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,
#3101
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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George Arliss
1868 - 1946 (78 years)
George Arliss was an English actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award – which he won for his performance as Victorian-era British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli – as well as the earliest-born actor to win the honour. He specialized in successful biopics, such as Disraeli, Voltaire , and Cardinal Richelieu , as well as light comedies, which included The Millionaire and A Successful Calamity .
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Maurice Holleaux
1861 - 1932 (71 years)
Maurice Holleaux was a 19th–20th-century French historian, archaeologist and epigrapher, a specialist of Ancient Greece. Biography Années de formation Admitted in the École normale supérieure in 1879, Holleaux was agrégé in history in 1881 and became a member of the French School at Athens in 1882. He then conducted epigraphic explorations in Samos and Rhodes. He devoted thereafter an important scientific activity in the latter city. In 1884 he undertook missions in Asia Minor during which he discovered with Pierre Paris the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Back in Greece, he excavated in Boeotia the Ptoion sanctuary which had been previously identified by the traveler William Leake.
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Elizabeth Powell Bond
1841 - 1926 (85 years)
Elizabeth Powell Bond was an educator and social activist who was the first Dean of Women at Swarthmore College. Family and education Elizabeth Powell was born in 1841 in Clinton, New York, to a Quaker couple, Catherine Macy Powell and Townsend Powell. Her father was a farmer, and when she was four, the family moved to a farm in Ghent. By the age of 15, she was serving as an assistant teacher at a Friends’ School in the county. She graduated at the age of seventeen from the State Normal School in Albany.
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Elisha Mitchell
1793 - 1857 (64 years)
Elisha Mitchell was an American educator, geologist and Presbyterian minister. His geological studies led to the identification of North Carolina's Mount Mitchell as the highest peak in the United States east of the Mississippi River.
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Ernst Langlotz
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
Ernst Langlotz was a German classical archaeologist and art historian, who specialized in Greek sculpture of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. He studied classical archaeology, philology and art history at the universities of Leipzig and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1921. As a student, his influences were archaeologist Franz Studniczka and art historian Heinrich Wölfflin . Following graduation, he took a study trip to Italy and Greece, where he met with Ernst Buschor in Athens. In 1925 he qualified as a lecturer at the University of Würzburg, and subsequently worked as a conservator at th...
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Jennie Fowler Willing
1834 - 1916 (82 years)
Jennie Fowler Willing was a Canadian-born American educator, author, preacher, social reformer, and suffragist. She married a lawyer and Methodist pastor at age 19. In 1873, she and her husband became professors at Illinois Wesleyan University. In addition to teaching, she was a leader in the temperance movement. Willing came to notice when she joined the Illinois Woman's State Temperance Union, serving as its leader for some years. She and Emily Huntington Miller were involved with creating and presiding over the First Woman's National Temperance Convention of 1874 in Cleveland where the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was formed.
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Victor Bursian
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Victor Robertovich Bursian was a Soviet scientist who worked on theoretical physics, geophysics, electricity and thermodynamics, crystal physics, and the theory of electrical resistivity tomography.
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Joseph Cummings
1817 - 1890 (73 years)
Joseph Cummings was an American academic who served as the 5th president of Wesleyan University from 1857 to 1875, the 5th president of Northwestern University from 1881 to 1890, and the president of Genesee College from 1854 to 1857.
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Botho Graef
1857 - 1917 (60 years)
Franz Botho Graef was a German classical archaeologist and art historian. His father was painter Gustav Graef, and his sister, Sabine Lepsius, was also an artist of some note. Graef taught at the University of Jena from 1904 until 1917.
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Rufus Early Clement
1900 - 1967 (67 years)
Rufus Early Clement was an American academic administrator and university president. He served as the sixth and longest-serving president of the historically black Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia.
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William Richardson
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
William Richardson FRSE was a Scottish classicist and literary scholar. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life Born in Aberfoyle, Perthshire, he was the son of Rev. James Richardson, the Church of Scotland parish minister of the same parish in which William was first educated. William attended the University of Glasgow in 1757 where he focused on his talent for learning languages. He graduated MA from the University in 1763 and was employed by Charles Cathcart, 9th Lord Cathcart, as tutor to his two sons.
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Mary Harriott Norris
1848 - 1918 (70 years)
Mary Harriott Norris was an American author and educator. Born in Boonton, New Jersey to Charles Bryan Norris and Mary Lyon Kerr, she was educated at Vassar College, where she graduated with honor, receiving an A.B. degree in 1870. Two years later in 1872 she was invited back to deliver the annual commencement address to the college. She became a writer of short stories, novels, and educational articles; she edited several works and gave a number of lectures. Norris was a regular contributor to the Boston Journal of Education.
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Mary Mitchell Birchall
1846 - 1898 (52 years)
Mary Mitchell Birchall, born Mary Wheelwright Mitchell , was the first woman in New England to earn a bachelor's degree when she graduated from Bates College in 1869. She later served as a professor at Vassar College and founded a girls' school in Boston.
