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,
#3001
Sidney Franklin
1893 - 1972 (79 years)
Sidney Arnold Franklin was an American film director and producer. Franklin, like William C. deMille, specialized in adapting literary works or Broadway stage plays. His brother Chester Franklin also became a director during the silent film era, best known for directing the early Technicolor film The Toll of the Sea.
Go to Profile#3002
E. E. Speight
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
Ernest Edwin Speight , usually known as E E Speight, was a Yorkshireman who travelled in Japan and India and was a professor of English for twenty years at the Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan and also at the Fourth Higher School, Kanazawa, then for a further twenty years at the Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. In India he made a study of the Nilgiri hill tribes and was working on a Toda grammar at his death
Go to Profile#3003
Iraklis Mitsopoulos
1816 - 1892 (76 years)
Iraklis Mitsopoulos was an author, biologist, archaeologist, physicist, zoologist, paleontologist, mineralogist, geologist, and professor. He is considered the father of modern natural sciences in Greece. He taught classes for over forty-seven years of his life. His nephew world renowned Greek geologist Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos became the first student to receive a doctorate degree in the natural sciences at the University of Athens. His son Maximos Mitsopoulos also became a geologist. Hercules co-founded the Museum of Physical Geography in Athens, Greece, and directed its Zoological Department.
Go to Profile#3004
LeRoy D. Brown
1848 - 1898 (50 years)
LeRoy D. Brown was the first president of University of Nevada. History Nevada became a state in 1864. Its constitution mandated the establishment of a state university with departments in agriculture, the mechanic arts, and mining, along with a state normal school for teacher training. The constitution specified that the state university would be controlled by an elected Board of Regents. The Nevada Legislature established the first State University campus in Elko, Nevada. Its Preparatory Department opened for enrollment in October 1874 with the goal of enhancing Nevada's young people to be ready for college-level study.
Go to Profile#3005
Christian Leberecht Vogel
1759 - 1816 (57 years)
Christian Leberecht Vogel was a German painter, draughtsman and writer on art theory. His pupils included Louise Seidler, and he was the father of court painter and art professor Carl Christian Vogel.
Go to Profile#3006
André Jolles
1874 - 1946 (72 years)
Johannes Andreas Jolles, known as André Jolles was a Dutch-German art historian, literary critic and linguist who was affiliated with the Nazi Party. He is best known for his work Simple Forms. Life Jolles was born on August 7, 1874, in Den Helder. His father, Hendrik Jolle Jolles, died on February 25, 1888, in Naples. Jolles grew up as an only child with his mother Jacoba Cornelia Singles in Amsterdam.
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Sergei Lemeshev
1902 - 1977 (75 years)
Sergei Yakovlevich Lemeshev was a Soviet and Russian opera singer and director. People's Artist of the USSR . Biography Early life and career Lemeshev was born into a peasant family, and his father wanted him to become a cobbler. In 1914, he left a parish school and was sent to be trained to make shoes in Saint Petersburg. In 1917, he graduated from school in Tver, where he received vocal training. He began first at a local workers' club and later moved to Moscow.
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Ludger Alscher
1916 - 1985 (69 years)
Ludger Alscher was a German classical archaeologist, who could be considered the most significant scholar of his subject area in the DDR. Life Ludger Alscher studied ancient history and classical archaeology from 1936, first at the University of Münster and then at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1939. Archaeology quickly became the primary focus of his studies, thanks especially to the influence of his teacher at Münster, Friedrich Matz the Younger. In Munich he was mainly influenced by Ernst Buschor. In 1942 he received his doctorate for a work on depictions of Nike in the round...
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Karel Pravoslav Sádlo
1898 - 1971 (73 years)
Karel Pravoslav Sádlo was a Czech cellist and significant cello pedagogue. Between 1929–1961, he was the teacher of the majority of Czech cellists and tutored a large number of leading soloists and chamber music performers . He was a teacher at the Conservatoire, dean of the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and a juror at prestigious performers' competitions.
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Martin Brewer Anderson
1815 - 1890 (75 years)
Rev. Martin Brewer Anderson was the first president of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. Biography Anderson was born February 12, 1815, in Brunswick, Maine. His father was of Scotch-Irish descent and his mother of English origin, a woman of marked intellectual qualities. He graduated from Waterville College in 1840 and then attended Newton Theological Institution in Newton, Massachusetts. He married Elizabeth Gilbert, of New York.
