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,
#2801
Julia Gulliver
1856 - 1940 (84 years)
Julia Henrietta Gulliver was an American philosopher, educator and college president. She was only the second woman in America to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy and was a tireless advocate for increased female representation in higher education.
Go to Profile#2802
Charles Augustus Aiken
1827 - 1892 (65 years)
Charles Augustus Aiken was an American clergyman and academic. Biography He was born in Manchester, Vermont, on October 30, 1827, to John Aiken and Harriet Adams Aiken. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1846, at the age of nineteen, and went on to Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1853. He married Sarah Noyes on October 17, 1854, and was ordained a pastor of the Congregational church in Yarmouth, Maine, that same year.
Go to Profile#2803
James A. Doonan
1841 - 1911 (70 years)
James Aloysius Doonan was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit, who was the president of Georgetown University from 1882 to 1888. During that time he oversaw the naming of Gaston Hall and the construction of a new building for the School of Medicine. Doonan also acquired two historic cannons that were placed in front of Healy Hall. His presidency was financially successful, with a reduction in the university's burdensome debt that had accrued during the construction of Healy Hall.
Go to Profile#2804
Richard Henry Beddome
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
Colonel Richard Henry Beddome was a British military officer and naturalist in India, who became chief conservator of the Madras Forest Department. In the mid-19th century, he extensively surveyed several remote and then-unexplored hill ranges in Sri Lanka and south India, including those in the Eastern Ghats such as Yelandur, Kollegal, Shevaroy Hills, Yelagiri, Nallamala Hills, Visakhapatnam hills, and the Western Ghats such as Nilgiri hills, Anaimalai hills, Agasthyamalai Hills and Kudremukh. He described many species of plants, amphibians, and reptiles from southern India and Sri Lanka, an...
Go to Profile#2805
Lucy Rider Meyer
1849 - 1922 (73 years)
Lucy Jane Rider Meyer was an American social worker, educator, physician, and author who cofounded the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions in Illinois. She is credited with reviving the office of the female deacon in the U.S. Methodist Episcopal Church.
Go to Profile#2806
Edgar Wind
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Edgar Wind was a German-born British interdisciplinary art historian, specializing in iconology in the Renaissance era. He was a member of the school of art historians associated with Aby Warburg and the Warburg Institute as well as the first Professor of art history at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#2807
Carl Justi
1832 - 1912 (80 years)
Carl Justi was a German art historian, who practised a biographical approach to art history. Professor of art history at the University of Bonn, he wrote three major critical biographies: of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, of Diego Velázquez and of Michelangelo.
Go to Profile#2808
Howard B. Meek
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Howard Bagnall Meek was an American professor who founded Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. He began teaching hotel management at Cornell during 1922, when the subject was part of the university's agricultural college, which operated its home-economics school, rather than a separate unit within the university.
Go to Profile#2809
Millicent Carey McIntosh
1898 - 2001 (103 years)
Millicent Carey McIntosh was an educational administrator and American feminist who led the Brearley School , and most prominently Barnard College . The first married woman to head one of the Seven Sisters, she was "considered a national role model for generations of young women who wanted to combine career and family," advocating for working mothers and for child care as a dignified profession.
Go to Profile#2810
Slavko Vorkapich
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Slavoljub "Slavko" Vorkapić , known in English as Slavko Vorkapich, was a Serbian-born Hollywood montagist, an independent cinematic artist, chair of USC School of Cinematic Arts, chair of the Belgrade Film and Theatre Academy, painter, and illustrator. He was a prominent figure of modern cinematography and motion picture film art during the early and mid-20th century and was a cinema theorist and lecturer.
Go to Profile#2811
Johann Adam von Ickstatt
1702 - 1776 (74 years)
Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt was a German educator and director of the University of Ingolstadt. Born in Vockenhausen, he was a major proponent of the Enlightenment in Bavaria. He died in Waldsassen. He was a godfather to Adam Weishaupt.
Go to Profile#2812
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1945 - 1982 (37 years)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder , sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker, actor, and dramatist. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Versatile and prolific, his over 40 films span a variety of genres, most frequently blending elements of Hollywood melodrama with social criticism and avant-garde techniques. His films, according to him, explored "the exploitability of feelings". His work was deeply rooted in post-war German culture: the aftermath of Nazism, the German economic miracle, and the terror of the Red Army Faction.
Go to Profile#2813
Annie Webb Blanton
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Annie Webb Blanton was an American suffragist from Texas, educator, and author of a series of grammar textbooks. Blanton was elected Superintendent of Texas Public Instruction in 1918, making her the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office.
