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.

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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,

#4601

Mirjam Brusius

#142412

Overall Influence

Mirjam Sarah Brusius is a cultural historian and historian of science. She is currently Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History at the German Historical Institute London. She specialises in the history of photography, museums, collecting and race in colonial contexts.

#4602

David E. Maas

#109121

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

David Edward Maas is Emeritus Professor of History at Wheaton College , United States. He was first appointed to Wheaton's faculty in 1970 and retired in 2010. Education He gained a B.A. in History from Wheaton College in 1962, an M.A. in History from California State University at Los Angeles in 1964 and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1972.

#4603

Robert J. Woodford

#119048

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (89 years)

Robert John Woodford is an expert on Joseph Smith and the Doctrine and Covenants. He was a teacher in seminaries and institutes with the Church Educational System of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for many years. He is one of the editors with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and along with Steven C. Harper and Robin Scott Jensen was a volume editor of The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations, Manuscript Revelations Books, Facsimile Edition that was published in 2009.

#4604

Kathleen Flake

#97334

Overall Influence

Kathleen Flake is an American historian, writer, and attorney and is currently the Richard Lyman Bushman chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia. Education Flake obtained a BA from Brigham Young University, an MA from Catholic University of America, a JD from the University of Utah College of Law, and a PhD from the University of Chicago.

#4605

Urs Stammbach

#70112

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Urs Stammbach is a Swiss mathematician, specializing in homological algebra. Stammbach studied at ETH Zurich, where he obtained his Diplom in 1964 and received his doctorate in 1966 under the supervision of Beno Eckmann with dissertation Anwendungen der Homologietheorie der Gruppen auf Zentralreihen und auf Invarianten von Präsentierungen . As a postdoc Stammbach was from 1966 to 1967 at ETH Zurich and from 1967 to 1969 at Cornell University. At ETH Zurich, he was from 1969 to 1972 an assistant professor, from 1972 to 1979 an associate professor, and from 1979 to 2005 a full professor, retir...

#4606

Richard S. Newman

#119737

Overall Influence

1930 - 2003 (73 years)

Richard Newman is an American educator, author and historian of African American Studies. He is Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology and biographer of African Methodist Episcopal Church founder Richard Allen. His scholarly interests include African-American History, Atlantic History, environmental history and technology and history.

#4607

Robert A. Hill

#85138

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Robert A. Hill is a Jamaican historian and academic who moved to the United States in the 1970s. He is Professor Emeritus of History and Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles , and Visiting Fellow at The Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies , University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. A leading scholar on Marcus Garvey, Hill has lectured and written widely on the Garvey movement, and has been editor-in-chief of The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers for more than 30 years. Reviewing the first volume in 1984, Eri...

#4608

Benjamin J. Kaplan

#108145

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Benjamin Jacob Kaplan is a historian and professor of Dutch history at University College London and the University of Amsterdam. He taught at University of Iowa. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. According to The New York Times, in his 2007 book Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Kaplan "maintains that religious toleration declined from around 1550 to 1750," and that Europeans responded by devising "intricate boundaries allowing them to live more or less peaceably with neighbors whose rival beliefs were anathema."

#4609

Ahmad H. Sa'di

#76815

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Ahmad Sa'di is a Palestinian social scientist and a tenured professor in the Department of Politics and Government in Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel. He is the author of multiple books. Most notably he co-authored Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory with Lila Abu-Lughod.

#4610

Edward Linenthal

Edward Linenthal

#88574

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Edward Tabor Linenthal is an American academic who specializes in religious and American studies, and particularly memorials and other sacred spaces. Biography and scholarship Linenthal received his A.B. from Western Michigan University in 1969, his M.Div. from the Pacific School of Religion in 1973, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979. He worked for 25 years at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, in religious studies and completed his career with the Indiana University history department. Now retired, Linenthal now resides in Virginia.

