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.
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List of the most influential people in Anthropology,
#2751
Isabel Kelly
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Isabel Truesdell Kelly was an American anthropologist known for her work with the members of the Coast Miwok tribe, members of the Chemehuevi people in the 1920s and 1930s, and her work later in life as an archaeologist working in Sinaloa, Mexico. She was trained by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#2752
Heinrich Brunn
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
Heinrich Brunn, since 1882 Ritter von Brunn was a German archaeologist. He was known for taking a scientific approach in his investigations of classical Greek and Roman art, being credited with introducing the method of determining the date and source of sculptural fragments by way of thorough analysis of the account of anatomic detail.
Go to Profile#2753
August Pauly
1796 - 1845 (49 years)
August Friedrich von Pauly was a German educator and classical philologist. From 1813 to 1818 he studied at the University of Tübingen, then furthered his education at Heidelberg as a student of Georg Friedrich Creuzer. Beginning in 1822, he served as rector of the Latin school in Biberach, followed by work as a gymnasium professor in Heilbronn . From 1830 until his death in 1845, he was an educator at the gymnasium in Stuttgart.
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Sophus Ruge
1831 - 1903 (72 years)
Sophus Ruge was a German geographer and historian, he studied about European discoveries and written works about Portuguese discoveries. His studies was a different vision on one traditionally followed in Portugal, he had translated a large part from Portuguese and had been influential in the development of Portuguese historiography.
Go to Profile#2755
John Leland Champe
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
John Leland Champe was an academic and archaeologist especially influential in the area of Great Plains archaeology. Champe was born in 1895 in Elwood, Nebraska. In 1921, he earned a BA from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in mathematics. In 1924, he married Flavia Waters. Before moving to New York to enter the Ph.D. program in anthropology at Columbia University in 1938, Champe had been vice president and a claims adjustor at a Nebraska insurance company. While at Columbia, he studied under William Duncan Strong.
Go to Profile#2756
Eduards Volters
1856 - 1941 (85 years)
Eduards Volters was a linguist, ethnographer, archaeologist who studied the Baltic languages and culture. He was a long-time professor at the Saint Petersburg University and Vytautas Magnus University .
Go to Profile#2757
Ernest Arthur Gardner
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Ernest Arthur Gardner was an English archaeologist. He was the director of the British School at Athens between 1887 and 1895. Early life Gardner was born in Clapton, London, England on 16 March 1862 to Thomas Gardner and Ann Pearse. He was educated at the City of London School, a boys' private day school located in the City of London. He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1880. He read for a Bachelor of Arts in Classics and graduated with a double first in 1884.
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Kenneth Murray
1903 - 1972 (69 years)
Kenneth Crosswaithe Murray better known as K.C. Murray was an English art curator and teacher. The second son of the chess historian H. J. R. Murray and his suffragette wife Kate Crosthwaite, Murray was an elder brother of educationalist and biographer Elisabeth Murray, and a grandson of Sir James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Go to Profile#2759
Tihomir Đorđević
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Tihomir Đorđević was a Serbian ethnologist, folklorist, cultural historian and professor at the University of Belgrade. Biography He received his B.A. in History and Philology at the Grandes écoles in Belgrade. He pursued his post-graduate studies in Vienna and Munich, where he received his doctorate in 1902. Among the Munich alumnae were Miloje Vasić, Veselin Čajkanović and Dragutin Anastasijević, his contemporaries.
Go to Profile#2760
Alexander Conze
1831 - 1914 (83 years)
Alexander Christian Leopold Conze was a German archaeologist, who specialized in ancient Greek art. He was a native of Hanover, and studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. In 1855 he obtained his doctorate at Berlin as a student of Eduard Gerhard. In 1863 he became an associate professor at the University of Halle, and from 1869 to 1877, he served as a professor of archaeology at the University of Vienna. In the 1870s, he performed two archaeological explorations at Samothrace . In 1876, with Otto Hirschfeld, he organized the Archaeologic-Epigraphic Seminar at the university. In...
