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 female people in Education,
#851
Krista Kodres
#122231
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Krista Kodres is an Estonian art historian and former backstroke and freestyle swimmer. From 1971 until 1974, she become 7-times Estonian champion in different swimming disciplines and was a member of Estonian swimming team. She has set 13 national records.
Go to Profile#852
Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine
#183522
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anne-Catherine Robert is a Belgian museum professional and lecturer at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne who also served as Director General of the International Council of Museums , from May 2014 through November 2016.
Go to Profile#853
Noushafarin Ansari
#43564
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Noushafarin Ansari is an Iranian librarian, educator, and manager. Life Her parents were diplomats; therefore she was exposed to many languages and cultures in Asia and Europe. In 1958-1960 she studied librarianship in Geneva, a discipline she continued at McGill University and at the University of Toronto. She worked as a librarian at the Delhi Public Library, and Tehran University Central library, and was Library Director at the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at Tehran University. In 1962 she married Mehdi Mohaghegh, a renowned Iranian university professor and scholar.
Go to Profile#854
Ewa Chojecka
#173184
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Ewa Sabine Chojecka is a Polish art historian who served as chair of art history at the University of Silesia in Katowice from 1977 to 2003, and chairwoman of the Silesian Museum and the Bielsko-Biała Museum and Castle. She was awarded a Georg Dehio Cultural Prize in 2013, and invested with the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1989.
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Joanne Cuthbertson
#192318
Overall Influence
Joanne Cuthbertson was the chancellor of the University of Calgary in Alberta from 2006 until 2010.
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Helen Doron
#182312
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Helen Doron is a British-Israeli linguist and educator based in Israel. She is best known as the creator of the Helen Doron Method of teaching and as the Founder of Helen Doron Educational Group, an international pedagogic network for babies, children, and teens learning English and other programs, including Helen Doron Academy Kindergartens, Helen Doron International, MathRiders and Helen Doron Connect.
Go to Profile#857
Debora L. Silverman
#116418
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Debora Leah Silverman is professor and University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD from Princeton University in 1983. She is a specialist in the history of Art Nouveau. She was a Guggenheim fellow in 1992 in fine arts research.
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Bette Gordon
#172826
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bette Gordon is an American filmmaker and professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. She is best known for her films Variety and Handsome Harry both of which received critical acclaim in North America and abroad.
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Anna Kortelainen
#87361
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Anna Taina Aleksandra Kortelainen is a Finnish scholar, art historian and non-fiction writer. Life Kortelainen defended her doctoral dissertation in 2002 at the University of Turku about Albert Edelfelt. She teaches art history at the University of Helsinki.
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Charlotte Eyerman
#175129
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Charlotte Nalle Eyerman is an American museum director and curator and expert in 19th century French art. She was appointed Director and Chief Curator of the JPMorgan Chase art collection in 2017. She is a member of the board of trustees at Accountability Lab. Eyerman has also served as Director and chief executive officer of the Monterey Museum of Art , and as Director of the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.
Go to Profile#861
Laura Malosetti Costa
#164490
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Laura Malosetti Costa is a Uruguayan-born Argentine social and cultural anthropologist, researcher, art historian, and essayist. She is also a curator of art exhibitions and the author of several books on Latin American art. She was recognized with the Konex Award in 2006 and 2016.
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Dominga Sotomayor Castillo
#191040
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo is a Chilean filmmaker. Biography She graduated from Universidad Católica de Chile with a degree on Audiovisual Direction in 2007, followed by a Master at the Escola de Cinema y Audiovisuals de Catalunya in Film direction. She directed several short films that were shown at festivals internationally. Her first feature film, Thursday Till Sunday was developed as part of the program La Résidence by Cinéfondation / Festival de Cannes, and premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it was awarded the Hivos Tiger Award.
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Florence E. Bamberger
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Florence Eilau Bamberger was an American pedagogue, school supervisor, progressive education advocate, and author. Influenced by the ideas of John Dewey, she researched, lectured, and wrote extensively on the concept of child-centered education. She spent most of her career as a professor of education in the department of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and was the first woman to attain a full professorship at that university. From 1937 to 1947 she served as director of Johns Hopkins' College for Teachers. After her retirement, she taught in private elementary schools in Baltimore, Ma...
