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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List of the most influential people in History,

#4701

Michael Fellman

#143223

Overall Influence

1943 - 2012 (69 years)

Michael Fellman was a professor emeritus of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Fellman was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He was educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University . He was the son of David Fellman, Vilas Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

#4702

Margaret J. Osler

#115863

Overall Influence

1942 - 2010 (68 years)

Margaret J. "Maggie" Osler was a historian and philosopher of early modern science and a professor of history at the University of Calgary. Biography Osler received a B.A. in philosophy from Swarthmore College in 1963, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University in History and Philosophy of Science under the supervision of Richard S. Westfall. The title of her dissertation was John Locke and Some Philosophical Problems in the Science of Boyle and Newton. She held teaching appointments at Oregon State University, Harvey Mudd College, and Wake Forest University before coming to the University of Calgary in 1975.

#4703

Adam Rome

#107827

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Adam Ward Rome is an American environmental historian. In his book Bulldozer in the Countryside, he examines how the post World War II residential construction boom and its resulting urban sprawl contributed to the rise of the modern environmental movement.

#4704

Ethan H. Shagan

#101807

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Ethan H. Shagan is an American historian of early modern Britain. Shagan is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the chair of the History Department. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and his master's degree and PhD from Princeton University . He was formerly a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and Wayne V. Jones Research Professor in History at Northwestern University, where he received the E. LeRoy Hall Award for Distinguished Teaching. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize and Morris D.

#4705

Irving H. Bartlett

#92715

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Irving Henry Bartlett was an American historian. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University, Bartlett obtained his master's and doctoral degrees at Brown University. He taught at Cape Cod Community College, the Rhode Island College of Education, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he was the John F. Kennedy Professor of American Civilization. Bartlett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966. He died in Hingham, Massachusetts on July 1, 2006, aged 83.

#4706

Robert Ericksen

#144758

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Robert P. Ericksen is a historian of the Holocaust. His book Theologians Under Hitler was widely acclaimed, and was made into a documentary in 2004. He maintains affiliations with the Humboldt Foundation and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and sits on the editorial board of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, a German journal. He is currently professor of history at Pacific Lutheran University.

#4707

Robert Chapman

#102115

Overall Influence

1922 - 2004 (82 years)

Robert McDonald Chapman was a New Zealand political scientist and historian. Early life Born in Takapuna, Auckland, on 30 October 1922, Chapman was educated at Auckland Grammar School. He later studied at Auckland Teachers' Training College and Auckland University College, where he received scholarships, and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1947, and Master of Arts with first-class honours in 1949. For his Master's research project in history, he analysed the 1928 New Zealand general election.

#4708

Ingo Zechner

#68835

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Ingo Zechner is a philosopher and historian. He is the Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History in Vienna. Research topics: time and memory, aesthetics , film, digital media and Holocaust Studies. Further research on the concept of modernity in the fields of Cultural Studies and Post-structuralism .

#4709

Mayke de Jong

#109813

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Mayke de Jong is a Dutch historian and Professor Emerita of Medieval History at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the political and religious history of the early Middle Ages. Career De Jong received her MA degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1977. She achieved her PhD with honours at the same university in 1986 with a thesis entitled Kind en klooster in de vroege middeleeuwen

#4710

Susan Cayleff

#122506

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Susan Cayleff is an American academic and emeritus professor at San Diego State University, having taught there from 1987 to 2020. She was one the inaugural members of the National Women's Studies Association Lesbian Caucus and served on the organization's Coordinating Council between 1977 and 1979. She founded the Women's History Seminar Series at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston, Texas; the Graduate Women's Scholars of Southern California in 1989; and was a co-founder of the SafeZones program at San Diego State University.

#4711

Brian Holden-Reid

#103902

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Brian Holden-Reid is a British military historian. Career Holden-Reid studied at University of Hull, University of Sussex and University of London. He taught at Polytechnic of North London and City University London. In 1982 he joined King's College London and the Department of War Studies, KCL. He was appointed lecturer in 1987, to senior lecturer in 1992 and to chair in 2000. He served as Head of the Department of War Studies 2001–2007, and in 2007 he was awarded the Fellowship of King's College , the highest honour the college can award its alumni and staff. He was also a member of the Co...

#4712

Bernard Jennings

#84637

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Bernard Jennings was an English adult educationist and historian. He was president of the Workers' Educational Association in the 1980s, and was known for his local histories of Yorkshire. Jennings was born in Nelson, Lancashire in 1928. He was educated at St Mary's College in Blackburn and the College of St Mark and St John in London. After national service in the Army Education Corps he joined the Workers' Educational Association as an organising tutor in Yorkshire. In 1958 he took a master's degree in adult education at Leeds University, and then became a lecturer at Leeds. In 1973 he...

