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,
#2651
Fatima Massaquoi
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh was a Liberian writer and academic. After completing her education in the United States, she returned to Liberia in 1946, making significant contributions to the cultural and social life of the country.
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Georg Dehio
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Georg Gottfried Julius Dehio , was a Baltic German art historian. In 1900, Dehio started the "Handbuch der deutschen Kunstgeschichte" , published by Ernst Wasmuth. The project is ongoing and managed by the 'Dehio-Vereinigung', Munich.
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Osbert Salvin
1835 - 1898 (63 years)
Osbert Salvin was an English naturalist, ornithologist, and herpetologist best known for co-authoring Biologia Centrali-Americana with Frederick DuCane Godman. This was a 52 volume encyclopedia on the natural history of Central America.
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Ernest Carroll Moore
1871 - 1955 (84 years)
Ernest Carroll Moore was an American educator. He co-founded the University of California, Southern Branch, in Los Angeles, California. Biography Early life Moore was born in 1871 in Youngstown, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio Normal University in 1892, where he also received an LL.B. in 1894. He then received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1898. He later received an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
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Friedrich Eggers
1819 - 1872 (53 years)
Hartwig Karl Friedrich Eggers was a German art historian. He was a member of the literary groups Tunnel über der Spree and Rütli. Biography His father, Christian Friedrich Eggers , sold building materials. After completing his primary education, he followed his father into the trade. His first literary efforts date from these years. Later, from 1839 to 1841, he took private preparatory lessons for graduate school and, in 1842, was admitted to the University of Rostock, where he studied philology. After only a short time there, he moved to Leipzig to engage in historical studies with Wilhelm Wachsmuth.
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Joseph Carlebach
1883 - 1942 (59 years)
Joseph Hirsch Carlebach was a German Orthodox rabbi, natural scientist, and scholar of the history of the Jews in Germany. Early life and family Carlebach was the eighth child of Esther Adler , daughter of the former rabbi of Lübeck, Rabbi Alexander Sussmann Adler , and Lübeck's then-Rabbi Salomon Carlebach .
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John Daniel Runkle
1822 - 1902 (80 years)
John Daniel Runkle was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868 to 1870 and president between 1870 and 1878. Biography Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age, and then studied and taught until he entered the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, where he graduated in 1851. His ability as a mathematician led in 1849 to his appointment as assistant in the preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, in which he continued to engage until 1884. He was professor of mathematics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1865 until his retirement in 1902.
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Ryuichi Kaji
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Ryuichi Kaji was a Japanese journalist and political critic. Life He was born in Hyogo Prefecture. Having graduated from the Department of Law of Tokyo University, he joined the East-Asiatic Commercial Intelligence Institute at Tokyo of the South Manchuria Railway. Later he joined the Asahi Shimbun and in 1945, he became head the editorial board and wrote essays in Tensei Jingo. In 1947, he headed the Department of Publication of Asahi Shimbun. Later he became Instructor at Dokkyo University, and a member of the Ministry of Education's University educational accreditation committee and a mem...
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Harry K. Newburn
1906 - 1974 (68 years)
Harry Kenneth Newburn was an American educator. He served as the president of various universities during the mid-20th century. Life Newburn was born on January 1, 1906, in the town of Cuba, Illinois. He attended Western Illinois State Teachers College, earning his bachelor's degree in education there and later earning his master's and Ph.D from the University of Iowa. After earning his Ph.D, he remained at Iowa as an assistant professor, rising to the position of dean of its College of Liberal Arts.
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Mohan Sinha Mehta
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Mohan Singh Mehta was founder of Vidya Bhavan group of institutions and Seva Mandir in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Life Mohan Singh Mehta was born in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, on 20 April 1895 to Jeewan Singh Mehta. His wife’s name was Hulas Kumari Mehta and he had one son, Jagat Singh Mehta, who became Foreign Secretary in the Government of India.
