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 Law,
#3601
Theodore William Dwight
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
Theodore William Dwight was an American jurist and educator, cousin of Theodore Dwight Woolsey and of Timothy Dwight V. Biography Theodore William Dwight was born in Catskill, New York on July 18, 1822. His father was Benjamin Woolsey Dwight , a physician and merchant, and his grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV , a prominent theologian, educator, author, and president of Yale University from 1795-1817. Theodore Dwight graduated from Hamilton College in 1840. He also later studied physics under Samuel F.B. Morse and John William Draper.
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Georges Burdeau
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Georges Burdeau was a French constitutionalist.
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James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
1838 - 1922 (84 years)
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, , was a British academic, jurist, historian, and Liberal politician. According to Keoth Robbins, he was a widely traveled authority on law, government, and history whose expertise led to high political offices culminating with his successful role as ambassador to the United States, 1907–13. His intellectual influence was greatest in The American Commonwealth , an in-depth study of American politics that shaped the understanding of America in Britain and in the United States as well.
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Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
1864 - 1958 (94 years)
Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, , known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923, was a British lawyer, politician and diplomat. He was one of the architects of the League of Nations and a defender of it, whose service to the organisation saw him awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937.
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Paul Krüger
1840 - 1926 (86 years)
Paul Krüger was a German jurist. Biography He was born in Berlin, where he studied jurisprudence . In 1863, he began to lecture on Roman law at the University of Berlin. In 1870, he became an associate professor of law at the University of Marburg, where he attained a full professorship during the following year. Afterwards, he served as a professor at the universities of Innsbruck , Königsberg and Bonn .
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Contardo Ferrini
1859 - 1902 (43 years)
Contardo Ferrini was a noted Italian jurist and legal scholar. He was also a fervent Roman Catholic, who lived a devout life of prayer and service to the poor. He has been beatified by the Catholic Church.
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Sheldon Amos
1835 - 1886 (51 years)
Sheldon Amos was an English jurist. Life and career Sheldon Amos was born in St Pancras, London, the son of lawyer Andrew Amos and his wife, Margaret. He was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar as a member of the Middle Temple in 1862. He was invited by F. D. Maurice to teach at The Working Men's College, with fellow Cambridge graduates and friends Richard Chevenix Trench and J. R. Seeley. In 1869 he was appointed to the chair of jurisprudence in University College, London, and in 1872 became reader under the council of legal education and examiner in constitutional law and history to the University of London.
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David Derham
1920 - 1985 (65 years)
Sir David Plumley Derham was an Australian jurist and university administrator. He was an expert in Australian constitutional law. In 1963, he became the Foundation Dean of Monash University Law School, which is now called the David Derham School of Law in his honour.
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Edward Jenks
1861 - 1939 (78 years)
Edward Jenks, FBA was an English jurist, and noted writer on law and its place in history. Born on 20 February 1861 in Lambeth, London, to Robert Jenks, upholsterer, and his wife Frances Sarah, née Jones, he was educated at Dulwich College and King's College, Cambridge, where he was scholar and, in 1889-95, fellow. He graduated B.A., LL.B. in 1886, and M.A. in 1890. He was awarded the Le Bas Prize and the Thirlwall Prize and was chancellor's medallist. In 1887 he was called to the Bar and for the next two years lectured at Pembroke and Jesus colleges, Cambridge.
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Jacob Israël de Haan
1881 - 1924 (43 years)
Jacob Israël de Haan was a Dutch Jewish literary writer, lawyer and journalist who immigrated to Palestine in 1919, and was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1924 by the Zionist paramilitary organization Haganah for his anti-Zionist political activities.
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Emma Gillett
1852 - 1927 (75 years)
Emma Millinda Gillett was an American lawyer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the advancement of legal studies for women. After local law schools refused to admit her because of her sex, she was admitted by Howard University, an historically black university. Yet the Washington College of Law, which she founded in 1898, did not accept people of color until 1950.
