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,
#3851
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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Jacob Friedrich Behrend
1833 - 1907 (74 years)
Jacob/Jakob Friedrich Behrend was a German jurist. His father was Friedrich Jakob Behrend, a German physician. He finished his studies in his native city at the university. He became "Gerichtsassessor" in 1859; but, deciding upon a scholastic career, he became privatdozent at the Berlin University in 1864. The first-fruit of his research was the Magdeburger Fragen, edited by him, and published in Berlin, 1865. This 300-page treatise is a critical treatment of the manuscripts which are in existence under this name, and are traced by him to a Prussian origin of about the period from 1386 to 140...
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William Hannibal Thomas
1843 - 1935 (92 years)
William Hannibal Thomas was an American teacher, journalist, judge, writer and legislator. He battled racism throughout his life. In 1861, he was rejected entry from the Union's Army until 1863 when he served, and was wounded by gunshot, leading to the amputation of his right arm. He published "Land and Education," in 1890, promoting avenues for Black people to obtain land and largely criticizing white people for troubles brought onto Black people. He garnered heavy attention from the Black community when he published his most famous work, The American Negro, which took a large conceptual le...
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Joseph von Zhishman
1820 - 1894 (74 years)
Joseph von Zhishman was an Austrian lawyer and specialist in canon law. Zhishman was born in Ljubljana and baptized Josephus Zhishman. He attended high school and the Lyceum in Ljubljana. In 1839 he went to Vienna to study law and graduated in 1843. He continued his studies in oriental languages, obtained his doctorate, and worked in the philology and history department at the University of Vienna until 1851. After he passed the state examination in history, geography, Latin, and Greek for all high school classes in 1851, he taught at the Trieste State High School. In 1853 he was transferred to the Theresianum in Vienna.
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Gilbert Rohde
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Gilbert Rohde , whose career as a furniture and industrial designer helped to define American modernism during its first phase from the late 1920s to World War II, is best known today for inaugurating modern design at Herman Miller Inc.
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Jay Cooke
1821 - 1905 (84 years)
Jay Cooke was an American financier who helped finance the Union war effort during the American Civil War and the postwar development of railroads in the northwestern United States. He is generally acknowledged as the first major investment banker in the United States and creator of the first wire house firm.
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Karl von Lilienthal
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Karl von Lilienthal was a German scholar of Jurisprudence who became a university professor of criminal law. After working briefly as an Assessor at the Wuppertal District Court he taught successively at the universities of Halle, Zürich, Marburg and then, between 1896 and 1924, Heidelberg, where he also served several terms as Dean of the Law Faculty and, for some years between 1902 and 1919, engaged in a parallel part time career in town as an assistant district judge.
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John Moses
1885 - 1945 (60 years)
John Moses was the 22nd Governor of North Dakota from 1939 to 1945, and served in the United States Senate in 1945 until his death that year. Excluding those appointed to fill brief vacancies, and those not seated at the beginning of their lawful terms, Moses is the shortest-serving U.S. senator ever, in office for just 59 days.
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Ján Spišiak
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Ján Spišiak was a Slovak lawyer who specialized in business law, who worked for much of his career as the legal representative of Tatra banka. However, he is best known for his role as the Slovak ambassador to Hungary during the Second World War.
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Uroš Nestorović
1765 - 1825 (60 years)
Uroš Stefanović Nestorović also known as Uroš Stefan Nestorović was a writer, jurist, philosopher, and pedagogue who headed all Eastern Orthodox schools in the Habsburg Monarchy. Uroš Nestorović is considered one of the most prominent Serbian enlighteners and educators along with Teodor Janković Mirijevski, Stefan Vujanovski, Dimitrie Eustatievici and Avram Mrazović.
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Thomas Murray Taylor
1897 - 1962 (65 years)
Sir Thomas Murray Taylor was a 20th-century Scottish advocate and university administrator. He was a devout Christian and active member of the United Free Church of Scotland. When this amalgamated with the Church of Scotland in 1929 he adopted the latter faith, becoming a church elder in 1936. From 1945 he served on the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches.
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Alona E. Evans
1917 - 1980 (63 years)
Alona E. Evans was an American scholar who specialized in international law and was one of the first American academics to write extensively on legal issues related to international terrorists, fugitives and refugees. Evans was a professor in and the chair of the Department of Political Science at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, and was the first woman to be president of the American Society of International Law.
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Philipp Reinhard Vitriarius
1647 - 1720 (73 years)
Philipp Reinhard Vitriarius was a jurist from Germany. Vitriarius was born in Oppenheim and after his studies became a professor at Leiden University where his portrait hangs in the Rector's hall. His son Johann Jacob Vitriarius also studied there and took his place as professor, eventually publishing his writings in several volumes. For example: Philipus Reinhardus Vitrarius, Institutiones Juris Publici Romano-Germanici,
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Johann Zanger
1557 - 1607 (50 years)
Johann Zanger was a German jurist, professor of law at Wittenberg University. Born in Brunswick, from 1576 Zanger studied law at Wittenberg University under Hugo Donellus. Subsequently studying in Italy, he gained a doctorate at Basel University in 1580. From 1581 onwards he was professor and judge at the aulic court of justice in Wittenberg. He later became a member of the court of lay assessors, the consistory and the regional court of Lower Lusatia.
