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
Benedikt Niese
1849 - 1910 (61 years)
Jürgen Anton Benedikt Niese , also known as Benedict, Benediktus or Benedictus Niese, was a German classical scholar. Niese was born in Burg, on the island of Fehmarn, then part of the German Confederation but ruled by King Frederick VII of Denmark. His father was Emil August Niese, pastor in the town, and his mother was born Benedicte Marie Matthiessen. He was educated at the Domgymnasium in Schleswig and then from 1867 at Bonn and Kiel, studying under Alfred von Gutschmid. After volunteering for the army during the Franco-Prussian War, he was awarded a PhD in 1872. After teaching for a short time in a secondary school in Flensburg, he travelled in Italy and France.
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Sergei Teploukhov
1888 - 1934 (46 years)
Sergei Aleksandrovich Teploukhov was an archaeologist from the Soviet Union. From 1920 to 1932, Teploukhov conducted research on the archaeological remains of various periods in Siberia and Central Asia. He was the first to devise a classification of the archaeological cultures of Southern Siberia. Teploukhov was arrested on suspicions of nationalism on November 26, 1933 and was found dead in his cell on March 10, 1934.
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William Sanders Scarborough
1852 - 1926 (74 years)
William Sanders Scarborough is generally thought to be the first African American classical scholar. Born into slavery, Scarborough served as president of Wilberforce University between 1908 and 1920. He wrote a popular university textbook on Classical Greek that was widely used in the 19th century.
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Johann Matthias Gesner
1691 - 1761 (70 years)
Johann Matthias Gesner was a German classical scholar and schoolmaster. Life He was born at Roth an der Rednitz near Ansbach. His father, Johann Samuel Gesner, a pastor in Auhausen, died in 1704, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Gesner's mother, Maria Magdalena , remarried, and Johann Matthias's stepfather, Johann Zuckermantel, proved supportive.
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Gerhard Lindblom
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Karl Gerhard Lindblom was an ethnographer from Sweden who worked in East Africa in the 1910s. He was the principal author of materials on the Akamba peoples. Additionally, he worked as the Director of the Museum of Stockholm beginning in 1928 and in 1935 he became a professor at the University of Stockholm.
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Pieter Helbert Damsté
1860 - 1943 (83 years)
Pieter Helbert Damsté was a Dutch classical scholar. Biography Damsté was born in Wilsum as the son of preacher Barteld Roelof Damsté and Richardina Jacoba Gesina Gallé. His 1885 dissertation was called Adversaria critica ad C. Valerii Flacci Argonautica. He taught Latin at Utrecht University.
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Gonçalo Sampaio
1865 - 1937 (72 years)
Gonçalo António da Silva Ferreira Sampaio was a Portuguese botanist. He studied mathematics at the University of Coimbra and chemistry, mineralogy and botany at the Polytechnic Academy of Porto. From 1890 he served as an assistant naturalist at the Polytechnic Academy. From 1912 to 1935 he was a professor of botany at the faculty of sciences of the University of Porto. As a taxonomist he described around 50 new species of vascular plants, five new species of desmids and about 70 new taxa of lichens that included the genus Carlosia . The mycological genus Sampaioa commemorates his name.
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Risieri Frondizi
1910 - 1983 (73 years)
Risieri Frondizi was an Argentine philosopher, anthropologist, and rector of the University of Buenos Aires. Background Risieri Frondizi Ercoli was born on 20 November 1910 in Posadas, Argentina. His parents were Julio Frondizi and Isabel Ercoli, who had arrived in the 1890s from Gubbio, Umbria, Italy. Frondizi had seven brothers and six sisters. They included Arturo Frondizi , Ricardo and Silvio . Frondizi studied at Harvard University. In 1943, Frondizi received his MA from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 1950, he received a doctorate from the National Autonomous University...
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Antal Hekler
1882 - 1940 (58 years)
Antal Hekler was a Hungarian/German classical archaeologist and art historian. He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Life He wrote his doctoral thesis in political science in 1903 and then studied classical archaeology in Munich under Adolf Furtwängler, where he wrote his second doctoral thesis, before he returned to his birthplace Budapest, where he first worked at the city's national museum and later held a chair for Christian archaeology and history of art at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Budapest.
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Anastasios Orlandos
1887 - 1979 (92 years)
Anastasios Orlandos was a Greek architect and historian of architecture. Biography A descendant of Ioannis Orlandos, Anastasios was born and died in Athens. He studied as a civil engineer in the National Technical University of Athens, and completed his studies in archaeology at the University of Athens, where he later served as a professor. He was among the leading researchers in ancient and Byzantine architecture, and responsible for the restoration of many ancient and medieval monuments throughout the country. He was also chairman of the Academy of Athens in 1950, and from 1951 until his d...
