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,

#3801

Mary P. Ryan

#77742

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Mary P. Ryan is an American historian, and John Martin Vincent Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is also Margaret Byrne Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Berkeley.

#3802

Michiel van Kempen

Michiel van Kempen

#58745

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Michaël Henricus Gertrudis van Kempen is a Dutch writer, art historian and literary critic. He has written novels, short stories, essays, travel literature and scenarios. He was the compiler of a huge range of anthologies of Dutch-Caribbean literature and wrote an extensive history of the literature of Suriname, in two volumes.

#3803

Peter Linehan

#102095

Overall Influence

1943 - 2020 (77 years)

Peter Anthony Linehan was a British historian of medieval Spain. He was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, where he was Dean of Discipline, and a fellow of the British Academy. Life Linehan was born in Mortlake, London, the son of a brokerage clerk and a teacher, and attended St Benedict's School, Ealing. He first visited Spain in 1959. He joined St John's College in 1961 as an undergraduate to study History. He remained at St John's where he became a research fellow in 1966. He completed his PhD on "Reform and reaction: the Spanish kingdoms and the Papacy in the thirteenth century", under the supervision of Walter Ullmann.

#3804

Michael D. Gordin

#58583

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Michael Dan Gordin is an American science historian and Slavist. Born in New Jersey, Gordin studied at Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in 1996 and a doctorate in 2001. From 2003 he was at Princeton University, where he is now a professor.

#3805

David Baldwin

#71091

Overall Influence

1946 - 2016 (70 years)

David Baldwin was a British historian, author and former university lecturer, who lived near Leicester, England. Baldwin specialised in late Medieval history—"the great medieval families of the Midlands"—and wrote several books about the people and events of the Wars of the Roses. Before retiring from teaching, Baldwin had previously worked as a lecturer at both the University of Leicester and the University of Nottingham. In 1986, over 25 years before the 2012 excavation and the discovery of the king's body, he predicted that Richard III's remains would be found at Greyfriars, Leicester.

#3806

Mieczysław B. Biskupski

#74702

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Mieczysław B. Biskupski is a Polish-American historian and political scientist, with focus on Central European history and international relations. He has held professorship appointments at St. John Fisher College, the University of Rochester, and the University of Warsaw. In 1997 he was a Fellow of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Since 2002 he is the Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish-American Studies at Central Connecticut State University.

#3807

Walter Licht

#105882

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Walter Licht is an American historian who specializes in labor history, economic history, and the history of American capitalism. He is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.

#3808

Karl Friday

#76590

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Karl F. Friday is an American Japanologist. Friday earned a bachelor's degree in Japanese at the University of Kansas in 1979, followed by a master's degree in East Asian languages and culture from the same institution in 1983. He then attended Stanford University to pursue graduate study in history, earning a master of arts degree in 1986, followed by a doctorate in 1989. Friday began his teaching career as an assistant professor at the University of San Diego. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia, where he was successively promoted to associate professor in 1993, and full professor in 1999.

#3809

Jens Høyrup

#60022

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Jens Egede Høyrup, born 1943 in Copenhagen, is a Danish historian of mathematics, specializing in pre-modern and early modern mathematics, ancient Mesopotamian mathematics in particular. He is especially known for his interpretation of what has often been referred to as Old Babylonian "algebra" as consisting of concrete, geometric manipulations.

#3810

Anson Rainey

#68951

Overall Influence

1930 - 2011 (81 years)

Anson Frank Rainey was professor emeritus of ancient Near Eastern cultures and Semitic linguistics at Tel Aviv University. He is known in particular for contributions to the study of the Amarna tablets, the noted administrative letters from the period of Pharaoh Akhenaten's rule during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. He authored and edited books and articles on the cultures, languages and geography of the Biblical lands.

#3811

Guy Bois

#58052

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Guy Bois was a French Marxist historian. He was noted for his contributions to the history of feudalism, which have been widely translated. Biography Bois was professor of medieval history at the Université de Paris-I and the Université de Franche-Comté , and president of the Société d'étude du féodalisme . He died on 8 June 2019, aged 84.

#3812

Jean Vezin

#79458

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Jean Vezin was a French librarian and medievalist historian, specializing in Latin palaeography and codicology. Biography Vezin was born in Vannes. A student at the École Nationale des Chartes, he obtained the archivist palaeographer diploma in 1958 with a thesis entitled Les scriptoria d’Angers au XIe siècle then joined the Casa de Velázquez.

#3813

David K. Johnson

#75388

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

David K. Johnson is an American historian and author who has taught at the University of South Florida since 2003. He specializes in LGBTQ and gender history in the 20th-century United States. His first book, The Lavender Scare, was made into a documentary film that garnered best documentary awards at over a dozen film festivals and broadcast nationwide on PBS June 18, 2019. His second book, Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement chronicles the rise of a gay commercial network in the years leading up to the Stonewall Riots. It was released in March 2019 by Columbia University Press in its series on "Columbia Studies in the History of U.S.

