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
Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg
1890 - 1958 (68 years)
Guido Kaschnitz von Weinberg was an Austrian-German archaeologist and art historian. He was the husband of writer Marie Luise Kaschnitz. He studied at the University of Vienna, where one of his influences was art historian Max Dvořák. From 1910 to 1913 he took part in excavations in Dalmatia and participated in study trips to Greece, North Africa and Egypt. In 1913 he obtained his doctorate from Vienna with a dissertation-thesis on Greek vase painting. After performing military service in World War I, he worked for several years in Munich.
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Justino Fernández
1904 - 1972 (68 years)
Justino Fernández García was a researcher, historian and art critic who is particularly known for his work documenting and critiquing Mexican art of the 20th century. Fernandez studied and developed his career with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, as a protégé of Manuel Toussaint. Then the latter died in 1955, Fernandez took over as head of the Aesthetic Research Institute at UNAM, where he would develop the most of his writing and research until his death. Fernandez’s work was recognized by the Mexican government with the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in 1969.
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Karel Domin
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Karel Domin was a Czech botanist and politician. After gymnasium school studies in Příbram, he studied botany at the Charles University in Prague, and graduated in 1906. Between 1911 and 1913 he published several important articles on Australian taxonomy. In 1916 he was named as professor of botany. Domin specialised in phytogeography, geobotany and plant taxonomy. He became a member at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, published many scientific works and founded a botany institute at the university. The Domin scale, a commonly used means of classifying a standard area by the number of pl...
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May L. Cheney
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
May Lucretia Shepard Cheney was born during the American Civil War in Garden Grove, Iowa, and was named after the month in which she was born, and her maternal grandmother who influenced her childhood. May's early school attendance was in her hometown. She attended high schools in Oakland and Chico, California before enrolling at UCB in 1879. With her widowed mother, she settled at 2020 Hearst Avenue , in a house with a watermill in the rear yard. Residing in the same house was Lemuel Warren Cheney , a law student.
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Chester Lyman
1814 - 1890 (76 years)
Chester Smith Lyman was an American teacher, clergyman and astronomer. Early life and education He was born in Manchester, Connecticut, to Chester and Mary Smith Lyman. Chester is the descendant of Richard Lyman, a settler who arrived in America in 1631. Chester's early education was in a country school, but at an early age he showed a strong interest in astronomy and the sciences. By 1833 he had gained admittance to Yale, and graduated in 1837. In his junior year he became editor of the Yale Literary Magazine and he was a member of Skull and Bones. He served for two years as Superintendent of Ellington School, then studied theology at the Union and Yale seminaries.
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Chloe Clark Willson
1818 - 1874 (56 years)
Chloe Aurelia Clark Willson was an early pioneer of what became the U.S. state of Oregon, and one of the first teachers of the Methodist mission in the Willamette Valley. In 1850, she owned half of the land in Oregon's state capital Salem.
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Benson Dillon Billinghurst
Benson Dillon Billinghurst, often known using his initials as B.D. Billinghurst, was an American educator in Nevada during the early 20th century. Born in Ohio in 1869, he served as the Superintendent of Schools of the Washoe County School District from 1908 until his death in 1935, and was famous for his school building projects, his expansion of the availability and quality of Reno education, the introduction of junior high schools to Nevada, and his influence in education laws and the establishment of the Nevada State Textbook Commission.
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Sailendra Sircar
1877 - 1942 (65 years)
Sailendranath Sircar was the fifth and the youngest son of Peary Charan Sircar, he was the founder head master of Swaraswati Institution, established in 1920, now renamed as Sailendra Sircar Vidyalaya, situated at north Kolkata. He was the head examiner in English under Calcutta University, and a gold medalist of the university.
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John Harrison Minnick
1877 - 1966 (89 years)
John Harrison Minnick was an American educator, born at Somerset, Indiana, and educated at Indiana University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Chicago, and other universities. For several years he taught in high schools in Indiana and Illinois, and from 1911 to 1913 he was critic teacher of mathematics at Indiana University. For two years following he was instructor in mathematics at the Horace Mann School at New York City. In 1916 he became instructor of mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania and was successively assistant professor of education, professor of education, and dean of the school of education at that university.