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Richard S. Rust
1815 - 1906 (91 years)
Richard Sutton Rust was an American Methodist preacher, abolitionist, educator, writer, lecturer, secretary of the Freedmen's Bureau, and founder of the Freedmen's Aid Society. He also helped found multiple educational institutions including his namesake Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the oldest historically black United Methodist-related college.
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Elmer Ellsworth Brown
1861 - 1934 (73 years)
Elmer Ellsworth Brown was an American educator. Biography Born at Kiantone in Chautauqua County, New York, Elmer Ellsworth Brown studied at New York University , graduated from Illinois State Normal University in 1881 and at the University of Michigan ; then he studied in Germany and received a Ph.D. from the University of Halle in 1890.
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Barbara Foxley
1860 - 1958 (98 years)
Barbara Foxley was a British Professor of Education at University College, Cardiff and a campaigner for women's rights. Life Foxley was born in Market Weighton where her father, Reverend Joseph Foxley, was the vicar. Her mother was Lucy born Allen and Barbara was educated at home before attending schools in London and Manchester. She obtained what would have been a second class degree at Newnham College, but Cambridge University only gave degrees to men until 1949. Her historical tripos and a teaching qualification enabled her to gain a master's degree from Trinity College, Dublin who did not...
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Ludwig Karl Schmarda
1819 - 1908 (89 years)
Ludwig Karl Schmarda was an Austrian naturalist and traveler, born at Olmütz, Moravia. Early life and education Schmarda was born at Olmütz where he attended the Grammar School and the Philosophical Course at the University of Olomouc. He graduated in 1841. He studied medicine and science at the Josephinum, now part of the Medical University of Vienna , particularly interested in zoology, graduating in 1843 as "Dr Med et Chir.", as well as Magister of Ophthalmology and Gynecology.
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Aby Warburg
1866 - 1929 (63 years)
Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg , a private library, which was later moved to the Warburg Institute, London. At the heart of his research was the legacy of the classical world, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of Western culture through to the Renaissance.
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Fannie Smith Washington
1858 - 1884 (26 years)
Fannie Smith Washington was an American educator, and the first wife of Booker T. Washington. Before her premature death in 1884, Fannie Washington aided her husband in the early development of the Tuskegee Institute.
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Carmelita Hinton
1890 - 1983 (93 years)
Carmelita Hinton was an American progressive educator. She is best known as the founder in 1935 of The Putney School, a progressive boarding school in Vermont. Early life Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Hinton was one of four children. Her father, Clement Chase, who owned a newspaper and a bookstore, was a women's rights advocate and encouraged Hinton's energetic nature and belief that she could do what she wished with her life. Her mother, Lula Belle Edwards, disagreed and tried unsuccessfully to mold Hinton into a more traditional woman's role. During her years at the Omaha's Episcopal School for ...
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Amy Barrington
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Amy Barrington was an Irish teacher and scientist who was closely associated with the practices and beliefs of eugenics. She published several papers on that subject as well as indexing a work on history. She also wrote an account of the family history of the Barringtons. Amy Barrington herself states in 'The Barrington family history' that she occupied herself in learning and travelling for 26 years before deciding to pursue her family's ancestral history. She was the youngest daughter of Edward Barrington of Fassaroe, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.
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William Healey Dall
1845 - 1927 (82 years)
William Healey Dall was an American naturalist, a prominent malacologist, and one of the earliest scientific explorers of interior Alaska. He described many mollusks of the Pacific Northwest of North America, and was for many years America's preeminent authority on living and fossil mollusks.
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Lorentz Dietrichson
1834 - 1917 (83 years)
Lorentz Henrik Segelcke Dietrichson was a Norwegian poet and historian of art and literature. Biography Lorentz Henrik Segelcke Dietrichson was the son of Fredrik Dietrichson and Marie Heiberg Dahl . Dietrichson grew up in Bergen as an only child in a home of cultural officials interested in the parents' social circle. While an undergraduate in the University of Christiania, he composed many clever student songs which were collected and published in 1859. After school graduation in 1853 at the University of Christiania and other exams the following year he began to study theology, but he was more keen to cultivate their literary and artistic interests.
