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 Education,
#2301
Ignacio Jordán Claudio de Asso y del Río
1742 - 1814 (72 years)
Ignacio Jordán Claudio de Asso y del Río was a Spanish diplomat, naturalist, lawyer and historian. He sometimes used the pseudonym of Melchor de Azagra. Biography Of noble birth, he received an excellent education, studying Classical Greek and Latin in the college known as the Escuelas Pías of Zaragoza and philosophy under the Jesuits at the Real e Imperial Colegio de Nobles de Nuestra Señora y Santiago de Cordellas, located in Barcelona . He studied at the University of Cervera, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1760, and at the University of Zaragoza, where he studied jurispru...
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Theophilus C. Abbot
1826 - 1892 (66 years)
Theophilus Capen Abbot was an American educator and the third President of the State Agricultural College , serving from 1863 until 1885. Early life He was born in Vassalboro, Maine, and spent his early life in Augusta, Maine. At the age of fifteen he entered Colby University in Waterville, Maine. He graduated in 1845 with his bachelor's degree, and received his A.M. degree from Colby four years later.
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August Zeune
1778 - 1853 (75 years)
Johann August Zeune was a German teacher of geography and Germanic languages, as well as the founder of the Berlin Foundation for the Blind. Life Zeune was born on 12 May 1778 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg as the son of Johann Karl Zeune, professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg. In his parents' house, he was educated by his father and tutor. In 1798 Zeune started studying at the Wittenberg University. He graduated with his thesis on the history of geography, and was awarded for a short time the dignity of an academic faculty, as a Quasi-professor of Geography. His novel „Höhenschichte...
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John Wood
1775 - Present (251 years)
John Wood was a professor of mathematics at the College of William & Mary, political writer, and cartographer, who tutored the grandchildren of Thomas Jefferson. Life A native of Scotland, Wood spent much of his early years in France and Switzerland before immigrating to New York City in 1800. Upon arriving in the United States, he soon met Aaron Burr and wrote a number of pamphlets supporting Burr's political stance. One of Wood’s efforts, The History of the Administration of John Adams was deemed so controversial that Burr unsuccessfully attempted to suppress it. Wood briefly lived in Kentucky in 1806 and resided thereafter in Richmond, Virginia.
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John Hiram Lathrop
1799 - 1866 (67 years)
John Hiram Lathrop was a well-known American educator during the early 19th century. He served as the first President of both the University of Missouri and the University of Wisconsin as well as president of Indiana University.
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Josef Strzygowski
1862 - 1941 (79 years)
Josef Rudolph Thomas Strzygowski was a Polish-Austrian art historian known for his theories promoting influences from the art of the Near East on European art, for example that of Early Christian Armenian architecture on the early Medieval architecture of Europe, outlined in his book, Die Baukunst der Armenier und Europa. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History.
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Gustave Larroumet
1852 - 1903 (51 years)
Louis Barthélemy Gustave Paul Larroumet was a French art historian, literary critic, and administrator. Biography His father was an army officer. After completing his secondary education at the lycée in Cahors, he initially considered a military career, then began studying medicine, but was forced to quit, due to poor health. Despite this, he volunteered at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, serving with the Army of the Loire as a sniper. After the war, he was presented with the Médaille Militaire
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Anders Sparrman
1748 - 1820 (72 years)
Anders Sparrman was a Swedish naturalist, abolitionist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Biography Sparrman was the son of a clergyman. At the age of nine he enrolled at Uppsala University, beginning medical studies at fourteen and becoming one of the outstanding pupils of Linnaeus. In 1765 he went on a voyage to China as ship's doctor, returning two years later and describing the animals and plants he had encountered. On this voyage he met Carl Gustaf Ekeberg.
