Walter Scheidel
Historian and Stanford professor
Walter Scheidel is a historian from Austria, based at Stanford University, where he teaches ancient history. His research looks at inequality, state formation and human welfare across world history.
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American Born 1966 in Vienna, Austria
About Walter Scheidel
Walter Scheidel was born in Vienna in 1966. At Stanford University he is a professor of classics and history and holds the Dickason professorship in the humanities. He is also a fellow in Human Biology. His research covers ancient social and economic history and the population history of premodern societies. It also takes in the comparative history of inequality, state formation and human welfare. He likes to link the humanities with the social and life sciences. The Great Leveler is one of his books. Scheidel has worked at Vienna, Cambridge and Chicago universities. He created the digital project Orbis, a geospatial model of the Roman world, and has received a Guggenheim fellowship. He also belongs to the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member.