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,
#3901
Petrus Cunaeus
1586 - 1638 (52 years)
Petrus Cunaeus was the pen name of the Dutch Christian scholar Peter van der Kun. His book The Hebrew Republic is considered "the most powerful statement of republican theory in the early years of the Dutch Republic."
Go to Profile#3902
Gezina van der Molen
1892 - 1978 (86 years)
Gezina Hermina Johanna van der Molen was a Dutch legal scholar and resistance fighter during the Second World War. From 1924 to 1929, she studied law at the Free University of Amsterdam — the first female student to do so — and was also the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree from there. She dealt with numerous issues: the rights of women, apartheid in South Africa, the United Nations, the South Moluccas and New Guinea.
Go to Profile#3903
Pierre Laporte
1921 - 1970 (49 years)
Pierre Laporte was a Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician. He was deputy premier of the province of Quebec when he was kidnapped and murdered by members of the Front de libération du Québec during the October Crisis.
Go to Profile#3904
Georg Frederik Ursin
1797 - 1849 (52 years)
Georg Frederik Ursin was a Danish mathematician and astronomer. Early life His father, Georg Jacob Krüger, was a first lieutenant in the Royal Danish Navy, however, in 1798, his was stripped of his functions where was taken to Munkholmen, an islet north of Trondheim, Norway.
Go to Profile#3905
John Morris
John Morris was an English buccaneer active in the Caribbean during the 1660s and early-1670s. His son, John Morris the Younger, held a command of his own ship during his father's later expeditions against Portobelo and Maracaibo. John Morris the Younger was one of the commanders killed in an explosion during a party on board Henry Morgan's flagship in 1670.
Go to Profile#3906
Otto Günther
1822 - 1897 (75 years)
Otto Günther was a German lawyer and City Councilor. He studied law and was awarded the Dr. iur. He then worked as a lawyer and legal director. From 1867 to 1872 he was a town councilor in Leipzig. From 1881 to 1897 he served as music director at the Leipzig Conservatory.
Go to Profile#3907
Heinrich Hermann Fitting
1831 - 1918 (87 years)
Heinrich Hermann Fitting was a German jurist. Biography He was born at Mauchenheim, and studied at Würzburg, Heidelberg, and Erlangen. In 1857 he was appointed professor of Roman law at Basel, and in 1862 he was called in the same capacity to Halle. From 1864 to 1878 he was engaged in publishing the Archiv für die civilistische Praxis. He retired in 1902. He was the father of botanist Hans Fitting.
Go to Profile#3908
Charles B. Elliott
1861 - 1935 (74 years)
Charles Burke Elliott was an American jurist. Born in Morgan County, Ohio, Elliott moved to Iowa with his parents. He graduated from University of Iowa College of Law in 1881 and was admitted to the Iowa bar. He was the lawyer for a land company in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory. Elliott then moved to Minnesota in 1884. He received his doctorate from University of Minnesota in 1887 with a thesis on "The Northeastern Fisheries" and taught at the university from 1890 to 1899. In 1890, Elliott was appointed the Minneapolis, Minnesota municipal court judge and in 1894 was appointed a Minnesota district court judge.
Go to Profile#3909
Ernst Immanuel Bekker
1827 - 1916 (89 years)
Ernst Immanuel Bekker was a German jurist and professor. Life Bekker studied law at Heidelberg, where he was a member of the Corps Saxo-Borussia. In 1853 he gained his Habilitation at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Roman law. He was extraordinary professor there from 1855 until he was called to an ordinary professorship at Greifswald in 1857. In 1874 he finally returned to Heidelberg. In 1886, he became Pro-Rector of the University of Heidelberg, and became emeritus in 1908. He remained in Heidelberg until his death.
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Jiří Trnka
1912 - 1969 (57 years)
Jiří Trnka was a Czech puppet-maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director. In addition to his extensive career as an illustrator, especially of children's books, he is best known for his work in animation with puppets, which began in 1946. Most of his films were intended for adults and many were adaptations of literary works. Because of his influence in animation, he was called "the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe", despite the great differences between their works. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustrators in 1968, recognizing his career con...
