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 Law,
#3651
William Paget, 1st Baron Paget
1506 - 1563 (57 years)
William Paget, 1st Baron Paget of Beaudesert , was an English statesman and accountant who held prominent positions in the service of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I. Early life He was the son of John Pachett or Paget, one of the serjeants-at-mace of the city of London. He was born in Staffordshire in 1506, and was educated at St Paul's School when William Lily was its headmaster, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, proceeding afterwards to the University of Paris. At St Paul's, he befriended the future antiquary John Leland and later acted as one of his benefactors.
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Kaoru Osanai
1881 - 1928 (47 years)
Kaoru Osanai was a Japanese theater director, playwright, and actor central in the development of modern Japanese theater. Biography Kaoru Osanai was born on July 26, 1881, in Hiroshima, the second son of Director of Hiroshima Army Garrison Hospital, Takeshi Osanai. His father was a former samurai from Hirosaki Domain. When he was five, Takeshi died abruptly at the age of 38, leaving his three children Reiko, Kaoru and Yachiyo to his wife Taka. Osanai subsequently moved to Tokyo where he received his education. The family lived comfortably at Takeshi's mansion where Taka and her female friends practiced music.
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Philipp Knipschildt
1595 - 1657 (62 years)
Philipp Knipschildt was a jurist and legal historian. Life Philipp Knipschildt was born in Treisbach , the son of Melchior Knipschildt and Catharina née Lefart. From c. 1604 he attended school at Medebach in the Duchy of Westphalia; as a Protestant, he moved to Sachsenhausen in the Duchy of Waldeck in 1606. He spent several years in Wildungen and Korbach before enrolling at the Soest Archigymnasium. He attended the University of Giessen from 1615 to 1620 before serving as tutor to Prince Charles Ludwig of Pfalz-Veldenz until 1623. Subsequently, he studied at Strasbourg, obtaining his doctoral degree on November 4, 1626, with a study of fideicommissa.
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Cornelis van Eck
1662 - 1732 (70 years)
Cornelis van Eck was a Dutch jurist and poet. Born in Arnhem, he studied literature in Utrecht and law in Leiden, attaining his doctorate under Johannes Voet in 1682. His dissertation, De septem damnatis legibus, saw seven re-editions. He was called upon to teach in Franeker in 1686 and was appointed to a professorship in Utrecht in 1693.
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Agathon Wunderlich
1810 - 1878 (68 years)
Gottlob Friedrich Walter Agathon Wunderlich was a German jurist and a member of the Oberappellationsgericht der vier Freien Städte . History Wunderlich was the son of philologist Ernst Karl Friedrich Wunderlich . Although he was not a Prussian citizen, he was awarded a scholarship to study at the prestigious Landesschule Pforta . Afterwards he studied at the University of Göttingen, obtaining his law degree in 1832. In 1833 he received his habilitation and began serving as an Hanoverian civil servant. Due to the repeal of the Hanoverian state constitution by King Ernest Augustus and associate...
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R. A. E. Greenshields
1861 - 1942 (81 years)
Robert Alfred Ernest Greenshields was Chief Justice of the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec; Dean of the Faculty of Law at McGill University and 9th Chancellor of Bishop's University. Greenshields was born at Danville, Canada East, the youngest son of Scottish-born parents John Greenshields , farmer and mill owner of Danville, and Margaret Naismith.
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William of Pagula
1290 - 1332 (42 years)
William of Pagula , also known as William Paull or William Poull, was a 14th-century English canon lawyer and theologian best known for his written works, particularly his manual for priests entitled the Oculus Sacerdotis. Pagula was made the perpetual vicar of the church at Winkfield on 5 March 1314, although he was absent from his parish for several years while pursuing a doctorate in Canon Law from the University of Oxford. After this was granted he returned to work with his parish, and his writings are written from the perspective of someone familiar with the job of a rural priest.
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John Speed
1772 - 1840 (68 years)
John Speed was an American judge and farmer in Louisville, Kentucky. He built the Farmington estate and served briefly in the American Indian Wars. Early life John Speed was born on May 17, 1772, to Captain James Speed. He was ten years old when he came to Kentucky with his father. He received education from schools in Kentucky.
