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 History,
#7401
Esther Clark Wright
1895 - 1990 (95 years)
Esther Isabelle Clark Wright, was a notable Atlantic Canadian historian who at the end of her life received the Order of Canada for her lifetime contributions to Canadian scholarship. She published many works in relation to her historic and genealogical research and was best known for her pioneer and genealogy studies of Nova Scotia & New Brunswick, Canada.
Go to Profile#7402
Kurt Vogel
1888 - 1985 (97 years)
Kurt Vogel was a German historian of mathematics. Life and Work Vogel was born in Altdorf bei Nürnberg and attended school in Ansbach. From 1907 to 1911, he studied mathematics and physics with Max Noether, Paul Gordan, and Erhard Schmidt in Erlangen, and with Felix Klein, David Hilbert, and Otto Toeplitz in Göttingen. He passed his examination to become a schoolteacher in 1911, then served as an army officer from 1913 to 1920 before taking a teaching post in Munich.
Go to Profile#7403
Auguste Himly
1823 - 1906 (83 years)
Auguste Louis Himly was a French historian and geographer. After studying in his native town and taking the university course in Berlin , Himly went to Paris and passed first in the examination for fellowship of the lycées , first in the examinations on leaving the École des Chartes, and first in the examination for fellowship of the faculties . In 1849 he took the degree of doctor of letters with two theses, one of which, Wala et Louis le Débonnaire , placed him in the front rank of French scholars in the province of Carolingian history.
Go to Profile#7404
Conrad Henry Moehlman
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Conrad Henry Moehlman was an American professor of church history at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, where he was emeritus professor. A Baptist and known as theologically liberal, he was a strong proponent of the separation of church and state and wrote a number of books on religion and education, church history, and Christianity.
Go to Profile#7405
Dmitry Petrushevsky
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
Dmitry Moiseevich Petrushevsky was a Russian and Soviet historian, medievalist, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences . His father was a priest in the village. He graduated from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1886.
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Engelbert Mühlbacher
1843 - 1903 (60 years)
Engelbert Mühlbacher was an Austrian historian. Born in Gresten, he received his classical education in Linz, Upper Austria being his family's home region. In 1862 he became a novice among the Austin Canons in Sankt Florian. After completing his theological studies there, he was ordained priest in 1867. As Alfred Ritter von Arneth relates in his memoirs, historical studies had been successfully cultivated at St. Florian's since Provost Arneth's time, and Mühlbacher was soon active in this domain. Among his writings are articles on St. Florian's Gerhoh von Reichersberg, and the literary productions of St.
Go to Profile#7407
Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer
1833 - 1901 (68 years)
Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer was a German historian. He was the father of mineralogist Otto Erdmannsdörffer. From 1852 he studied classical philology and history at the University of Jena, subsequently receiving his doctorate under the sponsorship of Johann Gustav Droysen. After conducting research in Italy, he relocated to Berlin in 1861 and collaborated with Droysen and Maximilian Wolfgang Duncker on a massive work involving Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, "Urkunden und Actenstücke zur Geschichte des Kurfürsten Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg", a project that ultimately grew to 23 ...
Go to Profile#7408
Manuk Abeghyan
1865 - 1944 (79 years)
Manuk Khachaturi Abeghyan was an Armenian philologist, literary scholar, folklorist, lexicographer and linguist. He authored numerous scholarly works, including a comprehensive two-volume history of old Armenian literature titled , and a volume on Armenian folklore, the German version of which is titled . He worked extensively on the compilation and study of the Armenian national epic Daredevils of Sassoun. He is also remembered as the main designer of the reformed Armenian orthography used in Armenia to this day. He was one of the first professors of Yerevan State University and was a founding member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#7409
Charles Firth
1857 - 1936 (79 years)
Sir Charles Harding Firth was a British historian. He was one of the founders of the Historical Association in 1906. Esmond de Beer wrote that Firth "knew the men and women of the seventeenth century much as a man knows his friends and acquaintances, not only as characters but also in the whole moral and intellectual world in which they lived."
Go to Profile#7410
James Ware
1594 - 1666 (72 years)
Sir James Ware was an Anglo-Irish historian. Personal details Born at Castle Street, Dublin on 26 November 1594, James Ware was the eldest son of Sir James Ware and Mary Bryden, daughter of Ambrose Bryden of Bury St. Edmunds. Originally from Yorkshire, his father came to Ireland in 1588 as secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir William FitzWilliam, was knighted by James I, elected to the Irish House of Commons for Mallow in 1613, and served as auditor of Trinity College Dublin He also had a younger brother Joseph, Dean of Elphin from 1642 to 1648, while his sister Martha married Sir Wi...
