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,
#2601
Geoffrey Webb
1898 - 1970 (72 years)
Geoffrey Fairbank Webb CBE was a British art historian, Slade Professor of Fine Art and head of the Monuments and Fine Arts section of the Allied Control Commission during World War II. Early life Webb was born in Birkenhead, to John Racker Webb, who worked at Booth’s Steamship Company, and his wife Elizabeth Hodgson Fairbank. Webb was the only child of his father’s second marriage. Most of his step-brothers and -sisters were old enough to be his uncles and aunts. His mother died when he was fifteen and his father later married again. His closet ties growing up were with his eldest stepsister...
Go to Profile#2602
Hans Tietze
1880 - 1954 (74 years)
Hans Tietze was an Austrian art historian and member of the Vienna School of Art History. Life and work The son of a Jewish lawyer, Tietze grew up in Prague in a German speaking environment. In 1893, his family moved to Vienna, Austria. From 1900 to 1903, he studied archaeology, history and art history under Alois Riegl, Julius von Schlosser and Franz Wickhoff at the University of Vienna. In 1903, he completed his Ph.D. dissertation, supervised by Wickhoff, on the topic of medieval typological representation. In 1905, he wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Annibale Caracci's frescos at the Pal...
Go to Profile#2603
Florence E. Bamberger
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Florence Eilau Bamberger was an American pedagogue, school supervisor, progressive education advocate, and author. Influenced by the ideas of John Dewey, she researched, lectured, and wrote extensively on the concept of child-centered education. She spent most of her career as a professor of education in the department of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, and was the first woman to attain a full professorship at that university. From 1937 to 1947 she served as director of Johns Hopkins' College for Teachers. After her retirement, she taught in private elementary schools in Baltimore, Ma...
Go to Profile#2604
Milton Bennion
1870 - 1953 (83 years)
Milton Bennion was an American educator and a university and educational administrator. Biography Bennion was born in Taylorsville, Utah Territory. He received a B.S. degree from the University of Utah in 1897 and an M.A. degree from Columbia University in 1901.
Go to Profile#2605
H. W. Janson
1913 - 1982 (69 years)
Horst Woldemar Janson , was a Russian Empire-born German-American professor of art history best known for his History of Art, which was first published in 1962 and has since sold more than four million copies in fifteen languages. His academic specialism was the sculpture of Donatello.
Go to Profile#2606
Henri van de Waal
1910 - 1972 (62 years)
Henri van de Waal was a Dutch writer and art historian known for developing Iconclass. Van de Waal was born in Rotterdam. In 1934 he finished his education as an art historian in Leiden with a monography on Jan van Goyen. He accepted a position at the National Print Cabinet in The Hague, where he began work on a German concept of image-based historical research, which due to the special circumstances of the interbellum period was drastically reduced. He eventually finished his PhD thesis 12 July 1940, cum laude, on the patriotic subject of Zeventiende eeuwsche uitbeeldingen van den Bataafschen Opstand .
Go to Profile#2607
Günther Grundmann
1892 - 1976 (84 years)
Günther Grundmann was a German art historian, museum curator and monument preservator. Life Born in Jelenia Góra, Krkonoše Mountains, Province of Silesia, after Abitur in his hometown in 1912, Grundmann studied art history at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich among others with Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl. In addition to his studies, he learned painting at the Walter Thor painting school and attended the Königliche Kunstgewerbeschule München from 1913 onwards, where he took, among other things, the typeface class with Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke and the furniture design class with Richard Riemerschmid.
Go to Profile#2608
Charles Depéret
1854 - 1929 (75 years)
Charles Jean Julien Depéret was a French geologist and paleontologist. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Société géologique de France and dean of the Science faculty of Lyon. Charles Depéret was born in Perpignan. He started his career as a military doctor from 1877 to 1888. Initially posted in Algeria, he was later active in Sathonay. In 1888, he became lecturer at Aix-Marseille University, and in 1889 he became professor of geology at the University of Lyon. He died in Lyon.