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James Fitzjames Duff
1898 - 1970 (72 years)
Sir James Fitzjames Duff was an English academic and Vice-chancellor of Durham University. The son of James Duff Duff, he was educated at Winchester College then at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the 1920s, he conducted pioneering research with Godfrey Thomson on the relationship between IQ and social class, now regarded as controversial. He was Professor of Education at the University of Manchester from 1932 to 1937, then Warden of Durham University from 1937 until 1960. During this time, he held the position of Vicechancellor for 6 periods of two years, in alternation with the Rector of Ki...
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María Teresa Babín Cortés
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
María Teresa Babín Cortés was a Puerto Rican educator, literary critic, and essayist. She also wrote poetry and plays. Among her best-known works is Panorama de la Cultura Puertorriqueña and several essays on Federico García Lorca.
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Ole Borch
1626 - 1690 (64 years)
Ole Borch was a Danish scientist, physician, grammarian, and poet. He was royal physician to both Kings Frederick III of Denmark and Christian V of Denmark. He was the founder of Borchs Kollegium and is noted for being the influential instructor of scientist Nicolas Steno.
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Wilhelm Hemprich
1796 - 1825 (29 years)
Wilhelm Friedrich Hemprich was a German naturalist and explorer. Hemprich was born in Glatz , Prussian Silesia, and studied medicine at Breslau and Berlin. It was in Berlin that he became friends with Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the two men sharing an interest in natural history. Hemprich lectured at Berlin University on comparative physiology, and wrote Grundriss der Naturgeschichte . In his spare time he studied reptiles and amphibians at the zoological museum under Hinrich Lichtenstein.
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Anna Cheney Edwards
1835 - 1930 (95 years)
Anna Cheney Edwards was a 19th-century American educator from the U.S. state of Massachusetts. She served as Associate Principal of Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1872–1888; and as Professor of Theism and Christian Evidences, 1888–1890.
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William Westley Guth
1871 - 1929 (58 years)
William Westley Guth was an American attorney, Methodist minister, and academic who served as the fourth president of Goucher College. Early life, family, and education Guth was born on October 15, 1871, in Nashville, Tennessee, to Rev. George Guth and Susan Sophie Grandlienard of Perrefitte, Switzerland. Guth was of German, French, and Swiss descent. When he was a teenager, his family moved to San Francisco, California. He enrolled at the University of the Pacific and continued his studies at the then-newly established Stanford University, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1892.
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William Carey Crane
1816 - 1885 (69 years)
William Carey Crane was an American Baptist minister, an educator, and the president of Baylor University from 1864 to 1885. Early life and education William Carey Crane was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 17, 1816. He attended the Mount Pleasant Classical Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Virginia Baptist Seminary, now known as Richmond College. In 1883, he attended the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute and Madison, now known as Colgate University. In 1836, he received a B.A. from Columbian College, now known as George Washington University, followed by an M.A. in 1839.
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Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann
1743 - 1815 (72 years)
Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmermann was a German geographer and zoologist. He studied natural philosophy and mathematics in Leiden, Halle, Berlin, and Göttingen, and in 1766 was appointed professor of mathematics and natural sciences at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig. One of his pupils was mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. From 1789 onward, he served as aulic councillor in Braunschweig.
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Anders Bugge
1889 - 1955 (66 years)
Anders Bugge was a Norwegian theologist and art historian. Biography Anders Ragnar Bugge was born in Sandsvær in Kongsberg, Norway. He was the son of Christian August Bugge and Dina Alette Danielsen . His father was a theologian and a chaplain at Botsfengslet. He attended the University of Kristiania, where he graduated with a degree in art in 1907 and became cand.theol. in 1914. In 1912–18 he was assistant and later curator at the Museum of Art and Design in Kristiania. In 1929 he defended his doctoral dissertation.
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Maya Deren
1917 - 1961 (44 years)
Maya Deren was a Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important part of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.
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Homer Sprague
1829 - 1918 (89 years)
Homer Baxter Sprague was an American author, educator, abolitionist, and Lieutenant Colonel of the Union Army. A native of Sutton, Massachusetts, Sprague was a Captain of the 13th Connecticut Infantry Regiment in 1861 when the American Civil War began, and quickly rose to the rank of Colonel before being captured as a prisoner of war by the Confederate Army in 1864. In 1865 he was released in a prisoner exchange, and remained active within the military until the end of the war.
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Carl Oesterley
1805 - 1891 (86 years)
Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Oesterley was a German painter and art historian. He is remembered largely for creating oil paintings with Biblical themes. Biography He was a native of Göttingen, and studied archaeology, philosophy and history at the University of Göttingen, where in 1824 he earned his doctorate in the field of art history. Subsequently he studied drawing in Dresden, where he was a student of Johann Gottlob Matthäi . He then spent several years in Rome .