#3814

Idzi Panic

#66050

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Idzi Jan Panic is Polish historian, professor at the University of Silesia. He is specializing in history of Cieszyn Silesia and medieval Poland. He graduated from the University of Silesia in Katowice in 1976 and gained a Ph.D. from this university in 1980. In 1999 Panic gained the title of professor.

#3815

William Armstrong Percy III

#45704

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

William Armstrong Percy III was an American professor, historian, encyclopedist, and gay activist. He taught from 1968 at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and started publishing in gay studies in 1985.

#3816

Jürgen Reulecke

#106287

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Jürgen Reulecke is a German historian and emeritus professor. Life Born in Düsseldorf, in his childhood Reulecke was a member of a catholic boys' group. He studied history, German Studies and philosophy at the universities of Münster, Bonn and Bochum. In 1972 he received his doctorate under Wolfgang Köllmann and in 1979 his habilitation. From 1984 to 2003 he was professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Siegen. During the academic year, Reulecke was a research fellow at the in Munich. Since 2003 he has taught at the University of Giessen and was spokesperson of the special research area "Memory Cultures".

#3817

Elena Brambilla

#89229

Overall Influence

1942 - 2018 (76 years)

Elena Brambilla was an Italian historian. Biography Elena Brambilla was born in Milan, 29 July 1942. She was the daughter of Franca Brambilla Ageno. Brambilla specialized in modern history, graduating in 1967 University of Milan.

#3818

Andrea Rusnock

#36280

Overall Influence

Andrea Rusnock is a professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. She has published two books and numerous articles on science and medicine in the Enlightenment, quantification, public health and the environment, and the history of vaccination. Her work has been reviewed in Medical History: An International Journal for the History of Medicine and Related Sciences, EH.net of the Economic History Association, and The American Historical Review.

#3819

Michael Goebel

#132038

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Michael Goebel is a German historian. Since 2021, he has been Einstein Professor of Global History at Freie Universität Berlin. Biography Born in Munich, Goebel studied History at Freie Universität Berlin and University College London, where he received his Ph.D. in 2006. He subsequently held a Past & Present Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, a Marie Curie Fellowship at the European University Institute, and a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship at Harvard University. After four years as "Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter", Freie Universität Berlin appointed him as a professor in June 2015.

#3820

Thomas A. Desjardin

#88203

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Thomas A. Desjardin is an American historian. He has published books on the American Civil War and American Revolutionary War. He also was director of Maine's State Park system, and briefly was Maine's Acting Commissioner of the Department of Education. He was born at St. Mary's Hospital, now Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine.

#3821

Friso Wielenga

#139465

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Johan Willem Friso Wielenga is a Dutch contemporary historian. Life and career Born in Rotterdam, Wielenga studied history and politics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 1975 to 1978 and in 1982/1983 with a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He received his Doctorate in 1989. He then taught International relations at the University of Groningen and from 1990 Political history at the Utrecht University. In 1992, he became associate professor of German Contemporary history and Dutch-German relations at the University of Gro...

#3822

Jean-François Mayer

#41857

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Jean-Francois Mayer is a religious historian, translator in Switzerland, and Director of the Institute Religioscope. He has a doctorate degree in History at the Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 . From 1991 to 1998, he worked as an analyst on international affairs and policy for the Swiss federal government. In 1999, he founded a firm of strategic researches named JFM Recherches et Analyses, and taught at the University of Freiburg from 1999 to 2007. In 2007, Mayer founded the Institute Religioscope and became the director.

#3823

Klaas van Berkel

#37641

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Klaas van Berkel is a Dutch historian, historian of science, and professor of Modern History at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, known from his work on the history of science in the Netherlands, particularly the work of Isaac Beeckman, Simon Stevin and Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis.

#3824

Eugene Kusielewicz

Eugene Kusielewicz

#120707

Overall Influence

1930 - 1996 (66 years)

Eugene Francis Vincent Kusielewicz was an American historian, author, educator, and a leading spokesperson on Polish and Polish-American affairs in the United States. Life and recognition Born on October 12, 1930, in Brooklyn, New York, Kusielewicz attended St. John's University , where he was inducted into the Skull and Circle Honor Society. While at St. John's, he was also a two-time winner of the Judge Albert Conway History Essay Contest. He then attended Fordham University , where he studied under Oskar Halecki, the Polish historian. Under Halecki's guidance, he wrote his Master's thesis ...

