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
Yigael Yadin
1917 - 1984 (67 years)
Yigael Yadin was an Israeli archeologist, soldier and politician. He was the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and Deputy Prime Minister from 1977 to 1981. Biography Yigael Sukenik was born in Ottoman Palestine to archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik and his wife Hasya Sukenik-Feinsold, a teacher and women's rights activist.
Go to Profile#2702
Taha Baqir
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Taha Baqir was an Iraqi Assyriologist, author, cuneiformist, linguist, historian, and former curator of the National Museum of Iraq. Baqir is considered one of Iraq's most eminent archaeologists. Among the works he is remembered for are his Akkadian to Arabic translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, his decipherment of Babylonian mathematical tablets, his Akkadian law code discoveries, and his excavations of ancient Babylonian and Sumerian sites; including the ancient Sumerian city of Shaduppum in Baghdad.
Go to Profile#2703
Charles Conrad Abbott
1843 - 1919 (76 years)
Charles Conrad Abbott was an American archaeologist and naturalist. Biography Abbott was born at Trenton, New Jersey, son of Timothy and Susan Abbott; grandson of Joseph and Anne Abbott, and a descendant of John and Anne Abbott, settlers, from England, in New Jersey in 1684. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. During the American Civil War, he served as a surgeon in the Union Army. He received his M.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1865, but never entered into the practice of the profession.
Go to Profile#2704
Herman Pontzer
Herman Pontzer is an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, where he is associate professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health. He is best known for his research into human bioenergetics.
Go to Profile#2705
Pietro Romanelli
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Pietro Romanèlli was an Italian archaeologist. Born in Rome, he carried out excavations at Tarquinia, Ostia Antica, the Palatine Hill in Rome, at the Forum Romanum and at Leptis Magna in Libya. Among his students was the Roman archaeologist and researcher at Ostia Antica Maria Floriani Squarciapino .
Go to Profile#2706
Lewis B. Paton
1864 - 1932 (68 years)
Lewis Bayles Paton was an American biblical scholar, archaeologist and historian. He was a professor at the Hartford Theological Seminary for many years, and a well known authority on Old Testament exegesis.
Go to Profile#2707
Thomas Griffith Taylor
1880 - 1963 (83 years)
Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor was an English-born geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica . Taylor was a senior academic geographer at universities in Sydney, Chicago, and Toronto. His writings on geography and race were controversial.
Go to Profile#2708
Maxime Collignon
1849 - 1917 (68 years)
Léon-Maxime Collignon was a French archaeologist who specialized in ancient Greek art and architecture. Biography From 1868 he studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris as a student of archaeologist Georges Perrot. In 1873 he became a member of the French School at Athens. In 1876, with Louis Duchesne, he conducted archaeological research in Asia Minor, about which, he published "Rapport sur un voyage archéologique en Asie Mineure". In 1879 he was named professor of Greek antiquities at the University of Bordeaux. In 1883 he returned to Paris as a deputy to Georges Perrot at the Faculty of Arts, where in 1900 he became a full professor of archaeology.
Go to Profile#2709
Oluf Rygh
1833 - 1899 (66 years)
Oluf Rygh was a noted Norwegian archaeologist, philologist and historian. Oluf Rygh is recognized as one of the founders of professional archaeology in Norway. He led the 1867 excavation of the Tune ship
Go to Profile#2710
Karel Absolon
1877 - 1960 (83 years)
Karel Absolon was a Czech archaeologist, geographer, paleontologist, and speleologist. He was born in Boskovice. Absolon was the grandchild of paleontologist Jindřich Wankel. During his studies at Charles University in Prague he started with speleological research in the caves of Moravský kras in the Moravia of what is now the Czech Republic. In 1907 he became the custodian of the Moravian museum in Brno and a professor of paleoanthropology at the Charles University in Prague in 1926.
