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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Education,
#2451
August Kalkmann
1853 - 1905 (52 years)
August Kalkmann was a German classical archaeologist and art historian. He studied under Franz Bücheler, Hermann Usener and Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz at the University of Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1881 with a dissertation on Euripides' Hippolytus. In 1885 he qualified as a lecturer, and in 1900 became an associate professor at the University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#2452
Johannes Gessner
1709 - 1790 (81 years)
Johannes Gessner was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, botanist, mineralogist and physician. He is seen as the founder of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Zürich". Gessner was born and died in Zürich, where he trained under the physician Johannes von Muralt. He moved to Basel to study medicine, continuing his studies in 1726 and 1727 at the University of Leiden. There he became friendly with Albrecht von Haller, with whom he made a grand tour to Paris to finish their medical studies. There he wrote his diary, later published as Pariser Tagebuch. The two friends in 1728 studied mathematics...
Go to Profile#2453
Millard Meiss
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Millard Lazare Meiss was an American art historian, one of whose specialties was Gothic architecture. Meiss worked as an art history professor at Columbia University from 1934 to 1953. After teaching at Columbia, he became a professor at Harvard until 1958, when he joined the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. Meiss has edited several leading art journals and has also written articles and books on medieval and Renaissance painting. Among his many important contributions are Italian style in Catalonia and a fourteenth century Catalan workshop , Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death and French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry .
Go to Profile#2454
Ivan Paskvić
1753 - 1829 (76 years)
Ivan Paskvić was an Austro-Hungarian astronomer, physicist and mathematician. Biography Paskvić was born in Senj. He was educated in Zagreb, from 1778 in Graz and from 1782 in Buda. In Buda he was an adjunct professor of physics, professor of mathematics, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and director of Buda Observatory. His Slovakian colleague Daniel M. Kmeth accused him in several scientific journals of forging observational data of Buda Observatory. After examining the data many prominent scientists in Europe stood in Paskvić's defense, such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Friedrich Bessel, Johann Franz Encke, Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers, Heinrich Christian Schumacher.
Go to Profile#2455
Anthony Blunt
1907 - 1983 (76 years)
Anthony Frederick Blunt , styled Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO from 1956 to November 1979, was a leading British art historian and Soviet spy. Blunt was a professor of art history at the University of London, the director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures. His 1967 monograph on the French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin is still widely regarded as a watershed book in art history. His teaching text and reference work Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700, first published in 1953, reached its fifth edition in 1999, at which time it was still considered the best ...
Go to Profile#2456
George F. Zook
1885 - 1951 (66 years)
George Frederick "Fred" Zook was an American educator who was President of the University of Akron, U.S. Commissioner of Education, and President of the American Council on Education. Life and career Zook was born on April 22, 1885, on a farm near Fort Scott, Kansas, the son of Stephen Douglas Zook and Helen Follenius. He enrolled at the University of Kansas in 1902, funding his education by driving a hearse. After graduation he was a fellow at the University of Kansas, then an assistant at Cornell University, and a faculty member at Penn State University, where he advanced from instructor to full professor.
Go to Profile#2457
Margarete Bieber
1879 - 1978 (99 years)
Margarete Bieber was a Jewish German-American art historian, classical archaeologist and professor. She became the second woman university professor in Germany in 1919 when she took a position at the University of Giessen. She studied the theatre of ancient Greece and Rome as well as the sculpture and clothing in ancient Rome and Greece.
Go to Profile#2458
Una Ellis-Fermor
1894 - 1958 (64 years)
Una Mary Ellis-Fermor , who also used the pseudonym Christopher Turnley, was an English literary critic, author and Hildred Carlile Professor of English at Bedford College, London . In recognition of her services to London University, there is now an award in her name to provide assistance for research students in the publication of scholarly work, in the fields of English, Irish or Scandinavian drama to which Fermor-Ellis herself had been a notable contributor.
Go to Profile#2459
Charles Rufus Morey
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Charles Rufus Morey was an American art historian, professor, and chairman of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University from 1924 to 1945. He had expertise in medieval art and founded the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University in 1917. He was one of the founders of the College Art Association.