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James Orton
1830 - 1877 (47 years)
James Orton was an American naturalist who contributed much to the knowledge of South America and the Amazon basin. Biography Orton was the son of Presbyterian clergyman and theologian Azariah Giles Orton. Four of his seven brothers died in infancy, and the family's financial resources were very meager. Early in life he developed an interest in natural history and writing. Financial difficulties and poor health delayed his matriculation at Williams College, where he graduated in 1855. In 1858, he graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. After spending some time in travel in Europe and the East, he was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in Greene, New York, on July 11, 1860.
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William T. B. Williams
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
William Taylor Burwell Williams was Dean of the College Department at Tuskegee Institute and two-time president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools . He was a member of U.S. Commissions on Education in Haiti and the Virgin Islands, and a member of the U.S. War Department Committee on Education and Special Training. Williams worked as a field agent of the Slater and Jeanes Fundss and the General Education Board. He taught at Hampton Institute and was a member of the editorial staff of its journal Southern Workman. In 1934, he was the recipient of the NAACP's Spingarn Med...
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John William Adamson
1857 - 1947 (90 years)
John William Adamson was a British educationist and historian of education. From 1903 to 1924 he was Professor of Education at King's College London. He was the most distinguished historian of education of his day.
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Huang Binhong
1865 - 1955 (90 years)
Huáng Bīnhóng was a Chinese literati painter and art historian born in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. His ancestral home was She County, Anhui province. He was the grandson of artist Huang Fengliu. He would later be associated with Shanghai and finally Hangzhou. He is considered one of the last innovators in the literati style of painting and is noted for his freehand landscapes.
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Maximilian Perty
1804 - 1884 (80 years)
Josef Anton Maximilian Perty was a German naturalist and entomologist. He was a professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Bern. His first name is sometimes spelled as "Joseph".
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Max Imdahl
1925 - 1988 (63 years)
Max Imdahl was a German art historian specialized in art historical methodology and the interpretation of modern art after World War II. Life and work Imdahl studied studio painting, art history, archaeology and German literature at the University of Münster. For his paintings he won the Blevins Davis Prize, the most prestigious art contest of the postwar period in Germany, in 1950. In 1951 he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the treatment of color in late Carolingian book illustration under Werner Hager. He worked as an assistant professor at the University of Münster for some years and wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Ottonian Art in 1961.
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Du Zuozhou
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Du Zuozhou was a Chinese educator, writer and psychologist. Biography Du was born in Dongyang, Jinhua of Zhejiang province in late Qing Dynasty China. Du's courtesy name was Jitang . Du graduated from Zhejiang Provincial No.7 High School in Jinhua. In 1915, Du went to Wuhan and studied at Wuchang Advanced Normal College . Du graduated in 1919 and taught for one year at the college.
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John Adams
1772 - 1863 (91 years)
John Adams was an American educator noted for organizing several hundred Sunday schools. He was the 4th Principal of Phillips Academy. His life was celebrated by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in his poem, "The School Boy", which was read at the centennial celebration of Phillips Academy in 1878, thus recalls him:
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Craven Laycock
1866 - 1940 (74 years)
Craven Laycock was the dean of Dartmouth College from 1911 to 1934. He is perhaps best known as the dean who suspended Theodor Seuss Geisel from editing the Dartmouth humor magazine, after which Geisel wrote under the pen name Dr. Seuss.
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George Dana Boardman Pepper
1833 - 1913 (80 years)
George Dana Boardman Pepper was an American academic administrator who served as the 9th president of Colby College from 1882 to 1889. Early life and education Pepper was born in Ware, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children. He attended the Williston Seminary for three years before entering Amherst College at the age of 21 in 1853. In 1857, he attended the Andover Theological Seminary .
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Abby Lillian Marlatt
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Abby Lillian Marlatt was an American educator. Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Marlatt graduated from Kansas State College with a B.S. in 1888. receiving her M.S. from the same institution in 1890. After graduation, she taught home economics, beginning in Utah before going to Rhode Island. In 1909, she came to the University of Wisconsin, where she became the first director of the home economics department. She remained in this capacity until retiring, in 1939, with the title of professor emeritus. She established a regular curriculum and provided students with more specialized work; besides e...
