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.
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List of the most influential people in History,
#6901
George Park Fisher
1827 - 1909 (82 years)
George Park Fisher was an American theologian and historian who was noted as a teacher and a prolific writer. Biography He was born in Wrentham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in 1847, and then studied theology at Yale Divinity School and the Andover Theological Seminary. He graduated from the latter institution in 1851. In 1853 he visited Germany, where he continued his theological studies.
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George Louis Beer
1872 - 1920 (48 years)
George Louis Beer was a renowned American historian of the "Imperial school". Early life and education Born in Staten Island, New York, to an affluent family that was prominent in New York's German-Jewish community, Beer's father owned a successful tobacco importing business. He studied at Columbia University, where he received the A.B. degree and then an A.M. degree in 1893. Beer's master's thesis was supervised by Professor Herbert Levi Osgood and was immediately published in the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law.
Go to Profile#6903
J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton was an American historian of the South, author, and the founder of the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he spent most of his academic career. He published books and articles about the history of Reconstruction but his most influential role was as an archivist, collecting manuscripts from around the South that form the core of the Southern Historical Collection.
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Ladislaus the Posthumous
1440 - 1457 (17 years)
Ladislaus V, more commonly known as Ladislaus the Posthumous , was Duke of Austria and King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. He was the posthumous son of Albert of Habsburg with Elizabeth of Luxembourg. Albert had bequeathed all his realms to his future son on his deathbed, but only the estates of Austria accepted his last will. Fearing an Ottoman invasion, the majority of the Hungarian lords and prelates offered the crown to Vladislaus III of Poland. The Hussite noblemen and towns of Bohemia did not acknowledge the hereditary right of Albert's descendants to the throne, but also did not elect...
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Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés
1478 - 1557 (79 years)
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés , commonly known as Oviedo, was a Spanish soldier, historian, writer, botanist and colonist. Oviedo participated in the Spanish colonization of the West Indies, arriving in the first few years after Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at the islands in 1492. Oviedo's chronicle Historia general de las Indias, published in 1535 to expand on his 1526 summary La Natural hystoria de las Indias , forms one of the few primary sources about it. Portions of the original text were widely read in the 16th century in Spanish, English, Italian and F...
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Matija Murko
1861 - 1952 (91 years)
Matija Murko, also known as Mathias Murko , was a Slovenian scholar, known mostly for his work on oral epic traditions in Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian. Life Murko was born in the small village of Drstelja near Ptuj, Lower Styria, in what was then the Austrian Empire and is now in Slovenia, and baptized Mathias Murko. He attended high school in Ptuj and Maribor. He studied Slavic and Germanic philology at the University of Vienna, where he was a pupil of Franz Miklosich. After obtaining his PhD in Vienna in 1886, he went to postdoctoral studies to Moscow. From 1897 to 1902, he taught Slavic ph...
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Paolo Giovio
1483 - 1552 (69 years)
Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian, biographer, and prelate. Early life Little is known about Giovio's youth. He was a native of Como; his family was from the Isola Comacina of Lake Como. His father, a notary, died around 1500. He was educated under the direction of his elder brother Benedetto, a humanist and historian. Although interested in literature, he was sent to Padua to study medicine. He graduated in 1511.
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James Westfall Thompson
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
James Westfall Thompson was an American historian specializing in the history of medieval and early modern Europe, particularly of the Holy Roman Empire and France. He also made noteworthy contributions to the history of literacy, libraries and the book trade in the Middle Ages.
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Walter Schlesinger
1908 - 1984 (76 years)
Walter Schlesinger was a German historian of medieval social and economic institutions, particularly in the context of German regional history . Schlesinger is widely recognized as one of the most influential and prolific scholars of medieval social history in the post-war period.
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Nikephoros I
760 - 811 (51 years)
Nikephoros I , also known as Nicephorus I, was the Byzantine emperor from 802 to 811. He began his career as genikos logothetēs under Empress Irene, but later overthrew her to seize the throne. Prior to becoming emperor, he was sometimes referred to as "the Logothete" and "Genikos" or "Genicus" , in recognition of his previous role.
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Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
1862 - 1932 (70 years)
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson , known as Goldie, was a British political scientist and philosopher. He lived most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group.
