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,
#2451
Albert W. Dent
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Albert Walter Dent was an academic administrator who served initially as business administrator of Flint-Goodridge Hospital and later as president of Dillard University , a predominantly black liberal arts college in New Orleans, Louisiana. In these roles, he was a community leader who improved education and health care for African-Americans and impoverished people in the American South.
Go to Profile#2452
Lorenz Oken
1779 - 1851 (72 years)
Lorenz Oken was a German naturalist, botanist, biologist, and ornithologist. Oken was born Lorenz Okenfuss in Bohlsbach , Ortenau, Baden, and studied natural history and medicine at the universities of Freiburg and Würzburg. He went on to the University of Göttingen, where he became a Privatdozent , and shortened his name to Oken. As Lorenz Oken, he published a small work entitled Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, der Theorie der Sinne, mit der darauf gegründeten Classification der Thiere . This was the first of a series of works which established him as a leader of the movement of "Naturphilo...
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Alice Ravenhill
1859 - 1954 (95 years)
Alice Ravenhill was an educational pioneer, a developer of Women's Institutes, and one of the first authors to propound aboriginal rights in B.C. She is also the author of numerous articles and books, including her autobiography which she wrote when she was 92.
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Alice Mary Dowd
1855 - 1943 (88 years)
Alice Mary Dowd was an American educator and author. She was born in Virginia in 1855 and began teaching at the age of seventeen. Dowd taught for more than three decades before retiring in 1926, having had experience in almost all phases of the work, including district school substitute, evening school, private school, high school, college, and Sunday school. Besides numerous uncollected poems, she published a volume entitled Vacation Verses in 1890. In 1906, she published Our Common Wild Flowers. With her sister, Luella Dowd Smith, she co-authored another book of poetry, Along the Way, in 1938.
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Matthew Digby Wyatt
1820 - 1877 (57 years)
Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt was a British architect and art historian who became Secretary of the Great Exhibition, Surveyor of the East India Company and the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge. From 1855 until 1859 he was honorary secretary of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and in 1866 received the Royal Gold Medal.
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Elizabeth Piper Ensley
1847 - 1919 (72 years)
Elizabeth Piper Ensley , was an educator and an African-American suffragist. Born in Massachusetts, Ensley was a teacher on the eastern coast of the country. She moved to Colorado where she achieved prominence as a leader in the Colorado suffrage movement. She was also a journalist, activist, and a leader and founder of local women's clubs.
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Aleksander Zawadzki
1798 - 1868 (70 years)
Aleksander Zawadzki born Józef Antoni Zawadzki was a Polish naturalist, author of flora and fauna lists of the Galicia region and the neighbourhood of Lviv . He was also the first scientist who studied and catalogued the beetles and butterflies of Eastern Galicia. He was responsible for encouraging Gregor Mendel to study genetics at Brno.
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George Turnbull
1698 - 1748 (50 years)
George Turnbull was a Scottish philosopher, theologian, teacher, writer on education and an early but little-known figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He taught at Marischal College, Aberdeen, worked as a tutor and became an Anglican clergyman. Aside from his published writings on moral philosophy, he is also known for the influence he exerted on Thomas Reid and as the first member of the Scottish Enlightenment to publish a formal treatise on the theory and practice of education.
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Rachel Wischnitzer
1885 - 1989 (104 years)
Rachel Bernstein Wischnitzer , was a Russian-born architect and art historian. Biography Wischnitzer was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Minsk, in Russian Empire, the daughter of Wladimir and Sophie Bernstein. Rachel's father was for a time in the insurance business. She had one sibling, a younger brother, Gustave, who later became a chemist. She learned Hebrew as a child, and her family observed the major Jewish holidays. After her family moved to Warsaw, she attended a state gymnasium there. At school she became interested in mathematics and the natural sciences. She learned French and German, and took private lessons in Polish.
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Joris Ivens
1898 - 1989 (91 years)
Georg Henri Anton "Joris" Ivens was a Dutch documentary filmmaker. Among the notable films he directed or co-directed are A Tale of the Wind, The Spanish Earth, Rain, ...A Valparaiso, Misère au Borinage , 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War, The Seine Meets Paris, Far from Vietnam, Pour le Mistral and How Yukong Moved the Mountains.
Go to Profile#2461
T. N. Srikantaiah
1906 - 1966 (60 years)
Theerthapura Nanjundaiah Srikantaiah commonly known as 'Thee. Nam. Shree. , was a Kannada poet, essayist, editor, translator, linguist and teacher. He was awarded the Pampa Prashasthi for his work on the history and tradition of Indian poetics spanning two millennia titled Bharathiya Kavyamimamse. T. N. Srikantaiah was instrumental in preparing and publishing the Kannada version of Constitution of India in 1952. He is credited with the use of the vernacular equivalent of Rashtrapathi for the English 'President', a usage which is still in vogue. Srikantaiah was responsible for guiding the doctoral theses of Kannada litterateurs like S.
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Otto Benesch
1896 - 1964 (68 years)
Otto Benesch was an Austrian art historian. He was taught by Max Dvořák and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He is well known for his catalogue of Rembrandt's drawings. In 1942 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.
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Rashidul Hasan
1932 - 1971 (39 years)
SMA Rashidul Hasan was a Bengali educationist. He was born in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal. In 1949, he migrated to East Pakistan. He was awarded Independence Day Award in 2018 posthumously by the Government of Bangladesh.
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Edward W. Forbes
1873 - 1969 (96 years)
Edward Waldo Forbes was an American art historian. He was the Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University from 1909 to 1944. Early life Edward Waldo Forbes, of the Forbes family, was born on July 16, 1873, on Naushon Island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts. His father, William Hathaway Forbes, was a co-founder of the Bell Telephone Company with Alexander Graham Bell. His mother, Edith Emerson Forbes, was the daughter of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. His paternal grandfather, John Murray Forbes, was a French-born railroad magnate, merchant, and abolitionist. His brother, William Cameron For...
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Otto Demus
1902 - 1990 (88 years)
Otto Demus was an Austrian art historian and Byzantinist. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. Between 1921 and 1928, Demus studied art history at the University of Vienna under Josef Strzygowski, receiving his Ph.D. summa cum laude. In the following years Demus travelled throughout Greece, photographing the mosaics of its Byzantine churches in color, a project that resulted in his first major publication, Byzantine mosaics in Greece , written together with Ernst Diez. He also worked for Austria's historical preservation service, documenting and restoring the medieval monuments of Carinthia.
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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 (250 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
#2486
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
#2495
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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