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,
#2901
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#2902
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#2903
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#2904
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#2905
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#2906
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#2907
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#2908
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#2909
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.
Go to Profile#2911
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#2912
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#2913
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#2914
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#2915
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#2916
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#2917
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#2918
Curt Wachsmuth
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Curt Wachsmuth was a German historian and classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to philologist Friedrich Ritschl. Academic biography From 1856 to 1860 he studied at the universities of Jena and Bonn, where he later received his habilitation in classical philology and ancient history. In 1864 he became a professor in ancient history at the University of Marburg, followed by professorships in classical philology at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg . From 1885 to 1905 he was a professor of classical philology and ancient history at the University of Leipzig. In 1897/98 he serve...
Go to Profile#2919
Mikhail Artamonov
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov was a Soviet and Russian historian and archeologist, who came to be recognized as the founding father of modern Khazar studies. Biography Artamonov was born into a peasant family in Tver Governorate. He moved to Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the Russian Revolution.
Go to Profile#2920
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.
Go to Profile#2921
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.
Go to Profile#2922
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.
Go to Profile#2923
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.
Go to Profile#2924
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...
Go to Profile#2925
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#2926
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.
Go to Profile#2927
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.
Go to Profile#2928
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#2929
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 .
Go to Profile#2930
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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Taha Baqir
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Taha Baqir was an Iraqi Assyriologist, author, cuneiformist, linguist, historian, and former curator of the National Museum of Iraq. Baqir is considered one of Iraq's most eminent archaeologists. Among the works he is remembered for are his Akkadian to Arabic translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, his decipherment of Babylonian mathematical tablets, his Akkadian law code discoveries, and his excavations of ancient Babylonian and Sumerian sites; including the ancient Sumerian city of Shaduppum in Baghdad.
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Charles Farwell Edson Jr.
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Charles Farwell Edson Jr. was an American scholar of Ancient History. Edson was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1905 as the son of poet and musician Charles Farwell Edson and social activist and feminist Katherine Philips Edson, and the great nephew of prominent Chicago businessman John V. Farwell and Senator Charles B. Farwell. Edson received the degree of A.B. in Classics from Stanford University in 1929 . He went on to earn his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University in 1939 with a dissertation entitled “Five Studies in Macedonian History" directed by Professor William Scott Ferguson . ...
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Reo Fortune
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Reo Franklin Fortune was a New Zealand-born social anthropologist. Originally trained as a psychologist, Fortune was a student of some of the major theorists of British and American social anthropology including Alfred Cort Haddon, Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. He lived an international life, holding various academic and government positions: in China, at Lingnan University from 1937 to 1939; in Toledo, Ohio, USA from 1940 to 1941; at the University of Toronto, from 1941 to 1943; in Burma, as government anthropologist, from 1946 to 1947; and finally, at Cambridge University...
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Felix A. Chami
1900 - Present (126 years)
Felix A. Chami is an archaeologist from Tanzania. He is a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, focusing on East African coastal archaeology. Dr. Chami discovered, on the island of Mafia and Juani, artifacts that revealed East Africa as being integral to the Indian Ocean trade. Chami earned a first degree in sociology from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1986, a master's degree in anthropology from Brown University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Uppsala University in 1994.
Go to Profile#2936
John Percival Droop
1882 - 1963 (81 years)
John Percival Droop was a British classical archaeologist of Dutch descent. After attending Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge, Droop became a student of the British School at Athens, where he excavated at Sparta, in Thessaly, on Milos and on Crete. He later became a full member of the BSA.
Go to Profile#2937
Roald H. Fryxell
1934 - 1974 (40 years)
Roald Hilding Fryxell was an American educator, geologist and archaeologist. He was a Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University and pioneer in the interdisciplinary field of geoarchaeology, with a career that involved work on monumental projects in North America and even outer space.
Go to Profile#2938
Kenneth de Burgh Codrington
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Kenneth de Burgh Codrington was a British archaeologist and art historian of India who was Keeper of the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Professor of Indian Archaeology at the University of London .
