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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#6651
James Tait
1863 - 1944 (81 years)
James Tait, was an English medieval historian. With Thomas Frederick Tout, he was the second major figure in the "Manchester School of History". Life He was born in Broughton, Salford, on 19 June 1863, the son of Robert Ramsay Tait, a seed merchant, and his wife Annie Case. He entered Owens College, Manchester, aged 16, and in 1883 graduated there, in history, the institution having meanwhile become part of the federal Victoria University, with other colleges in Leeds and Liverpool. He then studied at Balliol College, Oxford under Arthur Lionel Smith, and obtained a first class degree in 1887.
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Dmitry Odinets
1883 - 1950 (67 years)
Dmitry Mikhaylovich Odinets was a Russian Empire politician and Ukrainian statesman. In 1917-18 he was a minister of Great Russian Affairs in the Council of People's Ministers in Ukraine. In 1940s Odinets chaired the Union of Russian Patriots, a pro-Soviet organization of Russian émigrés in France. After Odinets was exiled to USSR along with other members of the Union, he settled in Kazan and taught Latin at the Kazan State University.
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Philipp Clüver
1580 - 1622 (42 years)
Philipp Clüver was an Early Modern German geographer and historian. Life Clüver was born in Danzig , in Royal Prussia, a province of the Kingdom of Poland. After spending some time at the Polish court of Sigismund III Vasa, he began the study of law at the University of Leiden , but soon he turned his attention to history and geography, which were then taught there by Joseph Scaliger.
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Nikolay Kun
1877 - 1940 (63 years)
Nikolay Albertovich Kun was a Russian historian, writer, and educator. He is best known for his book Greek Myths and Legends , which was extremely popular with readers in the Soviet Union. First published in 1914, it has been republished many times since and translated into a number of European languages.
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Joseph Ehrenfried Hofmann
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Joseph Ehrenfried Hofmann was a German historian of mathematics, known for his research on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Life and work After graduating from high school in 1919 at the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Munich, Hofmann studied at University of Munich with Walther von Dyck and George Faber, gaining Ph.D. in 1927. He was briefly an assistant in Munich and Darmstadt, before he went into the teaching profession in Gunzburg, Nördlingen.
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Matija Mesić
1826 - 1878 (52 years)
Matija Mesić was a Croatian historian, university professor, the first rector of the University of Zagreb. He graduated philosophy at the Royal Academy of Science in 1844, and theology at the Vienna Pázmáneum in 1848. After being ordained and a short chapel service, he worked as a probationary professor of history and geography at the gymnasium in Zagreb. In the period 1851–1853 he studied history and geography in Vienna and Prague. He received a professorship at the Law Academy in Zagreb in 1854, working as a director of the same institution since 1871.
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Philipp Jaffé
1819 - 1870 (51 years)
Philipp Jaffé was a German historian and philologist. The Schwersenz native, despite discrimination against his Jewish religion, was one of the most important German medievalists of the 19th century.
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Dumitru Caracostea
1879 - 1964 (85 years)
Dumitru Caracostea was a Romanian folklorist, literary historian and critic. Biography Origins and early career He was born in Slatina, Olt County to Nicolae Caracostea, a magistrate of Aromanian descent, and his wife Eufrosina , a French teacher. His father's family had become wealthy through engaging in commerce, which opened the possibility of higher education for its members. He attended primary school and one year of high school in his native town, completing his secondary education at Saint Sava High School in Bucharest in 1900. That year, he enrolled in the literature and philosophy f...
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Georg Stadtmüller
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Georg Stadtmüller was German historian and Albanologist. Biography He studied German history, classic and oriental philology and history in Freiburg in period 1927–1931. He was president of History department on Munich University, specialist for history of European Orient and history of Albanians. In his 1942 work he published the controversial thesis in which he traced the origin of Albanians back to the region of Mat. Stadtmüller and later Stavro Skendi supported the controversial assertion about crypto-religious groups existing in the Balkans in all places where the population converted to Islam.
