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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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List of the most influential female people in Education,

#351

Irene J. Winter

#41520
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Irene J. Winter is an American art historian who is an influential and pioneering scholar of ancient Near Eastern art. Life BA Barnard College, Anthropology, 1960; MA University of Chicago, Near Eastern Studies, 1967; PhD Columbia University, Art History and Archaeology. She has taught at Queens College, CUNY, 1971-1976, The University of Pennsylvania, 1976-1988, and Harvard University since 1988, chairing the department of Fine Arts from 1993-1996, and served on the Faculty Council, 2006-2009; retired June 2009. Slade Professor, University of Cambridge, 1997. She was elected a member of the...
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#352

Sonya Douglass Horsford

#103057
Overall Influence
Sonya Douglass Horsford is an American academic who researches educational inequality in the United States, social justice, and education policy. Horsford is a professor of educational leadership at the Teachers College, Columbia University.
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#353

Edith Balas

#76687
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Edith Balas is a Professor of Art History, College of Humanities & Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Biography Balas was born in 1929 in Cluj ; she is a Holocaust survivor. She is the widow of the late mathematician Egon Balas, who was a fellow professor at Carnegie Mellon.
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#354

Daniella Tilbury

Daniella Tilbury
#97082
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Daniella Tilbury is a Gibraltarian academic, educator and sustainable development leader who was the first woman in her country to hold the title of university professor. The inaugural Vice-Chancellor and CEO of the University of Gibraltar, Tilbury, who has long been involved in sustainability issues became the first Commissioner for Sustainable Development in May 2018. She was recognized as an honorary don of St Catharine's College, Cambridge in July 2018 because of her scientific and social contributions.
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#355

Tania Ka'ai

#135050
Overall Influence
Tania M. Ka'ai, sometimes known as Tania Kaai-Oldman, is a New Zealand education academic. She is a full professor of language revitalisation at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career Ka'ai earned a 1995 education PhD from the University of Waikato, with a thesis titled ' Te tātari i te kaupapa' , which looked at ways the New Zealand qualifications framework could be used as a tool for indigenous knowledge to be integrated and recognised as a valid part of the education system in New Zealand. After working at the University of Otago, from which she was stood down in contentious circumstances, Ka'ai moved to the Auckland University of Technology with John Moorfield.
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#356

Marie Smallface Marule

Marie Smallface Marule
#106572
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
Marie Smallface Marule was a Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator. She served as executive director of the National Indian Brotherhood , chief administrator of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples , and secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta. Marule was president of Red Crow Community College for two decades, and led the creation of several indigenous studies programs. She was previously an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Lethbridge.
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#357

Rebecca Eynon

#137784
Overall Influence
Rebecca Elizabeth Eynon is a British educationalist specializing in the sociology of education. She holds a joint academic post at the Oxford Internet Institute and Department of Education, University of Oxford. She is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and she is a co-convenor for the MSc Education , at the Department for Education, University of Oxford. Her book Teenagers and Technology, Routledge, 2013 attracted coverage in the national press for its insight in to the nuances of how teenagers behave on the internet and the implications for teen...
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#358

Miriam G. Sherin

#123731
Overall Influence
Miriam G. Sherin is a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and the Learning Sciences Department at Northwestern University. Her areas of research include mathematics teaching and learning, teacher cognition, and teacher education. Sherin has published articles in Journal of Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. Her most recent book, Mathematics Teacher Noticing: Seeing Through Teachers' Eyes, was publish in 2011 by Taylor & Francis. Since 2018 she has been associate provost for undergraduate education at Northwestern University.
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#359

Kris Gutiérrez

Kris Gutiérrez
#99844
Overall Influence
Kris D. Gutiérrez is an American professor of learning sciences and literacy. She currently holds the Carol Liu Chair in Educational Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and formerly held the Inaugural Provost's Chair at University of Colorado, Boulder. She is professor emerita of the University of California, Los Angeles. She has specialized in "culture and learning in urban schools," according to the Los Angeles Times. She is a member of the National Academy of Education. In April 2020, Gutiérrez was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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#360

Sharon Patton

#110819
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Sharon F. Patton is an American historian who specializes in African art. Early life and education She was born in southern part of Chicago in 1944, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1966 from Roosevelt University. Patton attended University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where she got her master's degree three years later. The same year, she became a student at the University of Chicago and by 1980, obtained her Ph.D. in the history of African art at the Northwestern University.
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#361