#4713

Donald F. Lach

#80267

Overall Influence

1917 - 2000 (83 years)

Donald Frederick Lach was an American historian based as a professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. He was an authority on Asian influence in the European civilization during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.

#4714

Marion Kaplan

#86326

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Marion Kaplan is Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University. She is a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award for her non-fiction writing about German-Jewish history, Jewish refugees, and Holocaust history. Established in 1950, these awards recognize outstanding achievement in Jewish writing and research.

#4715

Stephen A. Schuker

#28321

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Stephen Alan Schuker is an American historian who is currently William W. Corcoran Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He was educated at Cornell University, where he gained a BA in 1959. In 1958 Cornell awarded him a $500 prize for being their outstanding history student. He was awarded an MA and a PhD by Harvard University in 1962 and 1969, respectively. According to Walter A. McDougall, Schuker's book The End of French Predominance in Europe is the definitive work on the circumstances leading to the adoption of the 1924 Dawes Plan on German reparations. The book was awarded...

#4716

Piet Emmer

#114265

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Pieter Cornelis Emmer is a Dutch Emeritus Professor of Colonial History at Leiden University, specialising in the European Expansion, and related themes of slavery and immigration. Scholarship Prof Piet Emmer studied history and economics in Leiden. He worked at the University of Amsterdam where he obtained his PhD in 1974 with the thesis 'England, the Netherlands, Africa and the slave trade in the nineteenth century'. He then worked at Leiden University until 2009, as full professor of the history of European expansion and related migration and slavery. In addition, he was an associate pro...

#4717

Ida Bull

#138300

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Ida Bull is an archivist, historian, author, and academic. She is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Historical Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Bull's research interests span fields of history including social history, economic history, local history, and women and gender history, particularly from the era of 1978–1998. She has authored books, including Lokalsamfunnet i verden. Norske lokalsamfunns plass i den første globaliseringen på 1600- til 1800-tallet, and Trondheim 1814 Series: The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences, Writings 1-2014.

#4718

Robert Frank Leslie

#169858

Overall Influence

1918 - Present (107 years)

Robert Frank Leslie was professor of history at Queen Mary University of London. His papers are held by Queen Mary Archives. He was a specialist in modern Polish history. Selected publications Polish Politics and the Revolution of November, 1830. Athlone Press, London, 1956. Reform and Insurrection in Russian Poland, 1856-1865. Athlone Press, London, 1963. The Age of Transformation, 1789-1871. Blandford Press, London, 1964.The Polish Question: Poland's Place in Modern History. Historical Association, London, 1964.The History of Poland since 1863. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980.

#4719

James Sidbury

#148598

Overall Influence

James Sidbury is an American historian who studies race and slavery in the English-speaking Atlantic world. Sidbury is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Rice University and he is a published author.

#4720

Marian Quartly

#122912

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Marian Quartly is an Australian social historian. She is professor emeritus in history at Monash University. Early life and education Marian Quartly is the daughter of Valma Jean and metalworker Gordon Henry Quartly. She was born in 1942 in Adelaide, South Australia. She attended Blair Athol State School and then Wilderness School. In 1964 she completed a BA at the University of Adelaide. She moved to Melbourne, where she graduated with a PhD at Monash University in 1970.

#4721

Nicholas Howe

#87411

Overall Influence

1953 - 2006 (53 years)

Nicholas Howe was an American scholar of Old English literature and culture, whose Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England was an important contribution to the study of Old English literature and historiography.

#4722

Gregg Herken

#69943

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Gregg Herken is an American historian and museum curator who is Professor Emeritus of modern American diplomatic History at the University of California, Merced, whose scholarship mostly concerns the history of the development of atomic energy and the Cold War.

#4723

Jørn Sandnes

#117221

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

Jørn Sandnes was a Norwegian historian. He was born in Snåsa in Nord-Trøndelag. He was appointed Professor in Trondheim from 1975 to 1992, From 1984 he served as the first rector at the University of Trondheim. Among his works is Norsk Stadnamnleksikon from 1976 , and Avfolking og union, volume four of Cappelens Norgeshistorie from 1977. He was the principal editor of the six volumes of Trondheims historie from 1997.

#4724

Ann McGrath

#103894

Overall Influence

Ann Margaret McGrath is an Australian historian and academic. she is the WK Hancock Chair of History at the Australian National University in Canberra. Early life and education McGrath graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland in 1976.

#4725

Jürgen Elsner

#152964

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

Jürgen Elsner is a German music ethnologist and author. Life Born in Finsterwalde, Elsner studied music theory, musicology and Arabic studies at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 1958 to 1964, he was a research assistant at the Institute for Musicology there. In 1964, he was awarded a doctorate with the dissertation Zum vokalsolistischen Vortrag der Eislerschen Kampfmusik. In 1970, he habilitated with the thesis Zum vokalsolistischen Vortrag der Eislerschen Kampfmusik Der Begriff des maqam in Ägypten in neuerer Zeit. He then taught music history and music ethnology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Leipzig University.

