The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Anthropology,
#3001
Ahmed Fakhry
1905 - 1973 (68 years)
Ahmed Fakhry was an Egyptian archaeologist who worked in the Western desert of Egypt , and also in the necropolis at Dahshur. Bibliography Siwa Oasis, Cairo, Egypt, American University in Cairo Press 1990Bahriyah and Farafra, Cairo, American University in Cairo Press 2003An archaeological journey to Yemen, Bahria OasisThe Bent pyramid of Dahshûr / by Ahmed Fakhry ; with papers by Hasan Mostafa and Herbert RickeIntiṣār al-ḥaḍārah : tārīkh al-Sharq al-qadīm / bi-qalam Zhayms Hanrī Baristid ; naqalahu ilá al-ʻArabīyah Aḥmad FakhrīThe Inscriptions of the Amethyst Quarries at Wadi el HudiThe monu...
Go to Profile#3002
Gudmund Hatt
1884 - 1960 (76 years)
Professor Aage Gudmund Hatt was a Danish archaeologist and cultural geographer. He was a professor of cultural geography at the University of Copenhagen from 1929 through 1947. Also an ethnologist, he was the first person to systematically inventory cultural similarities and differences amongst northern peoples.
Go to Profile#3003
Boris Kuftin
1892 - 1953 (61 years)
Boris Alekseevich Kuftin was a Soviet archaeologist and ethnographer. From 1933 to 1953, he worked in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR. In the 1930s, he discovered the Trialeti culture; and in 1940, he coined the term Kura-Araxes. He participated in the South Turkmenistan Complex Archaeological Expedition in the 1940s-1950s.
Go to Profile#3004
Robert Gordon Latham
1812 - 1888 (76 years)
Robert Gordon Latham FRS was an English ethnologist and philologist. Early life The eldest son of Thomas Latham, vicar of Billingborough, Lincolnshire, he was born there on 24 March 1812. He entered Eton College in 1819, and in 1829 went on to King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1832, and was soon afterwards elected a Fellow.
Go to Profile#3005
Alfred von Domaszewski
1856 - 1927 (71 years)
Alfred von Domaszewski was an Austrian historian born in Timișoara in the Habsburg monarchy. He received his education in Vienna, and following graduation remained in Vienna as a secondary school teacher. In 1884 he began work as an assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In 1887 he became an associate professor of ancient history at the University of Heidelberg, where in 1890 he attained full professorship. One of his better known students was historian Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz .
Go to Profile#3006
Arthur Frothingham
1859 - 1923 (64 years)
Arthur Lincoln Frothingham, Jr. was an early professor of art history at Princeton University and an archaeologist. Biography Frothingham was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and came from a wealthy family background, which allowed him to study languages at the Catholic Seminary of San Apollinare in Rome and the Royal University of Rome between 1868 and 1881. In 1882, he began teaching Semitic languages at Johns Hopkins University. He completed his doctorate in Germany, at the University of Leipzig in 1883, and he married Helen Bulkley Post. In 1884, he was secretary of the newly founded Archa...
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Bedřich Hrozný
1879 - 1952 (73 years)
Bedřich Hrozný , also known as , was a Czech orientalist and linguist. He contributed to the decipherment of the ancient Hittite language, identified it as an Indo-European language, and laid the groundwork for the development of Hittitology.
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Bertha Parker Pallan
1907 - 1978 (71 years)
Bertha Pallan Thurston Cody was an American archaeologist, working as an assistant in archaeology at the Southwest Museum. She was also married to actor Iron Eyes Cody. She is thought to be the first Native American female archaeologist, of Abenaki and Seneca descent.
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Piotr Ignacy Bieńkowski
1865 - 1925 (60 years)
Piotr Ignacy Bieńkowski was a Polish classical scholar and archaeologist, professor of Jagiellonian University. Bieńkowski studied classical philology and history at the University of Lwów and University of Berlin . He continued his studies in Vienna, Rome and Athens, habilitation at the University of Kraków.
Go to Profile#3010
Ernst Pfuhl
1876 - 1940 (64 years)
Ernst Pfuhl was a German-Swiss classical archaeologist and art historian. He was the son of sculptor Johannes Pfuhl and a son-in-law to art dealer Athanasios Rhousopoulos . Biography He studied under Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff at the University of Berlin, and later on, performed excavations at the necropolis at Thera as an assistant to Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen. In 1905 he received his habilitation at the University of Göttingen, and in 1911, became a "full professor" at the University of Basel. At Basel he founded the in 1912. He remained at Basel until his death in 1940, his successor being Karl Schefold.
Go to Profile#3011
Yigael Yadin
1917 - 1984 (67 years)
Yigael Yadin was an Israeli archeologist, soldier and politician. He was the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and Deputy Prime Minister from 1977 to 1981. Biography Yigael Sukenik was born in Ottoman Palestine to archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik and his wife Hasya Sukenik-Feinsold, a teacher and women's rights activist.