Kate Crawford

Kate Crawford
#87175
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Kate Crawford is a researcher, writer, composer, producer and academic, who studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is based in New York and works as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research , the co-founder and former director of research at the AI Now Institute at NYU, a visiting professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media, a senior fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU, and an associate professor in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is also a member of the WEF's Global Agenda Council on Data...
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#362

Irene Fountas

#37995
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Irene C. Fountas is an American educational whole language theorist. She teaches at Lesley University as the Marie M. Clay Endowed Chair for Early Literacy and Reading Recovery.
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#363

Fahmida Hussain

#91928
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Dr Fahmida Hussain was born in a literary family on July 5, 1948, in Tando Jam in district Hyderabad Sindh, Pakistan. Her father Mohammad Yakoon "Niaz" was also a scholar who had translated poetry of Hafiz Shirazi from Persian to Sindhi language. Her brother Sirajul Haq Memon was also a well-known author and researcher. She is a well-known author, scholar, linguist and intellectual of Pakistan. Her fields of work have been: Literature, Linguistics, Woman studies and Anthropology. Her specialization is in the study of the great classical mystic poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Dr Fahmida was the Chairperson of Sindhi Language Authority from May 2008 to March 2015.
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#364

Margaret McKenna

#74996
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Margaret McKenna is an American religious sister and anti-militarist activist. Raised in Hackensack, New Jersey, she earned her PhD in the origins and religious thought of Christianity from the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1970s, McKenna began participating in non-violent civil disobedience with the Plowshares Movement, sometimes being arrested or imprisoned for her actions. Her activism has continued through recent years.
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#365

Maravene Loeschke

#129187
Overall Influence
1947 - 2015 (68 years)
Maravene Sheppard Loeschke was an American academic administrator who served as president of Towson University from 2012 to her retirement in 2014. She had previously taught at Towson from 1970 to 2002 before leaving Maryland for Pennsylvania, to become the provost of Wilkes University, then the president of Mansfield University.
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#366

Merlin Stone

Merlin Stone
#13378
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Merlin Stone was an American author, artist and academic. She was an important thinker of the feminist theology and Goddess movements and is known for her book When God Was a Woman. Biography Merlin Stone was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. She attended P.S. 217 and Erasmus Hall High School, where she graduated in 1949 with a Metallic Art Medal Award. After enrolling at the University of Buffalo later that year and marrying in 1950, she continued her studies while raising her children, ultimately earning a B.S. and teaching certificate in art from the institution in 1958. She became in...
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#367

Christina Maranci

#67194
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Christina Maranci is an Armenian-American researcher, writer, translator, historian, and professor at currently serving as the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University. She is considered an expert on the history and development of Armenian architecture.
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#368

Sheila Riddell

#120220
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Sheila Riddell , is an academic at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity . She has also been Director of the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research, University of Glasgow. Her research interests include equality and social inclusion in education and adult education, with particular reference to gender, social class and disability
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#369

Sheila Blair

#62940
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Sheila S. Blair is a Canadian-born American art historian and educator. Blair has served as the dual Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College, along with her husband, Jonathan M. Bloom.
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#370

Jenny Ozga

#163845
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jennifer E Ozga is a British education policy researcher. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She was Professor of Sociology of Education at Oxford from 2010 to 2015 and has also worked at the University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde, Keele University, UWE Bristol, and the Open University. Ozga was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2013.
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#371

Pearl Duncan

#90255
Overall Influence
Pearl Maud Duncan Booth was an Australian teacher, anthropologist and academic. A Gamilaraay woman, she was the first known tertiary-qualified Indigenous teacher in Australia. She was named a Queensland Great in 2008.
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#372

Kendra Stearns O'Donnell

#99489
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Kendra Stearns O'Donnell is an American educator and painter who served as the 12th principal of Phillips Exeter Academy. Biography She attended Emma Willard School, graduating in 1960, Barnard College, graduating in 1965, and Columbia University, where she received an M.A. and Ph.D. degree in English. As an assistant professor of English at Princeton University, entering the faculty in 1971, she received, as the first woman to do so, the title of university marshal. She served as a program officer at the Markle Foundation, the program director of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and as a consultant and special assistant to the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
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#373