#3825

Jan Kieniewicz

#109439

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Jan Oskar Kieniewicz is a Polish historian, diplomat and humanities professor. He specialised in the history of India and European, Spanish and Polish history. He is a member of the Collegium Invisibile and the jury for the KLIO Award.

#3826

Anton Erkoreka

#65863

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Anton Erkoreka is a Basque historian of medicine and an ethnographer. He is director of the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science, located at the University of the Basque Country. His areas of specialization include the history of diseases, in particular the Spanish flu pandemic, folk medicine, such as the evil eye and the study of human populations.

#3827

Hartmut Hoffmann

#94241

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Hartmut Hoffmann was German medieval historian. Life He studied philosophy, art history, German studies, history and Latin philology at Frankfurt University, Marburg University and Cologne University. He graduated PhD in 1954 with a thesis on Carolingian history entitled Untersuchungen zur karolingischen Annalistik. He habilitated from Bonn University in 1961 with a thesis entitled Gottesfriede und Treuga Dei and taught as professor of medieval and contemporary history at Göttingen University from 1967.

#3828

Bernard Dov Cooperman

Bernard Dov Cooperman

#96307

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Bernard Dov Cooperman is a Louis L. Kaplan Associate Professor of Jewish History at the University of Maryland in the Department of History. Cooperman was on the faculty of Harvard University until 1989, has been a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Lilly Fellow . He served as Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies from 1991 to 1997.

#3829

Richard H. Collin

#47970

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Richard Harvey Collin was an American historian, university professor, restaurant critic, and cookbook writer. He was notable for his research in the life and presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Collin's contributions to Theodore Roosevelt scholarship included his dissertation, two monographs on Roosevelt, editing a book length collection of papers on the President, journal articles, and book reviews related to other writers' works on the President. His food writing, much of it written together with his wife Rima, included cookbooks and restaurant reviews.

#3830

Naoko Shimazu

#90031

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Naoko Shimazu is a professor in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a Fernand Braudel fellow at the European University Institute. Her research interests are the "cultural history of international diplomacy, social and cultural history of modern societies at war, and new approaches to the study of empire". Shimazu is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

#3831

Amy Dru Stanley

#123671

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (47 years)

Amy Dru Stanley is an American historian of American history, women's history, and emancipation. Biography She graduated from Princeton University and from Yale University with a Ph.D. She taught at the University of California, Irvine. She teaches at the University of Chicago.

#3832

John Joseph Lee

#103820

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

John Joseph Lee , is an Irish historian and former senator. He has held the chairs of Modern History in University College Cork and Professor of History and Glucksman Professor for Irish Studies and Director of Glucksman Ireland House, at New York University.

#3833

Mark Whittow

#122982

Overall Influence

1957 - 2017 (60 years)

Mark Whittow was a British historian, archaeologist, and academic, specialising in the Byzantine Empire. He was a university lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

#3834

Joan R. Piggott

#45122

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Joan R. Piggott is an American historian specializing in East Asian studies. Education Piggott completed a master of arts from Stanford University in 1972, followed by a doctorate from Stanford in 1987.

#3835

Frank E. Manuel

#50060

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Frank Edward Manuel was an American historian, Kenan Professor of History, emeritus, at New York University and Alfred and Viola Hart University Professor, emeritus, at Brandeis University. He was known for his work on the idea of utopia. In 1980, he and his wife, Fritzie P. Manuel, won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for their book Utopian Thought in the Western World . In 1983 they won the National Book Award for the paperback edition of the same work.

#3836

Karol Daniel Kadłubiec

Karol Daniel Kadłubiec

#85088

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (88 years)

Karol Daniel Kadłubiec is a Polish Czech ethnographer, folklorist and historian. He specializes also in ethnology, history of language and dialectology, and in a studies of culture, folklore and language of Cieszyn Silesia and Trans-Olza.

#3837

Richard Kagan

#99999

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Richard Lauren Kagan is an American historian specializing in modern history. His focus of research is on the intellectual and legal history of the Spanish Empire under the Habsburgs. Born in 1943, he holds an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Kagan has been a professor at Johns Hopkins University since 1972. There, he acts as the Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emeritus of History, with a joint-appointment as a professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. His work has given him international recognition. He has been inv...

#3838

Paul Bibire

#55814

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Paul Adrian Bibire is an author and former lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge . His area is Anglo Saxon and Old Norse and he has written many articles on these and related subjects. Bibire is also a keen enthusiast of the author J. R. R. Tolkien whom he credits as the motivation for his academic career.

#3839

David Norbrook

#45975

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

David Norbrook was Merton Professor of English literature at Oxford University from 2002 to 2014, and is now an Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He specializes in literature, politics and historiography in the early modern period, and in early modern women's writing. He is currently writing a biography and edition of Lucy Hutchinson. He teaches in literary theory and early modern texts, in early modern women writers, and in Shakespeare, Milton and Marvell. Before his current role, he taught at the University of Maryland.