Go to Profile#2814
Francis Anderson
1858 - 1941 (83 years)
Sir Francis Anderson was a Scottish-born Australian philosopher and educator. Early life Francis Anderson was born in Glasgow, the son of Francis Anderson, a manufacturer, and his wife Elizabeth Anna Lockart, née Ellison. Anderson was educated at Old Wynd and Oatlands public schools and became a pupil-teacher at the age of 14. He went on to the University of Glasgow, matriculating in 1876 and graduated M.A. in 1883. He was awarded Sir Richard Jebb's prize for Greek literature, took first place in the philosophical classes of Professors Veitch and Caird, and won two scholarships. For two years...
Go to Profile#2815
Kenneth John Conant
1894 - 1984 (90 years)
Kenneth John Conant was an American architectural historian and educator, who specialized in medieval architecture. Conant is known for his studies of Cluny Abbey. Career Born in Neenah, Conant received a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1915. He was considered the academic heir of Herbert Langford Warren, a teacher at Harvard, and through him, of the art historians Charles Eliot Norton and John Ruskin. He served in the 42nd Infantry Division of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and was wounded in the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918. Conant later returned to Harvard.
Go to Profile#2816
William Edward Zeuch
1892 - Present (133 years)
William Edward Zeuch was an American socialist, educator, and academic who is best known as a founder and first director of the Commonwealth College in Arkansas. This college is the most well known attempt in Arkansas at establishing a radical labor educational school.
Go to Profile#2817
Kurt Martin
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Kurt Martin was a German art historian. Martin was a professor of art history. His career began in 1927 as curator of the . From 1934 to 1956, he was director of the Staatlichen Kunsthalle Karlsruhe . In 1940 he was appointed Head of the Municipal Museums of Strasbourg as well as Chief Commissioner of the Alsatian Museums. In 1956 he became Director of the Karlsruher Kunstakademie , and in 1957 General Director of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen .
Go to Profile#2818
Moina Michael
1869 - 1944 (75 years)
Moina Belle Michael was an American professor and humanitarian who conceived the idea of using poppies as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in World War I. Early life Michael was born in 1869 and lived on what is now known as 3698 Moina Michael Road in Good Hope, in Walton County, Georgia. She was the eldest daughter and second of the seven children of John Marion Michael, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, and Alice Sherwood Wise. She was distantly related to General Francis Marion on her father's side, and the Wise family of Virginia state governors on her mother's side.
Go to Profile#2819
Ion A. Rădulescu-Pogoneanu
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Ion A. Rădulescu-Pogoneanu was a Romanian pedagogue. Biography Born in 1870 in Pogoanele, Buzău County, he studied for six years at Leipzig University, obtaining his doctorate in philosophy in July 1901 with thesis Über das Leben und die Philosophie Contas. He then became a professor at the University of Bucharest, and was elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy in 1919. A contributor to Convorbiri Literare and România Jună magazines, he helped popularize knowledge of pedagogy in his country. Among his works are a biography of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a book on the phenomenon of education, and one on the problems of Romanian culture.
Go to Profile#2820
Helen Stuart Campbell
1839 - 1918 (79 years)
Helen Stuart Campbell was an American author, economist, and editor, as well as a social and industrial reformer. She was a pioneer in the field of home economics. Her Household Economics was an early textbook in the field of domestic science.
Go to Profile#2821
Frances St John Chappelle
1897 - 1936 (39 years)
Frances Arcadia Willoughby St. John Chappelle was an Assistant in Psychology at the University of Nevada. Biography Frances Arcadia Willoughby St. John was born on July 2, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Lettie Willoughby St. John, a direct descendant of the first Lord Willoughby and one of the first women to graduate from a medical college. She was also an artist and magazine illustrator.
Go to Profile#2822
Ali al-Qari
Nur ad-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Sultan Muhammad al-Hirawi al-Qari , known as Mulla Ali al-Qari was an Islamic scholar. He was born in Herat, where he received his basic Islamic education. Thereafter, he travelled to Mecca and studied under the scholar Shaykh Ahmad Ibn Hajar al-Haytami Makki, and al-Qari eventually decided to remain in Mecca where he taught, died and was buried.
Go to Profile#2823
William George Constable
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
William George Constable Education Distantly related to the landscape painter John Constable, William George Constable was educated at Derby School, where his father was headmaster, and St John's College, Cambridge, where he read history, law and economics. In 1909, he was awarded the Whewell Scholarship for International Law. After gaining a First in economics in 1910, he was awarded the McMahon Law Studentship by St John's for four years, then entered the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in May, 1914.
