The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Law,
#4001
Erdmann Copernicus
1600 - 1573 (-27 years)
Erdmann Copernicus was a German poet, composer, and jurist mainly active in the Margraviate or Electorate of Brandenburg, a precursor to Prussia. Similar to the unrelated astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus , his name is documented in several partially Latinized variants: Erdmann/Erdmannus/Ertmannus/Erdmanus Kopernikus/Copernicus.
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Jean Vendeville
1527 - 1592 (65 years)
Jean Vendeville was a law professor and a bishop of Tournai. Life Vendeville was possibly born in Lille, the son of Guillaume Vendeville and Marie Des Barbieux. He went to school in Menin, and from the age of fifteen in Paris, where he studied law, beginning a legal practice in Arras. In 1551 he married Anne Roelofs, of Leuven, and in 1553 he obtained a doctorate in laws from the University of Leuven. In 1562 he was appointed professor of law at the newly founded University of Douai. He was influential in rallying secular support for the first establishment of diocesan seminaries in the Low Countries, and for the establishment of a Jesuit college at Douai.
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John Morton-Finney
1889 - 1998 (109 years)
John Morton-Finney was an American civil rights activist, lawyer, and educator who earned eleven academic degrees, including five law degrees. He spent most of his career as an educator and lawyer after serving from 1911 to 1914 in the U.S. Army as a member of the 24th Infantry Regiment, better known as the Buffalo soldiers, and with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I. Morton-Finney taught languages at Fisk University in Tennessee and at Lincoln University in Missouri, before moving to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he taught in the Indianapolis Public Schools for forty-seven years.
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Slim Summerville
1892 - 1946 (54 years)
Slim Summerville was an American film actor and director best known for his work in comedies. Early life Summerville was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where his mother died when he was only five. Moving from New Mexico to Canada and later to Oklahoma, he had a nomadic upbringing. In Canada, in Chatham, Ontario, he lived with his English grandparents and obtained his first job there, working as a messenger for the Canadian Pacific Telegraphs.
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Bernard L. Diamond
1912 - 1990 (78 years)
Bernard Lee Diamond was a Professor of law and psychiatry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is primarily known for his contribution to what is known as forensic psychiatry. He was an expert witness for the defense in many well known trials, most notably the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy. The defense based much of their case on Diamond's testimony that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity at the time that he fired the deadly shots. In the 1980's, Jonathon Marks, who was representing Mark David Chapman for his alleged act of murdering John Lennon, brought Dr.
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Edward J. Cannon
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
Edward J. Cannon was the first and longest-serving dean of the Gonzaga University School of Law. He served as dean from 1912 to 1934. Career A well respected lawyer, Cannon was lauded as "one of the brilliant members of the Spokane bar. At the time of his death in 1934, Cannon was also honored as a "model trial lawyer" by his peers.
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Otto Mejer
1818 - 1893 (75 years)
Otto Karl Alexander Mejer was a German canon law specialist and church historian. He studied law at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin and Jena, receiving his doctorate at Göttingen in 1841. While a student in Berlin, he was deeply influenced by the teachings of Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Not long after graduation, he became a lecturer at Göttingen, and in 1845/46 took an extended study trip to Rome.
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Edward Tompkins
1815 - 1872 (57 years)
Edward Tompkins was an American lawyer. He is best known for endowing a chair at the University of California where he had been elected to the board of regents. Background Tompkins was born in 1815 in rural Paris Hill, New York. Tompkins enrolled in Union College in 1831 and joined Sigma Phi. Tompkins graduated, earned a law degree at Hamilton College, and practiced law in Binghamton, New York as a partner to Daniel S. Dickinson. Tompkins married a Quaker woman, Mary Cook, from Bridgeport, Connecticut. She died several years later. Tompkins moved to San Francisco, California in 1859 where he continued as a lawyer.
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Lucius Edwin Smith
1822 - 1900 (78 years)
Lucius Edwin Smith was a United States lawyer, editor, clergyman and educator. Biography Smith graduated from Williams College in 1843, studied law in Williamstown, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. He served during 1847/8 as associate editor of the Hartford Courant, and in 1849 as associate editor, with Henry Wilson, of the Boston Republican. From 1849 to 1854 he was assistant corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Boston. The next three years he spent in Newton Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1857, and became in 1858 pastor of the Baptist church in ...
