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,
#2851
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#2852
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#2853
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#2854
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#2855
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#2856
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.
Go to Profile#2857
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#2858
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#2859
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#2860
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#2861
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#2862
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#2863
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#2864
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#2865
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#2866
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#2867
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#2868
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#2869
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...
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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.
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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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Konrad Theodor Preuss
1869 - 1938 (69 years)
Konrad Theodor Preuss was a German ethnologist. He was chairman of the Lithuanian Literary Society . Preuss was born in Preußisch-Eylau. After studying at the Albertina in Königsberg in Prussia and at Frederick William's University of Berlin he joined the Ethnological Museum of Berlin in 1895, advancing to director of the Central and North American department in 1920, before retiring in 1934. He also became a member of the faculty of the University of Berlin and died in Berlin.
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Karl Friedrich Hermann
1804 - 1855 (51 years)
Karl Friedrich Hermann was a German classical scholar and antiquary. Biography He was born at Frankfurt-am-Main. Having studied philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig , he went on a tour of Italy; on his return from which he lectured as privatdozent in Heidelberg. In 1832 he was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Marburg, and in 1833 received the additional offices of second librarian at the university, and director of the philological seminary. In 1842 he transferred to Göttingen as the chair of philology and archaeology, vacant by the death of Otfried Müller.
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Oleh Olzhych
1907 - 1944 (37 years)
Oleh Oleksandrovych Kandyba , better known by the pen name of Oleh Olzhych , was a Ukrainian poet and political activist. He was forced to emigrate from Ukraine in 1923 due to occupation by the Soviet Russia and lived in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He graduated in 1929 from Charles University with a degree in archaeology. In 1929 he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and became head of their cultural and educational branch.
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James Luce Kingsley
1778 - 1852 (74 years)
James Luce Kingsley was an American classical and biblical scholar. Biography Born in Windham, Connecticut, Kingsley was educated at Williams and Yale, where he was graduated in 1799. He afterward taught for two years, first in Wethersfield, Connecticut and then in Windham, and in 1801 became a tutor at Yale. In 1805 he was appointed to the newly established professorship of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in there. Kingsley was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1825. He was relieved of a part of his duties in 1831, when a separate professorship of Greek was establishe...
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Oscar Almgren
1869 - 1945 (76 years)
Oscar Almgren was a Swedish archaeologist specializing in prehistoric archaeology. He published a dissertation on Nordic types of brooches in 1897. He was also the father of Bertil Almgren, who followed in his father's footsteps in also becoming a professor of Scandinavian and Comparative Archaeology at Uppsala University.
Go to Profile#2877
Richard Schöne
1840 - 1922 (82 years)
Richard Schöne was a German archaeologist and classical philologist. He studied classical philology and archaeology at the University of Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1861 with a dissertation on Plato's Protagoras. He then studied painting under Friedrich Preller the Elder, and from 1864 conducted archaeological research in Italy, during which time, he visited numerous museums and libraries, and participated in excavations at Pompeii. In Rome, he worked alongside Otto Benndorf and Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz.
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Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann
1775 - 1839 (64 years)
Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann was a German philosopher and anthropologist. Biography Windischmann attended the Gymnasium in Mainz, and in 1772 took the course in philosophy at the university there. He continued this course at Würzburg, where he also studied the natural sciences and medicine until 1796. After a year at Vienna he settled in 1797 as a practising physician at Mainz, where he also gave medical lectures. In 1801 the Elector of Mainz, Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, summoned him to Aschaffenburg as court physician.
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Andreas Rumpf
1890 - 1966 (76 years)
Andreas Rumpf was a German classical archaeologist born in Potsdam. He was a specialist of ancient Greek and Roman art, in particular, vase painting and Greek wall painting. He was the son of painter Fritz Rumpf .
Go to Profile#2880
Daniel Schlumberger
1904 - 1972 (68 years)
Daniel Théodore Schlumberger was a French archaeologist and Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Strasbourg and later Princeton University. Biography After having been invited by Khan Nasher in the 1960s, he conducted fieldwork at Ay Khanum in Afghanistan as Director of the Délégation Archéologique Française, discovering ruins and artifacts of the Hellenistic period. His written works were included posthumously in The Cambridge History of Iran .