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Charles Herbert Moore
1840 - 1930 (90 years)
Charles Herbert Moore was an American university professor, painter, and architectural historian, known as the first director of Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum. He was one of many followers of the works of John Ruskin, and was known as an American Pre-Raphaelite. In 1871, Moore left painting to begin teaching at Harvard, where he led its new art department. There, Moore was among the first art historians at an academic institution in the United States. After retirement, Moore moved to Hampshire, England where he wrote many books on medieval and Renaissance architecture. He died in Hamps...
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Lloyd N. Morrisett Sr.
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Lloyd N. Morrisett was an American educator. Born in Barretville, Tennessee, he graduated from high school in Edmond, Oklahoma, and received an A.B. degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1917. He earned an A.M. degree and Ph.D. degree from Columbia University.
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Moritz Thausing
1838 - 1884 (46 years)
Moritz Thausing was an Austrian art historian, and counts among the founders of the Vienna School of Art History. Life The son of a palace official in Schloß Tschischkowitz , Thausing began his academic career as a student of German literature and history. He studied first in Prague, and in 1858 went to Vienna, where he studied at the Österreichische Institut für Geschichtsforschung . There he came into contact with Rudolf Eitelberger, who since 1852 had held the first chair in art history at the University of Vienna. Under his influence Thausing began to study the history of art. In 1862 he ...
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Alberta Virginia Scott
1878 - 1902 (24 years)
Alberta Virginia Scott was an American educator. She was the first African-American graduate of Radcliffe College, in 1898. Early life Alberta Virginia Scott was born near Richmond, Virginia. Her mother worked as a cook. She raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her family moved when she was six years old. Her family were members of the historic Union Baptist Church in Cambridge. Scott attended Allston School and then Cambridge Latin School, graduating with the class of 1894.
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Thomas Dawson
Thomas Dawson was an Anglican priest and the fourth president of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia . He is also the brother of William Dawson, who was the second president of William & Mary . He was educated at William & Mary and also held several religious positions, including being an Anglican clergyman, rector of the Bruton Parish, and commissary of the Bishop of London. Dawson was also a member of the Governor's Council and master of the Indian School at the College.
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Christian Gueintz
1592 - 1650 (58 years)
Christian Gueintz was a teacher and writer-grammarian. He was qualified and taught in several mainstream subjects of the time, notably philosophy, theology, and law. He lived during the first half of the seventeenth century, a period characterised by Baroque architecture and, in northern Germany, repeatedly disrupted by destructive war, which at various points had a dislocating impact on his career, and through which he demonstrated impressive qualities of persistence.
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George Herbert Carpenter
1865 - 1939 (74 years)
George Herbert Carpenter was a British naturalist and entomologist, born in the Peckham district of southeast London in 1865, and died in Belfast on 22 January 1939. His main interests were in the study of insects and arachnids, zoogeography, and economic zoology. In addition to numerous contributions to scientific journals and Encyclopædia Britannica, he authored five books.
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Althea Sherman
1853 - 1943 (90 years)
Althea Rosina Sherman was an American illustrator, educator, self-taught ornithologist, and writer who commissioned the building of the "Chimney Swifts' Tower" in Clayton County, Iowa. This structure enabled her to observe and report on the life cycle of chimney swifts, the first to complete such investigations. She published more than 70 articles in scientific and ornithological journals during her career. Sherman was elected as a member of the American Ornithologists' Union and was listed in the third edition of American Men of Science. Additionally, her work as an illustrator, particularly...
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Mable E. Buland Campbell
1885 - 1961 (76 years)
Mable Electa Buland Campbell was a Professor of English in Washington State during the early 20th century, and was, at one time, the youngest person to hold a PH.D. in the United States. Buland was also active in women's groups associated with women's suffrage.
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William Chapman Hewitson
1806 - 1878 (72 years)
William Chapman Hewitson was a British naturalist. A wealthy collector, Hewitson was particularly devoted to Coleoptera and Lepidoptera and, also, to birds' nests and eggs. His collection of butterflies, collected by him as well as purchased from travellers throughout the world, was one of the largest and most important of his time. He contributed to and published many works on entomology and ornithology and was an accomplished scientific illustrator.