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Viktorin Kornel of Všehrdy
1460 - 1520 (60 years)
Viktorin Kornel ze Všehrd or simply Všehrd , was a Czech humanist and lawyer, working towards the end of the 15th century as Vice-scribe at the Land Court in the Prague Castle. He is famous for the most penetrating analysis of the Czech common law that he has put forward on some 460 pages under the title "On the Laws of the Czech Land Nine Books" . He has also translated some Latin texts.
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Bonifacius Amerbach
1495 - 1562 (67 years)
Bonifacius Amerbach was a jurist, scholar, an influential humanist and the rector of the University of Basel for several terms. Early life and education Born on the 11 October 1495, he was the youngest son of the printer Johannes Amerbach who immigrated to Basel from Amorbach in Bavaria and Barbara Ortenberg. He was baptized in the and had two godfathers and one godmother. He received his primary education in Basel from where he was sent away from the family in 1502 and 1507 into safety from the plague. The second time to the monastery Engental in Muttenz, where his teacher was Conrad of Leonberg.
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Ludwig Raiser
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Ludwig Raiser was a German legal scholar. In 1961, he was one of the signatories of the Memorandum of Tübingen on West German foreign policy. He was President of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany from 1970 to 1973.
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Michael Chekhov
1891 - 1955 (64 years)
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov , known as Michael Chekhov, was a Russian-American actor, director, author, and theatre practitioner. He was a nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov and a student of Konstantin Stanislavski. Stanislavski referred to him as his most brilliant student.
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Anita Loos
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Corinne Anita Loos was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi.
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Johannes Sichardus
1499 - 1552 (53 years)
Johannes Sichardus was a humanist, jurist and law professor at the University of Türbingen. He also edited several editions for printers in Basel. Early life and education He was born in Tauberbischofsheim into a humble household. In later years, his father would become an innkeeper. With the support of an influential relative from Aschaffenburg, he attended the Latin school in Erfurt. From 1514, Sichard studied at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1518 with a M.A. After graduation, he became a teacher at the schola poetica in Munich. In 1521 he moved to Freiburg where he lectured...
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Julia Sears
1840 - 1929 (89 years)
Julia Ann Sears was a pioneering academic and suffragist, achieving a milestone early in her career as she became the first woman to head a public college in the United States, in 1872. The school was Mankato Normal School, now Minnesota State University, Mankato, which named a residence hall after Sears in 2008.
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Jean Doujat
1609 - 1688 (79 years)
Jean Doujat was a French lawyer, juris consultus, professor of canon law at the Collège royal, docteur-régent at the faculté de droit de Paris, preceptor of the Dauphin and historian. His works include histories of the reign of Louis XIV.
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Gustavo Herrera
1890 - 1953 (63 years)
Gustavo Herrera Grau , was a Venezuelan lawyer and diplomat. Career He served as Finance Minister in 1936, Plenipotentiary Minister of Venezuela in Netherlands and Germany, acting head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Education, and Minister of Development in various presidential administrations. He was the Minister of Finance in 1936.
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Judah P. Benjamin
1811 - 1884 (73 years)
Judah Philip Benjamin, QC was a United States senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. Benjamin was the first Jew to hold a Cabinet position in North America and the first to be elected to the United States Senate who had not renounced his faith.
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Peter Friedrich Arpe
1682 - 1740 (58 years)
Peter Friedrich Arpe was a German lawyer, historian and legal writer. He was also the founder of a huge collection of objects and manuscripts on the history of Schleswig-Holstein, though his collection also included banned theological works. He also wrote and collected under the Latinised form of his name, Petrus Fridericus Arpius.
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Pedro Barbosa
1530 - 1606 (76 years)
Pedro Barbosa was a Portuguese jurist and the leading representative of the ius commune and the usus modernus in Portugal. Teaching law at the University of Coimbra in 1557–64, he came to hold the highest judicial offices, including with the Inquisition, as judge of the Casa da Suplicação and the Desembargo do Paço, and as Chanceler-mor do Reino. Barbosa also wrote numerous tractss on family law, inheritance law and procedural law.
