The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in History,
#4051
Stuart Woolf
#26443
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Stuart Joseph Woolf was an English-Italian historian. Woolf was emeritus professor of contemporary history at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, where he had taught from 1996 to 2006. Prior to this he taught at the European University Institute in Florence from 1984 to 1992 and at the University of Essex where he was Foundation Professor of History beginning in 1975. He previously held appointments at the University of Reading and Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge. He also held a number of visiting appointments at European, American and Australian universities, including Colu...
Go to Profile#4052
Fritz Stern
#146792
Overall Influence
#4053
Ludwell H. Johnson
#102737
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Ludwell Harrison Johnson III was a professor of history at the College of William and Mary. His main expertise was the American Civil War, with a focus on the political and economic motives of those who sought independence in the form of a new Confederacy.
Go to Profile#4054
Albert Parry
#66332
Overall Influence
1901 - 1992 (91 years)
Albert Parry was a Russian-born academic and historian. Overview Parry, born Abraham Josipovich Paretsky in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, was professor of Russian civilization and language at Colgate University. After the Russian Revolution he became a sailor in the Russian Merchant Marine and emigrated in 1921 to the United States, settling in New York City's Greenwich Village. There he wrote for periodicals. At the University of Chicago, he earned an A.B. in 1935, and his Ph.D. in history in 1938, taught there briefly and at Northwestern University. He was editor of Consolidated Book Publishers during his in Chicago years and a research director of radio broadcasts for the Chicago Sun.
Go to Profile#4055
Hossein Abadian
#71464
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Hossein Abadian is a contemporary Persian Iranologist and historian. He was born in Lar, Fars province. He is a professor at the Department of History at Imam Khomeini International University, and also an academic board member of Historia Iranica.
Go to Profile#4056
Júnia Ferreira Furtado
#105277
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Júnia Ferreira Furtado is a Brazilian historian and university professor. She retired from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in 2016. Education After graduating in 1983 with a degree in History from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Júnia Furtado completed a specialization in Modern and Contemporary History from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais. She then completed a Master's degree in Social History from the Universidade de São Paulo , where she went on to defend her doctoral degree in 1996.
Go to Profile#4057
Judith V. Field
#43168
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Judith Veronica Field is a British historian of science with interests in mathematics and the impact of science in art, an honorary visiting research fellow in the Department of History of Art of Birkbeck, University of London, former president of the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and president of the Leonardo da Vinci Society.
Go to Profile#4058
Brian Balogh
#107016
Overall Influence
Brian Balogh is an American historian, and professor at the University of Virginia. Balogh is the director of the National Fellowship Program hosted by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. He also co-hosted the radio program, "Backstory with the American History Guys". In 2015, he received a Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award.
Go to Profile#4059
Stephen D. White
#93759
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Stephen D. White is an American historian. White graduated from Harvard University in 1965 with a bachelor's degree. In 1972, he earned his PhD in history with a study of Edward Coke. White taught history at Harvard from 1968 to 1970, history and literature for the two years following. From 1972 to 1975 he was a lecturer at Harvard University. From 1975 to 1980, White taught as Assistant Professor of History, then Associate Professor of History from 1980 to 1985, and Professor of History at Wesleyan University from 1985 to 1989. From 1982 to 1983 he was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study.
Go to Profile#4060
Rae Frances
#88701
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Raelene Frances, is an Australian historian and academic at the Australian National University. Early life and education Frances was born in Collie, Western Australia as Raelene Frances Anderson in 1955. She left Collie Senior High School in 1972, having been dux that year and winning a University of Western Australia Exhibition in History and a Commonwealth scholarship.
Go to Profile#4061
William Caferro
#124117
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
William Caferro is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History & Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. His expertise is in medieval and Renaissance European history. His publications synthesize economic, military, social, literary, and historical trends.
Go to Profile#4062
Miguel Tinker Salas
#113243
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Miguel Tinker Salas is a Venezuelan historian and professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He specializes in modern Latin America having written books, edited volumes, and essays on Mexico and Venezuela. He frequently serves as a political analyst and his comments can be seen on television, radio, and print media.
Go to Profile#4063
Yvonne Svanström
#54284
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Yvonne Svanström, , is an associate professor and head of the Department of Economic History at Stockholm University. Career She earned her PhD in 2000, with a dissertation on prostitution in the 19th century. An expanded and popularized version of her thesis was published in Swedish as "Offentliga kvinnor. Prostitution I Sverige 1812–1918".
