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,
#2701
Cees P. M. Van Der Vleuten
#2702
Karl Georg von Raumer
1783 - 1865 (82 years)
Karl Georg von Raumer was a German geologist and educator. Biography Raumer was born in Wörlitz, in Anhalt-Dessau. He was educated at the universities of Göttingen and Halle, and at the mining academy in Freiberg as a student of Abraham Gottlob Werner. In 1811 he became professor of mineralogy at Breslau, and two years later, participated in the German Campaign of 1813. In 1819 he relocated as a professor to the University of Halle, then in 1827 settled at the University of Erlangen as a professor of natural history and mineralogy. Raumer died in Erlangen.
Go to Profile#2703
Leonard Horner
1785 - 1864 (79 years)
Leonard Horner FRSE FRS FGS was a Scottish merchant, geologist and educational reformer. He was the younger brother of Francis Horner. Horner was a founder of the School of Arts of Edinburgh, now Heriot-Watt University and one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. A 'radical educational reformer' he was involved in the establishment of University College School. As a commissioner on the Royal Commission on the Employment of Children in Factories, Horner arguably did more to improve the working conditions of women and children in North England than any other person in the 19th century.
Go to Profile#2704
Andrej Dudrovich
1782 - 1830 (48 years)
Andrej Dudrovich was a Russian philosopher, professor and president of Kharkov University during the Age of Enlightenment. Biography Andrej Dudrovich was born in Serbia, then part of the Austrian Empire before emigrating to Imperial Russia. Like many intellectuals of his generation who received an education abroad, he became influenced by Immanuel Kant's moral teachings. His chief work was a doctoral dissertation dealing with Kant while in the class of Johann Baptist Schad, a Benedictine monk who converted to Protestanism and became one of Kant's disciples in Imperial Russia. Dudrovich was a...
Go to Profile#2705
Antoine-Fortuné Marion
1846 - 1900 (54 years)
Antoine-Fortuné Marion was a French naturalist with interests in geology, zoology, and botany. He was also a competent amateur painter. A school friend of Paul Cézanne's in Aix-en-Provence, Marion went on to become professor and director of the Natural History Museum in Marseille. Cézanne painted his portrait in 1866–1867 at the Bastide du Jas de Bouffan.
Go to Profile#2706
Sydney Cockerell
1867 - 1962 (95 years)
Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell was an English museum curator and collector. From 1908 to 1937, he was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. He was knighted in 1934. Biography Sydney Cockerell made his way initially as clerk in the family coal business, George J. Cockerell & Co., until he met John Ruskin. Around 1887, Cockerell sent Ruskin some sea shells, which he collected.
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Hal Roach
1892 - 1992 (100 years)
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach Sr. was an American film and television producer, director, screenwriter, and centenarian, who was the founder of the namesake Hal Roach Studios. Roach was active in the industry from the 1910s to the 1990s known for producing a number of successes including the Laurel and Hardy franchise, the films of entertainer Charley Chase, and the Our Gang short film comedy series.
Go to Profile#2708
Boris Vipper
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Boris Robertovich Vipper was a Russian, Latvian and Soviet art historian. Early life and education Boris Robertovich Vipper was born in Moscow, in the Russian Empire, the only son of historian Robert Vipper, who was of Austrian origin , and his wife Anastasiia Vasilievna Akhramovich, an ethnic Belarusian. He attended the VII Moscow Classical Gymnasium, completing his studies in 1906, and applied for entrance to the Imperial Moscow University, where his father was employed. Vipper studied at the historical-philological faculty, graduating in 1911. In 1918 he obtained a master's degree at the s...
Go to Profile#2709
John Finley Crowe
1787 - 1860 (73 years)
John Finley Crowe was a Presbyterian minister and the founder of Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana. His residence from 1824 to 1860, the Crowe-Garritt House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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Dionýz Ilkovič
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Dionýz Ilkovič was a Czechoslovak physicist and physical chemist of Rusyn ethnicity. Along with Nobel laureate Jaroslav Heyrovský, he helped to establish theoretical basis of polarography. In this field, he is the author of an important result, the Ilkovic's equation. He was also one of the leading figures in modern university-level physics education in Slovakia.
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Richard Ettinghausen
1906 - 1979 (73 years)
Richard Ettinghausen Princeton, New Jersey was a German-American historian of Islamic art and chief curator of the Freer Gallery. Education Ettinghausen was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt in 1931 in Islamic history and art history.
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François Jules Pictet de la Rive
1809 - 1872 (63 years)
François Jules Pictet-De la Rive was a Swiss zoologist and palaeontologist. Biography He was born in Geneva. He graduated B. Sc. at Geneva in 1829, and pursued his studies for a short time at Paris, where under the influence of Georges Cuvier, de Blainville and others, he worked at natural history and comparative anatomy. On his return to Geneva in 1830 he assisted A. P. de Candolle by giving demonstrations in comparative anatomy. Five years later, when de Candolle retired, Pictet was appointed professor of zoology and comparative anatomy.