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Giovanni Maria Lampredi
1731 - 1793 (62 years)
Giovanni Maria Lampredi was an Italian jurist, scholar, and writer, active in Tuscany. He is also remembered for his text on Etruscan culture. Biography He was born in Rovezzano to a family of modest means. An older brother became a Franciscan friar, but Giovanni Maria studied classical languages and literature at the Seminario Eugeniano in Florence under Francesco Poggini. He studied philosophy under the provost Francesco Fossi. Graduating with a degree in canon law and theology in 1756, he joined the intellectual circles including of Giovanni Lami, Marco Lastri, and Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli.
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Gustaf Gründgens
1899 - 1963 (64 years)
Gustaf Gründgens , born Gustav Heinrich Arnold Gründgens, was one of Germany's most famous and influential actors of the 20th century, and artistic director of theatres in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg. His career continued unimpeded through the years of the Nazi regime; the extent to which this can be considered as deliberate collaboration with the Nazis is hotly disputed.
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Gerrit van Poelje
1884 - 1976 (92 years)
Gerrit Abraham van Poelje was a Dutch civil servant, lawyer and Public Administration scholar. He is considered one of the most important founders of the science of Public Administration in The Netherlands.
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J. Farrell MacDonald
1875 - 1952 (77 years)
John Farrell MacDonald was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. He appeared in over 325 films over a four-decade career from 1911 to 1951, and directed forty-four silent films from 1912 to 1917.
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Ralph T. Catterall
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Ralph Tunnicliff Catterall , judge of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Early life Catterall was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of English-born historian Ralph C. H. Catterall and lawyer Helen Tunnicliff Catterall. His maternal grandfather was judge Damon G. Tunnicliff. He graduated from Harvard University. During World War I he was a second lieutenant in the United States Army.
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Nikolaus Gjelsvik
1866 - 1938 (72 years)
Nikolaus Gjelsvik was a Norwegian jurist and law professor. He was born at Vevring in Sunnfjord. He served as a professor at the University of Kristiania from 1906. Among his works are the books Innleiding i rettsstudiet from 1912, Lærebok i folkerett from 1915, and Lærebok i millomfolkeleg privatrett from 1918. He was a proponent for the Nynorsk language, took part in organisational work, and had leading positions in the publishing house Det Norske Samlaget and in the societies Noregs Ungdomslag and Noregs Mållag.
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John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair
1847 - 1934 (87 years)
John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, , known as The 7th Earl of Aberdeen from 1870 to 1916, was a British politician. Born in Edinburgh, Lord Aberdeen held office in several countries, serving twice as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and serving from 1893 to 1898 as Governor General of Canada.
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Eduard Böcking
1802 - 1870 (68 years)
Eduard Böcking was a German legal scholar. He is best known for his editions of, and commentaries on, the legal works of classical antiquity. Life Böcking was born in Trarbach an der Mosel, and attended the gymnasium in Kaiserslautern from 1816 to 1818. He then studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, Berlin, and Göttingen, and graduated in 1826 with the thesis De mancipii causis at the University of Berlin. In spring 1829 he was appointed extraordinary professor, and moved in the fall to the University of Bonn, where in 1835 he became regular Professor of Law. He died in Bonn in 1870...
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John Alexander Weir
1894 - 1942 (48 years)
John Alexander Weir was a Canadian attorney, and the first Dean of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law from 1926 to 1942. Early life John Alexander Weir was born in Ardoch, North Dakota on 13 December 1894 to the Reverend Richard and Margaret Moir Weir. He had three brothers and two sisters. Due to his father being called to new congregations the family traveled from Ardock to Hensall, Ontario when John was two years old, then to Petrolia, Ontario in 1898, and finally to Regina, Saskatchewan in 1901 where John attended the Regina public school. He continued his education by enrolling at ...
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Fèlix Maria Falguera
1811 - 1897 (86 years)
Fèlix Maria de Falguera i de Puiguriguer was a Spanish jurist and the country's leading authority in matters of notarial law in the 19th century. From 1844 on, Puiguriguer taught at the Escuela de Notaría in Barcelona. He also founded the professional journal La Notaría, which published most of his work.
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Jan Sehn
1909 - 1965 (56 years)
Jan Sehn , was a Polish lawyer, 1945 to 1947 investigating magistrate, and professor at Jagiellonian University since 1961. He was member of the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, and Chairman of the Kraków District Commission until 1953. In 1945 and 1946, he led the investigations on the site of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. As an investigation judge he prepared the accusation act of the former camp commandant Rudolf Höß. From 1949 director of the Institute of Forensic Research in Kraków. Sehn died suddenly 1965 in Frankfurt.
