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,
#14501
Brian Thomas
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Brian Thomas was a British artist best known for his decorative work in church buildings, particularly murals and stained glass. Biography Brian Thomas was born in Barnstaple, Devon, on 19 September 1912 to Frank and Margaret . He was educated at Bradfield College and awarded a science scholarship to study at Oxford University. He chose instead to attend the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. There he won a scholarship to the British School at Rome to study mural painting and travelled widely in Italy and Spain. During the war, he worked in the camouflage section of Home Security. From 1946 to 1954, he was principal of the Byam Shaw School of Art.
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Franklin Carmichael
1890 - 1945 (55 years)
Franklin Carmichael was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven. Though he was primarily famous for his use of watercolours, he also used oil paints, charcoal and other media to capture the Ontario landscapes. Besides his work as a painter, he worked as a designer and illustrator, creating promotional brochures, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and designing books. Near the end of his life, Carmichael taught in the Graphic Design and Commercial Art Department at the Ontario College of Art .
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Albert Collins
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Albert E. Collins was an Australian painter, teacher and actor born in New Zealand. After a successful career in painting and teaching he joined ABC radio, where he gave pleasure to a generation of children as "Joe" of the Children's Session and the main character in the long-running serial "The Wide-awake Bunyip".
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Robert Douglas Laurie
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Douglas Laurie was the founder and first president of the Association of University Teachers. Career He was born in Birkenhead and educated at Birkenhead School. He took a job in a bank until 1899 before resuming his studies at Liverpool University before gaining a third class degree in zoology from Merton College, Oxford. After working as a demonstrator and assistant lecturer in the department of comparative anatomy at Oxford, he moved back to the University of Liverpool in 1906 also as a demonstrator and assistant lecturer. From 1911 he also lectured in embryology and genetics. During the ...
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James Fairchild
1817 - 1902 (85 years)
James Harris Fairchild was an American educator, author, and third president of Oberlin College. Biography Fairchild was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on November 25, 1817. His father was Grandison Fairchild. Two of his brothers were Henry Fairchild and George Fairchild, both of whom became college presidents. Soon after his birth his parents moved to Brownhelm, Lorain County, Ohio, and settled on a farm about ten miles from the present site of Oberlin College.
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Moritz Steinschneider
1816 - 1907 (91 years)
Moritz Steinschneider was a Moravian bibliographer and Orientalist. He received his early instruction in Hebrew from his father, Jacob Steinschneider , who was not only an expert Talmudist, but was also well versed in secular science. The house of the elder Steinschneider was the rendezvous of a few progressive Hebraists, among whom was his brother-in-law, the physician and writer Gideon Brecher.
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Charles Madison Sarratt
1888 - 1978 (90 years)
Charles Madison Sarratt was an American academic and administrator. He was the co-author of a textbook on mathematics. He was the chair of the department of mathematics at Vanderbilt University from 1924 to 1946, dean of students from 1939 to 1945, vice-chancellor from 1946 to 1958, and dean of alumni from 1958 to 1978.
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Margaret Garland
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
Margaret Vallis Mary Lester Garland was a British artist known as a painter of landscapes and figure subjects. Biography Garland was born in Oxford and attended the Royal College of Art design school between 1925 and 1927. There she met Helen Binyon and they became lifelong friends. After graduating from the Royal College she began to exhibit with the New English Art Club and also received a commission to create a mural for the Holy Trinity Church in Bath. The mural was completed but destroyed by bombing during World War II. After the War, Garland remained in Bath where she taught at the Bat...
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Elizabeth Gould
1804 - 1841 (37 years)
Elizabeth Gould, née Coxen , was a British artist and illustrator at the forefront of the natural history movement. Elizabeth traveled and worked alongside her husband, naturalist and author John Gould. She produced illustrations and lithographs for ornithological works, including plates in Darwin's The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle and the Goulds' seminal work The Birds of Australia. In total, Elizabeth is accredited to at least 650 works.
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Lygia Clark
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Lygia Pimentel Lins , better known as Lygia Clark, was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicalia movement. Along with Brazilian artists Amilcar de Castro, Franz Weissmann, Lygia Pape and poet Ferreira Gullar, Clark co-founded the Neo-Concrete movement. From 1960 on, Clark discovered ways for viewers to interact with her art works. Clark's work dealt with the relationship between inside and outside, and, ultimately, between self and world.