E. Jennifer Monaghan

#81997
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
E. Jennifer Monaghan , also known as Jennifer Monaghan, was an educator and historian. She was regarded as the leading expert on literacy education in early America. She published three books and dozens of book chapters and journal articles.
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#374

Catherine Odora Hoppers

Catherine Odora Hoppers
#135212
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Catherine Alum Odora Hoppers is a Ugandan-born Professor in Development Education in South Africa. She has worked in Sweden and now is based in South Africa. Life Odora Hoppers was born in Uganda. She studied in Uganda, Zambia and Sweden. She has a doctorate in international pedagogy from Stockholm University. She has worked as an international policy adviser to UNESCO and to World Intellectual Property Organization and the governments of South Africa and Uganda.
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#375

Caroline Gipps

#120205
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Caroline Victoria Gipps was Vice-chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton from 2005 to 2011. Gipps read Psychology at Bristol University and before her appointment at Wolverhampton had been dean of research at the Institute of Education and Deputy Vice-chancellor at Kingston University.
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#376

Fadia Nasser-Abu Alhija

#163304
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Fadia Nasser-Abu Alhija is an Arab educator, and professor at Tel Aviv University. From 2012 to 2016, she was a member of the Higher Education Council in Israel. Life In 1977, she graduated from Tel Aviv University. In 1997, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
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#377

Eva Olsson

#111278
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Eva Olsson is a Swedish physicist who is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and part of the selection committee for the Nobel Prize in Physics.
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#378

Julie Dash

Julie Dash
#72774
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Julie Ethel Dash is an American filmmaker, music video and commercial director, author, and website producer. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion. The L.A. Rebellion refers to the first African and African-American students who studied film at UCLA. Through their collective efforts, they sought to put an end to the prejudices of Hollywood by creating experimental and unconventional films. The main goal of these films was to create original Black stories and bring them to the main screens. After Dash had w...
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#379

Bronwen Cowie

#168566
Overall Influence
Bronwen Cowie is a New Zealand academic. As of 2018, she is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 2000 PhD titled 'Formative assessment in science classrooms' at the University of Waikato, Cowie joined the staff, rising to full professor.
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#380

Sue McKemmish

#78841
Overall Influence
Professor Sue McKemmish is an Australian archivist and scholar in the field of archival science. She is currently the Associate Dean Graduate Research for the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Melbourne.
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#381

Jo-Ann Archibald

#144850
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jo-Ann Archibald, also known as Q’um Q’um Xiiem , is an Indigenous studies scholar from the Sto:lo First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. Archibald completed her Bachelor of Education at the University of British Columbia in 1972, followed by her Master's degree and Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University. Archibald was a member of the Board of Directors at the First Nations House of Learning at UBC and was also its Director from 1993 to 2001.
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#382

Michelle Caswell

#65435
Overall Influence
Michelle Caswell is an American archivist and academic known for her work regarding community archives and approaches to archival practice rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression. She is an associate professor of archival studies in the Department of Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles and is the director of the school's Community Archives Lab.
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#383

Maggie George

#107148
Overall Influence
Maggie L. George is an American academic administrator and educator. She served as president of Diné College from August 2011 to January 2016. In 2006, George became the inaugural director of academic affairs and Indian education for the New Mexico Higher Education Department.
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#384

Corine Schleif

#38537
Overall Influence
Corine Schleif is a professor and art historian who researches, teaches and writes about Medieval art, Renaissance art, feminist art theory, and the motivations behind the creating and destroying of art. She is faculty at Arizona State University's School of Art.
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#385

Susan MacLaury

#113933
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Susan MacLaury is the co-founder and executive director of the non-profit media company Shine Global, a licensed social worker, and a retired educator. She is also an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated producer.
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#386

Patricia Rubin

#109611
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Patricia Lee Rubin is an American art historian and a scholar of Italian Renaissance art. Early life and education Rubin received her BA from Yale University in 1975, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 1978, and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1986.
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#387

Noelle W. Arnold

#131762
Overall Influence
Noelle W. Arnold, Ph.D. , is a Senior Associate Dean, Professor and the director of the EdD in Educational Administration program in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University. She is the first female African American president of the University Council for Educational Administration, an academic organization for those researching educational administration in North America. A former administrator at the district and state level, she has served as a consultant for National Public Radio and throughout the United States advising districts in school improvement, culture a...
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#388

