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,
#4001
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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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Frederick Sherwood Dunn
1893 - 1962 (69 years)
Frederick Sherwood Dunn was an American scholar of international law and international relations. After working as a legal officer at the U.S. Department of State, he went into academia and taught at Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and Princeton University, publishing several books during his career. He served as a founder and a director of both Yale's Institute of International Studies and the Center of International Studies at Princeton. He founded the journal World Politics and was chairman of its editorial board until 1961.
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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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Francis Bowes Sayre Sr.
1885 - 1972 (87 years)
Francis Bowes Sayre Sr. was a professor at Harvard Law School, High Commissioner of the Philippines, and a son-in-law of President Woodrow Wilson. Biography He was born on April 30, 1885. He graduated from Williams College in 1909 and Harvard Law School in 1912. At the start of his career, Sayre worked for Wilfred Grenfell's medical mission in Newfoundland, and as an assistant prosecutor in the office of the New York County District Attorney .On November 25, 1913, Sayre married Jessie Woodrow Wilson , the middle daughter of President Woodrow Wilson, in a ceremony at the White House. In 1914 he began work as an assistant to the president of Williams College.
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Zechariah Chafee
1885 - 1957 (72 years)
Zechariah Chafee Jr. was an American judicial philosopher and civil rights advocate, described as "possibly the most important First Amendment scholar of the first half of the twentieth century" by Richard Primus. Chafee's avid defense of freedom of speech led to Senator Joseph McCarthy calling him "dangerous" to America.
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Henry Angus
1891 - 1991 (100 years)
Henry Forbes Angus was a Canadian lawyer and academic. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, he received a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in 1911. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Civil Law from Oxford University in 1914. He was awarded the Vinerian Scholarship. He fought in India during World War I. After the war, he received a Master of Arts from Oxford University. Returning to British Columbia, he was called to the Bar.
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Arthur Lehman Goodhart
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Arthur Lehman Goodhart was an American-born academic jurist and lawyer; he was Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, 1931–51, when he was also a Fellow of University College, Oxford. He was the first American to be the Master of an Oxford college, and was a significant benefactor to the college.
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Louis Lowenstein
1908 - 1968 (60 years)
Louis Lowenstein was a medical researcher who made significant contributions in hematology and immunology. Lowenstein was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1908. As a child in Nashville, he was accomplished as a violinist and tennis player. He received a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt University and a medical degree from Vanderbilt's medical school. In 1937, after additional training at Vanderbilt and Ohio State University, he joined the faculty of the McGill University medical school and the staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Quebec. He remained at McGill for the rest of his...
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Anna Goldfeder
1898 - 1993 (95 years)
Dr. Anna Goldfeder was a pioneering researcher in the fields of radiology and cancer treatment. Born in 1898 in Józefów Poland, Goldfeder studied at the University of Prague and worked at the Masaryk University before earning her doctorate in natural sciences in 1922. She was invited to conduct research in the United States, and immigrated in 1931. During her 66-year career as a research scientist, she worked at the University of Vienna, Harvard University, Columbia University, Lenox Hill Hospital, the Rockefeller Institute, the New York City Hospitals Department and the Department of Biolog...
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Josef Laurenz Kunz
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Josef Laurenz Kunz was an Austrian American jurist. He was a Professor of International Law at the University of Toledo from 1934 to 1960, after having emigrated from Austria in 1932. Kunz earned his doctorate degree in 1920 from the University of Vienna, where he was a student of Hans Kelsen.
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Karl Llewellyn
1893 - 1962 (69 years)
Karl Nickerson Llewellyn was an American jurisprudential scholar associated with the school of legal realism. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Llewellyn as one of the twenty most cited American legal scholars of the 20th century.
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L. F. L. Oppenheim
1858 - 1919 (61 years)
Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim was a German jurist. He is regarded by many as the father of the modern discipline of international law, especially the hard legal positivist school of thought. He inspired Joseph Raz and Prosper Weil.
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Ora Mendelsohn Rosen
1935 - 1990 (55 years)
Ora Mendelsohn Rosen was an American medical researcher who investigated the influence of hormones, particularly insulin, on the control of cell growth. She was a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Roger J. Traynor
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Roger John Traynor was the 23rd Chief Justice of California and an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California from 1940 to 1964. Previously, he had served as a Deputy Attorney General of California under Earl Warren, and an Acting Dean and Professor of UC Berkeley School of Law. He is widely considered to be one of the most creative and influential judges and legal scholars of his time.
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Jesse Bullowa
1879 - 1943 (64 years)
Jesse Godrey Moritz Bullowa was an American medical researcher, and an early proponent of controlled clinical trials. From 1928 until his death he was a clinical professor at New York University College of Medicine.
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Edith Quimby
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Edith Smaw Quimby was an American medical researcher and physicist, best known as one of the founders of nuclear medicine. Her work involved developing diagnostic and therapeutic applications of X-rays. One of her main concerns was protecting both those handling the radioactive material and making sure that those being treated were given the lowest dose necessary.
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Anton-Hermann Chroust
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
Anton-Hermann Chroust was a German-American jurist, philosopher and historian, from 1946 to 1972, professor of law, philosophy, and history, at the University of Notre Dame. Chroust was best known for his 1965 book The Rise of the Legal Profession in America.
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Esther Greisheimer
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Esther M. Greisheimer was an American academic and medical researcher. She was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. Greisheimer received a BA in education from Ohio University in 1914, an MA in general physiology from Clark University in 1916, a PhD in human physiology and biochemistry from the University of Chicago in 1919 and an MD from the University of Minnesota in 1923. She became a licensed medical practitioner and surgeon in 1924.
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Michael Barton Akehurst
1940 - 1989 (49 years)
Michael Barton Akehurst was an international lawyer. He was the author of the Modern Introduction to International Law which remains the most widely used student text in the field. Seven editions have been published, it has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese and it was updated after his death by Peter Malanczuk under the title 'Akehurst's Modern Introduction to International Law'.
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Raphael Lemkin
1900 - 1959 (59 years)
Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who is known for coining the term genocide and campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention. During the Second World War, he campaigned vigorously to raise international outrage against atrocities in Axis-occupied Europe. It was during this time that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policies against Jews and Poles.
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Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld
1879 - 1918 (39 years)
Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist. He was the author of the seminal Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Legal Essays . During his brief life, he published only a handful of law review articles. After his death the material forming the basis of Fundamental Legal Conceptions was derived from two articles first published in the Yale Law Journal and that had been partially revised in anticipation of publication in longer form. Editorial work was undertaken to complete the revisions and the book was published with the inclusion of the manuscript n...
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Gertrude Smith
1894 - 1985 (91 years)
Gertrude Elizabeth Smith was the Edwin Olson Professor of Greek at the University of Chicago. She is known for her work on Greek law and her longstanding involvement in and support of the Summer Session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She was the first woman to be president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South and is currently the only woman to have been president of CAMWS and the American Philological Association.
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William Henry Harrison Hart
1857 - 1934 (77 years)
William Henry Harrison Hart was an African American attorney and Professor of Criminal Law at Howard University from 1887 to 1922. He won an important legal case, Hart v. State, 100 MD 595 . Biography Hart was born in Eufaula, Alabama, on October 31, 1857. His father was Henry Clay Hart, a white slave trader born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1829. He was a descendant of Thomas Hart, an English jurist who embarked at Baddow, Essex county, England, in the Desire, in 1635, landing at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1639. He attended the American Missionary Association School in Eufaula from 1867 to 1874.
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