Go to Profile#4064
Shurlee Swain
#76529
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Shurlee Lesley Swain, is an Australian social welfare historian, researcher and author. Since August 2017 she has been an Emeritus Professor at the Australian Catholic University . Early life and education Swain was born in 1948 at Natimuk, Victoria. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father a grocer. The family relocated to Ringwood in Melbourne in 1951, where she completed all her schooling. At the University of Melbourne she completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours and Diploma of Social Work before completing her Doctor of Philosophy in 1977 on The Victorian Charity Network in the 18...
Go to Profile#4065
Olive Checkland
#130845
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
Olive Edith Checkland was an English historian and writer who specialised in post-19th century cultural, economic and social relationships between Japan and the United Kingdom. After enrolling on a geography degree at the University of Birmingham, she assisted her husband Sydney Checkland in forming the University of Glasgow's School of Economic History and the couple edited a republication of the English Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 and she worked alone in researching the Scottish Poor Laws. As associate director of 19th-century East Asians, Checkland wrote five entries for Oxford University ...
Go to Profile#4066
Isa Blumi
#128091
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Isa Blumi is a historian. He is a senior lecturer and associate professor of Turkish Studies at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies in Sweden. Career During the Kosovo conflict , Blumi was a member of the provisional Kosovo government. After the war, he worked as a consultant for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo and the Organization for Security and Operation in Europe . Blumi completed an MA in Political Theory and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York, United States. Studying in the History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies departments, Blumi graduated with a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#4067
Kate Cooper
#116798
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Kate Cooper is a Professor of History and former head of the History Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, a role to which she was appointed in September 2017 and she stood down in 2019. She was previously Professor of Ancient History and Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester, where she taught from 1995.
Go to Profile#4068
David A. T. Stafford
#48588
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
David Alexander Tetlow Stafford is projects director at Edinburgh University's Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars and Leverhulme Emeritus Professor in the university's School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Go to Profile#4069
Vanessa Northington Gamble
#37232
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Vanessa Northington Gamble is a physician who chaired the Tuskegee Syphilis Study Legacy Committee in 1996. Early life and education Born in West Philadelphia, Gamble was primarily raised by her maternal grandmother. She attended Philadelphia High School for Girls and graduated in 1970, then studied medical sociology and biology at Hampshire College, graduating with her bachelor's degree in 1974. Gamble then attended medical school and graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, earning her M.D. in 1983 and her Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science in 1987. She completed her gr...
Go to Profile#4070
Peter Lamont
#62142
Overall Influence
Peter Karl Lamont is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working on the history, theory and performance of magic. He is a magician, Member of The Magic Circle, and a former president of the Edinburgh Magic Circle. He has performed and lectured across the world.
Go to Profile#4071
Robert Smith
#89979
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Robert Sidney Smith was an expert on the history of the Yoruba people of Nigeria and was a senior lecturer and then professor of history at the universities of Lagos, Ife and Ibadan. He was born on 31 January 1919. For many years, he lived near Kew Gardens in London and died in London on 29 November 2009.
Go to Profile#4072
Katherine Elizabeth Fleming
#86384
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Katherine Elizabeth Fleming is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Department of History at New York University as well as Provost Emerita of the university. She was Provost of NYU from 2016 to 2022. She has been President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust since August 1, 2022, an appointment with which she became "effectively...the most powerful woman in the US museum world." She was included in the Observer's 2023 Business of Art Power List. Since arriving at the Getty, she has shown an interest in...
Go to Profile#4073
Stephen B. Baxter
#74926
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Stephen Bartow Baxter was an American historian specialising in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century English history. He was educated at Harvard University and Trinity College, Cambridge before working at Dartmouth College and the University of Missouri. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959-1960 for which he spent seven years researching his biography of William III of England.
Go to Profile#4074
Gene A. Smith
#45485
Overall Influence
Gene A. Smith is an American historian. He is a professor of History and the director of the Center for Texas Studies at Texas Christian University. He is the author of several books. Early life Smith was born on Saturday, September 7, 1963, in Fort Payne, Alabama, and grew up in Albertville, Alabama. Playing sports and serving in the Civil Air Patrol as a teen, he graduated from Albertville High School in 1981. Growing up a University of Alabama fan, he instead chose to attend Auburn University for academic reasons—to become a veterinarian. Ultimately, a course in chemistry put him on the path to becoming a historian.
Go to Profile#4075
John Hudson
#49065
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
John Geoffrey Henry Hudson, FBA, FRSE, FRHistS is an English medieval historian and Latin translator. He is Professor of Legal History at the University of St Andrews and the William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He was educated at Worcester College, Oxford and the University of Toronto .
