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,

#4201

Mircea Păcurariu

#121594
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Mircea Păcurariu was a Romanian theologian, historian and priest in the Romanian Orthodox Church. Biography Born in Ruși, Hunedoara County, he was the son of the village priest. He enrolled in the History faculty of Babeș University in Cluj, but had to leave after his first year because the Communist Romanian authorities viewed his social origin as unacceptable. He later attended the theological seminaries in Sibiu and in Bucharest, then taught at the seminaries of Neamț Monastery and Sibiu. In 1997, he was elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy; he was elevated to titular sta...
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#4202

Alexander L. Baugh

Alexander L. Baugh
#114802
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Alexander L. Baugh is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University . He has largely written on the history of the Latter Day Saint movement in the 1830s Missouri period, but has also written on such topics as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Great Britain during the 20th Century.
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#4203

Mambet Koigeldiev

#124447
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Mambet Kulzhabayuly Koigeldiev is a Kazakh historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, Full Member of the Kazakhstan National Academy of Science. He also serves as a President of Association of Historians of Kazakhstan He specializes in Alash Orda, Alash movement.
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#4204

Richard N. Holzapfel

#113219
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Richard Charles Neitzel Holzapfel is a former professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University and an author on topics related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Western and Utah History, and the New Testament. As of 2018, Holzapfel is working in the LDS Church's Missionary Department as a senior manager.
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#4205

Yves Gingras

Yves Gingras
#152829
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
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#4206

Richard Wolfram

#101317
Overall Influence
1901 - 1995 (94 years)
Richard Wolfram was an Austrian philologist who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Richard Wolfram was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 16 September 1901. His family was well educated and middle class. Since 1920, Wolfram studied Germanistics, Scandinavistics and art history at the University of Vienna. He gained his PhD at the University of Vienna in 1926 with a thesis on Ernst Moritz Arndt. Wolfram completed his habilitation in Germanic studies at the University of Vienna in 1934 under the supervision of Rudolf Much. His thesis was on the comitatus in early Germanic society.
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#4207

Saheed Aderinto

Saheed Aderinto
#51815
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (46 years)
Saheed Aderinto is a Nigerian American Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at Florida International University and an award-winning author. He is the Founding President of the Lagos Studies Association. In February 2023, Aderinto received the $300,000 Dan David Prize–the largest financial reward for excellence in the historical discipline in the world. He has published eight books, thirty-six journal articles and book chapters, forty encyclopedia articles, and twenty book reviews.
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#4208

Suzanne Citron

#88153
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Suzanne Citron, born Suzanne Grumbach on 15 July 1922 in Ars-sur-Moselle and died on 22 January 2018 in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, was a French historian and essayist of the left. She is known for her work on the national myth and the teaching of history in France.
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#4209

Abiola Félix Iroko

#109332
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Abiola Félix Iroko was a Beninese historian and university professor. He often wrote on the topic of slavery in Africa. Biography Iroko earned a doctoral degree in letters and humanities from the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Throughout his career, he served as a professor of history at the University of Abomey-Calavi. He also knew how to play the zither in his youth.
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#4210

Lawrence Badash

#81206
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
Lawrence Badash was an American professor of the history of physical sciences, specializing in the history of physics, particularly the history of nuclear physics and nuclear weapons. Education and career Badash graduated in 1956 with a B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a Reserve Officers' Training Corps student. After serving three years as a naval aviator, he became a graduate in the physics department of Yale University but soon switched to the history of science. He became Derek de Solla Price's first doctoral student. Badash received his Ph.D. in 1964 and his Ph.D.
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#4211

Peter Sugar

#128340
Overall Influence
1919 - 1999 (80 years)
Peter Sugar was an American historian, known for his expertise in the history of East Central Europe, and a frequent speaker at international conferences during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Sugar was a recipient of a lifetime achievement Award for Distinguished Contributions to Slavic Studies from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
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#4212

Rudolf Braun

#95655
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Rudolf Braun was a Swiss historian. Biography Braun was the son of a geologist. He attended Mathematical-Natural Scientific High School of Basel and later studied folklore and history from 1950 to 1958 at the universities of Freiburg, Basel and Zurich before he earned a doctor's degree in 1960. He worked as an assistant at the Center for Social Research of Dortmund from 1959 to 1961 and as a scientific assistant in Chicago from 1961 to 1964, before he qualified as a professor at the University of Bern in 1964. He subsequently wrote a paper about integration problems of Italian guest workers in Switzerland.
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#4213

