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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Literature,
#5901
William Anselmi
#96348
Overall Influence
William Anselmi is an Italian-born academic and writer. His work has focused on Italian poetry ; Italian Canadian literature and culture; narratives of displacement; the body organic/technological; the Image vs. the Word; media: television, cinema, Italian alternative music; environments of technological communication.
Go to Profile#5902
Elise Blackwell
#98867
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Elise Blackwell is an American novelist and writer. She is the author of five novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Her books have been translated into five languages, adapted for the stage, and served as the inspiration for the song "When the War Came" by The Decemberists. She is host and organizer of the literary series The Open Book at the University of South Carolina, where she also teaches. In 2019, she was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
Go to Profile#5903
Tracey Slaughter
#155804
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Tracey Slaughter is a New Zealand writer and poet. Life Slaughter was born in Papatoetoe, South Auckland, and lived there until she was 10 years old, when her family moved to the Coromandel Peninsula. She studied at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Ph.D in 2002. The title of her PhD thesis was Her face looking back at me: reflections on New Zealand women's autobiography. Slaughter has tutored in English at Massey University and the University of Auckland, and is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Waikato.
Go to Profile#5904
Marjeta Šašel Kos
#174007
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marjeta Šašel Kos is a Slovene archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography Marjeta Šašel Kos was born on 20 April 1954. In 1980, she earned a master's degree in archaeology from the University of Ljubljana, and in 1989 a PhD in classical philology from the same university.
Go to Profile#5905
Matthew Knisely
#84903
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Matthew "Matt" Knisely is an American TV Photojournalist and an American author known for professional standards and his vivid editing and use of depth of field in his photography. Born in York, Pennsylvania, Knisely attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Millersville University majoring in Journalism and Philosophy. He got his start as a TV Photojournalist in his home state at two local TV stations, WGAL-TV and WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He then ventured to Europe where he worked internationally as a photojournalist with the British Broadcasting Corporation in East Riding, England.
Go to Profile#5906
Julian Kornhauser
#42845
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Julian Kornhauser is a Polish poet and literary critic. He was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, as a son of Jakub and Małgorzata Kornhauser. He is an author of poems, novels and literary sketches. He also published translations of Serbian and Croatian poetry. At present, he works as a professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Through his daughter Agata Kornhauser-Duda, his son-in-law is Andrzej Duda, President of Poland for the Law and Justice party.
Go to Profile#5907
Raphael Sealey
#71404
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Raphael Sealey was a classical scholar and ancient historian. Sealey studied at University College, Oxford in England under George Cawkwell, receiving an M.A. from Oxford University in 1951. Raphael Sealey was Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley in California, United States, from 1967 to 2000, specialising in Ancient Greek history and law. On retirement, he became an Emeritus Professor. Before coming to Berkeley, he had taught at the University College of North Wales, at Queen Mary College, University of London, and at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Go to Profile#5908
Zohar Shavit
#88137
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Zohar Shavit is an Israeli professor at Tel Aviv University’s School for Cultural Studies. Biography Zohar Dror was born in Tel Aviv. She studied at Tel Aviv University, where she wrote her PhD theses under the supervision of Itamar Even-Zohar in the direct course of studies for outstanding students. In 1997, she became a full professor of culture research at Tel Aviv University.
Go to Profile#5909
Oliver Baez Bendorf
#118686
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Oliver Baez Bendorf is an American poet. Early life and education Oliver Baez Bendorf was born on June 21, 1987, in Iowa City, Iowa. His poems sometimes feature the landscape of his childhood, and his writing about returning to Iowa for a visit while transitioning genders was published in Buzzfeed. He graduated with a BA from the University of Iowa in 2009. In 2013, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he met his teachers Lynda Barry, Quan Barry, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, and Ronald Wallace. In 2015, he received an MA in Library and Infor...
Go to Profile#5910
Benjamin Berton
#104158
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
. Benjamin Berton is a French writer. Biography Benjamin Berton is graduated from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and holder of a D.E.A. of social and cultural history. Sauvageons, a chronicle of the lives of northern teenagers in need of reference points, won the prix Goncourt du premier roman in 2000 as well as the Prix littéraire de la vocation the same year. He lives in Le Mans, where the action of La Chambre à remonter le temps takes place.