Go to Profile#7411
Mark Wischnitzer
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Mark Wischnitzer was a scholar of Jewish history. Biography Mark Wischnitzer was born on May 10, 1882, in Rovno, Russia. He studied at the University of Vienna and University of Berlin, and he received his doctorate in 1906. Wischnitzer served as editor of the history section of the Russian-language Jewish Encyclopedia from 1908 to 1913, and later as the editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica published in Berlin. He moved to Berlin, Germany, in 1921. There he served as Secretary General of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden until his immigration to France in 1938. In Paris from 1938 to 1940, he was a research associate of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Go to Profile#7412
Edvard Bull Jr.
1914 - 1986 (72 years)
Edvard Bull , Edvard Bull d.y. or Edvard Bull Jr. was a Norwegian professor and historian. Biography He was born in Kristiania as the son of professor and politician Edvard Bull, Sr. and Lucie Juliane Antonette Voss 1886–1970AUF
Go to Profile#7413
Robert Thomas Jenkins
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Robert Thomas Jenkins CBE was a Welsh historian and academic. Life Jenkins was born on 31 August 1881 in Liverpool. He moved with his family to Bangor, Gwynedd, when his father was appointed clerk to the registrar of the newly established University College of North Wales. However, both of his parents had died by 1888 and he was then brought up by his maternal grandparents in Bala, Gwynedd. He was baptised by Thomas Charles Edwards and studied at Bala Grammar School before winning a scholarship to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, obtaining a first-class degree in English in 1901.
Go to Profile#7414
Ivan Snegarov
1883 - 1971 (88 years)
Ivan Yonchev Snegarov was a Bulgarian historian and archivist. Biography Snegrov was born on October 12, 1883, in the city of Ohrid, then in the Ottoman Empire, today in North Macedonia. He studied in Ohrid, and later at the Constantinople Theological Seminary . Then he was a clerk in the Bulgarian Exarchate in Constantinople . In 1908-1912 he studied at the Kiev Theological Academy. In 1913-1926 he was a Bulgarian teacher at the Constantinople Seminary and in the Sofia Seminary. Snegarov became a full-time associate professor at the Faculty of Theology at the Sofia University , full professor , corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences , academician .
Go to Profile#7415
Niels Nikolaus Falck
1784 - 1850 (66 years)
Niels Nikolaus Falck was a Danish jurist and historian. Biography He was born at Emmerlef in the Duchy of Schleswig. He was educated at the University of Kiel and became a theological candidate in 1808, graduating dr. phil. in 1809. From 1813 he was appointed professor juris in Kiel. In 1814, he became professor of law at the University of Kiel, and in 1838 he was appointed president of the Schleswig-Holstein Assembly of the States.
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Alexander Bugge
1870 - 1929 (59 years)
Alexander Bugge was a Norwegian historian. He was professor at the Royal Frederick University from 1903–1912, and his main fields of interest were culture and society in the Viking era and the development of trade and cities in Norway during the Middle Ages.
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Ruth Anna Fisher
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Ruth Anna Fisher was an American historian, archivist, and teacher who played a major role in collecting sources from British archives for the Carnegie Institution and Library of Congress. Early life Fisher was born in Lorain, Ohio, the daughter of David C. Fisher, a real estate investor and ice merchant, and Elizabeth Dorsey. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1906 and was offered a position at the Tuskegee Institute. Within a few months, however, she had a falling out with Booker T. Washington over matters of pedagogy and the school's requirement that she be involved in the Sunday School...
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Johann Ludwig Choulant
1791 - 1861 (70 years)
Johann Ludwig Choulant was a German physician from the Kingdom of Saxony who was a professor of Medicine at Dresden medical historian and contributed to the study of the history of medicine. He was the father of architect Ludwig Theodor Choulant . He trained initially in pharmacy before shifting to medicine. A student of classical languages, he examined old works on medicine and produced an influential history of medical illustration which was translated into English by Mortimer Frank and others in 1920.