Margaret Malamud

#86136
Overall Influence
Margaret Irene Malamud is Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies at New Mexico State University. Malamud is known in particular for her work on classical reception in the United States. Career Malamud studied Classics and Islamic Studies at Boston University, graduating with a BA in 1980. She continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley completing her MA in Near Eastern Studies in 1983 and her PhD in 1990. Following two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History at Stanford University, Malamud joined the faculty of New Mexico State University in 1992 as Assistant Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies.
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#4214

Albrecht Classen

Albrecht Classen
#153475
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
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#4215

Benjamin Hudson

#92303
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Benjamin T. Hudson is an American medievalist based at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree at Pennsylvania State University, received his Masters at University College, Dublin, and his D.Phil. at Worcester College, Oxford. He specializes in the history of Celtic-speaking peoples in the British Isles in the Early and High Middle Ages, and in the Norse-Gaelic Irish Sea region of the same period.
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#4216

Fernando García de Cortázar

#98030
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Fernando García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aguirre was a Spanish priest and historian.
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#4217

Mordechai Breuer

Mordechai Breuer
#91761
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
Mordechai Breuer was a German-Jewish historian and writer. Background and Family Breuer was born in Frankfurt am Main to Isaac Breuer and his wife Jenny Breuer in 1918. He had four siblings: Yaakov; Ulla, Tzipora, and Simeon. The family originated in Frankfurt but left for Israel in 1936.
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#4218

Edward Countryman

#96375
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (81 years)
Edward Countryman is an American historian. Life He graduated from Manhattan College, and from Cornell University with an MA, and a Ph.D. in 1971. He taught at Yale University, University of Canterbury, University of Warwick, University of Cambridge. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor at Southern Methodist University.
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#4219

Tuomo Polvinen

#95964
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Tuomo Ilmari Polvinen was a Finnish historian. Biography Polvinen was born in Helsinki on 2 December 1931. He became a PhD in 1964. He was an official in the Finnish national archives in Helsinki, and its chief. 1968-70 he was professor in general history at Tampere University and professor on the subject at Helsinki University; research professor and .
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#4220

Tamar Herzog

#62932
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Tamar Herzog is a historian and jurist. She is the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Harvard Law School. She previously taught at Stanford University, University of Chicago and Autonomous University of Madrid. Her work concentrates on early modern European history, colonial Latin American history, imperial history, Atlantic history, and Legal history.
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#4221

Henryk Kocój

#153683
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (94 years)
Henryk Kocój is a Polish historian. Professor of the Silesian University, he specializes in the Polish history of the 17th and 18th century, in particular, the history of the Constitution of 3 May, Great Sejm, and the partitions of Poland.
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#4222

Lynn Abrams

#149317
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Lynn Abrams is a historian and Professor of History at the University of Glasgow, and a Fellow of the British Academy . She is Chair in Modern History at the University of Glasgow, where her research and teaching interests include the history of women and gender relations in Britain, and oral history.
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#4223

Andrew Thompson

#88956
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Andrew Stuart Thompson is a British historian and academic. He specialises in modern British history, Imperialism, and the British Empire. Since September 2019, he has been Professor of Global Imperial History at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Exeter. He was Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2018 to 2020, having previously been its chief executive on a part-time basis.
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#4224

Christine Kinealy

#70779
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Christine Kinealy is an Irish historian, author, and founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. She is an authority on Irish history. Kinealy has lived in the United States since 2007. She was named "one of the most influential Irish Americans" in 2011 by Irish America magazine.
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#4225

Douglas D. Alder

#102376
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Douglas D. Alder was an American historian and academic administrator who was president of Dixie College from 1986 to 1993. Biography Douglas D. Alder was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He studied at the University of Utah getting a bachelor's and master's degree there. He then earned a PhD at the University of Oregon. He was for many years a professor of European history at Utah State University. While there he was director of the honors program. He edited the work Cache Valley: Essays of Her Past and People.
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#4226

Jie-Hyun Lim

#126521
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Jie-Hyun Lim is a South Korean historian, writer, and "memory activist." He is a full professor of transnational history and the director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University, Seoul, who conceptualized paradigms of "Mass Dictatorship" and "Victimhood Nationalism." Since Lim founded the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture in 2004, he has carried out a series of international projects, including the "East Asian History Forum for Criticism and Solidarity" and the "Flying University of Transnational Humanities."
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#4227

