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).
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List of the most influential people in History,
#3951
John W. Baldwin
#87005
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
John Wesley Baldwin was an American historian. He was Charles Homer Haskins professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Life and career Born in Chicago, he received his Hopkins Ph.D. in 1956 and joined the faculty in 1961. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. Author of nine books, he was elected to numerous academies including the American Philosophical Society, the Medieval Academy, the British Academy, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres. In 2007 Northwestern University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
Go to Profile#3952
Bernard Faure
#30590
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Bernard Faure is a Franco-American author and scholar of Asian religions, who focuses on Chan/Zen and Japanese esoteric Buddhism. His work draws on cultural theory, anthropology, and gender studies. He is currently a Kao Professor of Japanese Religion at Columbia University and an Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He also previously taught at Cornell University, and has been a visiting a professor at the University of Tokyo, the University of Sydney, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He co-founded the Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University and the ARC: Asian Religions and Cultures Series within Stanford University Press.
Go to Profile#3953
John Parascandola
#63082
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
John Parascandola is an American medical historian. He has written numerous books, including The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline, and held the position of Public Health Service Historian.
Go to Profile#3954
Tibor Grasser
#127960
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Tibor Grasser is an electrical engineer and full professor at the Vienna University of Technology in Vienna, Austria. Since 2016 he heads the Institute for Microelectronics at that University. Grasser's research interests are focused on numerical simulation of solid-state devices and integrated circuits. For contributions to the modeling of the reliability of semiconductor devices, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016.
Go to Profile#3955
Milton V. Backman
#125966
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Milton Vaughn Backman Jr. was a historian of American religions with particular emphasis on the early history of the Latter Day Saint movement. Biography Backman was a professor of church history at Brigham Young University. Following his retirement, he briefly taught at the BYU-affiliated Joseph Smith Academy.
Go to Profile#3956
Sieglinde Hartmann
#96663
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Sieglinde Hartmann is a German medievalist, expert on the medieval poet Oswald von Wolkenstein and president of the Oswald von Wolkenstein-Gesellschaft. Biography Sieglinde Hartmann studied in Cologne and Frankfurt am Main. She received her Ph.D. at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany with a study on age reflection and self-portrayal in Oswald von Wolkenstein's oeuvre. She has been visiting professor at the University of Graz , as well as lecturer at the Universities of Paris IV , Mainz , Gießen , Kassel , Bamberg, and the J.W. Goethe-University in Frankfurt . In...
Go to Profile#3957
Alan Allport
#100428
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Alan Allport is a British historian whose work looks at the relationship between war and society during the period of the two world wars. He was born in Whiston, Merseyside and moved to the United States in 1994. Allport received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 and currently teaches at Syracuse University.
Go to Profile#3958
Caleb Carr
#70722
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Caleb Carr is an American military historian and author. Carr is the second of three sons born to Lucien Carr and Francesca Von Hartz. He authored The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, The Lessons of Terror, Killing Time, The Devil Soldier, The Italian Secretary, and The Legend of Broken. He has taught military history at Bard College, and worked extensively in film, television, and the theater. His military and political writings have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in upstate New York.
Go to Profile#3959
Andrew Pettegree
#52719
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Andrew D. M. Pettegree is a British historian and an expert on the European Reformation, the history of the book and media transformations. he holds a professorship at St Andrews University, where he is the director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue Project. He is the founding director of the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute.
Go to Profile#3960
David Curtis Skaggs Jr.
#143058
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
David Curtis Skaggs Jr. , is an American historian of the Colonial and Early Republic periods, who spent nearly his entire academic career at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Early life The son of David Curtis Skaggs Sr. and his wife Eleanor Elizabeth Baer Skaggs, David Skaggs attended the University of Kansas, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1959 and went on to obtain a Master of Arts degree in 1960 with a thesis on "Military contributions to the development of territorial Kansas." He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1959 and served from 1960 to 1962 on active duty, becoming a first lieutenant.
Go to Profile#3961
Brian Plomley
#66158
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Norman James Brian Plomley regarded by some as one of the most respected and scholarly of Australian historians and, until his death, in Launceston, the doyen of Tasmanian Aboriginal scholarship. Professional background He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Sydney University in 1935. He did postgraduate work at Cambridge University in 1936–1937 and obtained his Master of Science degree from the University of Tasmania in 1947. Qualified as an anatomist, throughout a varied academic career he worked in England; and Hobart, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australia, mostly as a lecturer in anatomy.
Go to Profile#3962
W. Patrick McCray
#79113
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
W. Patrick McCray is a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He researches, writes about, and teaches the history of science and the history of technology. Life McCray grew up in rural southwestern Pennsylvania and later attended graduate school at the University of Arizona where he completed a Ph.D. in 1996. He is the author or editor of several books on the history of science and technology; topics include the effects of technology on astronomical practice, the activities of amateur scientists during the Cold War, and the activities of scientists who promoted radical visions for the technological future.