Go to Profile#3012
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.
Go to Profile#3013
Charles Conrad Abbott
1843 - 1919 (76 years)
Charles Conrad Abbott was an American archaeologist and naturalist. Biography Abbott was born at Trenton, New Jersey, son of Timothy and Susan Abbott; grandson of Joseph and Anne Abbott, and a descendant of John and Anne Abbott, settlers, from England, in New Jersey in 1684. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. During the American Civil War, he served as a surgeon in the Union Army. He received his M.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1865, but never entered into the practice of the profession.
Go to Profile#3014
Herman Pontzer
Herman Pontzer is an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, where he is associate professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health. He is best known for his research into human bioenergetics.
Go to Profile#3015
Pietro Romanelli
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Pietro Romanèlli was an Italian archaeologist. Born in Rome, he carried out excavations at Tarquinia, Ostia Antica, the Palatine Hill in Rome, at the Forum Romanum and at Leptis Magna in Libya. Among his students was the Roman archaeologist and researcher at Ostia Antica Maria Floriani Squarciapino .
Go to Profile#3016
Lewis B. Paton
1864 - 1932 (68 years)
Lewis Bayles Paton was an American biblical scholar, archaeologist and historian. He was a professor at the Hartford Theological Seminary for many years, and a well known authority on Old Testament exegesis.
Go to Profile#3017
Amedeo Maiuri
1886 - 1963 (77 years)
Amedeo Maiuri was an Italian archaeologist, famous for his archaeological investigations of the Roman city of Pompeii which was destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August of AD 79. He was the first to conduct systematic scientific excavations, analysis and publication at Pompeii and other sites around Vesuvius.
Go to Profile#3018
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.
Go to Profile#3019
Oluf Rygh
1833 - 1899 (66 years)
Oluf Rygh was a noted Norwegian archaeologist, philologist and historian. Oluf Rygh is recognized as one of the founders of professional archaeology in Norway. He led the 1867 excavation of the Tune ship
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Clyde E. Keeler
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
Clyde Edgar Keeler was a medical geneticist who is noted for his work on laboratory mice and the genetics of vision. His work was instrumental in the understanding of retinitis pigmentosa. He also seems to have published the first scientific paper on non-rod non-cone visual sensation.
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François Daumas
1915 - 1984 (69 years)
François Felix Eugene Daumas was a French Egyptologist who was director of the Institut français d'archéologie orientale from 1959 to 1969.
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Gustaf VI Adolf
1882 - 1973 (91 years)
Gustaf VI Adolf was King of Sweden from 29 October 1950 until his death in 1973. He was the eldest son of Gustaf V and his wife, Victoria of Baden. Before Gustaf Adolf ascended the throne, he had been crown prince for nearly 43 years during his father's reign. As king, and shortly before his death, he gave his approval to constitutional changes which removed the Swedish monarchy's last nominal political powers. He was a lifelong amateur archeologist particularly interested in Ancient Italian cultures.
Go to Profile#3023
William Hamilton
1730 - 1803 (73 years)
Sir William Hamilton, KB, PC, FRS, FRSE was a British diplomat, politician, antiquarian and vulcanologist who served as the Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of Naples from 1764 to 1800. After sitting in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1761 to 1764, he began working as a diplomat, succeeding Sir James Gray as the British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. While in Italy, Hamilton became involved in studying local volcanoes and collecting antiquities, becoming a fellow of the Royal Society and being given the Copley Medal. His second wife was Emma Hamilton, who was famed as the m...
Go to Profile#3024
Daniel Sutherland Davidson
1900 - 1952 (52 years)
Daniel Sutherland Davidson was an American anthropologist who also did important work among the Australian Aborigines in the 1930s. Life Davidson was born in Cohoes in New York in 1900, the son of a travelling salesman, Matthew H. Davidson and his wife Laura . He studied at the University of Pennsylvania graduating in 1923, and taking successively a Master's and Doctoral degree in anthropology . He was appointed instructor at his alma mater, remaining there, apart from a brief stint at the University of Buffalo for the academic year 1932-1932, until 1946. He spent a year at the University of...
Go to Profile#3025
Franz Winter
1861 - 1930 (69 years)
Franz Winter was a German archaeologist. He specialized in ancient Greek and Roman art, being particularly known for his analyses of individual statues, such as the Apollo Belvedere. He studied ancient history in Zurich, Munich and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1885 with a dissertation on the playwright Plautus. By way of a suggestion from Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, he was tasked by the directorate of the German Archaeological Institute with compiling a typological catalog of classical terracotta works.