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George Pierce Baker
1866 - 1935 (69 years)
George Pierce Baker was a professor of English at Harvard and Yale and author of Dramatic Technique, a codification of the principles of drama. Biography Baker graduated in the Harvard College class of 1887, served as Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Monthly, and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwriting in 1905. He was instrumental in creating the Harvard Theatre Collection at Harvard University Library. In 1908 he began the Harvard Dramatic Club, acting as its sponsor, and in 1912 he founded Workshop 47 to provide a forum for the performance of plays developed within his English class.
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Ahmad Huseinzadeh
1812 - 1887 (75 years)
Ahmad Huseinzadeh also known as Sheikh Ahmad Salyani — third Sheikh ul-Islam of the Caucasus, maternal grandfather of Ali bey Huseynzade. Early life He was born in Salyan in 1812 to Ali Huseynzadeh. He was brought up initially from 1822 to 1832 in his hometown by his uncle Akhund Molla Muhammad Hussein. Then he became a student of the Baku mujtahid Akhund Molla Ramazan, and studied with him for another six years, until 1838 when he completed the full course of Arabic sciences.
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Giulio Mancini
1559 - 1630 (71 years)
Giulio Mancini was a seicento physician, art collector, art dealer and writer on a range of subjects. His writings on contemporary artists like Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci remain one of our earliest sources of biographical information; his Considerazioni being an important source on art in early 17th-century Rome.
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Ying Qianli
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Ying Qianli , also known as Ying Jiliang , was a Manchu Bannerman, a prominent Catholic layman who devoted himself to education. He was proficient in English, French, Spanish and Latin. Biography Ying was born in Beijing on November 11, 1900, to Ying Lianzhi, founder of Ta Kung Pao and Fu Jen Catholic University, and Aisin Gioro Shuzhong, a member of the Qing dynasty royal family. At the age of 14, Ying was taken to the United Kingdom by Roman Catholic missionary Frédéric-Vincent Lebbe. After graduating from University of London in 1924 he returned to China, he helped his father to establish t...
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Richard Muther
1860 - 1909 (49 years)
Richard Muther was a German critic and historian of art, born at Ohrdruf in Germany. He studied at Heidelberg and at Leipzig, where he took his doctor's degree. In 1895 he became professor of art history at the University of Breslau.
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Henry Coppée
1821 - 1895 (74 years)
Henry Coppée was an American educator and author. From 1885 to 1887 he was a vice president, from 1887 to 1888 he was president of the Aztec Club of 1847. Early life and education Coppée was born in Savannah, Georgia. His family was initially from France and settled in Haiti.
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Alice Gordon Gulick
1847 - 1903 (56 years)
Alice Gordon Gulick was an American missionary teacher in Spain. Early life Alice Winfield Gordon was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Auburndale, Massachusetts, the daughter of James M. Gordon and Mary Clarkson Gordon. Her parents were active in the abolition movement; her sisters Anna Adams Gordon and Elizabeth Putnam Gordon were temperance activists. She attended Mount Holyoke Seminary from 1863 to 1867.
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John Whelan Sterling
1816 - 1885 (69 years)
John Whelan Sterling was a pioneer faculty member of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. When the first university chancellor John Hiram Lathrop opened the school in 1849, he and Sterling were the only two professors. As an early faculty member and in his capacity as dean of faculty and vice chancellor from 1861 to 1867, Sterling was often called the "father of the university", despite never holding the office of president or chancellor.
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Henri Focillon
1881 - 1943 (62 years)
Henri Focillon was a French art historian. He was the son of the printmaker Victor-Louis Focillon. He was Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Professor of Art History at the University of Lyon, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and then in the United States, where he went into exile and taught at Yale University. A poet, printmaker, and teacher, Focillon trained generations of art historians including George Kubler. He remains best known for his works on medieval art, most of which were translated into English.
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Robert Blackburn
1927 - 1990 (63 years)
Robert Blackburn was an Irish educationalist. He was an early pioneer of the International Baccalaureate Organisation and was instrumental in establishing the first United World College in the early 1960s. In 1968, Blackburn was appointed United World College International Secretary.