Go to Profile#3963
Tom Whiteside
#54933
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Derek Thomas Whiteside FBA was a British historian of mathematics. Biography In 1954 Whiteside graduated from Bristol University with a B.A. having studied French, Latin, mathematics and philosophy. He had spent part of 1952 studying at the Sorbonne. In 1956 he began graduate study with Richard Braithwaite who referred him to Michael Hoskin . In 1959 he submitted the manuscript "Mathematical patterns of thought in the late seventeenth century" to Hoskin who submitted it to Archive for History of Exact Sciences for publication.
Go to Profile#3964
Vadim Skuratovsky
#47433
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Vadym Leontiyovych Skurativskiy is a Ukrainian art historian and critic, an expert in literature, philologist, and political essayist. He is a professor at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University.
Go to Profile#3965
Ruben Safrastyan
#93986
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Ruben Arami Safrastyan is an Armenian historian and Turkologist who specializes in Turkish, Ottoman, genocide, Middle Eastern and regional studies. He is currently professor of history and Turkish studies at Yerevan State University and head researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, of which he is a full member. He was director of the Institute of Oriental Studies from 2006 to 2020. He has also served as a counsellor of the Armenian Embassy in Germany.
Go to Profile#3966
Virginia Guedea
#91646
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Virginia Guedea Rincón Gallardo is a Mexican historian, writer, translator, researcher, and academic. She has specialized in the political history of the viceregal period of New Spain and the Mexican War of Independence.
Go to Profile#3967
Geoffrey Crossick
#60966
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Geoffrey Joel Crossick FRHistS is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, a postgraduate school of the University of London. He was Vice-Chancellor of London University from 2010 to 2012.
Go to Profile#3968
Joan L. Richards
#69057
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Joan Livingston Richards is an American historian of mathematics and a professor of history at Brown University, where she directs the Program of Science and Technology Studies. Education and career Richards graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1971. She completed a Ph.D. in the history of science at Harvard University in 1981. Her dissertation, Non-Euclidean Geometry In Nineteenth-century England: A Study of Changing Perceptions of Mathematical Truth, was supervised by I. Bernard Cohen.
Go to Profile#3969
Deborah Hertz
#71367
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Deborah Hertz , is an American historian whose specialties are modern German history, modern Jewish history and modern European women's history. Her current research focuses on the history of radical Jewish women.
Go to Profile#3970
Corinne Bonnet
#75945
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Corinne Bonnet is Professor of Greek History at the University of Toulouse, France. She is known for her work on ancient Mediterranean history and religion. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant project Mapping Ancient Polytheisms.
Go to Profile#3971
Penelope Murray
#143473
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Penelope Murray is an expert in ancient history with an interest in ancient poetics and the Muses. After research posts at King's College London and St Anne's College, Oxford, she was a founder member of the department of Classics at the University of Warwick, with promotion to Senior Lectureship in 1998. After retiring from Warwick, Murray has been working on the Blackwell Companion to Ancient Aesthetic, co-editing with Pierre Destrée.
Go to Profile#3972
E. Frances White
#86776
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
E. Frances White is an American historian, author and academic serving as Professor Emerita of History and Black Studies at Gallatin School of Individualized Study. From 2005 to 2008 she served as Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs at New York University. Prior to that post, she was the Dean of New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study .
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Christine King
#30010
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Christine Elizabeth King, CBE, FRHistS, DL is a British historian and university administrator. She was Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University from 1995 to 2011. King has published extensively on the Third Reich and is considered an expert on Nazi Germany. She was formerly head of the School of Historical and Critical Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Lancashire Polytechnic. In 1990 she was appointed Assistant Director of Staffordshire Polytechnic, which became Staffordshire University in 1992.
Go to Profile#3974
Piotr Ostaszewski
#117874
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Piotr Ostaszewski is a Polish historian, political scientist and translator. Since 24 September 2017 serving as an ambassador to South Korea. Life Piotr Ostaszewski was born on 5 April 1964 in Żyrardów. Ostaszewski sat for an M.A. and Ph.D. in history at the University of Warsaw respectively in 1990 and 1998 for his thesis on Harry S. Truman's policy toward Vietnam. In 2004 he attained a post-doctoral degree at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In 2013 he became a full professor. He specializes in 20th-century international relations in Asia.
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Jock Phillips
#88753
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
John Oliver Crompton Phillips is a New Zealand historian, author and encyclopedist. He was the general editor of Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, the official encyclopedia of New Zealand. Career Born and raised in Christchurch, Phillips graduated with a BA at Victoria University of Wellington, followed by a MA and PhD at Harvard in 1978. Returning to Wellington was a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader in History at Victoria. He was founding director of the Stout Research Centre .