Go to Profile#3911
Paul M. Herzog
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Paul M. Herzog was an American lawyer, educator, civil servant, and university administrator. He was chairman of the United States National Labor Relations Board from 1945 to 1953. Early life and career Paul M. Herzog was born in New York City on August 21, 1906, to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Herzog. His father was an attorney in Platzek, Stroock & Herzog, a large and notable New York City law firm.
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William Miller Collier
1867 - 1956 (89 years)
William Miller Collier was United States Ambassador to Spain from 1905 to 1909, the president of George Washington University from 1918 to 1921, and United States Ambassador to Chile from 1921 to 1928.
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Mohamed Fadhel Ben Achour
1909 - 1970 (61 years)
Mohamed Fadhel Ben Achour was a Tunisian theologian, writer, trade unionist, intellectual and patriot born in La Marsa. Biography Born October 16, 1909, in a family of Scholars, Magistrates and High Officials of the upper middle class of Tunisia, he began to learn the Quran and Arabic grammar from the age of three years. He also learns French language at the age of nine. He made his entry in 1922 in Zitouna where he is directly enrolled in second year. In 1928, he obtained the first diploma of Zitounian high school leaving, then called tatwi. In 1931, he enrolled at the Faculty of Letters of Algiers as a free auditor.
Go to Profile#3914
Adolf Wach
1843 - 1926 (83 years)
Eduard Gustav Ludwig Adolph Wach, known as Adolf Wach was a German jurist, a professor in Königsberg, Rostock, Tübingen, Bonn and Leipzig. Biography Wach was born in Kulm, West Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia to Adolph Leopold Wach , the town treasurer of Kulm, and Gustava Wach, née Suchland . Wach passed his Abitur in 1861 at the gymnasium in Kulm and studied law at the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Königsberg and Göttingen.
Go to Profile#3915
Charles de Visscher
1884 - 1973 (89 years)
Charles Marie Joseph Désiré de Visscher was a Belgian scholar and practitioner of international law, as well as judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice and International Court of Justice.
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Nikodim Milaš
1845 - 1915 (70 years)
Nikodim Milaš was a Serbian Orthodox Church bishop in Dalmatia . He was a writer and arguably the greatest Serbian expert on Orthodox church law and the Slavic world. As a canon lawyer in Dalmatia, he defended the Serbian Orthodox Church against the State. He was a polyglot, fluent in German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Old Slavonic, and an author of numerous books.
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Willem van Eysinga
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Willem Jan Mari van Eysinga was a Dutch diplomat and jurist. He served as a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice from 1931 to 1945. Early life and education Van Eysinga was born on 3 January 1878 in Noordwijkerhout, now the municipality of Noordwijk, to a prominent political family. His father, Tjalling, was the mayor of Noordwijkerhout and his grandfather, Frans van Eysinga, was President of the Dutch Senate from 1880 to 1888. Van Eysinga received a Doctor of Law and a Doctor of Political Science from the Leiden University in 1900 and 1906 respectively. He married Coralie Le...
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Blewett Harrison Lee
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
Blewett Harrison Lee was an American legal scholar and corporate attorney who taught at the Northwestern University Law School and University of Chicago Law School, and served as general counsel to the Illinois Central Railroad.
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Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski
1864 - 1945 (81 years)
Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski was a Polish jurist and scholar of civil law. After studies in Berlin and a habilitation in Breslau, Koschembahr-Łyskowski taught Roman law at the universities of Fribourg, Lemberg and Warsaw from 1895 to 1930.
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Charles A. Graves
1850 - 1928 (78 years)
Charles Alfred Graves was a legal scholar and law professor, who taught at the law schools of Washington and Lee University and the University of Virginia. Biography Charles A. Graves was born on Mechums River in Albemarle County, Virginia on October 20, 1850. He graduated from Washington and Lee, where he studied under John W. Brockenbrough and John Randolph Tucker, then joined the faculty in 1873. From 1875 to 1887, Graves taught alone, while Tucker served in Congress. Tucker returned, then in 1896, a third faculty member was added, John W. Davis. Graves became dean in 1897 upon Tucker's death.