Go to Profile#5911
Sharon Solwitz
#175471
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sharon Solwitz is a fiction writer and professor based in Chicago, Illinois. She is the author of the short story collection Blood and Milk and the novels Bloody Mary and Once, in Lourdes. Tom Perotta and Heidi Pitlor selected her story "Alive" for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2012, and her story "Gifted" was chosen for the 2016 collection. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991, and teaches creative writing at Purdue University.
Go to Profile#5912
Kevin Murphy
#121354
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Kevin Murphy is an American screenwriter, television producer, lyricist and composer. He wrote the book and lyrics of the musical Reefer Madness, as well as its television adaptation. For television, he has worked as a writer and producer for many series, most notably Desperate Housewives. He also wrote the stage musical Heathers: The Musical.
Go to Profile#5913
Roy Eriksen
#144452
Overall Influence
1948 - 2019 (71 years)
Professor Roy T. Eriksen was a Norwegian Renaissance scholar and Marlowe scholar teaching at University of Agder. Education and Employment Roy T. Eriksen studied at the University of Oslo with Maren-Sofie Røstvig. He wrote his Ph.D thesis on a structural analysis of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.
Go to Profile#5914
Jean Walton
#140038
Overall Influence
1914 - 2006 (92 years)
Jean Brosius Walton was an American academic administrator and women's studies scholar. She spent the bulk of her career at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Born to a Pennsylvania Quaker family, Walton grew up at George School and studied mathematics at Swarthmore College, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. She joined Pomona College in 1949 as the Dean of Women, and was promoted to dean of students in 1969 and vice president for student affairs in 1976, three years before her formal retirement. During her tenure, she advocated for women's education, engaged with stud...
Go to Profile#5915
Jennifer Militello
#130165
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jennifer Militello is an American poet and professor. She is author of the award-winning memoir Knock Wood which appeared from Dzanc Books in 2019, and five collections of poetry including The Pact, Tupelo Press, 2021. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Flinch of Song, was published in 2009 by Tupelo Press, and won the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize. Her second collection, Body Thesaurus, was named a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award by Marilyn Hacker in 2010. Her third book A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize.
Go to Profile#5916
Valentina Radinska
#176117
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Valentina Dimitrova Radinska is a Bulgarian poet. Life She studied at the Sofia University, and graduated from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute with an MA. She was an editor at Bulgarian Cinematography. She teaches at Sofia University.
Go to Profile#5917
Rachel Bowlby
#171373
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Rachel Bowlby FBA is Professor of Comparative Literature at University College London. Biography Bowlby completed undergraduate studies in Latin and Greek Literature at the University of Oxford and a PhD in Comparative Literature at Yale University in 1983. She held positions at the University of Sussex, University of Oxford, and the University of York before joining UCL in 2004 as Lord Northcliffe Professor of English Literature. Between 2014 and 2016 Bowlby was Professor of Comparative Literature. She rejoined UCL in 2017. Bowlby was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007.
Go to Profile#5918
Ezzat Goushegir
#69841
Overall Influence
Ezzat Goushegir is a fiction writer and playwright born in Iran and living in the U.S. since 1986. She has published four books in Persian, including two collections of short stories. She began her playwriting career in 1976 when her first play "Beginning of Bloom" was produced for Iranian National Television followed by the “Middle East Odyssey” at Culture and Art Hall in Tehran. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#5919
Kim Takhwan
#148944
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Kim Takhwan is a South Korean novelist and literary critic. He left the security of a tenured professorship to focus on his writing career. Work Almost all of Kim's novels take place in the mid to late Joseon dynasty , a period when the feudal dynasty still remained unchallenged though the demand to respond to the advent of modern era was beginning to be heard. Kim is not content with mere replication of historical characters and events, but always desires that his readers discover a sense of continuum and ongoing communication between the past and the present through his works.