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Kathryn Brown
1900 - Present (126 years)
Kathryn Jane Brown is a British art historian and Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at Loughborough University. Career Educated at Seymour College, Adelaide, and the University of Adelaide, South Australia, Brown was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed a PhD at Balliol College, Oxford under the supervision of Malcolm Bowie. Brown then became a private equity lawyer in the City of London. Trained at Slaughter and May, Brown worked as an associate successively at Slaughter and May and then became an associate, and later Counsel, in the London office of US law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy.
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Anna Botsford Comstock
1854 - 1930 (76 years)
Anna Botsford Comstock was an acclaimed author, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Cornell University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study , is now in its 24th edition. Comstock was an American artist and wood engraver known for illustrating entomological text books with her husband, John Henry Comstock including their first joint effort, The Manual for the Study of Insects . Comstock worked with Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Georgia as part of the department of Nature Study at Cornell University.
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Minnie Steckel
1890 - 1952 (62 years)
Minnie Steckel was an American teacher, psychologist, clubwoman, and an activist involved in the women's poll tax repeal movement. Steckel began her career as a school teacher and worked her way up to school principal, superintendent and school psychologist, earning her bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees. From 1932 until her death in 1952, she was the dean of women and counselor at Alabama College. She served as president of the local Montevallo chapter of the American Association of University Women from 1937 to 1939, as president of the state chapter of the Business and Professional Wome...
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Myrtilla Avery
1869 - 1959 (90 years)
Myrtilla Avery was an American classical scholar focused on Medieval art, former chair of the Department of Art at Wellesley College and director of the Farnsworth Art Museum from 1930–1937. Biography Avery graduated in 1891 from Wellesley College, majoring in Greek. After in which she started taking classes at University at Albany, SUNY, while working in the university library. By 1895 she earned a bachelor's degree in Library Science. Her Master of Arts degree from Wellesley was in 1913 and a doctorate in art history from Radcliffe College in 1927.
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Margaret Whinney
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Margaret Dickens Whinney was a British art historian who taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her published works included books on British sculpture and architecture. Life Whinney was the daughter of Thomas Bostock Whinney, an architect, and Sydney Margaret Dickens, the granddaughter of Charles Dickens. She was educated at the University of London, graduating in art history in 1935. She had published her first article in 1930, under the supervision of her mentor Tancred Borenius.
Go to Profile#869
Eleanor McDougall
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Eleanor McDougall was a Resident Lecturer in Classics at Westfield College, London from 1902, and later one of the pioneers in women's education in India. She was the First Principal of Women's Christian College in Madras, Madras Presidency in British India in 1915.
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Helga Eng
1875 - 1966 (91 years)
Helga Kristine Eng was a Norwegian psychologist and educationalist. She was the third woman to receive a doctor's degree in Norway, and the first to do so in psychology. Early life and education She was born in Rakkestad as a daughter of teacher and smallholder Hans Andersen Kirkeng and Johanne Marie Sæves . She had seven siblings. She graduated from Asker Seminary in 1895, and started a career as a primary school teacher. She started in Lier, continued in Moss from 1897 to 1900 when she was hired at Lakkegata School at Tøyen, Oslo.
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Edith Hall Dohan
1877 - 1943 (66 years)
Edith Hayward Hall Dohan was an American archaeologist who earned Bryn Mawr College's first classical archaeology Ph.D. Hall was part of an excavation team with Harriet Boyd in her early career that most notably brought the first Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean collection to be displayed in America. Hall later wrote The Decorative Art of Crete in the Bronze Age, which was published in 1906 that breaks down the evolution of the art and pottery in Crete from the Bronze Age.
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Jeannette Augustus Marks
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Jeannette Augustus Marks was an American professor at Mount Holyoke College. She is the namesake of the Jeannette Marks Cultural Center , which provides support and programming for LGBT students and allies.
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Gabriela Mistral
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga , known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral , was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator, and Catholic. She was a member of the Secular Franciscan Order or Third Franciscan order.She was the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences.
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Anna Cox Brinton
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Anna Shipley Cox Brinton was an American classics scholar, college administrator, writer, and Quaker leader, active with the American Friends Service Committee . She has credited with being one of those who "reinvented Quakerism" for the 20th century.
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Lucy Donnelly
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Lucy Martin Donnelly was a teacher of English at Bryn Mawr College. She was head of the English department starting in 1914. Sources James, E. T, Wilson James, J. and Boyer, P. S. 1971, Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary , p. 499Russell, B. and Griffin, N. 1992, The selected letters of Bertrand Russell, p. Lucy Donnelly
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Caroline Beaumont Zachry
1894 - 1945 (51 years)
Caroline Beaumont Zachry was an educational psychologist born in New York City to James Greer Zachry and Elise Clarkson Thompson. Her maternal grandfather was Hugh Smith Thompson the Governor of South Carolina from 1882 to 1886.