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Johannes du Plessis Scholtz
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Johannes du Plessis Scholtz was a South African philologist, art historian, and art collector. Scholarly life Scholtz studied first at the University of Stellenbosch, completing an M.A. in 1920. He then took a job assisting the philologist in editing Die Huisgenoot, but he moved shortly thereafter over to the Nasionale Pers to be head of the publication department. In 1924 he went to Amsterdam and in 1927 he received a PhD from the Gemeentelijke Universiteit. He returned to the Netherlands for two years to pursue further studies in Dutch dialectology and structural linguistics, studies whic...
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John Charles Alderson
#2321
James Donaldson
1831 - 1915 (84 years)
Sir James Donaldson was a Scottish classical scholar, and educational and theological writer. Life Donaldson was born in Aberdeen on 26 April 1831. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Marischal College, Aberdeen, New College, London, and Berlin University. In 1854 he was appointed Rector of the Stirling High School where he remained for two years, before leaving for the Royal High School of Edinburgh, of which he was appointed Rector in 1866.
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Lorenzo D. Harvey
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Lorenzo Dow Harvey was an American educator who served as Superintendent of Public Instruction of Wisconsin in the late 1880s and early 1900s. Early life and career Harvey was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, and moved with his parents to Wisconsin in 1850, settling in Fulton, Wisconsin. Harvey earned his bachelor's degree from Milton College in 1872, and earned his master's degree from Milton in 1876.
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Karel van Mander
1548 - 1606 (58 years)
Karel van Mander or Carel van Mander I was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters and Northern Renaissance artists in his Schilder-boeck. As an artist and art theoretician he played a significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch Republic.
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Zhang Dinghuang
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Zhang Dinghuang , also known as Zhang Fengju was a Chinese–American antiquarian, Linguistics, literary critic, poet, and translator. He was born in Nanchang and an expert in antique manuscripts. Zhang was a supporting but key figure of the rich 20th century Chinese literary movements.
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Henry Tutwiler
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Henry Tutwiler was an American educator who founded a school for boys near Greensboro, Alabama. Biography Tutwiler was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley in 1807. He entered the first class of the University of Virginia, and following graduation with a master's degree in 1831 became a professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. While in Tuscaloosa, he was a member of the Alabama Colonization Society, and he delivered an address to the student literary societies. It is possible that Tutwiler's departure from the University was related to his anti-slavery views.
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David Stirling Anderson
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Sir David Stirling Anderson was a 20th-century Scottish engineer and educationalist. Life He was born in Glasgow on 25 September 1895, the son of Alexander Anderson and his wife, Sarah Stirling. In the First World War he served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force.
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John W. Schwada
1919 - 1990 (71 years)
John W. Schwada was an American educator. He served as the chancellor of the University of Missouri in the 1960s and as the president of Arizona State University in the 1970s. Life Schwada was born on September 23, 1919, in Oklahoma. His family moved to north of Clarence, Missouri, where he graduated from high school in 1937. In 1941 he graduated from Northeast Missouri State Teachers College with a bachelor's degree. During World War II, Schwada served in the Army Air Forces and rose to the rank of captain. After the war, he continued his studies, earning a master's degree in political scie...
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George Washington Hosmer
1804 - 1881 (77 years)
George Washington Hosmer was a United States educator and pastor. He was president of Antioch College from 1862 to 1872. His son, writer James Kendall Hosmer was also a pastor and was a professor at Antioch.
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William H. Jeynes
#2330
Otto Kraushaar
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Otto Frederick Krausharr was an American professor of philosophy who served as the 6th president of Goucher College. Kraushaar was also a professor at Smith College for 15 years. Early life and education Kraushaar was born on November 19, 1901, in Clinton, Iowa, to Otto Christian Kraushaar and Mary Elizabeth Staehling. Kraushaar attended the University of Iowa, from which he earned a bachelor's degree in 1923 and a master's degree in 1927. He continued his graduate studies at Harvard University, earning a doctorate in 1933. His dissertation was titled Lotze's Theory of Knowledge.