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Johann Caspar Barthel
1697 - 1771 (74 years)
Johann Caspar Barthel was a German canon lawyer. Biography He was born at Kitzingen, Bavaria, the son of a fisherman, attended school in Kitzingen, and from 1709 to 1715 studied at the Jesuit College at Würzburg. In 1715 he entered the seminary of the latter city and in 1721 was ordained priest.
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Celia Tapias
1885 - 1964 (79 years)
Celia Tapias was the first female lawyer to practice law in the City of Buenos Aires and the second in her country. Life and work She attended the baccalaureate classes in Buenos Aires, and after her graduation in 1904, she entered the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires . In 1910, she obtained the title of lawyer and on 12 August 1911, she went earned a doctorate with a thesis on Tutela dativa, becoming the first lawyer in the city of Buenos Aires.
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Charles Bonaventure Marie Toullier
1752 - 1835 (83 years)
Charles Bonaventure Marie Toullier, born 21 January 1752 in Dol-de-Bretagne, died in Rennes on 19 September 1835, was a French Jurisconsult. He is cited significantly in Proudhon's seminal work What Is Property?.
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Lloyd Bacon
1889 - 1955 (66 years)
Lloyd Francis Bacon was an American screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director. As a director, he made films in virtually all genres, including westerns, musicals, comedies, gangster films, and crime dramas. He was one of the directors at Warner Bros. in the 1930s who helped give that studio its reputation for gritty, fast-paced "torn from the headlines" action films. And, in directing Warner Bros.' 42nd Street, he joined the movie's song-and-dance-number director, Busby Berkeley, in contributing to "an instant and enduring classic [that] transformed the musical genre".
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Karl Schildener
1777 - 1843 (66 years)
Karl Schildener was a German lawyer, legal historian and university lecturer. Life and achievements Schildener was born on 26 August 1777 in Greifswald in what was then Swedish Pomerania. His father was the council pharmacist Johann Karl Schildener , his mother Christina Liboria a daughter of Balzer Peter Vahl, mayor of Greifswald from 1788 to 1792. Already in 1792 he was enrolled as a student of law at the University of Greifswald, from 1796 he studied at the University of Jena. There he received his doctorate in law in 1798. In 1800 he began studying Swedish law at Uppsala University. In ...
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Alexander Irving, Lord Newton
1766 - Present (260 years)
Alexander Irving, Lord Newton FRSE was a Scottish judge who served as professor of civil law at Edinburgh University from 1800 to 1826. He was a Senator of the College of Justice. Life He was born on 12 October 1766, the son of George Irving of Newton, by Elvanfoot . The Irvings of Newton were a cadet branch of the Scottish family the Irvines of Drum.
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Jacobus de Belviso
1270 - 1335 (65 years)
Jacobus de Belviso was an Italian jurist from Bologna. His later reputation was based on the text Practica criminalis on criminal law printed under his name in 1515. This is, however, no longer believed to be his work.
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Charles L. Capen
1845 - 1927 (82 years)
Charles Laban Capen was a prominent Illinois lawyer. He was born in Union Springs, New York on January 31, 1845, the son of Luman Capen, a direct descendant of Bernard Capen, who was one of the 140 emigrants who left Dorchester, Dorset to found Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1630. Luman Capen was an ardent abolitionist and maintained a station of the Underground Railroad in Union Springs. A supporter of the short-lived Free Soil Party, in the wake of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Luman Capen answered the call of the New England Emigrant Aid Company for abolitionists to settle in the Kansas Territory.
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Nicolaus Reusner
1545 - 1602 (57 years)
Nicolaus Reusner was a German jurist and publisher. He was born into a family of wealthy German landowners in Löwenberg, Silesia, who had recently moved there from Transylvania. Several members of his family became famous in the fields of law and medicine in the 16th century, including his brothers Bartholomäus von Reusner , Elias Reusner and Jeremias von Reusner . Reusner studied in Wittenberg and Leipzig, under Modestinus Pistoris, and Leonhard Badehorn. In Leipzig, imperial personal physician Georg Wirth persuaded him to abandon medicine and study law.
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Earl C. Arnold
1884 - 1949 (65 years)
Earl Caspar Arnold was an American academic administrator. He served as the dean of the Vanderbilt University Law School from 1930 to 1945. Early life Arnold was born on 8 June 1884 in Iola, Kansas. He graduated from Baker University in 1906, and he earned a JD from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 1909.