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Edith Clara Batho
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Dr. Edith Clara Batho was Principal of Royal Holloway College, University of London from 1945 to 1962. Education She was educated at Highbury Hill High School, now Highbury Fields School in Islington, London. She then went on to University College, London and graduated in English in 1915.
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Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth
1905 - 1969 (64 years)
Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth was an archaeologist and art history and classical studies professor. She studied at Vassar and received her doctorate at Radcliffe. In addition to her research contributions to the classics, she also bridged her interest to contemporary art and architecture. Her grandfather was Henry van Ingen.
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Maria Montessori
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for her philosophy of education and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, becoming one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy; she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally.
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Stella Kramrisch
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Stella Kramrisch was an American pioneering art historian and curator who was the leading specialist on Indian art for most of the 20th century. Her scholarship remains a benchmark to this day. She researched and taught Indian art history for more than six decades on three continents. After writing her dissertation on the essence of early-buddhist sculpture in India, she was invited to teach at Kala Bhavana in Shantiniketan and went on to teach at Calcutta University from 1924 to 1950. In Europe, Kramrisch worked at the Courtauld Institute, London . From 1950, she was professor at the Univer...
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Jodie Hunter
Jodie Margaret Roberta Hunter is a New Zealand academic, of Cook Island Māori descent, and is a full professor at Massey University. Hunter researches mathematics pedagogy, with a particular interest in culturally responsive teaching of mathematics to Pasifika students. She is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow and has been a Fulbright Scholar.
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Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt was an American educator, activist, and prominent member and leader of numerous organizations. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her doctoral dissertation at Yale, and studied as a fellow at Oxford. After teaching at the University of Idaho, the Lewiston State Normal School, and with the Extension Division of the University of California, Reinhardt was elected president of Mills College in 1916, and held the position until 1943, making her the longest serving president in the history of the school.
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Sirarpie Der Nersessian
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Sirarpie Der Nersessian was an Armenian art historian, who specialized in Armenian and Byzantine studies. Der Nersessian was a renowned academic and a pioneer in Armenian art history. She taught at several institutions in the United States, including Wellesley College in Massachusetts and as Henri Focillon Professor of Art and Archaeology at Harvard University. She was a senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, its deputy director from 1954–55 and 1961–62, and a member of its Board of Scholars. Der Nersessian was also a member of several international institutions such as the British Academy , the Ac...
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Tsuda Umeko
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
was a Japanese educator who founded Tsuda University. She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist, and at the age of 7, she became Japan's first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission.
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Anna Maria Brizio
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Anna Maria Brizio was professor of art history at the University of Milan, a member of the Commissione Vinciana and an authority on the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Selected publications Italian Per il quarto centenario dalla nascita di Paolo Caliari detto Paolo Veronese. Note per una definizione critica dello stile di Paolo Veronese, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», 31 , fasc. 1Un'opera giovanile del Botticelli, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», marzo 1933, fasc. 2, pp. 108–119Per il quinto centenario Verrocchiesco , in «Emporium», dicembre 1935, pp. 293–303Vercelli.
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Françoise Henry
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Françoise Henry was a scholar of early Irish art, archaeologist, and art historian. While at University College Dublin , she founded the Department of History of European Painting in 1965, and was head until she retired in 1974.
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Caroline Hazard
1856 - 1945 (89 years)
Caroline Hazard was an American educator, philanthropist, and author. She served as the fifth president of Wellesley College, from 1899 to 1910. Early life Caroline Hazard was born in Peace Dale, Rhode Island in 1856. Her father was industrialist Rowland Hazard II and her mother was Margaret A. Hazard, née Rood. She was educated at the Mary A. Shaw School in Providence and received private tutoring at Brown University and in Europe. She conducted welfare programs in Peace Dale, and wrote on a variety of topics, including biography, poetry, and Rhode Island history. She was the founder of the...