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William Stephens
1829 - 1890 (61 years)
William John Stephens , FGS, was headmaster at Sydney Grammar School, a professor at the University of Sydney and museum administrator. Stephens was born in Levens, Westmorland, the son of the Rev. William Stephens, of Heversham, Westmorland, and his wife Alicia, née Daniell. William, junior, was an elder brother of Thomas Stephens. William was educated at Marlborough College, and at The Queen's College, Oxford, where he was scholar from 1848 to 1853; Fellow from 1853 to 1860; Lecturer in 1854; and Tutor from 1855 to 1856.
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Charles Lamont
1895 - 1993 (98 years)
Charles Lamont was a prolific filmmaker, directing over 200 titles and producing and writing many others. He directed nine Abbott and Costello comedies and many Ma and Pa Kettle films. Biography Lamont was born in San Francisco. Lamont came from a family of actors, being the fourth generation to be an actor. He appeared onstage while a teenager and started appearing in films from 1919. He worked as a prop man before becoming assistant director.
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Peter Agricola
1525 - 1585 (60 years)
Peter Agricola was a German Renaissance humanist, educator, classical scholar and theologian, diplomat and statesman, disciple of Martin Luther, friend and collaborator of Philipp Melanchthon. Successively tutor to several young princes of German sovereign states and rector of schools in Ulm and Lauingen, where he created and developed the Gymnasium Illustre, he became an important councilor and State minister of the Dukes of Zweibrücken and Palatinate-Neuburg, carrying out many missions in the German Holy Roman Empire and supporting the Protestant Reformation.
Go to Profile#3014
John Fryer
1839 - 1928 (89 years)
John Fryer , also known as Fu Lanya , was an English sinologist who was first Louis Agassiz Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He was professor of English at Tung-Wen College , Peking, China and head of the Anglo-Chinese School in Shanghai, China, and established the Shanghai Polytechnic and Institute for the Chinese Blind there. He was president of the Oriental Institute of California, United States.
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Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert
1870 - 1926 (56 years)
Hippolyte Gevaert or Fierens-Gevaert was a Belgian art historian, philosopher, art critic, singer, and writer. Life He had studied at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles in 1890 and won first prize for singing. That same year he married Jacqueline Marthe Gevaert, daughter of the musician François-Auguste Gevaert . He then joined the Opéra de Lille, but an accident with his voice ended his singing career. He moved to Paris, where he began working as a journalist, writer and art critic and changed his surname to Fierens-Gevaert.
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Ernst August Hagen
1797 - 1880 (83 years)
Ernst August Hagen was a Prussian writer on art and novelist. He taught at Königsberg University and was the first Prussian scholar to hold a teaching chair in Art history and Aesthetics. Family provenance and connections Ernst August Hagen was born in Königsberg, at that time the administrative capital of East Prussia . His father, Karl Gottfried Hagen was a distinguished chemist and the court apothecary.
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Nikolai Tarabukin
1889 - 1956 (67 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Tarabukin was an art theoretician active in the Soviet Union. He was one of major theorists of Proletkult. Tarabukin's first book was Опыт теории живописи which although started in 1916 was not published until 1923. He was influenced by influence of Heinrich Wölfflin.
Go to Profile#3018
Maria Brace Kimball
1852 - 1933 (81 years)
Maria Brace Kimball was an American elocutionist who taught, lectured, and wrote on the subject. She was an instructor in elocution and lecturer on dramatic literature in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; lecturer on French theatre and dramatic literature in schools; teacher of elocution in Brearley School, New York City, 1883–92. She was the author of A Text Book of Elocution and A Soldier-doctor of our army, James P. Kimball , as well as various contributions to periodicals.
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Bellamkonda Ramaraya Kavindrulu
1875 - 1914 (39 years)
Bellamkonda Ramaraya Kavindrulu was an Indian poet, author, yogi, Sanskrit scholar and a philosopher. Ramaraya Kavi wrote nearly 148 classic works in Sanskrit . All but 45 are missing. While some are available in part, the remaining are available full length.