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Karl Otfried Müller
1797 - 1840 (43 years)
Karl Otfried Müller was a German professor, scholar of classical Greek studies and philodorian. Biography He was born at Brieg in Silesia, then in the Kingdom of Prussia. His father was a chaplain in the Prussian army, and he was raised in the atmosphere of Protestant Pietism. He attended the gymnasium of his town. His university education was partly in Breslau and partly in Berlin. In Berlin, he was spurred towards the study of Greek literature, art and history by the influence of Philipp August Böckh. In 1817, after the publication of his first work, Aegineticorum liber, on the Aegineta...
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Poliziano
1454 - 1494 (40 years)
Agnolo Ambrogini , commonly known as Angelo Poliziano or simply Poliziano, anglicized as Politian, was an Italian classical scholar and poet of the Florentine Renaissance. His scholarship was instrumental in the divergence of Renaissance Latin from medieval norms and for developments in philology. His nickname Poliziano, by which he is chiefly identified to the present day, was derived from the Latin name of his birthplace, Montepulciano .
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Alexander Khakhanov
1864 - 1912 (48 years)
Aleksandr Solomonovich Khakhanov born Aleksandre Khakhanashvili was a Georgian-Russian historian, archaeologist, and one of the most acclaimed scholars of Georgian literature. He was born in Gori, Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, and studied at Tbilisi . Having graduated from Moscow University in 1888, he delivered lectures on Georgian language and literature at Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages since 1889 and at Moscow University since 1900. He authored numerous works on Georgian history and literature, including the resonant Очерки по истории грузинской словесности , published in Russian from 1895 to 1907.
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Dimitri Baramki
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Dimitri Constantine Baramki, often styled D. C. Baramki , was a Palestinian archaeologist who served as chief archaeologist at the Department of Antiquities of the Government of Mandatory Palestine from 1938 to 1948. From 1952 until his retirement, he was the curator of the Archaeological Museum at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, where he served as a professor of archaeology.
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Thomas Dempster
1579 - 1625 (46 years)
Thomas Dempster was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish highlands and the Scottish lowlands, he was sent abroad as a youth for his education. The Dempsters were Catholic in an increasingly Protestant country and had a reputation for being quarrelsome. Thomas' brother James, outlawed for an attack on his father, spent some years as a pirate in the northern islands, escaped by volunteering for military service in the Low Countries and was drawn and quartered there for insubordination. Thomas' father lost the ...
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Joseph George Cumming
1812 - 1868 (56 years)
Joseph George Cumming, MA Cantab., was an English geologist and archaeologist. His major works concerned the geology and history of the Isle of Man. Biography Born at Matlock in Derbyshire where his mother and father ran the Old Bath Hotel at Matlock Bath. Cumming was educated at Oakham School, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking the degree of MA, and entering holy orders in 1835. Joseph's elder cousin, James was Professor of Chemistry in Cambridge from 1815.
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Francis H. Snow
1840 - 1908 (68 years)
Francis Huntington Snow was an American naturalist and educator. He spent more than forty years at the University of Kansas, first as a professor of natural history and then as chancellor. He was interested in several fields of science including botany, ornithology and geology but his primary focus was entomology. He was well-known as a field naturalist, based on 26 years of field collecting trips that he organized and led throughout Kansas, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. During these excursions, he and his students collected a quarter-million insect specimens representing some 21,...
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Charles Pickering Bowditch
1842 - 1921 (79 years)
Charles Pickering Bowditch was an American financier, archaeologist, cryptographer and linguistics scholar who specialized in Mayan epigraphy. Bowditch was born in Boston into the Massachusetts Bowditch family of mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch, his grandfather, and physiologist Henry Pickering Bowditch, his brother, son of Jonathan Ingersoll Bowditch and Lucy Orme Nichols. He received his undergraduate degree in 1863 and his master's in 1866, both from Harvard University. During the American Civil War he served as an officer in the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a colored regiment,...
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Charles Lenormant
1802 - 1859 (57 years)
Charles Lenormant was a French archaeologist. Biography After pursuing his studies at the Lycée Charlemagne and the Lycée Napoléon, he took up law, but a visit to Italy and Sicily made him an enthusiastic archaeologist. In 1825 he was named sub-inspector of fine arts and a few months later married Amelia Syvoct, niece and adopted daughter of the celebrated Mme Récamier. He visited Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and accompanied Jean-François Champollion to Egypt in July 1828, where he devoted himself to the study of architectural works.
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Friedrich Blass
1843 - 1907 (64 years)
Friedrich Blass was a German classical scholar. Biography After studying at Göttingen and Bonn from 1860 to 1863, Blass lectured at several gymnasia and at the University of Königsberg. In 1876 he was appointed extraordinary professor of classical philology at Kiel, and ordinary professor in 1881. In 1892 he accepted a professorship at Halle, where he later died.