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Benozzo Gozzoli
1420 - 1497 (77 years)
Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. A pupil of Fra Angelico, Gozzoli is best known for a series of murals in the Magi Chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, depicting festive, vibrant processions with fine attention to detail and a pronounced International Gothic influence. The chapel's fresco cycle reveals a new Renaissance interest in nature with its realistic depiction of landscapes and vivid human portraits. Gozzoli is considered one of the most prolific fresco painters of his generation. While he was mainly active in Tuscany, he also worked in Umbria and Ro...
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Thomas Pollock Anshutz
1851 - 1912 (61 years)
Thomas Pollock Anshutz was an American painter and teacher. Known for his portraiture and genre scenes, Anshutz was a co-founder of The Darby School. One of Thomas Eakins's most prominent students, he succeeded Eakins as director of drawing and painting classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
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Heinrich Hofmann
1824 - 1911 (87 years)
Johann Michael Ferdinand Heinrich Hofmann was a German painter of the late 19th to early 20th century. He was the uncle of the German painter Ludwig von Hofmann. He was born in Darmstadt and died in Dresden. He is best known for his many paintings depicting the life of Jesus Christ.
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David Wiley Mullins
1944 - 1987 (43 years)
David Wiley Mullins was an American academic. He was the president of University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas from 1960 to 1974, the second longest serving president. Early life and education Mullins was born August 11, 1906, in Ash Flat, Arkansas, to Roscoe C. and Emma Matilda Mullins. He attended University of Arkansas, graduating cum laude in 1931. In 1934, he earned a master's degree from the University of Colorado. He received his doctoral degree from Columbia University in 1941.
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William Rothenstein
1872 - 1945 (73 years)
Sir William Rothenstein was an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman, lecturer, and writer on art. Though he covered many subjects – ranging from landscapes in France to representations of Jewish synagogues in London – he is perhaps best known for his work as a war artist in both world wars, his portraits, and his popular memoirs, written in the 1930s. More than two hundred of Rothenstein's portraits of famous people can be found in the National Portrait Gallery collection. The Tate Gallery also holds a large collection of his paintings, prints and drawings. Rothenstein served as Principal at the Royal College of Art from 1920 to 1935.
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Mikhail Bernshtein
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
Mikhail Davidovich Bernshtein was a Soviet painter and art educator, who lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists, professor of the Repin Institute of Arts, who played an important role in the formation of the Leningrad School of Painting.
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Olea Marion Davis
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Olea Marion Davis was a Canadian artist and craftsperson who worked in architecture and decorative art as well as sculpture and pottery. Her sculptural and ceramic work was exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, as well as at the Brussels World Fair in 1958 and the Ostende International Show in 1959. Her architectural commissions include friezes, ornamental grills and screens, and lighting fixtures for locations such as the Hotel Vancouver and Pier B.C. in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
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Victor Hasselblad
1906 - 1978 (72 years)
Victor Hasselblad was a Swedish inventor and photographer, known for inventing the Hasselblad 6x6 cm medium format camera. Life and work Hasselblad was born in Gothenburg. In 1940 Swedish Air Force officers requested Hasselblad to construct a camera that rivaled the one found in a German reconnaissance aircraft shot down over Sweden. Hasselblad founded the Victor Hasselblad AB company in 1941 to produce cameras for the Swedish Air Force.
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Paul Durand-Ruel
1831 - 1922 (91 years)
Paul Durand-Ruel was a French art dealer associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. Being the first to support artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he is known for his innovations in modernizing art markets, and is generally considered to be the most important art dealer of the 19th century. An ambitious entrepreneur, Durand-Ruel cultivated international interest in French artists by establishing art galleries and exhibitions in London, New York, Berlin, Brussels, among other places. Additionally, he played a role in the decentralization ...
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Roi Partridge
1888 - 1984 (96 years)
George Roy Partridge , also known professionally as Roi Partridge, was an American printmaker and teacher. He was born in Centralia, Washington. At age four he moved with his family to Seattle, where his father worked as a typesetter and later owned the local newspaper.
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Joe Jones
1909 - 1963 (54 years)
Joseph John Jones was an American painter, landscape painter, lithographer, and muralist. Time magazine followed him throughout his career. Jones was associated with the John Reed Club and his name is closely associated with its artistic members, most of them also contributors to the New Masses magazine.
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Simeon North
1802 - 1884 (82 years)
Simeon North was the fifth President of Hamilton College, from 1839 to 1857. North was born in Berlin, Conn., September 7, 1802. He graduated from Yale College in 1825. At graduation he entered the Yale Divinity School, and there pursued a three years' course in theology, being engaged also during the greater part of this time as a Tutor at Yale. While in the Tutorship and considering a call to pastoral service, he was elected, May 1829, to the chair of ancient languages in Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y. His ten years of valuable service as a professor there were followed by his election to the presidency of the same institution in 1839.