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Federico Cammeo
1872 - 1939 (67 years)
Federico Cammeo was an Italian jurist and an important figure in the public law of the Fascist era in Italy. Cammeo taught at the University of Cagliari from 1901, at the University of Padua from 1905, and from 1911 at the University of Bologna. From 1925 he taught at the University of Florence, from which he was dismissed under the Italian racial laws of 18 November 1938. From 1930 until 1938 he was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
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Leopold Wenger
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Leopold Wenger was a prominent Austrian historian of ancient law. He fostered interdisciplinary study of the ancient world . Biography Wenger was born in his maternal grandparents' castle Trabuschgen in Obervellach in 1874. He discovered a love for the study of Latin and Ancient Greek in secondary school. He went on to study law at the University of Graz, where he became interested in ancient law. After completing his doctorate in 1897, he continued his studies at the University of Leipzig under Ludwig Mitteis. He then returned to the University of Graz to write his Habilitation.
Go to Profile#3923
Kisaburo Yokota
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
was a Japanese international legal scholar. He served as the 3rd Chief Justice of Japan from 1960 to 1966. He graduated from the Tokyo Imperial University and later served on its faculty. He received the Degree of Doctor of Law . He was a recipient of the Order of Culture and the Order of the Rising Sun. His grave is in Gokoku-ji Temple Cemetery, Bunkyō-ku, Tokyo
Go to Profile#3924
E. C. S. Wade
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
Emlyn Capel Stewart Wade was a British constitutional law scholar. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge from 1945 to 1962. Biography The son of Charles Stewart Douglas Wade, Wade was educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took Firsts in both parts of the Law Tripos. During the First World War he served with the Royal Garrison Artillery with the British Salonika Force. In 1920 he was elected a scholar of Gonville and Caius College, and won the Whewell Scholarship in International Law in 1922. He w...
Go to Profile#3925
Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank
1748 - 1816 (68 years)
The Hon Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank FRSE FSA was a Scottish advocate, academic jurist, judge and agriculturalist. Life The only son of Alexander Maconochie of Meadowbank, Kirknewton, Midlothian, and his wife Isabella Allan, daughter of the Rev. Walter Allan, minister of Colinton in the same shire, was born on 26 January 1748. He was educated privately by Alexander Adam, and at the High School of Edinburgh. He entered the University of Edinburgh, where he attended the law classes. He was apprenticed to Thomas Tod, writer to the signet.
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Charles Lee
1758 - 1815 (57 years)
Charles Lee was an American lawyer and politician from Virginia who served as United States Attorney General from 1795 until 1801, and as United States Secretary of State ad interim from May 13, 1800, to June 5, 1800., after serving as prosecutor for the City of Alexandria and serving in the Virginia House of Delegates from Fairfax County.
Go to Profile#3927
Nathaniel Beverley Tucker
1784 - 1851 (67 years)
Nathaniel Beverley Tucker was an American author, judge, legal scholar, and political essayist. Life and politics Tucker was generally known by his middle name. He was born into a socially elite and politically influential Virginia family: his father was the noted legal scholar St. George Tucker, and his half-brother was the John Randolph of Roanoke. Tucker's older brother Henry St. George Tucker, Sr., too, went on to have an eminent career as a law professor and Congressman in antebellum Virginia. His nephew Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a U.S. diplomat and later secret agent for the Confederacy, was named after him.
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Tristán Narvaja
1819 - 1877 (58 years)
Tristán Narvaja was an Argentine and Uruguayan judge, professor, theologian, and politician. Biography Narvaja was born on March 17, 1819, in Córdoba, Argentina, to father Pedro Narvaja Dávila and mother Mercedes Montelles. He attended school in his hometown Colegio de los Franciscanos and later in Buenos Aires, where he received his doctorate in theology and jurisprudence.
Go to Profile#3929
John White
1765 - 1800 (35 years)
John White was a lawyer and politician in Upper Canada. He was the first Attorney General for Upper Canada. He wrote and was responsible for the legislation of the new Province, which stemmed from the partition of Quebec in the Constitutional Act of 1791. His Act to limit slavery, which relied on Christian argument, was the first such enactment ever in the world.
