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,
#2801
Sergey Tolstov
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
Sergey Pavlovich Tolstov was a Russian and Soviet archaeologist and ethnographer. Tolstov was the organizer and the first director of the Chorasmian Expedition credited with discovery and investigation of archeological monuments of Khwarezm. He is also the author of the book Old Khwarezm, the seminal work in the field. In 1953, Tolstov was elected the corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Go to Profile#2802
St. Clair Drake
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
John Gibbs St. Clair Drake was an African-American sociologist and anthropologist whose scholarship and activism led him to document much of the social turmoil of the 1960s, establish some of the first Black Studies programs in American universities, and contribute to the independence movement in Ghana. Drake often wrote about challenges and achievements in race relations as a result of his extensive research.
Go to Profile#2803
José Leite de Vasconcelos
1858 - 1941 (83 years)
José Leite de Vasconcelos Cardoso Pereira de Melo was a Portuguese ethnographer, archaeologist and prolific author who wrote extensively on Portuguese philology and prehistory. He was the founder and the first director of the Portuguese National Museum of Archaeology.
Go to Profile#2804
Arthur Raistrick
1896 - 1991 (95 years)
Arthur Raistrick was a British geologist, archaeologist, academic, and writer. He was born in a working class home in Saltaire, Yorkshire. He was a scholar in many related, and some unrelated, fields. He published some 330 articles, books, pamphlets and scholarly treatises.
Go to Profile#2805
Wilhelm Schmidt
1868 - 1954 (86 years)
Wilhelm Schmidt SVD was a German-Austrian Catholic priest, linguist and ethnologist. He presided over the Fourth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences that was held at Vienna in 1952.
Go to Profile#2806
Raymond Williams
1921 - 1988 (67 years)
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contributed to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books were sold in UK editions alone, and there are many translations available. His work laid foundations for the field of cultural studies and cultural materialism.
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Felix von Luschan
1854 - 1924 (70 years)
Felix Ritter von Luschan was a medical doctor, anthropologist, explorer, archaeologist and ethnographer born in the Austrian Empire. Life Luschan was born the son of a lawyer in Hollabrunn, Lower Austria, and attended the Akademisches Gymnasium in Vienna. After leaving school he studied medicine at the University of Vienna and anthropology in Paris, with an emphasis on craniometry. After he gained his doctorate in 1878, he was an army doctor in Austro-Hungarian occupied Bosnia and, together with the British archaeologist Arthur Evans, travelled through Dalmatia, Montenegro and Albania. From 1...
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Alfred Irving Hallowell
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Alfred Irving "Pete" Hallowell was an award-winning American anthropologist, archaeologist and businessman. Early life and education Hallowell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania receiving his B.S. degree in 1914. It was assumed he would follow a career in business but Hallowell developed interests in sociology and became first a social worker for the Family Society.
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Bernardino de Sahagún
1499 - 1590 (91 years)
Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain . Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529. He learned Nahuatl and spent more than 50 years in the study of Aztec beliefs, culture and history. Though he was primarily devoted to his missionary task, his extraordinary work documenting indigenous worldview and culture has earned him the title as “the first anthropologist." He also contributed to the description of Nahuatl, the imperial language of the Aztec Empire.
Go to Profile#2810
Arnold van Gennep
1873 - 1957 (84 years)
Arnold van Gennep, in full Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep was a Dutch–German-French ethnographer and folklorist. Biography He was born in Ludwigsburg, in the Kingdom of Württemberg . Since his parents were never married, Van Gennep adopted his Dutch mother's name, "van Gennep". When he was six, he and his mother moved to Lyons, France, where she married a French doctor who moved the family to Savoy.
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Juan Comas
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Juan Comas Camps was a Spanish-Mexican anthropologist, notable for his critical work on race, and his participation in drafting the UNESCO statement on race. He fled Spain during the regime of Franco, and spent the rest of his life in Mexico. He was a professor of physical anthropology at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico between 1940 and 1943, and at the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 1955 until his death.
Go to Profile#2812
Alexander Lesser
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Alexander Lesser was an American anthropologist. Working in the Boasian tradition of American cultural anthropology, he adopted critical stances of several ideas of his fellow Boasians, and became known as an original and critical thinker, pioneering several ideas that later became widely accepted within anthropology.
Go to Profile#2813
Georges Bataille
1897 - 1962 (65 years)
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism.
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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.
