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.
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List of the most influential people in Education,
#3101
Agnes L. Rogers
1884 - 1943 (59 years)
Agnes Low Rogers was a Scottish educator and educational psychologist. Early life Agnes Low Rogers was born in Dundee, the daughter of William Thomson Rogers and Janet Low Rogers. She earned a master's degree at the University of St. Andrews in 1908. She passed the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge in 1911, and completed doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1917. Her dissertation, published the following year, was titled Experimental Tests of Mathematical Ability and their Prognostic Value .
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Lottlisa Behling
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Lottlisa Behling was a German art historian and botanist. Biography Lottlisa Behling was born on 15 July 1909 in Neustettin, Pomerania. She was a double major in art history and botany at the universities of Greifswald, Halle and Berlin. She received her doctorate degree 1937 in Berlin. Her doctoral thesis was titled Das ungegenständliche Bauornament der Gotik. Versuch einer Geschichte des Maßwerks.
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Howard Landis Bevis
1885 - 1968 (83 years)
Howard Landis Bevis was the 7th President of Ohio State University. Bevis received a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1908, a degree from University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1910. He served in the Ordnance Department of the United States Army during World War I, and later was chief of the legal section of the finance division of the Army Air Corps. He received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1920. He went on to practice law in Cincinnati, Ohio and served on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Law. The governor appointed Bevis to the Ohio Supreme Court in 1933 to fill a vacancy.
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Frederick Middlebush
1890 - 1971 (81 years)
Frederick Middlebush was an American educator and thirteenth president of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri from 1935 to 1954. His presidency was the longest term ever served at the University. His presidency included the completion of the Memorial Union and a tripling in enrollment after World War II. Middlebush Hall, on the Columbia campus, is named after him. He is buried in Columbia at the Columbia Cemetery.
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Henry Louis Smith
1859 - 1951 (92 years)
Henry Louis Smith was the ninth president of Davidson College and the first president to not be an ordained Presbyterian minister. Originally from Greensboro, North Carolina, Smith graduated from Davidson in 1881 but returned as a professor of physics before becoming president in 1901. It was during his time as a professor that Smith and a group of students created one of the first x-ray images in America.
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Andrew P. Torrence
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Andrew Pumphrey Torrence was an African-American university administrator. He served as the third president of Tennessee State University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1968 to 1974, and as the executive vice president and provost of Tuskegee University, another historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama, from 1974 to 1980.
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Wilhelm Worringer
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Wilhelm Robert Worringer was a German art historian known for his theories about abstract art and its relation to avant-garde movements such as German Expressionism. Through his influence on the art critic T. E. Hulme, his ideas were influential in the development of early British modernism, especially Vorticism.
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Aurelia Henry Reinhardt
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt was an American educator, activist, and prominent member and leader of numerous organizations. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her doctoral dissertation at Yale, and studied as a fellow at Oxford. After teaching at the University of Idaho, the Lewiston State Normal School, and with the Extension Division of the University of California, Reinhardt was elected president of Mills College in 1916, and held the position until 1943, making her the longest serving president in the history of the school.
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Tsuda Umeko
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
was a Japanese educator who founded Tsuda University. She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist, and at the age of 7, she became Japan's first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission.
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Edmund von Mach
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
Edmund von Mach was a German-American art historian and lecturer on art. Life and career He was born on August 1, 1870, in Jawory, Pomerania, eastern Prussia . He came to America in 1891, and was educated at Harvard University , where he was an instructor in fine arts from 1899 to 1903. He was also an instructor in the history of art at Wellesley College from 1899 to 1902, and thereafter lectured on the same subject at Bradford Academy. He is the author of Greek Sculpture: Its Spirit and Principles ; A Handbook of Greek and Roman Sculpture ; Outlines of the History of Painting ; The Art of Painting in the Nineteenth Century .
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L. P. Jacks
1860 - 1955 (95 years)
Lawrence Pearsall Jacks , abbreviated L. P. Jacks, was an English educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister who rose to prominence in the period from World War I to World War II. Early life Jacks was born on 9 October 1860 in Nottingham. In 1882, he enrolled in Manchester New College . After graduating with a M.A. in 1886, he spent a year at Harvard University, where he studied with the philosopher Josiah Royce. In 1887, he became assistant minister to Stopford Brooke in his chapel in Bloomsbury, London. He served as assistant minister for a year, and then accepted a position as Unitarian...
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Roscoe Conkling Bruce
1879 - 1950 (71 years)
Roscoe Conkling Bruce, Senior was an African-American educator who was known for stressing the value of practical industrial and business skills as opposed to academic disciplines. Later he administered the Dunbar Apartments housing complex in Harlem, New York City, and was editor in chief of the Harriet Tubman Publishing Company.