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Carlton C. Qualey
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Carlton Chester Qualey was an American academic, author, and historian. His research specialized principally in Norwegian-American immigration. An eminent historian, his publications include books, articles and reviews produced over a 60-year career. He is most frequently associated with his 1938 study, Norwegian Settlement in the United States.
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Eduard Burdzhalov
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Eduard Nikolaevich Burdzhalov was a Soviet historian. Burdzhalov graduated from Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, and Literature in 1932. He then taught at various Moscow universities, including the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. In 1957 he was dismissed as deputy editor of the journal Questions of History after he published an article about the Bolshevik's confusion following the February Revolution in 1917. However in 1959 he was appointed professor.
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Frank W. Blackmar
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
Frank Wilson Blackmar was an American sociologist, historian and educator. He served as the 9th President of the American Sociological Society . Biography He was born on November 3, 1854, in Springfield Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania.
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Lorenz von Westenrieder
1748 - 1829 (81 years)
Lorenz von Westenrieder was a well-known author and historian in Bavaria and a critic of the Elector Karl Theordor and supporter of Maximilian IV Joseph. There are several memorials to him in Munich.
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Anson D. Morse
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Anson Daniel Morse was an educator, historian, and professor at Amherst College. Morse was born in Cambridge, Vermont. He received his bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1871. He joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1876, and held positions as lecturer in political economics and professor of history. He retired in 1907.
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Mary Hayden
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
Mary Teresa Hayden was an Irish historian, Irish-language activist and campaigner for women's causes. Biography Mary Hayden was educated initially at the Dominican College, Eccles Street and then at Alexandra College in Dublin. She attended the Royal University of Ireland where she graduated with a BA and an MA in Modern Languages. With Agnes O'Farrelly she campaigned for women's rights in the university.
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William Holden Hutton
1860 - 1930 (70 years)
William Holden Hutton was a British historian and a priest of the Church of England. He was Dean of Winchester from 1919 to 1930. Biography William Holden Hutton was born in England on 24 May 1860, in Lincolnshire, where his father was rector of Gate Burton. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first class degree in Modern History in 1881. He was a fellow at St John's College, Oxford, from 1884 to 1923, and an honorary fellow thereafter; and from 1889 to 1909 was a tutor at the college. Between 1895 and 1897 he also lectured on Church history at Cambridge University.
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Ilya Shifman
1930 - 1990 (60 years)
Ilya Sholeimovich Shifman Ilya Shifman studied Oriental studies at the Leningrad State University but in connection with the closure of the faculty moved to the faculty of history. From 1959 to 1960 he did post-graduate studies at the department of Ancient Greece and Rome of the Faculty of History of the Leningrad State University, concentrating on the Phoenician colonization of the Western Mediterranean area. Thereafter he worked at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as at the Leningrad State University. He mainly published works on Carthago and Phoenicia.
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Gustav Storm
1845 - 1903 (58 years)
Gustav Storm was a Norwegian historian, a professor at the Royal Frederick University in Christiania from 1877. He was a driving force in the research of Scandinavian history and literature of the Middle Ages.
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Erik Gustaf Geijer
1783 - 1847 (64 years)
Erik Gustaf Geijer was a Swedish writer, historian, poet, romantic critic of political economy, philosopher, and composer. His writings served to promote Swedish National Romanticism. He was an influential advocate of conservatism, but switched to liberalism later in life.
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Hiraizumi Kiyoshi
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
was a Japanese historian and professor of history at the Imperial University of Tokyo. He is best known for Kōkoku Shikan theory and was highly influential in Japanese conservative and nationalist politics. He was also a shinto priest at Heisenji Hakusan Shrine.
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Carolus Sigonius
1520 - 1584 (64 years)
Carolus Sigonius was an Italian humanist, born in Modena. Biography Having studied Greek under the learned Franciscus Portus of Candia, he attended the philosophical schools of Bologna and Pavia. In 1545, he was elected professor of Greek in his native place in succession to Portus. In 1552, he was appointed to a professorship at Venice, which he exchanged for the chair of eloquence at Padua in 1560.