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Klaus Wachsmann
1907 - 1984 (77 years)
Klaus Philipp Wachsmann was a British ethnomusicologist of German birth. Born in 1907 in Berlin, he is considered a pioneer in the study of the traditional musics of Africa. His studies in Germany were interrupted by the rise of the Nazis in 1933, where he was also forbidden to marry his 'Aryan' fiancée Eva Buttenburg, a singer. Consequently, they both migrated to Britain in 1936.
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Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle was possibly the earliest professional woman in Southeast archaeology. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Claude Lordawick Ashley, a chief of the Atlanta city council, and Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of Captain Hiram Miller, a veteran of the Federal army.
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Carl Whiting Bishop
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
Carl Whiting Bishop was an American archeologist who specialized in East Asian civilizations. From 1922 to 1942 he was a curator at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. At his death Bishop was praised for his ability to synthesize a wide range of evidence and present them "in ordered and highly engaging fashion", which was "the best sort of popularization of prehistory". He argued for the then popular theory of hyperdiffusionism, the theory that all civilizations originated in one place and spread to others, in this case, from the Near East to China. He was criticized, however, for g...
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Joe Caldwell
1916 - 1973 (57 years)
Joseph Ralston Caldwell was an American archaeologist. In the late 1930s he conducted major excavations in the Savannah, Georgia area at the Irene site as part of Depression-era archaeology program. He also led excavations at other archaeology sites in Georgia, such as the Summerour Mound site in the early 1950s. He was among those conducting extensive excavations prior to the development of Lake Hartwell and Lake Strom Thurmond, which flooded numerous archeological sites.
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Michela Schiff Giorgini
1923 - 1978 (55 years)
Michela Schiff Giorgini née Beomonte was an Italian archaeologist who is remembered for her extensive work in today's Sudan at Soleb on the River Nile where from 1957 she conducted excavations of the Temple of Amenhotep III. During the 20 years she spent in the area, she went on to investigate the temple of Queen Tiye at Sedeinga, and the tomb of Taharqa at Nuri. The Michela Schiff Giorgini Foundation was established in 1984 to preserve her memory and promote Egyptology. Her research is well documented in her many books and publications, beginning with Soleb: Volume 1 in 1965.
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Robert Munro
1835 - 1920 (85 years)
Robert Munro FRSE FSA LLD was a Scottish physician and noted amateur archaeologist. Edinburgh University's Munro Lectures in Archaeology and Anthropology are named in his honour. Life He was born on 21 July 1835 at Assynt in Rossshire, and educated at Kiltearn Free Church School, and at the Royal Academy in Tain. He studied Medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MA in 1860 and MB ChB in 1867. He worked as a General Practitioner in Kilmarnock until 1886, when he turned his whole attention to archaeological research. He was a member of many learned societies at home and abroad and p...
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Srečko Brodar
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Srečko Brodar was a Slovene archaeologist, internationally best known for excavation of Potok Cave , an Upper Palaeolithic cave site in northern Slovenia. Life Brodar studied at the University of Vienna and University of Zagreb, graduating in 1920. Beginning in 1921, he taught at Celje Grammar School, and after the First World War, during which he received a serious elbow injury, he in 1939 received his PhD from the University of Ljubljana, and became a professor there in 1946, serving as the chair of Archaeological Department until retirement. Brodar was the director of the Institute of Arch...
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Eberhard Otto
1913 - 1974 (61 years)
Eberhard Otto was a German Egyptologist. Otto studied from 1932 to 1937 in Leipzig, Munich and Göttingen and after his Promotion in 1938 and his Habilitation in 1943 was appointed in 1950 unofficial professor extraordinarius of Egyptology at the University of Hamburg. In 1955 he was appointed professor ordinarius of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg. He was known for his work on the religion and art of ancient Egypt and, in particular, his role as co-editor, with Wolfgang Helck, of the first volume of the multi-volume Lexikon der Ägyptologie. After his death his successor as co-editor for volumes 2 through 7 was Wolfhart Westendorf.
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Claudius Salmasius
1588 - 1653 (65 years)
Claude Saumaise , also known by the Latin name Claudius Salmasius, was a French classical scholar. Life Salmasius was born at Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy. When Salmasius was sixteen, his father - a counsellor of the parlement of Dijon - sent him to Paris, where he became intimate with Isaac Casaubon . In 1606 he went to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied under the jurist Denis Godefroy, and devoted himself to the classics, influenced by the librarian Jan Gruter. Here he embraced Protestantism, the religion of his mother.
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Axel W. Persson
1888 - 1951 (63 years)
Axel Waldemar Persson was a Swedish archaeologist. He was professor of classical archaeology and ancient history at Uppsala University and conducted excavations of sites in Greece and in Asia Minor.
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Wilhelm Koppers
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
Wilhelm Koppers was a Catholic priest and cultural anthropologist.
