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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#14351
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
1732 - 1806 (74 years)
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism.
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Pontormo
1494 - 1556 (62 years)
Jacopo Carucci or Carrucci , usually known as Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo , was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine School. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine Renaissance. He is famous for his use of twining poses, coupled with ambiguous perspective; his figures often seem to float in an uncertain environment, unhampered by the forces of gravity.
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp
1889 - 1943 (54 years)
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer. Born in 1889 in Davos, and raised in Trogen, Switzerland, she attended a trade school in St. Gallen and, later, art schools in Germany, before moving back to Switzerland during the First World War. At an exhibition in 1915, she met for the first time the German-French artist Hans/Jean Arp, whom she married shortly after. It was during these years that they became associated with the Dada movement, which emerged in 1916, and Taeuber-Arp's most famous works – Dada Head – date from these years.
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Charles Le Brun
1619 - 1690 (71 years)
Charles Le Brun was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. He served as a court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him "the greatest French artist of all time". Le Brun was a dominant figure in 17th-century French art and was influenced by Nicolas Poussin.
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Ludo Waltman
#14356
Guercino
1591 - 1666 (75 years)
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , better known as Guercino , was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner contrasts with the classical equilibrium of his later works. His many drawings are noted for their luminosity and lively style.
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Léon Bakst
1866 - 1924 (58 years)
Léon Bakst – born as Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg, Лейб-Хаим Израилевич Розенберг was a Russian painter and scene and costume designer of Jewish origin. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes. He designed the décor for such productions as Carnaval , Spectre de la rose , Daphnis and Chloe , The Sleeping Princess and others.
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Walter Crane
1845 - 1915 (70 years)
Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.
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Alexander Archipenko
1887 - 1964 (77 years)
Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko was a Ukrainian-American avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist, active in France and the United States. He was one of the first to apply the principles of Cubism to architecture, analyzing human figure into geometrical forms.
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Francesco Solimena
1657 - 1747 (90 years)
Francesco Solimena was a prolific Italian painter of the Baroque era, one of an established family of painters and draughtsmen. Biography Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino in the province of Avellino.
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Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
1617 - 1682 (65 years)
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.
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Tadeusz Kantor
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Tadeusz Kantor was a Polish painter, assemblage and Happenings artist, set designer and theatre director. Kantor is renowned for his revolutionary theatrical performances in Poland and abroad. Laureate of Witkacy Prize – Critics' Circle Award .
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John La Farge
1835 - 1910 (75 years)
John La Farge was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics. La Farge made stained glass windows, mainly for churches on the American east coast, beginning with a large commission for Henry Hobson Richardson's Trinity Church in Boston in 1878, and continuing for thirty years. La Farge designed stained glass as an artist, as a specialist in color, and as a technical innovator, holding a patent granted in 1880 for superimposing panes of glass. That patent would be key in his dispu...
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Abanindranath Tagore
1871 - 1951 (80 years)
Abanindranath Tagore was the principal artist and creator of the "Indian Society of Oriental Art". He was also the first major exponent of Swadeshi values in Indian art. He founded the influential Bengal school of art, which led to the development of modern Indian painting. He was also a noted writer, particularly for children. Popularly known as 'Aban Thakur', his books Rajkahini, Buro Angla, Nalak, and Khirer Putul were landmarks in Bengali language children's literature and art.
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Jacques Charles
1746 - 1825 (79 years)
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French inventor, scientist, mathematician, and balloonist. Charles wrote almost nothing about mathematics, and most of what has been credited to him was due to mistaking him with another Jacques Charles, also a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, entering on 12 May 1785. He was sometimes called Charles the Geometer.