Elizabeth Eva Leach

#65965
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Elizabeth Eva Leach is a British musicologist and music theorist who specializes in medieval music, especially that of the fourteenth century. Much of her scholarship concerns the life and work of Guillaume de Machaut.
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#4228

Ruth Leiserowitz

Ruth Leiserowitz
#74203
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Ruth Leiserowitz is a German historian. Her work and study primarily deal with the wolf children, a group of German children orphaned at the end of World War II in East Prussia. Since 2009, she has been the deputy director of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. In 2014, she was awarded the Cross of Merit First Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by German president Joachim Gauck.
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#4229

Évelyne Patlagean

#111299
Overall Influence
1932 - 2008 (76 years)
Évelyne Patlagean was a French historian and Byzantinist, working on questions of poverty, welfare, gender, the family, and women in Byzantium. Patlagean's doctoral thesis, entitled Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e-7e siècles, was published in 1977. In it, Patlagean developed ideas about inherent inequality in the status of women in the eastern Roman empire. She worked on questions of gender indetermination and transgression, including the seemingly unclear status of the eunuch, and in an important 1976 article, Patlagean opened a new dimension on the masculine inscription of circumscribed gender roles in Byzantine religious orders.
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#4230

Charlotte Macdonald

#56603
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Charlotte Jean Macdonald is a New Zealand historian. After studying as an undergraduate at Massey University, she earned her PhD from University of Auckland and is now a professor at Victoria University of Wellington.
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#4231

Linda Grant DePauw

#74877
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (85 years)
Linda Grant DePauw is an American modern historian, retired university teacher, non-fiction author and journal editor, who is a pioneer in women's research in the United States. She received the Beveridge Award in 1964, was shortlisted for the American Book Awards in 1983, and became part of a book published by the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.
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#4232

Jean-Marc Olivier

#82276
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Jean-Marc Olivier is a French historian born in 1961 in the town of Champagnole . Biography and career Olivier received the French agrégation in history and is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Toulouse. He was director of the CNRS research group FRAMESPA from 2005-2013. He was elected Vice-President of International Relations at this university in June 2012.
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#4233

Daniel Leab

Daniel Leab
#103268
Overall Influence
1936 - 2016 (80 years)
Daniel Joseph Leab was an American historian of 20th-century history. He made significant academic contributions to fields of American labor unions and anti-Communism. He was long-time editor of three journals and magazines.
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#4234

Joan Maria Thomàs

Joan Maria Thomàs
#121701
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Joan Maria Thomàs Andreu is a Spanish historian. He is professor of Contemporary History at the Rovira i Virgili University and corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History. His academic production has focused on the history of falangism and the international relations of Spain during the Francoist dictatorship.
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#4235

Fidel Villarroel

#43580
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Fidel Villarroel was a Spanish historian, writer, filipinologist, biographer, political commentator, Master Theologian of the Dominican Order, and member of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. A recipient of the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, he is the former Archivist, Spanish Department Director, Prefect of Libraries, and professor at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas. He had also served as secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature for 32 years, and is currently an academic director of the prestigious Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española , the local branch of the renowned Real A...
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#4236

John North

#87803
Overall Influence
1934 - 2008 (74 years)
John David North was a British historian of science and author of numerous books. North was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire in 1934. He attended Batley Grammar School and then read Mathematics at Merton College, Oxford and later Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He met his wife Marion in Oxford, and married her in 1957. Later he went to London University where he took an external degree in Astronomy, Physics and Applied Maths in 1958.
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#4237

Kim Jun-yop

#154135
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Kim Jun-Yop was president of Korea University, a historian focusing on China and North Korea issues. Kim declined a nomination from Roh Tae-woo to become Prime Minister of South Korea in 1990, preferring to stay in academia.
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#4238

Ángel Bahamonde Magro

Ángel Bahamonde Magro
#63151
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Ángel Bahamonde Magro is a Spanish historian. He is professor of Contemporary History at the Charles III University of Madrid . Biography Born in Madrid in 1949, he earned a PhD in history from the Complutense University of Madrid , reading a dissertation titled El horizonte económico de la burguesía isabelina. Madrid 1856-1866, supervised by José María Jover. In 1992, he was appointed to a chair in the area of "Contemporary History" at the UCM. He moved to the UC3M in 2003. Prior to that he was also a lecturer at Toulouse-Le Mirail and Paris-Saint Denis.
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#4239