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William Nicholas Hailmann
1836 - 1920 (84 years)
William Nicholas Hailmann was an American educator. He was a progressive educator and helped introduce the kindergarten into the United States. Biography He was educated in the gymnasium at Zürich, studied in Medical College of Louisville, Kentucky, and received a Ph.D. from Ohio University in 1885. He taught natural science in the Louisville high schools from 1856 to 1865, and then directed the German and English Academy from 1865 to 1873, where he built the first kindergarten classroom in the United States. He eventually became president of the Froebel Institute of North America.
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Oswald Heer
1809 - 1883 (74 years)
Oswald Heer , Swiss geologist and naturalist, was born at Niederuzwil in Canton of St. Gallen and died in Lausanne. Biography Oswald Heer was educated as a clergyman at Halle and took holy orders, and he also graduated as Doctor of Philosophy and medicine. Early in life his interest was aroused in entomology, on which subject he acquired special knowledge, and later he took up the study of plants and became one of the pioneers in paleobotany, distinguished for his researches on the Miocene flora.
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Mario Praz
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Mario Praz was an Italian-born critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony , was a comprehensive survey of the decadent, erotic and morbid themes that characterised European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries . The book was written and published first in Italian as in 1930; and the most recent edition was published in Florence by Sansoni in 1996.
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François-Alphonse Forel
1841 - 1912 (71 years)
François-Alphonse Forel was a Swiss physician and scientist who pioneered the study of lakes, and is thus considered the founder, and the Father of limnology. Limnology is the study of bodies of fresh water and their biological, chemical, and physical features.
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Mungo Park
1771 - 1806 (35 years)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.
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Vladimir Petković
1874 - 1956 (82 years)
Vladimir R. Petković was a Serbian art historian who initiated this scientific discipline in the Serbian cultural milieu. He was also a professor at the University of Belgrade. Biography He received his elementary education in his hometown, Oreovica, Kuseljevo, Svilajnac and in Kragujevac he attended high school. He studied the Department of Philology and History at the Grandes écoles in Belgrade between 1893 and 1897. He attended doctoral studies at the universities of Munich and Halle. Between 1900 and 1905 he served as assistant custodian of the warden of the National Museum in Belgrade, a...
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Thomas Hill
1818 - 1891 (73 years)
Thomas Hill was an American Unitarian clergyman, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, and educator. Biography Taught to read at an early age, Hill read voraciously and was well regarded for his capacious and accurate memory. His father taught him botany, and he took a delight in nature and devised scientific instruments, one that calculated eclipses and was subsequently awarded the Scott Medal by the Franklin Institute.
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Víctor Jara
1932 - 1973 (41 years)
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and Communist political activist. He developed Chilean theater by directing a broad array of works, ranging from locally produced plays to world classics, as well as the experimental work of playwrights such as Ann Jellicoe. He also played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the Nueva canción chilena movement. This led to an uprising of new sounds in popular music during the administration of President Salvador Allende.
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Cynthia S. Burnett
1840 - 1932 (92 years)
Cynthia S. Burnett was an American educator, temperance reformer, and newspaper editor. She passed her early life in Ohio, but her first temperance movement work was done in Illinois, in 1879, later answering calls for help in Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In 1885, she was made state organizer of Ohio, and the first year of this appointment, she lectured 165 times, besides holding meetings in the daytime and organizing over 40 unions. Her voice failing, she accepted a call to Utah as teacher in the Methodist Episcopal College, in Salt Lake City. While living there, she was made ...