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Kate Everest Levi
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Kate Asaphine Everest Levi was an American educator, writer, and social worker. She was the first director of Kingsley House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a settlement house, and the first woman Ph.D. recipient from the University of Wisconsin. Although both Syracuse University and the College of Wooster had granted doctorates in history to women in the 1880s, Everest Levi is considered the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in history from an organized graduate school in the United States. She wrote on topics such as education and German immigration to the Midwest.
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Franklin Carter
1837 - 1910 (73 years)
Franklin Carter was an American professor of Germanic and romance languages and served as President of Williams College from 1881 to 1901. Carter was born September 30, 1837, in Waterbury, Connecticut, the third son of Deacon Preserve Wood Carter and Ruth Holmes Carter. He attended Phillips Academy Andover, then matriculated at Yale College in 1855. He became sick and retreated to Florida, until 1860, when he entered Williams College. Graduating in 1862, he received a professorship in French and German the following year.
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Ibuka Kajinosuke
1854 - 1940 (86 years)
Ibuka Kajinosuke was a Japanese samurai of the late Edo period, who became a Christian during the Meiji period. He was born in Aizu, and fought in the Boshin War. In his adult life, he also became an ordained minister, and was an educator.
Go to Profile#3023
Pierre Francastel
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Pierre Francastel was a French art historian, best known for his use of sociological method. Francastel's initial period of study was in literature, at the Sorbonne. He worked in building conservation at Versailles while undertaking research toward his doctoral degree, which was on the sculpture of Versailles, and in 1928 he published a monograph, including a critical catalogue, on the seventeenth-century French sculptor François Girardon. In 1930, he was appointed director of the Warsaw Institut français, and in 1936 he was appointed professor at the University in Strasbourg. In 1948, he was...
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Myrtle Smith Livingston
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Myrtle Smith Livingston was an American educator and playwright. Early life Myrtle Athleen Smith was born in Holly Grove, Arkansas, in 1902, the daughter of Isaac Samuel Smith and Lulu C. Hall Smith. She graduated from high school in 1920. She studied pharmacy at Howard University for two years , and earned a Colorado teaching certificate in 1924. She later earned a master's degree in 1940, from Columbia University.
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Aubrey Moore
1848 - 1890 (42 years)
Aubrey Lackington Moore was an English Anglo-Catholic priest and one of the first Christian Darwinians. He has been described as "the clergyman who more than any other man was responsible for breaking down the antagonisms towards Evolution then widely felt in the English Church".
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Delia E. Wilder Carson
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
Delia E. Wilder Carson was an American educator from the U.S. state of New York. She taught mathematics, and served as preceptress of Ladies' Hall, at the University of Wisconsin . Early years and education Wilder was born in Athens, New York, January 25, 1833. Her father, Thomas Wilder, was one of eight brothers who migrated from Massachusetts when the eldest was a young man. Several were teachers, and all were closely identified with the development and progress of Genesee and Wyoming counties, New York, where they ultimately settled. Her mother's maiden name was Hannah Dow . Her siblings included: Henry Fayette Wilder, Sarah D.
Go to Profile#3027
Barker Fairley
1887 - 1986 (99 years)
Barker Fairley, was a British-Canadian painter, and scholar who made a significant contribution to the study of German literature, particularly for the work of Goethe, and was an early champion and friend of the Group of Seven.
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Nicholas Russo
1845 - 1902 (57 years)
Nicholas Russo was an Italian Catholic priest, Jesuit, philosopher, and missionary. Born in Italy, he ran away from his family and joined the Society of Jesus in France in 1862, where he was educated and began teaching. In 1875, Russo was sent to the United States to study at Woodstock College. For ten years, he was a professor and the chair of philosophy at Boston College and became its first faculty member to publish a book. Specializing in Thomism, he was regarded as a successful professor. He served as president of the college from 1887 to 1888.
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J. Stuart Blackton
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
James Stuart Blackton was a British-American film producer and director of the silent era. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation, is considered a father of American animation, and was the first to bring many classic plays and books to the screen. Blackton was also the commodore of the Motorboat Club of America and the Atlantic Yacht Club.