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Thomas Jones
1870 - 1955 (85 years)
Thomas Jones, CH was a British civil servant and educationalist, once described as "one of the six most important men in Europe", and also as "the King of Wales" and "keeper of a thousand secrets". Jones served as Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet for nearly twenty years, under four different Prime Ministers.
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Jacob Bigelow
1787 - 1879 (92 years)
Jacob Bigelow was an American physician, botanist and botanical illustrator. He was architect of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts , husband to Mary Scollay, and the father of physician Henry Jacob Bigelow.
Go to Profile#2715
Mary Pickford
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Gladys Marie Smith , known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian actress resident in the U.S., and also producer, screenwriter and film studio founder, who was a pioneer in the US film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades.
Go to Profile#2716
Wilbur S. Jackman
1855 - 1907 (52 years)
Wilbur Samuel Jackman was an American educator and one of the originators of the nature study movement. Jackman was born in Mechanicstown, Ohio, and shortly after his birth the family moved to California, Pennsylvania, where he spent his boyhood growing up on a farm that his grandfather had obtained from the local Indians in exchange for a copper kettle. It was his childhood experiences that engendered him with a love of the outdoors and all the plants and animals that live there. Jackman continued his education at the California Normal School, travelling to school and back on horseback. He then went to Meadville College for three years.
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John Warren Davis
1888 - 1980 (92 years)
John Warren Davis was an American educator, college administrator, and civil rights leader. He was the fifth and longest-serving president of West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia, a position he held from 1919 to 1953. Born in Milledgeville, Georgia, Davis relocated to Atlanta in 1903 to attend high school at Atlanta Baptist College . He worked his way through high school and college at Morehouse and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911. At Morehouse, Davis formed associations with John Hope, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Samuel Archer, Benjamin Griffith Brawley, Booker T.
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Regnerus Praedinius
1510 - 1559 (49 years)
Regnerus Praedinius or Reinier Veldman was a Dutch humanist, rector, reformer, and teacher. The Praedinius Gymnasium in Groningen is named after him. Johannes Acronius Frisius, Volcher Coiter, and Abel Eppens were among his students. He was born in Winsum as Reinier Veldman. He studied theology at the Fraterhuis in Groningen, and at Leuven, before becoming the rector of the St. Maartens school. He began to find problems in the Catholic Church and sought to reform the system. He was an admirer of Desiderius Erasmus. He later Latinized "Veldman" using the word praedium to Praedinius. Reinier w...
Go to Profile#2719
Karl Friedrich Schimper
1803 - 1867 (64 years)
Karl Friedrich Schimper was a German botanist, naturalist and poet. Life Early life and education Schimper was born in Mannheim, on February 15, 1803, to Friedrich Ludwig Heinrich Schimper and Margaretha Kathar. Jakob. Wilh. V. Furtenbach. He was a theology student at Heidelberg University and taught at Munich University.
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Julius von Schlosser
1866 - 1938 (72 years)
Julius Alwin Franz Georg Andreas Ritter von Schlosser was an Austrian art historian and an important member of the Vienna School of Art History. According to Ernst Gombrich, he was "One of the most distinguished personalities of art history".
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Nathaniel Butler Jr.
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Nathaniel J. Butler was the 12th President of Colby College, Maine, United States from 1896 to 1901. Early life Butler was born in Eastport, Maine, to Rev. Nathaniel and Jeanne Emery Butler. He was educated at Camden High School and Coburn Classical Institute, and graduated from Colby College in 1873.
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Sibyl Moholy-Nagy
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy was an architectural and art historian. Originally a German citizen, she accompanied her second husband, the Hungarian Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy, in his move to the United States. She was the author of a study of his work, Moholy-Nagy: Experiment in Totality, plus several other books on architectural history.
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Carl Vogt
1817 - 1895 (78 years)
August Christoph Carl Vogt was a German scientist, philosopher, popularizer of science, and politician who emigrated to Switzerland. Vogt published a number of notable works on zoology, geology and physiology. All his life he was engaged in politics, in the German Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–49 and later in Switzerland.
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Michi Matsuda
1868 - Present (157 years)
Michi Matsuda also written as Matsuda MichiDoshisha Joshi Senmon Gakko Early life Michi Matsuda was born in Kyoto. She went to the United States in 1893 to study, beginning with two years of college preparation at Miss Stevens' school in Germantown, Pennsylvania. With a letter of recommendation from Tsuda Umeko, she attended Bryn Mawr College, earning a bachelor's degree in 1899. She was the first student to hold the American Women's Scholarship for Japanese Women, begun by Tsuda.