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A. D. Gordon
1856 - 1922 (66 years)
Aaron David Gordon , more commonly known as A. D. Gordon, was a Labour Zionist thinker and the spiritual force behind practical Zionism and Labor Zionism. He founded Hapoel Hatzair, a movement that set the tone for the Zionist movement for many years to come. Influenced by Leo Tolstoy and others, it is said that in effect he made a religion of labor. Gordon moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1904, at age 48, where he was revered by younger Zionist pioneers for leading by example.
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Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
1778 - 1853 (75 years)
was a German gymnastics educator and nationalist whose writing is credited with the founding of the German gymnastics movement as well as influencing the German Campaign of 1813, during which a coalition of German states effectively ended the occupation by Napoleon's First French Empire. His admirers know him as , roughly meaning "Father of Gymnastics ".
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Joseph Losey
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant and The Go-Between .
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Alcide d'Orbigny
1802 - 1857 (55 years)
Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology , palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthropology. D'Orbigny was born in Couëron , the son of a ship's physician and amateur naturalist. The family moved to La Rochelle in 1820, where his interest in natural history was developed while studying the marine fauna and especially the microscopic creatures that he named "foraminiferans".
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Claudia A. Baier
#2336
Kenneth G. Matheson
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
Kenneth Gordon Matheson was a professor at and a chancellor of several educational institutions. Early life Matheson was an 1885 graduate of the South Carolina Military Academy, now known as The Citadel where he was initiated into the Kappa Alpha Order. He then served as commandant of cadets at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville, Georgia from 1885 to 1888, at the University of Tennessee from 1888 to 1890, and at the Missouri Military Academy from 1890 to 1896; he also taught English at the latter two institutions. In 1896, Matheson resigned to enter Stanford University, and earned a ma...
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Ludwig von Schorn
1793 - 1842 (49 years)
Johann Karl Ludwig Schorn, after 1838 von Schorn was a German art historian and university Professor. His second wife was the poet, . Biography From 1811 to 1814, he studied evangelical theology at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen. After graduating, he moved to Munich, where he came under the influence of the intellectual circle associated with Friedrich Thiersch; developing an interest in art history and archaeology.
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Hannah Keziah Clapp
1824 - 1908 (84 years)
Hannah Keziah Clapp was a teacher, activist and feminist in Nevada, US. She organized the state's first private school and was co-founder of the state's first kindergarten. She served as principal of the Lansing Female Seminary; taught at Michigan Female College; and was the first instructor and librarian at the University of Nevada, Reno. Clapp co-founded Reno's 20th Century Club, which in 1983 was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Washoe County, Nevada. She was born in Albany, New York in 1824, and arrived in Carson City in 1860, where she established the Sierra Seminary.
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John James Tigert III
1856 - 1906 (50 years)
John James Tigert III was an American clergyman, editor and academic. He was a professor of Moral Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, and a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Early life Tigert was born on November 25, 1856, in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Queena Mario
1896 - 1951 (55 years)
Queena Marian Tillotson , known professionally as Queena Mario, was an American soprano opera singer, newspaper columnist, voice teacher, and fiction writer. Early life Queena Marian Tillotson was born in Akron, Ohio, the daughter of James Knox Tillotson and Rose Tillotson. Queena was raised in Plainfield, New Jersey, where she graduated from Plainfield High School. She studied voice with Marcella Sembrich, who advised her name change. She paid for voice lessons by writing newspaper advice columns under the name Florence Bryant, including childrearing advice; "You know a lot when you're 16, y...
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Lucy Langdon Wilson
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Lucy Langdon Wilson was an American educator and ethnographer who became widely known for her models of progressive education and for using laboratory methods to teach natural science to young school children. She was also a published ethnographer.
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William Allen
1784 - 1868 (84 years)
William Allen was an American biographer, scholar and academic. He served as president of both Dartmouth University and Bowdoin College. Biography William Allen was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1784. He graduated from Harvard College in Cambridge in 1802 and after a few years of work became assistant librarian at Harvard. He became Pastor of Pittsfield 1810; President of Dartmouth University, 1817; and President of Bowdoin College 1820-1839. He was largely responsible for establishing the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin College in 1820. He resigned in 1839, and died at Northampto...