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Renate Wagner-Rieger
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Renate Wagner-Rieger was an Austrian art historian and educator, with significant research in the fields of architecture and historicism. Education and career Renate Rieger was born January 10, 1921, in Vienna. In 1942 she studied art history at the University of Vienna, under Hans Sedlmayr and Karl Oettinger and received her PhD in 1947 under Karl Maria Swoboda on the architectural facade of the Viennese apartments from the 16th to the mid-18th century. In 1956 she became a lecturer at University of Vienna and in the same year married historian Walter Wagner.
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Dorothy L. Sayers
1893 - 1957 (64 years)
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. Born in Oxford, Sayers was brought up in rural East Anglia and educated at Godolphin School in Salisbury and Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with first class honours in medieval French. She worked as an advertising copywriter between 1922 and 1929 before success as an author brought her financial independence. Her first novel Whose Body? was published in 1923. Between then and 1939 she wrote ten more novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. In 1930, in Strong Poison, she introduced a leading female character, Harriet Vane, the object of Wimsey's love.
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Mary McLeod Bethune
1875 - 1955 (80 years)
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was an American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, established the organization's flagship journal Aframerican Women's Journal, and presided as president or leader for a myriad of African American women's organizations including the National Association for Colored Women and the National Youth Administration's Negro Division.
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Mary Lyon
1797 - 1849 (52 years)
Mary Mason Lyon was an American pioneer in women's education. She established the Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts, in 1834. She then established Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1837 and served as its first president for 12 years. Lyon's vision fused intellectual challenge and moral purpose. She valued socioeconomic diversity and endeavored to make the seminary affordable for students of modest means.
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Mary Church Terrell
1863 - 1954 (91 years)
Mary Church Terrell was an American civil rights activist, journalist, teacher and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street School —the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Colored Women's League of Washington .
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Anna J. Cooper
1858 - 1964 (106 years)
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to receive a world-class education and claim power and prestige in academic and social circles. In 1924, she received her PhD from the Sorbonne, University of Paris. Cooper became the fourth African-American woman to earn a doctoral degree. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
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Maria Grzegorzewska
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Maria Grzegorzewska was a Polish educator who brought the special education movement to Poland. Born to a family from the Żmudź region, she was strongly influenced by her parents' beliefs in humanitarianism. After attending clandestine schools to earn her basic education from Polish rather than Russian educators, she obtained her teaching credentials in Lithuania. She continued her education at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and in 1913 joined her countrywoman, Józefa Joteyko in Brussels to study at the International Paedological Faculty. When her studies in Belgium were interrupted by...
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Christa McAuliffe
1948 - 1986 (38 years)
Sharon Christa McAuliffe was an American teacher and astronaut from Concord, New Hampshire who was killed on the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L, where she was serving as a payload specialist.
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Nadezhda Krupskaya
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya was a Russian revolutionary and the wife of Vladimir Lenin. Krupskaya was born in Saint Petersburg to an aristocratic family that had descended into poverty, and she developed strong views about improving the lives of the poor. She embraced Marxism and met Lenin at a Marxist discussion group in 1894. Both were arrested in 1896 for revolutionary activities and after Lenin was exiled to Siberia, Krupskaya was allowed to join him in 1898 on the condition that they marry. The two settled in Munich and then London after their exile, before briefly returning to Rus...
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Anna Leonowens
1831 - 1915 (84 years)
Anna Harriette Leonowens was an Anglo-Indian or Indian-born British travel writer, educator, and social activist. She became well known with the publication of her memoirs, beginning with The English Governess at the Siamese Court , which chronicled her experiences in Siam , as teacher to the children of the Siamese King Mongkut. Leonowens's own account was fictionalised in Margaret Landon's best-selling novel Anna and the King of Siam , as well as adaptations for other media such as Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 musical The King and I.
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Fatima Sheikh
1831 - 1900 (69 years)
Fatima Sheikh was an Indian educator and social reformer, who was a colleague of the social reformers Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule She is widely considered to be India’s first Muslim woman teacher.
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Millicent Mackenzie
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
Millicent Hughes Mackenzie was a British professor of education at University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, the first female professor in Wales and the first appointed to a fully chartered university in the United Kingdom. She wrote on the philosophy of education, founded the Cardiff Suffragette branch, became the only woman candidate in Wales in the 1918 general election, and was a key initiator of Steiner-Waldorf education in the United Kingdom.
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Fanny Jackson Coppin
1837 - 1913 (76 years)
Fanny Jackson Coppin was an American educator, missionary and lifelong advocate for female higher education. One of the first Black alumnae of Oberlin College, she served as principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia and became the first African American school superintendent in the United States.
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