The Most Influential People Across History
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 Anthropology,
#2701
George Macdonald
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Sir George Macdonald was a British archaeologist and numismatist who studied the Antonine Wall. Life Macdonald was born in Elgin on 30 January 1862. His father, James Macdonald, was a schoolmaster at Elgin Academy and his mother was Margaret Raff. His father moved from Elgin Academy to Ayr Academy during his early youth.
Go to Profile#2702
Birger Nerman
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Birger Nerman was a Swedish archaeologist, historian and philologist who specialized in the history and culture of Iron Age Sweden. Nerman was educated at Uppsala University, where he began his career as a lecturer in Nordic philology. He participated in archaeological excavations on Stone Age and Iron Age Sweden, and became noted for his efforts to combine archaeological and philological evidence. Areas investigated by Nerman include Gamla Uppsala and Gotland.
Go to Profile#2703
Walter Miller
1864 - 1949 (85 years)
Samuel Walter Miller, LL. D., Litt. D. was an American linguist, classics scholar and archaeologist responsible for the first American excavation in Greece and a founder of the Stanford University Classics department.
Go to Profile#2704
Percy Gardner
1846 - 1937 (91 years)
Percy Gardner, was an English classical archaeologist and numismatist. He was Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1879 to 1887. He was Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford from 1887 to 1925.
Go to Profile#2705
Georg Karo
1872 - 1963 (91 years)
Georg Heinrich Karo was a German archaeologist, known for his research into the Mycenaean and Etruscan cultures. He was twice director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens , in which capacity he excavated the Mycenaean site of Tiryns and the Temple of Artemis on Corfu. A colleague of Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, Karo published the findings from Schliemann's excavations of Grave Circle A at Mycenae, a work considered his greatest contribution to scholarship.
Go to Profile#2706
Bronwyn Fredericks
Bronwyn Fredericks is an Indigenous Australian academic and administrator. Her scholarship extends across education, health, community development, policy, and Indigenist research methods, including a focus on work relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people using participatory and community led approaches. Her contributions have been recognised through the NAIDOC Education Award in 2022 and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Award in 2019. She is currently the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Queensland.
Go to Profile#2707
Francis J. Haverfield
1860 - 1919 (59 years)
Francis John Haverfield, was an English ancient historian, archaeologist, and academic. From 1907 to 1919 he held the Camden Professorship of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. Education Educated at Winchester College and New College, University of Oxford. At Oxford he gained a First in Classical Moderations in 1880 and a Second in Literae Humaniores in 1883. He worked for a time under Theodor Mommsen. He won the Conington Prize at Oxford in 1891 and in the following year was appointed a Student [Fellow] of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1907 he moved to Brasenose College to become Cam...
Go to Profile#2708
Ernst Langlotz
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
Ernst Langlotz was a German classical archaeologist and art historian, who specialized in Greek sculpture of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. He studied classical archaeology, philology and art history at the universities of Leipzig and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1921. As a student, his influences were archaeologist Franz Studniczka and art historian Heinrich Wölfflin . Following graduation, he took a study trip to Italy and Greece, where he met with Ernst Buschor in Athens. In 1925 he qualified as a lecturer at the University of Würzburg, and subsequently worked as a conservator at th...
Go to Profile#2709
Theodor Schreiber
1848 - 1912 (64 years)
Georg Theodor Schreiber was a German archaeologist and art historian. From 1868 to 1872 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where he was a pupil of Johannes Overbeck. In 1874, by way of a travel stipend from the German Archaeological Institute, he traveled to Rome and studied under Wilhelm Henzen and Wolfgang Helbig. Afterwards, he continued his educational journey to Greece. In 1879 he obtained his habilitation for archaeology at Leipzig, where in 1885 he became an associate professor.
Go to Profile#2710
Otto Weinreich
1886 - 1972 (86 years)
Otto Karl Weinreich was a German classical philologist. He is noted for his study of the Lukan Befreiungswunder through his work Gebet und Wunder. Weinrich's works were focused on the so-called liberation miracles such as the miracles of the Dionysian "circles" . The miracles also included the miraculous escape of Moses; two liberations in the text Life of Apollonius of Tyana; and, the divine deliverances in the New Testament's Acts. He was also one of the editors of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft .
