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,
#4151
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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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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August Friedrich Müller
1684 - 1761 (77 years)
August Friedrich Müller was a German legal scholar and logician. August Friedrich was born in Penig, the son of Johann Adam Müller and his wife Johanne Susanne, daughter of a pharmacist in Rochlitz, Johann Fromhold. Prefigured by his father, he attended school in 1697 and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1703. Here he completed a degree in early philosophical sciences; Andreas Rüdiger was his most important teacher. On the side he studied law under Gottlieb Gerhard Titius .
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Herbert Fuchs
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Herbert Fuchs was a former American Communist and federal government official who became a professor of law at the American University in Washington, D.C. in 1949, after which he became embroiled in anti-communist congressional hearings just after the peak of McCarthyism.
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C. J. Hamson
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
Charles John Joseph "Jack" Hamson, QC was a British jurist. Early life and education Hamson was born in Constantinople, the son of Charles Edward Hamson, a vice-consul in the Levant Consular Service, and of Thérèse Boudon. He was educated at Downside School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a scholar, obtaining Firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos in 1925 and 1927 respectively. He then turned to the study of law, obtaining taking the LL.B. in 1934 and the LL.M. in 1935. Between 1928 and 1929 he was Davidson Scholar at Harvard and in 1932 he won the Yorke Prize. A fencer,...
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Jean de Coras
1515 - 1572 (57 years)
Jean de Coras, also called Corasius was a French jurist. Life Born in Réalmont as the son of a notary, he studied law in Toulouse, Cahors, Orléans and perhaps also in other cities, under teachers such as Franciscus Curtis junior and Marianus Socinus junior. After his 1535 promotion in Padua by Filippo Decio, he taught law at the University of Toulouse starting in 1536, in Valence and in Ferrara , where he became one of the most popular professors of the time.
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John Brown
1757 - 1837 (80 years)
John Brown was an American lawyer and statesman who participated in the development and formation of the State of Kentucky after the American Revolutionary War. Brown represented Virginia in the Continental Congress and the U.S. Congress . While in Congress, he introduced the bill granting Statehood to Kentucky. Once that was accomplished, he was elected by the new state legislature as a U.S. Senator for Kentucky. From 1803 to 1804, Brown served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate.
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Alexander de Tartagnis
1424 - 1477 (53 years)
Alexander de Tartagnis was an Italian jurist. After completing his studies in Bologna, he became an assessor at the Conservatore della Giustizia and taught law in Bologna, Ferrara and Padua. His work includes commentaries on select parts of the Pandects and on other works, as well as more than 1200 advisory opinions. He reports that, for humanitarian reasons, he did not issue advisory opinions in the disfavour of the accused in criminal cases.
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Muhammad Ibrahim
1894 - 1966 (72 years)
Muhammad Ibrahim was a Pakistani Bengali judge and academic. He served as the 8th Vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka during 1956–1958. Early life and education Ibrahim was born in September 1894 in Shaildubi village of Sadarpur Upazila in Faridpur District to Ghiyasuddin Ahmed. Ibrahim passed matriculation exam from Barisal Zilla School and intermediate exam from Dhaka College in 1916 and 1918 respectively. He completed his bachelor's in English literature. He then studied Law under the persuasion of Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta. He earned a law degree in 1921.
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Āpirana Ngata
1874 - 1950 (76 years)
Sir Āpirana Turupa Ngata was a prominent New Zealand statesman. He has often been described as the foremost Māori politician to have served in parliament in the mid-20th century, and is also known for his work in promoting and protecting Māori culture and language. His legacy is one of the most prominent of any New Zealand leader in the 20th century, and is commemorated by his depiction on the fifty dollar note.
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Beatrice Rosenberg
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Beatrice Rosenberg was a prominent attorney at the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Rosenberg argued over thirty cases before the Supreme Court of the United States and supervised over 2,500 briefs submitted to the Court. The District of Columbia Bar gives an annual award in her honor.
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Julian Pierce
1946 - 1988 (42 years)
Julian Thomas Pierce was an American lawyer and Lumbee activist. Born in Hoke County, North Carolina, he became the first person in his family to go to college and worked for several years as a chemist at shipyards in Virginia before obtaining his law degree. Following two years of work for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he moved to Robeson County, North Carolina to direct a legal aid organization and in that capacity co-authored a petition to the federal government asking for the extension of federal recognition to the Lumbee tribe. In 1988 he resigned from his job to pursue a candidacy for a new Superior Court judgeship.