Claus Bjørn

#63875
Overall Influence
1944 - 2005 (61 years)
Claus Ebbe Bjørn was a Danish author, historian, and television and radio broadcaster, who was Associate Professor of Agricultural History at the University of Copenhagen, Chairman of the Danish Agricultural History Society and Member of the Royal Danish Society of the History of the Fatherland.
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#4240

Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru

#54236
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru is a Spanish-Mexican academic who specializes in the cultural history of New Spain. In 2007 she received, along archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, the National Prize for Arts and Sciences of Mexico in the category of History, Social Sciences and Philosophy.
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#4241

Donald A. Yerxa

Donald A. Yerxa
#101058
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Donald A. Yerxa is an author, editor, and historian. Biography Yerxa received his bachelor's degree in history from the Eastern Nazarene College in 1972 and a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Maine on a university fellowship. He was a director of The Historical Society at Boston University and a senior editor of Historically Speaking, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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#4242

Michael Kißener

#114850
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Michael Kißener is a German historian and Professor at the University of Mainz. His research is focused on the history of the national socialist regime and the opposition against it. He earned his doctorate in 1991, and headed the Forschungsstelle Widerstand at the University of Karlsruhe from 1992 to 2002. In 2000, he earned his Habilitation. He was appointed Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Mainz in 2002.
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#4243

David C. Cassidy

#66295
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
David C. Cassidy is an American historian of science and professor emeritus at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. He is best known for his contributions to the history of quantum mechanics, scientific biography, history of physics in Germany and the United States and, most recently, science-history drama.
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#4244

Carolyn Muessig

#53056
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Carolyn Anne Muessig holds the Chair of Christian Studies at the University of Calgary. A graduate of Fulton-Montgomery Community College, State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Toronto, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and the Université de Montréal, Muessig is a specialist in the history of medieval preaching, Jacques de Vitry, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena and female educators of the Middle Ages. Prior to moving to Calgary, she was Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Bristol. She was co-editor of Medieval Sermon Studies for 17 years ...
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#4245

Robert Demoulin

#82225
Overall Influence
1911 - 2008 (97 years)
Robert Demoulin was a professor of contemporary Belgian history at the University of Liège. Life Demoulin was born in Huy on 8 May 1911. He attended a state secondary school in Huy, and then the University of Liège, where he studied history. He graduated Ph.D. in 1932, with a thesis on the Belgian Revolution of 1830. In the mid-1930s he prospected in archives in Paris, London and The Hague, attending Charles Webster's seminar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and François Simiand's lectures at the Collège de France. In 1938 he succeeded Herman Vander Linden lecturing on...
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#4246

François Cusset

François Cusset
#35263
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
François Cusset is a writer, intellectual historian, and Professor of American Civilisation at the University of Nanterre. Cusset was a student at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Saint-Cloud. He has been an associate researcher at The National Center of Scientific Research , teacher of contemporary French culture at Reid Hall, and professor at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. He is the brother of the writer Catherine Cusset.
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#4247

Louise McNeill

#101971
Overall Influence
1911 - 1993 (82 years)
Louise McNeill , also known as Louse McNeil Pease, was an American poet, essayist, and historian of Appalachia. She began teaching in a one roomed schoolhouse in West Virginia and would eventually move on to teach at other universities. She would eventually become a professor of history and English at West Virginia University where her archives are held today.
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#4248

Sándor Csernus

#103974
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Sándor Csernus is a Hungarian historian, associate professor , diplomat, former dean of Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged and director of the Hungarian Institute of Paris. He is fluent in Hungarian and French.
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#4249

Michael Handelsman

#71870
Overall Influence
Michael Handelsman is an American specialist in Spanish language and of Latin American literature and Latin American studies, currently a Distinguished Humanities Professor at the University of Tennessee.
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#4250

Kiyoko Takeda

#50210
Overall Influence
1917 - 2018 (101 years)
Cho Kiyoko , better known as Takeda Kiyoko , was a Japanese scholar of the history of ideas. In the 1950s, she contributed to the diplomacy that was hurt by World War II, aimed at restoring relations and understanding among Asian people, including Chinese, Filipino, Indian, and people of other Asian countries. She was the founder of the Social Studies Institute at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Takeda Kiyoko was a professor emerita at ICU with a PhD in Literature from the University of Tokyo in 1961.
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