Go to Profile#2761
Lev Oshanin
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Lev Vasilievich Oshanin was a Soviet professor, medical doctor, anthropologist, and founder of the department of anthropology at National University of Uzbekistan in Tashkent. Oshanin was most notable for his anthropological work in Central Asia.
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Gustav Riek
1900 - 1976 (76 years)
Johannes Gustav Riek was a German archaeologist from the University of Tübingen who worked with the SS Ahnenerbe in their excavations, and led the teams that excavated the Vogelherd Cave in 1931, the Heuneburg Tumulus burial mounds in 1937 and the Brillenhöhle 1955–63.
Go to Profile#2763
Peter Kandela
#2764
Carl Watzinger
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Carl Watzinger was a German archaeologist, who with Ernst Sellin, worked on uncovering the site of the ancient city of Jericho , and earlier, with Heinrich Kohl , conducted excavations at Capernaum .
Go to Profile#2765
Józef Kostrzewski
1885 - 1969 (84 years)
Józef Kostrzewski was a Polish archaeologist. Kostrzewski was born in Węglewo . He studied first in Kraków, then from 1910 onwards with Gustaf Kossinna at Berlin and graduated in 1914. Back in Poland, he was to turn Kossinna's settlement-archaeological method against its creator and to try to prove a Slavonic autochthonism in Poland from at least the Bronze Age onwards.
Go to Profile#2766
R. A. Stewart Macalister
1870 - 1950 (80 years)
Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister was an Irish archaeologist. Biography Macalister was born in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Alexander Macalister, then Professor of Zoology, University of Dublin. His father was appointed professor of anatomy at Cambridge University in 1883, and he was educated at The Perse School, and then studied at Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#2767
Thomas Gann
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Thomas William Francis Gann was a medical doctor by profession, but is best remembered for his work as an amateur archaeologist exploring ruins of the Maya civilization. Personal history Thomas Gann was born in Murrisk Abbey, County Mayo, Ireland, the son of William Gann of Whitstable, England, and Rose Garvey of Murrisk Abbey. He was raised in Whitstable, where his parents were prominent in the social life of the town. Gann trained in medicine in Middlesex, England.
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Ivar Skarland
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Ivar Skarland was a Norwegian anthropologist. Skarland was born in Høylandet, Norway, on September 2, 1899. He earned a diploma from the Steinkjer School of Forestry in Norway in 1921 before moving to the United States for further education. He studied English at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, graduating in 1935. In 1942, he was awarded a master's degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and in 1948 received a Ph.D. from the same institution. He was a student of Earnest Hooton. He worked with Otto W. Geist.
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Erik Holtved
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Dr. Erik Holtved was a Danish artist, archaeologist, linguist, and ethnologist. He was the first university-trained ethnologist to study the Inughuit, the northernmost Greenlandic Inuit. Career Holtved was born in Fredericia, Denmark in 1899.
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John O. Westwood
1805 - 1893 (88 years)
John Obadiah Westwood was an English entomologist and archaeologist also noted for his artistic talents. He published several illustrated works on insects and antiquities. He was among the first entomologists with an academic position at Oxford University. He was a natural theologian, staunchly anti-Darwinian, and sometimes adopted a quinarian viewpoint. Although he never travelled widely, he described species from around the world on the basis of specimens, especially of the larger, curious, and colourful species, obtained by naturalists and collectors in England.
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J. Eric S. Thompson
#2772
François Thureau-Dangin
1872 - 1944 (72 years)
François Thureau-Dangin was a French archaeologist, assyriologist and epigrapher. He played a major role in deciphering of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. He studied under Julius Oppert in Paris, and from 1895, was associated with duties performed at the Louvre, where in 1908, he was appointed assistant curator of the Oriental Antiquities department, in french the département des Antiquités orientales where he spent most of his career and whom he led from 1925 to 1928. On behalf of the Louvre museum, he conducted then excavations at Arslan Tash and at Til Barsip .
