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
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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Veranus Alva Moore
1859 - 1931 (72 years)
Veranus Alva Moore was a U.S. bacteriologist and pathologist. Early life and education He was born in Hounsfield, New York. A Cornell University graduate and faculty member, Moore served as head of the United States Department of Agriculture's Division of Animal Pathology from 1895 to 1896. He also served as president of the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1910, and as dean of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine from 1908 to 1929.
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Mitchell Siporin
1910 - 1976 (66 years)
Mitchell Siporin was a Social Realist American painter. Biography Mitchell Siporin was born on May 5, 1910, in New York City to Hyman, a truck driver, and Jennie Siporin, both immigrants from Poland, and grew up in Chicago. Siporin attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He did illustrations for Esquire and other magazines. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Siporin worked as a painter for the Illinois Art Project through the Works Progress Administration. Together with Edward Millman, he painted "the largest single mural project awarded for a post office by the Section of Fine Arts" in the...
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Giuliano da Sangallo
1445 - 1516 (71 years)
Giuliano da Sangallo was an Italian sculptor, architect and military engineer active during the Italian Renaissance. He is known primarily for being the favored architect of Lorenzo de' Medici, his patron. In this role, Giuliano designed a villa for Lorenzo as well as a monastery for Augustinians and a church where a miracle was said to have taken place. Additionally, Giuliano was commissioned to build multiple structures for Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X. Leon Battista Alberti and Filippo Brunelleschi heavily influenced Sangallo and in turn, he influenced other important Renaissance figures ...
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Anton Dereser
1757 - 1827 (70 years)
Anton Dereser was a Discalced Carmelite professor of hermeneutics and Oriental languages. Dereser was a Catholic representative of the Enlightenment, and promoted a rationalistic interpretation of the Bible. He had a marked tendency to take independent positions and defy authority—both secular and ecclesiastical—which involved him in numerous controversies and nearly cost him his life during the French Revolution.
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Dawson Dawson-Watson
1864 - 1939 (75 years)
Dawson Dawson-Watson was a British-born Impressionist painter who became famous in 1927 for winning the largest cash prize in American art, the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibition. He was one of the first members of the famous Impressionist colony in Giverny, France and was a prominent teacher in Hartford, Connecticut, St. Louis, Missouri and San Antonio, Texas.
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Lawrence Amos McLouth
1863 - 1927 (64 years)
Lawrence Amos McLouth, A.B., LL.D. was an American Germanic scholar, born at Ontonagon, Michigan He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1887, as a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. He served as principal of the Danville, Illinois High School for three years, then proceeded to Europe for additional training, studying for two years at Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Munich. He returned to the University of Michigan as instructor in German. In 1895 he became professor of Germanic languages and literatures at New York University. He edited Huldrych Zwingli's sermons and some of the novels of Friedrich Gerstäcker and Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse .
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Julius Hübner
1806 - 1882 (76 years)
Rudolf Julius Benno Hübner was a German historical painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting. He was also known as a poet and the father of Emil Hübner, a distinguished classical scholar. Life Hübner was born at Oels in Silesia, studied at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin under Schadow, and in Düsseldorf. He first attracted attention by his picture of "Ruth and Boaz" . He traveled in Italy and resided for the most part at Düsseldorf until 1839. In that year he settled at Dresden, becoming a professor in the Academy of Arts in 1841 and director of the Gallery of Paintings in 1871. He obtained the great gold medal at Brussels in 1851.
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Gooroodas Banerjee
1844 - 1918 (74 years)
Sir Gooroodas Banerjee was a Bengali Indian judge of the Calcutta High Court. In 1890, he also became the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of University of Calcutta. Education He received his early education at the Oriental Seminary, and the Hare School at the Presidency College in Kolkata. the General Assembly's Institution , the University of Calcutta. He obtained an M.A. with a focus on Mathematics in 1865, winning a University medal for attaining first place in his examinations, and passed the B.L. examination in 1866. in 1877, he obtained a Doctorate in Law.
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Joseph Nollekens
1737 - 1823 (86 years)
Joseph Nollekens R.A. was a sculptor from London generally considered to be the finest British sculptor of the late 18th century. Life Nollekens was born on 11 August 1737 at 28 Dean Street, Soho, London, the son of the Flemish painter Josef Frans Nollekens who had moved from Antwerp to London in 1733. He studied first under another Flemish immigrant in London, the sculptor Peter Scheemakers, before studying and working as an antiques dealer, restorer and copier in Rome from 1760 or 1762. The sculptures he made in Rome included a marble of Timocles Before Alexander, for which he was awarded...
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Thomas Sully
1783 - 1872 (89 years)
Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter in the United States. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included national political leaders such as United States presidents: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers. In addition to portraits of wealthy patrons, he painted landscapes and historical pieces such as the 1819 The Passage of the Delaware. His work was adapted for use on Unite...
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