplastics. Career Lintsen was born on July 17, 1949, in the town of Heerlen, The Netherlands.

#3623

Jeffrey Lesser

#80764

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Jeffrey Lesser is a U.S.-based historian of Latin America who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory University. Prior to that he was the Winship Distinguished Professor of the Humanities. After two terms as the chair of the History Department at Emory University he was named the first faculty director of the Halle Institute for Global Research . He is the author of numerous books on ethnicity, immigration and national identity in Brazil. In 2022 Lesser won Emory University‘s Eleanor Main Graduate Mentor Award and in 2023 he received the Marion V. Creekmore Award for Internationali...

#3624

Shigehisa Kuriyama

#85268

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Shigehisa "Hisa" Kuriyama is a Japanologist and historian of medicine. He is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History at Harvard University. Early life and education Kuriyama was born in Marugame, Japan. After his family moved for a time to the US, he studied at Phillips Exeter Academy. Subsequently, he attended Harvard for all three of his degrees. He earned an A.B. degree from its Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations in 1977 and an A.M. degree in 1978. Afterwards, he received three years of training in acupuncture in Tokyo. He earned his Ph.D. at Harvard's Depar...

#3625

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

#31040

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Biography Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a scholar and historian, born in Gwanda, Matabeleland S., Zimbabwe.

#3626

Jack Wertheimer

#77418

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Jack Wertheimer is a Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the flagship yeshiva of Conservative Judaism. He is the former Provost of JTS, and was the founding director of the Joseph and Miriam Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism. Wertheimer has written and edited numerous books and articles on the subjects of modern Jewish history, education, and life.

#3627

Giuseppe Zecchini

#134016

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Giuseppe Zecchini is an Italian historian. He is mainly concerned with the political history of the Roman world in the age of Caesar and Augustus and in the late antiquity and with the history of Hellenistic and Roman historiography.

#3628

Afsaneh Najmabadi

Afsaneh Najmabadi

#81501

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Afsaneh Najmabadi is an Iranian-born American historian, gender theorist, archivist, and educator. She is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

#3629

Celia Applegate

#81648

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Celia Stewart Applegate is professor and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Blair School of Music, both at Vanderbilt University. A scholar of modern German history, Professor Applegate has previously taught history at Smith College and the University of Rochester, where she served as director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Studies and held an Affiliate Faculty position in the Department of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

#3630

Claudia Orange

#83168

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Dame Claudia Josepha Orange is a New Zealand historian best known for her 1987 book The Treaty of Waitangi, which won 'Book of the Year' at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award in 1988. Since 2013 she has been the head of research at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, where she was previously the director of collections and research. In 2018 she was made a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in recognition of her service to the humanities.

#3631

Neilson Debevoise

#111585

Overall Influence

1903 - 1992 (89 years)

Neilson Carel Debevoise was an American historian of ancient Mesopotamia and Iran, and subsequently a military intelligence officer. Born in 1903 in Jersey City, he studied at the University of Illinois, where he completed his doctoral dissertation, "Parthian Problems", under the supervision of Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead in 1929. In 1938, he published A Political History of Parthia, a seminal history of the Parthian Empire. He joined the US Military Intelligence Service during World War II; in the course of the war he was posted in Egypt. He continued his work in intelligence in the postwar per...

#3632

Jean-Clément Martin

#51418

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Jean-Clement Martin , born on 31 January 1948, is a French historian, a specialist in the French Revolution, Counter-revolution and the War in the Vendée. Biography Jean-Clement Martin was a pupil of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. From 2000 to 2008 he was the director of the Institute for the history of the French Revolution, a center of academic research and teaching, connected to Pantheon-Sorbonne University. Since then he is professor emeritus.

#3633

Karin Reich

#34224

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Karin Anna Reich is a German historian of mathematics. Career From 1967 to 1973 Reich was a scientific assistant at the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Institute for the History of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where in 1973 she graduated under supervision of Helmuth Gericke. In 1980 she completed her time in Munich, publishing The development of tensor calculus, in 1994 in a revised form as a book.

#3634

Janet Coleman

#59266

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Janet Coleman FRHistS is a British academic and historian of political theory. Life She is currently a Professor of Ancient and Medieval Political Thought at the London School of Economics. She was the first woman to receive a chair in the LSE government department. Her research interests include ancient Greek and Roman political thought, medieval philosophy, and theories of citizenship and the state.

#3635

Sanjoy Bhattacharya

#118887

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Sanjoy Bhattacharya, FRAS, is an academic and historian, who is the permanent Head of the School of History at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where he is also the professor of medical and global health histories.

