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,
#4251
Alexander Schomberg
1756 - 1792 (36 years)
Alexander Crowcher Schomberg was an English poet and writer on jurisprudence. Life The son of Ralph Schomberg of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, he was born there on 6 July 1756. From Southampton School he was admitted a scholar of Winchester School in 1770. He matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, and on 9 May 1775, was elected a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1776. He graduated B.A. on 20 January 1779, and commenced M.A. on 9 November 1781. He became a probationer fellow of Magdalen College in 1782, and senior dean of arts in 1791.
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John Cary
Sir John Cary , of Devon, was a judge who rose to the position of Chief Baron of the Exchequer and served twice as Member of Parliament for Devon, on both occasions together with his brother, Sir William Cary, in 1363/64 and 1368/69.
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Elsa Schiaparelli
1890 - 1973 (83 years)
Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian fashion designer from an aristocratic background. She created the house of Schiaparelli in Paris in 1927, which she managed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Starting with knitwear, Schiaparelli's designs celebrated Surrealism and eccentric fashions. Her collections were famous for unconventional and artistic themes like the human body, insects, or trompe-l'œil, and for the use of bright colors like her "shocking pink".
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Richard White of Basingstoke
1539 - 1611 (72 years)
Richard White was an English jurist and historian, in later life an expatriate scholar who became a Catholic priest. Life He was son of Henry White of Basingstoke, Hampshire, who died at the siege of Boulogne in 1544. His mother was Agnes, daughter of Richard Capelin of Hampshire. He was born at Basingstoke, entered Winchester School in 1553, and was admitted perpetual fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1557. He took the degree of B.A. on 30 May 1559. On the advice of John Boxall he travelled abroad to study law; his fellowship was declared void in 1564.
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Charles Lynch
1783 - 1853 (70 years)
Charles Lynch was a Democratic and Whig politician who served as Governor of Mississippi and was a former enslaver. Early life and career Charles Lynch was born in 1783 in either South Carolina or Virginia. He was born into a planter family, and settled as a farmer near Monticello, Mississippi, sometime before 1821, when he was appointed probate judge of Lawrence County, Mississippi. According to the 1820 US Federal Census, Lynch also enslaved seven people.
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Paul B. Zuber
1926 - 1987 (61 years)
Paul B. Zuber was a civil rights attorney who fought against inferior schools for African Americans in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1958 and against segregated schools in New York State, New Jersey, and Chicago during the 1960s. He was the first African American tenured professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute . He briefly ran for the Republican nomination in the U.S. presidential campaign of 1964. He was married to illustrator Barbara Zuber.
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Jack Buchanan
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Walter John Buchanan was a Scottish theatre and film actor, singer, dancer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in America for his role in the classic Hollywood musical The Band Wagon in 1953.
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John Wilson
1626 - 1696 (70 years)
John Wilson was an English playwright and lawyer. Life and work He was son of Aaron Wilson, a royalist divine, and was born in London in 1626. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1644, and entered Lincoln's Inn two years later, being called to the bar in 1649. His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Derry about 1681. His Discourse of Monarchy , a tract in favour of the succession of the duke of York, was followed by a "Pindarique" on his coronation. In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James's action in dispensing with the penal statutes.
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Thomas Wentworth
1568 - 1628 (60 years)
Thomas Wentworth was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1604 and 1626. He was a vocal if imprudent defender of the rights of the House of Commons. Wentworth was the third son of Peter Wentworth of Lillingstone Lovell in Oxfordshire, a prominent Puritan leader in Parliament during the reign of Elizabeth I. He was educated at University College, Oxford and became a member of Lincoln's Inn where he was called to the bar in 1594.
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Gaspar de Baeza
1540 - 1569 (29 years)
Gaspar de Baeza was a Spanish humanist, lawyer, translator and writer known during the Spanish Golden Age. He studied law at the University of Granada and University of Salamanca, where he was a pupil of Juan Orozco. He was considered one of the most important jurisconsults of his time, in the wake of the so-called Latin legal humanism practiced in Italy by the famous Andrea Alciato. He practiced as a lawyer in the Royal Chancery of Granada and professor at its university and frequented Alonso de Granada Venegas's tertulia, where he met Hernando de Acuña, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Juan Latino, Luis Barahona de Soto, Pedro de Padilla, Gregorio Silvestre and Jorge de Montemayor.
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Robert Strachan Wallace
1882 - 1961 (79 years)
Sir Robert Strachan Wallace was an Australian academic, army officer and film censor. Wallace served as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1928 to 1947. He was Australia's chief censor from 1922 to 1927 and served as a member of the Australian Broadcasting Commission from 1932 to 1935.