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James Johnston Shaw
1845 - 1910 (65 years)
James Johnston Shaw was an Irish county court judge. Early life He was born at Kircubbin, County Down, Ireland on 4 January 1845, the second son among seven children of John Maxwell Shaw , a merchant and farmer at Kircubbin, by his wife Anne, daughter of Adam Johnston. Shaw was first taught in a local national school, and later by James Rowan, Presbyterian minister of Kircubbin. In 1858 he was sent to the Belfast Academy, where he became a favourite pupil of the principal, Rev. Reuben John Bryce, LL.D. . In 1861 he entered Queen's College, Belfast, gaining the highest entrance scholarship in classics, the first of many honours.
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Cary D. Landis
1873 - 1938 (65 years)
Cary Dayton Landis was an American attorney and politician who served as the 25th Florida Attorney General, serving from 1931 until 1938. Early life and education Landis was born in Claypool, Indiana, a small town in rural Kosciusko County, on May 10, 1873. Landis is Pennsylvania Dutch via his father's side of the family, and was raised Presbyterian.
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Austin Tappan Wright
1883 - 1931 (48 years)
Austin Tappan Wright was an American legal scholar and author, best remembered for his major work of Utopian fiction, Islandia. He was the son of classical scholar John Henry Wright and novelist Mary Tappan Wright, the brother of geographer John Kirtland Wright, and the grandfather of editor Tappan Wright King.
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James Murnaghan
1881 - 1973 (92 years)
James Augustine Murnaghan was an Irish judge who served as a Judge of the Supreme Court from 1925 to 1953 and a Judge of the High Court from 1924 to 1925. He attended University College Dublin and held the degrees of BA and LLD from the Royal University of Ireland. He also attended the King's Inns and was admitted to the degree of Barrister–at–Law in 1903.
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Bettisia Gozzadini
1209 - 1261 (52 years)
Bettisia Gozzadini also known as Bitisia Biltisia and Beatrix, was a Bolognese jurist who lectured at the University of Bologna from about 1239. She is thought to be the first woman to have taught at a university.
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Boyd B. Jones
1856 - 1930 (74 years)
Boyd B. Jones was an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1897 to 1901. He later served on the faculty at the Boston University School of Law and was one of the founding members of the Sentinels of the Republic.
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John Sullivan
1740 - 1795 (55 years)
John Sullivan was an American general in the Revolutionary War winning several key battles most notably the Delaware crossing. He was a delegate in the Continental Congress where he signed the Continental Association, the third governor of New Hampshire, and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire.
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Johann Jakob Schmauss
1690 - 1757 (67 years)
Johann Jakob Schmauss was a German jurist, historian, and university professor. Biography Johann Jakob Schmauss was born in Landau. After attending school in Durlach and Stuttgart, he studied at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Halle, where he fell under the influence of Christian Thomasius and Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling. He obtained his Habilitation in 1712, qualifying him to hold lectures in history. At this time Schmauss began regularly publishing journals. Without limiting his literary activities, in 1721 he joined the service of the Margrave of Baden-Durlach, first as a councilor.
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Timothy Walker
1806 - 1856 (50 years)
Timothy Walker was an American lawyer who founded the Cincinnati Law School and was its first dean. Biography Timothy Walker was born in Wilmington, Massachusetts, US, to Benjamin and Susanna Walker. He graduated from Harvard in 1826. From 1826 to 1829 he taught mathematics at the Round Hill School, and he studied law at Harvard Law School 1829 and 1830.
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George Marion Johnson
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
George Marion Johnson was an American lawyer and professor who was the first vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Early life and education Johnson was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and raised in San Bernardino, California; he earned Bachelor's and LL.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 1923 and 1929, and in 1938 earned a J.S.D. there, one of the first African American holders of the degree.
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Giovanni d'Andrea
1270 - 1348 (78 years)
Giovanni d'Andrea or Johannes Andreæ was an Italian expert in canon law, the most renowned and successful canonist of the later Middle Ages. His contemporaries referred to him as iuris canonici fons et tuba . Most important among his works were extensive commentaries on all of the official collections of papal decretals, papal judgments in the form of letters to delegated judges that were at the core of canon law.
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