Go to Profile#2939
Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martínez
1870 - 1970 (100 years)
Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martínez , was a Spanish archaeologist and historian. Biography Martinez was born 21 February 1870 in Granada, Spain. He is the son of noted painter and amateur archaeologist, Manuel Gómez-Moreno González and Dolores Martínez Almirón.
Go to Profile#2940
Spyridon Marinatos
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Spyridon Nikolaou Marinatos was a Greek archaeologist who specialised in the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. He is best known for the excavation of the Minoan site of Akrotiri on Santorini, which he conducted between 1967 and 1974. A recipient of several honours in Greece and abroad, he was considered one of the most important Greek archaeologists of his day.
Go to Profile#2941
Neil Judd
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Neil Merton Judd was an American archaeologist who studied under both Byron Cummings and Edgar Lee Hewett. He was the long-term curator of archaeology at the United States National Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution. He is noted for his discovery and excavation of ruins left by the Ancestral Pueblo People of the Four Corners area, especially sites located within Chaco Canyon, a region located within the now-arid San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. He headed the first federally backed archeological expeditions sent to Chaco Canyon, excavating the key ruins of Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo.
Go to Profile#2942
Jack Herbert Driberg
1888 - 1946 (58 years)
Jack Herbert Driberg was a British anthropologist. He was a part of the Uganda Protectorate and published The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda in 1923. Personal life and education Driberg was born in April 1888. He attended Lancing College. He also attended Hertford College. He died on 5 February 1946.
Go to Profile#2943
Roderick Urwick Sayce
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Roderick Urwick Sayce was a social anthropologist and geographer who was President of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, Vice-President of the Powysland Club and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Anthropological Institute and Museums Association.
Go to Profile#2944
Matthias Johann Eisen
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
Matthias Johann Eisen was an Estonian folklorist and in 1920–1927 served as the Professor of Folk Poetry at University of Tartu. Eisen is most known for his very thorough collection and a systematic typology of Estonian folk tales, totalling over 90,000 pages.
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Annie Ure
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
Annie Dunman Ure was an English archaeologist, who from 1922 to 1976 was the first Curator of the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology. She and her husband Percy Ure conducted important excavations at Ritsona in Boeotia, Greece, making her one of the first female archaeologists to lead an excavation in Greece.
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Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin was an award-winning anthropologist, folklorist, and ethnohistorian. Her research and directorship of the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project at Indiana University has been used to backup Native Americans during court cases with the US government over treaty claims.
Go to Profile#2947
Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt was a German physical anthropologist who classified humanity into races. His study in the classification of human races made him one of the leading racial theorists of Nazi Germany.
Go to Profile#2948
Einar Gjerstad
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Einar Nilson Gjerstad was a Swedish archaeologist. He was most noted for his research of the ancient Mediterranean, particularly known for his work on Cyprus, as well as his studies of early Rome. Biography Gjerstad studied at Uppsala University, where he earned a bachelor's degree. 1920, fil.mag. 1921, fil.lic. 1923, and received his doctorate in 1926. In 1922 he was an assistant at excavations in Asine under Axel W. Persson , professor of classical archaeology and ancient history at Uppsala University. From 1926 until 1935 he was professor of classical archaeology and ancient history at Up...
Go to Profile#2949
Barbara Myerhoff
1935 - 1985 (50 years)
Barbara Myerhoff was an American anthropologist, filmmaker, and founder of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. Throughout her career as an anthropologist, Barbara Myerhoff contributed to major methodological trends which have since become standards of social cultural anthropology. These methods include reflexivity, narrative story telling, and anthropologists' positioning as social activists, commentaries, and critics whose work extends beyond the academy.
Go to Profile#2950
Olwen Brogan
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
Lady Olwen Phillis Frances Brogan was a British archaeologist and expert on Roman Libya. She attended University College London and later taught there. She was the author of two monographs, over thirty articles and was a regular reviewer for Antiquaries Journal, Antiquity and Journal of Roman Studies.
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