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Claudius de Goeje
1879 - 1955 (76 years)
Claudius Henricus de Goeje was a Dutch Navy officer and cartographer, who took a special interest in the Wayana and Tiriyó peoples he encountered on his expeditions to the interior of Suriname. For his lifelong interest in the Amerindian peoples of the Surinamese interior, he was awarded an endowed professorship in the Linguistics and Anthropology of Suriname and Curaçao at Leiden University in 1946. De Goeje retired in 1951 and died four years later, in 1955.
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George Macdonald
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Sir George Macdonald was a British archaeologist and numismatist who studied the Antonine Wall. Life Macdonald was born in Elgin on 30 January 1862. His father, James Macdonald, was a schoolmaster at Elgin Academy and his mother was Margaret Raff. His father moved from Elgin Academy to Ayr Academy during his early youth.
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Birger Nerman
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Birger Nerman was a Swedish archaeologist, historian and philologist who specialized in the history and culture of Iron Age Sweden. Nerman was educated at Uppsala University, where he began his career as a lecturer in Nordic philology. He participated in archaeological excavations on Stone Age and Iron Age Sweden, and became noted for his efforts to combine archaeological and philological evidence. Areas investigated by Nerman include Gamla Uppsala and Gotland.
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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.
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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.
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Georg Karo
1872 - 1963 (91 years)
Georg Heinrich Karo was a German archaeologist, known for his research into the Mycenaean and Etruscan cultures. He was twice director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens , in which capacity he excavated the Mycenaean site of Tiryns and the Temple of Artemis on Corfu. A colleague of Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, Karo published the findings from Schliemann's excavations of Grave Circle A at Mycenae, a work considered his greatest contribution to scholarship.
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Bronwyn Fredericks
Bronwyn Fredericks is an Indigenous Australian academic and administrator. Her scholarship extends across education, health, community development, policy, and Indigenist research methods, including a focus on work relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people using participatory and community led approaches. Her contributions have been recognised through the NAIDOC Education Award in 2022 and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Award in 2019. She is currently the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Queensland.
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Francis J. Haverfield
1860 - 1919 (59 years)
Francis John Haverfield, was an English ancient historian, archaeologist, and academic. From 1907 to 1919 he held the Camden Professorship of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. Education Educated at Winchester College and New College, University of Oxford. At Oxford he gained a First in Classical Moderations in 1880 and a Second in Literae Humaniores in 1883. He worked for a time under Theodor Mommsen. He won the Conington Prize at Oxford in 1891 and in the following year was appointed a Student [Fellow] of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1907 he moved to Brasenose College to become Cam...
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Ernst Langlotz
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
Ernst Langlotz was a German classical archaeologist and art historian, who specialized in Greek sculpture of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. He studied classical archaeology, philology and art history at the universities of Leipzig and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1921. As a student, his influences were archaeologist Franz Studniczka and art historian Heinrich Wölfflin . Following graduation, he took a study trip to Italy and Greece, where he met with Ernst Buschor in Athens. In 1925 he qualified as a lecturer at the University of Würzburg, and subsequently worked as a conservator at th...
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Theodor Schreiber
1848 - 1912 (64 years)
Georg Theodor Schreiber was a German archaeologist and art historian. From 1868 to 1872 he studied at the University of Leipzig, where he was a pupil of Johannes Overbeck. In 1874, by way of a travel stipend from the German Archaeological Institute, he traveled to Rome and studied under Wilhelm Henzen and Wolfgang Helbig. Afterwards, he continued his educational journey to Greece. In 1879 he obtained his habilitation for archaeology at Leipzig, where in 1885 he became an associate professor.
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Otto Weinreich
1886 - 1972 (86 years)
Otto Karl Weinreich was a German classical philologist. He is noted for his study of the Lukan Befreiungswunder through his work Gebet und Wunder. Weinrich's works were focused on the so-called liberation miracles such as the miracles of the Dionysian "circles" . The miracles also included the miraculous escape of Moses; two liberations in the text Life of Apollonius of Tyana; and, the divine deliverances in the New Testament's Acts. He was also one of the editors of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft .
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André Parrot
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
André Charles Ulrich Parrot was a French archaeologist specializing in the ancient Near East. He led excavations in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and is best known for his work at Mari, Syria, where he led important excavations from 1933 to 1975.
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Ludwig Ross
1806 - 1859 (53 years)
Ludwig Ross was a German classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavation and conservation work on the Acropolis of Athens. He was also an important figure in the early years of archaeology in the independent Kingdom of Greece, serving as Ephor General of Antiquities between 1834 and 1836.
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August Rossbach
1823 - 1898 (75 years)
August Rossbach was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. He is known for his investigations of ancient Greek metrics, defined as a discipline that studies the patterns and arrangements of syllables and words that characterize Greek poetry.
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