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William Smith
1697 - 1769 (72 years)
William Smith was an American lawyer and jurist. Life Smith was born on 8 October 1697 in Newport Pagnell in England. He was the eldest of five sons born to Thomas Smith and Susanna Smith . In 1715, he emigrated with his family to New York where his father became one of the founders of the First Presbyterian Church on Wall Street, inviting Jonathan Edwards to serve as minister. Once in America, Smith studied religion, law and the classics at Yale College, graduating in 1719.
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Lorenzo Campeggio
1474 - 1539 (65 years)
Lorenzo Campeggio was an Italian cardinal and politician. He was the last cardinal protector of England. Life Campeggio was born in Milan, the eldest of five sons. In 1500, he took his doctorate in canon and civil law at Bologna and married Francesca Guastavillani with whom he had five children. When she died in 1509, Campeggio began an ecclesiastical career under Pope Julius II's patronage.
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Charles Dumoulin
1500 - 1566 (66 years)
Charles Dumoulin was a French jurist. He was surnamed by some of his contemporaries the "French Papinian". Life He was born in Paris. He began practice as an advocate before the parlement of Paris from 1522 to 1535 and later taught law at various places. After he turned Lutheran and later Calvinist, he was forced into exile for many years, with stays in Basel, Geneva, Tübingen, Strasbourg, Besançon, and elsewhere. He returned to Paris in 1557 but had to flee again in 1562. After writing against the Council of Trent, he was imprisoned by order of the parlement until 1564. He converted back to...
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Johann Freinsheim
1608 - 1660 (52 years)
Johann Freinsheim , also known under the Latinized form of the name, Johannes Frenshemius, was a German classical scholar and critic. Freinsheim was born at Ulm on November 16, 1608, and after studying at several universities: Marburg, Giessen and Strassburg, he visited France, where he remained for three years.
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Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah
Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abi Jum'ah al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani was an Algerian Maliki scholar of Islamic law, active in the Maghreb from the end of the fifteenth century until his death. He was identified as the author of the 1504 fatwa commonly named the Oran fatwa, instructing the Muslims in Spain about how to secretly practice Islam, and granting comprehensive dispensations for them to publicly conform to Christianity and performing acts normally forbidden in Islam when necessary to survive. Because of his authorship of the fatwa he is often referred to as "the Mufti of Oran", although he likel...
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Kate Claghorn
1864 - 1938 (74 years)
Kate Holladay Claghorn was an American sociologist, economist, statistician, legal scholar, and Progressive Era activist, who became one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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Pierre Grégoire
1540 - 1597 (57 years)
Pierre Grégoire was a French jurist and philosopher Career and key ideas Grégoire was born to a poor Catholic family in Toulouse. He studied the law and made a career for himself as an influential and at times controversial Catholic jurist. He taught law at Cahors and Toulouse from 1566 until 1582 when his patron, Charles III of Lorraine, procured a professorship in civil and canon law for him at the university of Pont à Mousson. Here Grégoire found himself colleague to the Scottish jurist William Barclay, best known for his invention of the term ‘monarchomach’ and his political treatise De Regno et Regali Potestate .
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John D. Wickhem
1888 - 1949 (61 years)
John Dunne Wickhem was an American lawyer and jurist from Beloit, Wisconsin. He was a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1930 until his death in 1949. Biography John D. Wickhem was born in Beloit, Wisconsin, in May 1888. He was raised and educated in Beloit, and went on to earn his bachelor's degree from Beloit College in 1910. After graduating, he taught school in Beloit for four years until entering the University of Wisconsin Law School. He graduated after just two years, speeding up his progression with summer courses. After law school, he went to work in the law office of Burr W.
Go to Profile#3938
Filippo Decio
1454 - 1535 (81 years)
Filippo Decio or Decius was an Italian jurist whose services were courted by European universities and rulers. He was an influential representative of the pre-Humanist scholastic ius commune tradition, and one of the leading jurists of his time together with Felino Sandeo, Antonio Cocchi Donati and Bartolomeo Socini.
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Julius Herman Boeke
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
Julius Herman Boeke was a Dutch economist and lawyer. He was a professor of Dutch Constitutional Law at Leiden University, where he lectured and published works on the subject of the economy of the Dutch East Indies.
