List of historians facts for kids

Historians are like detectives of the past! They study and write about events that happened long ago, helping us understand how the world and people have changed over time. This list includes many important historians who have helped us learn about different periods and places in human history.

Ancient Historians

Ancient historians lived a very long time ago. They wrote about the events and people of their own times, and also about earlier periods.

Greek and Roman Historians

These historians wrote about the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

Classical Period

• Herodotus (around 484 – 420 BCE), from Halicarnassus, is often called the "Father of History" in the Western world. He wrote The Histories, which tells about the wars between the Greeks and the Persians.
• Thucydides (around 460 – 400 BCE) wrote about the Peloponnesian War, a big conflict between Athens and Sparta.
• Xenophon (around 431 – 360 BCE) was an Athenian knight and a student of the famous philosopher Socrates.
• Ctesias (early 4th century BCE) was a Greek historian who wrote about the history of Assyria, Persia, and India.

Hellenistic Period

• Polybius (203 – 120 BCE) wrote about the early history of Rome in Greek.
• Diodorus of Sicily (1st century BCE) wrote a large history of the world, covering many different cultures.
• Posidonius (around 135 – 51 BCE) wrote about Greek and Roman history.

Roman Empire

• Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BCE) was a famous Roman general and leader who wrote about his own military campaigns, like the Gallic Wars.
• Livy (64 BCE – 12 CE) wrote a massive history of Rome, from its founding to his own time.
• Flavius Josephus (37–100 CE) was a Jewish historian who wrote important accounts of Jewish history and the Jewish-Roman wars.
• Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (around 56–120 CE) wrote about the early Roman Empire.
• Plutarch (around 45–125 CE) wrote Parallel Lives, which compared the lives of important Greek and Roman figures.
• Suetonius (around 69 – 122 CE) wrote biographies of Roman emperors.
• Appian (around 95 – 165 CE) wrote a history of Rome.
• Dio Cassius (around 160 – after 229 CE) wrote a long history of Rome.
• Eusebius of Caesarea (around 275 – 339 CE) was an early Christian historian.
• Ammianus Marcellinus (around 325 – 391 CE) wrote about the later Roman Empire.

Chinese Historians

China has a very long tradition of writing history.

• Sima Qian (around 145 – 86 BCE) is often called the "Father of Chinese Historiography." He wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, a huge work covering over 2,000 years of Chinese history.
• Ban Gu (32–92 CE) and his sister Ban Zhao (45–116 CE) completed the Book of Han, which tells the history of the Western Han dynasty. Ban Zhao was China's first known female historian.
• Chen Shou (233–297 CE) wrote the Records of the Three Kingdoms, a history of a period when China was divided into three states.

Historians of the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, also known as the Medieval period, lasted from about 500 CE to 1500 CE.

Byzantine Historians

The Byzantine Empire was the eastern part of the Roman Empire that continued after the western part fell.

• Procopius (around 500 – 565 CE) wrote about the reigns of Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora.
• Anna Komnene (1083–1153) was a Byzantine princess who wrote a history of her father's reign, the Alexiad.

Latin Sphere Historians

These historians wrote in Latin, mainly in Western Europe.

Early Middle Ages

• Gregory of Tours (538–594) wrote A History of the Franks, which is a key source for early French history.
• Bede (around 672–735) was an Anglo-Saxon monk who wrote Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an important work about early English history.
• Einhard (9th century) wrote a biography of the famous emperor Charlemagne.

High Middle Ages

• William of Malmesbury (1095–1143) was an English historian.
• William of Newburgh (1135–1198) was an English historian known for his critical approach to historical sources.
• Snorri Sturluson (around 1178–1241) was an Icelandic historian who wrote sagas about Norse kings and mythology.
• Matthew Paris (died 1259) was an English chronicler and artist.

Late Middle Ages

• Giovanni Villani (1276–1348) was an Italian chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica.
• Jean Froissart (around 1337 – 1405) was a chronicler who wrote about the Hundred Years' War between England and France.
• Christine de Pizan (around 1365 – 1430) was a historian, poet, and philosopher, one of the first female professional writers.
• Jan Długosz (1415–1480) was a Polish historian and chronicler.

Islamic World Historians

Historians in the Islamic world made many important contributions to history writing.

• Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838–923) was a Persian historian who wrote a huge history of the world, from creation to his own time.
• Al-Biruni (973–1048) was a Persian scholar who wrote about history, geography, and science.
• Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was a North African historian who wrote a "universal history" and is considered one of the founders of modern sociology and historiography.

East Asia Historians

• Liu Zhiji (661–721) was a Chinese historian who wrote the Shitong, the first Chinese book about how to write history.
• Sima Guang (1019–1086) was a Chinese historian and politician who wrote the Zizhi Tongjian, a comprehensive history of China.
• Kim Bu-sik (1075–1151) was a Korean historian who wrote the Samguk Sagi, a historical record of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.

India Historians

• Kalhana (around 12th century) was a historian of Kashmir and the Indian Subcontinent.

Renaissance to Early Modern Historians

This period saw a renewed interest in classical learning and new ways of thinking about history.

Renaissance Europe

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was an Italian writer and politician who wrote Florentine Histories.
• Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) was a historian of the Italian Wars, known for his detailed and analytical approach.
• Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) was an Italian historian who wrote about the Council of Trent.
• Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616) was a Spanish historian of Inca history, born in Peru.

Early Modern Period

This era, from about 1600 to 1815, saw the rise of new nations and global exploration.

• James Ussher (1581–1656) created a famous chronology of the history of the world based on the Bible.
• William Bradford (1590–1657) wrote about the early history of the Plymouth Colony in America.
• Voltaire (1694–1778) was a famous French writer who also wrote about European and French history.
• David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher and historian who wrote a History of England.
• Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) wrote the very influential The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766–1826) was a major Russian historian.

Middle East and Islamic Empires

• Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni (1540–1615) was an Indo-Persian historian.
• Bahrey (born 1593) was an Ethiopian monk and historian who wrote about the Oromo people.
• Abbasgulu Bakikhanov (1794–1847) wrote about the history of Azerbaijan and the Middle East.

East Asia Historians

• Zhang Tingyu (1672–1755) compiled the History of Ming, a history of the Ming dynasty in China.

Modern Historians

These historians lived and wrote from the 19th century onwards, using new methods and focusing on different topics.

Historians Born in the 19th Century

• Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) was a very influential German historian who emphasized using primary sources and being objective.
• Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) wrote about the French Revolution and Germany.
• Jules Michelet (1798–1874) was a French historian known for his passionate writing style.
• George Bancroft (1800–1891) wrote a multi-volume history of the United States.
• Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) was a Swiss historian of art and culture, especially the Renaissance.
• Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a philosopher and economist whose ideas greatly influenced the study of history, especially economic and social history.
• Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) wrote History of Civilization in England.
• Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829–1902) was a leading historian of 17th-century England.
• Lord Acton (1834–1902) was a British historian known for his work on European history.
• J. B. Bury (1861–1927) was an Anglo-Irish historian who specialized in classical and Byzantine history.
• Vasily Klyuchevsky (1841–1911) was a prominent Russian historian.
• Marc Bloch (1886–1944) was a French medieval historian and a founder of the Annales School, which focused on long-term social and economic history.
• Winston Churchill (1874–1965) was a British Prime Minister and also a Nobel Prize-winning historian, writing about the world wars and the British Empire.
• E. H. Carr (1892–1982) was a British historian known for his work on Soviet history and the philosophy of history.
• Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) was a Dutch historian, famous for his book The Waning of the Middle Ages.
• Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) was a British historian who wrote a massive 12-volume work called A Study of History, comparing different civilizations.
• Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) was an American historian known for his "frontier thesis" about the American West.

Historians Born in the 20th Century

This period saw even more diverse topics and approaches to history.