#4726

Robin D. S. Higham

#138977

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Robin David Stewart Higham was a British-American historian, specializing in aerospace and military history, who also served as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Early life and family Higham was born to a British veteran of the First World War and Margaret Anne Stewart, an American woman. Born in 1925, he grew up in London but had already met relatives in Texas and Oklahoma with his mother in 1929 and 1935. Following the outbreak of the Battle of Britain in 1940, Higham's parents sent him to the United States. He attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.

#4727

George A. Rothrock

#105658

Overall Influence

1932 - 1993 (61 years)

George Abel Rothrock Jr. was a professor of European history at the University of Alberta, known for his research on the military history of early modern Europe and the Ancien Régime in France, including books on Huguenots and on 17th-century military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and a translation of de Vauban's work.

#4728

Robin Stacey

#90841

Overall Influence

Robin Chapman Stacey is an American medievalist and celticist based at the University of Washington, Seattle. After finishing her undergraduate life, she attended the University of Oxford where she complete her M. Litt. under Thomas Charles-Edwards, learning Welsh with the tutorship of David Ellis Evans. In 1986 she completed a Ph.D. with a thesis on Irish and Welsh law at Yale University, under John Boswell. Since 1988 she has been teaching at the University of Washington, where she is now a Professor in history.

#4729

Israel Shatzman

Israel Shatzman

#161883

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Israel Shatzman was an Israeli historian. He has been Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , a Fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and Director at the National Library of Israel .

#4730

James P. Leary

#100650

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

James P. Leary is a folklorist and scholar of Scandinavian studies, and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Personal life Leary was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, in August 1950. He is married to Janet C. Gilmore, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#4731

Henry Snyder

#142810

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Henry L. Snyder was professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside, and the former director of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. He served as a co-director and the leader of the American English Short Title Catalogue team for more than 32 years.

#4732

Johann Büssow

#133176

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Johann Büssow is a historian of the modern Middle East. He is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. Academic career Johann Büssow studied political science, Islamic studies and Jewish studies. He has taught five years at Free University of Berlin, where he also obtained a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies in 2008. Later he has worked as a research associate at the German Orient-Institut in Beirut, Lebanon and at the Research Centre ‘Difference and Integration’ at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. From 2013 to 2018 he had been professor of Islamic History...

#4733

Ruth Mazo Karras

#143390

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Ruth Mazo Karras is an American historian and author of the Middle Ages whose interests are masculinity and sexuality in Christian and Jewish society during the Middle Ages. Her book, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages, was named co-winner of the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History for 2012.

#4734

Yousef Ghawanmeh

#147796

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Yousef Darwish Ghawanmeh was a Jordanian historian, anthropologist, professor and author. Life He was born in the village of Saham Al-Kefarat north of the city of Irbid. He received his elementary education in his village before moving to the city of Irbid where he graduated high school, he then earned his Bachelor's, master's and doctorate's degree from Alexandria University and his Post-Doctorate from Princeton University in the United States in 1979. His works focus on the cultural and political history of Jordan during the Islamic periods.

#4735

Peder Anker

#110455

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Peder Anker is a historian of environmental sciences, specializing in the history of ecology and ecological architecture and design. Anker is currently a Professor of History of Science at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Anker has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Dibner Institute and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and been a visiting scholar at both Columbia University and University of Oslo.

#4736

Jill Roe

#94609

Overall Influence

1940 - 2017 (77 years)

Jillian Isobel Roe, was an Australian historian and academic, who wrote a definitive biography of the Australian writer Miles Franklin. Early life and education Roe was born in 1940, at Tumby Bay, South Australia. Her grandparents had been early settlers of the western coast of South Australia. Her mother Edna Heath, a nurse, died before Roe was two years old, and she was raised on the Eyre Peninsula by her father John Roe, a farmer. At the age of 14, she attended Adelaide Girls' High School. Upon matriculating, she enrolled to study history at the University of Adelaide, and in 1963 moved o...

#4737

Enikő A. Sajti

#133598

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Enikő A. Sajti is a Hungarian historian and professor emerita of Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged. She has been active in research of the relationship between Serbia & Croatia and Hungary for decades. She is a notable and respected scientist both in Hungary and around the world.

#4738

Meng Xianshi

#121787

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Meng Xianshi is a Chinese historian specialized in the history of Sui and Tang dynasties, an associate professor at Renmin University of China. Biography Meng Xianshi was born in Nehe, Heilongjiang. He received his BA degree from Nankai University in 1983 and PhD degree from Beijing University in 2001. He joined the faculty of Renmin University of China in 2002.