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David Smith
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Sir David Stanley Smith was a New Zealand lawyer, judge and educationalist. Smith was born in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand in 1888. He worked for Charles Morison as an assistant from 1912. He Smith was appointed as a judge to the Supreme Court in 1928, a relatively early appointment based on his performance as counsel for Maori land claims. Smith received a knighthood in the 1948 New Year Honours. A few months later, he resigned as a judge and concentrated on public affairs.
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Ibn Abi Jumhur al-Ahsa'i
1435 - 1505 (70 years)
Mohammed bin Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Shaybani Al-Bakri Al-Ahsa’i was an influential Shia Muslim scholar who adhered to the Ja'fari school of Islamic jurisprudence. He was born in the village of Taymiyyah in Eastern Arabia during the reign of the first Jabrid Emir, and was raised in prosperity by his father Zain al-Din Ali and grandfather Ibrahim, both Shi’ite scholars. Ibn Abi Jumhur studied first with them before traveling on to Najaf in what is now Iraq to study with Sharaf al-Din Hassan bin Abdulkarim Fattal, who gave him permission to transmit hadith. In 1472, the young postulant went on Hajj and met Ali bin Hilal al-Jazaery in Jabal Amel, giving the latter the same permission.
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Carl Ludwig Wilhelm Grolman
1775 - 1829 (54 years)
Carl Ludwig Wilhelm Grolman, since 1812 von Grolmann, was Jurist and Grand Duchy of Hesse Minister-President.
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John Carr
1772 - 1832 (60 years)
Sir John Carr was an English barrister and writer. Life Carr, from Devonshire, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, but for health reasons began to travel. Accounts of his journeys around Europe were popular for their light style.
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Petrus Wesseling
1692 - 1764 (72 years)
Petrus Wesseling was a German philologist and jurist working in the Dutch Republic. He became famous as a philologist. Early life Petrus Wesseling was born to Gerardus Wesseling and Anna Reiners or Creter on 7 January 1692 Old Style. When he was 10 he lost his father. He then went to his uncle Wessel Reiners, a merchant in Emden. Here Wesseling visited the Latin school. Later he went to the Gymnasium Arnoldinum in Steinfurt, where he was educated in classical languages and theology. His main teachers were August Houck , Werner Justin Pagenstecher and Arnold Visch . In 1712 Wesseling ended his studies in Steinfurt with the disputation theologica de petra in Matthaei evang.
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Lowell Sherman
1885 - 1934 (49 years)
Lowell Sherman was an American actor and film director. In an unusual practice for the time, he served as both actor and director on several films in the early 1930s. He later turned exclusively to directing. Having scored huge successes directing the films She Done Him Wrong and Morning Glory , he was at the height of his career when he died after a brief illness.
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Charles H. Davis
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Charles Hubbard Davis was a Republican lawyer who has twice served on the Illinois Supreme Court, once as Chief Justice, and on the Illinois Appellate Court, also as Presiding Justice. Davis was born, grew up and attended school in Fairfield, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago and became a lawyer in Rockford in 1931. He married Ruth Peugh on October 19, 1935, and had seven children.
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John Macmillan Brown
1845 - 1935 (90 years)
John Macmillan Brown was a Scottish-New Zealand academic, administrator and promoter of education for women. Brown was born in Irvine, the sixth child of Ann Brown and her husband, James Brown, a sea captain. John was raised in a family that placed high value on education—for both sexes. He attended Irvine Academy, then University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow. He declined a Balliol scholarship in mathematics instead taking a Snell exhibition for Classics and philosophy.
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Marian Jedlicki
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Marian Zygmunt Jedlicki was a Polish lawyer, historian and a professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the University of Poznań. He is well known for his translation of the Thietmar Chronicle, an early 11th century document .
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Ernst Marcus
1856 - 1928 (72 years)
Ernst Moses Marcus was a German lawyer and philosopher. He developed a theory of aether based on Immanuel Kant's posthumous work Opus Postumum, however sharply disagreeing with Erich Adickes interpretation. He used this to mount a criticism of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. He was a major influence on Salomo Friedlaender.
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Albert Coates
1896 - 1989 (93 years)
Albert Coates was the founder and long-time director of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina. Coates earned a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina in 1918 and an LLB from Harvard University in 1923. Upon graduation, Coates joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Law and taught there until 1969. In 1932, Coates founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina. He served as its director until 1962.
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