Go to Profile#2711
François Daumas
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
François Felix Eugene Daumas was a French Egyptologist who was director of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale from 1959 to 1969.
Go to Profile#2712
Gustaf VI Adolf
1882 - 1973 (91 years)
Gustaf VI Adolf was King of Sweden from 29 October 1950 until his death in 1973. He was the eldest son of Gustaf V and his wife, Victoria of Baden. Before Gustaf Adolf ascended the throne, he had been crown prince for nearly 43 years during his father's reign. As king, and shortly before his death, he gave his approval to constitutional changes which removed the Swedish monarchy's last nominal political powers. He was a lifelong amateur archeologist particularly interested in Ancient Italian cultures.
Go to Profile#2713
William Hamilton
1730 - 1803 (73 years)
Sir William Hamilton, KB, PC, FRS, FRSE was a British diplomat, politician, antiquarian and vulcanologist who served as the Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Naples from 1764 to 1800. After sitting in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1761 to 1764, he began working as a diplomat, succeeding Sir James Gray as the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. While in Italy, Hamilton became involved in studying local volcanoes and collecting antiquities, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society and being given the Copley Medal. His second wife was Emma Hamilton, who was famed as the m...
Go to Profile#2714
Daniel Sutherland Davidson
1900 - 1952 (52 years)
Daniel Sutherland Davidson was an American anthropologist who also did important work among the Australian Aborigines in the 1930s. Life Davidson was born in Cohoes in New York in 1900, the son of a travelling salesman, Matthew H. Davidson and his wife Laura . He studied at the University of Pennsylvania graduating in 1923, and taking successively a Master's and Doctoral degree in anthropology . He was appointed instructor at his alma mater, remaining there, apart from a brief stint at the University of Buffalo for the academic year 1932-1932, until 1946. He spent a year at the University of...
Go to Profile#2715
Franz Winter
1861 - 1930 (69 years)
Franz Winter was a German archaeologist. He specialized in ancient Greek and Roman art, being particularly known for his analyses of individual statues, such as the Apollo Belvedere. He studied ancient history in Zurich, Munich and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1885 with a dissertation on the playwright Plautus. By way of a suggestion from Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, he was tasked by the directorate of the German Archaeological Institute with compiling a typological catalog of classical terracotta works.
Go to Profile#2716
Klaus Wachsmann
1907 - 1984 (77 years)
Klaus Philipp Wachsmann was a British ethnomusicologist of German birth. Born in 1907 in Berlin, he is considered a pioneer in the study of the traditional musics of Africa. His studies in Germany were interrupted by the rise of the Nazis in 1933, where he was also forbidden to marry his 'Aryan' fiancée Eva Buttenburg, a singer. Consequently, they both migrated to Britain in 1936.
Go to Profile#2717
Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle was possibly the earliest professional woman in Southeast archaeology. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Claude Lordawick Ashley, a chief of the Atlanta city council, and Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of Captain Hiram Miller, a veteran of the Federal army.
Go to Profile#2718
Carl Whiting Bishop
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
Carl Whiting Bishop was an American archeologist who specialized in East Asian civilizations. From 1922 to 1942 he was a curator at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. At his death Bishop was praised for his ability to synthesize a wide range of evidence and present them "in ordered and highly engaging fashion", which was "the best sort of popularization of prehistory". He argued for the then popular theory of hyperdiffusionism, the theory that all civilizations originated in one place and spread to others, in this case, from the Near East to China. He was criticized, however, for g...
Go to Profile#2719
Joe Caldwell
1916 - 1973 (57 years)
Joseph Ralston Caldwell was an American archaeologist. In the late 1930s he conducted major excavations in the Savannah, Georgia area at the Irene site as part of Depression-era archaeology program. He also led excavations at other archaeology sites in Georgia, such as the Summerour Mound site in the early 1950s. He was among those conducting extensive excavations prior to the development of Lake Hartwell and Lake Strom Thurmond, which flooded numerous archeological sites.