Go to Profile#2609
Gavril Katsarov
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Gavril Iliev Katsarov was a Bulgarian historian, classical philologist and archeologist. Rector of Sofia University. Director of the National Archaeological Museum and the Bulgarian Archeological Institute.
Go to Profile#2610
Eleanor McDougall
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Eleanor McDougall was a Resident Lecturer in Classics at Westfield College, London from 1902, and later one of the pioneers in women's education in India. She was the First Principal of Women's Christian College in Madras, Madras Presidency in British India in 1915.
Go to Profile#2611
John Charles Van Dyke
1856 - 1932 (76 years)
John Charles Van Dyke was an American art historian, critic, and nature writer. Biography John Charles Van Dyke was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey on April 21, 1856. He studied at Columbia, and for many years in Europe. He was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in 1877, but never practiced law.
Go to Profile#2612
Coy Cornelius Carpenter
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Coy Cornelius Carpenter M.D. , was first dean of the School of Medicine of Wake Forest University from 1936 to 1967 and vice president for health affairs from 1963 to 1967. He guided the school through the transition from a two-year to a four-year program and the move from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem in 1941. He also authored The Story of Medicine at Wake Forest University . He resided in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Go to Profile#2613
Ludwig von Baldass
1887 - 1963 (76 years)
Ludwig von Baldass was an Austrian art historian, professor and acclaimed author who specialised in Early Netherlandish painting. He studied under Max Dvořák at the University of Vienna and began to lecture there in 1926, gaining the position of professor in 1934. Von Baldass' 1942 treatise on Hans Memling was instrumental in the re-evaluation of his artistic importance. Other publications include articles and books on Jan van Eyck , Hieronymus Bosch , Giorgione and Albrecht Altdorfer .
Go to Profile#2614
Gordon B. Hancock
1884 - 1970 (86 years)
Gordon Blaine Hancock was a professor at Virginia Union University and a leading spokesman for African American equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Hancock was a nationally syndicated columnist for the Norfolk Journal and Guide whose columns were published in 114 black newspapers. He was one of the organizers of the 1942 Southern Conference on Race Relations and gave the opening keynote address. This conference led to the publication of "A Basis for Inter-Racial Cooperation and Development in the South: A Statement by Southern Negroes," known as the Durham Manifesto, ...
Go to Profile#2615
Axel Romdahl
1880 - 1951 (71 years)
Axel Ludvig Romdahl was a Swedish art historian and museum curator. Biography Axel Ludvig, known as Ludde, was the son of P.A.C. Romdahl and Clara Theresia Brogren. He married Gudrun Biller in 1906 in Stockholm.
Go to Profile#2616
John Williston Cook
1844 - 1922 (78 years)
John Williston Cook was an educator during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, specifically in Illinois. His work in education, specifically in association with the Herbartianism movement, had a lasting impact on the field at the time.
Go to Profile#2617
Jeannette Augustus Marks
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Jeannette Augustus Marks was an American professor at Mount Holyoke College. She is the namesake of the Jeannette Marks Cultural Center , which provides support and programming for LGBT students and allies.
Go to Profile#2618
Gerald Warner Brace
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Gerald Warner Brace was an American novelist, writer, educator, sailor and boat builder. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England. Biography Early life and ancestors He was born on September 24, 1901, in Islip, Long Island, Suffolk County, New York, and died on July 20, 1978, at Blue Hill, Maine.
Go to Profile#2619
Anna Cox Brinton
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Anna Shipley Cox Brinton was an American classics scholar, college administrator, writer, and Quaker leader, active with the American Friends Service Committee . She has credited with being one of those who "reinvented Quakerism" for the 20th century.
Go to Profile#2620
Hubert Winkler
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
Hubert Winkler was a German botanist, who specialized in tropical flora research. From 1895 he studied theology and botany at the University of Breslau, where in 1901/02 he worked as an assistant at the botanical garden. Afterwards, he worked at the Botanical Museum in Berlin and at the botanic garden in Victoria, Kamerun. In 1921 he became an associate professor of phytogeography at the University of Breslau, where in 1927 he attained a full professorship.