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Michael Loew
1907 - 1985 (78 years)
Michael Loew was an American Abstract Expressionist artist who was born in New York City. Career In the late 1920s, Loew studied at the Art Students League with the Ashcan School and was a recipient of a Sadie A. May Fellowship which allowed Loew to continue his studies in France. Michael worked for New Deal art projects from 1933–37 and during this time painted murals for U.S. post offices, high schools and the Hall of Pharmacy for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Loew chose to share his private commission with close friend and fellow artist, Willem de Kooning.
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Paul Fix
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Peter Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor who was best known for his work in Westerns. Fix appeared in more than 100 movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career between 1925 and 1981. Fix portrayed Marshal Micah Torrance, opposite Chuck Connors's character in The Rifleman from 1958 to 1963. He later appeared with Connors in the 1966 Western film Ride Beyond Vengeance.
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Julian Hoke Harris
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Julian Hoke Harris was an American artist. Life He was born in Carrollton, Georgia in 1906 the youngest child of Joseph and Margaret Harris. His father owned Harris Hardware on the square in Carrollton. He graduated from Georgia Tech in 1928 with a B.S. in architecture. In 1930, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After the first year of study, he was granted by the Academy a full scholarship for the remaining three years. He graduated in 1934 and returned to Atlanta Georgia. He was licensed by the State of Georgia as an architect and worked briefly for architect Philip Schutze.
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Jacopo Sansovino
1486 - 1570 (84 years)
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian Renaissance sculptor and architect, best known for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. These are crucial works in the history of Venetian Renaissance architecture. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity. Giorgio Vasari uniquely printed his Vita of Sansovino separately.
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Chen Jintao
1871 - 1939 (68 years)
Chen Jintao was a Chinese technocrat who founded the Bank of China. He was chief financial officer and head of currency reform in the Republic of China and served as finance minister for warlords in Beijing, Nationalists in Nanjing, and the Nanjing Regime. Chen was responsible for innovations and improvements in printing and engraving, as well as for various currency reforms.
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Philip Lindsley
1786 - 1855 (69 years)
Philip Lindsley was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and classicist. He served as the acting president of the College of New Jersey from 1822 to 1824, and as the first president of the now-defunct University of Nashville from 1824 to 1850.
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Sarah A. Worden
1855 - 1918 (63 years)
Sarah A. Worden was an American painter of landscapes and portraits. She was also an art instructor in various schools and for several years, at Mount Holyoke College. Early life and education Sarah Agnes Worden was born in Xenia, Ohio, October 10, 1853.
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Edward H. Bersoff
Edward H. Bersoff founded BTG, Inc. and served as its chief executive and president until 2001, when he sold the company to Titan Corporation. He was elected to the board of Titan in February 2002 and holds board positions with a number of other organizations.
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Antoni Żabko-Potopowicz
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
Antoni Żabko-Potopowicz was an economist of agriculture, economic historian, and professor at Warsaw Agricultural University. He was a member of Polish Science Society and co-founder of the 1945 incarnation of the Polish Economic Society .
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Anastas Ishirkov
1868 - 1937 (69 years)
Academic professor Anastas Todorov Ishirkov was a Bulgarian scientist, geographer and ethnographer. He was the founder of geographical science in Bulgaria and was a member of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
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Fra Angelico
1400 - 1455 (55 years)
Fra Angelico, OP was a Dominican friar and Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.
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Adolf Schinnerer
1876 - 1949 (73 years)
Adolf Schinnerer was a German artist, active in painting, drawing and graphic design. He was also an instructor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where his students included Karl Gatermann the Younger.
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Anton Graff
1736 - 1813 (77 years)
Anton Graff was an eminent Swiss portrait artist. Among his famous subjects were Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Heinrich von Kleist, Frederick the Great, Friederike Sophie Seyler, Johann Gottfried Herder, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn and Christian Felix Weiße. His pupils included Emma Körner, Philipp Otto Runge and Karl Ludwig Kaaz.
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Gerald Mohr
1914 - 1968 (54 years)
Gerald Mohr was an American radio, film, and television character actor and frequent leading man, who appeared in more than 500 radio plays, 73 films, and over 100 television shows. Early years Mohr was born in Manhattan to Henrietta , a singer, and Sigmond Mohr. He was educated in Dwight Preparatory School in Manhattan, where he learned to speak French and German and also learned to ride horses and play the piano.