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José Babini
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
José Babini was an Argentine mathematician, engineer, and historian of mathematics and mathematical sciences. Babini worked for a construction company, where the owners recognized his mathematical talent and made it possible for him to pursue academic study. From 1918 he studied in Buenos Aires. In 1921 he graduated with a qualification to teach natural science and mathematics. In 1922 he received his degree as a civil engineer. Already in 1917 he contacted the well-known Spanish mathematician Julio Rey Pastor. Instead of working as a civil engineer, Babini taught mathematics at the Faculty for Industrial Chemistry of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Rosario.
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James Franck Bright
1832 - 1920 (88 years)
James Franck Bright was a British historian and Master of University College, Oxford. Early life He was born in London, the son of the physician Richard Bright, who described Bright's disease, and Eliza Follett, sister of lawyer-politicians William Webb Follett and Brent Follett. He was educated at Rugby School and at University College, Oxford .
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Ignjat Đurđević
1675 - 1737 (62 years)
Ignjat Đurđević was a baroque poet and translator from the Republic of Ragusa, best known for his long poem Uzdasi Mandaljene pokornice . He wrote poetry in three languages: Latin, Italian and Croatian.
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Stefan Pawlicki
1839 - 1916 (77 years)
Stefan Zachariasz Pawlicki was a Polish Catholic priest, philosopher, historian of philosophy, professor and rector of Kraków's Jagiellonian University. Life Stefan Pawlicki came from a merchant family. He began his education in Danzig ; after his family moved to Greater Poland, he continued it in Pleschen . At age thirteen, he lost his parents during an epidemic. He completed progimnazjum thanks to help from a local parish priest, Father Basiński. He continued his education in 1853–58 at a liceum in Ostrów Wielkopolski, where he was one of the best pupils, thanks to a scholarship from Jan K...
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Vasily Modestov
1839 - 1907 (68 years)
Vasily Ivanovich Modestov was a Russian historian, philologist, publicist and translator. A Saint Petersburg University graduate who lectured at the Odessa, Kazan and Kiev Universities, as well as his alma mater , Modestov was a prominent authority on the history and culture of Ancient Rome, as well as earlier Apennine Peninsula cultures . He contributed to Istorichesky Vestnik, Golos, Nov, Filologicheskoye Obozrenye, as well as the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, providing entries on the history and culture of Rome. Modestov translated into Russian semimal works by Tacitus , Horace, Spinoza, as well as the Reallexikon des classischen Alterthums für Gymnasien.
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Hoshino Hisashi
1839 - 1917 (78 years)
was a Japanese historian, active in the late 19th century debates over the role of Japanese history. Career Hoshino was appointed professor at Tokyo Imperial University in 1888. Historical work had previously been carried out in a government department dedicated to writing the official history of Japan, but it was decided in 1888 to move this work to the university. Hoshino, Kume Kunitake, and Shigeno Yasutsugu were the first three history professors appointed. Hoshino and Kume took opposite views on the historical treatment of Japanese mythology: Hoshino held that the Age of the Gods was a hi...
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Chen Yinke
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Chen Yinke, or Chen Yinque , was a Chinese historian, linguist, orientalist, politician, and writer. He was a fellow of Academia Sinica, considered one of the most original and creative historians in 20th century China. His representative works are Draft essays on the origins of Sui and Tang institutions , Draft outline of Tang political history , and An Alternative Biography of Liu Rushi .
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Georgius Hornius
1620 - 1670 (50 years)
Georgius Hornius was a German historian and geographer, and professor of history at Leiden University from 1653 until his death. Life He was born in Kemnath, Upper Palatinate as the son of the superintendent of the Reformed church there. His family was forced to move away in the wake of the Catholic victory at White Mountain when Horn was still an infant. In 1635, he visited the gymnasium in Nuremberg, and in 1637 he was enrolled in University of Altdorf as a student of theology and medicine. He later worked as a private tutor, in Gröningen and later in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic. In Leiden, he was also enrolled as a student of Friedrich Spanheim.