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Walter Williams
1864 - 1935 (71 years)
Walter Williams was an American journalist and educator. He founded the world's first journalism school at the University of Missouri, and later served as the university's president. An internationalist, he promoted the ideals of journalism globally and is often referred to as "The Father of Journalism Education".
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LeBaron Russell Briggs
1855 - 1934 (79 years)
LeBaron Russell Briggs was an American educator. He was appointed the first dean of men at Harvard College, and subsequently served as dean of the faculty until he retired. He was concurrently president of Radcliffe College and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
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Anna Maria Brizio
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Anna Maria Brizio was professor of art history at the University of Milan, a member of the Commissione Vinciana and an authority on the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Selected publications Italian Per il quarto centenario dalla nascita di Paolo Caliari detto Paolo Veronese. Note per una definizione critica dello stile di Paolo Veronese, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», 31 , fasc. 1Un'opera giovanile del Botticelli, in «L'arte. Rivista bimestrale di storia dell'arte medioevale e moderna», marzo 1933, fasc. 2, pp. 108–119Per il quinto centenario Verrocchiesco , in «Emporium», dicembre 1935, pp. 293–303Vercelli.
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Voldemar Vaga
1899 - 1999 (100 years)
Voldemar Vaga was Estonian art and architecture historian and teacher. 1913–1914 he studied at drawing courses of Estonian Arts Society. 1918–1919 he studied at Ants Laikmaa studio school. 1926 he graduated from Tartu University.
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Noah K. Davis
1830 - 1910 (80 years)
Noah Knowles Davis was an American educator. He served as president of Bethel College in Kentucky. He taught at Delaware College, Howard College and the University of Virginia. Early life Noah Knowles Davis was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 15, 1830, to Mary and Noah Davis. His father, who was a minister of the Baptist Tract Society, died shortly after Davis' birth. He was raised by his mother and step-father, the Reverend John L. Dagg, a Southern Baptist theologian in Alabama.
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Caroline Hazard
1856 - 1945 (89 years)
Caroline Hazard was an American educator, philanthropist, and author. She served as the fifth president of Wellesley College, from 1899 to 1910. Early life Caroline Hazard was born in Peace Dale, Rhode Island in 1856. Her father was industrialist Rowland Hazard II and her mother was Margaret A. Hazard, née Rood. She was educated at the Mary A. Shaw School in Providence and received private tutoring at Brown University and in Europe. She conducted welfare programs in Peace Dale, and wrote on a variety of topics, including biography, poetry, and Rhode Island history. She was the founder of the...
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Renate Wagner-Rieger
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Renate Wagner-Rieger was an Austrian art historian and educator, with significant research in the fields of architecture and historicism. Education and career Renate Rieger was born January 10, 1921, in Vienna. In 1942 she studied art history at the University of Vienna, under Hans Sedlmayr and Karl Oettinger and received her PhD in 1947 under Karl Maria Swoboda on the architectural facade of the Viennese apartments from the 16th to the mid-18th century. In 1956 she became a lecturer at University of Vienna and in the same year married historian Walter Wagner.
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Pietro Toesca
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Giovanni Pietro Toesca was an Italian academic and art historian, notable as one of the most important historians of medieval to 20th century art. His La pittura e la miniatura nella Lombardia fino alla metà del Quattrocento was the first attempt to reconstruct the course of figurative Lombard art from the Middle Ages onwards, defining its importance across Europe.
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Vladimir Kemenov
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Vladimir Semyonovich Kemenov was a Soviet art historian and statesman who headed the VOKS for the USSR in the 1940s. Life and career He was born in Yekaterinoslav . In 1940, he succeeded Viktor Smirnov as chairman of VOKS , a propaganda organization created in 1925 and restructured in 1958. VOKS also often served as a convenient 'roof' for operations of both branches of Soviet intelligence, whose residents and operatives used opportunities provided by VOKS to establish and maintain contacts in intellectual, scientific and government circles. These contacts were, for the most part, unaware ...
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Paul Clemen
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Paul Clemen was a German art historian known in particular for his large inventory of monuments in the Rhineland area, many of which were destroyed or severely damaged in World War II. Clemen was born in Leipzig, son of Professor Christian August Julius Clemen and his wife Helene Voigt . His two brothers Carl and Otto became prominent scholars in their own right in the fields of comparative religion and history, respectively.
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John Dewey
1859 - 1952 (93 years)
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education, or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous." Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—to be major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality.