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Royall Tyler
1757 - 1826 (69 years)
Royall Tyler was an American jurist and playwright. He was born in Boston, graduated from Harvard University in 1776, and then served in the Massachusetts militia during the American Revolution. He was admitted to the bar in 1780, became a lawyer, and fathered eleven children. In 1801, he was appointed a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. He wrote a play, The Contrast, which was produced in 1787 in New York City, shortly after George Washington's inauguration. It is considered the first American comedy. Washington attended the production, which was well-received, and Tyler became a li...
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John Blair Jr.
1732 - 1800 (68 years)
John Blair Jr. was an American Founding Father, who signed the United States Constitution as a delegate from Virginia and was appointed an Associate Justice on the first U.S. Supreme Court by George Washington.
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Zaccaria Giacometti
1893 - 1970 (77 years)
Zaccaria Giacometti was a Swiss scholar of constitutional law and professor at the University of Zurich. Biography Early life in the giacometti artist family Zaccaria Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia to Zaccaria Giacometti, Sr. and Cornelia Stampa . Orphaned at the age of 12, Zaccaria and his older brother Cornelio spent much of their childhood in the household of their aunt Anetta, and were raised as „older brothers“, so to speak, to their cousins Alberto Giacometti , Diego Giacometti , and Bruno Giacometti . After visiting boarding scho...
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Pehr Evind Svinhufvud
1861 - 1944 (83 years)
Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad was the third president of Finland from 1931 to 1937. Serving as a lawyer, judge, and politician in the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was at that time an autonomous state within the Russian Empire, Svinhufvud played a major role in the movement for Finnish independence. He was the one who presented the Declaration of Independence to the Parliament.
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Lady Amin
1886 - 1983 (97 years)
Hajiyeh Seyyedeh Nosrat Begum Amin, also known as Banu Amin, Lady Amin , was Iran's most outstanding female jurisprudent, theologian and great Muslim mystic of the 20th century, a Lady Mujtahideh. She received numerous ijazahs of ijtihad, among them from Ayatollahs Muḥammad Kazim Ḥusayni Shīrāzī and Grand Ayatullah ‘arif , the founder of the Qom seminaries . She also granted numerous ijazahs of ijtihad to female and male scholars, among them Sayyid Mar'ashi Najafi.
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Andrea Alciato
1492 - 1550 (58 years)
Andrea Alciato , commonly known as Alciati , was an Italian jurist and writer. He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists. Biography Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, near Milan, and settled in France in the early 16th century. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators. He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus and accumulated a s...
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Franciscus Accursius
1225 - 1293 (68 years)
Franciscus Accursius was an Italian lawyer, the son of the celebrated jurist and glossator Accursius. The two are often confused. Born in Bologna, Franciscus was more distinguished for his tact than for his wisdom. Edward I of England, returning from Palestine, brought him with him to England. The king invited him to Oxford, and he lived in the former Beaumont Palace, , in Oxford.
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Mariano Moreno
1778 - 1811 (33 years)
Mariano Moreno was an Argentine lawyer, journalist, and politician. He played a decisive role in the Primera Junta, the first national government of Argentina, created after the May Revolution. Moreno was born in Buenos Aires in 1778. His father was Manuel Moreno y Argumosa, born in Santander, Spain, who arrived in the city in 1776 and married Ana María del Valle. Mariano was the firstborn of the Moreno family and had thirteen brothers. During his youth he studied Latin, logic, and philosophy at San Carlos Royal College under Mariano Medrano, followed by college studies of law at Chuquisaca. During these studies, he learned the new ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment.
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Georges Vanier
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Georges-Philias Vanier was a Canadian military officer and diplomat who served as governor general of Canada, the first Quebecer and second Canadian-born person to hold the position. Vanier was born and educated in Quebec. In 1906, he was valedictorian when he graduated with a BA from Loyola College. After earning a university degree in law, he served in the Canadian army during the First World War; on the European battlefields, he lost a leg and was commended for his actions with a number of decorations from King George V.