Go to Profile#2711
André Parrot
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
André Charles Ulrich Parrot was a French archaeologist specializing in the ancient Near East. He led excavations in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and is best known for his work at Mari, Syria, where he led important excavations from 1933 to 1975.
Go to Profile#2712
Ludwig Ross
1806 - 1859 (53 years)
Ludwig Ross was a German classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavation and conservation work on the Acropolis of Athens. He was also an important figure in the early years of archaeology in the independent Kingdom of Greece, serving as Ephor General of Antiquities between 1834 and 1836.
Go to Profile#2713
August Rossbach
1823 - 1898 (75 years)
August Rossbach was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. He is known for his investigations of ancient Greek metrics, defined as a discipline that studies the patterns and arrangements of syllables and words that characterize Greek poetry.
Go to Profile#2714
Georg Friedrich Creuzer
1771 - 1858 (87 years)
Georg Friedrich Creuzer was a German philologist and archaeologist. Life He was born at Marburg, the son of a bookbinder. After studying at Marburg and at the University of Jena, he went to Leipzig as a private tutor; but in 1802 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and two years later professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg. He held the latter position for nearly forty-five years, with the exception of a short time spent at the University of Leiden, where his health was affected by the Dutch climate. He was one of the principal founders of the Philological Seminary established at Heidelberg in 1807.
Go to Profile#2715
J. R. Aspelin
1842 - 1915 (73 years)
Johannes Reinhold Aspelin was a Finnish archaeologist and professor who was the first state archaeologist of Finland, as well as the first professor of archaeology in Finland. He was a leading figure in the establishment of the National Museum of Finland.
Go to Profile#2716
Ernst Buschor
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Ernst Buschor was a German archaeologist and translator. Biography From 1905 he studied at the University of Munich as a pupil of classical archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler, earning his doctorate in 1912. After serving as a soldier in the Balkans during World War I, he became an associate professor of classical archaeology at the University of Erlangen. In 1920 he became a full professor at the University of Freiburg. From 1921 to 1929, he was director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens. From 1929 to 1959, he served as a professor of classical archaeology at Munich.
Go to Profile#2717
Shelomo Dov Goitein
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Shelomo Dov Goitein was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza. Biography Shelomo Dov Goitein was born in the town of Burgkunstadt in Upper Franconia, Germany. His father, Dr. Eduard Goitein, was born in Hungary to a long line of rabbis. The name Goitein may be derived from Kojetín as the city of origin of the family. He was brought up with both secular and Talmudic education. In 1914, his father died and the family moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he finished high school and...
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Karl Lehmann
1894 - 1960 (66 years)
Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann was a German-born American art historian, archaeologist, and professor. He was known for archaeology work in Samothrace, Greece and the related publications. He was a professor at New York University Institute of Fine Arts from 1935, until his death in 1960. Lehmann was the founder and director of the Archaeological Research Fund at New York University
Go to Profile#2719
Richard Delbrück
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Richard Delbrück was a German classical archaeologist who specialized in the field of ancient Roman portraiture. Career In 1899 he graduated from the University of Bonn, where he was a student of Georg Loeschcke. From 1911 to 1915, he was head of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome. He was later a professor of classical archaeology at the Universities of Giessen and Bonn .
Go to Profile#2720
Isaac Casaubon
1559 - 1614 (55 years)
Isaac Casaubon was a classical scholar and philologist, first in France and then later in England. His son Méric Casaubon was also a classical scholar. Life Early life He was born in Geneva to two French Huguenot refugees. The family returned to France after the Edict of Saint-Germain in 1562, and settled at Crest in Dauphiné, where Arnaud Casaubon, Isaac's father, became minister of a Huguenot congregation. Until he was nineteen, Isaac had no education other than that given him by his father. Arnaud was away from home for long periods in the Calvinist camp, and the family regularly fled to the hills to hide from bands of armed Catholicss who patrolled the country.
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Stefanos Koumanoudis
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Stefanos Koumanoudis was a Greek archaeologist, teacher and writer of the 19th century. Biography He was born in 1818 in Adrianople to a rich merchant family. In an early age, his family settled in Bucharest, and later in Silistra where he spent most of his childhood. He graduated from the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Paris. Fellow university students of Koumanoudis were Efthymios Kastorchis, Iraklis Mitsopoulos, Lysandros Kavtantzoglou and Emmanuel Kokkinos, who became notable teachers and archaeologists as well.