• Stephen Ambrose (1936–2002) was an American historian who wrote popular books about World War II and U.S. political history.
• Philippe Ariès (1914–1984) was a French historian who studied medieval society and the history of childhood.
• Bernard Bailyn (1922–2020) was an American historian specializing in early American and Atlantic history.
• Antony Beevor (born 1946) is a British historian known for his books on World War II battles.
• Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) was a French historian, a key figure in the Annales School, known for his work on the Mediterranean world.
• Peter Burke (born 1937) is a British historian of the early modern period and cultural history.
• Bruce Catton (1899–1978) was an American historian who wrote extensively about the American Civil War.
• Christopher Clark (born 1960) is an Australian historian specializing in modern German and European history.
• Robert Conquest (1917–2015) was a British-American historian known for his work on Soviet history.
• William Dalrymple (born 1965) is a Scottish historian and writer, focusing on India and the Middle East.
• Robert Darnton (born 1939) is an American historian of 18th-century France.
• Norman Davies (born 1939) is a British historian known for his work on Poland and Britain.
• David Herbert Donald (1920–2009) was an American historian who wrote about the American Civil War.
• William Doyle (born 1932) is a British historian of the French Revolution.
• Georges Duby (1924–1996) was a French medieval historian.
• Richard J. Evans (born 1947) is a British historian of modern German social history.
• Niall Ferguson (born 1964) is a Scottish historian known for his work on military, business, and imperial history.
• Orlando Figes (born 1957) is a British historian of Russia.
• Eric Foner (born 1943) is an American historian specializing in the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War.
• Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian of ideas.
• Martin Gilbert (1936–2015) was a British historian, famous for his biographies of Winston Churchill and his work on the Holocaust.
• Carlo Ginzburg (born 1939) is an Italian historian known for his microhistory approach.
• Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) is an Israeli historian known for his books on world history, such as Sapiens.
• Max Hastings (born 1945) is a British military historian.
• Raul Hilberg (1926–2007) was an American historian and a leading scholar of the Holocaust.
• Christopher Hill (1912–2003) was a British historian of 17th-century England.
• Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was a British historian known for his work on labor history and Marxism.
• Tom Holland (born 1968) is a British historian who writes about ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages.
• Michael Howard (1922–2019) was a British military historian.
• Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was a Turkish historian specializing in the Ottoman Empire.
• Jonathan Israel (born 1946) is a British historian of the Netherlands and the Enlightenment.
• Paul Johnson (1928–2023) was a British writer and historian of Western civilization.
• John Keegan (1934–2012) was a British military historian.
• Paul Kennedy (born 1945) is a British historian known for his work on world and military history.
• Ian Kershaw (born 1943) is a British historian specializing in Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.
• Henry Kissinger (born 1923) is an American diplomat and historian, known for his work on 19th-century Europe and late 20th-century foreign policy.
• Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014) was a French medieval historian.
• Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) was a British-American historian specializing in Oriental studies and the Middle East.
• David Levering Lewis (born 1936) is an American historian known for his biographies of W.E.B. Du Bois and his work on the Harlem Renaissance.
• Margaret MacMillan (born 1943) is a Canadian historian of 20th-century international relations.
• William Manchester (1922–2004) was an American historian and biographer, known for his books on Winston Churchill.
• James M. McPherson (born 1936) is an American historian specializing in the American Civil War.
• William McNeill (1917–2016) was an American historian known for his work on world history.
• Benny Morris (born 1948) is an Israeli historian of the Middle East.
• Joseph Needham (1900–1995) was a British scientist and historian known for his extensive work on the history of Chinese science and technology.
• Richard Overy (born 1947) is a British historian specializing in World War II.
• Richard Pipes (1923–2018) was an American historian of Russian and Soviet history.
• Andrew Roberts (born 1963) is a British historian known for his biographies of historical figures.
• Simon Schama (born 1945) is a British historian known for his engaging writing style and work on British, Dutch, and French history.
• Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007) was an American historian who wrote about Andrew Jackson and the New Deal.
• William L. Shirer (1904–1993) was an American journalist and historian, famous for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
• Timothy D. Snyder (born 1969) is an American historian specializing in Eastern Europe.
• Jonathan Spence (1936–2021) was a British-American historian of China.
• Lawrence Stone (1919–1999) was a British historian of early modern British social, economic, and family history.
• A. J. P. Taylor (1906–1990) was a British historian of modern Europe.
• Hugh Thomas (1931–2017) was a British historian known for his work on the Spanish Civil War.
• Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989) was an American historian and author of popular history books, often focusing on 20th-century military events.
• C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was an American historian of the American South.
• Lucy Worsley (born 1973) is a British historian and television presenter, known for her engaging approach to British history.
• Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was an American historian and activist, known for A People's History of the United States.

See also

• Historiography (the study of how history is written)
• History
• List of history journals