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William Mather Lewis
1878 - 1945 (67 years)
William Mather Lewis was an American teacher, university president, local politician, and a state and national government official. He was mayor of Lake Forest, Illinois from 1915 to 1917, President of George Washington University from 1923 to 1927 and the President of Lafayette College from 1927 to 1945.
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E. Spencer Miller
1817 - 1879 (62 years)
Elihu Spencer Miller was a Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Biography Miller was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He attended the College of New Jersey , graduating in 1836. He trained as a lawyer in Princeton and Baltimore, Maryland. He passed the bar, and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1843, setting up a practice.
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William Hickey
1749 - 1830 (81 years)
William Hickey was an English lawyer, but is best known for his vast Memoirs, composed in 1808–10 and published between 1913 and 1925, which in their manuscript form cover 750 closely-written folio pages. Described by Peter Quennell as "One of the most remarkable books of its kind ever published in the English Language", Hickey's Memoirs give an extraordinarily vivid picture of life in late 18th-century London, Calcutta, Madras and Jamaica which stands comparison with the best of his near-contemporary James Boswell.
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Charles Smith Olden
1799 - 1876 (77 years)
Charles Smith Olden was an American merchant, banker, and politician who served as the 19th governor of New Jersey from 1860 to 1863 during the first part of the American Civil War. As Governor, Olden supported President Abraham Lincoln and the national war effort but favored union and reconciliation with the South above all else; before the war, he argued slavery was properly understood as the sole regulatory province of the states, and he later opposed Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
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Johann Jacob Vitriarius
1679 - 1745 (66 years)
Johann Jacob Vitriarius was a Dutch jurist of German descent. Life Johann Jacob Vitrarius was the son of the German jurist Philipp Reinhard Vitriarius, who between 1675 and 1682 taught law at the Geneva Academy. At the age of 2 or 3 he moved to Leiden in the Dutch Republic when his father became professor at Leiden University. Eventually, Vitriarius studied law at the same university, earning a doctorate there in 1701 with the thesis Disputio juridica inauguralis de acquisitione rerum originaria.
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Marian Oldfather Boner
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
Marian Oldfather Boner was an American legal scholar. She was the first director of the Texas State Law Library and sat on the editorial board of the Texas Law Review. Personal life Oldfather was born on June 25, 1909, to parents Henry and Berta Oldfather. She married C. P. Boner in 1930 and together they had three children. Beginning in 1936, the family lived in a house that was specifically built for C. P. Boner, his aunt, and Oldfather.
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Gumersindo de Azcárate
1840 - 1917 (77 years)
Gumersindo de Azcárate was a Spanish philosopher, jurist and politician. Biography After law studies in Oviedo, he taught comparative law in Madrid since 1864 and represented León in the Cortes. In the 1870s, he joined Francisco Giner de los Ríos and Julián Sanz del Río to teach at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza .
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Carl Otto von Madai
1809 - 1850 (41 years)
Carl Otto von Madai was a German law professor, politician, and statesman. Madai was born in Halle, and studied at the University of Halle. He became a lecturer there in 1832 and professor in 1835. He moved to the University of Dorpat in 1837, where he stayed until in 1843 he became a private secretary of Duchess Elisabeth von Nassau . In 1845 he became Professor of Law at the University of Kiel, where he took part in the debates over the Schleswig-Holstein Question. He participated in the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848, and then became envoy of the provisional government of Schleswig-Holstein to the German Confederation.
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Woodson T. Slater
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Woodson Taylor Slater was an American attorney and jurist in Oregon. He was the 38th associate justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, serving from 1909 to 1911. Slater was the son of Congressman James H. Slater. The Oregon native also worked in the state’s treasurer’s office and for the Supreme Court prior to his appointment as a judge to the state’s highest court.
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Novella d'Andrea
1312 - 1333 (21 years)
Novella d'Andrea was an Italian legal scholar and professor in law at the University of Bologna. As the daughter of Giovanni d'Andrea, a professor in Canon law at the University of Bologna, she was educated by her father and reportedly took over his lectures at the university during his absence. According to Christine de Pisan, she talked to the students through a curtain so they would not be distracted by her beauty. Some suggest that she married the lawyer Giovanni Calderinus or the professor John of Legnano, but, according to others sources she married the lawyer Filippo Formaglini in 1326.