#4739

Christina Vella

#109646

Overall Influence

1952 - 2017 (65 years)

Christina Vella was an American writer, historian of modern Europe, and adjunct professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. Biography Vella received her Ph.D. in European and U.S. history from Tulane University in New Orleans.

#4740

Jacques Le Brun

#127248

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Jacques Le Brun was a French historian who specialized in the study of Christianity in the 17th century. Biography Le Brun's first works were related to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. He was Director of Honorary Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, and the Chair of History of Modern Catholicism at the school. In addition to his research, he also edited the works of François Fénelon.

#4741

Jean-Pierre Wallot

Jean-Pierre Wallot

#139945

Overall Influence

1935 - 2010 (75 years)

Jean-Pierre Wallot was a Canadian historian, educator, civil servant and former National Archivist of Canada. Born in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, he graduated from the Université de Montréal in 1954. He also received a Master's and Doctorate from the same university. Wallot worked as a journalist from 1954 to 1960. From 1966 to 1969, he was a historian with the National Museum of Man in Ottawa. He has held a number of senior administrative positions at the Université de Montréal including Chairman, Department of History , Vice-Dean Studies and Vice-Dean Research in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Vice-President Academic .

#4742

Maria Mesner

#89058

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Maria Mesner is an Austrian contemporary historian who heads the gender studies program at the University of Vienna. She is co-editor of the journal Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften and directs the Bruno Kreisky Archives.

#4743

A. C. Greene

#114222

Overall Influence

1923 - 2002 (79 years)

A. C. Greene was an American writer – important in Texas literary matters as a memoirist, fiction writer, historian, poet, and influential book critic in Dallas. As a newspaper journalist, he had been a book critic and editor of the Editorial Page for the Dallas Times Herald when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, which galvanized his role at the paper to help untangle and lift a demoralized city in search of its soul. Leaving full-time journalism in 1968, Greene went on to become a prolific author of books, notably on Texas lore and history. His notoriety led to stints on radio and TV as a talk-show host.

#4744

Ian Gooderson

#121421

Overall Influence

Ian Gooderson is a senior lecturer in the Defence Studies Department of King's College London. He teaches and publishes on twentieth-century military and strategic studies, especially air power. Gooderson gained his MA and PhD degrees from the Department of War Studies at King's College London before joining the teaching staff at RAF Henlow in 1997 where he taught air power history on junior and intermediate courses from 1997 until 2000. Earlier, between 1988 and 1996, he had been a Research Associate within the Department of War Studies, specialising in Air Power and contracted to work with the Centre for Defence Analysis.

#4745

Safua Akeli Amaama

#90605

Overall Influence

Togialelei Safua Akeli Amaama is a Samoan academic. She works as Head of New Zealand and Pacific Histories and Cultures at Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand and is the first Pacific person to hold the role. She is also Adjunct Research Fellow in the Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and an Associate Researcher for the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

#4746

Mark Levene

#80279

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Mark Levene is a historian and emeritus fellow at University of Southampton. Levene's work and research focuses on genocide, Jewish history and anthropogenic climate change. His book The Crisis of Genocide: The European Rimlands, 1912-1953 received the biennial Lemkin Award from the New York-based Institute for the Study of Genocide in 2015.

#4747

François Georgeon

#84625

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

François Georgeon is a French historian specialising in the Ottoman Empire and contemporary Turkey. Biography A graduate from the École des Langues Orientales , François Georgeon was an assistant in contemporary history at the University of Tunis from 1971 to 1975 and a scientific resident at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul from 1976 to 79. He has been a researcher at CNRS since 1979, and an emeritus research director since 2008. For several years he was director of the Center for Turkish History , renamed the "Centre d’études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et asiatique...

#4748

Pierre Maraval

#98604

Overall Influence

1936 - 2021 (85 years)

Pierre Maraval was a French historian and academic, specialising in the Early Christianity and of Late antiquity. Life Youth and training Born into a modest family in Roquecourbe, Maraval inherited from his mother, who was very pious, a religious commitment that led him to the minor seminary. He briefly entered a monastery in which he worked as a librarian.

#4749

Maria Elena Martinez

#129223

Overall Influence

1966 - 2014 (48 years)

María Elena Martínez-Lopez was a historian of colonial Mexico. Her landmark book, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico garnered significant academic recognition.

#4750

Julia Pavón

#109403

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Julia Pavón or Julia Pavón Benito is a Spanish historian and Professor of Medieval History at the University of Navarra in Pamplona. Life Pavón was born in 1968 in Madrid. In 1991 she obtained her first degree in history and geography from the University of Zaragoza. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Navarra in 1996 with Ángel Martín Duque as her supervisor. She is a full Professor of Medieval History in that university's Department of History, Art History and Geography. In 2012 she became the director of that department until in 2019 she was promoted to be the Vice Dean of Acad...

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