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Alfred Götze
1865 - 1948 (83 years)
Alfred Götze was a German prehistorian. Götze may have received the first doctorate in the field of prehistory and early history, and later became one of the first scientists active in the field. He worked for a long time in the Archaeological Preservation in Berlin and Brandenburg and was founder and long-time director of the Steinsburg Museum in Römhild.
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John Spencer Bassett
1867 - 1928 (61 years)
John Spencer Bassett was an American historian. He was a professor at Trinity College , and is best known today for the "Bassett Affair" in 1903 when he publicly criticized racism among Southern elites, and called Booker T. Washington, "all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in 100 years." Despite widespread outrage, the college trustees refused to accept Bassett's resignation by a vote of 18 to 7. After Trinity, he became a professor of history at Smith College in Massachusetts. and was the executive director of the American Historical Association for many years.
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Ilia Abuladze
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Ilia Vladimiri dze Abuladze was a distinguished Georgian historian, philologist and public figure, a Corresponding Member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences , Meritorious Science Worker of Georgia , Doctor of Philological Sciences , and professor .
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Władysław Heinrich
1869 - 1957 (88 years)
Władysław Heinrich was a Polish historian of philosophy, psychologist, professor at Kraków University and member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Life Władysław Heinrich studied mathematics, the natural sciences and philosophy. In philosophy he was a student of Richard Avenarius at the University of Zurich and applied his radical positivism to psychology: Heinrich pointed out that the new experimental psychology of the time was based on metaphysical concepts and premises, on constructions and introjections. In opposition to it, he proposed a psychology based on pure experiment .
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Szymon Starowolski
1588 - 1656 (68 years)
Szymon Starowolski was a writer, scholar and historian in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was probably born near Pruzhany, and died near Kraków. He was a very prolific writer, and left behind over 70 works, mostly in Latin. Some of them survived until its translation into Polish.
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Reginald Bassett
1901 - 1962 (61 years)
Reginald Bassett was an English historian and Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. Career Having left school to become a solicitor's clerk, at the age of 25 Bassett won a scholarship to study for a diploma at Ruskin College, Oxford, and from there proceeded to New College, Oxford. He was a lecturer under the Extra-Mural Studies Delegacy of the University of Oxford, lecturing mainly in Sussex. From 1945-50 he was a tutor at the London School of Economics for a course designed for students from trade unions. He was lecturer in political science from 1950 to 1953, Re...
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Martin Lintzel
1901 - 1955 (54 years)
Martin Lintzel was a German historian, specialising on medieval German history. He studied at the University of Halle during 1919–1925, under Albert Werminghoff. His dissertation on the medieval institution of the Hoftage was published in 1924, supervised by Robert Holtzmann. He was a lecturer at Halle from 1931. In March 1935, he was elected as professor for medieval and modern history at the University of Kiel, but was sent back to Halle in 1936, following a political dispute with the National Socialist press and student organisations in Kiel. He entered military service for two months during 1944, but was discharged due to suffering from depression.
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Peter III of Aragon
1239 - 1285 (46 years)
Peter III of Aragon was King of Aragon, King of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. At the invitation of some rebels, he conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and became King of Sicily in 1282, pressing the claim of his wife, Constance II of Sicily, uniting the kingdom to the crown.
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Orin Grant Libby
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Orin Grant Libby was an American historian. Biography Libby was the son of farmer Asa Libby and his wife Julia Libby. As well as farming, his father held several local government positions, and worked in several skilled crafts. In 1886, Libby received a diploma from River Falls State Normal School, and then taught in high schools until 1890, when he entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a junior. He received a bachelor's degree from Wisconsin in 1892, and stayed to continue his studies in history. In 1893, he submitted a master's thesis with an emphasis on economic history entitled “De Witt Clinton and the Erie Canal — A State Enterprise.” He ultimately received a Ph.D.
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Paul Hazard
1878 - 1944 (66 years)
Paul Gustave Marie Camille Hazard , was a French professor and historian of ideas. Biography Hazard was the son of a school teacher. Starting in 1900, he attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1910 and became famous for his Ph.D. dissertation La Révolution française et les lettres italiennes .