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Karl Faber
1773 - 1853 (80 years)
Karl Peter Andreas Faber was a Prussian archivist and historian. A native of Königsberg, East Prussia, Faber became chief archivist of the Prussian State Archive in 1808 after attending the University of Königsberg. Faber and Ernst Hennig were the first of Königsberg's archivists to approach the subject in a scientific manner. Faber made public letters from Martin Luther to Albert, Duke of Prussia in 1811. Works by Faber include his Taschenbuch für Königsberg in 1829 and Die Haupt- und Residenzstadt Königsberg in 1841. He also briefly produced a newspaper, Königsberger Abendzeitung, in 1831 and received an honorary doctorate from the philosophy faculty in 1837.
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Ignacy Chrzanowski
1866 - 1940 (74 years)
Ignacy Chrzanowski was a Polish historian of literature, professor of the Jagiellonian University, arrested by the Nazis as part of the Sonderaktion Krakau and killed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Go to Profile#7421
Matthias Christian Sprengel
1746 - 1803 (57 years)
Matthias Christian Sprengel was a German geographer and historian. He was notably the author of works on North American history, the American Revolution and Maratha history. He studied history at the University of Göttingen as a pupil of August Ludwig von Schlözer. In 1778 he became an associate professor, and during the following year, relocated to the University of Halle as a full professor of history. At Halle he worked closely with Johann Reinhold Forster, who in time, became Sprengel's father-in-law.
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Giovanni Costigan
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Giovanni Costigan was a historian and specialist in Irish and English history. Costigan was educated at the University of Oxford. He received a Master of Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he earned his PhD. In 1934 he joined the history department at the University of Washington where he served for 41 years. He was a staunch critic of American involvement in the Vietnam war. One Seattle reporter stated Costigan was a "combative man of peace."
Go to Profile#7423
John W. Olmsted
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
John W. Olmsted was an American Rhodes scholar and historian of early modern Europe. He taught history at University of California, Los Angeles for 24 years and served as faculty representative to the Pacific Coast Conference for seven years. He also served as the first chairman of University of California, Riverside's Humanities Division.
Go to Profile#7424
Edward Rosen
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Edward Rosen was an American historian, whose main field of study was early modern science and, in particular, the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. Academic life Edward Rosen's academic life, including his education, was spent in New York. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1926 and he received his master's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. He was a teacher at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York until his retirement in 1977, with two interruptions: he was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957–1958, and at Indiana University in 1963–1964.
Go to Profile#7425
Francis Wade
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Francis C. Wade was an American Jesuit and professor of philosophy at Marquette University. Biography Wade was born on November 11, 1907, in Whitesboro, Texas, where he was baptized in St. Thomas Church. He was the son of George H. Wade and Virginia M. Wade. He was educated at Whitesboro Public School and at St. Mary's College High School, St. Marys, Kansas. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1925. He was awarded his B.A. from Xavier University in 1930, his M.A. from Saint Louis University in 1932, and his S.T.L. from Saint Louis University in 1939.
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Courtenay Edward Stevens
1905 - 1976 (71 years)
Courtenay Edward Stevens was a British classicist. He was educated at Winchester College and received a first class degree in literae humaniores from New College, Oxford. Stevens remained at Oxford after graduation, receiving scholarships and, in 1933, a research fellowship at Magdalen College. During the Second World War he worked for British military intelligence, specialising in propaganda. Stevens produced German-language newspapers and broadcasts and suggested the use of the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for Allied broadcasts. After the war he returned to Magdalen, taking on a huge teaching workload of up to 72 hours per week.
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Paul Scheffer-Boichorst
1843 - 1902 (59 years)
Paul Scheffer-Boichorst was a German historian of the Middle Ages. He studied history at the universities of Innsbruck, Göttingen and Berlin, receiving his doctorate from Leipzig University in 1867. Later on, he worked on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica project in Munich and Berlin. In 1875, he became an associate professor of history at the University of Giessen, then relocated to Strasbourg as a full professor during the following year. From 1890 onward, he taught classes at the University of Berlin.
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Stepan Kechekjan
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
Stepan Fyodorovich Kechekjan was a Russian-Armenian lawyer, historian and a specialist in the field of history and theory of state and law and history of political and legal doctrines. Professor, Doctor of Law Sciences. Honoured Scientist of the RSFSR.