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Lazare Kopelmanas
1907 - 1980 (73 years)
Lazare Kopelmanas was an international jurist and diplomat. His older brother was Lithuanian businessman and public figure Moisey Kopelman. Biography After obtaining his candidate's degree in economic and social sciences at the University of Geneva in 1929, he went to the University of Paris to study law. Shortly after his graduation in 1935, he began to teach at its Institut des hautes études internationales and became professor in 1939. Later that same year he volunteered into the French army. During the German invasion of France in 1940, he was taken prisoner and interned in Stalag VII-A. ...
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Ernest Nys
1851 - 1920 (69 years)
Ernest Nys was a Belgian lawyer and a professor of Public International Law at the University of Brussels. He also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Life Ernest Nys was born in 1851 in Kortrijk, Belgium and studied law at the Universities of Ghent, Heidelberg, Leipzig and Berlin. He then worked as a lawyer in Antwerp and Brussels. He succeeded Alphonse Rivier as Professor of International Law at the University of Brussels, following the death of Professor Rivier in 1898. Nys also acted as dean from 1898 to 1900.
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Tobias Barreto
1839 - 1889 (50 years)
Tobias Barreto de Meneses was a Brazilian poet, philosopher, jurist and literary critic. He is famous for creating the "Condorism" and revolutionizing Brazilian Romanticism and poetry. He is patron of the 38th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
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Austin Wakeman Scott
1886 - 1981 (95 years)
Austin Wakeman Scott was a professor of law at Harvard University who wrote a ten-volume treatise covering many topics of personal trusts such as the formation and termination of express trusts, resulting and constructive trusts, and the conflicts of interest encountered in the administration of trusts. Many of Professor Scott's dictums for fiduciaries have been incorporated in the Uniform Prudent Investor Act . His four-volume book, The Law of Trusts, was published in 1939.
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Edward John Phelps
1822 - 1900 (78 years)
Edward John Phelps was a lawyer and diplomat from Vermont. He is notable for his service as Envoy to Court of St. James's from 1885 to 1889. In addition, Phelps was a founder of the American Bar Association, and served as its president from 1880 to 1881.
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Michał Jan Rostworowski
1864 - 1940 (76 years)
Michał Jan Rostworowski was a Polish-Austrian lawyer. He was professor of international and constitutional law at the University of Cracow from 1903 to 1930, serving as rector in the 1925–1926 academic year. He was elected as a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, which position he held until his death in 1940.
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Otto Kahn-Freund
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund, QC was a scholar of labour law and comparative law. He was a professor at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford. Biography Kahn-Freund was born in Frankfurt am Main the only child of Richard Kahn-Freund and his wife, Carrie Freund. Although an agnostic he had a strict and conventional Jewish upbringing, and was very proud of this. He was educated at the Goethe-Gymnasium, Frankfurt, and then studied law at the Frankfurt University.
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Norman Hartnell
1901 - 1979 (78 years)
Sir Norman Bishop Hartnell was a leading British fashion designer, best known for his work for the ladies of the royal family. Hartnell gained the Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth in 1940, and Royal Warrant as Dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957. Princess Beatrice also wore a dress designed for Queen Elizabeth II by Hartnell for her wedding in 2020.
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Burton K. Wheeler
1882 - 1975 (93 years)
Burton Kendall Wheeler was an attorney and an American politician of the Democratic Party in Montana, which he represented as a United States senator from 1923 until 1947. Born in Massachusetts, Wheeler began practicing law in Montana almost by chance, after losing his belongings while en route to Seattle. As the U.S. Attorney for Montana, he became known for his criticism of the Sedition Act of 1918 and defense of civil liberties during World War I. An independent Democrat who initially represented the progressive wing of the party, he received support from Montana's labor unions in his elec...