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Karolina Lanckorońska
1898 - 2002 (104 years)
Countess Karolina Maria Adelajda Franciszka Ksawera Małgorzata Edina Lanckorońska was a Polish noble, World War II resistance fighter, philanthropist, and historian. Lanckorońska bequeathed her family's enormous art collection to Poland only after her homeland became free from communism and Soviet domination during the Revolutions of 1989. The Lanckoronski Collection may now, for the most part, be seen in Warsaw's Royal Castle and Kraków's Wawel Castle.
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Gabriel Bonnot de Mably
1709 - 1785 (76 years)
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably , sometimes known as Abbé de Mably, was a French philosopher, historian, and writer, who for a short time served in the diplomatic corps. He was a popular 18th-century writer.
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Sten Lindroth
1914 - 1980 (66 years)
Sten Hjalmar Lindroth was a Swedish historian of learning and science. Lindroth was born in the university town of Lund in Southern Sweden, but grew up and went to school in Gothenburg after his father Hjalmar Lindroth had been appointed to the Chair of Nordic languages at Gothenburg University. After finishing school in Gothenburg at Göteborgs högre latinläroverk, he matriculated at Uppsala University in 1933 and eventually became a student of Johan Nordström, holder of the Emilia and Gustaf Carlberg Chair of the history of ideas and learning, the first of its kind at Uppsala. Lindroth event...
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Frederick York Powell
1850 - 1904 (54 years)
Frederick York Powell was an English historian and scholar. Biography He was born on 4 January 1850 at 43 Woburn Place, Bloomsbury, London, the son of Frederick Powell, a commissariat merchant, and his wife Mary Powell, daughter of Dr James Powell. He was educated at the Manor House School at Hastings, and Rugby School. He matriculated at the University of Oxford in 1868 as an unattached student, the following year joining Christ Church, where he took a first-class degree in law and modern history in 1872. Whilst at Oxford, he was a member of the exclusive Stubbs Society.
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Charles Cutler Torrey
1863 - 1956 (93 years)
Charles Cutler Torrey was an American historian, archaeologist and scholar. Career He is known for, presenting through his books, manuscript evidence supporting alternate views on the origins of Christian and Islamic religious texts. He founded the American School of Archaeology at Jerusalem in 1901.
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Élie Halévy
1870 - 1937 (67 years)
Élie Halévy was a French philosopher and historian who wrote studies of the British utilitarians, the book of essays Era of Tyrannies, and a history of Britain from 1815 to 1914 that influenced British historiography.
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Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis was a Dutch historian of science. Career Dijksterhuis studied mathematics at the University of Groningen from 1911 to 1918. His Ph.d. thesis was entitled "A Contribution to the Knowledge of the Flat Helicoid."
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Aleksandar Teodorov-Balan
1859 - 1959 (100 years)
Aleksandar Stoyanov Teodorov-Balan was a Bulgarian linguist, historian and bibliographer. Balan was born in the village of Kubey in the Russian Empire, today in Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, to a Bessarabian Bulgarian family. The Bulgarian general Georgi Todorov was his brother. Balan studied in Prague and Leipzig graduating in Slavistics from the Charles University in Prague. In 1884 he settled in Sofia, the capital of the Principality of Bulgaria, spending four years working for the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment. He became professor of Slavic ethnography and dialectology and history of the Bul...
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Stanisław Arnold
1895 - 1973 (78 years)
Stanisław Arnold was a Polish historian, professor of the University of Warsaw, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, chief of Marksistowskie Zrzeszenie Historyków . Biography He was the son of Jan, director of a mine, and Romana née Bojanowski. In 1920 he defended his PhD thesis Władztwo biskupie na grodzie wolborskim w wieku XIII under supervision of Marceli Handelsman. Later he became an employee of the Warsaw University, with which he was connected until retirement in 1966. From 1924 to 1928 he was working as a history teacher at Gimnazjum im. Stefana Batorego in Warsaw.
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Kazimierz Piwarski
1903 - 1968 (65 years)
Kazimierz Piwarski was a Polish historian, professor of Jagiellonian University in Kraków since 1946 and Poznań University in years 1953-1955, member of Polish Academy of Skills since 1945, and member of Polish Academy of Sciences since 1958.