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Cha Liang-chao
1896 - 1982 (86 years)
Cha Liang-chao was an educator and philanthropist of the Republic of China. Life Cha was born in 1897 in Tianjin but his family roots were from Haining, Zhejiang. He was a paternal cousin of the wuxia novelist Louis Cha, who is better known as Jin Yong.
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Lydia Fowler Wadleigh
1817 - 1888 (71 years)
Lydia Fowler Wadleigh was an American educator, principal of the first high school for girls in New York City, and "lady superintendent" of the precursor to Hunter College. Early life and education Lydia Fowler Wadleigh was born in Sutton, New Hampshire, daughter of Benjamin and Polly Marsden Wadleigh. Her father was a county judge. Her cousin was US Senator Bainbridge Wadleigh. She attended New Hampton Literary and Scientific Institution, graduating in 1841.
Go to Profile#2727
Edmund Asa Ware
1837 - 1885 (48 years)
Edmund Asa Ware was an American educator and the first president of Atlanta University, serving from 1869 to 1885. Biography Ware, son of Asa B. and Catharine Ware, was born December 22, 1837, in North Wrentham, now Norfolk, Massachusetts, and entered College from Norwich, Connecticut, to which place his family had removed about 1852. He graduated from Yale College in 1863. For the two years next after graduation he taught in the Norwich Free Academy, where he had had his early education.
Go to Profile#2728
Nathan B. Young
1862 - 1933 (71 years)
Nathan Benjamin Young was an American educator who helped advance black education in the early 20th century. Born a slave in Alabama, Young later became an educator after Booker T. Washington, who witnessed Young’s skills in debating, invited him to teach at the Tuskegee Institute. Following his career as a teacher, Young later became a president of two major universities, Florida A&M University and Lincoln University. He and Henry Lee De Forest, the president of Talladega College, started a campaign to help improve education for the African American community.
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Roberto Longhi
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Roberto Longhi was an Italian academic, art historian, and curator. The main subjects of his studies were the painters Caravaggio and Piero della Francesca. Early life and career Longhi was born in December 1890 in Alba, Piedmont to parents from Emilia. He studied with Pietro Toesca, in Turin, and Adolfo Venturi in Rome. The latter made him book reviews editor of the journal L'Arte in 1914. Between 1912 and 1917, Longhi, primarily an essayist, published texts in L'Arte and La Voce on Mattia Preti, Piero della Francesca, Orazio Borgianni and Orazio Gentileschi. His writings in L'Arte were acad...
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George Edwards
1694 - 1773 (79 years)
George Edwards was an English naturalist and ornithologist, known as the "father of British ornithology". Edwards was born at West Ham, then in the county of Essex. In his early years, he travelled extensively through mainland Europe, studying natural history, and gained a reputation for his coloured drawings of animals, especially birds. He was appointed as beadle to the Royal College of Physicians in 1733.
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Lionello Venturi
1885 - 1961 (76 years)
Lionello Venturi was an Italian historian and critic of art. He edited the first catalogue raisonné of Paul Cézanne. Life Lionello Venturi was born in 1885, son of art historian Adolfo Venturi. He became a specialist in the art of the Italian Renaissance, but was also interested in late 19th and early 20th century art. In 1918 he met the financier and collector Riccardo Gualino, and advised him to buy work by Amedeo Modigliani. Gualino and Venturi supported Turin painters such as Felice Casorati and the Gruppo di Sei , which included Carlo Levi, Francesco Menzio, Jessie Boswell, Gigi Chessa, Enrico Paolucci and Nicola Galante.
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Samuel Parr
1747 - 1825 (78 years)
Samuel Parr , was an English schoolmaster, writer, minister and Doctor of Law. He was known in his time for political writing, and as "the Whig Johnson", though his reputation has lasted less well than Samuel Johnson's, and the resemblances were at a superficial level; Parr was no prose stylist, even if he was an influential literary figure. A prolific correspondent, he kept up with many of his pupils, and involved himself widely in intellectual and political life.
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Georg Friedrich Parrot
1767 - 1852 (85 years)
Georg Friedrich Parrot was a German scientist, the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat in what was then the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire. Education Georges-Frédéric Parrot was born in Mömpelgard . His father, a surgeon by profession and the local duke's physician in ordinary, had a respectable position in the society becoming the mayor of his hometown. As the family was Protestants, they sent Georg Friedrich to study physics and mathematics at the University of Stuttgart in Stuttgart, the capital of the Duchy .
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Eugene Carlisle LeBel
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Reverend Eugene Carlisle LeBel, C.S.B., C.D., LL.D, was a Canadian academic and religious leader, who spent much of his life in Catholic schools, both studying and teaching. He is best known for his efforts to introduce academic changes to Assumption College, leading it to become Assumption University of Windsor and later the non-denominational University of Windsor.
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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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