Go to Profile#2720
Michela Schiff Giorgini
1923 - 1978 (55 years)
Michela Schiff Giorgini née Beomonte was an Italian archaeologist who is remembered for her extensive work in today's Sudan at Soleb on the River Nile where from 1957 she conducted excavations of the Temple of Amenhotep III. During the 20 years she spent in the area, she went on to investigate the temple of Queen Tiye at Sedeinga, and the tomb of Taharqa at Nuri. The Michela Schiff Giorgini Foundation was established in 1984 to preserve her memory and promote Egyptology. Her research is well documented in her many books and publications, beginning with Soleb: Volume 1 in 1965.
Go to Profile#2721
Robert Munro
1835 - 1920 (85 years)
Robert Munro FRSE FSA LLD was a Scottish physician and noted amateur archaeologist. Edinburgh University's Munro Lectures in Archaeology and Anthropology are named in his honour. Life He was born on 21 July 1835 at Assynt in Rossshire, and educated at Kiltearn Free Church School, and at the Royal Academy in Tain. He studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MA in 1860 and MB ChB in 1867. He worked as a General Practitioner in Kilmarnock until 1886, when he turned his whole attention to archaeological research. He was a member of many learned societies at home and abroad and p...
Go to Profile#2722
Srečko Brodar
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Srečko Brodar was a Slovene archaeologist, internationally best known for excavation of Potok Cave , an Upper Palaeolithic cave site in northern Slovenia. Life Brodar studied at the University of Vienna and University of Zagreb, graduating in 1920. Beginning in 1921, he taught at Celje Grammar School, and after the First World War, during which he received a serious elbow injury, he in 1939 received his PhD from the University of Ljubljana, and became a professor there in 1946, serving as the chair of Archaeological Department until retirement. Brodar was the director of the Institute of Arch...
Go to Profile#2723
Eberhard Otto
1913 - 1974 (61 years)
Eberhard Otto was a German Egyptologist. Otto studied from 1932 to 1937 in Leipzig, Munich and Göttingen and after his Promotion in 1938 and his Habilitation in 1943 was appointed in 1950 unofficial professor extraordinarius of Egyptology at the University of Hamburg. In 1955 he was appointed professor ordinarius of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. He was known for his work on the religion and art of ancient Egypt and, in particular, his role as co-editor, with Wolfgang Helck, of the first volume of the multi-volume Lexikon der Ägyptologie. After his death his successor as co-editor for volumes 2 through 7 was Wolfhart Westendorf.
Go to Profile#2724
Claudius Salmasius
1588 - 1653 (65 years)
Claude Saumaise , also known by the Latin name Claudius Salmasius, was a French classical scholar. Life Salmasius was born at Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy. When Salmasius was sixteen, his father - a counsellor of the parlement of Dijon - sent him to Paris, where he became intimate with Isaac Casaubon . In 1606 he went to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied under the jurist Denis Godefroy, and devoted himself to the classics, influenced by the librarian Jan Gruter. Here he embraced Protestantism, the religion of his mother.
Go to Profile#2725
Axel W. Persson
1888 - 1951 (63 years)
Axel Waldemar Persson was a Swedish archaeologist. He was professor of classical archaeology and ancient history at Uppsala University and conducted excavations of sites in Greece and in Asia Minor.
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Wilhelm Koppers
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Wilhelm Koppers was a Catholic priest and cultural anthropologist.
Go to Profile#2727
Claudius de Goeje
1879 - 1955 (76 years)
Claudius Henricus de Goeje was a Dutch Navy officer and cartographer, who took a special interest in the Wayana and Tiriyó peoples he encountered on his expeditions to the interior of Suriname. For his lifelong interest in the Amerindian peoples of the Surinamese interior, he was awarded an endowed professorship in the Linguistics and Anthropology of Suriname and Curaçao at Leiden University in 1946. De Goeje retired in 1951 and died four years later, in 1955.