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Jan Matejko
1838 - 1893 (55 years)
Jan Alojzy Matejko was a Polish painter, a leading 19th-century exponent of history painting, known for depicting nodal events from Polish history. His works include large scale oil paintings such as Rejtan , the Union of Lublin , the Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversations with God , or the Battle of Grunwald . He was the author of numerous portraits, a gallery of Polish monarchs in book form, and murals in St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków. He is considered by many as the most celebrated Polish painter, and sometimes as the "national painter" of Poland. Matejko was among the notable people to re...
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Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy
#14368
Leiv Sandvik
#14369
Laura H. Carnell
1867 - 1929 (62 years)
Laura Horner Carnell was an American educator and the first dean of Temple University. Formative years Born in Philadelphia on September 7, 1867, Carnell graduated from the Philadelphia Normal School in 1866. In 1895, she was asked by Temple University founder Russell Conwell to join Temple's faculty. During her tenure, she helped found the Women's Department, and was named acting dean in 1897. In 1905, she was named dean, and served in that post until 1925; she then became associate president. Carnell was also named to the Philadelphia Board of Public Education in 1923. In 1924 she was presi...
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Stuart Davis
1892 - 1964 (72 years)
Edward Stuart Davis was an early American modernist painter. He was well known for his jazz-influenced, proto-pop art paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bold, brash, and colorful, as well as his Ashcan School pictures in the early years of the 20th century. With the belief that his work could influence the sociopolitical environment of America, Davis' political message was apparent in all of his pieces from the most abstract to the clearest. Contrary to most modernist artists, Davis was aware of his political objectives and allegiances and did not waver in loyalty via artwork during the course of his career.
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Lorenzo Ghiberti
1378 - 1455 (77 years)
Lorenzo Ghiberti , born Lorenzo di Bartolo, was an Italian Renaissance sculptor from Florence, a key figure in the Early Renaissance, best known as the creator of two sets of bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery, the later one called by Michelangelo the Gates of Paradise. Trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, he established an important workshop for sculpture in metal. His book of Commentarii contains important writing on art, as well as what may be the earliest surviving autobiography by any artist.
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Norbert Pfeiffer
#14373
Nikos Engonopoulos
1907 - 1985 (78 years)
Nikos Egonopoulos was a Greek painter and poet. He is one of the most important members of "Generation of the '30s", as well as a major representative of the surrealist movement in Greece. His work as a writer also includes critique and essays.
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Pompeo Batoni
1708 - 1787 (79 years)
Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign visitors travelling throughout Italy and reaching Rome during their "Grand Tour" led the artist to specialize in portraits.
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Alessandro Gronchi
#14376
Harold Stuart Stone
#14377
Konstantin Korovin
1861 - 1939 (78 years)
Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin was a leading Russian Impressionist painter. Biography Youth and education Konstantin was born into a wealthy merchant family of Old Believers and his mother was from the nobility, although they were officially registered as "peasants" from Vladimir Gubernia". His father, Aleksey Mikhailovich Korovin, earned a university degree and was more interested in arts and music than in the family business established by Konstantin's grandfather. Konstantin's older brother Sergei Korovin was a notable realist painter. Konstantin's relative Illarion Pryanishnikov was als...
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Peter G. Neumann
#14379
Andrea del Sarto
1486 - 1530 (44 years)
Andrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. He was known as an outstanding fresco decorator, painter of altar-pieces, portraitist, draughtsman, and colorist. Although highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist , his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
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Clarence L. Phelps
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Clarence Lucien Phelps was the first provost of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Phelps served as president of UCSB's predecessor, Santa Barbara State Normal School of Manual Arts and Home Economics, from 1918. His administrative title was changed to provost in 1944 when the campus became a part of the University of California. He retired from the position in 1946.
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Waleed Brinjikji
#14382
Jock Douglas Mackinlay
#14383
Sam Peckinpah
1925 - 1984 (59 years)
David Samuel Peckinpah was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic The Wild Bunch received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute's top 100 list. His films employed a visually innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence as well as a revisionist approach to the Western genre.
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Romare Bearden
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Romare Bearden was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.
