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,

#4151

Richard Britnell

Richard Britnell

#99692

Overall Influence

1944 - 2013 (69 years)

Richard Hugh Britnell was Professor of the Department of History, University of Durham. An economic historian, his work demonstrated that "commerce played an essential part in medieval life". His obituary in The Guardian stated that "Not many academics can be said to have moved the boundaries of their subject, yet no one meeting Richard encountered any pretension or flamboyance". He was a prolific author.

#4152

Paul Langdon Ward

#75860

Overall Influence

1911 - 2005 (94 years)

Paul Langdon Ward was an American academic, the fifth president of Sarah Lawrence College from 1960 to 1965. Life Ward was born in 1911 in Diyarbakir in what was then the Ottoman Empire, the son of a medical missionary. He spent much of his childhood in Lebanon, where he attended the American Community School. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1933, an M.A. from Harvard University in 1934 and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1940. He was an Assistant Professor History at Russell Sage College 1941-42 before joining the Office of Strategic Services in the U.S. Department of State for the duration of World War II.

#4153

Timothy Gilfoyle

#78290

Overall Influence

Timothy J. Gilfoyle is an American historian from New York who is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches American urban and social history. He gained a B.A. in 1979, followed by a Ph.D. in history at Columbia University in 1987. He is the former president of the Urban History Association .

#4154

Per G. Norseng

#115853

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Per Gudbrand Norseng is a Norwegian historian. He was born in Oslo, and received the cand.philol. degree at the University of Oslo in 1983. He has been a research fellow at the University of Oslo , an associate professor at the Universities of Trondheim and Stavanger and the Vestfold University College , senior research librarian at the University Library of Oslo , and a senior curator at the Follo Museum and Berg-Kragerø Museum . He was then the chief curator and the director of the Norwegian Maritime Museum . From 2011 to 2012 he was Head of the Department of Cultural Studies and Humanities, Telemark University College.

#4155

Paul J. Springer

#77093

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (50 years)

Paul J. Springer is an American author, professor, and military historian. Born in Iowa in 1975, Springer attended Urbandale High School in Urbandale, Iowa and Texas A&M University, earning a BS in Psychology in 1997 and a PhD in Military History in 2006. He is now a history professor at the Air Command and Staff College and has also taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has appeared as a consultant and interview subject for programs on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the National Geographic Channel. Springer was named a Senior Fellow of the Foreign P...

#4156

Andriy Grechylo

Andriy Grechylo

#91865

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Andrii Grechylo , is a Ukrainian historian, heraldist and vexillologist. During his career he has published several books and designed hundreds of coats of arms, flags, banners and seals for over 1000 different municipalities and institutions.

#4157

Martin Wiener

#90608

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Martin Joel Wiener is an American academic and author. He is currently a research professor at Rice University. Keith Joseph gave a copy of Wiener's book English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850–1980 to every cabinet minister.

#4158

Pietro Corsi

#83438

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Pietro Corsi is an Italian historian of science. Biography From 1967, Pietro Corsi studied at the Faculty of Philosophy, The University of Pisa, and was also a pupil of the Class of Letters, The Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. Under the supervision of Francesco Barone and Gilberto Bernardini, he worked on selected issues in the history of science. In particular, he completed yearly theses on the works of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and the historiographic conceptions elaborated by Alexandre Koyré. His final thesis reconstructed the relationship between epistemology and the history of science in France, from Henri Poincaré to Alexandre Koyré.

#4159

Weston Bate

#88065

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Weston Arthur Bate was an Australian historian. Bate served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War. He studied at the University of Melbourne under Manning Clark, Max Crawford, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and John O'Brien. He taught at Brighton Grammar School, Melbourne Grammar School, Bradfield College , and at the University of Melbourne. From 1978 until 1989 Bate held the foundation chair of Australian Studies at Deakin University, Geelong.

#4160

Estelle Brodman

Estelle Brodman

#118451

Overall Influence

1914 - 2007 (93 years)

Estelle Brodman was an American medical librarian and medical historian. She held positions at Columbia University, the National Library of Medicine and the Washington University School of Medicine . Brodman served terms as director of the Special Libraries Association, president of the Medical Library Association, and editor of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. Under Brodman's leadership, the library at WUSM became known as a leader in the use of computing machines to perform library functions.

#4161

Arne Kaijser

#57537

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Arne Kaijser is a professor emeritus of history of technology at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and a former president of the Society for the History of Technology. Kaijser has published two books in Swedish: Stadens ljus. Etableringen av de första svenska gasverken and I fädrens spår. Den svenska infrastrukturens historiska utveckling och framtida utmaningar, and has co-edited several anthologies. Kaijser is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences since 2007 and also a member of the editorial board of two scientific journals: Journal of Urban Technology and Centaurus.