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William Miller
1838 - 1923 (85 years)
William Miller was a Scottish educationalist and Free Church of Scotland missionary to Madras. He was also a member of Madras Legislative Council for four terms—in 1893, 1895, 1899, and 1902. He was chiefly notable for transforming Madras Christian College into an ecumenical enterprise and imbuing the minds of Madras Province South Indians with Fulfilment theology, with an idea of "Christ the fulfiller"—in a sense, he is considered not only the pioneer of Fulfilment theology, but also of Hindu Renaissance by making Indian converts to think Christianity in Indian context. He was the recipient...
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Ingebrikt Grose
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Ingebrikt Fredrick Grose or Ingebricks F. Grose was an author, college professor and founding president of Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. Background Inglebrikt was the first child of Johan and Ingeborg Grose. His father, Johan had arrived in the United States during 1854 from Stetten, then a part of Prussia. His mother, Ingeborg emigrated to the United States from the western Norway during the same year. His parents were married in Wisconsin in 1860 and moved to Kenyon, Minnesota, where Grose was born in 1862. Grose attended primary school in Kenyon, after which he traveled to St.
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Otto Kurz
1908 - 1975 (67 years)
Otto Kurz FBA was a historian and Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Oxford. Education University of Vienna Career Fleeing to London from the Nazis, he was Librarian at the Warburg Institute, 1944–65 and Professor of the History of Classical Tradition with special reference to the Near East, University of London, 1965–75. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford for 1971–72.
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T. S. R. Boase
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase was a British art historian, university teacher, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Early life and education Thomas Boase was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Charles Millet Boase , operator of a bleaching mill at Claverhouse, outside Dundee, of which the Boase family were part-owners, and his wife Anne. Boase was educated at a day preparatory school and then at Rugby School in England .
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Adolph Goldschmidt
1863 - 1944 (81 years)
Adolph Goldschmidt was a Jewish German art historian. He taught at University of Berlin from 1892 to 1903, and University of Halle from 1904 to 1912. Biography He was born on 15 January 1863 in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. His family was Jewish and in the banking business. After a short business career he devoted himself to the study of the history of art at the universities of Jena, Kiel, and Leipzig. He took his degree in 1889 with the dissertation, Lübecker Malerei und Plastik bis 1530 , the first detailed analysis of the medieval art of northeast Germany.
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Thomas I. Gasson
1859 - 1930 (71 years)
Thomas Ignatius Gasson was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit. Born in England, he emigrated to the United States at the age of 13, and was taken under the care of two Catholic women in Philadelphia, which led to his conversion to Catholicism soon thereafter. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1875, and studied theology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, where he was ordained a priest. Upon his return to the United States, he became a professor at Boston College, before being named President of Boston College in 1907.
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Richard Taylor
1781 - 1858 (77 years)
Richard Taylor was an English naturalist and publisher of scientific journals. He became joint editor of the Philosophical Magazine in 1822 and went on to publish the Annals of Natural History in 1838. From 1837 to 1852, he edited and published Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science. In 1852, he was joined by the chemist Dr William Francis to form Taylor and Francis.
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Henry Thode
1857 - 1920 (63 years)
Henry Thode was a German art historian. He was born in Dresden and died in Copenhagen. Biography He was an art historian at the time of the Weimar republic. He wrote against the prevailing ideas of the time that art from outside of Germany, such as French Impressionism was superior to traditional academic or native art.
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Bernhard Wosien
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Bernhard Wosien was a German Ballet master, choreographer and professor of expression education and dance. Wosien is the founder of the modern form of sacred dance; he was assisted by his daughter, Maria-Gabriele Wosien.
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Hans Peter L'Orange
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Hans Peter L'Orange was a Norwegian art historian and classical archaeologist. Biography L'Orange was born in Kristiania , Norway. He was a son of Major General Hans Wilhelm L'Orange and Ginni Gulbranson . His family had its origin from among the French Huguenots. He was a paternal grandson of military officer Hans Peter L'Orange , maternal grandson of businessowner Carl August Gulbranson and brother-in-law of journalist and writer, Gunnar Larsen .