Go to Profile#4076
Ann Ellis Hanson
#39272
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Ann Ellis Hanson is an American papyrologist and historian who holds the position of senior research scholar and lecturer in the Department of Classics at Yale University. Professor Hanson received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Michigan, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#4077
Hugh Torrens
#96354
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Hugh Simon Torrens is a British historian of geology and paleontology, and Emeritus Professor of History of Science and Technology at Keele University. Torrens received a bachelor's degree from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Leicester.
Go to Profile#4078
Michael Anthony
#46159
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Michael Anthony HBM was a Trinidadian author and historian, who was named by CNC3 as one of the "50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago". Early life and education Born in the county of Mayaro, Trinidad, on 10 February 1930, to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus, Michael Anthony was educated on the island at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College in San Fernando. He subsequently took a job as a laundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist. Later on, poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1954. Yet ...
Go to Profile#4079
Chen Yung-fa
#79028
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Chen Yung-fa is a Chinese historian from Taiwan. Chen was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province. He moved with his family to Taiwan in 1949. After Chen earned bachelor's and master's degrees from National Taiwan University, he completed a doctorate in history at Stanford University, and became a professor at National Taiwan University. He was elected to the Academia Sinica in 2004 and served as the director of the academy's between 2002 and 2009. He has been sought for commentary regarding the history of the Republic of China. Beginning in 2011, Chen led a project to digitalize the diarial writi...
Go to Profile#4080
Tomio Hora
#90122
Overall Influence
1906 - 2000 (94 years)
Tomio Hora was a Japanese historian and Waseda University professor, well known for his pioneering efforts to push back against Nanjing Massacre denial inside Japan. Education Hora attended middle school at Matsumoto Kukashi High School and high school at Waseda University High School .
Go to Profile#4081
Helga Schultz
#106436
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Helga Schultz was a German historian whose work focused on the economic and social history of Europe. Biography Schultz graduated from University of Rostock in 1964, where she majored in history teaching. A year later she received her diploma in history and became a research assistant and later senior assistant at the history section of the university.
Go to Profile#4082
Maryanne Kowaleski
#127382
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Maryanne Kowaleski, FRHistS, is a medieval historian, who was Joseph Fitzpatrick S. J. Distinguished Professor of History and Medieval Studies at Fordham University from 2005 until her retirement. Career Kowaleski completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, graduating with an AB in 1974 with a double major in French and Medieval/Renaissance studies. She then completed a Master of Arts degree in medieval studies at the University of Toronto in 1976, before completing the Medieval Studies Licentiate in 1978 at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at Toronto, before...
Go to Profile#4083
Tom Buk-Swienty
#88492
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Tom Buk-Swienty is a Danish historian, journalist and author, known for his work on the Second Schleswig War. Buk-Swienty was raised in Sønderborg, Denmark. He holds degrees in history and American Studies from the University of Copenhagen and the University of California. During 1994–2005, he served as the American correspondent for the Danish periodical Weekendavisen and also as a lecturer at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense until 2010. He is now an independent author and since 2014 has been an adjunct professor in history at University of Southern Denmark.
Go to Profile#4084
Daniel Pick
#88438
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Daniel Pick is a British historian, psychoanalyst, university teacher, writer and occasional broadcaster. Between 2014 and 2021, he was the recipient of a senior Investigator grant from the Wellcome Trust and led a research group at Birkbeck exploring the history of the human sciences and 'psy' professions during the Cold War. The project was entitled 'Hidden Persuaders': Brainwashing, Culture, Clinical Knowledge and the Cold War Human Sciences, c. 1950-1990'.
Go to Profile#4085
Claudia Märtl
#81505
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Claudia Märtl is a German historian. She is a professor of Medieval history at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her research focuses on English and Romance languages. In March 2011 she was elected to succeed Rudolf Schieffer as President of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. She took office on April 1, 2012 for a limited period of two years. On March 31, 2014, she resigned as president after a very vehement protest against the savings measures of the Free State of Bavaria and reform demands from the State Ministry for Education, Culture, Science and Art, which was taken over by Ludwig Spaenle .
Go to Profile#4086
Carl Bridge
#57542
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Carl Bridge is an Australian historian, academic, and professor emeritus of Australian History at King's College London. Biography Carl Bridge is a graduate of the University of Sydney and Flinders University. He taught at Flinders and the University of New England, and was director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College London from 1997 to 2014. He has been a fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Churchill College, Cambridge; the Australian Prime Ministers' Centre; and the National Library of Australia. He is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Bridge is a former co-editor of London Papers in Australian Studies and Reviews in Australian Studies.