#4162

Émilienne Demougeot

#110318

Overall Influence

1910 - 1994 (84 years)

Émilienne Demougeot was a French historian, a specialist of Late Antiquity and Early Christianity. She was one of the first women professors of history at a French university, and the first woman professor at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Montpellier.

#4163

Barbara Taylor

#39504

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Barbara G. Taylor is a Canadian-born historian based in the United Kingdom, specialising in the Enlightenment, gender studies and the history of subjectivity. She is Professor of Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London.

#4164

James M. Stayer

#100921

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

James M. Stayer is a historian specializing in the German Reformation, particularly the anabaptist movement. He is also a Professor Emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Stayer received his PhD from Cornell University in 1964. After teaching at Ithaca College, Bridgewater College and Bucknell University, he moved to Canada in 1968 to teach at Queen's University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1977.

#4165

Jean Herskovits

#91686

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Jean Frances Herskovits was a research professor of history at the State University of New York at Purchase specializing in African history and politics. Herskovits taught at Brown University, Swarthmore College, City College of the City University of New York and Columbia University. She held a D. Phil. in African history from Oxford University.

#4166

Gretchen Gerzina

#42262

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is an American author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies. Her academic posts have included being the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College, working as a professor at Vassar College, being a professor and a director of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and as at April 2019 being the Dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College. Gerzina was the host of WAMC's nationally-syndicated radio program The Book Show for fourteen years, where she interviewed authors.

#4167

Steven Keillor

#98123

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Steven James Keillor is a Minnesota historian and author. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D in American History from the University of Minnesota; currently, he is an adjunct professor at Bethel University. He lives in Askov, Minnesota and is the brother of Garrison Keillor .

#4168

Carol Rittner

#57341

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Carol Rittner is an American nun and Holocaust historian. She is a Distinguished Emerita Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Professor of Holocaust Studies at Stockton University.

#4169

Marģers Vestermanis

Marģers Vestermanis

#97439

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (100 years)

Marģers Vestermanis is a Latvian Holocaust survivor, historian, founder and former director of the museum Jews in Latvia. Life Youth and World War II Marģers Vestermanis was born in Riga into a Latvian Jewish, German-speaking family as the youngest of three sons of a merchant and manufacturer. He attended the Riga German Primary School No. 10 until 1933, and was later a student of the private, German and Latvian-language Jewish private gymnasium Ezra. In addition to that Vestermanis received religious education from a rabbi at the age of 6 until he turned 15.

#4170

Frederick Burkhardt

#51575

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

Frederick Burkhardt was an American educator and foundation administrator. He was President of the American Council of Learned Societies , then after his retirement devoted decades of work on The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

#4171

Lizanne Henderson

#108978

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Lizanne Henderson is a Senior Lecturer in history at the University of Glasgow in Dumfries. Books Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, c.1670-1740 Palgrave 2016. Winner of the Katharine Briggs Book Award 2016.Editor, with Edward J. Cowan, A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.Editor, Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture Edinburgh: John Donald, 2009.with Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History East Linton: Tuckwell P, 2001; 2007. 242pp. .

#4172

Jeremi Suri

#94448

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Jeremi Suri is an American historian and the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Life He graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's in history in 1994. He then obtained a master's in history from Ohio University followed by a Ph.D. in history from Yale University. While at Yale, he wrote a dissertation titled "Convergent Responses to Disorder: Cultural Revolution and Détente among the Great Powers during the 1960s."

#4173

Mark Alan Hewitt

#67800

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Mark Alan Hewitt is an American architect, preservationist and architectural historian, known for his work on architectural history and the history of architectural drawing "as a medium of thought."

#4174

Fred Bateman

#113814

Overall Influence

1937 - 2012 (75 years)

James Fred Bateman, Jr. was a noted economic historian. He served as the Nicholas A. Beadles Professor in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. Bateman's main areas of research were US 19th century agricultural and industrial economic history. He served from 1982–83 as president of the Business History Conference and in 2010 he was elected as a Fellow of the Cliometric Society.

#4175

Akram Fouad Khater

#83612

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Akram Fouad Khater is a Lebanese-born American professor, historian, and author. He serves as a professor of history, and the director of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University . He specializes in the history of Lebanon, Lebanese Studies and diaspora, the Middle Eastern history, and Arab relations.

#4176

James E. Sheridan

#133872

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

James Edward Sheridan was a professor emeritus in the Department of History at Northwestern University and the author of a number of books on modern Chinese history, such as China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History and the biography Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-Hsiang.