Go to Profile#2460
Harold Rugg
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Harold Ordway Rugg was an educational reformer in the early to mid 1900s, associated with the Progressive education movement. Originally trained in civil engineering at Dartmouth College , Rugg went on to study psychology, sociology and education at the University of Illinois where he completed a doctoral dissertation titled "The Experimental Determination of Mental Discipline in School Studies."
Go to Profile#2461
Georges Daux
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Georges Daux was a French archaeologist and a leading scholar of Greek inscriptions. Born in Bastia and educated at the École normale supérieure, Daux headed the French School at Athens from 1950 to 1969.
Go to Profile#2462
Charlotte Towle
1896 - 1966 (70 years)
Charlotte Helen Towle was an American social worker, academic and writer. Early life and education Towle was born and raised in Butte, Montana. In 1919, she received a BA in Education from Goucher College. After graduation, she worked at the American Red Cross and became increasingly interested in social work. With financial support from a Commonwealth Fund fellowship, she attended New York School of Social Work . She earned a degree in Psychiatric Social Work in 1926.
Go to Profile#2463
Robert Goldwater
1907 - 1973 (66 years)
Robert Goldwater was an art historian, African arts scholar and the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York, from 1957 to 1973. He was married to the French-born American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
Go to Profile#2464
William Bell Dinsmoor
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
William Bell Dinsmoor Sr. was an American architectural historian of classical Greece and a Columbia University professor of art and archaeology. Biography He was born on July 29, 1886, in Windham, New Hampshire.
Go to Profile#2465
Eduard C. Lindeman
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Eduard C. Lindeman was an American educator, notable for his pioneering contributions in adult education. He introduced many concepts of modern adult education in his book, The Meaning of Adult Education.
Go to Profile#2466
Paul Dressel
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
Paul Dressel was an American educational psychologist. He was the founding director of the Counseling Center at Michigan State University, and the author of several books. Early life Dressel was born on November 29, 1910. He graduated from Wittenberg University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1931. He earned a master's degree from Michigan State University in 1934, and a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1939.
Go to Profile#2467
Edgar Dale
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Edgar Dale was an American educator who developed the Cone of Experience, also known as the Learning Pyramid. He made several contributions to audio and visual instruction, including a methodology for analyzing the content of motion pictures.
Go to Profile#2468
Wolfgang Stechow
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Wolfgang Ferdinand Ernst Günther Stechow was a German American art historian. Life He was the son of Prussian prosecutor Waldemar Stechow and the concert singer Bertha Deutschmann. He attended the in Göttingen until 1913 and then volunteered in 1914. He was captured in Russia, in 1915 and spent two years in a Siberian camp.
Go to Profile#2469
Diego Angulo Íñiguez
1901 - 1986 (85 years)
Diego Angulo Iñiguez was an art historian, a university professor, writer and Director of the Prado Museum in Madrid from 1968 to 1970. Complementing his career as a curator an academic, he served as one of the founding members of the Art advisory council of the International Foundation for Art Research .
Go to Profile#2470
A. Y. Campbell
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Archibald Young Campbell was a classical scholar, translator, and published poet of the 1920s and 1930s. Life Campbell was born at Blantyre, near Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1885, and received his education at Hamilton Academy and Fettes College, in Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#2471
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.
Go to Profile#2472
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.
Go to Profile#2473
Osvald Sirén
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Osvald Sirén was a Finnish-born Swedish art historian, whose interests included the art of 18th century Sweden, Renaissance Italy and China. Biography Sirén was born in Helsinki. He held the J.A. Berg Professorship of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Stockholm 1908-1923 and was Keeper of painting and sculpture at Nationalmuseum 1928–1945. He died in Stockholm, aged 87.
Go to Profile#2474
Fritz Novotny
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Fritz Novotny , was an Austrian art historian. He is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. Biography Novotny studied art history at the University of Vienna under Josef Strzygowski, and wrote his dissertation on the Romanesque architectural sculpture in the apse of the Pfarrkirche in Schöngrabern, in Lower Austria. Beginning in 1927 he worked as an assistant at Strzygowski's institute. In 1937 he received his habilitation with a study of Cézanne und das Ende der wissenschaftlichen Perspektive , which became a standard study of the French painter and established Novotny as an internationally recognized expert on his work.