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Theodore Saloutos
1910 - 1980 (70 years)
Theodore Saloutos was an American historian. His areas of research included agrarian politics and reform movements, immigration studies, and Greek immigration to the United States Early life Saloutos was born in Milwaukie, Wisconsin on August 3, 1910. His parents were immigrants from Greece.
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Gerardus Vossius
1577 - 1649 (72 years)
Gerrit Janszoon Vos , often known by his Latin name Gerardus Vossius, was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian. Life He was the son of Johannes Vos, a Protestant from the Netherlands, who fled from persecution into the Electorate of the Palatinate and briefly became pastor in the village near Heidelberg where Gerardus was born, before friction with the strict Lutherans of the Palatinate caused him to settle the following year at the University of Leiden as student of theology, and finally became pastor at Dordrecht, where he died in 1585. Here in Dordrecht the son received his education,...
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Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol was a Romanian historian, philosopher, professor, economist, sociologist, and author. Among his many major accomplishments, he is the Romanian historian credited with authoring the first major synthesis of the history of the Romanian people. His daughter Margareta Xenopol became a well-known Romanian composer.
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Christian Molbech
1783 - 1857 (74 years)
Christian Molbech was a Danish historian, literary critic, writer, and theater director. He was a professor of literature at the University of Copenhagen and was the founding editor of Historisk Tidsskrift
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David Feuerwerker
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
David Feuerwerker was a French Jewish rabbi and professor of Jewish history who was effective in the resistance to German occupation the Second World War. He was completely unsuspected until six months before the war ended, when he fled to Switzerland and his wife and baby went underground in France. The French government cited him for his bravery with several awards. After the war, he and his wife re-established the Jewish community of Lyon. He settled in Paris, teaching at the Sorbonne. In 1966, he and his family, grown to six children, moved to Montreal, where he developed a department of ...
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John Joseph Saunders
1910 - 1972 (62 years)
John Joseph Saunders was a British historian whose work focused on medieval Islamic and Asian history. Born in Alphington, Devon, he was educated at Exeter University. He was a lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Geoffrey Rice wrote of him: John Saunders was an only child, and books were his best companions from an early age. He also displayed artistic ability with pen and ink drawing, having something of a gift for cartoons and caricature. At school at Mount Radford in Exeter he showed particular aptitude for languages, literature and history. One of the masters who noticed his potential, Theodore Vine, became a lifelong friend.
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Militsa Nechkina
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Militsa Vasilyevna Nechkina was a Soviet historian. She taught at Moscow State University and extensively studied the Decembrist revolt of 1825. Biography Nechkina was born in Nizhyn, Russian Empire. She attended Kazan University, graduating in 1921. She began teaching history at Moscow State University in 1924 and became a doctor of historical sciences in 1936. She specialized in the study of the Decembrist revolt and was the first historian to write in detail about the social and ideological aspects of the revolt. As a historian, she also contributed to Soviet history topics in the Great So...
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Geoffrey Bruun
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Geoffrey Bruun was a historian and biographer who taught at New York University from 1927 until 1941. He was born in Montreal, Quebec and received a bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia, and master's and doctoral degrees from Cornell University. After retiring as a professor of history from N.Y.U., he was a visiting professor at Cornell, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of Illinois, and Georgetown University.
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Şihabetdin Märcani
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
Şihabetdin Märcani was a Tatar Hanafi Maturidi theologian and historian. He studied in madrassas of Tashkichu , Bukhara and Samarkand. Beginning in 1850 he served as the imam of the First Cathedral Mosque. Later, in 1867, he became a muhtasib of Kazan. At the same time, in 1876-1884 he lectured on religion in the Tatar Teachers' School. Märcani became the first Muslim member of The Society for Archaeology, History and Ethnography at Kazan State University. In his papers he illustrated his ideas about the renovation and the perfection of the Tatar educational system. As a historian, he was the...
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T. S. R. Boase
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase was a British art historian, university teacher, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Early life and education Thomas Boase was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Charles Millet Boase , operator of a bleaching mill at Claverhouse, outside Dundee, of which the Boase family were part-owners, and his wife Anne. Boase was educated at a day preparatory school and then at Rugby School in England .