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Petronėlė Lastienė
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Petronėlė Lastienė Sirutytė was a Lithuanian teacher and university professor. She was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jewish children from the Kaunas Ghetto during the Holocaust.
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William Hallock Johnson
1865 - 1963 (98 years)
William Hallock Johnson was an American educator who served as president of the historically black Lincoln University of Pennsylvania from 1926 to 1936. He had a liberalizing effect on the institution, presiding over the appointment of its first Black faculty member, and substantially reduced the university's debt.
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Jack Smith
1932 - 1989 (57 years)
Jack Smith was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer.
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Arthur A. O'Leary
1887 - 1962 (75 years)
Arthur Aloysius O'Leary was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit, who served as president of Georgetown University in from 1935 to 1942. Born in Washington, D.C., he studied at Gonzaga College before entering the Society of Jesus and continuing his education at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and Woodstock College. He then taught at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and Georgetown University, where he eventually became the university's librarian, and undertook a major improvement of the Georgetown University Library. O'Leary then assumed the presidency of the university in the midst of the Great Depression and, l...
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Winfield Scott Chaplin
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Winfield Scott Chaplin was the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1891 until 1907. Early life Winfield Scott Chaplin was born in Maine in 1847 and graduated from West Point in 1870 as a second lieutenant of artillery. After resigning in 1872, Chaplin held a number of academic positions in civil and mechanical engineering; including Maine State College, Imperial University in Tokyo, Harvard University, and Union College. He served as dean of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard for six years before being named Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis at age 43...
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Walter Fong
1866 - 1906 (40 years)
Walter Ngon Fong was an American educator, missionary and linguist who founded the first technical college in Hong Kong. He was Stanford University's first Chinese graduate. Early life Fong was born on 1 April 1866 to a humble farming family in the village of Sunning, Guangdong, China. At 15, he emigrated to California, United States, where he initially attended a Presbyterian Mission. While later working at the Chinese Methodist School in San Jose, he pursued further studies at the University of the Pacific from which he graduated in 1892. He went on to be the first Chinese student to g...
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Cornelius Beach Bradley
1843 - 1936 (93 years)
Cornelius Beach Bradley was an American English-language scholar. He served as professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley , and also extensively studied the Thai language. Bradley was born and grew up in Siam, the son of missionary Dan Beach Bradley, and also did missionary work in the country after graduating from Oberlin College in the United States. He returned to the United States in 1874, becoming a teacher and vice-principal at Oakland High School, before joining the faculty of the University of California in 1882. He was also known for mountaineering, especially in...
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Hermann Board
1867 - 1918 (51 years)
Hermann Board was a German architect and art historian. Life Born in Essen, Board was the son of the master mason Hermann Board and attended the municipal Realschule in Essen. He then completed a four-year apprenticeship as an architect and attended the municipal further education school in Essen, the commercial technical school in Cologne and the Technical University of Berlin. Afterwards, he worked for seven years in the construction office of the mining company and also taught in the construction classes of the municipal technical and further education schools in Essen. This was followed...
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John Strong
1868 - 1945 (77 years)
John Strong CBE FRSE FEIS LLD was a 20th-century British educationalist. He was one of the creators of the Education Act 1918. This brought the many poorly-funded private Catholic schools in Scotland into state control.
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Elisabeth Neurdenburg
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Elisabeth Neurdenburg was a Dutch art historian. She contributed to the large inventory of 17th-century Dutch paintings by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, and became a specialist on Dutch Kraak ware. She was a close friend of the Dutch art historian and museum director Ida Caroline Eugenie Peelen.
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Sidney Olcott
1873 - 1949 (76 years)
Sidney Olcott was a Canadian-born film producer, director, actor and screenwriter. Biography Born John Sidney Allcott in Toronto, he became one of the first great directors of the motion picture business. With a desire to be an actor, a young Sidney Olcott went to New York City where he worked in the theatre until 1904 when he performed as a film actor with the Biograph Studios.