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Charles Thomas Newton
1816 - 1894 (78 years)
Sir Charles Thomas Newton was a British archaeologist. He was made KCB in 1887. Life He was born in 1816, the second son of Newton Dickinson Hand Newton, vicar of Clungunford, Shropshire, and afterwards of Bredwardine, Herefordshire.
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William E. Gates
1863 - 1940 (77 years)
William Edmond Gates was an American Mayanist. Most of his research focused around Mayan language hieroglyphs. He also collected Mesoamerican manuscripts. Gates studied Mayan-based languages like Yucatec Maya, Ch'olti', Huastec and Q'eqchi'. Biographies state that he could speak at least 13 languages. Works and archives related to Gates reside in the collections of Brigham Young University.
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Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker
1784 - 1868 (84 years)
Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. Biography Welcker was born at Grünberg, Hesse-Darmstadt. Having studied classical philology at the University of Giessen, in 1803 he was appointed master in the high school, an office which he combined with that of lecturer at the university. In 1806 he journeyed to Italy, and was for more than a year private tutor at Rome in the family of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who became his friend and correspondent.
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David Ruhnken
1723 - 1798 (75 years)
David Ruhnken was a Dutch classical scholar of German origin. Origins Ruhnken was born in Bedlin near Stolp, Pomerania Province, . After he had attended Latin school at Königsberg , his parents wanted him to enter the church, but after two years at the University of Wittenberg he determined to live the life of a scholar. At Wittenberg, Ruhnken studied with two distinguished professors, Johann Daniel Ritter and Johann Wilhelm von Berger. To them he owed a thorough grounding in ancient history and Roman antiquities and literature; and from them he learned a pure and vivid Latin style. At Witte...
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Joseph Anselm Feuerbach
1798 - 1851 (53 years)
Joseph Anselm Feuerbach was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. Biography Born in Jena, he studied history, philosophy and theology at the University of Erlangen from 1817, followed by studies of philology and archaeology at the University of Heidelberg . In 1825 he began work as a schoolteacher at the gymnasium in Speyer. In 1836 he was appointed professor of philology, antiquities and art history at the University of Freiburg.
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Bror Emil Hildebrand
1806 - 1884 (78 years)
Bror Emil Hildebrand was a Swedish archaeologist, numismatist and museum director. From 1837 to 1879 he was Custodian of Ancient Monuments and Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters. From 1847 he was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and from 1866 a member of the Swedish Academy. In 1866, he founded the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.
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Albert Lythgoe
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Albert Morton Lythgoe was an American archaeologist and Egyptologist. He is best known for his work for the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and for the support he gave to the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb, he releasing several key Metropolitan Museum staff to assist Howard Carter.
Go to Profile#2780
Carl Patsch
1865 - 1945 (80 years)
Carl Ludwig Patsch, also Karl Ludwig Patsch, ; was an Austrian Slavist, Albanologist, archaeologist and historian. Biography Carl Patsch was born in north-east Bohemia, as a son of Ludwig Patsch, a steward of an upper prince, but grew up in the Ukrainian villages of Marachivka and Slavuta. He spoke Czech, Polish and Russian as mother languages.
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Henry Schoolcraft
1793 - 1864 (71 years)
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of Native Americans commissioned by Congress and published in the 1850s.
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Jonas Puzinas
1905 - 1978 (73 years)
Jonas Puzinas was a Lithuanian archaeologist and specialist on the prehistory of Lithuania. He belonged to the first generation of Lithuanian scholars who matured in independent Lithuania . He was the first scientifically trained archaeologist of Lithuania and he laid the foundations, including some of the basic terminology and periodization, for future archaeological studies. His work in Lithuania was cut short by World War II. In 1944, he retreated to Germany and then to the United States. There he continued his academic work, notably editing Lithuanian encyclopedias.