Go to Profile#2621
Werner Weisbach
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Werner Weisbach was a German-Swiss art historian. He studied art history, archaeology, history and philosophy at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig, receiving his promotion from the latter institution in 1896 . Following a study trip through Europe, he served as a volunteer at the Museum of Berlin under the directorship of Wilhelm von Bode. From 1903 onward, he worked as a lecturer at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin, where from 1921 to 1933 he taught classes as an associate professor of art history. During the era of National Socialism he emigrated to Basel, Swi...
Go to Profile#2622
Willard Van Dyke
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Willard Ames Van Dyke was an American filmmaker, photographer, arts administrator, teacher, and former director of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art. Early life Van Dyke went to the University of California, Berkeley, circa 1927 dropping out for a time to avoid taking an ROTC course, left in 1929 and did not graduate.
Go to Profile#2623
Franz Roh
1890 - 1965 (75 years)
Franz Roh , was a German historian, photographer, and art critic. Roh is perhaps best known for his 1925 book Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei he coined the term magic realism.
Go to Profile#2624
Will Grohmann
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Will Grohmann was a German art critic and art historian specialized in German Expressionism and abstract art. He was known as the "godfather of modernism". Life and work From 1908 to 1913 Grohmann studied oriental languages with special emphasis on Sanskrit at the universities of Paris and Leipzig. Though he wrote his PhD thesis in Germanic literature, entitled Vers oder Prosa im hohen Drama des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts , and taught languages at school, where Erich Kästner was one of his pupils, he devoted his life to art research and publishing. He was interested in the painters of Die Brücke and supported the Bauhaus.
Go to Profile#2625
Richard Offner
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Richard Offner was an Austrian-American art historian dedicated to the study of Florentine paintings from the Renaissance. Biography Offner was born in Vienna, Austria, on June 30, 1889. In 1891, his family emigrated to New York City. He pursued his undergraduate degree at Harvard University from 1909 to 1912, continuing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1912 to 1914. In 1914, he submitted his dissertation in art history under Max Dvořák at the University of Vienna. He was granted his Doctorate, however, his dissertation is now lost.
Go to Profile#2626
Jean Alazard
1887 - 1960 (73 years)
Jean Alazard was a French art historian who was an expert on the art of the Renaissance and Orientalism. Early life Alazard was born in Lacalm in the Aveyron. He attended the Lycée and moved to Italy, where he became an authority on the art of the Renaissance.
Go to Profile#2627
Charles Picard
1883 - 1965 (82 years)
Charles Picard was a prominent Classical archaeologist and historian of ancient Greek art. He is best known for his multi-volume, monumental survey, Manuel d'archéologie grecque: La sculpture. Volume I , was published in 1935. He completed the second fascicule of Volume IV in 1963. Picard was elected member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1932.
Go to Profile#2628
Lucy Donnelly
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Lucy Martin Donnelly was a teacher of English at Bryn Mawr College. She was head of the English department starting in 1914. Sources James, E. T, Wilson James, J. and Boyer, P. S. 1971, Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary , p. 499Russell, B. and Griffin, N. 1992, The selected letters of Bertrand Russell, p. Lucy Donnelly
Go to Profile#2629
Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth
1905 - 1969 (64 years)
Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth was an archaeologist and art history and classical studies professor. She studied at Vassar and received her doctorate at Radcliffe. In addition to her research contributions to the classics, she also bridged her interest to contemporary art and architecture. Her grandfather was Henry van Ingen.
Go to Profile#2630
Leonard Wild
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Leonard John Wild was a New Zealand teacher, agricultural scientist, lecturer, principal, educationalist, and writer. Early life Born at Oraki near Riverton in Southland in 1889, he received his secondary education at Southland Boys' High School. He received his tertiary education from the University of Otago and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1910, a Bachelor of Science in 1917 and a Master of Arts in 1921. During the 1910s, he published several papers on geology in the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, which resulted in him being elected fellow of the Geologi...
Go to Profile#2631
Frederick Hilgendorf
1874 - 1942 (68 years)
Frederick William Hilgendorf was a New Zealand teacher, lecturer and agricultural scientist. He was born in Waihola, South Otago, New Zealand on 23 January 1874. In 1935, he was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal. The Hilgendorf Wing at Lincoln University was named after him.