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Viktor Heikel
1842 - 1927 (85 years)
Frans Viktor Heikel was a Finland-Swedish gymnastics teacher, known as "the father of Finnish school gymnastics". Life Heikel was born in Turku to educator and priest Henrik Heikel and Wilhelmina Johanna Schauman. He had ten siblings, including brother Felix Heikel , a bank manager and politician and sister Anna Heikel, head of the School for the Deaf. In 1873 Heikel married Hanna Kihlman. He was father to doctor Allan Phayllos Heikel and ethnologist Yngvar Heikel . He was also cousin to ethnographer Axel Heikel and philologist Ivar Heikel.
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Alexander Adam
1741 - 1809 (68 years)
Alexander Adam was a Scottish teacher and writer on Roman antiquities. Life Alexander Adam was born near Forres, in Moray, the son of a farmer. From his earliest years he showed uncommon diligence and perseverance in classical studies, notwithstanding many difficulties and privations. In 1757 he went to Edinburgh, where he studied at the University of Edinburgh. During this period he lodged with a Mr Watson on Restalrig.
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Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert
1780 - 1860 (80 years)
Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert was a German physician, naturalist and psychologist. Biography He began his studies with theology, but turned to medicine and established himself as a doctor in Altenburg, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. He soon gave up his practice however and devoted himself to research in Dresden . In 1809, by way of mediation from Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, he received the post of rector at a secondary school in Nuremberg.
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Viktor Lazarev
1897 - 1976 (79 years)
Viktor Nikitich Lazarev was a Soviet and Russian art critic and historian who specialized in medieval Byzantine, Russian, and Armenian religious art. He was the son of Nikita Lazarev, a Moscow architect, and was related by blood to Wassily Kandinsky.
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David Smith
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Sir David Stanley Smith was a New Zealand lawyer, judge and educationalist. Smith was born in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand in 1888. He worked for Charles Morison as an assistant from 1912. He Smith was appointed as a judge to the Supreme Court in 1928, a relatively early appointment based on his performance as counsel for Maori land claims. Smith received a knighthood in the 1948 New Year Honours. A few months later, he resigned as a judge and concentrated on public affairs.
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John Gilbert
1812 - 1845 (33 years)
John Gilbert was an English naturalist and explorer. Gilbert is often cited in the earliest descriptions of many Australian animals, many of which were unrecorded in European literature, and some of these are named for him by those authors. Gilbert was sent to the newly founded Swan River Colony and made collections and notes on the unique birds and mammals of the surrounding region. He later joined expeditions to remote parts the country, continuing to make records and collections until he was killed during a violent altercation at Mitchell River on the Cape York Peninsula.
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John McGilvrey
1867 - 1945 (78 years)
John Edward McGilvrey was an American academic who was the first president of what is now Kent State University. McGilvrey was educated at the Indiana State Normal School, receiving his bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1895. He also received an honorary doctorate from Miami University in 1915. At the time of his appointment at the Kent State Normal School in 1911, McGilvrey had recently begun his position as head of the education department at the Western Illinois Normal School in Macomb, Illinois. Other positions held included professor of education at Illinois University, princip...
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Robert Witt
1872 - 1952 (80 years)
Sir Robert Clermont Witt was a British art historian, who, along with Samuel Courtauld and Lord Lee of Fareham, was a co-founder of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Witt was born in Camberwell, south London, in 1872, the son of German parents Gustavus Andreas Witt, a merchant born in Hamburg, and Friederike Helene Von Clermont, from Frankfurt. He was educated at Clifton College and read history at New College, Oxford. In 1896, he fought in the Second Matabele War, and worked alongside Cecil Rhodes as a war correspondent.
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António de Gouveia
1505 - 1566 (61 years)
António de Gouveia was a Portuguese humanist and educator during the Renaissance. Gouveia was born in Beja. After graduating in Paris he taught at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, and then at Toulouse, Avignon, Lyon, Cahors, Valence, Grenoble, Turin and Mondovi. His controversy with Pierre de la Ramée about Aristotle became famous. He wrote literary and philosophical works, having correspondeded with most of the writers of his time. He was brother to André de Gouveia and nephew of Diogo de Gouveia the elder.
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Mary Lowe Dickinson
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Mary Lowe Dickinson was a 19th- and early 20th-century American fiction writer, poet, editor, and educator who also became an advocate for women's rights and anti-war activist. Asked later in life about her decision to pursue the writing life, she observed: "Talent uses us.... If I had had a spark of it, I could not have waited for circumstances to force me to use it."
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Johan Wilhelm Zetterstedt
1785 - 1874 (89 years)
Johan Wilhelm Zetterstedt was a Swedish naturalist who worked mainly on Diptera and Hymenoptera. Biography Zetterstedt studied at the University of Lund, where he was a pupil of Anders Jahan Retzius. He received the title of professor in 1822 and succeeded Carl Adolph Agardh as professor of botany and practical economy in 1836, retiring as emeritus in 1853. In 1831, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Richard Delbrück
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Richard Delbrück was a German classical archaeologist who specialized in the field of ancient Roman portraiture. Career In 1899 he graduated from the University of Bonn, where he was a student of Georg Loeschcke. From 1911 to 1915, he was head of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome. He was later a professor of classical archaeology at the Universities of Giessen and Bonn .
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