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Francis Kelsey
1858 - 1927 (69 years)
Francis Willey Kelsey was an American classicist, professor, and archaeologist that would go on to lead the first expedition to the Near-East done by the University of Michigan . His papyrus findings and the collection of antiquities he acquired for the university brought him fame not only among University of Michigan faculty but around the world. Originally hailing from New York, he would teach at Lake Forest University, in Illinois, eventually coming to the University of Michigan. He was the secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America, Vice President, and eventually President, of t...
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William Clifford Massey
1917 - 1974 (57 years)
William Clifford Massey was an anthropologist who played a key role in the study of the prehistory of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. His scientific contributions included archaeological surveys, excavations, and the documentation of previous collections, as well as detailed analyses of ethnohistoric and linguistic evidence bearing of the region's prehistory.
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Sjoerd Hofstra
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Sjoerd Hofstra was a Dutch sociologist and anthropologist, best known as the first Dutch person to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Africa, where he lived among the Mende in Sierra Leone. Hofstra was an animal protection advocate.
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Thomas Gray
1716 - 1771 (55 years)
Thomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751. Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley Cibber, though he declined.
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Aleksandr Maksimov
1872 - 1941 (69 years)
Aleksandr Nikolayevich Maksimov was a Soviet ethnographer who focused on the history of the family, the clan and the economy. Career Aleksandr Maksimov was born in Oryol on 13 August 1872. He became a member of the circle formed by A.I. Ryazanov, although he did not immediately adopt the Marxist creeds of its leader. In 1894 he was arrested and deported to Arkhangelsk Governorate. There he became interested on ethnology. After returning to Moscow, Maksimov was made head of the ethnographic department of the Society of the Aficionados of the Natural Sciences, Anthropology and Ethnography , and...
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Kōsaku Hamada
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Kōsaku Hamada, also known as Seiryō Hamada, was a Japanese academic, archaeologist, author and President of Kyoto University. Early life Hamada was born in Osaka. He was educated at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University; and he studied in England.
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George Byron Gordon
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
George Byron Gordon was a Canadian-American archaeologist, who graduated from Harvard University in 1894. While studying at Harvard, he participated in excavations at Copan in Honduras under the direction of John G. Owens in 1891. Following Owens’ death in the field, Gordon took command of the Copan expeditions from 1894 to 1895 and in 1900–1901. After his time in Honduras, George Byron Gordon was hired by the University of Pennsylvania where he led two expeditions to Alaska in 1905 and 1907. He spent the remainder of his twenty-four year employment at the University of Pennsylvania collectin...
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Otto Dempwolff
1871 - 1938 (67 years)
Otto Dempwolff was a German physician, linguist and anthropologist who specialized in the study of the Austronesian language family. Initially trained as a physician, Dempwolff began his linguistic research while serving as medical doctor in the German colonies German New Guinea and German East Africa. Under the mentorship of Carl Meinhof, he began his academic career at the Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut, which later became part of the University of Hamburg. In 1931, he founded the "Seminar für indonesische und Südseesprachen", which he headed until his death in 1938. He was also appointed t...
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Axel Olai Heikel
1851 - 1924 (73 years)
Axel Olai Heikel was a Finnish ethnographer and archaeologist, and cousin of Viktor, Felix, Anna, and Ivar Heikel. He is one of the founders of ethnology in Finland. Biography Heikel was born on April 28, 1851, in Brändö, Åland, Finland, to vicar Carl Henrik and Emma Fredrika Heikel née Wallin.
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George Brown
1835 - 1917 (82 years)
George Brown was an English Methodist missionary and ethnographer. Early life and education George Brown was born at Barnard Castle, Durham, England, the son of George Brown, barrister, and his wife Elizabeth, née Dixon, sister of the wife of Rev. Thomas Buddle, missionary in New Zealand. Brown was educated at a private school and on leaving, became an assistant in a doctors surgery, was afterwards with a chemist, and then in a draper's shop. Brown reacted to his stepmother's discipline and attempted to run away to sea.