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Mikhail Vrubel
1856 - 1910 (54 years)
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel was a Russian painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. A prolific and innovative master in various media such as painting, drawing, decorative sculpture, and theatrical art, Vrubel is generally characterized as one of the most important artists in Russian symbolist tradition and a pioneering figure of Modernist art.
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John Donald Wade
1892 - 1963 (71 years)
John Donald Wade was an American biographer, author, essayist, and teacher. Early life Wade was born in Marshallville, Georgia. His father was a country doctor who served as a surgeon in the Civil War. Wade was descended from the first governor of Georgia, John Adam Treutlen.
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Luigi Chiarini
1789 - 1832 (43 years)
Luigi Chiarini was an Italian abbot, orientalist and translator, born near Montepulciano , April 26, 1789, died February 28, 1832, in Warsaw , known for the first translation of the Talmud in French. His translation of the Talmud benefited from a grant from Tsar Nicholas I .
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Wenonah Bell
1890 - 1981 (91 years)
Wenonah Day Bell was an American painter known for depictions of rural life in the southern United States and urban scenes of New York. Bell was a native of Trenton, South Carolina, and the daughter of a Baptist minister. The Bell family lived in numerous small towns throughout the Piedmont region during Bell's childhood. They eventually settling in Gainesville, Georgia, where her father established a ministry.
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Percy French
1854 - 1920 (66 years)
William Percy French was an Irish songwriter, author, poet, entertainer and painter. Life French was born at Clooneyquinn House, near Tulsk, County Roscommon, the son of an Anglo-Irish landlord, Christopher French, and Susan Emma French . He was the third of nine children. His younger sister, Emily later Emily de Burg Daly was also a writer.
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Xavier Martínez
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a well-known bohemian figure in San Francisco, the East Bay, and the Monterey Peninsula and one of the co-founders of two California artists' organizations and an art gallery. He painted in a tonalist style and also produced monotypes, etchings, and silverpoint.
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Franciszek Zachara
1898 - 1966 (68 years)
Franciszek Zachara was a Polish pianist and composer who concertized extensively throughout Europe in the years leading up to 1928. He was a professor of piano at a Polish conservatory from 1922–1928, and two American colleges from around this time until his death in 1966. Zachara composed well over 150 works, including many works for piano solo, a piano concerto, a symphony, several works for band, and various chamber pieces. The archive of his manuscripts is held at the Warren D. Allen Music Library at Florida State University. Most of these manuscripts are originals from the composer's ow...
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Fra Bartolomeo
1472 - 1517 (45 years)
Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo , also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Bartolommeo di San Marco, Paolo di Jacopo del Fattorino, and his original nickname Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He spent all his career in Florence until his mid-forties, when he travelled to work in various cities, as far south as Rome. He trained with Cosimo Rosselli and in the 1490s fell under the influence of Savonarola, which led him to become a Dominican friar in 1500, renouncing painting for several years. Typically his paintings are of static groups of figures in su...
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Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon was a Canadian academic and Chancellor of McMaster University. Born on a farm near Delhi in Norfolk County, Ontario, McCrimmon graduated from the University of Toronto in 1890. In 1892, he started teaching at Woodstock College and five years later became its principal. From 1903 to 1904, he studied at the University of Chicago. In 1906, he was appointed a professor at McMaster University. From 1911 to 1922, he was the Chancellor of McMaster.
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Józef Wieniawski
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Józef Wieniawski was a Polish pianist, composer, conductor and teacher. He was born in Lublin, the younger brother of the famous violinist Henryk Wieniawski. After Franz Liszt, he was the first pianist to publicly perform all the études by Chopin. He appeared with Liszt in recitals in Paris, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, Leipzig and Amsterdam.
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Stuart Sutcliffe
1940 - 1962 (22 years)
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was a British painter and musician best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" , as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination of group names with double meanings , so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word beat . As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometim...
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George C. Griffin
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
George C. Griffin served in various positions at his alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology, most notably as dean of men from 1946 to 1964. He was known variously as "the best friend of all Tech men" and "Mr. Georgia Tech."
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Fred Clark
1914 - 1968 (54 years)
Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film and television character actor, often cast in authoritative roles. Early years Born in Lincoln, California, Clark was the son of Fred Clark Sr. He attended Stanford University with plans to become a doctor, but participation in a college production of Yellow Jack diverted his attention to acting. He changed his major to drama and later received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, he was elected his class's most promising actor.
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John Keith Benton
1896 - 1956 (60 years)
John Keith Benton was an American theologian and university administrator. He served as the Dean of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School from 1939 to 1956. Early life John Keith Benton was born on May 24, 1896, in Banks, Alabama. His father was Arthur Franklin Benton and his mother, Martha Frederick.
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