Go to Profile#3976
Timothy E. Gregory
#90858
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Timothy E. Gregory is an American historian and scholar, specializing in the Byzantine empire and classical archaeology. He has authored or co-authored numerous high-profile books on Byzantine topics and Christianity in the early period.
Go to Profile#3977
David S. Brown
#44694
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
David Scott Brown is a Horace E. Raffensperger professor of history at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, United States. He is the author of several books, including biographies of Richard Hofstadter and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Go to Profile#3978
Hugh C. Williams
#50274
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Hugh Cowie Williams is a Canadian mathematician. He deals with number theory and cryptography. Early life Williams studied mathematics at the University of Waterloo , where he received his doctorate in 1969 in computer science under Ronald C. Mullin . He was a post-doctoral student at York University.
Go to Profile#3979
Jeffrey Mass
#95698
Overall Influence
1940 - 2001 (61 years)
Jeffrey Paul Mass was an American academic, historian, author and Japanologist. He was Yamato Ichihashi Professor of Japanese History at Stanford University. Early life Mass was born in New York City in 1940. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from Hamilton College in 1961, a master's degree in history from New York University in 1965, and he received his doctorate in history from Yale in 1971.
Go to Profile#3980
Kiril Merdzhanski
#51819
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Kiril Merdzhanski is a Bulgarian poet, playwright and translator from English. He graduated in History from Saint Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. He lives in the United States where he graduated with Master's in History from Wright State University. He is considered to be one of the most influential postmodern Bulgarian poets. His works have been translated into English, French, Bosnian, Croatian, German, Czech and Swedish.
Go to Profile#3981
Andreas Gotzmann
#72994
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Andreas Gotzmann is a German historian of Judaism and scholar of religion. He holds the Chair for Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt. Education Andreas Gotzmann graduated from the Center for Jewish Studies Heidelberg and Heidelberg University in 1988 with an M.A. in Jewish History, Rabbinics & Codices, and Jewish Art History. He received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at the Free University of Berlin in 1995. Between 1990-1995 he was a research fellow in New York and Jerusalem; from 1994-1997 he was first a research assistant, then assistant professor for Jewish His...
Go to Profile#3982
Alison E. Cooley
#84428
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Alison E. Cooley is a British classicist specialising in Latin epigraphy. She is a professor at the University of Warwick and former head of its Department of Classics and Ancient History. In 2004, she was awarded The Butterworth Memorial Teaching Award.
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Monica Green
#69792
Overall Influence
Monica H. Green is an author and a historian who was a professor of history at Arizona State University. She is an expert in the history of women's health care in premodern Europe, medicine and gender, and she specialises in the history of infectious diseases in the pre-modern period.
Go to Profile#3984
Gaetano L. Vincitorio
#136075
Overall Influence
1921 - 2007 (86 years)
Gaetano Leonard "Tom" Vincitorio was an American historian, author, and educator who specialized in Modern European History, particularly the British politician Edmund Burke. Life and career Born on September 11, 1921, in Brooklyn, New York, Vincitorio attended St. John's University, where he graduated summa cum laude , and was also inducted into the Skull and Circle Honor Society. He then attended Fordham University in Bronx, New York, where he received an M.A. , and Ph.D. in History. He also took classes at Columbia University in 1946. Vincitorio's doctoral dissertation was prepared under Professor Ross J.
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David Shepherd Nivison
#48913
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
David Shepherd Nivison was an American sinologist known for his publications on late imperial and ancient Chinese history, philology, and philosophy, and his 40 years as a professor at Stanford University. Nivison is known for his use of archaeoastronomy to accurately determine the date of the founding of the Zhou dynasty as 1045 BC instead of the traditional date of 1122 BC.
Go to Profile#3986
Annette Imhausen
#71924
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Annette Imhausen is a German historian of mathematics known for her work on Ancient Egyptian mathematics. She is a professor in the Normative Orders Cluster of Excellence at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Go to Profile#3987
Maryanne Cline Horowitz
#80329
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Maryanne Cline Horowitz is an American Historian of The Renaissance and of History of ideas. She is Professor of History at Occidental College, Associate of the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, and an Affiliate of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. Horowitz is best known as the author of Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge, which won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History in 1999 from the American Philosophical Society. Dr. Horowitz served as Editor-in-Chief of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas which the American Library Association division RUSA declared an Outstanding Reference Source 2005.