Go to Profile#2815
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#2816
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.
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Alice Braunlich
1888 - 1989 (101 years)
Alice Freda Braunlich was an American classical philologist. Life Braunlich was born to parents of German extraction, Emilie Hedwig Hoering Braunlich and the physician Henry Uchtorf Braunlich, in Davenport, Iowa on February 1, 1888. Her father's income made it possible for Alice to study at the University of Chicago, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in 1908 and a master's degree in 1909. From 1912 to 1914 she worked as an assistant for William Gardner Hale, professor of Latin. In 1913 she received her Ph.D., with a dissertation on indirect questions in the indicative mood.
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Martín Almagro Basch
1911 - 1984 (73 years)
Martín Almagro Basch was a Spanish archaeologist, historian, and writer. He fought in the Spanish civil war. He was an archaeology specialist, ranging from rock art to classic archaeology. He was a professor of early human history at the University of Madrid and Barcelona, and was Director of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional "MAN" de Madrid between 1968-1981. He directed the first Spanish archeological expedition in Egypt. His contribution in the transfer and rescue of several Egyptians temples was grateful by the Arab Republic with the concession of the Debod temple, actually in Madrid.
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Luc Lacourcière
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Luc Lacourcière, CC was a Quebec writer and ethnographer, who established himself during his lifetime as a leading figure in folklore studies. Trained by Marius Barbeau, he in turn influenced renowned researchers such as linguist Claude Poirier. In 1944, Lacourcière founded the Archives de folklore , which he directed until 1975. Since 1978, a Luc-Lacourcière medal has been awarded every two years.
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Leonhard Schultze-Jena
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Leonhard Sigmund Friedrich Kuno Klaus Schultze-Jena was a German explorer, zoologist, and anthropologist known for his explorations of German Southwest Africa and New Guinea, as well as for his studies on Mesoamerican languages. During the Herero and Namaqua genocide, Schultze, a witness, took "body parts from fresh native corpses" which according to him was a "welcome addition". He also noted that he could use prisoners for that purpose.
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Eirik Vandvik
1904 - 1953 (49 years)
Eirik Vandvik was professor in literature at the University of Oslo. Vandvik was one of the major interpreters of the ancient Greek and Latin literature, and saw it as his purpose to make these works available to Norwegian literati.
Go to Profile#2822
Axel Boëthius
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Axel Boëthius was a scholar and archaeologist of Etruscan culture. Boëthius was primarily a student of Etruscan and Italic architecture. His father was the historian Simon Boëthius. As a student, Boëthius studied at the Uppsala University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1918. He taught at Uppsala during which time he excavated at Mycenae in Greece. In 1925 he was selected as the first director of the Swedish Institute at Rome by the Swedish crown prince Gustav Adolf . He became professor of archaeology at the Göteborg University in 1934, a post he held until 1955. He also served as rector of the university .
Go to Profile#2823
Furio Jesi
1941 - 1980 (39 years)
Furio Jesi was an Italian historian, writer, archaeologist, and philosopher. Biography The only son of "war hero" Bruno Jesi, Furio Jesi was an independent scholar of myth, Egyptology, history of Mediterranean religions, philology and archeology, most notable for his work on extending the ideas of Károly Kerényi including studies of the science of myth and the difference between classic Myths and "Technified Myths".
Go to Profile#2824
Pei Wenzhong
1904 - 1982 (78 years)
Pei Wenzhong , or W. C. Pei, was a Chinese paleontologist, archaeologist and anthropologist born in Fengnan. He is considered a founding figure of Chinese anthropology. Career Pei graduated from Peking University in 1928 and went to work for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China joining the excavations of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, where he was named the field director of the excavations the following year. The work at Zhoukoudian was carried out under difficult conditions: for example, the scientists had to ride there on mules, some 40 km southwest of the city of Beijing.
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Eva Verbitsky Hunt
1934 - 1980 (46 years)
Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband Robert Hunt, she performed innovative regional work in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.
Go to Profile#2826
D.R. Bhandarkar
1875 - 1950 (75 years)
Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar was an Indian archaeologist and epigraphist who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India . Born in Marathi Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family, he was the son of eminent Indologist, R. G. Bhandarkar.