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Lilian Wyckoff Johnson
1864 - 1956 (92 years)
Lilian Wyckoff Johnson was an American teacher of history and an advocate for rural reform and civil rights. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee to John Cumming Johnson and Elizabeth Fisher. Both of her parents valued education and were strong proponents of community service. Her mother headed up the Memphis Women's Christian Association and was the first president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. After an early education in private schools, in 1878 Lilian was sent to Dayton, Ohio to take refuge during a yellow fever outbreak; while there, she attended the Cooper Academy. Her parents...
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John Anderson
1726 - 1796 (70 years)
John Anderson was a Scottish natural philosopher and liberal educator at the forefront of the application of science to technology in the industrial revolution, and of the education and advancement of working men and women. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was the posthumous founder of Anderson's College , which ultimately evolved into the University of Strathclyde.
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Harriet Newell Haskell
1835 - 1907 (72 years)
Harriet Newell Haskell was an American educator and school administrator from the U.S. state of Maine. She taught from 1855 to 1860 in Waldoboro, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1868, she was a teacher and principal at Castleton Collegiate Seminary, Vermont. Thereafter, for 39 years, she served as principal at Monticello Seminary of Godfrey, Illinois.
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René Clair
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
René Clair , born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1960. Clair's best know...
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Paulius Galaunė
1890 - 1988 (98 years)
Paulius Galaunė was a Lithuanian art historian, museum curator, and graphic artist. He was one of the first professional museum curators in Lithuania and was well-published on topics of Lithuanian folk art. The apartment of Galaunė and his wife Adelė Nezabitauskaitė, an opera singer, was converted into the Galaunė Family Museum in 1995, and contains his personal belongings as well as his works. It is part of the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum. He was buried in Petrašiūnai Cemetery.
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Fukuzawa Yukichi
1835 - 1901 (66 years)
Fukuzawa Yukichi was a Japanese educator, philosopher, writer, entrepreneur and samurai who founded Keio University, the newspaper Jiji-Shinpō, and the Institute for Study of Infectious Diseases. Fukuzawa was an early advocate for reform in Japan. His ideas about the organization of government and the structure of social institutions made a lasting impression on a rapidly changing Japan during the Meiji period. He appears on the current 10,000-Japanese yen banknote.
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Elizabeth Bass
1876 - 1956 (80 years)
Mary Elizabeth Bass was an American physician, educator and suffragist. She was the first of two women to become faculty members at the medical school of Tulane University along with Edith Ballard. Bass worked to promote the efforts of women as physicians. She worked at Tulane for thirty years.
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Efrem Zimbalist
1889 - 1985 (96 years)
Efrem Zimbalist was a Russian and American concert violinist, composer, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music. Early life Efrem Zimbalist Sr. was born on April 9, 1889, O.S., equivalent to April 21, 1889, in the Gregorian calendar, as reported in many newspaper obituaries, in the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, the son of Jewish parents Maria and Aron Zimbalist , who was a conductor. By the age of nine, Efrem Zimbalist was first violin in his father's orchestra. At age 12 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and studied under Leopold Auer. He graduated f...
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Isaac Fisher
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Isaac Fisher was an American educator who graduated from Tuskegee Institute, served as principal at Branch Normal College, and taught at several other Historically Black Colleges and Universities. A protege of Booker T. Washington, he advocated vocational education.
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Porter Garnett
1871 - 1951 (80 years)
Porter Garnett was a playwright, critic, editor, librarian, teacher, and printer. Biography Porter Garnett was born in 1871 in San Francisco. He was an active member in San Francisco's literary scene and a member of the Bohemian Club, writing and directing plays at Bohemian Grove. In 1896, he joined The Lark, founded the previous year by Gelett Burgess and Bruce Porter. In 1907 he became assistant curator of Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Emilio Cornalia
1824 - 1882 (58 years)
Emilio Cornalia was an Italian naturalist. He was born in Milan and died in the same city. He was conservator from 1851 to 1866, and director from 1866 till his death, of the Milan Museum of Natural History, and was interested in all areas of biology.
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