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Benedetto Accolti the Elder
1415 - 1464 (49 years)
Benedetto Accolti was an Italian jurist, humanist and historian. He was born at Arezzo in Tuscany, of a prominent family, several members of which were distinguished like himself for their attainments in law. He was for some time professor of law in the University of Florence, and after the dismissal in 1456 from the Florentine chancellorship of the renowned humanist Poggio Bracciolini for incompetence and an interregnum of two years, Accolti himself became Chancellor of the Florentine Republic in 1458.
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Oliver Farrar Emerson
1860 - 1927 (67 years)
Oliver Farrar Emerson was a United States educator and philologist noted for Chaucer scholarship and his History of the English Language. Biography Emerson was born in Traer, Iowa, on May 24, 1860. He studied at Iowa College, taking a post graduate course at Cornell University, where he received the degree of D.Ph. in 1891. After serving as superintendent of schools in Grinnell and Muscatine, Iowa, he was principal of the Academy of Iowa College , instructor in English Cornell University and assistant professor of rhetoric and English philology in the same institution , when he took the same chair at Adelbert College of Western Reserve University.
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Richard Dunn Pattison
1874 - 1916 (42 years)
Richard Phillipson Dunn Pattison was a British soldier and academic historian specialising in military history. Biography Dunn Pattison was the son of Alexander Dunn Pattison, who was an advocate of Old Kilpatrick, Dumbarton, and his wife Minnie Phillipson. He served with the 91st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
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Peter Heylyn
1599 - 1662 (63 years)
Peter Heylyn or Heylin was an English ecclesiastic and author of many polemical, historical, political and theological tracts. He incorporated his political concepts into his geographical books Microcosmus in 1621 and Cosmographie .
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George William Cox
1827 - 1902 (75 years)
George William Cox was a British historian. He is known for resolving the several mythss of Greece and the world into idealisations of solar phenomena. The French poet Stéphane Mallarmé has translated some of his works under the title of Les Dieux antiques .
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Edgar B. Graves
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Edgar Baldwin Graves was an American medievalist and professor of history at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. His primary area of expertise was medieval English law and the relationship between royal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions.
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John Vivian
1729 - 1771 (42 years)
John Vivian was the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford between 1768 and 1771. He was the son of William Vivian of Padstow, Cornwall, and became a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1750.
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Charles Sanford Terry
1864 - 1936 (72 years)
Charles Sanford Terry was an English historian and musicologist who published extensively on Scottish and European history as well as the life and works of J. S. Bach. Career Terry was the eldest son of Charles Terry, a physician, and Ellen Octavia Prichard. After attending St Paul's Cathedral School, King's College School, and Lancing College, he was an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge, where he obtained a B.A. in history in 1886 and an M.A. in 1891. He held lectureships in history at Durham College of Science , the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. In 1901...
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Yordan Ivanov
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Yordan Ivanov was a Bulgarian literary historian. A full member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 1909, he was an expert on the literary and cultural heritage of the Bogomils. Ivanov is known as the discoverer of the manuscript original of Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya in the Zograf Monastery. He was the favorite lecturer of Yordan Yovkov.
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Bernhard von Kugler
1837 - 1898 (61 years)
Bernhard von Kugler was a German historian. He is largely known for his research of the Crusades. He studied at the Universities of Greifswald, Tübingen and Munich, obtaining his habilitation in history at University of Munich in 1861. Later, he became an associate professor and a full professor of history at the University of Tübingen.
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Thomas J. Kelly
1833 - 1908 (75 years)
Thomas Joseph Kelly was an Irish revolutionary and leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood , a secret organisation with the objective of establishing an Irish republic independent from the United Kingdom. Kelly was the nominal leader of the failed Fenian Rising of 1867. He had previously also been an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, serving mainly with the 10th Ohio Infantry "The Bloody 10th".
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Severin Binius
1573 - 1641 (68 years)
Severin Binius was a German Roman Catholic priest, historian and critic. Life He studied at the gymnasium of St. Lawrence, in Cologne, and later taught in the same school for several years. After his ordination to the priesthood he obtained the degree of doctor of divinity from the University of Cologne, where he taught general ecclesiastical history and ecclesiastical discipline, eventually becoming Rector Magnificus of the university. Binius was successively canon in two chapter-churches of Cologne and finally in the cathedral. In 1631 he was made counselor and vicar-general of the archdio...