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Paul Maas
1880 - 1964 (84 years)
Paul Maas was a German scholar who, along with Karl Lachmann, founded the field of textual criticism. He studied classical philology at the universities of Berlin and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1903. In 1910 he obtained his habilitation and in 1920 became a full professor at Berlin. In 1930 he was appointed chair of classical philology at the University of Königsberg. In 1934 he was forced into retirement by the Nazi government due to his Jewish ancestry, and in 1939 he emigrated to Great Britain, where he taught classes at Oxford University. After his death, he was buried at Wolverco...
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Jiří Polívka
1858 - 1933 (75 years)
Jiří Polívka was a Czech linguist, slavist, literary historian and folklorist. He was a disciple of Jan Gebauer. In 1895 he was appointed professor at Charles University in Prague. He became a corresponding member of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts and corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences . He was a supporter of Theodor Benfey’s migration theory. His major work was the collection Slavic Tales and studies about Slavic dialectology.
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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.
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Johan Gunnar Andersson
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
Johan Gunnar Andersson was a Swedish archaeologist, paleontologist and geologist, closely associated with the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s. Early life and polar research After studies at Uppsala University, and research in the polar regions, Andersson served as Director of Sweden's National Geological Survey.
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Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton
1889 - 1939 (50 years)
Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton FSA was a British anthropologist. He was educated at Radley and Exeter College, Oxford, and he was Reader in Physical Anthropology at the University of Oxford between 1928 and 1939. He conducted field work in Sudan, India, Malta, the United States, China and Mesopotamia, and in 1913 he excavated Lapithos in Cyprus under the direction of professor John Myres and Cyprus Museum curator Menelaos Markides. During his extensive travels he documented his work through photography; the pictures are currently in the Pitt Rivers Museum. In the 1930s he carried research in Oxford with anthropologist Beatrice Blackwood.
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Eckhard Unger
1885 - 1966 (81 years)
Eckhard Unger was a German assyriologist. Unger who was the curator of the Istanbul museum described the remains of Balawat Gates that are still in the Istanbul Museum. Unger was fully aware that the major parts of the gates were in London and Paris as he had visited both locations and discussed them with the respective curators. In 1916, as curator of the Archeological Museum of Istanbul, he identified and described a copper-alloy object in the museum collection as an ell or measuring rod from Nippur. Dating to the first half of the third millennium BC or even earlier, possibly the oldest known measuring device, it supposedly defines the Sumerian cubit at about 518.6 millimetres.
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Philip Wheelwright
1901 - 1970 (69 years)
Philip Ellis Wheelwright was an American philosopher, classical scholar and literary theorist. He was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of a stockbroker, and died in Santa Barbara, California. Wheelwright was educated at Princeton University, with a B.A. in 1921 and a Ph.D. in 1924 with his dissertation "The Concepts of Liberty and Contingency in the Philosophy of Charles Renouvier," the French Kantian philosopher who so influenced William James.
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Albert B. Reagan
1871 - 1936 (65 years)
Professor Albert B. Reagan was an American author and historian of Native American history. He was professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University and documented Native American customs and folklore in New Mexico, Arizona, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and Utah, for tribes that include the Jemez people, Navajo people, Ojibwe people, Quileute people, and Ute people.
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Terence Mitford
1905 - 1978 (73 years)
Terence Bruce Mitford FBA FSA was a Scottish archaeologist and classicist. He spent his whole career at the University of St Andrews, and had a special interest in the history and archaeology of Cyprus and southern Turkey, making many expeditions to these areas. His academic life was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served with the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service.
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Ruth Bunzel
1898 - 1990 (92 years)
Ruth Leah Bunzel was an American anthropologist, known for studying creativity and art among the Zuni people , researching the Mayas in Guatemala, and conducting a comparative study of alcoholism in Guatemala and Mexico. Bunzel was the first American anthropologist to conduct substantial research in Guatemala. Her doctoral dissertation, The Pueblo Potter was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology and Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process.