#4177

Albert Lindemann

#62988

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

Albert Lindemann is an American historian known for his book Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. He also authored The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs , 1894–1915. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#4178

Boris Shramko

#93161

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Boris Andriyovich Shramko was a Ukrainian historian and professor of history. Excavations at Bilske Horodyshche near the village of Bilsk in the Ukraine have led to suggestions by archaeologist Boris Shramko and others identifying it as the Scythian capital Gelonus. It is strategically situated on the exact boundary between the steppe and forest-steppe.

#4179

Fearghal McGarry

#65973

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Fearghal McGarry is an Irish historian specializing in the history of Ireland in the 20th century, currently Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen's University, Belfast. McGarry is the author of books about Ireland in the first half of the twentieth century. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.

#4180

Paolo Vitti

#151719

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

#4181

Mark Thompson

#98785

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Mark Thompson is a British historian. The most recent of his four books is Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis , which was described by Adam Thirlwell, in a lead review in the Times Literary Supplement, as "a great biography of the work as much as the life".

#4182

Roger Ekirch

#39669

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Arthur Roger Ekirch is University Distinguished Professor of history at Virginia Tech in the United States. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1998. The son of intellectual historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. and Dorothy Gustafson, Roger Ekirch is internationally known for his pioneering research into pre-industrial sleeping patterns that was first published in "Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles" and later in his award-winning 2005 book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.

#4183

Matthew Innes

#120954

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Matthew Innes is a British academic who is Vice Master and Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Honours and awards The Philip Leverhulme Prize for Outstanding Research The Royal Historical Society's Gladstone History Book Prize

#4184

Lothar Mertens

#82747

Overall Influence

1959 - 2006 (47 years)

Lothar Mertens was a prolific German historian and social sciences scholar. A principal focus of his output was on the German Democratic Republic . Life and work Lothat Mertens was born in Leverkusen in West Germany at the height of the country's remarkable postwar economic revival. He studied History, Catholic Theology and Sociology at the universities of Bochum and Cologne. He received his doctorate in 1990 for a piece of work on the development of Women's Studies in Germany as a branch of social sciences before 1945. A higher level doctorate from the University of Potsdam followed ...

#4185

Darrett B. Rutman

#124511

Overall Influence

1929 - 1997 (68 years)

Darrett B. Rutman was a historian of early America. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1959. He was a distinguished scholar and served on the History faculties of the University of Minnesota, 1959–1968, the University of New Hampshire, 1968–1984, and the University of Florida in Gainesville, 1984-1996. He died of an aortic aneurysm on April 11, 1997.

#4186

François Géré

#77019

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

François Géré , a French historian specializing in geostrategy, is notably the founding president of the French strategic analysis institute, the Institut français d’analyse stratégique . He is also an official representative for the French Institute of Higher National Defense Studies, the Institut des Hautes études de défense nationale and research director at Paris III University. He was awarded the distinction of Knight of the French Legion of Honor in 2005.

#4187

Øyvind Bjørnson

#112865

Overall Influence

1950 - 2007 (57 years)

Øyvind Bjørnson was a Norwegian historian who specialized in labor history and the history of the welfare state. He hailed from Haugesund. He took the cand.philol. degree in 1979, and later the dr.philos. degree in 1987 with the thesis Den nye arbeidsdagen. In 1990 he published På klassekampens grunn, volume two of the work Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge, the history of the Norwegian workers' movement. He then covered the welfare state history with the books 100 år for bedre arbeidsmiljø, published in 1993 at the 100th anniversary of the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority, and Langso...

#4188

Andrew Rossos

#103001

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Andrew Rossos is a Canadian-Macedonian Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Toronto. Early life and education Rossos was born in 1941 in the village of Moschochori, Florina, Greece from the Slavophone minority. During the Greek Civil War in 1948, he was evacuated to Czechoslovakia as a refugee child. Rossos attended primary school in Sobotin and Technical School in Prague. In 1958 he moved with the rest of his family to Canada and graduated from high school in Toronto. Rossos earned a bachelor's degree in history at Michigan State University in 1963 and did his postgraduate studies at the University of Stanford, earning his PhD in 1971.

#4189

Yoginder Sikand

#51975

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Yoginder Singh Sikand is an Indian writer and academic who has written several books on Islam-related issues in India. Early life and education Sikand received his B.A. in economics from St. Stephen's College of the University of Delhi , followed by an MA in sociology and an MPhil in sociology, from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi . Thereafter, he received his PhD in history, focusing on the Tablighi Jama'at, from Royal Holloway College, University of London .

