It has always struck me as an interesting concept, but seems to have largely fallen out of favor past the 19th century.
Yes and no.
On the one hand, the concept of the Great Man Theory of History, as put forth by Thomas Carlyle in his On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840), is very often referenced by historians throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, particularly to discount it. For example, a study in 1975, historian Aidan Southall wrote that "I have come to the conclusion that General Haji Idi Amin Dada is not a bizarre or maverick intrusion upon the Uganda political scene, but deeply and significantly entwined in it." (1) This is not so different from what was being contemplate at the start of the twentieth century, when Eugenics and the continued rise of the social sciences made historians turn, in part, to the question of nurture versus nature:
Our conclusions are that greatness must be conceived in terms of
inherited qualities and environmental traits. The distribution of
inherited qualities appears to be such that the inherited abilities of
greatness should be plentiful and constant, facts which minimize the
the importance of the great man, biologically conceived. On the social
forces side, there are two important factors that affect great
achievement, the existing cultural materials and the social valuations.
These two factors vary greatly over time and by places, and hence
may be called causes of great achievement. They are the nature of
social forces. Great men are thus the product of their times.(2)
In both theses cases, they are struggling against the idea of the Great Man Theory in a way that implies that it continues to be very attractive. Likewise, modern scholars of the history of science seem to be struggling in the case way, implying an implicit attachment to the idea. While I cannot find any examples of historians using it explicitly, the narrative they are writing relies so heavily on particular discoveries by particular individuals that there seems to be a sense that they have to constantly, actively guard against the 'Great Man Theory.'
In 2008, John Henry contemplated the role of counter-factual history by noting that "Unique though Isaac Newton was, it seems hard to believe that others would not have moved mathematical physics in roughly the same direction. Robert Hooke had the idea of the universal principle of gravitation before Newton, and though he didn't have the mathematical skills to prove its truth there were surely others in Continental Europe who did."(3) If you look at his language, its clear that there is a desire to understand individuals as particular genius (something he makes reference to throughout this article) but that this, if looked at with a modicum of common sense, cannot really be the case.
The one place that the Great Man theory is alive and well, however, is in biography, particularly political biography. Historians such as Lucy Riall (among many others within disciplinary fora) have noted that ""The implications of what might be termed "the heroic model of biography" can be traced through the publication of the British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) in 1882 (and thereafter updated into the 1970s.)" (4). She notes that although the turn of the twentieth century saw attempts at the 'new biography', warts-and-all biography, "Carlyle's underlying rationale for biography--that is, the emphasis on the individual life as expression and creator of an age, and thus the belief in the "Great" (now implying also "Bad" or "Weak"men)--remained, and with it survived some sense of biography's pre-eminent position as interpreter of the historical processes. She argues that even after the social and cultural history turns of the late-twentieth century, political biography remains a 'deeply conservative' field, something evidenced by the continued popularity of 'Great Men' biographies such as those about Thomas Jefferson, which continue to fill the catalogues of the most prestigious university presses, alongside wider social and cultural histories of the Revolution. These biographies aren't, generally, the sort of political hagiographies that existed in the 19th century, but by focusing on the life of one man (or sometimes woman) as an exemplar and mover of the times, they do suggest the 'great man' theory.
So, Great Men are alive and well in the historical profession, in political biography and certainly in the minds of historians constantly trying to debunk it.
You may also want to look at the following discussions, for other perspectives:
[Lucy Riall, 'The Shallow End of History? The Substance and Future of Political Biography' Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 375-397.] (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jinh.2010.40.3.375#.U4GzDfldUeg)