#3636

E. Bruce Heilman

#32545

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Earl Bruce Heilman was an American educator who served as president of the University of Richmond and Meredith College. He last held the positions of chancellor at the University of Richmond and National Spokesman of The Greatest Generations Foundation.

#3637

Deborah Lavin

#84240

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Deborah Margaret Lavin, FRSA , is a South African academic and historian, resident in the United Kingdom for most of her career. Biography Lavin was born on 22 September 1939. She attended Rhodes University, South Africa and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, graduating in 1961.

#3638

Elena Osokina

#83386

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Elena Aleksandrovna Osokina is a Russian historian. Personal Her mother, Octobriana , named after the Bolshevik October revolution. Education Elena Aleksandrovna Osokina earned her B.A. and M.A. in 1981, and her Ph.D. in 1987, all from Moscow State University.

#3639

Hayk Demoyan

#83424

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (50 years)

Hayk Demoyan is an Armenian historian who served as the Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, Armenia from 2006 to 2018. Demoyan was born in the city of Leninakan in Soviet Armenia. He is a graduate of Yerevan State University and received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. From 2002 until 2005 he was a lecturer at the History Department of Yerevan State University. He is also a researcher and has written several books on such topics as the Armenian Genocide, Turkish foreign policy and Turkey's involvement i...

#3640

Vera Rich

#55492

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Vera Rich was a British poet, journalist, historian, and translator from Belarusian and Ukrainian. Biography Born in London in April 1936, she studied at St Hilda's College of the University of Oxford and Bedford College, London. In 1959, her poetry attracted the attention of the editors of John O'London's Weekly and the following year her first collection of verse, Outlines, was privately produced and received favourable reviews, selling out within six months.

#3641

Robert Oxnam

#32395

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Robert Bromley Oxnam is an American China scholar and President Emeritus of the Asia Society New York. He ran the society for more than a decade, and led financial-cultural tours of China for Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. He became well known in the public media after his 2005 autobiography, A Fractured Mind, in which he revealed that he had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.

#3642

Kenneth Sacks

#79886

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Kenneth Sacks is an American historian and classicist, noted for his work on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Currently he serves as Professor of History and Classics at Brown University, where he was previously Dean of the College.

#3643

Joan E. Taylor

#45625

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Joan E. Taylor is a New Zealand writer and historian of Jesus, the Bible, early Christianity, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Second Temple Judaism, with special expertise in archaeology, and women's and gender studies. Taylor is the Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College, London and Honorary Professor at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. She identifies as a Quaker.

#3644

A. W. Martin

#72843

Overall Influence

1926 - 2002 (76 years)

Allan William Martin AM FASSA FAHA was an Australian historian. He wrote numerous works on Australian political history. Early life and education Martin served in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, and subsequently entered the University of Sydney to study education. He worked as a schoolteacher for a period, but later returned to university to complete a Master of Arts in history. He entered the newly established Australian National University as the first doctoral student in the Research School of the Social Sciences; he completed his PhD in 1955. His doctoral thesis, supe...

#3645

Terry Golway

#59394

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Terry Golway is a historian, author, and a journalist, having served as a columnist and editorial board member for The New York Times and a long-time editor and writer at The New York Observer. Career In 2010, Golway discovered a historic early census count predating the creation of the United States at Liberty Hall National Historic Landmark at Kean. He is the author of several books on American and Irish history.

#3646

Robert Chazan

#95482

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Robert Chazan is the S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Professor of Hebrew & Judaic Studies at New York University. According to Andrew Gow writing in Speculum, Chazan is, "a distinguished scholar in the field of Jewish history and Christian-Jewish relations in the high Middle Ages."

#3647

Marianne Elliott

#48531

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Marianne Elliott is an Irish historian who was appointed OBE in the 2000 Birthday Honours. Career Elliott was born on 25 May 1948 in Raholp, County Down, Northern Ireland, brought up in Belfast, and educated at Dominican College, Fortwilliam, Queen's University Belfast, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

#3648

Mary Heimann

#97807

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Mary Heimann is an American historian and Professor of Modern History at Cardiff University. She is particularly noted for her controversial book, Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed. Books Catholic Devotion in Victorian England. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995.Czechoslovakia: The State That Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 2011.Československo – stát, ktery zklamal. Petrkov, Havlíčkův Brod 2020.

#3649

Przemysław Urbańczyk

Przemysław Urbańczyk

#84659

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Przemysław Urbańczyk is a Polish archaeologist who is Professor of Archaeology at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author of more than 400 scientific books and articles on the archaeological history of Europe.

#3650

Tuvia Friling

#81545

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Tuvia Friling is an Emeritus professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Previously he served as a senior researcher at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism and a lecturer at the Israel Studies Program both at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

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