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Edmund Burke
1809 - 1882 (73 years)
Edmund Burke was an American lawyer, newspaper editor and politician. He served as the United States Commissioner of Patents and as a U.S. Representative from New Hampshire in the 1840s. Early life and career Born in Westminster, Vermont, Burke was the son of Elijah and Grace Burke. He attended the public schools and studied law with Henry Adams Bellows, future Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Burke was admitted to the bar in 1826. He began practicing law in Colebrook, New Hampshire before moving to Claremont, New Hampshire in 1833.
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John Ross
1770 - 1834 (64 years)
John Ross , was a Representative to the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania. Ross studied law in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the bar in 1792 and engaged in practice in Easton, Pennsylvania. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1800. He was clerk of the orphans’ court and recorder from 1800 to 1803, county register from 1800 to 1809, and burgess of Easton in 1804.
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Richard Sutton
1460 - 1524 (64 years)
Sir Richard Sutton was an English lawyer. He was founder, with William Smyth, bishop of Lincoln, of Brasenose College, Oxford, and the first lay founder of any college. He was born in Sutton, Cheshire, the younger son of Sir William Sutton, a wealthy landowner and master of the hospital at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire. He was a barrister, and in 1499 a member of the privy council. In 1513 he became steward of the monastery of Sion, a house of Brigittine nuns at Isleworth.
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Justus Claproth
1728 - 1805 (77 years)
Justus Claproth was a German jurist and inventor of the deinking process of recycled paper. See also German inventors and discoverers
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George S. Patton
1856 - 1927 (71 years)
George Smith Patton was an American attorney, businessman and politician who served as Los Angeles County District Attorney and the first mayor of San Marino, California. Patton was the son of Susan Thornton Glassell and George S. Patton Sr., a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War. His mother moved to California after his father was killed during the war, and Patton was educated in Los Angeles. He returned to Virginia to attend Virginia Military Institute, from which he graduated in 1877. After studying law at his uncle's firm, he was admitted to the bar and practiced in Los Angeles.
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August Ludwig Schott
1751 - 1787 (36 years)
August Ludwig Schott was a German lawyer and professor. August Ludwig Schott was a lawyer, solicitor and professor for law in Tübingen and later court counselor in Erlangen. Life August Ludwig Schott was the son of Christoph Friedrich Schott, a priest and professor in Tübingen. He studied in Tübingen, matriculated in 1768, then studied law and received a law degree in 1772.
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Charles Hastings Collette
1816 - 1901 (85 years)
Charles Hastings Collette was a British 19th-century solicitor and writer of Protestant popular controversialist apologetics. He was the father of actor Charles Henry Collette and the organizer of the Joseph Mendham library. As a volunteer in the First Middlesex Artillery, he compiled a handbook for drill instruction.
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Frederick Edmund Meredith
1862 - 1941 (79 years)
Frederick Edmund Meredith was a Canadian lawyer and businessman. He was the 8th Chancellor of Bishop's University; President of the Mount Royal Club; Bâtonnier of the Bar of Montreal; President of the Montreal Victorias for three of their Stanley Cup championships in the late 1890s, and Chief Counsel to the CPR at the inquest into the sinking of RMS Empress of Ireland.
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John Simpson
John Simpson was a United States Army officer, attorney, and politician. Simpson saw military action in both the Northwest Indian War and the War of 1812. He also served 4 terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives including 2 years as the House's Speaker. In 1812 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives but died before he could take office.
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James Thompson
1806 - 1874 (68 years)
James Thompson was a lawyer, politician and jurist from Pennsylvania. He served in the United States Congress and in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he was Speaker in 1835. He also served as a federal judge and as a member of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
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Jack Cassidy
1927 - 1976 (49 years)
John Joseph Edward Cassidy was an American actor, singer and theater director known for his work in the theater, television and films. He received multiple Tony Award nominations and a win, as well as a Grammy Award, for his work on the Broadway production of the musical She Loves Me. He also received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He was the father of teen idols David Cassidy and Shaun Cassidy.
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John James McCook
1843 - 1927 (84 years)
John James McCook, Jr. was a chaplain in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and postbellum lawyer, professor, and theologian. He was a member of the Fighting McCooks, a family of Ohioans who contributed 15 members to the Union army.
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John Lindsay of Balcarres, Lord Menmuir
1552 - 1598 (46 years)
John Lindsay of Balcarres was Secretary of State, Scotland. On 5 July 1581 he was appointed a Lord of Session under the title Lord Menmuir. Life He was the second son of David Lindsay, 9th Earl of Crawford and Catherine Campbell, daughter of Sir John Campbell of Lorn. Along with his brother, Lord Edzell, he was sent under the care of James Lawson to complete his education on the continent. The French Wars of Religion meant they had to return rapidly from Paris to Dieppe, then moving to the University of Cambridge; however, as there is no record of him in Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses John ma...