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Johann Daniel Major
1634 - 1693 (59 years)
Johann Daniel Major was a German professor of theoretical medicine, naturalist, collector and the founder of museology. From 1654 to 1658 Johann Daniel Major studied at the University of Wittenberg and in 1659 graduated as a magister medicine at the University of Wittenberg and journeyed to Italy gaining from the University of Padua another degree for a dissertation "Description of the bird Albatros and other curious observations". From 1661 to 1663 he practiced as a physician in Wittenberg moving in 1663 to Hamburg, where he was a plague physician and wrote medical publications. In 1666 he conducted the first public dissection of a human corpse now in Kiel.
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Franz von Reber
1834 - 1919 (85 years)
Franz von Reber was a German art historian. After studying in Munich and Berlin, he went to Rome, and in 1858 established himself as lecturer at the University of Munich, was appointed professor at the Polytechnicum of Munich in 1863 and director of the Royal Gallery in 1875.
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William G. Vinal
1881 - 1976 (95 years)
William Gould Vinal was an American naturalist, nature educator, and conservationist who was a faculty at Massachusetts State College—now known as the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He wrote numerous books and papers on nature and outdoors education. He has been called the Father of Nature Recreation. He also served as an college football coach while teaching at Marshall College—now known as Marshall University—in 1908.
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Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet
1723 - 1778 (55 years)
Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet was a French pharmacist, botanist and one of the earliest botanical explorers in South America. He was one of the first botanists to study ethnobotany in the Neotropics.
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Paul J. Sachs
1878 - 1965 (87 years)
Paul Joseph Sachs was an American investor, businessman and museum director. Sachs served as associate director of the Fogg Art Museum and as a partner in the financial firm Goldman Sachs. He is recognized for having developed one of the earliest museum studies courses in the United States.
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Gerard Baldwin Brown
1849 - 1932 (83 years)
Gerard Baldwin Brown, FBA was a British art historian. Life Brown was born in London, the son of church minister James Baldwin Brown and his wife, Elizabeth, a sister of the sculptor Henry Leifchild. He attended Uppingham School before earning a scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford in 1869; graduating with degrees in classics in 1871 and literae humaniores in 1873. That year Brown became a Fellow at Brasenose College in 1874, appointed in a teaching position, but he left in 1877 and took up studio painting at the National Art Training School in South Kensington .
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Arthur Masterman
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
Arthur Thomas Masterman FRS FRSE was an English zoologist and author. He was an expert on the British fishing industry. Life He was born on 9 April 1869 the son of Thomas W. Masterman of Rotherfield Hall in Sussex. His older brother Howard Masterman, became Bishop of Plymouth. His youngest brother was Charles Masterman. Masterman was educated at University School in Hastings and then Weymouth College. He then won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge studying under Sir Arthur Shipley. He graduated in physiology and zoology in 1893.
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David Hand
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
David Dodd Hand was an American animator and animation filmmaker known for his work at Walt Disney Productions. He worked on numerous Disney shorts during the 1930s and eventually became supervising director on the animated features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi.
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George Henry Perkins
1844 - 1933 (89 years)
George Henry Perkins was an American naturalist. He was the state entomologist and geologist for Vermont. Biography He was educated at the Knox Academy, Galesburg, Illinois, and at Yale, where he graduated in 1867, and in 1869 received the degree of Ph.D. there for postgraduate studies. In 1869 he was appointed as professor of natural history in the University of Vermont, and in 1898 he became dean of the natural science department. Beginning in 1880, he held the office of state entomologist of Vermont. In 1895, he left that post to become the state geologist. He devoted considerable study to...
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Ernst Buchner
1892 - 1962 (70 years)
Ernst Buchner was a German museum administrator and art historian. A native of Munich, he was director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, a position in German arts administration second only to the head of the Berlin museum network. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, played a role in seizing Jewish art, and was eventually responsible for safeguarding German collections and Nazi Plunder from the threat of destruction in war. He largely rehabilitated his career after his post-war denazification trial.
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Leila Cook Barber
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Leila Cook Barber was an American art historian and professor, specializing in the Renaissance art and Medieval studies. She was a Professor Emeritus at Vassar College, where she taught from 1931 until 1968.
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Charles de Tolnay
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Charles de Tolnay, born Károly von Tolnai , was a Hungarian art historian and an expert on Michelangelo. According to Erwin Panofsky, he was "one of the most brilliant art historians" of his time. Life and work De Tolnay was born in Budapest. He was the son of Arnold von Tolnai, an official of the Hungarian administration. In 1918, he began studying art history and archaeology as Karl Tolnai in Germany, first at the University of Berlin , then at the University of Frankfurt .