Go to Profile#2827
Wilhelm Kubitschek
1858 - 1936 (78 years)
Wilhelm Kubitschek was an Austrian classical historian, epigrapher and numismatist. From 1875 he studied history, epigraphy and archaeology at the University of Vienna, where his teachers included Otto Hirschfeld and Otto Benndorf. Afterwards, he furthered his education in Berlin as a student of Theodor Mommsen. From 1881 he taught classes at gymnasiums in Hollabrunn and Vienna, and in 1887 qualified as a university lecturer in ancient history. In 1896 he became an associate professor at the University of Graz, and during the following year, returned to Vienna as curator of the Imperial Coin Collection at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Go to Profile#2828
Kazimierz Żurowski
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Kazimierz Żurowski was a Polish archaeologist. He was a professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and researcher of a Bronze Age and early Middle Ages. Author of book Gniezno, pierwsza stolica Polski .
Go to Profile#2829
Sune Lindqvist
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Sune Lindqvist was a Swedish archaeologist and scholar. He worked at the Swedish History Museum, where he was responsible for the finds from the boat graves at Valsgärde, and later at Uppsala University, where he wrote two major works alongside several hundred other publications.
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Otto E. Ravn
1881 - 1952 (71 years)
Otto Emil Ravn was a Danish Assyriologist and professor at the University of Copenhagen.
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Lodewijk Grondijs
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Lodewijk Herman Grondijs or Louis Grondijs was a Dutch Byzantologist, physics teacher, war correspondent and soldier. Early life Grondijs was born in the Dutch East-Indies, now known as Indonesia, and via his mother was one eighth Indonesian. He spent most of his youth in the East Indies and graduated in 1896 from grammar school in Surabaya.
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E. Wyllys Andrews IV
1916 - 1971 (55 years)
Edward Wyllys Andrews IV was an American archaeologist noted for research of Maya civilization. During his career with Tulane University's Middle American Research Institute, Andrews focused on Mayan ruins, rediscovering several sites and leading investigation into Balankanche, Kulubá, Coba, and more.
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Johannes Brøndsted
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Johannes Balthasar Brøndsted was a Danish archaeologist and prehistorian. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen and director of the National Museum of Denmark. Biography Brøndsted was born at Grundfør in Jutland, Denmark. He was the son of Kristine Margrethe Bruun and Holger Brøndsted . His father was a parish priest. In 1909, he took his matriculation examination at Sorø Academy, after which he briefly studied law and art history at the University of Copenhagen and took his examination in classical philology in 1916. In 1920, he received his doctorate for his work on the ...
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Gavril Katsarov
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Gavril Iliev Katsarov was a Bulgarian historian, classical philologist and archeologist. Rector of Sofia University. Director of the National Archaeological Museum and the Bulgarian Archeological Institute.
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Homer Barnett
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Homer Garner Barnett was an American anthropologist and teacher. Education He began his studies at Stanford in civil engineering but soon quit to rethink his major. When he returned to Stanford it was as a liberal arts major with an emphasis on philosophy. He graduated in 1927. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley for his Ph.D., granted in 1938. His specialization was culture change and applied anthropology.
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Ella Kivikoski
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Ella Margareta Kivikoski was the first Finnish female to earn a doctorate in archaeology in Finland. In 1931, she studied at the Baltic Institute in Stockholm and developed a scholarly working relationship with the Estonian archaeologist Harri Moora. She was a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki from 1948 until 1969, specializing in both Finnish and Nordic archaeology. Her specialty was the Finnish Iron Age.
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Jan Czekanowski
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Jan Czekanowski was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist. His scientific contributions include introducing his system of racial classification and founding the field of computational linguistics.
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Sverre Marstrander
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Sverre Marstrander was a Norwegian professor in archaeology. Marstrander was born in Oslo, Norway. He earned his Magister degree in classical archaeology at the University of Oslo in 1937. He worked with the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters at Trondheim . Marstrander became a professor in Nordic archaeology at the University of Oslo in 1968. In that same year he was appointed as the manager of the University of Oslo Museum of National Antiquities and was in the position until 1980. His most important studies were in the research of Norwegian Bronze Age rock carvings, which showed in his dr.philos.
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Ramaprasad Chanda
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Ramaprasad Chanda was an Indian anthropologist, historian and archaeologist from Bengal. A pioneer in his field in South Asia, Chanda's lasting legacy is the Varendra Research Museum, he established in Rajshahi , a leading institute for research on the history of Bengal. He was the first head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Calcutta from 1920- 1921. He was also a professional archaeologist and worked in the Archaeological Survey of India. Chanda was one of the founders the Indian Anthropological Institute and was its president during 1938–1942. He represented India in the first International Congress of Anthropology held in London in 1934.