Go to Profile#2824
Thomas Percival Creed
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Sir Thomas Percival Creed, KBE, MC, QC was a lawyer and educationist. Principal of Queen Mary College London from 1952 to 1967, he served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1964 to 1967.
Go to Profile#2825
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.
Go to Profile#2826
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.
Go to Profile#2827
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.
Go to Profile#2828
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.
Go to Profile#2829
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.
Go to Profile#2830
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.
Go to Profile#2831
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.
Go to Profile#2832
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...
Go to Profile#2833
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.
Go to Profile#2834
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.
Go to Profile#2835
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".
Go to Profile#2836
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.
Go to Profile#2837
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.
Go to Profile#2838
Ellwood Patterson Cubberley
1868 - 1941 (73 years)
Ellwood Patterson Cubberley was an American educator, a eugenicist, and a pioneer in the field of education management. He spent most of his career as a professor and later served as the first dean of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education in California.
Go to Profile#2839
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:
Go to Profile#2840
Georges Daux
1899 - 1988 (89 years)
Georges Daux was a French archaeologist and a leading scholar of Greek inscriptions. Born in Bastia and educated at the École normale supérieure, Daux headed the French School at Athens from 1950 to 1969.
Go to Profile#2841
Charlotte Towle
1896 - 1966 (70 years)
Charlotte Helen Towle was an American social worker, academic and writer. Early life and education Towle was born and raised in Butte, Montana. In 1919, she received a BA in Education from Goucher College. After graduation, she worked at the American Red Cross and became increasingly interested in social work. With financial support from a Commonwealth Fund fellowship, she attended New York School of Social Work . She earned a degree in Psychiatric Social Work in 1926.
Go to Profile#2842
William Bell Dinsmoor
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
William Bell Dinsmoor Sr. was an American architectural historian of classical Greece and a Columbia University professor of art and archaeology. Biography He was born on July 29, 1886, in Windham, New Hampshire.
Go to Profile#2843
Eduard C. Lindeman
1885 - 1953 (68 years)
Eduard C. Lindeman was an American educator, notable for his pioneering contributions in adult education. He introduced many concepts of modern adult education in his book, The Meaning of Adult Education.
Go to Profile#2844
Rhys Carpenter
1889 - 1980 (91 years)
Rhys Carpenter was an American classical art historian and professor at Bryn Mawr College. Carpenter was unconventional as a scholar. He analyzed Greek art from the standpoint of artistic production and behavior. He argued for dating the Greek alphabet to the eighth century B.C.
Go to Profile#2845
Lawrence Stenhouse
1926 - 1982 (56 years)
Lawrence Stenhouse was a British educational thinker who sought to promote an active role for teachers in educational research and curriculum development. Life Stenhouse was born in 1926 and he was educated at Manchester Grammar School, the University of St Andrews and the University of Glasgow .
Go to Profile#2846
Henry-Russell Hitchcock
1903 - 1987 (84 years)
Henry-Russell Hitchcock was an American architectural historian, and for many years a professor at Smith College and New York University. His writings helped to define the characteristics of modernist architecture.
Go to Profile#2847
Herbert Heaton
1890 - 1973 (83 years)
Herbert Heaton was a British-born economic historian. He held posts at the University of Tasmania, Queen's University, Kingston, and the University of Minnesota, where he was head of the Department of History from 1954 until his retirement in 1958. Heaton was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1945.
Go to Profile#2848
James Ritchie
1882 - 1958 (76 years)
James Ritchie CBE PRSE was a Scottish naturalist and archaeologist, who was Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh 1936–52 and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1952–1958.
Go to Profile#2849
Walter Dearborn
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Walter Fenno Dearborn was a pioneering American educator and experimental psychologist who helped to establish the field of reading education. Dearborn, who approached the study of psychology from the perspective of an empirical scientist, is perhaps best known for using empirical research to design and refine teaching methods. Dearborn's research persuaded him that children develop at different rates and that schools should not ignore individual differences by teaching children in large groups or classes.
Go to Profile#2850
Julian Gibbs
1924 - 1983 (59 years)
Julian Howard Gibbs was an American educator and the fifteenth President of Amherst College. Gibbs graduated from Amherst College in 1947. He earned his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in 1949 and 1950 from Princeton University. After a year of postdoctoral study at Cambridge University in England with a Fulbright Fellowship, he briefly taught at the University of Minnesota. Gibbs then worked for eight years at General Electric Company and American Viscose Corporation before accepting a position at Brown University in 1960 as associate professor of chemistry. He was named a full professor in 1963 and served as the chairman of the Chemistry Department at Brown from 1964 to 1972.
Go to Profile