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Guan Liang
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
Guan Liang , courtesy name Lianggong , was a Chinese painter. He was an important representative of the first generation of oil painters in China and was known for blending Western and Chinese art styles.
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Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah
1894 - 1935 (41 years)
Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah was a Lebanese electrical and electronics research engineer, mathematician and inventor. He was born in Nabatieh in present-day Lebanon. Biography He studied at the American University of Beirut. In 1916, he was conscripted into the Ottoman army, and worked as a telegraph operator. He later taught mathematics in Damascus, Syria, and at the American University of Beirut.
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Arshile Gorky
1904 - 1948 (44 years)
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent the last years of his life as a national of the United States. Along with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. The suffering and loss he experienced in the Armenian genocide had crucial influence at Gorky's development as an artist.
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Liu Yizheng
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Liu Yizheng was a Chinese historian, calligrapher, librarian, cultural scholar, educator, and academic leader. He is known for his personal charisma, spirit and eruditeness. In modern Chinese academic field, it is said that the number of famous experts in various fields including in literature, history, geography, philosophy and even natural science he educated and enlighted was the most. Liu Yizheng and Wang Bohang were honorifically called Nanyong Double Pillars during the early period of the Republic of China.
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Bernard Leach
1887 - 1979 (92 years)
Bernard Howell Leach was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery". Biography Early years Leach was born in Hong Kong. His mother Eleanor died in childbirth. He spent his first three years in Japan with his father, Andrew Leach, until he moved back to Hong Kong in 1890.
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Lee Lawrie
1877 - 1963 (86 years)
Lee Oscar Lawrie was an American architectural sculptor and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts, Classicism, and, finally, into Moderne or Art Deco.
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Daniel Cozzolino
#14392
Tamara de Lempicka
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Tamara Łempicka , better known as Tamara de Lempicka, was a Polish painter who spent her working life in France and the United States. She is best known for her polished Art Deco portraits of aristocrats and the wealthy, and for her highly stylized paintings of nudes.
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Mohammad Moin
1914 - 1971 (57 years)
Mohammad Moin was a prominent Iranian scholar of Persian literature and Iranian Studies. Education Moin studied at the Higher Institute of Science in Tehran and obtained his BA in literature and philosophy in 1934. He subsequently went to Belgium and graduated in applied psychology, anthropology and cognitive science under Elmer Knowles. On returning to Iran he carried out his doctoral research under Ebrahim Pourdavoud at the University of Tehran, culminating in a thesis with the title "Mazdayasna and its Influence on Persian Literature" for which he received a PhD with honors in Persian literature and linguistics.
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Hermann Anschütz
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
Hermann Anschütz was a German painter and professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Anschütz was born in Koblenz. His father Joseph Andreas Anschütz was an eminent musician and was in charge of a school for vocal and instrumental instruction, and Hermann's younger brother Karl Anschütz ended up as an opera conductor in the United States.
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Martin Schmelz
#14396
Walter Stewart Scacchi
#14397
Filippo Lippi
1406 - 1469 (63 years)
Filippo Lippi , also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento and a Carmelite priest. He was an early Renaissance master of a painting workshop, who taught many painters. Sandro Botticelli and Francesco di Pesello were among his most distinguished pupils. His son, Filippino Lippi, also studied under him and assisted in some late works.
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Albert Bierstadt
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Albert Bierstadt was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.
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Bernardo Strozzi
1581 - 1644 (63 years)
Bernardo Strozzi, named il Cappuccino and il Prete Genovese , was an Italian Baroque painter and engraver. A canvas and fresco artist, his wide subject range included history, allegorical, genre and portrait paintings as well as still lifes. Born and initially mainly active in Genoa, he worked in Venice in the latter part of his career. His work exercised considerable influence on artistic developments in both cities. He is considered a principal founder of the Venetian Baroque style. His powerful art stands out by its rich and glowing colour and broad, energetic brushstrokes.
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