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Elli Köngäs-Maranda
1932 - 1982 (50 years)
Elli-Kaija Köngäs-Maranda was an internationally renowned anthropologist and feminist folklorist. She studied Finnish language and folklore at the University of Helsinki, where she received her B.A. in 1954 and her M.A. in 1955. She continued her studies in the United States of America and did her doctoral dissertation in 1963 at Indiana University. She was a lecturer at Columbia University and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University. Köngäs-Maranda was elected a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. The Society's Women's section inaugurated 1983 two prizes in her memory.
Go to Profile#2723
Boris Farmakovsky
1870 - 1928 (58 years)
Boris Vladimirovich Farmakovsky was a Russian archaeologist, who began professional excavations of the ancient Greek colony of Olbia in Ukraine. Farmakovsly served on many archeological commissions and was the curator of antiquities at the Hermitage from 1924-1928. His excavations at Olbia in 1896, 1901–1915, 1924-1926 provided significant insights into the ancient history of South Ukraine.
Go to Profile#2724
Dmitry Samokvasov
1843 - 1911 (68 years)
Dmitry Yakovlevich Samokvasov was a Russian archaeologist and legal historian who excavated the Black Grave in Chernigov and several other sites important for the history of Kievan Rus. He graduated from the St. Petersburg University in 1868 and worked in the Warsaw University, administering its law faculty and becoming its dean in 1891. Three years later, he moved to the Moscow University. He was instrumental in establishing the Moscow Archaeological Institute . His last years were spent sorting out historical archives in Moscow. In 1891, Samokvasov donated his sizable collection of archaeological artifacts to the State Historical Museum.
Go to Profile#2725
James Verne Dusenberry
1906 - 1966 (60 years)
James Verne Dusenberry was a well educated and publicly acclaimed scholar. He is best known for his writings on and the relationships he built with many of the various Montana tribes throughout his lifetime.
Go to Profile#2726
Erna Gunther
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Erna Gunther was an American anthropologist who taught for many years at the University of Washington in Seattle. Gunther's work on ethnobotany is still extensively consulted today. Biography Gunther graduated from Barnard College in 1919, as a student of Franz Boas, and received her MA in anthropology from Columbia University in 1920, studying under Boas. After graduating, she moved with her husband, Leslie Spier, to the University of Washington in 1921. After leaving for a short period of time with her husband, she returned in 1929. When her husband left in 1930, she stayed at the universi...
Go to Profile#2727
Adolf Schulten
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Adolf Schulten was a German historian and archaeologist. Schulten was born in Elberfeld, Rhine Province, and received a doctorate in geology from the University of Bonn in 1892. He studied in Italy, Africa and Greece with support from the Institute of Archaeology. After obtaining the chair of ancient history at the University of Erlangen, he continued his work in Spain with great dedication and to this day is considered a key influence upon archaeological study in Spain.
Go to Profile#2728
Robert Carr Bosanquet
1871 - 1935 (64 years)
Robert Carr Bosanquet was a British archaeologist, who excavated in the Aegean and in Britain. He was the first Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool, teaching there from 1906 to 1920. He was particularly significant to the archaeology of Wales, excavating at the Roman sites of Caerleon and Caersws and founding the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, which played an influential role in the direction of twentieth-century archaeology in the country.
Go to Profile#2729
Edmond Pottier
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
Edmond François Paul Pottier was an art historian and archaeologist who was instrumental in establishing the Corpus vasorum antiquorum. He was a pioneering scholar in the study of Ancient Greek pottery.
Go to Profile#2730
Frederic G. Kenyon
1863 - 1952 (89 years)
Sir Frederic George Kenyon was an English palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar. He held a series of posts at the British Museum from 1889 to 1931. He was also the president of the British Academy from 1917 to 1921. From 1918 to 1952 he was Gentleman Usher of the Purple Rod.
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Robert Thomas Aitken
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Robert Thomas Aitken was an American anthropologist known for his work in Oceania while at the Bishop Museum in Hawaiʻi. Biography Born in Livermore, California, in 1890, Aitken was raised and educated with his sister and two brothers atop Mt. Hamilton, where his father was an astronomer at the Lick Observatory. He married Gladys Page Baker in 1915, and had two sons, Robert Baker Aitken and Malcolm Darroch Aitken.