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Kaarlo Blomstedt
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Kaarlo Viljanti Blomstedt PhD , was a Finnish historian and archivist. Blomstedt organized the Finnish archives and functioned as an official at the National Archives of Finland from 1908 and became its chief in 1927. He was chairman of the delegation of archives 1928−1946, when the archives of Finnish landscapes was created. Blomstedt was also associate professor in history at Helsinki University between 1921 and 1933 and editor in chief for the biographical encyclopedia Kansallisen elämäkerraston 1928–1934.
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Ignacy Tadeusz Baranowski
1879 - 1917 (38 years)
Ignacy Tadeusz Baranowski was a Polish historian. He specialized in the history of Warsaw and history of the Polish peasants. Publications Komisje porządkowe w latach 1765-1788 Z dziejów feudalizmu na Podlasiu
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Violet Barbour
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Violet Barbour was an American historian. Education She graduated from Cornell University with a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. Career Beginning in 1914, she taught at Vassar College as a professor of English and European history.
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Beda Dudík
1815 - 1890 (75 years)
Beda František Dudík was a historian and Benedictine monk in the Rajhrad Monastery. Life After studying at the philosophical school at Brno he attended the University of Olomouc. In 1836 he entered the Benedictine Order and in 1840 was ordained priest at Rajhrad. Then until 1854 he taught first the classical languages and then history at the gymnasium of Brünn.
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Aleksander Birkenmajer
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
Aleksander Ludwik Birkenmajer was a Polish historian of exact sciences and philosophy, bibliologist, professor of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and of the Warsaw University. Biography He was the son of astronomer and historian of science Ludwik Antoni Birkenmajer. Aleksander was educated in Chernikhov and in the Jesuit high school in Chyrow. In 1908-1912 he studied classical philology, physics, mathematics and history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In 1914 defended there his PhD thesis based on the monograph about Henri Bate de Malines as an astronomer and philosopher of the 13th century, and annotated to him, Critics of the King Alphons tables .
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August Kluckhohn
1832 - 1893 (61 years)
August Kluckhohn was a German historian, born at Bavenhausen in Lippe. He studied at the University of Heidelberg as a pupil of Ludwig Häusser, and at the University of Göttingen, where he was influenced by Georg Waitz. In 1858 he went to Munich to become editor of the "critical division" of Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift. He became an instructor in history at the University of Munich in 1860, five years later being promoted to associate professor. In 1869, he was appointed a full professor of history at the Polytechnic School in Munich, and in 1883 he returned to Göttingen as a successor to...
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Aram Ter-Ghevondyan
1928 - 1988 (60 years)
Aram Ter-Ghevondyan was an Armenian historian and scholar who specialized in the study of historical sources and medieval Armenia's relations with the Islamic world and Oriental studies. His seminal work, The Arab Emirates in Bagratuni Armenia, is an important study on the Bagratuni Kingdom of Armenia. From 1981 until his death, Ter-Ghevondyan headed the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Armenian Academy of Sciences and he additionally held an honorary doctorate from the University of Aleppo and was an associate member of the Tiberian Academy of Rome.
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Sydney Nettleton Fisher
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Sydney Nettleton Fisher was an American historian of the Middle East. Life Fisher was born in Warsaw, New York. He studied at Oberlin College, gaining an economics degree in 1928 and an M. A. degree in history in 1932. He received his PhD in history from the University of Illinois in 1935. After teaching mathematics at Robert College in Istanbul, he joined the history faculty of Ohio State University in 1937. He gained full professorship in 1955, and retired in 1972.
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Piye
800 BC - 716 BC (84 years)
Piye was an ancient Kushiteite king and founder of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, who ruled Egypt from 744–714 BC. He ruled from the city of Napata, located deep in Nubia, modern-day Sudan. Name Piye adopted two throne names: Usimare and Sneferre. He was passionate about the worship of the god Amun, like many kings of Nubia. He revitalized the moribund Great Temple of Amun at Jebel Barkal, which was first built under Thutmose III of the New Kingdom, employing numerous sculptors and stonemasons from Egypt. He was once thought to have also used the throne name 'Menkheperre' but this prenom...
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Rudolf Köpke
1813 - 1870 (57 years)
Rudolf Köpke was a German historian born in Königsberg. Biography From 1832 he studied theology in Berlin, where his interest changed to history under the influence of Leopold von Ranke . With Georg Waitz , Wilhelm von Giesebrecht and Siegfried Hirsch , he was an early member of the so-called "Ranke school" of historians.
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