Go to Profile#2891
David L. Clarke
1937 - 1976 (39 years)
David Leonard Clarke was an English archaeologist and academic. He is well known for his work on processual archaeology. Early life and education Clarke was born in Kent, England. He studied at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, from which he obtained his PhD in 1964 under the supervision of Grahame Clark.
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John E. Stambaugh
1939 - 1990 (51 years)
John Evan Stambaugh was an American classical scholar and professor at Williams College. Stambaugh was educated at Trinity College and then at Princeton University, earning a Ph.D. in 1967. Stambaugh taught at Williams from 1965 until 1990 and was a specialist in the field of Greco-Roman religion as well as early Christianity. In addition to teaching at Williams, Stambaugh was a fellow of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. and a faculty and managing committee member and chair of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, Italy.
Go to Profile#2893
George Ewart Bean
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
George Ewart Bean was an English archaeologist and writer who specialized in classical Turkey. His father William Jackson Bean was a botanist, author, and curator of Kew Gardens. Bean was educated at St Paul's School, London from 1916 to 1921. He attended Pembroke College, Cambridge and won the Schoolbred Scholarship and the John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship for Classics.
Go to Profile#2894
Louis Dupree
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Louis Dupree was an American archaeologist, anthropologist, and scholar of Afghan culture and history. He was the husband of Nancy Hatch Dupree, who was the Board Director of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University in Afghanistan and author of five books about Afghanistan. The husband and wife team from the United States worked together for 15 years in Kabul, collecting as many works written about Afghanistan as they could. They travelled across the country from 1962 until the 1979 Soviet intervention, conducting archaeological excavations.
Go to Profile#2895
Glynn Isaac
1937 - 1985 (48 years)
Glynn Llywelyn Isaac was a South African archaeologist who specialised in the very early prehistory of Africa, and was one of twin sons born to botanists William Edwyn Isaac and Frances Margaret Leighton. He has been called the most influential Africanist of the last half century, and his papers on human movement and behavior are still cited in studies a quarter of a century later.
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Clellan S. Ford
1909 - 1972 (63 years)
Clellan Stearns Ford was an American anthropologist, best known as Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, and as co-author of the 1951 book Patterns of Sexual Behavior. Biography Clellan Ford was born on July 27, 1909, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale University, where he received the Ph.D. in chemistry in 1931, and a Ph.D. in sociology in 1935. In 1935, Ford spent a year in the Fiji Islands conducting ethnographic field research. The following year, he joined the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, where he co-founded the Cross-Cultural Survey. In 1940, the same ...
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Gladys Reichard
1893 - 1955 (62 years)
Gladys Amanda Reichard was an American anthropologist and linguist. She is considered one of the most important women to have studied Native American languages and cultures in the first half of the twentieth century. She is best known for her studies of three different Native American languages: Wiyot, Coeur d'Alene and Navajo. Reichard was concerned with understanding language variation, and with connections between linguistic principles and underpinnings of religion, culture and context.
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John Caskey
1908 - 1981 (73 years)
John Langdon Caskey was an American archaeologist and classical scholar. He directed the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1949 to 1959, and was head of the Classics department at the University of Cincinnati from 1959 to 1979. His career focused on excavations at the ancient settlements of Troy, Lerna, and Keos. Until their marriage ended, he worked with his spouse Elizabeth Caskey who went to excavate on her own after they parted.
Go to Profile#2899
Arthur E. Gordon
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Arthur Ernest Gordon was an American classical philologist and epigraphist. Life and career Born in Marlborough, Vermont, Gordon studied classical philology at Dartmouth College, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1923. He continued his studies at the American Academy in Rome. In 1925 he became a lecturer in Latin at Dartmouth College and in 1928 at Western Reserve University. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1929, where he worked with Tenney Frank, and afterwards briefly taught Latin and Ancient History at the University of Vermont. Gordon was invited to the University ...
Go to Profile#2900
Lloyd Fallers
1925 - 1974 (49 years)
Lloyd Ashton "Tom" Fallers, Jr. was the A. A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of anthropology and sociology at the University of Chicago. Fallers' work in social and cultural anthropology focused on social stratification and the development of new states in East Africa and Turkey.
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