#4611

Jacob Hen-Tov

#70233

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

Jacob Hen-Tov is an academician specializing in the history and politics of Russia and the Middle East and the legal system of the former Soviet Union. He retired in 2003 from his position as Professor of Eurasian Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

#4612

Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson

#154002

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson is the professor of transatlantic history and culture at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and has been since October 2016. Prior to this, Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson was deputy director at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., where her research interests included African American studies, transatlantic relations, and gender and American religious history . Born on 9 April 1965, Waldschmidt-Nelson received her PhD summa cum laude from the University of Munich in American history and culture in 1997, and worked there as a lecturer, assistant professor, ...

#4613

Sebastian Sobecki

#117970

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Sebastian Sobecki is a medievalist specialising in English literature, history, and manuscript studies. Biography Sobecki is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto. Prior to that, he was Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen, the oldest chair for English literature in the Netherlands. At Groningen he also held by courtesy the Professorship of Old Germanic, established in 1881. Having received his education at the University of Cambridge, Sobecki became an Assistant Professor at McGill University before being appointed at Groningen.

#4614

Tim Cook

#76121

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Tim Cook is a Canadian military historian and author. Cook is an historian at the Canadian War Museum and the author of thirteen books about the military history of Canada. Having written extensively about World War I, Cook's focus shifted to Canada's involvement in World War II with the 2014 publication of the first volume in a two-volume series chronicling Canada's role in that war. He is a two-time recipient of the C.P. Stacey Prize, a two-time recipient of the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize, and a three-time winner of the Ottawa Book Prize. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2019....

#4615

Irena Backus

#142118

Overall Influence

1950 - 2019 (69 years)

Irena Dorota Backus was a professor of the History of the Reformation at the University of Geneva. Life Born in Poland in 1950, Backus studied at Somerville College, Oxford. She obtained her doctorate in 1976, with a thesis on Theodore Beza's influence on the English New Testament, published in 1980 as The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza. From 1982 she was employed at the Institute for Reformation History in Geneva. A Festschrift in her honour was published in 2018, Crossing Traditions: Essays on the Reformation and Intellectual History in Honour of...

#4616

Peter Gray

#87409

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Peter Gray is Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen's University Belfast. He specializes in the history of British-Irish relations in the 19th century, particularly the Great Irish Famine. He is a member of the International Network of Irish Famine Studies, and a member of the Irish Association of Professional Historians. Gray was Head of the School of History and Anthropology and Professor of Modern Irish History at Queen's University Belfast from 2010 to 2015. In 2015 Gray was an Eaton Visitor Fellow at the University of New Brunswick, researching the impact of the Great Famine on New...

#4617

Christopher Celenza

#83223

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Christopher S. Celenza is an American scholar of Renaissance history and the current James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also a professor of history and classics.

#4618

Samuel H. Moffett

#83671

Overall Influence

1916 - 2015 (99 years)

Samuel Hugh Moffett was an American Christian missionary and academic who latterly served as professor emeritus at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He was regarded as a leading scholar on Christianity in Asia, and was the author of numerous publications, including the two-volume series of A History of Christianity in Asia.

#4619

David Lyle Jeffrey

#50689

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

David Lyle Jeffrey is a Canadian-American scholar of literature and religion, currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada . In 2003 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Conference of Christianity and Literature.

#4620

Jesús Escobar

#89548

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Jesús Escobar is a professor of art history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Escobar specializes in the art, architecture, and urbanism of early modern Spain and Italy and has published articles and reviews in journals of art history and early modern studies. His book The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid explores the interchange of architecture and politics in the evolution of Madrid from a secondary city of Castile to the seat of a global empire. The book won the Eleanor Tufts Award from the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies and has been revised in a Spanish-language edition published in 2008 by Editorial Nerea.

#4621

Véronique Chankowski

Véronique Chankowski

#110561

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Véronique Chankowski is a French historian. She is a specialist in the economic and social history of the ancient Greek world. She has served as the Director of the French School at Athens since 2019.

#4622

Keith Wailoo

#101393

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Keith A. Wailoo is an American historian. He is currently the Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs and Chair of the Department of History at Princeton University. His research lies at the intersection of history and health policy, often focusing on the politics of healthcare, the development of drug policy, and the social implications of health policy. He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

#4623

Eric Nelson

#34873

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

Eric Matthew Nelson is an American historian and Professor of Government at Harvard University. Biography Eric Nelson was born in 1977 and grew up in New York City. According to Harvard Magazine, he went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every week as a child.