#3840

Slobodan Ćurčić

#84211

Overall Influence

1940 - 2017 (77 years)

Slobodan Ćurčić was an American art historian and Byzantinist. Life After completing school in Belgrade, Ćurčić first studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he obtained a Bachelor of Architecture in 1964 and a Master of Architecture in 1965. In 1975, he received his doctorate in art history from New York University Institute of Fine Arts under Richard Krautheimer with a thesis on the monastery church of Gračanica.

#3841

Michael Wayne

#104388

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Michael Wayne is a Canadian historian of the United States at the University of Toronto. He is a senior fellow at University College. As an undergraduate, Wayne studied at the University of Toronto and Amherst College. He received his PhD from Yale University where he studied under C. Vann Woodward.

#3842

Harry Cranbrook Allen

#72714

Overall Influence

1917 - 1998 (81 years)

Harry Cranbrook Allen was a British historian of the United States. Biography Born on 23 March 1917, Harry Cranbrook Allen was educated at Bedford School and at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was a Scholar and gained a first class degree in Modern History. He was elected as a Fellow by the Commonwealth Fund of New York in 1939 . He served during the Second World War with the Hertfordshire Regiment and the Dorset Regiment in France and Germany, was promoted to the rank of Major, awarded the Military Cross, and appointed as Commandant of the 43rd Division Educational College, between June ...

#3843

Jean-Pierre Arrignon

Jean-Pierre Arrignon

#48085

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Jean-Pierre Arrignon was a French academic and historian. He specialized in the Middle Ages and contemporary Russia. Biography After earning an agrégation in history, Arrignon studied at the École pratique des hautes études. He defended a thesis titled La chaire métropolitaine de Kiev, des origines à 1240 at Pantheon-Sorbonne University in 1986 under the direction of Helene Ahrweiler. His research then centered around the medieval Slavic world, as well as modern-day Russia, largely centered around Vladimir Putin. He taught at the University of Poitiers and served as Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences.

#3844

Holden Furber

#88420

Overall Influence

1903 - 1993 (90 years)

Holden Furber was a professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania from 1952 till 1973. He was the twenty-first president of the Association for Asian Studies and a scholar who specialized in the history of India during the time of the British Raj.

#3845

Rafayel Ishkhanian

#83334

Overall Influence

1922 - 1995 (73 years)

Rafayel Avetisi Ishkhanyan was an Armenian linguist, philologist and historian. He was a professor of the Yerevan State University. Biography Ishkhanyan was born in Yerevan in 1922 to Bolshevik revolutionaries Avetis and Haykanush Ishkhanian. His father Avetis was executed in 1937 during the Great Purge. In 1939, Ishkhanyan entered the department of philology of Yerevan State University . He was called up for military service in 1940 and participated in World War II, during which he was wounded and taken prisoner, then released from imprisonment and continued his service. After demobilization, he continued his studies and graduated from YSU in 1949.

#3846

Narve Bjørgo

#46767

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Narve Bjørgo is a Norwegian historian. He was born in Meland. He graduated from the University of Bergen in 1964, and worked as a research assistant until 1970. Then, for two years, he was a research fellow and associate professor. In 1973 he was appointed professor of history at the University of Tromsø. He served as dean from 1984 to 1985, and rector from 1985 to 1989. He was CEO of NAVF from 1991 to 1993, and professor at the University of Bergen from 1993 to 2006, before retiring. In 2008 he was given an honorary degree at the University of Tromsø.

#3847

Arthur Keaveney

#106968

Overall Influence

1951 - 2020 (69 years)

Arthur Peter Keaveney was an Irish historian. Biography Keaveney was born in Galway and was educated there . In 1975 he moved to Hull University to work on PhD on Lucius Cornelius Sulla, which was later expanded and published as a book.

#3848

John Dunmore

#35595

Overall Influence

1923 - 2023 (100 years)

John Dunmore was a French-born New Zealand academic, historian, author, playwright, and publisher. Biography Dunmore was born in Trouville-sur-Mer, France, on 6 August 1923. He lived in Jersey under German occupation during World War II, and then in England, where he received a BA from the University of London. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1950. He completed a PhD under historian J. C. Beaglehole at Victoria University of Wellington in 1962, studying the French contribution to the exploration of the Pacific Ocean in the 18th century. He was professor of French, head of the Department of Mo...

#3849

Steven E. Sodergren

#57891

Overall Influence

Steven E. Sodergren is a historian and University Professor employed by Norwich University. His book The Army of the Potomac in the Overland & Petersburg Campaigns was the recipient of the 2018 Colby Award.

#3850

Joseph R. Curray

#140289

Overall Influence

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