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Karl Lehmann
1894 - 1960 (66 years)
Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann was a German-born American art historian, archaeologist, and professor. He was known for archaeology work in Samothrace, Greece and the related publications. He was a professor at New York University Institute of Fine Arts from 1935, until his death in 1960. Lehmann was the founder and director of the Archaeological Research Fund at New York University
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Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl
1782 - 1849 (67 years)
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl was a German Germanist, pedagogue, musicologist and conductor. Life Griepenkerl was born in Peine the son of a preacher, he first attended the school in Peine and changed in 1796 to the . From 1805 to 1808 he studied theology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he also studied philosophy and pedagogy with Johann Friedrich Herbart and philology with Christian Gottlob Heyne. In addition he studied music theory, piano and organ with Johann Sebastian Bach's devotee Johann Nikolaus Forkel . In 1808, on Herbart's advice, he went to Hofwil in Switzerland, wh...
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John C. Young
1803 - 1857 (54 years)
John Clarke Young was an American educator and pastor who was the fourth president of Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. A graduate of Dickinson College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he entered the ministry in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1828. He accepted the presidency of Centre College in 1830, holding the position until his death in 1857, making him the longest-serving president in the college's history. He is regarded as one of the college's best presidents, as he increased the endowment of the college more than five-fold during his term and increased the graduating class size from t...
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Mikhail Alpatov
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Mikhail Vladimirovich Alpatov was a Soviet historian and art theorist, notable for his contribution to the history of the culture of ancient Rus. Biography Alpatov graduated from Moscow State University, where he studied the history of arts from 1919 and 1921. Subsequently, he worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, and, from 1923 to 1930, in the Institute of Archeology and Art History of the Academy of Sciences. In 1943 he became a professor at the Surikov State Institute of Arts, also in Moscow. In 1954, he became a member of the USSR Academy of Art. He died in 1986.
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Andreas Stübel
1653 - 1725 (72 years)
Andreas Stübel, also: Stiefel was a German Lutheran theologian, pedagogue and philosopher. Career Born in Dresden the son of an innkeeper, Stübel attended the from 1668. After the Abitur, he studied philosophy, philology and theology at the University of Leipzig, graduating in 1674 a Baccalaureus and in 1676 a Magister of philosophy. He then worked as a private teacher. From 1682 he was Tertius at the , promoted to Konrektor in 1684. In 1687 he was a Baccalaureus of theology, appointed a private lecturer at the Leipzig University. In 1697 he lost the position due to theological disputes. He ...
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Olive Cowell
1887 - 1984 (97 years)
Olive Thompson Cowell was a patron of the arts and music, and a professor of International Relations. Career Cowell graduated from Barnard College in 1910. She taught in high schools for several years before becoming professor at San Francisco State University. She went on to found the International Relations department as part of the Government program at San Francisco State University in 1927, the first International Relations department in the USA. She taught at the university until 1956.
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Rose Zeller
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Rose Margaret Zeller was a New Zealand artist. Biography Zeller was born at the family home at 325 Cashel Street, Christchurch, New Zealand, where she lived until her death. Her parents were Hubert Andrew Zeller and Sarah Ann Zeller, who had arrived in New Zealand from London in 1890.
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James Mason Hoppin
1820 - 1906 (86 years)
James Mason Hoppin was an American educator and writer. Biography James Mason Hoppin was born at Providence, Rhode Island on January 17, 1820. He graduated from Yale College in 1840 from Harvard Law School in 1842, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1845. He studied for some time abroad; and was pastor of a Congregational church at Salem, Massachusetts from 1850 to 1859. From 1861 to 1879 he was professor of homiletics at Yale, where he was also professor of art history from 1879 to 1899, when he became professor emeritus. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Science...
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