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Friedrich Fröbel
1782 - 1852 (70 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel or Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He created the concept of the kindergarten and coined the word, which soon entered the English language as well. He also developed the educational toys known as Froebel gifts.
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Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
1746 - 1827 (81 years)
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach. He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland and wrote many works explaining his revolutionary modern principles of education. His motto was "Learning by head, hand and heart". Thanks to Pestalozzi, illiteracy in 18th-century Switzerland was overcome almost completely by 1830.
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Wilhelm von Humboldt
1767 - 1835 (68 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt was a German philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after him in 1949 .
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G. Stanley Hall
1846 - 1924 (78 years)
Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator who earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America at Harvard College in the nineteenth century. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Hall as the 72nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century, in a tie with Lewis Terman.
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Horace Mann
1796 - 1859 (63 years)
Horace Mann was an American educational reformer, slavery abolitionist and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education, he is thus also known as The Father of American Education. In 1848, after public service as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann was elected to the United States House of Representatives . From September 1852 to his death, he served as President of Antioch College.
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William Tecumseh Sherman
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War , achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general".
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Joseph Priestley
1733 - 1804 (71 years)
Joseph Priestley was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science.
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Kuniyoshi Obara
1887 - 1977 (90 years)
Kuniyoshi Obara was an influential Japanese education reformer and publisher. Obara left a strong mark in education philosophy and on the theories of liberal education, art education and vocational education. In addition to creating his own education theory, Zenjin Education, he was among the leaders of the New Education Movement in Japan and disseminated in that country the works of earlier reformers such as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He was the founder of the campus Tamagawa Gakuen and for many years president of its university, Tamagawa University.
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John Amos Comenius
1592 - 1670 (78 years)
John Amos Comenius was a Moravian philosopher, pedagogue and theologian who is considered the father of modern education. He served as the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren before becoming a religious refugee and one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica Magna. As an educator and theologian, he led schools and advised governments across Protestant Europe through the middle of the seventeenth century.
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Kurt Hahn
1886 - 1974 (88 years)
Kurt Matthias Robert Martin Hahn was a German educator. He was decisive in founding Stiftung Louisenlund, Schule Schloss Salem, Gordonstoun, Outward Bound, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, and the first of the United World Colleges, Atlantic College.
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John Bosco
1815 - 1888 (73 years)
John Melchior Bosco, SDB , popularly known as Don Bosco , was an Italian Catholic priest, educator, writer, and saint of the 19th century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the ill effects of industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System.
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Alcuin
724 - 804 (80 years)
Alcuin of York – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Archbishop Ecgbert at York. At the invitation of Charlemagne, he became a leading scholar and teacher at the Carolingian court, where he remained a figure in the 780s and 790s. Before that, he was also a court chancellor in Aachen. "The most learned man anywhere to be found", according to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne , he is considered among the most important intellectual architects of the Carolingian Renaissance. A...
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Amos Bronson Alcott
1799 - 1888 (89 years)
Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a plant-based diet. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.
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Thomas Arnold
1795 - 1842 (47 years)
Thomas Arnold was an English educator and historian. He was an early supporter of the Broad Church Anglican movement. As headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, he introduced several reforms that were widely copied by other noted public schools. His reforms redefined standards of masculinity and achievement.
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Johann Friedrich Herbart
1776 - 1841 (65 years)
Johann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline. Herbart is now remembered amongst the post-Kantian philosophers mostly as making the greatest contrast to Hegel—in particular in relation to aesthetics. His educational philosophy is known as Herbartianism.
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Kanō Jigorō
1860 - 1938 (78 years)
was a Japanese educator, athlete, and the founder of Judo. Along with Ju-Jutsu, Judo was one of the first Japanese martial arts to gain widespread international recognition, and the first to become an official Olympic sport. Pedagogical innovations attributed to Kanō include the use of black and white belts, and the introduction of dan ranking to show the relative ranking among members of a martial art style. Well-known mottoes attributed to Kanō include "good use of energy" and "mutual welfare and benefit".
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Francis Wayland Parker
1837 - 1902 (65 years)
Francis Wayland Parker was a pioneer of the progressive school movement in the United States. He believed that education should include the complete development of an individual — mental, physical, and moral. John Dewey called him the "father of progressive education." He worked to create curriculum that centered on the whole child and a strong language background. He was against standardization, isolated drill and rote learning. He helped to show that education was not just about cramming information into students' minds, but about teaching students to think for themselves and become indepen...
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Adolph Diesterweg
1790 - 1866 (76 years)
Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterweg was a German educator, thinker, and progressive liberal politician, who campaigned for the secularization of schools. He is said to be precursory to the reform of pedagogy. Diesterweg is considered as "a teacher of teachers".
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