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W. A. B. Coolidge
1850 - 1926 (76 years)
William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge was an American historian, theologian and mountaineer. Life Coolidge was born in New York City as the son of Frederic William Skinner Coolidge, a Boston merchant, and Elisabeth Neville Brevoort, sister of James Carson Brevoort and Meta Brevoort. He studied history and law at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, and at Exeter College, Oxford. In 1875, he became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. From 1880 to 1881 he was professor of British history at Saint David's College in Lampeter and in 1883 he became a priest o...
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Johannes Haller
1865 - 1947 (82 years)
Johannes Haller was a Baltic German medievalist and teacher at the universities of Tübingen, Marburg and Giessen. Haller was born in Käina and studied history in Tartu and at the Frederick William University in Berlin. He was expert in the field of the history of Christianity. He died in Tübingen.
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Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch
1818 - 1880 (62 years)
Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch was a German historian known for his studies of ancient Rome and medieval Germany. He was the son of classical philologist Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch . In 1842 he received his doctorate from the University of Kiel with a dissertation involving the Greek historian Polybius. Following graduation, he took an extended study trip to Italy . In 1848 he became an associate professor at Kiel, where in 1858 he was named a full professor of history. Later, he was a professor of history at the Universities of Königsberg and Berlin .
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James II of Aragon
1267 - 1327 (60 years)
James II , called the Just, was the King of Aragon and Valencia and Count of Barcelona from 1291 to 1327. He was also the King of Sicily from 1285 to 1295 and the King of Majorca from 1291 to 1298. From 1297 he was nominally the King of Sardinia and Corsica, but he only acquired the island of Sardinia by conquest in 1324. His full title for the last three decades of his reign was "James, by the grace of God, king of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia and Corsica, and count of Barcelona" .
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Alfonso II of Aragon
1157 - 1196 (39 years)
Alfonso II , called the Chaste or the Troubadour, was the King of Aragon and, as Alfons I, the Count of Barcelona from 1164 until his death. The eldest son of Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona and Queen Petronilla of Aragon, he was the first King of Aragon who was also Count of Barcelona. He was also Count of Provence, which he conquered from Douce II, from 1166 until 1173, when he ceded it to his brother, Ramon Berenguer III. His reign has been characterised by nationalistic and nostalgic Catalan historians as l'engrandiment occitànic or "the Pyrenean unity": a great scheme to unite vario...
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Ernst Dümmler
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Ernst Ludwig Dümmler was a German historian. Biography Ernst Ludwig was born in Berlin, the son of , a Berlin bookseller. He studied law, classical philology and history, among other things, at Bonn under Johann Wilhelm Löbell, and in Berlin, where his influences were Leopold von Ranke and Wilhelm Wattenbach. His doctorate dissertation, De Arnulfo Francorum rege , was a notable essay among historians.
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Moltke Moe
1859 - 1913 (54 years)
Moltke Moe was a Norwegian folklorist. Biography Ingebret Moltke Moe was born in Krødsherad, Buskerud County, Norway. He was the son of Church of Norway Bishop Jørgen Moe. After school graduation in 1876 he began to study theology, but eventually he was attracted more by folklore and religious history. From the time he was 18 years old, he collected folklore, particularly in Telemark.
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François Louis Ganshof
1895 - 1980 (85 years)
François Louis Ganshof was a Belgian medievalist. After studies at the Athénée Royal, he attended the University of Ghent, where he came under the influence of Henri Pirenne. After studies with Ferdinand Lot, he practiced law for a period, before returning to the University of Ghent. Here he succeeded Pirenne in 1930 as professor of medieval history, after Pirenne left the university as a result of the enforcement of Dutch as language of instruction. He remained there until his retirement in 1961.
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Jean Maitron
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Jean Maitron was a French historian specialist of the labour movement. A pioneer of such historical studies in France, he introduced it to University and gave it its archives base, by creating in 1949 the Centre d'histoire du syndicalisme in the Sorbonne, which received important archives from activists such as Paul Delesalle, Émile Armand, Pierre Monatte, and others. He was the Center's secretary until 1969.
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Bertrand Gille
1920 - 1980 (60 years)
Bertrand Gille was a French archivist and historian of technology. Although best known for his work on technology, Gille also wrote on diverse subjects including the history of French banking and Russian economics. After teaching at the university of Clermont-Ferrand, he became a director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études, as well as giving a course on the history of technology at the University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne.