Go to Profile#2475
Mehmet Aga-Oglu
1896 - 1949 (53 years)
Mehmet Aga-Oglu , was an Azerbaijani-Turkish Islamic art historian. Born in Erivan, Russian Caucasia , Mehmet earned a doctorate history, philosophy, and Islamic languages from the University of Moscow. By 1921 he was at the University of Istanbul, where he studied Islamic art and Ottoman history. Whilst in Berlin, Aga-Oglu would study under Dr. Ernst Herzfeld in Near Eastern architecture.
Go to Profile#2476
Howard Hibbard
1928 - 1984 (56 years)
Benjamin Howard Hibbard, Jr. was an American art historian and educator. Hibbard was Professor of Italian Baroque Art at Columbia University. Career A native of Madison, Hibbard was born to Margaret and Benjamin, Sr., an agricultural economics professor at the University of Wisconsin. Hibbard received both a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a Master of Arts in art history from the University of Wisconsin in 1949 and 1952, respectively. His master's thesis was on the Basilica of Notre-Dame du Port. Hibbard then continued on to Harvard University, where he earned a PhD in art history in 1958. His doctoral dissertation on the Palazzo Borghese in Rome.
Go to Profile#2477
Carl R. Woodward
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Carl Raymond Woodward, Sr. was an American educator and college administrator who served from 1915 to 1941 in various positions at Rutgers University, and from 1941 to 1958 as the fifth president of the University of Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#2478
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.
Go to Profile#2479
Merle Middleton Odgers
1922 - 1983 (61 years)
Merle Middleton Odgers was president of Bucknell University from 1954 until his retirement in 1964, when he was named president emeritus. Biography Born in Philadelphia on April 21, 1900, Odgers was a son of David Odgers and Elizabeth Odgers. He graduated with first academic honors from Central High School in Philadelphia in 1918 and then from the University of Pennsylvania with class honors in 1922. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Go to Profile#2480
Percy Nunn
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Sir Thomas Percy Nunn was a British educationalist, Professor of Education, 1913–36 at Institute of Education, University of London. He was knighted in 1930. Early life Nunn was born in Bristol in 1870. His grandfather and father were schoolmasters. He was interested in making of mathematical instruments and writing plays. He got his education at Bristol University College. He received his B.A in 1895.
Go to Profile#2481
Heinrich Lützeler
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Heinrich Lützeler was a German philosopher, art historian, and literary scholar. He presided over a number of institutes and was dean at the department of philosophy at the University of Bonn. Biography Heinrich Lützeler was born the son of a porcelain painter in Bonn. He studied philosophy, art history, and literature at the University of Bonn with Paul Clemen and Wilhelm Worringer, and in 1924 earned his doctorate with a dissertation on art perception under the direction of the philosopher Max Scheler. He made a living writing theater reviews and giving lectures, while working on his habilitation, Grundstile der Kunst.
Go to Profile#2482
Henri Gabriel Marceau
1896 - 1969 (73 years)
Henri Gabriel Marceau was an American architect, teacher, art historian and museum curator. He served as Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1955–1964. Career He studied architecture at Columbia University, but his education was interrupted by military service in World War I. He graduated from Columbia in 1921, and spent that summer in France rebuilding war-damaged buildings. He won the 1922 Prix de Rome in architecture, studying for the next three years at the American Academy in Rome. In 1926, he was named assistant curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, a vast collection of Old...
Go to Profile#2483
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.
Go to Profile#2484
Oliver Waterman Larkin
1896 - 1970 (74 years)
Oliver Waterman Larkin was an American art historian and educator. He won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Art and Life in America. Life and work Larkin was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Ernest Larkin, a collector and dealer of antiques, and Kate Mary Waterman. He had two brothers and a sister. He grew up in Medford, and later in Georgetown, Massachusetts, where in 1914 he graduated with honors from the Perley Free School. By this time he had already begun to show his interest in the arts. He enrolled in Harvard University where he majored in French and Latin.
Go to Profile#2485
Maurice H. Rees
1880 - 1945 (65 years)
Maurice Holmes Rees was American medical educator who served as Dean of the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Superintendent of the University of Colorado Hospital from 1920 to 1945. Early life and education Maurice Holmes Rees was born on April 27, 1880, in Newton, Iowa, to Spencer Harris Rees and Margaret Holmes. He attended Newton High School and served in the Iowa National Guard from 1889 to 1901, where he was honorably discharged.