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John Evans
1823 - 1908 (85 years)
Sir John Evans was an English archaeologist and geologist. Biography John Evans, son of the Rev. A. B. Evans, was born at Britwell Court, Buckinghamshire. At the age of seventeen he started to work for the paper-manufacturing business of John Dickinson & Co. Ltd at Nash Mills . The company had been founded by his uncle and later father-in-law John Dickinson , who was also its senior partner. In 1850 Evans was admitted as a partner in the company and did not retire from active management until 1885.
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Maurice Holleaux
1861 - 1932 (71 years)
Maurice Holleaux was a 19th–20th-century French historian, archaeologist and epigrapher, a specialist of Ancient Greece. Biography Années de formation Admitted in the École normale supérieure in 1879, Holleaux was agrégé in history in 1881 and became a member of the French School at Athens in 1882. He then conducted epigraphic explorations in Samos and Rhodes. He devoted thereafter an important scientific activity in the latter city. In 1884 he undertook missions in Asia Minor during which he discovered with Pierre Paris the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Back in Greece, he excavated in Boeotia the Ptoion sanctuary which had been previously identified by the traveler William Leake.
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Edoardo Brizio
1846 - 1907 (61 years)
Edoardo Brizio was an Italian archaeologist. He was a student of Giuseppe Fiorelli’s school of archaeology in Pompeii. Brizio became a professor of archaeology at the University of Bologna in 1876, and later director of the Museo Civico of Bologna. He is notable for advancing the theory that the Terramare population had been the original Ligurians.
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Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger
1856 - 1936 (80 years)
Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger was a Croatian geologist, paleontologist, and archeologist. Education Dragutin finished his elementary education in Zagreb, Croatia, as well as two years of preparandija . He started studying paleontology in Zürich, Switzerland. Soon, he moved to München, where his lecturer was Karl Zittel, a world-renowned expert in the areas of anatomy and paleontology. He received a doctoral degree in 1879, , with work related to fossilized fishes.
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Jole Bovio Marconi
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Jole Bovio Marconi was an Italian archaeologist who graduated with a degree in the topography of ancient Rome from the Sapienza University of Rome and specialized at the Italian School of Archaeology at Athens. She married her colleague Pirro Marconi, whom she met in her studies in Athens.
Go to Profile#2737
Karl Krumbacher
1856 - 1909 (53 years)
Karl Krumbacher was a German scholar who was an expert on Byzantine Greek language, literature, history and culture. He was one of the principal founders of Byzantine Studies as an independent academic discipline in modern universities.
Go to Profile#2738
Sumner McKnight Crosby
1909 - 1982 (73 years)
Sumner McKnight Crosby, Sr. was an American art historian, archaeologist, and educator. A scholar of medieval architecture, specially the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Crosby was Professor of Art History at Yale University.
Go to Profile#2739
Hermann Winnefeld
1862 - 1918 (56 years)
Hermann Winnefeld was a German classical archaeologist. He studied classics in Heidelberg and Bonn from 1881 to 1884, and subsequently became a research assistant at the Großherzogliche Vereinigte Sammlungen in Karlsruhe. In 1887 he received his doctorate from the University of Bonn with the thesis "Sortes Sangallenses ineditae". With a scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute, he conducted archaeological research in Italy and Greece from 1887 to 1889.
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Jean Capart
1877 - 1947 (70 years)
Jean Capart was a Belgian Egyptologist, who is often considered the "Father of Belgian Egyptology." Biography Capart was born to Alphonse Capart, an otolaryngologist, and Alida Carbonelle in Brussels on 21 February 1877. He studied Egyptology under Karl Alfred Wiedemann at Bonn University.
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Otto Jahn
1813 - 1869 (56 years)
Otto Jahn , was a German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music. Biography After the completion of his university studies at Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, the University of Leipzig and Humboldt University, Berlin, he traveled for three years in France and Italy. In Rome, he was greatly influenced by the work of August Emil Braun . In 1839 he became privatdozent at Kiel, and in 1842 professor-extraordinary of archaeology and philology at the University of Greifswald .