Go to Profile#2632
Friedrich Dannemann
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Friedrich Dannemann was a German physicist, high school teacher and historian of science. In the judgment of George Sarton, Dannemann's four-volume Natural sciences in their development and context was "the first satisfactory textbook dealing with the history of science as a whole". In 1927, aged sixty-eight, Dannemann became an unsalaried professor in the history of science at the University of Bonn. Dannemann also helped Abraham Wolf with his A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Go to Profile#2633
Henry Louis Smith
1859 - 1951 (92 years)
Henry Louis Smith was the ninth president of Davidson College and the first president to not be an ordained Presbyterian minister. Originally from Greensboro, North Carolina, Smith graduated from Davidson in 1881 but returned as a professor of physics before becoming president in 1901. It was during his time as a professor that Smith and a group of students created one of the first x-ray images in America.
Go to Profile#2634
Andrew P. Torrence
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Andrew Pumphrey Torrence was an African-American university administrator. He served as the third president of Tennessee State University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1968 to 1974, and as the executive vice president and provost of Tuskegee University, another historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama, from 1974 to 1980.
Go to Profile#2635
Wilhelm Worringer
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Wilhelm Robert Worringer was a German art historian known for his theories about abstract art and its relation to avant-garde movements such as German Expressionism. Through his influence on the art critic T. E. Hulme, his ideas were influential in the development of early British modernism, especially Vorticism.
Go to Profile#2636
Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt was an American educator, activist, and prominent member and leader of numerous organizations. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her doctoral dissertation at Yale, and studied as a fellow at Oxford. After teaching at the University of Idaho, the Lewiston State Normal School, and with the Extension Division of the University of California, Reinhardt was elected president of Mills College in 1916, and held the position until 1943, making her the longest serving president in the history of the school.
Go to Profile#2637
Tsuda Umeko
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
was a Japanese educator who founded Tsuda University. She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist, and at the age of 7, she became Japan's first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission.
Go to Profile#2638
Edmund von Mach
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
Edmund von Mach was a German-American art historian and lecturer on art. Life and career He was born on August 1, 1870, in Jawory, Pomerania, eastern Prussia . He came to America in 1891, and was educated at Harvard University , where he was an instructor in fine arts from 1899 to 1903. He was also an instructor in the history of art at Wellesley College from 1899 to 1902, and thereafter lectured on the same subject at Bradford Academy. He is the author of Greek Sculpture: Its Spirit and Principles ; A Handbook of Greek and Roman Sculpture ; Outlines of the History of Painting ; The Art of Painting in the Nineteenth Century .
Go to Profile#2639
L. P. Jacks
1860 - 1955 (95 years)
Lawrence Pearsall Jacks , abbreviated L. P. Jacks, was an English educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister who rose to prominence in the period from World War I to World War II. Early life Jacks was born on 9 October 1860 in Nottingham. In 1882, he enrolled in Manchester New College . After graduating with a M.A. in 1886, he spent a year at Harvard University, where he studied with the philosopher Josiah Royce. In 1887, he became assistant minister to Stopford Brooke in his chapel in Bloomsbury, London. He served as assistant minister for a year, and then accepted a position as Unitarian...
Go to Profile#2640
Roscoe Conkling Bruce
1879 - 1950 (71 years)
Roscoe Conkling Bruce, Senior was an African-American educator who was known for stressing the value of practical industrial and business skills as opposed to academic disciplines. Later he administered the Dunbar Apartments housing complex in Harlem, New York City, and was editor in chief of the Harriet Tubman Publishing Company.
Go to Profile#2641
Walter Williams
1864 - 1935 (71 years)
Walter Williams was an American journalist and educator. He founded the world's first journalism school at the University of Missouri, and later served as the university's president. An internationalist, he promoted the ideals of journalism globally and is often referred to as "The Father of Journalism Education".