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William Dameron Guthrie
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
William Dameron Guthrie was an American lawyer and educator. Biography William Dameron Guthrie was born in San Francisco, California on February 3, 1859. He was educated in Paris, in England, and at the Columbia Law School . In his practice before the United States Supreme Court he argued the income tax, California irrigation, Illinois inheritance tax, oleomargarine, and Kansas City stockyardss rate cases. He was a William L. Storrs lecturer at Yale University in 1907-08 and was Ruggles Professor of Constitutional Law at Columbia University from 1909 to 1922. Besides his contributions to peri...
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F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead, was a British Conservative politician and barrister who attained high office in the early 20th century, in particular as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was a skilled orator, noted for his staunch opposition to Irish nationalism, his wit, pugnacious views, and hard living and drinking. He is perhaps best remembered today as Winston Churchill's greatest personal and political friend until Birkenhead's death aged 58 from pneumonia caused by cirrhosis of the liver.
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Alexander Pearce Higgins
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Alexander Pearce Higgins was a British international law scholar. He was Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge , President of the Institut de Droit International , and a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration .
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John L. McClellan
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
John Little McClellan was an American lawyer and segregationist politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from Arkansas. At the time of his death, he was the second most senior member of the Senate and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He is the longest-serving senator in Arkansas history.
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Martin Hübner
1723 - 1795 (72 years)
Martin Hübner was a Danish jurist noted for his contributions to international law. Born in Hannover and brought up in Danemark, Hübner studied law there and was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1761. Later he was a high government official.
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Sister Nivedita
1867 - 1911 (44 years)
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
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Ernst Heymann
1870 - 1946 (76 years)
Ernst Heymann was a German jurist from Berlin. In 1889, he put on Breslauer Mary Magdalene School from the matriculation examination. He then studied law at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Breslau until 1892. Heymann was appointed professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin in 1899. In 1902, he was appointed to the Chair of Law at the Albertus University of Königsberg, two years later, he moved to the University of Marburg. In 1914, he returned to Berlin at the Friedrich Wilhelm University.
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Lionel Murphy
1922 - 1986 (64 years)
Lionel Keith Murphy QC was an Australian politician, barrister, and judge. He was a Senator for New South Wales from 1962 to 1975, serving as Attorney-General in the Whitlam government, and then sat on the High Court from 1975 until his death.
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Ioaniky Malinovsky
1868 - 1932 (64 years)
Ioaniky Alekseyevich Malinovsky was a jurist and historian of law active in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Biography Education Malinovsky was born in 1868 in Ostrog, in the family of an artisan. In his hometown he studied at the Ostrog gymnasium, later moving to Kiev to study at the Pavlo Galagan Collegium, from which he graduated in 1888. In 1892 he completed his studies in law at the St. Vladimir Imperial University of Kiev.
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Paul Joseph von Riegger
1705 - 1775 (70 years)
Paul Joseph Riegger , was an Austrian lawyer and teacher of state church law. Biography Paul Joseph Riegger taught from 1733 as a university professor in Innsbruck , and from 1753 in Vienna at the University and Theresianum. For his services, he was elevated to the hereditary nobility on 8 January 1764 by Maria Theresa as Ritter von Riegger.
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Arnold Vinnius
1588 - 1657 (69 years)
Arnold Vinnius was one of the leading jurists of the 17th century in the Netherlands. Life Vinnius was born in Monster. He attended the University of Leiden from 1603 where he read law. He gained his degree in 1612. His most important teacher was Gerardus Tuningius, who had been a student of Hugo Donellus. Vinnius aspired to an academic career, and in 1618 began teaching at the University of Leiden. He was initially not considered for promotion to a professorship as he had previously expressed pejorative views on the professors, so it was not until 1633 the position of Extraordinarius Professor Institutionum was created for him.
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Benjamin Marius Telders
1903 - 1945 (42 years)
Benjamin Marius Telders was a professor of law at Leiden University. He is known for standing up for his belief in the rule of law and civil society during the German Occupation. From 1938 he became involved in Dutch politics; he was party chairman of the Liberal State Party from 1938–1945.