Go to Profile#3988
John Hall Archer
#48622
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
John Hall Archer, was a Canadian librarian, historian, and civil servant, and the first President of the University of Regina. Born just south of Broadview, Saskatchewan, he was a rural school teacher from 1933 to 1940. During World War II, he served with the Royal Canadian Artillery and was discharged with the rank of captain in 1945. In 1973, he was made an honorary colonel. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947 and a Master of Arts degree in 1948 from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1949, he received a Bachelor of Library Science degree from McGill University.
Go to Profile#3989
Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas
#100170
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas is a Spanish historian who specializes in nationalism studies, the cultural history of war and violence, and migration studies. Biography Born in Ourense, Galicia, in 1966, he studied at the University of Santiago de Compostela and in Dijon. He earned a PhD in contemporary history from the European University Institute in 1992, reading a dissertation titled El problema de las nacionalidades en la Europa de entreguerras: El Congreso de Nacionalidades Europeas supervised by Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Stuart J. Woolf Senior lecturer at the USC since 1994, he obtained a chair of contemporary history at the USC in 2007.
Go to Profile#3990
Om Prakash
#46398
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Om Prakash is an Indian economic historian. He is noted for his work on the Dutch East India company in Bengal, and also for his work on coinage, precious metal trade, and other aspects of pre-colonial commerce between Europe and India. In 2005, he was knighted by the Dutch queen.
Go to Profile#3991
Jessica Millward
#135861
Overall Influence
Jessica Millward is an American historian who focuses on African American history, early America, African diaspora, slavery, and gender. Her work focuses on the female slave experience by emphasizing narratives of black women during slavery.
Go to Profile#3992
Christopher Pelling
#89307
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Christopher Brendan Reginald Pelling, FLSW is a British classical scholar. He was the Regius Professor of Greek, at Christ Church, Oxford, from 2003 to 2015. He was President of the Hellenic Society from 2006 to 2008.
Go to Profile#3993
William Arceneaux
#68486
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
William Arceneaux is a Louisiana higher education official, an American professor, historian, writer, and Louisiana native. Arceneaux is President of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana , having been elected in January of 2011.
Go to Profile#3994
Philip Gabriel
#14810
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
James Philip Gabriel is an American translator and Japanologist. He is a full professor and former department chair of the University of Arizona's Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.
Go to Profile#3995
Peter Hart
#55800
Overall Influence
1963 - 2010 (47 years)
Peter Hart was a Canadian historian, specializing in modern Irish history. Life Hart was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland. He studied for one year at the Memorial University of Newfoundland before moving to study at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He graduated from there with an Honours BA degree. Subsequently, Hart completed a master's degree in International Relations at Yale University.
Go to Profile#3996
Andrea Stuart
#83085
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Andrea Stuart is a Barbadian-British historian and writer, who was raised in the Caribbean and the UK and now lives in the UK. Her biography of Josephine Bonaparte, entitled The Rose of Martinique, won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. Although her three published books so far have been non-fiction, she has spoken of working on a novel set in the 18th century.
Go to Profile#3997
Allen Brent
#65959
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
The Rev. Prof. Allen Brent is a scholar of early Christian history and literature. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, formerly Dean , was an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge in 1998–2010. At present he is Professor in Early Christian History and Iconography at King's College London where he is joint researcher , on a two year BARDA project: Early Christian Epigraphy and Iconography after Dölger. He is also Professore Invitato at the Augustinianum , Rome. He was formerly Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Huddersfield, and has previously been Professor of History at James Cook University.
Go to Profile#3998
Wilma King
#120994
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Wilma King is a historian and the Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Missouri. She holds a B.A. in American history from Jackson State University, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Recent U.S. History from Indiana University. She came to the University of Missouri in 1999 and was the first to receive appointment to the Arvarh E. Strickland chair in Black History and Culture, established when Strickland retired.
Go to Profile#3999
Frank J. Coppa
#108502
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Frank John Coppa was an American historian, author, and educator who wrote widely on the Papacy in history as well as on Italian historical topics. Life and recognition Born on July 18, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York, Coppa attended Brooklyn College and the Catholic University of America . His dissertation, "Giolitti and Industrial Italy: An Analysis of the Interrelationship Between Giolitti's Economic Policy and His Political Program" was supervised by John K. Zeender. He received a Fulbright grant to study in Italy in 1964-1965.
Go to Profile#4000
Alexander Litschev
#115976
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Alexander Litschev is a Bulgarian historian and university lecturer in philosophical anthropology and the history of philosophy at the University of Düsseldorf. Biography Early life and work In 1967 Litschev began to study history and philosophy at the University of Sofia. After graduating in 1973, he worked for two years as an assistant for the history of philosophy at the University of Sofia. From 1976 to 1990 he worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy. From 1988 to 1990, he taught as a professor of the history of philosophy and philosophical anthropology at the Unive...
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