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Caspar Reuvens
1793 - 1835 (42 years)
Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens was a Dutch historian and archaeologist. He was the founding director of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the world's first ever professor of archaeology , and conducted the first excavations at the Roman provincial site Forum Hadriani in the Netherlands.
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Ross Gilmore Marvin
1880 - 1908 (28 years)
Ross Gilmore Marvin was an American explorer who took part in Robert Peary's 1905–1906 and 1908–1909 expeditions to the Arctic. It was initially believed that Marvin drowned during the second expedition, but an Inuit member of the expedition later stated he shot and killed Marvin.
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John Haskell Hewitt
1835 - 1920 (85 years)
John Haskell Hewitt was an American classical scholar and educator, notable for serving as acting president of Williams College from 1901 to 1902. Born in Preston, Connecticut, to Charles Hewitt and Eunice , Hewitt entered Yale University in 1855, initially intending to study law. While at Yale he befriended Franklin Carter, a relationship that would prove beneficial in later years. After graduating with an A.B. in 1859, Hewitt then earned an advanced degree from the Yale Divinity School in 1863. He served as a librarian at Yale's Brothers in Unity Library until 1865, until he accepted a position teaching Latin and Greek at Olivet College.
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Gustav Körte
1852 - 1917 (65 years)
Gustav Körte was a German classical archaeologist. He was the brother of philologist Alfred Körte and surgeon Werner Körte . Körte was born in Berlin. He studied classical philology and archaeology at the University of Göttingen, then continued his education with Heinrich Brunn at Munich . From 1875, he performed research in Italy and Greece, where he worked was an assistant at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens .
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Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard
1795 - 1867 (72 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard was a German archaeologist. He was co-founder and secretary of the first international archaeological society. Biography Gerhard was born at Posen, and was educated at Breslau and Berlin. The reputation he acquired by his Lectiones Apollonianae led soon afterwards to his being appointed professor at the gymnasium of Posen. On resigning that office in 1819, on account of weakness of the eyes, he went in 1822 to Rome, where he remained for fifteen years.
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Attilio Degrassi
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Attilio Degrassi was an archeologist and pioneering Italian scholar of Latin epigraphy. Degrassi taught at the university of Padova where he trained, among others, the epigraphist Silvio Panciera, currently on the faculty of the University of Rome "La Sapienza".
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Vivian Wade-Gery
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Vivian Wade-Gery was a British classical archaeologist. Career Whitfield studied Classics at Trinity College Dublin and Somerville College, Oxford, where she obtained a BA degree in 1924. She was subsequently appointed lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading, and in 1924 to 1925 she received a Gilchrist studentship to study at the British School at Athens to study Greek topgraphy. She spent the period 1927 to 1928 again at the British school at Athens, on leave from Reading and supported by the Bryce studentship, Lady Margaret Hall and the Ireland Trustees, this time studying Spart...
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Bernard Pyne Grenfell
1869 - 1926 (57 years)
Bernard Pyne Grenfell FBA was an English scientist and egyptologist. Life Grenfell was the son of John Granville Grenfell FGS and Alice Grenfell. He was born in Birmingham and brought up and educated at Clifton College in Bristol, where his father taught. He obtained a scholarship in 1888 and enrolled at The Queen's College, Oxford.
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Montague Chamberlain
1844 - 1924 (80 years)
Montague Chamberlain was a Canadian-American businessman, naturalist, and ethnographer. Biography Chamberlain was born in St. John, New Brunswick, British North America. He spent the first few decades of his life as a bookkeeper and later manager of a grocery company in St. John. In his mid-twenties, he also became a dedicated amateur ornithologist. In 1883 he co-founded the American Ornithologists' Union, which today stakes its claim as "the oldest and largest organization in the New World devoted to the scientific study of birds." In 1888 Chamberlain became a resident member and editor for the Nuttall Ornithological Club, and a founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union.
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Evelyn Abbott
1843 - 1901 (58 years)
Evelyn Abbott was an English classical scholar, born at Epperstone, Nottinghamshire. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he excelled both academically and in sports, winning the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse in 1864, but after a fall in 1866 his legs became paralysed. He managed to graduate in spite of his handicap, and was elected fellow of Balliol in 1874. His best-known work is his History of Greece in three volumes , where he presents a sceptical view of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Among his other works are Elements of Greek Accidence , and translations of several German books on ancient history, language and philosophy.
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William Moir Calder
1881 - 1960 (79 years)
Sir William Moir Calder, FBA was a Scottish archaeologist, epigraphist, classicist, and academic. He was Hulme Professor of Greek at the University of Manchester from 1913 to 1930, and Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh from 1930 to 1951.
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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 .
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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