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Lester B. Pearson
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson was a Canadian politician, diplomat, statesman, and scholar who served as the 14th prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968. Born in Newtonbrook, Ontario , Pearson pursued a career in the Department of External Affairs. He served as Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1944 to 1946 and secretary of state for external affairs from 1948 to 1957 under Liberal Prime Ministers William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. He narrowly lost the bid to become secretary-general of the United Nations in 1953. However, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 fo...
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Nikolai Korkunov
1853 - 1904 (51 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Korkunov was a leading authority on constitutional law and legal sociology in the Russian Empire. His father was Mikhail Korkunov, a noted Russian historian. His sister Marie de Manacéïne was known for her pioneering studies of sleep and dreams. After Aleksandr Gradovsky's death in 1889 Korkunov held the chair in constitutional and international law at the University of Saint Petersburg.
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Nathan Ross Margold
1899 - 1947 (48 years)
Nathan Ross Margold was a Romanian-born American lawyer. He was a municipal judge in Washington, D.C., and the author of the 1933 Margold Report to promote civil rights for African-Americans through the courts. He was also a supporter of Native American civil rights and Native American sovereignty. In addition to his legal career, Margold is remembered as the father of adult film pioneer William Margold.
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Jubal Early
1816 - 1894 (78 years)
Jubal Anderson Early was an American lawyer, politician and military officer who served in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Trained at the United States Military Academy, Early resigned his United States Army commission after the Second Seminole War and his Virginia military commission after the Mexican–American War, in both cases to practice law and participate in politics. Accepting a Virginia and later Confederate military commission as the American Civil War began, Early fought in the Eastern Theater throughout the conflict. He commanded a division under Generals Stonewall Jackson and Richard S.
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Bertold Eisner
1875 - 1956 (81 years)
Bertold Eisner was a Croatian Jewish law professor at the University of Zagreb, pioneer of the Croatian Jurisprudence and writer. Biography Eisner was born in Korolówka, Galicia in 1875. In Černovice, Czech Republic, he finished high school and graduated from the Faculty of Law. In 1899, Eisner received his doctoral degree in law. After his education he moved to Vienna, where he worked as a court clerk. In the mid 1900, due to financial difficulties, Eisner moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he worked at the Travnik, Jajce, Prijedor and Ključ courts of law. In 1933, Eisner was elected as a regular professor at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law.
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Herennius Modestinus
201 - 201 (0 years)
Herennius Modestinus, or simply Modestinus, was a civil servant and a celebrated Roman jurist, a student of Ulpian who flourished about 250 AD. He appears to have been a native of one of the Greek-speaking provinces, or probably Dalmatia. Possibly from 223 to 225 AD he was secretary a libellis under Emperor Alexander Severus, and about 228 he was praefectus vigilum. In Valentinian's Law of Citations he is classed with Papinian, Paulus, Gaius and Ulpian, as one of the five jurists whose recorded views were considered decisive. He is considered to be the last great jurist of the classic age o...
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Philip Sclater
1829 - 1913 (84 years)
Philip Lutley Sclater was an English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London for 42 years, from 1860 to 1902.
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Guillaume Budé
1467 - 1540 (73 years)
Guillaume Budé was a French scholar and humanist. He was involved in the founding of Collegium Trilingue, which later became the Collège de France. Budé was also the first keeper of the royal library at the Palace of Fontainebleau, which was later moved to Paris, where it became the Bibliothèque nationale de France. He was an ambassador to Rome and held several important judicial and civil administrative posts.
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Leone Levi
1821 - 1888 (67 years)
Leone Levi was an English jurist and statistician. Born to a Jewish family in Ancona, Italy, he worked in commerce there before emigrating to Liverpool in 1844. There he obtained British citizenship and joined the Presbyterian church.
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