#4190

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar

#105182

Overall Influence

1953 - 2006 (53 years)

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar was a reader in the history and politics of South Asia and fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. Background Chandavarkar's work engaged most directly with the processes involved in the formation of the industrial working classes in Mumbai. He worked toward defining a new interdisciplinary approach for understanding processes of urbanisation, the nexus between the city and the countryside, and the evolution of industrial capitalism. His insights prompted research on a wide range of topics in South Asian social history and politics. This was particularly evident in the work of the research students whom he supervised at Cambridge.

#4191

Francis Rapp

#88743

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Francis Rapp was a French medievalist specializing in the history of Alsace and medieval Germany. An emeritus university professor, he was a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres since 1993.

#4192

James A. Rawley

#99426

Overall Influence

1916 - 2005 (89 years)

James A. Rawley was professor of history emeritus at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He was a specialist in the American Civil War, American race-relations and the life of Abraham Lincoln. His The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History was updated by Stephen D. Behrendt in 2005. The James A. Rawley Prize is given in his memory by the Organization of American Historians for the best book on race relations, and the James A. Rawley Prize is given in his memory by the American Historical Association for the best book in Atlantic history.

#4193

Jeremy Black

#56995

Overall Influence

1951 - 2004 (53 years)

Jeremy Allen Black was a British Assyriologist and Sumerologist, founder of the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Black was born in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, and was brought up in Buckinghamshire, England. He was the only son of tea-taster Dudley A. Black and his wife Joan M. née Denton . At age two, he was isolated for a whole year in hospital with polio, then, at age five, his mother died.

#4194

Ira Chernus

#50835

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Ira Chernus is a journalist, author, and Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Religion from Temple University, specializing in the history of rabbinic Judaism. For much of his career, his academic writing focused on the foreign policy of US presidents. He has published books on Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush. As a journalist, he has written extensively on peace, war, foreign policy, and nationalism in the United States, as well as the Israel-Palestine conflict and U.S. Middle East policy. He has written often for the Hu...

#4195

Robert Hess

#37031

Overall Influence

1932 - 1994 (62 years)

Robert Lee Hess was an American scholar of African history, and the sixth President of Brooklyn College. Personal life Hess was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, to Henry and Ada Hess. He attended Yale University, where he earned his B.A. , M.A. , and Ph.D. degrees, studying African history.

#4196

Edward P. Lilly

Edward P. Lilly

#86124

Overall Influence

1910 - 1994 (84 years)

Edward Paul Lilly was an American historian, author, educator, and government worker who specialized in the history of political and psychological warfare in the twentieth century. Life and career Lilly was born on October 13, 1910, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he received an A.B. in philosophy in 1932. He then attended Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he received his M.A. in history in 1933 and his Ph.D. in the same discipline in 1936. His doctoral dissertation, "The Colonial Agents of New York an...

#4197

Susan-Mary Grant

#135246

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Susan-Mary Grant is a professor of American history at Newcastle University. Her works generally cover the history of the United States. She received her PhD from the University of London. Her PhD supervisor was Peter J. Parish. After several temporary academic appointments, she joined the faculty of Newcastle University in 1992. In 1993 Grant co-founded and is the current chair of the association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians. She is on the editorial board of Nations and Nationalism. From 2005 to 2010 she was the editor of the American Nineteenth Century History journal. ...

#4198

Michael Clanchy

#97424

Overall Influence

1936 - 2021 (85 years)

Michael Thomas Clanchy was a British medievalist who was Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and Fellow of the British Academy. Early life and education Clanchy was born in Reading in 1936, the son of Henry, a Royal Navy captain from an Irish Catholic family, and Virginia, a New Zealander, and was educated at Ampleforth College. He went up to Oxford to read history, matriculating at Merton College in 1956 and taking a second class degree three years later. After two years teaching at Presentation College, Reading, Clanchy retur...

#4199

Jehan Desanges

#96990

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Jehan Desanges was a French historian, philologist and epigrapher, a specialist in the topic of North Africa during Antiquity. Biography Desanges was born in Nantes. He graduated in 1953, and was a lecturer at the École des hautes études in Tunis from 1958 to 1959. He was chef de travaux, then assistant professor of ancient history at the University of Dakar between 1959 and 1963. He was in charge of teaching in ancient history at the University of Algiers between 1963 and 1964 and at University of Nantes between 1964 and 1976, before becoming a senior lecturer after the defense of his thesis in 1976.

#4200

Nile Green

#56441

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Nile Green a historian who specializes in Islamic history of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, including that of the wider Persianate world. Green is Professor of History and the current holder of the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at the University of California, Los Angeles . He has authored seven monographs and over seventy articles and has edited seven books. He was a founding director of UCLA's Program on Central Asia, in addition to various boards, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies. According to his profile page, Green currently functions as ...

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