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John Duncan Sr.
1919 - 1988 (69 years)
John James Duncan Sr. was an American attorney and Republican politician who represented Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1965 until his death in 1988. He also served as Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, from 1959 to 1964, and as assistant attorney general of Knox County, from 1948 until 1956. He is the father of Congressman John J. "Jimmy" Duncan, Jr., who succeeded him in Congress, and current Tennessee State Senator Becky Duncan Massey.
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John Rankine
1846 - 1922 (76 years)
Sir John Rankine of Bassendean FRSE was a 19th-century Scottish legal author. Life He was born in the manse at Sorn in Ayrshire on 18 February 1846, the son of Very Rev Dr John Rankine DD, the local minister, and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1883, and his wife Jane Simpson .
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Giasone del Maino
1435 - 1519 (84 years)
Giasone de Maino was an Italian jurist. With his pupil Filippo Decio he was one of the last of the Bartolist commentators on Roman law. He was considered to be the illegitimate son of the patrician Andreotto del Maino. He was brought up in Milan, and taught at the University of Pavia from 1471 to 1485. After a few years in Padua he returned to Pavia, where in 1507 he made a speech welcoming Louis XII of France. In that year Andrea Alciato came to Pavia to study with him and others.
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John Richardson
1771 - 1841 (70 years)
Sir John Richardson was an English lawyer and judge. Life The third son of Anthony Richardson, a merchant of London, he was born in Copthall Court, Lothbury, on 3 March 1771. He was educated at Harrow School, and matriculated at University College, Oxford on 26 January 1789, graduated B.A. in 1792, taking the same year the Latin verse prize , and proceeded M.A. in 1795. He was admitted in June 1793 as a student at Lincoln's Inn. In early life, Richardson was closely associated with William Stevens, by whom he was supported while at college. They both worked for the repeal of the penal laws against the Scottish Episcopal Church.
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Jožef Krajnc
1821 - 1875 (54 years)
Jožef Krajnc, also spelled Josef Krainc, Josef Krainz was an Austro-Hungarian lawyer, philosopher and politician of Slovenian ancestry. Life Krajnc was born in Škale in the Duchy of Styria to a farmer of the same name. From 1832 until 1841 he attended the Gymnasium in Celje, graduating with the Matura. From 1841 until 1845, he studied philosophy and law in Graz, obtaining a doctorate in both disciplines. From 1842 on, he financed his studies as a private tutor to a wealthy landowner's family in Graz and Bad Radkersburg. From 1845 on, Krajnc worked as judicial advisor first to the city council of Radkersburg, then to the council of Graz.
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Linton McGee Collins
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Linton McGee Collins was a judge of the United States Court of Claims. Education and career Born on June 21, 1902, in Reidsville, Georgia, Collins received an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1921 from Mercer University and a Master of Arts in 1922 from the same institution. He was a teacher at Lanier High School in Macon, Georgia from 1922 to 1924, and a teacher at Columbia High School in Columbia, South Carolina from 1924 to 1925. He entered private practice in Tampa, Florida from 1925 to 1926 and practiced in Miami, Florida from 1926 to 1933.
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Said al-Andalusi
1029 - 1070 (41 years)
Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī , in full Abū al-Qāsim Ṣāʿid ibn Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad ibn Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid ibn ʿUthmān al-Taghlibi al-Qūrtūbi , was an Arab qadi of Toledo in Muslim Spain, who wrote on the history of science, philosophy and thought. He was a mathematician and scientist with a special interest in astronomy and compiled a famous biographic encyclopedia of science that quickly became popular in the empire and the Islamic East.
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Pier Michele Giagaraccio
Pier Michele Giagaraccio was a jurist, lawyer, and poet from Sardinia. He flourished in sixteenth century Sassari. Life Giagaraccio was born in Sardinia and studied law in Sassari, but lectured on civil institutions at the University of Pisa from 1565 to 1567. At a later point in life, he decided to return to the island, where he practiced law and taught jurisprudence for free in his hometown.