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Sturla Gudlaugsson
1913 - 1971 (58 years)
Sturla Gudlaugsson was a Danish-born Dutch art historian and director of the RKD and the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Gudlaugsson was born in Skagen as the son of the Icelandic poet Jonas Gudlaugsson, but his father died when he was three and he grew up in Kleef with his mother's extended Dutch family. He studied in Berlin and worked first there until he felt he needed to leave the Nazi regime and got a job in Denmark. He then worked briefly at the Gemeentelijk museum in The Hague before starting work at the RKD in 1942.
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Jomí García Ascot
1927 - 1986 (59 years)
Jomí García Ascot was a poet, essayist, filmmaker, director and educator. Born in Tunisia, he was a Spanish exile who lived in Mexico. Biography José Miguel García Ascot was born on 24 March 1927 in Tunis, Tunisia. The son of a Spanish diplomat, he spent his childhood traveling from Portugal to France to Belgium and Morocco.
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J. Eugene Gallery
1898 - 1960 (62 years)
Joseph Eugene Gallery was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit. He studied sociology at Georgetown University, before serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. Upon his return, he graduated, and entered business in Washington, D.C. He then entered the Society of Jesus in 1931, and was later ordained a priest. He became a professor of sociology at the University of Scranton, and also worked in child welfare and in arbitrating industrial disputes. In 1947, Gallery became the president of the University of Scranton. During his presidency, the university's graduate school was established. Hi...
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Carl Georg Heise
1890 - 1979 (89 years)
Carl Georg Heise was a German art historian. From 1945 to 1955 he was director of the Kunsthalle Hamburg. Life Heise was born into a Hamburg mercantile family with artistic interests. In about 1906 Aby Warburg became his mentor, and recommended to him a period of studying art history with Wilhelm Vöge in Freiburg. Subsequently, he went to Adolph Goldschmidt in Halle and—against Warburg's advice—to Heinrich Wölfflin in Munich. In 1910 he travelled to Italy with Wilhelm Waetzoldt and Warburg, visiting Venice and finally Ferrara, where Warburg was researching the frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia.
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Arthur R. M. Spaid
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Arthur Rusmiselle Miller Spaid was an American educator, school administrator, lecturer, and writer. He served as principal of Alexis I. duPont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, superintendent of New Castle County Public Schools in Delaware, superintendent of Dorchester County Public Schools in Maryland, and Delaware State commissioner of Education .
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Louis Grodecki
1910 - 1982 (72 years)
Louis Grodecki was a French art historian. A disciple of Henri Focillon since 1929, shortly after his arrival in France, and naturalized French in 1935, he met art historian Erwin Panofsky in 1949 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Grodecki is famous for his work on romanesque stained glass, of Paris, Picardy and the Nord-Pas de Calais region. His most notable works are about the stained glasses of Chartres Cathedral, in particular a complete catalogue which he never finished. He was a reviewer for the doctoral dissertation of E. Wayne Craven.
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Jerome Daugherty
1849 - 1914 (65 years)
Jerome Daugherty was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served in many different capacities at Jesuit institutions throughout the northeast United States, eventually becoming president of Georgetown University in 1901. Born in Baltimore, he was educated at Loyola College in Maryland, before entering the Society of Jesus and becoming a member of the first class at Woodstock College. He then taught various subjects, including mathematics, Latin, Ancient Greek, rhetoric, and the humanities in Massachusetts, New York City, and Washington, D.C., and served as minister at many of the insti...
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Stanley B. Freeborn
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Stanley Barron Freeborn served as the first chancellor of University of California, Davis between 1958 and June 1959. Prior to being the first chancellor of UC Davis, Freeborn was the dean of the College of Agriculture at UC Berkeley. Following his death in 1960, UC Davis renamed its assembly hall to Freeborn Hall in his honor.
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Philippe Le Corbeiller
1891 - 1980 (89 years)
Philippe Emmanuel Le Corbeiller was a French-American electrical engineer, mathematician, physicist, and educator. After a career in France as an expert on the electronics of telecommunications, he became a professor of applied physics and general education at Harvard University. His most important scientific contributions were in the theory and applications of nonlinear systems, including self-oscillators.
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