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Clairève Grandjouan
1929 - 1982 (53 years)
Clairève or Claireve Grandjouan was a French-born American archaeologist. She had a B.A. and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. After working on excavations in Athens, she became General Secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America and editor of its Bulletin, while teaching at New York University . She then taught at Hunter College from 1968, becoming chairman of classical and Oriental studies in 1968 and full professor in 1981.
Go to Profile#2841
Gero von Merhart
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Gero Merhart von Bernegg was a German archaeologist. Although he worked at the same time when German nationalism and Nazi archaeology was dominant in Germany, he was not a "Nazi archaeologist". He came into conflict with Hans Reinerth.
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Shakir Mustafa Salim
1919 - 1985 (66 years)
Shakir Mustafa Salim was an Iraqi social anthropologist who taught in the Department of Sociology at Baghdad University. He compiled A Dictionary of Anthropology: English-Arabic . Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta Salim is best known for his groundbreaking ethnographic work, Marsh Dwellers of the Euphrates Delta, submitted as his doctoral thesis in University College, London , first published in Arabic in Baghdad in two volumes , and subsequently published in English as number 23 in the series London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology . This was an anthropological repor...
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L. P. Wenham
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
Leslie Peter Wenham FSA was a British archaeologist, historian, and professor who excavated in York, on Hadrian's Wall and Malton. He was the first to produce a comprehensive report of a Romano-British Cemetery.
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Ernst Herzfeld
1879 - 1948 (69 years)
Ernst Emil Herzfeld was a German archaeologist and Iranologist. Life Herzfeld was born in Celle, Province of Hanover. He studied architecture in Munich and Berlin, while also taking classes in Assyriology, ancient history and art history.
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Konrad Jażdżewski
1908 - 1985 (77 years)
Konrad Jażdżewski was a Polish professor of archeology, doctor honoris causa at the University of Łódź. He was the first to conduct excavations at Brześć Kujawski. Publications JAZDZEWSKI, KONRAD. Poland. 240 pp. with 77 photos, 27 line drawings, 3 maps, & 3 tables, 8vo, cloth. New York, Praeger, 1965. Ancient People and Places Series.Konrad Jażdżewski, Urgeschichte Mitteleuropas .Archaeological Research on course of the new investments - Interstate Highways A-1 and A-2, by foundation of Konrad Jażdżewski Institute of archeology and Anthropology
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Dorothy Lamb
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Lady Brooke Nicholson, , better known by her maiden name Dorothy Lamb, was a British archaeologist and writer known for her catalogue of terracotta in the Acropolis Museum, Athens and her work in Mediterranean field archaeology.
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Isabelle Raubitschek
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Isabelle Kelly Raubitschek was an American art historian, archaeologist, and professor of art at Stanford University. Biography Raubitschek was born in Boston, and was the oldest of three children. She began to study foreign languages as a child, eventually becoming fluent in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. She met and studied with the art historian, Margarete Bieber, when she attended Barnard College in 1935. While at Barnard, she received the Lucille Pulitzer scholarship, which provided finances for four full years of study. She continued her graduate education at Columbia University and in 1936 went to the Institute of Art and Archaeology at Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#2848
Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz
1839 - 1911 (72 years)
Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz was a German archeologist. He has been called the founder of modern iconology . He served as director of the collection of antique sculpture and vases at the Berlin Museum and also as the director of the antiquarium of the Berlin Museum . Kekulé was the nephew of the organic chemist August Kekulé.
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Santo Mazzarino
1916 - 1987 (71 years)
Santo Mazzarino was an Italian historian considered to be a leading 20th-century historian of ancient Rome. He was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. Mazzarino was born in Catania. As a scholar and faculty member of the University of Catania and University of Rome La Sapienza, Mazzarino was viewed as one of Italy's leading historians. His influential book La fine del mondo antico examined the death of Rome as a result of decadence. The book was widely read among non-specialists as well and has been translated into several languages. Mazzarino's primary historical contributions covered sub...
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Hans Schleif
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Hans Philipp Oswald Schleif was a German architect, architectural and classical archaeologist and member of the SS , last occupying the rank of Standartenführer . He was a member of the Nazi Party since 1937, with membership number 5,380,876.
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