Go to Profile#2486
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.
Go to Profile#2487
Donald K. David
1896 - 1979 (83 years)
Donald Kirk David was the third dean of the Harvard Business School, serving from 1942 to 1955. Donald K. David, the Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development , established a national Commission on Money and Credit , November 21, 1957. The report of the Commission was published in June 1961 and it was subsequently disbanded.
Go to Profile#2488
Kurt Bauch
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Kurt Bauch was a German art historian with particular interest in the art of Rembrandt. The son of a Mecklenburg judge, Bauch studied art history at the University of Berlin under Adolph Goldschmidt and at the University of Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the Rembrandt pupil, Jacob Adriaensz Backer, at the University of Freiburg under Hans Jantzen. From 1924 to 1926 he was assistant of the famous Dutch Rembrandt scholar, Cornelis Hofstede de Groot in the Hague. In 1927 he completed his Habilitationsschrift on the art of the young Rembrandt. For some years he worked as a Privatdozent, teaching medieval and early modern art in Freiburg and Frankfurt am Main.
Go to Profile#2489
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#2490
Kurt Gerstenberg
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Kurt Gerstenberg was a German art historian, a pupil of Heinrich Wölfflin. Gerstenberg's 1913 work Deutsche Sondergotik gave the name to Sondergotik, a style of Late Gothic architecture.
Go to Profile#2491
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.
Go to Profile#2492
Paul Oppé
1878 - 1957 (79 years)
Adolph Paul Oppé, was a British art historian, critic, art collector and museum official. Born in London, the son of a silk merchant, he was educated at Charterhouse, the University of St Andrews, and New College, Oxford. From 1902–1905 he taught Greek and ancient history at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and from 1905–1938 worked as a civil servant in the Board of Education. He also served as Deputy Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Oppé was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 1952.
Go to Profile#2493
George Harold Edgell
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
George Harold Edgell was an American architectural and fine arts historian, author, and world expert on Sienese paintings. He was also dean of the Harvard University School of Architecture and director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#2494
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...
Go to Profile#2495
Alfred Brousseau
1907 - 1988 (81 years)
Brother Alfred Brousseau, F.S.C. , was an educator, photographer and mathematician and was known mostly as a founder of the Fibonacci Association and as an educator. Biography Brother Alfred Brousseau was born in North Beach, San Francisco, as one of six children. On August 14, 1920, Brousseau entered the juniorate of the De La Salle Christian Brothers , a religious institute of teachers in the Roman Catholic Church. He was accepted into the Christian Brothers novitiate on 31 July 1923 and advanced to the scholasticate on the campus of St. Mary's College in Moraga, California, in 1924.
Go to Profile#2496
Muhammad Abdul Hye
1919 - 1969 (50 years)
Muhammad Abdul Hye also known as Muhammad Abdul Hai was a Bengali educationist, litterateur, researcher and linguist who was and is remembered as a notable figure in the Bengali language movement. He was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1961 and Ekushey Padak in 1996 by the Government of Bangladesh.
Go to Profile#2497
Roman Dyboski
1883 - 1945 (62 years)
Roman Dyboski was a Polish philologist and literature scholar. Professor at the Jagiellonian University since 1911. Member of the Polish Academy of Learning. He was son of Antoni Dyboski and Maria Łopuszańska.
Go to Profile#2498
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.
Go to Profile#2499
Wilhelm Kraiker
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
Wilhelm Kraiker was a German classical archaeologist. Life Born in Frankfurt, in 1927 Kraiker received his doctorate at Heidelberg University under Ludwig Curtius. In 1928/29 he received a , afterwards he was assistant at the Heidelberg University as well as at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens and Rome; on 12 July 1937 he habilitated in Heidelberg. From June 1941 to September 1944, Kraiker worked in Athens during the German occupation in World War II for the newly formed Kunstschutz, which was subordinate to the Army High Command Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner, and was in charge from July 1942.
Go to Profile#2500
Lee Galloway
1871 - 1962 (91 years)
Lee Galloway was an American educator, publisher, and organizational theorist. He was Professor in the School of Finance and Commerce at the New York University, and co-founders of The National Association of Corporation Schools, predecessor of the American Management Association.
Go to Profile