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Maddalena Buonsignori
Maddalena Buonsignori was a 14th-century law professor at the University of Bologna. Buonsignori taught jurisprudence in 1380. Around this time other women were given similar opportunities at Bologna University, however this opportunity was unique to the school. She wrote a Latin treatise, De Legibus Connubialibus, in which she explored the legal status of the women in her time from various points of view.
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Thomas Percival Creed
1897 - 1969 (72 years)
Sir Thomas Percival Creed, KBE, MC, QC was a lawyer and educationist. Principal of Queen Mary College London from 1952 to 1967, he served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of London from 1964 to 1967.
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Tsuneko Gauntlett
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Tsuneko Yamada Gauntlett , born Yamada Tsune, was a Japanese temperance, suffrage, and peace activist. In 1937 she was international president of the Pan-Pacific Women's Association. Early life Yamada Tsune was born in what is now part of the city of Anjō, Aichi, the daughter of a samurai, Yamada Kenzō. Her younger brother was composer Kosaku Yamada. She was educated at the Sakurai Girls' School, where one of her teachers was Yajima Kajiko.
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Matthew Wesenbeck
1531 - 1586 (55 years)
Matthew Wesenbeck was a Belgian jurist and a student of Gabriel Mudaeus. His Latin surname was also spelled Wesembecius or Vesembecius. Wesenbeck was a Protestant writer widely known and cited during his time. He taught at Jena and Wittenberg.
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Dietrich Flade
1534 - 1589 (55 years)
Dietrich Flade was a German lawyer, judge and educator. He was one of the most known victims of the Trier witch trials. He was active as a judge during the Trier witch trials until he himself was arrested and executed for sorcery.
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Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando
1772 - 1842 (70 years)
Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando, born Joseph Marie Degérando , was a French jurist, philanthropist and philosopher of Italian descent. He is most remembered for his 1804 book Histoire comparée des systèmes de philosophie, considérés relativement aux principes des connaissances humaines as well as his 1820 study of benevolent activity, Le visiteur du pauvre . He influenced Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and especially Ralph Waldo Emerson who used his philosophical framework extensively in support of his own first book Nature.
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Georgius Merula
1430 - 1494 (64 years)
Georgius Merula was an Italian humanist and classical scholar. Life Merula was born in Alessandria in Piedmont. The greater part of his life was spent in Venice and Milan, where he held a professorship and continued to teach until his death. While he was teaching at Venice, he was the subject of a personal polemic by Cornelio Vitelli, directed at his scholarship; and Vitelli replaced him in 1483.
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Thomas H. Malone
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Thomas H. Malone was an American Confederate veteran, judge, businessman and academic administrator. He served as the President of the Nashville Gas Company from 1893 to 1906. He served as the second Dean of the Vanderbilt University Law School from 1875 to 1904.
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W. C. J. Meredith
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
William Campbell James Meredith , often referred to as W. C. J. Meredith, was a Canadian lawyer, the author of three legal texts, and Dean of the McGill University Faculty of Law . In 1951, he was noted for the prescient hiring of John Cobb Cooper to head up the new department he created, McGill's Institute of Air Space Law.
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Onissim Goldovsky
1865 - 1922 (57 years)
Onissim Borisovich Goldovsky was a Russian attorney, political philosopher and activist, author, and champion of Jewish causes. A so-called "Westerner" influenced by ideas of the French enlightenment, he was one of the founders of the Kadet party and advocated for a constitutional democracy for Russia. Married to the author Rashel Khin, he fathered three children with the violinist Lea Luboshutz, among them the opera impresario Boris Goldovsky.
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Jacobus Balduinus
1175 - 1235 (60 years)
Jacobus Balduinus was an Italian jurist. Balduinus was born in Bologna probably about 1175, and is reputed to have been of a noble family. He was a pupil of Azo, and the master of Odofredus, of the canonist Hostiensis , and of Jacobus de Ravanis , who taught at Orléans. His great fame as a professor of civil law at the University of Bologna caused Balduinus to be elected podestà of the city of Genoa, where he was entrusted with the reforms of the law of the Genoese Republic. He died at Bologna in 1235, and has left behind him some treatises on procedure.
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George Clinton Jr.
1771 - 1809 (38 years)
George Clinton Jr. was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. representative from New York from 1805 to 1809. Early life He was born in New York City on June 6, 1771, the son of Mary De Witt and James Clinton, a brevet major general in the American Revolutionary War. He was the brother of DeWitt Clinton , the 6th governor of New York, and half-brother of James Graham Clinton, also a U.S. Representative.
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Arthur A. Leeper
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Arthur A. Leeper was an American lawyer and politician. Leeper was born near Chandlerville, Cass County, Illinois. He went to the public schools. Lepper went to Eureka College and to University of Iowa College of Law. He lived in Virginia, Illinois with his wife and family. Leeper served as state's attorney for Cass County. He served in the Illinois Senate from 1889 to 1901 and was a Democrat. He died at his daughter's home in Clinton, Illinois.