Go to Profile#2728
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#2729
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#2730
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#2731
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.
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Conrad Bursian
1830 - 1883 (53 years)
Conrad Bursian was a German philologist and archaeologist. Biography He was born at Mutzschen in Saxony. When his parents moved to Leipzig, he received his early education at Thomasschule zu Leipzig. From 1847 to 1851 he was a student at the University of Leipzig, where his instructors included Moritz Haupt and Otto Jahn . He then spent six months in Berlin, where he attended lectures given by Philipp August Böckh . In 1852 he completed his university studies at Leipzig, spending the next three years traveling in Belgium, France, Italy and Greece.
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Mary Hamilton Swindler
1884 - 1967 (83 years)
Mary Hamilton Swindler was an American archaeologist, classical art scholar, author, and professor of classical archaeology, most notably at Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan. Swindler also founded the Ella Riegel Memorial Museum at Bryn Mawr College. She participated in various archaeological excavations in Greece, Egypt, and Turkey. The recipient of several awards and honors for her research, Swindler's seminal work was Ancient Painting, from the Earliest Times to the Period of Christian Art .
Go to Profile#2734
Orazio Marucchi
1852 - 1931 (79 years)
Orazio Marucchi was an Italian archaeologist and author of the Manual of Christian Archaeology. He served as Professor of Christian Archaeology at the University of Rome and director of the Christian and Egyptian museums at the Vatican Museums. He was also a member of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology and was a scrittore of the Vatican Library.
Go to Profile#2735
Karl Lehrs
1802 - 1878 (76 years)
Karl Ludwig Lehrs , was a German classical scholar. Born at Königsberg, he was Jewish, but in 1822 he converted to Christianity. In 1845 he was appointed professor of ancient Greek philology at Königsberg University, a post he held until his death.
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Adolf Schöll
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Gustav Adolf Schöll was a German art historian, archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography He studied at the universities of Tübingen and Göttingen, obtaining his habilitation at Berlin in 1833. In June 1837 he was appointed professor of rhetoric, classical philology, aesthetics and art history at the University of Dorpat. In 1839/40, with Karl Otfried Müller, he participated in a study trip to Italy and Greece.
Go to Profile#2737
Emily James Smith Putnam
1865 - 1944 (79 years)
Emily James Smith Putnam was an American classical scholar, author and educator. Biography She was the daughter of Justice James C. Smith. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1889 and studied at Girton College, Cambridge University, in 1889–90.
Go to Profile#2738
James Robinson Boise
1815 - 1895 (80 years)
James Robinson Boise was an American classicist. He was the author of several Greek text books. Biography He graduated from Brown University in 1840, and served there as tutor of Latin and Greek and as a professor of Greek until 1850. In 1852, he became professor of Greek language and literature in the University of Michigan. In 1868, he was called to the same chair in the old University of Chicago. In 1877, he became professor of New Testament Interpretation in the Baptist Union Theological Seminary. On the establishment of the new University of Chicago, he was made professor emeritus of New Testament Greek.
Go to Profile#2739
Rudolf Westphal
1826 - 1892 (66 years)
Rudolf Westphal was a German classical scholar. Life Westphal was born at Obernkirchen in Schaumburg. He studied at Marburg and Tübingen, and was professor at Breslau and Moscow . He subsequently lived at Bückeburg, and died at Stadthagen in Schaumburg-Lippe on 10 July 1892. Westphal devoted his life in translating and interpreting the works of Aristoxenus. He then applied Greek theories of poetic meter to eighteenth- and nineteenth century music.
Go to Profile#2740
Alexandre Moret
1868 - 1938 (70 years)
Alexandre Moret was a French Egyptologist. Life From 1906 to 1923 Moret was curator of the Musée Guimet. In 1918 Moret succeeded Émile Amélineau as Director of Studies for the Religions of Egypt within the Fifth Section of the École pratique des hautes études, devoted to religious science.