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Austin Adams
1826 - 1890 (64 years)
Austin Adams was an American lawyer and justice of the Iowa Supreme Court for twelve years. Heritage Austin Adam's ancestors lived along the hills of the Chums River in Essex, England. Henry Adams, of this family, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1632 with his wife and children. His sons were the ancestors of Samuel Adams, the political philosopher and statesmen; John Adams, second United States president; and Austin Adams.
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Basilius Amerbach the Younger
1533 - 1591 (58 years)
Basilius Amerbach was a lawyer, professor and collector from Basel. He was the only son of Bonifacius Amerbach. He began to study law in 1552 at the University of Tübingen. In 1553 he studied at the University of Padua where his lecturer was Marcus Mantua Benavidius. 1552, he became a law clerk at the Imperial Chamber Court in Speyer. During this time, Basilius surprised his father by choosing to live with Jacob zur Glocke, a goldsmith, rather than a lawyer. After one year as a clerk, he became a professor at the University of Basel.
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Johannes Cardinalis von Bergreichenstein
1375 - 1500 (125 years)
Johannes Cardinalis von Bergreichenstein was a Czech lawyer and diplomat. He was rector of Charles University in Prague 1416-1417. In 1394 he took up the study of law at the Charles University in Prague and received his doctorate at Jan Hus in 1404 to champion the seven liberal arts. 1407 was followed by the examination for Bachelor of laws. Two years later he was already as an envoy of King Wenceslas IV. together with Christian von Prachatitz and Peter de Mladoniovicz at the Council of Pisa in part. As followers of Jan Hus, they should provide for the repeal of the ban imposed against this church.
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Ben Johnson
1858 - 1950 (92 years)
Ben Johnson was an American lawyer and politician; Democrat, United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1907, to March 3, 1927. Biography Born near Bardstown in Nelson County, Kentucky. His father was William Johnson, who was state senator and a Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky. His mother, Nancy, was a member of the committee that selected the design of the Confederate flag; they chose a design submitted by Nicola Marschall. After prep school he went to St. Mary's College, in Marion County, Kentucky, and graduated in June 1878. He then transferred to the Louisville Law University and graduated in 1882.
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William Gibbs McAdoo
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
William Gibbs McAdoo Jr. was an American lawyer and statesman. McAdoo was a leader of the Progressive movement and played a major role in the administration of his father-in-law President Woodrow Wilson. A member of the Democratic Party, he also represented California in the United States Senate.
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Philip Phillips
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Philip Phillips was an American lawyer and politician from Cheraw, South Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, and Washington, D.C. He was a member of the Democratic Party who served as the U.S. representative from Alabama. Subsequently, he was a prominent lawyer in Washington, D.C., much involved in the political events surrounding the American Civil War.
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David Lewis
1520 - 1584 (64 years)
David Lewis was a Welsh lawyer, judge, and the first Principal of Jesus College, Oxford. Early life Lewis was born in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales. In 1540 he graduated from All Souls College, Oxford, as a Bachelor of Civil Law, and became a Fellow of All Souls in 1541.
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David Grimm
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
David Grimm was a Russian Imperial and then Estonian lawyer and politician. He was a member of Estonian National Assembly .
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Mieczysław Witold Gutkowski
1893 - 1943 (50 years)
Mieczysław Witold Gutkowski was a Polish lawyer, a world-renowned economist who specialized in public finance, and one of the first scholars of economic analysis of law in Poland. He was a professor at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno. He was murdered by German SS units and Lithuanian collaborators in the Ponary massacre.
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Thomas Jones
1614 - 1692 (78 years)
#3895
Keith Baverstock
Dr Keith Baverstock is a former regional adviser for Radiation and Public Health, World Health Organization and current medical researcher and Docent in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Eastern Finland.
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Noble Brandon Judah
1884 - 1938 (54 years)
Noble Brandon Judah Jr. was an American lawyer and politician. He joined his father's successful law firm in 1907 and eventually succeeded him as a partner. He served one term in the Illinois House of Representatives and married into the National Cash Register fortune. In 1927, Calvin Coolidge appointed Judah Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba.
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Carl Hildebrand von Canstein
1667 - 1719 (52 years)
Carl or Karl Hildebrand von Canstein , Baron or Count of Canstein, was a German aristocrat who founded the Canstein Bible Institute in Halle, Brandenburg-Prussia, the first modern Bible society. Life He was born at Lindenberg on 4 August 1667. He studied law at Alma Mater Viadrina in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder and, upon finishing his courses, he toured the Netherlands, England, France, Italy, and southern Germany from 1686 to 1688. On the death of the Great Elector Frederick William, he returned to Berlin.
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Grace Frick
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Grace Marion Frick was a translator and researcher for her lifelong partner French writer Marguerite Yourcenar. Grace Frick taught languages at US colleges and was the second academic dean to be appointed to Hartford Junior College.
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James Wright
1716 - 1785 (69 years)
James Wright was a colonial lawyer and jurist who was the last British Royal Governor of the Province of Georgia. He was the only Royal Governor of the Thirteen Colonies to regain control of his colony during the American Revolutionary War.
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Lawrence A. Kimpton
1910 - 1973 (63 years)
Lawrence Alpheus Kimpton was an American philosopher and educator, and a president of the University of Chicago. He earned a B.A. at Stanford and a Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University, and he taught at Deep Springs College before joining Chicago as a professor of philosophy in 1943.
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