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Boëtius Epo
1529 - 1599 (70 years)
Boetius Epo was a lawyer and scholar from the Low Countries. He was born at Reduzum, in Friesland, in 1529. He studied at Cologne and Leuven, and made such rapid progress in the acquisition of the learned languages, that at the age of twenty he gave public lectures on Homer. He afterwards taught, not only at Leuven but at Paris, jurisprudence, the belles-lettres, and theology, and afterwards went to Geneva with a view to inquire if the religious principles of John Calvin were worthy of the reputation they had gained. Not satisfied, however, with them, Boetius Epo returned to the Catholic Chur...
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Freeman Ransom
1884 - 1947 (63 years)
Freeman Briley Ransom was an American lawyer, businessman and civic activist in Indianapolis, Indiana. From 1910 until his death he served as legal counsel to Madam C. J. Walker and the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Robert Brokenburr was his law partner.
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Paul Cornell
1822 - 1904 (82 years)
Paul Cornell was an American lawyer and Chicago real estate speculator who founded the Hyde Park Township that included most of what are now known as the south and far southeast sides of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. He turned the south side Lake Michigan lakefront area, especially the Hyde Park community area and neighboring Kenwood and Woodlawn neighborhoods, into a resort community that had its heyday from the 1850s through the early 20th century. He was also an urban planner who paved the way for and preserved many of the parks that are now in the Chicago Park District.
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Henning Jakob Henrik Lund
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Henning Jakob Henrik Lund or Intel'eraq was a Greenlandic lyricist, painter, and pastor. He wrote the lyrics to "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit," in the indigenous Greenlandic language, an Eskimo–Aleut language. The song was adopted as the national anthem of Greenland.
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Thomas Greenwood
1790 - 1871 (81 years)
Thomas Greenwood was an English barrister, academic and historian. Life The second son of Thomas Greenwood, a London merchant, he was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1815 and M.A. in 1831. He entered Gray's Inn on 14 March 1809, and was called to the bar on 24 June 1817.
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Weston J. Morrow
#4294
John Ross
1818 - 1871 (53 years)
John Ross was a Canadian lawyer, politician, and businessman. Born in County Antrim, Ireland, he was brought to Canada as an infant. Ross married twice, first to Margaret Crawford who died in 1847, secondly to Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin February 4, 1851, the daughter of Robert Baldwin. Ross was president of the Grand Trunk Railway from 1853 to 1862 when he was succeeded by Sir Edward William Watkin. In 1867, he was appointed to the Senate representing the senatorial division of Ontario. A Conservative, the Honourable John Ross served until his death in 1871 in Toronto, Ontario.
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Victoria Conkling-Whitney
1859 - Present (167 years)
Victoria Conkling-Whitney was the first woman attorney to practice before the St. Louis Court of Appeals. She said she studied law in self-defense, and urged all women to devote some time to this helpful branch of education. She organized the Woman's State Bar Association, when she was elected president. It was the first organization of its kind in the West, and the object was educational and for mutual improvement in the profession.
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Fazio Cardano
1444 - 1524 (80 years)
Fazio Cardano was an Italian jurist and mathematician. He was a student of perspective. Cardano was also a professor at the University of Pavia, and was devoted to hermetical science and the world of the occult. He was a friend of Leonardo da Vinci.
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Edward Smith
1602 - 1682 (80 years)
Sir Edward Smith or Smythe was an English-born politician, barrister and judge who held the offices of Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas and judge of the Irish Court of Claims. Family He was the second son of Edward Smythe, a barrister of Middle Temple, and his wife Katherine. The family's earlier history is uncertain, although it has been suggested that they were related to the Smythe Baronets of Eshe Hall, Durham, and also to Sir Thomas Smith , who was Secretary of State to Elizabeth I. Edward's sister, Arabella, described as "a lady of surpassing beauty and charm", married against bo...
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Douglas Baird
1877 - 1963 (86 years)
General Sir Harry Beauchamp Douglas Baird was a British officer in the British Indian Army. Early life and education Baird was born in Kensington, London, the son of Scottish Colonel Andrew Wilson Baird and Margaret Elizabeth Davidson. He was educated at Clifton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
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John Thompson
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
John William McLeod Thompson was a lawyer, politician and judge in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1953 to 1962 as a Progressive Conservative, and held several cabinet posts in the government of Dufferin Roblin.
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Alexander Haddow
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
Sir Alexander Haddow FRS FRSE was a Scottish physician and pathologist at the forefront of cancer research in the 1940s. He served as Director of the Institute of Cancer Research from 1946 to 1969. He was also President of the Universal Union Against Cancer.
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