#4624

David Englander

#92678

Overall Influence

1949 - 1999 (50 years)

David Englander was a British historian of labour and poverty, and of soldiers in the World Wars, and was an authority on the work of Charles Booth and Jewish immigration to Britain. Early life David Englander was born in Whitechapel, London, on 3 June 1949, the son of a cabinet-maker. He was not successful at school until he came under the influence of inspiring teachers who encouraged him to apply for university. He graduated from Warwick University in 1970 in history and politics, where he was influenced by the communist historian E.P. Thompson.

#4625

Wang Liqun

#136065

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Wang Liqun is a Chinese historian and a professor in the School of Arts, Henan University. He is best known for conducting lecture series about Chinese history on the CCTV-10 television programme Lecture Room.

#4626

Roger Kain

#85787

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Roger James Peter Kain, is a British geographer and academic, who specialises in the history of maps. From 2010 to 2017 he was the Dean and Chief Executive of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990.

#4627

Tim Couzens

#88375

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

Tim Couzens was a South African literary and social historian, and travel writer. He was educated at Durban High School, Rhodes University, and the University of the Witwatersrand. He won a number of awards for his works, and was employed in the Graduate School for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

#4628

Stephanie Jones-Rogers

#136186

Overall Influence

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is an American historian. She is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. She is an expert in African-American history, the history of American slavery, and women's and gender history.

#4629

Raymond Grew

#168782

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Raymond Grew is a social historian of France and Italy and a Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Grew graduated from Harvard University in 1951 and received a Ph. D. from Harvard in 1957. During this period, on August 16, 1952, he married Daphne Merriam in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

#4630

Alan Mikhail

#129227

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Alan Mikhail is an American historian who is a professor of history at Yale University. His work centers on the history of the Ottoman Empire. Education Mikhail graduated in History and Chemistry from Rice University in 2001, and received his MA in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. His PhD was conferred from the same university in 2008. His thesis The Nature of Ottoman Egypt: Irrigation, Environment, and Bureaucracy in the Long Eighteenth Century was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences by Middle East Studies Association of North Am...

#4631

James L. Baughman

#94466

Overall Influence

1952 - 2016 (64 years)

James L. Baughman was an American mass communication historian, and the Fetzer-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Early life and education James L. Baughman was born in Warren, Ohio on January 10, 1952, the son of Lewis E. and Ann B. Baughman. Baughman grew up in Warren and attended the Warren City Schools. He was a lifelong and passionate fan of the Cleveland Indians.

#4632

Angela Zimmerman

#120931

Overall Influence

Angela Zimmerman is a professor of German history at George Washington University. Early life and education Zimmerman earned a PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1998, an M.Phil in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge in 1991, a B.A. in History from University of California, Los Angeles in 1990.

#4633

Emmanuel Poulle

#111674

Overall Influence

1928 - 2011 (83 years)

Emmanuel Poulle was a French archivist and historian, specialist in the history of science and the medieval period and was a member of the Institut de France. Honours He was an officier of the Légion d'honneur, commandeur of the Ordre des Palmes académiques and officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

#4634

Colin White

#99458

Overall Influence

1951 - 2008 (57 years)

Colin Saunders White was a British military historian, director of the Royal Naval Museum from 2006 until his death and one of Britain's leading experts on Admiral Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar.

#4635

Kenneth W. Noe

#102423

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Kenneth W. Noe is an American historian whose primary interests are the American Civil War, Appalachia and the American South. He has most recently published The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War.

#4636

Leszek Zasztowt

#109378

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Leszek Zasztowt is a Polish historian and professor at the University of Warsaw. Career He graduated from high school in Warsaw, and subsequently studied history at the University of Warsaw. In 1978 he started to work in the L.& A. Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences; where he held the post of director during the years 2007 through 2015. Since 1998 he has been employed by the Centre for East European Studies of the University of Warsaw. He received professorship at the University in 2006, and became a full professor in 2009. He is a chairman of the scientific council of the Polish Academy of Sciences Archives in Warsaw.