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Yu Pingbo
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Yu Pingbo , original name Yu Mingheng and courtesy name Pingbo , was a Chinese essayist, poet, historian, redologist, and literary critic. Early life Yu Pingbo's ancestry can be traced to Deqing, Zhejiang. His pet name as a child was Sengbao . He was a descendant of Yu Yue, a renowned scholar during the late Qing period, and Yu Pingbo was trained in the Chinese classics from an early age. In 1915, he qualified by examination for a preparatory course at Peking University, where he became one of Hu Shih's most prominent students. In 1917, he married Xu Baoxun , a gifted female scholar from Hangzhou, and then commenced composing melodies for Kunqu operas.
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Luke Wadding
1588 - 1657 (69 years)
Luke Wadding, O.F.M. , was an Irish Franciscan friar and historian. Life Early life Wadding was born on 16 October 1588 in Waterford to Walter Wadding of Waterford, a wealthy merchant, and his wife, Anastasia Lombard . Educated at the school of Mrs. Jane Barden in Waterford and of Peter White in Kilkenny, in 1604 he went to study in Lisbon and at the University of Coimbra.
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Michał Sczaniecki
1910 - 1977 (67 years)
Michał Sczaniecki was a Polish historian of state and law, especially of Poland and France; professor of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań from 1951 to 1965, and director of the Western Institute in Poznań from 1961 to 1964, later professor at Warsaw University.
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Josef Keil
1878 - 1963 (85 years)
Josef Keil was an Austrian historian, epigrapher and an archaeologist. Keil was born on 13 October 1878 in Reichenberg, northern Bohemia . He studied classical literature, epigraphy and archaeology at the University of Vienna, and received his doctorate there. He began his career in 1904 as a scientific secretary at the Austrian archaeological institute in Smyrna . He excavated archaeological sites in Asia Minor, particularly in Lydia. He led the excavations in Ephesus. He was a professor of ancient history at the University of Greifswald from 1927 to 1936, and at the University of Vienna from 1936 to 1951.
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Steven Gunn
1900 - Present (126 years)
Steven J. Gunn is an English historian and fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He teaches and researches the history of late medieval and early modern Britain and Europe, and is the author of a number of academic texts.
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Gregorio Mayans
1699 - 1781 (82 years)
Gregorio Mayans y Siscar was a Spanish historian, linguist and writer of the Enlightenment in Spain. Early life Gregorio Mayans was born on 9 May 1699 in Oliva, Valencia, Spain. His father, Pasqual Maians, fought on the Austrian side in the War of the Spanish Succession and accompanied archduke Charles VI to Barcelona in 1706; this resulted in the later marginalization of Gregorio Mayans, who lived in Spain when it was dominated by the House of Bourbon. Until 1713, when he returned to Oliva, Mayans studied with the Jesuits of Cordelles, but his grandfather, a mayor named Juan Siscar, encouraged him in the study of law.
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Manfred Kridl
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Manfred Kridl was a Polish historian of literature. From 1932 Kridl taught at Wilno's Stefan Batory University, where he was an opponent of anti-semitic ghetto-bench policy. In 1940, during World War II, Kridl managed to escape from occupied Poland and settled in the United States. There he taught at Smith College, then at Columbia University.
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Friedrich Karl Hermann Kruse
1790 - 1866 (76 years)
Friedrich Karl Hermann Kruse was a German historian born in Oldenburg. In 1813 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Leipzig. Beginning in 1816 he taught classes at Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau, and in 1821 was appointed professor of ancient and medieval history and geography at the University of Halle. From 1828 to 1853 he was a professor at the University of Dorpat.
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Xiao Yishan
1902 - 1978 (76 years)
Xiao Yishan was a modern Chinese historian. Biography Xiao Yishan entered Peking University in 1921, learned from the prominent scholar Liang Qichao. He later taught history of Qing Dynasty at Tsinghua University, Henan University, Northeastern University and Northwest University. In winter 1948, Xiao moved to Taiwan. General History of the Qing Dynasty is his masterpiece, in that book he promoted a historical view of nationalism.
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