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Benedikt Carpzov the elder
1565 - 1624 (59 years)
Benedikt Carpzov was a German legal scholar. After studying at Frankfort and Wittenberg, and visiting other German universities, he was made doctor of law at Wittenberg in 1590. He was admitted to the faculty of law in 1592, appointed professor of institutions in 1599, and promoted to the chair Digesti infortiati et novi in 1601. In 1602 he was summoned by Sophia, widow of the elector Christian I of Saxony, to her court at Colditz, as chancellor, and was at the same time appointed councillor of the court of appeal at Dresden. After the death of the electress in 1623 he returned to Wittenberg, and died there on 26 November 1624, leaving five sons.
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Wang Zaoshi
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Wang Zaoshi was a Chinese lawyer and activist for human rights and constitutional government under both the Nationalist Government in Republican China and the People's Republic of China. He was educated at Tsinghua University then went to the United States for a doctorate at University of Wisconsin, Madison and post-doctoral work at University of London. In the years leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War he was prominent in the that agitated for resistance to Japan and criticized the Nationalist government for its weak policies. He was one of the so-called , liberal scholars and activ...
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Henricus Canisius
1562 - 1610 (48 years)
Henricus Canisius was a Dutch canonist and historian. Biography Canisius was born Hendrik de Hondt , the nephew of Saint Peter Canisius. He studied at the University of Leuven, and in 1590 was appointed professor of canon law at Ingolstadt.
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John Herbert Chapman
1921 - 1979 (58 years)
John Herbert Chapman was a Canadian space researcher. He started his career with his work on radio propagation and the ionosphere. Chapman grew up in London, Ontario, the son of Lt. Col. Lloyd Chapman and Kathleen Chapman. He received his BSc from The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario in 1948, and later received a Master of Science degree and a Ph.D. in physics at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. After his studies at university, Chapman got his first position in the government with the Defence Research Board . He was then promoted to the position of section leader of the...
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Eric Roberts
1907 - 1972 (65 years)
Eric Arthur Roberts was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany. Roberts continued to work for the security services after the war, particularly in Vienna, but it was a time of great anxiety in the services because of the suspicions surrounding double agents such as the Cambridge spy ring.
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Thomas W. Merrill
#4046
David Hoffman
1784 - 1854 (70 years)
David Hoffman was an American legal scholar. He taught law at the University of Maryland from 1814 to 1843. Hoffman wrote Hoffman's Course of Legal Study, an influential early legal textbook. Hoffman was born in Baltimore on December 24, 1784, the youngest of eight brothers, to Dorothea Stierlin Lloyd and Peter Hoffman. His father, a businessman, had emigrated from Germany to Maryland. He attended St. John's College, but left in 1802 without receiving a degree. In 1816, he married Mary McKean.
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Lewis Morris
1698 - 1762 (64 years)
Lewis Morris Jr. was a colonial American judge, politician and vast landowner who was the 2nd Lord of the Manor of Morrisania. Early life Morris was born on September 23, 1698, at Morrisania, his family's manor in the southwest section of today's Bronx. He was the eldest son of Lewis Morris and Isabella Morris . His younger brother was Robert Hunter Morris, who served as the Deputy governor of New Jersey. His father was very prominent in public life and variously served as Chief Justice of New York and as the 8th Colonial Governor of New Jersey.
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Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye
1879 - 1959 (80 years)
Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye was a German fashion designer, professor at the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums Berlin and owner of the publishing company Graphik-Verlag. Haas-Heye headed the fashion department of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8. He was editor at the Graphische Modeblätter.
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Holmes Conrad
1840 - 1915 (75 years)
Holmes Conrad was an American politician, lawyer and military officer. Early life Conrad was born in Winchester, Virginia. He was the son of Robert Young Conrad, a prominent lawyer of Winchester, and state attorney general from 1857 to 1862; his mother was Elizabeth Whiting, daughter of Burr Powell. After attending the Virginia Military Institute, Conrad proceeded in 1858 to the University of Virginia.
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George L. Paddison
1883 - 1954 (71 years)
George Lucas Paddison was an American assistant professor, lawyer, and sales supervisor. Biography Paddison was born in Burgaw, North Carolina on August 9, 1883. He studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1905. He studied further at Kentucky State University and received a Master's degree in Chemistry. Afterwards Paddison taught as assistant professor of Chemistry at the University of Mississippi while he earned a degree in law. Upon completing his law degree, Paddison practiced law in Greenwood, Mississippi for five years. In 191...
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