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Con Leventhal
1896 - 1979 (83 years)
A.J. Con Leventhal was an Irish lecturer, essayist, and critic. Early life and education Leventhal was born Abraham Jacob Leventhal in Lower Clanbrassil Street, Dublin on 9 May 1896. His parents were Rosa and Moses Leventhal. His father was a draper, and his mother was a poet. She was a Zionist, who was a founding member of the Women's Zionist Society. He lived in the "Little Jerusalem" of Dublin, the area around the South Circular Road, in his youth. He attended Wesley College, Dublin, and then Trinity College Dublin to study modern languages. He edited the TCD student magazine in 1918. I...
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Donald Brittain
1928 - 1989 (61 years)
Donald Code Brittain, was a film director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada. Career Fields of Sacrifice is considered Brittain's first major film as director. His other notable directorial credits include the 1964 feature documentary Bethune, 1965 documentaries Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen and Memorandum and the Genie Award-winning 1979 documentary Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed. He also directed the first-ever IMAX film, Tiger Child for Expo '70, and Earthwatch, a 70mm film for Expo 86.
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William Suida
1877 - 1959 (82 years)
William Suida, born Wilhelm Emil Suida was an eminent Austrian art historian and art collector and "one of the greatest connoisseurs of Italian art." He published books and essays in multiple languages about numerous artists and schools of art. He and his heirs amassed a large private collection that in 1999 was acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, where many paintings from the Suida-Manning Collection are on permanent display.
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Émil Goeldi
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Émil August Goeldi , was a Swiss-Brazilian naturalist and zoologist. He was the father of Oswaldo Goeldi, a noted Brazilian engraver and illustrator. Biography Goeldi studied zoology in Jena, Germany with Ernst Haeckel, and in 1884 he was invited by Ladislau de Souza Mello Netto, the influential director of the Brazilian Museu Imperial e Nacional, to work at that institution. Goeldi arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1885 to work in the National Museum
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Igino Benvenuto Supino
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Igino Benvenuto Supino was an Italian painter, art critic, and historian. Biography Igino was born to a prominent and erudite Jewish family of Pisa; his father, Moises, was a collector of medieval seals, coins and medals, who donated his collection to the Museum of Pisa.
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Cyrus Nutt
1814 - 1875 (61 years)
Cyrus Nutt served as the fifth president of Indiana University. Biography Cyrus Nutt was born in Southington Township, Trumbull County, Ohio on September 4, 1814. His father was James Nutt and his mother was Mary Viets who married in 1806. Cyrus was the second son, with one brother and two sisters who all lived in a log cabin on a piece of land next to a large farm belonging James father-in-law.
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John D. Whitney
1850 - 1917 (67 years)
John Dunning Whitney was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became the president of Georgetown University in 1898. Born in Massachusetts, he joined the United States Navy at the age of sixteen, where he was introduced to Catholicism by way of a book that accidentally came into his possession and prompted him to become a Catholic. He entered the Society of Jesus and spent the next twenty-five years studying and teaching mathematics at Jesuit institutions around the world, including in Canada, England, Ireland, and around the United States in New York, Maryland, Boston, and Louisiana. ...
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Li Shizeng
1881 - 1973 (92 years)
Li Shizeng , born Li Yuying, was an educator, promoter of anarchist doctrines, political activist, and member of the Chinese Nationalist Party in early Republican China. After coming to Paris in 1902, Li took a graduate degree in chemistry and biology, and then along with Wu Zhihui and Zhang Renjie, cofounded the Chinese anarchist movement. He was a supporter of Sun Yat-sen. He organized cultural exchange between France and China, established the first factory in Europe to manufacture and sell beancurd, and created Diligent Work-Frugal Study programs which brought Chinese students to France for work in factories.
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Wilhelm Martin
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Wilhelm Martin was a German-Dutch art historian. Wilhelm Martin was born in 1876 in Quakenbrück, Germany as the son of Karl Martin, a geologist, and Ana Fittica. When his father became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1877, the family moved to the Netherlands. Wilhelm's two younger brothers, Herman Martin and Hans Martin were both born in the Netherlands.
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