#4637

Ivo John Lederer

#88997

Overall Influence

1929 - 1998 (69 years)

Ivo John Lederer was a diplomatic historian who taught at Princeton , Yale and Stanford universities. He also served at the Ford Foundation in New York City as Program Officer in charge of East European affairs. In 1977, he left academics to begin a second career in business.

#4638

Barbara Penner

#102966

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Barbara Penner is an architectural historian and Professor of Architectural Humanities at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She is a specialist in the history of small spaces, specifically the bathroom and toilet, and has written on the institution of the honeymoon in 19th century North America.

#4639

Peter Fritzsche

#140290

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Peter Fritzsche is a historian and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Works

#4640

Edward Jones-Imhotep

#80471

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Edward Jones-Imhotep is a historian of science and technology, academic and director and associate professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. in history of science from Harvard University in 2001.

#4641

David S. Barnes

#96110

Overall Influence

David S. Barnes is an Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science and Director of the Health and Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a historian specializing in public health issues of Third Republic France. He argues that the development of public health in nineteenth-century France is best understood in terms of the integration of scientific hypotheses into the generally accepted cultural, social and economic frameworks.

#4642

Janusz Cisek

#67776

Overall Influence

1955 - 2020 (65 years)

Janusz Waldemar Cisek was a Polish historian, academic lecturer, director of the Pilsudski Institute and Polish Army Museum, from 2012 to 2013 Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

#4643

Robert Sklar

#100929

Overall Influence

1936 - 2011 (75 years)

Robert Anthony Sklar was an American historian and author specializing in the history of cinema. Sklar began his career as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He received a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University in 1965. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

#4644

Bruce Muirhead

#96358

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Bruce Muirhead is a Canadian historian and academic whose work focuses on Canada's foreign trade policy. From 1985 to 2006, Muirhead taught at Lakehead University. Currently at the University of Waterloo, he teaches Canadian history, the American impact on Canada, and Canada's foreign economic policy in the 20th century. He is professor of history, Egg Farmers of Canada chair in public policy and associate dean of graduate studies and research.

#4645

Michael G. Vann

#102645

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (58 years)

Michael G. Vann is an American historian who serves as Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento. He teaches a range of world history courses, including 20th century world, Southeast Asia, imperialism, and genocide. His research specializes in the history of the French colonial empire, epidemic diseases such as the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, and Cold War era mass violence in Southeast Asia. Vann holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a student of Tyler Stovall and Edmund Burke III. His dissertation was on the history of white supremacy in French colonial Hanoi.

#4646

Hedwig Röckelein

#113413

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Hedwig Röckelein is professor of medieval history at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Early life Hedwig Röckelein was born in Burgebrach on 13 July 1956. From 1975 to 1981, she studied German, history, politics and prehistoric and early historical archeology at the Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg. In 1985, she received her PhD at the University of Freiburg with a dissertation on high medieval Latin texts.

#4647

William J. Cooper Jr.

#100634

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

William J. Cooper Jr. is an American historian who specializes in the history of the American South, and is regarded as a leading expert on the life of Jefferson Davis. Life and career Cooper studied at Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University. After two years of service as an officer in the U.S. Army, he went on to spend his entire academic career at Louisiana State University.

#4648

Xavier de Montclos

#66466

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Xavier de Montclos was a 20th–21st-century French historian, a specialist of the history of religions and particularly Christianity. Career In 1965, he defended his thesis devoted to Lavigerie, le Saint-Siège et l'Église, de l'avènement de Pie IX à l'avènement de Léon XIII, 1846-1978. In 1966, he supported a complementary thesis on Le toast d'Alger, documents, 1890-1891.

#4649

Jennifer S. Light

#104355

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Jennifer S. Light is Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Light's research investigates the work of technical experts in the political process, with special interest in these figures' influences on US urban history. Light serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Communication and the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

#4650

Kyaw Thet

#68233

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

Kyaw Thet was a historian of Burma, and professor of Burmese and Eastern History Studies at the University of Rangoon. He is of Burman and Mon descent. Kyaw Thet received his bachelor's degree at the University of Rangoon, and master's and doctorate degrees at the University of London. He was also a visiting professor at Yale University.

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