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Carl E. Guthe
1893 - 1974 (81 years)
Carl Eugen Guthe was an American academic and anthropologist, son of Karl Eugen Guthe, Professor of Physics and Dean of the Graduate Department of the University of Michigan, and Clara Belle née Ware of Grand Rapids, Mich. Guthe married Grace Ethel 12 September 1916 in Wayne, MI and they had three sons: Karl Frederick, Alfred Kidder, and James. Karl Frederick Guthe was professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Michigan. Alfred Kidder Guthe specialised in the archaeology of the US eastern seaboard, and became director of the Frank H. McClung museum at U Tennessee.
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Panagiotis Kavvadias
1850 - 1928 (78 years)
Panagiotis Kavvadias or Cawadias was a Greek archaeologist. He was responsible for the excavation of ancient sites in Greece, including Epidaurus in Argolis and the Acropolis of Athens, as well as archaeological discoveries on his native island of Kephallonia. As Ephor General from 1885 until 1909, Kavvadias oversaw the expansion of the Archaeological Service and the introduction of Law 2646 of 1899, which increased the state's powers to address the illegal excavation and smuggling of antiquities.
Go to Profile#2795
Hans Hahne
1875 - 1935 (60 years)
Hans Hahne was a German physician and prehistorian. Life Hans Hahne was born the son of a sugar manufacturer. He attended school in Artern and after 1885 in Berlin and Magdeburg, where he graduated in 1894 from the Domgymnasium. At the Universities of Jena, Munich, and Leipzig, he studied natural sciences and medicine and received his MD in 1899. This was followed by specialist training in Bern, Berlin, and Leipzig. In 1902 Hahne settled in Magdeburg as an internist and neurologist, but closed his practice in 1905 to devote himself to prehistory and early history .
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Grigore Tocilescu
1850 - 1909 (59 years)
Grigore George Tocilescu was a Romanian historian, archaeologist, epigrapher and folkorist, member of Romanian Academy. He was a professor of ancient history at the University of Bucharest, author of Marele Dicționar Geografic al României , general secretary of the Romanian Ministry of Teaching and multiple times senator, with conservative political views. Tocilescu is one of the first Romanian historians who focused on the study of civilizations in ancient Dacia. As a folklorist he collaborated on the publication of a folkloristics compendium.
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Helmuth Theodor Bossert
1889 - 1961 (72 years)
Helmuth Theodor Bossert was a German art historian, philologist and archaeologist. He is best known for his excavations of the Hittite fortress city at Karatepe, Turkey, and the discovery of bilingual inscriptions, which enabled the translation of Hittite hieroglyphs.
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Gitel Steed
1914 - 1977 (63 years)
Gitel Poznanski Steed was an American cultural anthropologist known for her research in India 1950–52 involving ethnological work in three villages to study the complex detail of their social structure. She supplemented her research with thousands of ethnological photographs of the individuals and groups studied, the quality of which was recognised by Edward Steichen. She experienced chronic illnesses after her return from the field, but nevertheless completed publications and many lectures but did not survive to finish a book The Human Career in Village India which was to integrate and uni...
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Hugo Winckler
1863 - 1913 (50 years)
Hugo Winckler was a German archaeologist and historian who uncovered the capital of the Hittite Empire at Boğazkale, Turkey. A student of the languages of the ancient Middle East, he wrote extensively on Assyrian cuneiform and the Old Testament, compiled a history of Babylonia and Assyrian that was published in 1891, and translated both the Code of Hammurabi and the Amarna letters. In 1904, he was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Berlin.
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Albert Jenks
1869 - 1953 (84 years)
Albert Ernest Jenks was an American anthropologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota. He was known for his work in historical anthropological studies on rice cultivation, the development of hominids, and his identification of the skeletal remains of Minnesota Woman, 8,000-year old human remains found near Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. He joined the United States Bureau of Ethnology in 1901 and served in the U.S. colonial government of the Philippines from 1902 to 1905. In this capacity, he was involved in the exhibition of Bontoc Igorot people at the 1904 Louisiana Universal Exposition in St.
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