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Otto Puchstein
1856 - 1911 (55 years)
Otto Puchstein was a German classical archaeologist. From 1875 to 1879 he studied philology, classical archaeology and Egyptology at the University of Strasbourg, where his instructors included Adolf Michaelis, Rudolf Schöll and Johannes Dümichen. Later on, via a grant from the German Archaeological Institute , he conducted studies of ancient sculptures in Alexandria and Cairo . In 1883, on behalf of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, with Carl Humann and Felix von Luschan, he took part in an expedition to Nemrud Dagi, where he visited the tomb of Antiochus I Theos of Commagene.
Go to Profile#2743
Elizabeth Pierce Blegen
1888 - 1966 (78 years)
Elizabeth Denny Pierce Blegen was an American archaeologist, educator and writer. She excavated at sites in Greece and Cyprus, contributed reports on archaeological discoveries in Greece to the American Journal of Archaeology from 1925 to 1952, and was involved in several organisations promoting women's professional advancement in Greece and the United States.
Go to Profile#2744
Georg Loeschcke
1852 - 1915 (63 years)
Georg Loeschcke was a German archaeologist born in Penig, Saxony. He studied archaeology under Johannes Overbeck at Leipzig, afterwards continuing his education at the University of Bonn, where he was a student of Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz. In 1877–78 he participated in a study trip to Greece and Italy under the aegis of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. As a result of this research, he published with Adolf Furtwängler, Mykenische Thongefäße, a landmark work that provided important historical timelines for Mycenaean pottery. In their investigations of Mycenaean pottery, Loeschcke a...
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Ernest Hébrard
1875 - 1933 (58 years)
Ernest Hébrard was a French architect, archaeologist and urban planner, best known for his urban plan for the center of Thessaloniki, Greece, after the great fire of 1917. Background Hebrard studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1904 won the Grand Prix de Rome, allowing him to study at the Académie de France in Rome, located in the Villa Medici. It was here that he chose to study Diocletian's palace at Split, eventually leading to the 1912 publication of a monograph containing what is still regarded as the most accurate image of the original appearance of the Palace. At the Academie, he...
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Walter Lehmann
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
Walter Hartmut Traugott Erdmann Lehmann was a German ethnologist, linguist and archeologist, known for his documentation of many indigenous cultures and languages of Central America. He studied under Eduard Seler, a renowned specialist in Mesoamerican cultures. Between 1907 and 1909 he undertook an expedition traveling from Panama to Mexico, in which he collected artefacts and ethnographic and linguistic data. He collected the only known documentation of several indigenous languages of Central America before they became extinct. His 1915 habilitation thesis was a vocabulary of the Rama language, and an historical analysis of the Subtiaba language.
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Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen was a German archeologist and philologist, a specialist in Greek epigraphy. Life Hiller von Gaertringen was the son of the Prussian army officer Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen and Helene Luise Kramsta . He studied ancient history, first with Alfred von Gutschmid at Tübingen, then with Theodor Mommsen in Berlin. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1886 he continued at Göttingen with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.
Go to Profile#2748
Jindřich Wankel
1821 - 1897 (76 years)
Jindřich Wankel was a Bohemian palaeontologist and archaeologist. Wankel was born to Damian Wankel, a clerk, and his wife Magdalena, née Schwarz, in a bilingual environment. He attended German schools in Prague and later studied Medicine at the University of Prague as a student of Josef Hyrtl.
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Jodi Byrd
Jodi Byrd holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. (2002) in English literature from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation was Colonialism’s Cacophony: Natives and Arrivants at the Limits of Postcolonial Theory. Before moving to Cornell University, she taught at the University of Illinois Chicago, and before that she was an assistant professor of indigenous politics in the department of political science of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was formerly associated with the American Indian Studies Program at Illinois. She was president of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures for 2011–2012.
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Alice Kober
1906 - 1950 (44 years)
Alice Elizabeth Kober was an American classicist best known for her work on the decipherment of Linear B. Educated at Hunter College and Columbia University, Kober taught classics at Brooklyn College from 1930 until her death. In the 1940s, she published three major papers on the script, demonstrating evidence of inflection; her discovery allowed for the deduction of phonetic relationships between different signs without assigning them phonetic values, and would be a key step in the eventual decipherment of the script.
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