Go to Profile#2642
LeBaron Russell Briggs
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
LeBaron Russell Briggs was an American educator. He was appointed the first dean of men at Harvard College, and subsequently served as dean of the faculty until he retired. He was concurrently president of Radcliffe College and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Go to Profile#2643
Anna Maria Brizio
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Anna Maria Brizio was professor of art history at the University of Milan, a member of the Commissione Vinciana and an authority on the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Selected publications Italian Per il quarto centenario dalla nascita di Paolo Caliari detto Paolo Veronese. Note per una definizione critica dello stile di Paolo Veronese, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», 31 , fasc. 1Un'opera giovanile del Botticelli, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», marzo 1933, fasc. 2, pp. 108–119Per il quinto centenario Verrocchiesco , in «Emporium», dicembre 1935, pp. 293–303Vercelli.
Go to Profile#2644
Voldemar Vaga
1899 - 1999 (100 years)
Voldemar Vaga was Estonian art and architecture historian and teacher. 1913–1914 he studied at drawing courses of Estonian Arts Society. 1918–1919 he studied at Ants Laikmaa studio school. 1926 he graduated from Tartu University.
Go to Profile#2645
Noah K. Davis
1830 - 1910 (80 years)
Noah Knowles Davis was an American educator. He served as president of Bethel College in Kentucky. He taught at Delaware College, Howard College and the University of Virginia. Early life Noah Knowles Davis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 15, 1830, to Mary and Noah Davis. His father, who was a minister of the Baptist Tract Society, died shortly after Davis' birth. He was raised by his mother and step-father, the Reverend John L. Dagg, a Southern Baptist theologian in Alabama.
Go to Profile#2646
Caroline Hazard
1856 - 1945 (89 years)
Caroline Hazard was an American educator, philanthropist, and author. She served as the fifth president of Wellesley College, from 1899 to 1910. Early life Caroline Hazard was born in Peace Dale, Rhode Island in 1856. Her father was industrialist Rowland Hazard II and her mother was Margaret A. Hazard, née Rood. She was educated at the Mary A. Shaw School in Providence and received private tutoring at Brown University and in Europe. She conducted welfare programs in Peace Dale, and wrote on a variety of topics, including biography, poetry, and Rhode Island history. She was the founder of the...
Go to Profile#2647
Renate Wagner-Rieger
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Renate Wagner-Rieger was an Austrian art historian and educator, with significant research in the fields of architecture and historicism. Education and career Renate Rieger was born January 10, 1921, in Vienna. In 1942 she studied art history at the University of Vienna, under Hans Sedlmayr and Karl Oettinger and received her PhD in 1947 under Karl Maria Swoboda on the architectural facade of the Viennese apartments from the 16th to the mid-18th century. In 1956 she became a lecturer at University of Vienna and in the same year married historian Walter Wagner.
Go to Profile#2648
Pietro Toesca
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Giovanni Pietro Toesca was an Italian academic and art historian, notable as one of the most important historians of medieval to 20th century art. His La pittura e la miniatura nella Lombardia fino alla metà del Quattrocento was the first attempt to reconstruct the course of figurative Lombard art from the Middle Ages onwards, defining its importance across Europe.
Go to Profile#2649
Vladimir Kemenov
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Vladimir Semyonovich Kemenov was a Soviet art historian and statesman who headed the VOKS for the USSR in the 1940s. Life and career He was born in Yekaterinoslav . In 1940, he succeeded Viktor Smirnov as chairman of VOKS , a propaganda organization created in 1925 and restructured in 1958. VOKS also often served as a convenient 'roof' for operations of both branches of Soviet intelligence, whose residents and operatives used opportunities provided by VOKS to establish and maintain contacts in intellectual, scientific and government circles. These contacts were, for the most part, unaware ...
Go to Profile#2650
Paul Clemen
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Paul Clemen was a German art historian known in particular for his large inventory of monuments in the Rhineland area, many of which were destroyed or severely damaged in World War II. Clemen was born in Leipzig, son of Professor Christian August Julius Clemen and his wife Helene Voigt . His two brothers Carl and Otto became prominent scholars in their own right in the fields of comparative religion and history, respectively.
Go to Profile