Liselotte Dieckmann

#79838
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
Liselotte Dieckmann was a German-American art historian and scholar of comparative literature. Life Background and early years Charlotte "Liselotte" Dieckmann was born in Frankfurt on October 31, 1902. Max Neisser , her father, was an experimental bacteriologist who in 1909 accepted a professorship at the university. Max Neisser later became Frankfurt University's first ever Professor of Hygiene. Liselotte's mother, Emma Eleonore Hallgarten-Neisser , was youngest of the four recorded children of the banker-philanthorpist Charles Hallgarten and his wife Elise. Liselotte Neisser embarked...
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#389

Louisa Elizabeth Allen

#171372
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Louisa Elizabeth Allen is a New Zealand sex education academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 2000 PhD titled Exploring relationships' : a study of young people's sexual subjectivities, knowledge and practices.' at the University of Cambridge, she moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.
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#390

Elnora M. Gilfoyle

#111377
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Elnora M. Gilfoyle is a retired American occupational therapist, researcher, educator, and university administrator. She worked at several hospitals before accepting a professorship at Colorado State University, later serving as Dean of the College of Applied Human Sciences and Provost/Academic Vice President at that university. She is also a past president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. With research interests in child development, developmental disabilities, and child abuse, she has led studies on the state and federal levels. The co-author of two books and many articles,...
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#391

Patricia Mainardi

#48917
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Patricia "Pat" Mainardi is a leading authority on nineteenth-century European art and European and American modernism, and a pioneering professor of women's studies. Career and activism Pat Mainardi was part of the radical feminist group Redstockings. In 1970, she contributed the essay, "The Politics of Housework," to the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful. It had originally been published by Redstockings earlier that year. In 1977, Mainardi became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press . WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to i...
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#392

Mary Bradburn

#84027
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Mary Bradburn was a British mathematics educator who became president of the Mathematical Association for the 1994–1995 term. Education and career Bradburn was born on 17 March 1918 in Normanby in North Yorkshire, the daughter of a marine engineer and a Scotswoman. She attended a school that didn't approve of girls studying mathematics, but allowed her to progress through the mathematics curriculum at her own rate, several years ahead of the other students.
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#393

Gail Tremblay

#77939
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Gail Tremblay was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is known for weaving baskets from film footage that depicts Native American people, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.
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#394

Hyla Willis

#94526
Overall Influence
Hyla Willis is an American artist. She is a founding member of subRosa, a feminist art collective and teaches media arts at Robert Morris University. In her work and teaching, Willis uses the cultural and political economies of graphic design, creative experimentation, and acoustic ecology.
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#395

Barbara W. Woodlee

#122201
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Barbara W. Woodlee is an American college administrator. She was president of Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, Maine, from 1984 to 2012, and since 2013 has served as chief academic officer of the Maine Community College System. She was the first woman president in both the state technical college and community college systems. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.
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#396

Merimeri Penfold

#84921
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Merimeri Penfold was a New Zealand Māori educator. She is thought to have been the first Māori woman to teach Māori language at a New Zealand university. Biography Penfold was born at Te Hāpua to Te Mutunga Rapata Hoterene and Maro Heteraka in 1920. She was a member of the Ngāti Kurī iwi. She was educated at Queen Victoria School in Auckland and Auckland Girls' Grammar School. After qualifying as a teacher, she taught at schools around the North Island before returning to university to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree.
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#397

Lynn D. Dierking

#168137
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Lynn Diane Dierking is a Sea Grant Professor in Free-Choice Learning, Science & Mathematics Education in the College of Science at Oregon State University. She is also the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education at Oregon State.
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#398

Rosemary Barrow

Rosemary Barrow
#103563
Overall Influence
1968 - 2016 (48 years)
Rosemary Julia Barrow was a Welsh art historian who specialised in classical themes in Victorian art and the painting of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in particular, whose reputation she attempted to restore.
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#399

Caroline Vout

#102443
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Caroline Vout is a British classicist and art historian. she is a Professor in classics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Christ's College. In 2021 she became Director of the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge.
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#400

Isabella Dryden

#98237
Overall Influence
1917 - Present (107 years)
Isabella Dryden is a Canadian educator known for teaching computer classes at the age of 102. She also supervised the business education curriculum used in Manitoba's public school system and is credited with making business studies a degree course at Manitoba's main university.
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