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Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes was an English lawyer and dramatist. A native of Cheshire, Hughes entered Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1571. He graduated and became a fellow of his college in 1576, and was afterwards a member of Gray's Inn.
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Friedrich Albert Fallou
1794 - 1877 (83 years)
Friedrich Albert Fallou was the German founder of modern soil science. While working as a lawyer and tax assessor, Fallou established himself as an independent scientist, a recognized authority in the natural history of farm and forest soil. In 1862 he advanced the idea that soil was separate in nature from geology. Intent on establishing the study of soils as an independent science, Fallou introduced the term pedology .
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Frederik Christian Stoud Platou
1811 - 1891 (80 years)
Frederik Christian Stoud Platou was a Norwegian legal scholar, Supreme Court justice, district stipendiary magistrate and politician. Personal life He was born in Christiania as a son of educator, professor, politician and State Secretary Ludvig Stoud Platou and his wife Karen Lumholtz . He was a maternal grandson of Nicolai Lumholtz and brother of Carl Nicolai Stoud Platou, and through the latter an uncle of Valborg Platou and Lars Hannibal Sommerfeldt Stoud Platou. He was a granduncle of Carl Platou.
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Jakob Friedrich Ludovici
1671 - 1723 (52 years)
Jakob Friedrich Ludovici was a German jurist. Ludovici studied law in Stargard, Königsberg and Halle. Appointed a professor extraordinary in 1701, he became a full professor in 1711. In 1721 he was appointed privy councillor, vice chancellor and Professor Juris primarius at the University of Gießen.
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Paulus Castrensis
1360 - 1447 (87 years)
Paulus Castrensis was an Italian jurist of the 14th century. Life He studied under Baldus de Ubaldis at Perugia, and was a fellow-pupil with Cardinal de Zabarella. He was admitted to the degree of doctor of civil law in the University of Avignon, but it is uncertain when he first undertook the duties of a professor. A tradition, which has been handed down by Panzirolus, represents him as having taught law for a period of fifty-seven years. He was professor at Siena in 1390, at Avignon in 1394, and at Padua in 1429; and, at different periods, at Florence, at Bologna and at Perugia. He was for s...
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Oldradus de Ponte
1270 - 1343 (73 years)
Oldradus de Ponte was an Italian jurist born in Lodi, active in the Roman curia in the early fourteenth century. Previously he had taught at the University of Padua. According to Joseph Canning he was an authority in both canon law and civil law, and his consilia are the earliest surviving ones.
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Claudio Achillini
1574 - 1640 (66 years)
Claudio Achillini was an Italian philosopher, theologian, mathematician, poet, and jurist. He is a major figure in the history of Italian Baroque poetry. Biography Born in Bologna, he was a grandson to Giovanni Filoteo Achillini and grand-nephew of Alessandro Achillini. He was professor of jurisprudence for several years at his native Bologna, Parma, and Ferrara, with the highest reputation. So much admiration did his learning excite, that inscriptions to his honour were placed in the schools in his lifetime. He was a member of a number of learned and literary societies, including the Accadem...
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Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
Charles Neaves, Lord Neaves FRSE was a Scottish advocate, judge, theologian and writer. He served as Solicitor General , as a judge of the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland , and as Rector of the University of St Andrews .
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Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli
1655 - 1740 (85 years)
Niccolò Comneno Papadopoli was an Italian lawyer and historian of Greek origin. Life He was born to Zuanne Papadopoli, a Venetian administrator at Candia, present day Heraklion. Papadopoli studied Canon Law and became a librarian at the University of Padua. In 1726 he published on the history of the university.
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Raul A. Orgaz
1888 - 1948 (60 years)
Raúl Andrés Orgaz was an Argentine lawyer, professor and writer. Orgaz pursued secondary studies at the Colegio Nacional de Monserrat, and graduated in law from the University of Córdoba in 1913. Subsequently, he traveled to France to study comparative civil law. After his stay in France, he returned to Córdoba where he taught sociology as Martinez Paz chair in the Faculty of Law until 1946. Because of his ideas removed from the position in 1946 during the confrontation between university students and the government.
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Francesco Mantica
1534 - 1614 (80 years)
Francesco Mantica was a Roman Catholic cardinal. Biography He was born in Udine, and studied canon law at the University of Padua. He became auditor of the Rota and Capella di Mano of pope Clement VIII, who named Mantica as cardinal in 1596. He died in Rome and is buried in Santa Maria del Popolo. He wrote De conjecturis ultimatum voluntatum , lib XI, published in 1754.