Go to Profile#2741
Arthur Ramos
1903 - 1949 (46 years)
Arthur Ramos de Araujo Pereira was a psychiatrist, professor, and psychologist who was a critical voice in the adoption of psychoanalysis in Brazil. Ramos challenged the White supremacist and eugenic ideologies that Brazilian psychiatrists were adopting in the first half of the 20th century and instead suggested the use of Freudian psychoanalysis to bridge the tensions between Whiteness and Blackness in Brazil.
Go to Profile#2742
George Johnston Allman
1824 - 1904 (80 years)
George Johnston Allman was an Irish professor, mathematician, classical scholar, and historian of ancient Greek mathematics. His fame rests mainly upon his authorship of Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid, first published in Dublin in 1889, and republished several times subsequently.
Go to Profile#2743
Franz Studniczka
1860 - 1929 (69 years)
Franz Studniczka was a German professor of classical archaeology born in Jasło, Galicia. He studied classical archaeology in Vienna as a pupil of Otto Benndorf . In 1887 he received his habilitation in Vienna, and in 1889 became the Chair of Classical Archaeology at the University of Freiburg.
Go to Profile#2744
Talfourd Ely
1838 - Present (188 years)
Talfourd Ely FSA was a British archaeologist, classicist, and author of several books, notably A Manual of Archaeology and Roman Hayling. Career Talfourd Ely contributed many articles on archaeology to learned journals and taught Latin and other classical languages at University College London.
Go to Profile#2745
Henry Potonié
1857 - 1913 (56 years)
Henry Potonié was a German botanist and paleobotanist, known for his studies of coal formation. Potonié was born in Berlin. He studied botany at the University of Berlin, and from 1880 served as a research assistant in the botanical garden at Berlin. In 1885 he became associated with the Prussian Geological Survey, and from that time, devoted most of his time to paleobotanical research. In 1891 he was appointed professor of paleobotany at the Mining Academy in Berlin, then around 1901, became a professor of paleobotany and geology at the university.
Go to Profile#2746
Alfred Maximilien Bonnet
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Alfred Maximilien Bonnet was a German Latinist classical scholar. He studied at Bonn University, then was a lecturer at Lausanne 1866–74 and in Paris 1874–81, then lecturer and from 1890 professor at the University of Montpellier. He made the first modern editions of various New Testament Apocrypha.
Go to Profile#2747
Robert Wood
1717 - 1771 (54 years)
Robert Wood was an Irish-British traveller, classical scholar, civil servant and politician. He was the son of the Revd James Wood of Summerhill, County Meath and educated at Glasgow University and the Middle Temple . His father was a patron of Hercules Rowley of Summerhill House.
Go to Profile#2748
Curt Wachsmuth
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Curt Wachsmuth was a German historian and classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to philologist Friedrich Ritschl. Academic biography From 1856 to 1860 he studied at the universities of Jena and Bonn, where he later received his habilitation in classical philology and ancient history. In 1864 he became a professor in ancient history at the University of Marburg, followed by professorships in classical philology at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg . From 1885 to 1905 he was a professor of classical philology and ancient history at the University of Leipzig. In 1897/98 he serve...
Go to Profile#2749
Mikhail Artamonov
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov was a Soviet and Russian historian and archeologist, who came to be recognized as the founding father of modern Khazar studies. Biography Artamonov was born into a peasant family in Tver Governorate. He moved to Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the Russian Revolution.
Go to Profile#2750
Samuel Wide
1861 - 1918 (57 years)
Samuel Karl Anders Wide was a Swedish classical archaeologist, ancient historian and philologist. Biography Wide was born at Stora Tuna in Kopparberg County, Sweden. Wide became a student at Uppsala University in 1879. In 1888 he received his PhD in Greek language and literature from Uppsala University.
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