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Wilhelm Arndt
1838 - 1895 (57 years)
Wilhelm Ferdinand Arndt was a German historian. Biography He graduated from the University of Göttingen and became connected with the University of Leipzig . Works For many years he was a collaborator on the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica .
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Maria Luisa Righini-Bonelli
1917 - 1981 (64 years)
Maria Luisa Righini-Bonelli was an Italian science historian and educator. The daughter of General Luigi Bonelli and Adele Giamperoli, she was born Maria Luisa Bonelli in Pesaro. She studied Spanish language and literature and then taught in the faculty of political science at the University of Florence from 1948 to 1968. She worked with at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza beginning in 1942. In 1961, she became director of the institute after Corsini died. Righini-Bonelli saved most of the important treasures of the institute during the Flood of Florence in 1966. She was a profes...
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Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack
1834 - 1917 (83 years)
Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack was a Dutch legal scholar, economist and historian, who is best known for his work De socialisten: Personen en stelsels . Biography Quack, born in Zetten to a beer brewer and his wife, commenced studies at Utrecht in 1853, followed by law studies at the Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustre. In Amsterdam, he attended lectures by Jeronimo de Bosch Kemper and Martinus des Amorie van der Hoeven, both Christian critics of liberalism. Following the example of his professors, Quack became convinced that liberalism could not address the social problems of his day. He submitted a...
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Aleksije Jelačić
1892 - 1941 (49 years)
Aleksije Jelačić was a Serbian historian. Jelačić was born in Kiev to a family of South Slavic descent; reportedly his ancestors moved to Russia in the 18th century from the Habsburg Empire. His ancestors came from Croatia.
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William Wells Newell
1839 - 1907 (68 years)
William Wells Newell was an American folklorist, school teacher, minister and philosophy professor. Biography Newell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. After trying his hand at ministry, he was a faculty member at the new philosophy department at Harvard University for a few years. However, the bulk of Newell's career was as a school teacher. He taught at the Wells Schoolfounded by his grandfather, William Wellssituated on Elmwood Avenue. Newell founded the American Folklore Society in 1888 where he edited the Journal of American Folklore.
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Joseph Spence
1699 - 1768 (69 years)
Joseph Spence was a historian, literary scholar and anecdotist, most famous for his collection of anecdotes that are an invaluable resource for historians of 18th-century English literature . Early life Spence was born on 28 April 1699, at Kingsclere, Hampshire, the son of Joseph and Mirabella .
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Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani
1896 - 1956 (60 years)
Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani was an Iranian literary scholar, historian, translator, and man of letters. Eqbal Ashtiani was born in Ashtian. He was educated at Dar ul-Funun in Tehran and University of Paris. In 1944 Eqbal founded the monthly periodical Yādgār. Eqbal Ashtiani died in Rome, Italy and was buried at the Shah-Abdol-Azim shrine in Rey, Iran.
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Beryl Smalley
1905 - 1984 (79 years)
Beryl Smalley was an English historian best known for her work The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, originally published in 1941, but revised many times, a book that laid the foundations of modern study of the medieval popular Bible.
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Johann Daniel Ritter
1709 - 1775 (66 years)
Johann Daniel Ritter was a German historian. In 1732 he received his magister degree from the University of Leipzig, where in 1735 he became an associate professor of philosophy. In 1742 he was appointed professor of history at the University of Wittenberg.
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Menassa Youhanna
1899 - 1930 (31 years)
Father Menassa Youhanna was a Coptic priest, historian and theologian, most noted for his work on the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Biography He was born in August, 1899 in Mallawi in Upper Egypt and died on Friday May 16, 1930, at the age of 30. Born in a Coptic Orthodox family, his father was also a priest.
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Antonio Schinella Conti
1677 - 1749 (72 years)
Antonio Schinella Conti , also known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist. He was born in Padua on 22 January 1677 and died there on 6 April 1749.
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