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Christopher Besoldus
1577 - 1638 (61 years)
Christopher Besoldus was a German jurist and publicist whose writing is seen as important for the history of the causes of the Thirty Years' War. Life He was born of Protestant parents in 1577 at Tübingen, Württemberg. He studied jurisprudence, and in the early 1590s was a close friend of Johannes Kepler. Besold asked permission of the classical scholar Vitus Müller to defend theses based on Kepler's dissertation ; he was denied the chance. Later, when Katharina Kepler, Johannes Kepler's mother, was prosecuted on witchcraft charges, Besold was one of the jurists dealing with the case, whic...
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Lyman Beecher Kellogg
1841 - 1918 (77 years)
Lyman Beecher Kellogg was the first president, as well as the first teacher, of Kansas State Normal , now known as Emporia State University, in Emporia, Kansas, United States. After serving as KSN's president, Kellogg went on to become an attorney, state representative and senator, and the Kansas Attorney General.
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Panormitanus
1386 - 1445 (59 years)
Nicolò de' Tudeschi was an Italian Benedictine canonist. Life In 1400 he entered the Order of St. Benedict; he was sent to the University of Bologna to study under Zabarella; in 1411 he became a doctor of canon law, and taught successively at Parma , Siena , and Bologna . Meanwhile, in 1425, he was made abbot of the monastery of Maniace, near Messina, whence his name "Abbas", to which has been added "modernus" or "recentior" ; Panormitanus is also known as "Abbas Siculus" on account of his Sicilian origin.
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Kate Wallach
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Kate Wallach was a legal scholar and librarian in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known for her work Research in Louisiana Law. Education Kate Wallach was a Jewish woman born to Ludwig Wallach and Berta Wallach on May 17, 1905, in Krefeld, Germany. Her father was a partner in a silk wholesale firm, but lost his position following the rise of the Nazis.
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Harold Dexter Hazeltine
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Harold Dexter Hazeltine, FBA was an American legal scholar. Early life and education Born on 18 November 1871 at Warren, Pennsylvania, he was the son of a banker and attended Brown University and Harvard Law School . At Harvard, he grew increasingly interested in legal history. He then studied at the University of Berlin and completed a doctoral dissertation; he was awarded the degree of juris utriusque doctor in 1905.
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Teresa Labriola
1873 - 1941 (68 years)
Teresa Labriola was an Italian writer, jurist, and feminist. The daughter of Antonio Labriola, a renowned Marxist thinker, Labriola served as the first Italian woman lawyer. Life From the time she was a student, Teresa Labriola was passionately involved in the nascent Italian feminist movement. Upon graduating, she held the position of Professor of Law at the University of Rome, making her the first female lawyer in Italy. Since 1906, Labriola was working with organizations who helped all women no matter of their economic or cultural status get the power to vote.
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Juan López de Palacios Rubios
1450 - 1524 (74 years)
Juan López de Palacios Rubios was a Spanish jurist called El Doctor for his expertise in canon law. He was the primary author of the famous Requerimiento, read during the conquest of America to the Indians, instructing them to submit peacefully. The text informed the natives that they were vassals of the Castilian monarch and subjects of the pope and, if they opposed they would be subjugated by force and turned into slaves.
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Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was an Iranian philosopher and jurist. Early life Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was born in 1890 in Qazvin Province, Iran. His family were the relatives of Molla Khalil Qazvini. His father Abul Hasan Ibn Khalil Al Hosseini was also a jurist. The family name Rafiee was given to him from his grandfather, Ayatollah Mirza Rafie.
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John Hancock
1824 - 1899 (75 years)
John Hancock was an American judge and politician. As a member of the Texas Legislature he opposed the secession of Texas during the American Civil War. After the war he represented Texas in the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party.
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Johannes Cuspinian
1473 - 1529 (56 years)
Johannes Cuspinianus , born Johan Spießhaymer , was a German-Austrian humanist, scientist, diplomat, and historian. Born in Spießheim near Schweinfurt in Franconia, of which Cuspinianus is a Latinization, he studied in Leipzig and Würzburg. He went to Vienna in 1492 and became a professor of medicine at the University of Vienna. He became Rector of the university in 1500 and also served as Royal Superintendent until his death.
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