Go to Profile#4087
Bernard Andrieu
#72195
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Bernard Andrieu is a French philosopher and historian of the body. Biography Andrieu was born on 24 December 1959 in Agen. He studied in Bordeaux from 1978 to 1984. He is a professor at the University of Nancy. He has written on the philosophy of neuroscience and the mind-body problem, as well as the history of bodily practices such as tanning, touch, the open air, and immersion. He is the editor of a 450-article Dictionary of the Body.
Go to Profile#4088
Mary Sarah Bilder
#105708
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Mary Sarah Bilder is an American historian, and a winner of the 2016 Bancroft Prize. Life She graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Harvard Law School, and Harvard University. She taught at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and teaches at Boston College Law School.
Go to Profile#4089
Marisa Chappell
#35608
Overall Influence
Marisa Chappell is an American historian and associate professor at Oregon State University. She is known for her works on economic history of the United States. Her book The War on Welfare was selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2010.
Go to Profile#4090
Marina Rustow
#52311
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Marina Rustow is an American historian and the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East at Princeton University. She is a 2015 MacArthur Fellow. Her work focuses on the study of Judeo-Arabic documents found in the Cairo geniza and the history of Jews in the Fatimid Caliphate.
Go to Profile#4091
Harvey Pitcher
#97967
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (89 years)
Harvey Pitcher is an English writer, historian and translator. He was born in London, and attended Merchant Taylors' School. During his National Service , he studied Russian at the Joint Services School of Linguists, qualifying as an interpreter. Afterwards, he read Russian at St John's College, Oxford, graduating in 1960 with First Class Honours.
Go to Profile#4092
Lellia Cracco Ruggini
#68581
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Lellia Cracco Ruggini was an Italian historian of Late Antiquity and professor emerita of the University of Turin. Her particular interests were in economic and social history, the history of ideas, and modern and ancient historiography. She specialized in the period from the second to seventh centuries AD.
Go to Profile#4093
Marco Patricelli
#112262
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Marco Patricelli is an Italian historian, specializing in the history of Europe of the 20th century and the Second World War. He is the author of a book about Witold Pilecki, Il volontario , which received the Acqui Award of History that year.
Go to Profile#4094
David Luscombe
#64723
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
David Edward Luscombe was a British medievalist. He was professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Sheffield. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1986. He was also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London. He was the joint editor of volume four of The New Cambridge Medieval History.
Go to Profile#4095
Henry Frendo
#76927
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (77 years)
Henry Joseph Frendo is a professor of modern history, teaching at the University of Malta since 1992. Frendo has previously worked with the UNHCR, and was stationed in Switzerland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Papua New Guinea. His main areas of research and interest are related to history since 1798; related to imperialism, nationalism, decolonization, postcolonialism, journalism, migration and ethnicity - in Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and MENA. Other areas of his interest are languages, culture and statehood.He is from Floriana and is brother of Michael Frendo.
Go to Profile#4096
William M. Fowler
#60061
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
William Morgan Fowler Jr. is a professor of history at Northeastern University, Boston and an author. He served as Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1998 through 2005. Early life and education Born in Tarpon Springs, Florida, the son of William Fowler, a U.S. Postal Service employee, and his wife Eleanor, he grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and attended Wakefield High School and Northeastern University, Boston, graduating magna cum laude in 1966. He went on to the University of Notre Dame, where he earned his M.A. in 1969 and his PhD in 1971. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1970 to 1984, reaching the grade of Captain.
Go to Profile#4097
Benjamin Batson
#71631
Overall Influence
1942 - 1996 (54 years)
Benjamin Batson was an American mathematician and historian who studied 20th century Thai history. He spent almost his entire professional life in Southeast Asia. Biography Batson was born in Tennessee in 1942. Batson earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1963 at Harvard College- where he was elected to membership of Phi Beta Kappa and played on the Harvard chess team. He briefly returned Tennessee to work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He then moved to Thailand, teaching mathematics at Chulalongkorn University from 1964-66. After completing a master's degree under Walter Vella ...
Go to Profile#4098
Jeremy King
#148317
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Jeremy King is an American historian, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke. He was research fellow at Harvard University, Berlin Prize Fellow, from the American Academy in Berlin, and 2004–2005 Research Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.
Go to Profile#4099
Carol Cornwall Madsen
#107880
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (95 years)
Carol Cornwall Madsen is an emeritus professor of history at Brigham Young University where she was a research historian with the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History. She also served as associate director of BYU's Women's Research Institute. She has written 50 scholarly articles and several books.
Go to Profile#4100
Shmuel Krakowski
#79201
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Shmuel Krakowski, Samuel Krakowski or Stefan Krakowski was an Israeli historian specializing in the Holocaust in Poland. After surviving the Holocaust, Krakowski worked for the intelligence and security services of the People's Republic of Poland. Later he became a Director of the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel.
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