Go to Profile#5920
Barbara Hardy
#144492
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Barbara Gladys Hardy, was a British literary scholar, author, and poet. As an academic, she specialised in the literature of the 19th Century. From 1965 to 1970, she was Professor of English at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Then, from 1970 to 1989, she was Professor of English Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Go to Profile#5921
William Grange
#153340
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
William Marshall Grange is Professor of Theatre at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln's Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film. His research publications are mostly concerned with the history of German-language theater and German-language literature. The author of over a dozen books, his most recent work was Cabaret . He is also the author of numerous book chapters, articles in scholarly journals, reviews of both books and productions, and has presented dozens of papers at scholarly conferences both in the United States and abroad.
Go to Profile#5922
Betty Comden
#130787
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Betty Comden was an American lyricist, playwright, and screenwriter who contributed to numerous Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century. Her writing partnership with Adolph Green spanned six decades: "the longest running creative partnership in theatre history." The musical-comedy duo of Comden and Green collaborated most notably with composers Jule Styne and Leonard Bernstein, as well enjoyed success with Singin' in the Rain, as part of the famed "Freed unit" at MGM.
Go to Profile#5923
Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich
#171519
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich is a German philologist. She specializes in medieval and neo-Latin literature, and the medieval reception of Ovid. Education and career Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich studied Latin and French at the University of Mannheim, the University of Nantes and the University of Lausanne. After a year of study at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, she studied Latin philology at the University of Heidelberg from 1986 to 1989. In 1990, she received her doctorate in Mannheim with the thesis Das Motiv der "Witwe von Ephesus" in lateinischen Texten der Antike und des Mittelalters . ...
Go to Profile#5924
Mez Packer
#97027
Overall Influence
Mez Packer is an English novelist. She is the author of Among Thieves and The Game Is Altered and lectures at Coventry University. Biography Packer was born in Essex, England and spent her early years amongst the Plymouth Brethren, in Essex. She attended Warwick University from 1984 to 1988, gaining a degree in Philosophy and literature.
Go to Profile#5925
José Martínez Gázquez
#172179
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
José Martínez Gázquez , is a Spanish philologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Latin Philology in the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Biography Gázquez began to study Arts and Philosophy in the Diocesan Seminary of Almería. He studied the degree of Classical Philology in the University of Valencia and the University of Barcelona. In 1973 he got his Doctor title in the University of Barcelona, with a special award. He became part time professor in the University of Barcelona between 1970 and 1972. Later he became full time assistant professor in the Autonomous University of Barcelona between 1972 and 1988.
Go to Profile#5926
Lynette R. Muir
#132378
Overall Influence
1930 - 2007 (77 years)
Lynette Ross Muir was an English scholar of medieval literature. She was a Reader in the Department of French Language and Literature at the University of Leeds. Life Lynette Ross Muir was born on 30 December 1930 in Eastbourne, England. She received a BA with first-class honours from the University of Exeter in 1951 and a PhD from the University of London in 1956.
Go to Profile#5927
James Bertolino
#58289
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James Bertolino is an American poet. Biography Bertolino was born in Pence, Wisconsin, near the border with Michigan. A descendant of Italian and French Canadian immigrant grandparents, he was introduced to poetry in high school by his sister, who brought him books by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other Beat poets from the local library; he started writing his own poems shortly thereafter. He attended University of Wisconsin in the 1960s, and later did graduate studies at Cornell University under A. R. Ammons. He taught creative writing for 36 years at several institutions, including Corn...
Go to Profile#5928
Curtis Harnack
#143455
Overall Influence
1927 - 2013 (86 years)
Curtis Arthur Harnack was an American writer. Early life Born June 27, 1927, Harnack grew up on a family farm in Remsen, Iowa. He studied English at Grinnell College before completing a master's degree at Columbia University. He began a career in teaching, initially at his alma mater Grinnell College, and then at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. During this time, he was also involved in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Go to Profile#5929
Lawrence Raab
#136190
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lawrence Raab is an American poet. Life Raab graduated from Middlebury College in 1968, and from Syracuse University with an MA in 1972. He taught at American University , University of Michigan, and Williams College . His work has appeared in The New Yorker and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#5930
Madeleine Monette
#132013
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Madeleine Monette is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and poet from Quebec. Biography Born in Montreal, she has lived in New York City since 1979. After her first novel, Le Double suspect, won the Prix Robert-Cliche in 1980, she devoted herself to writing novels and short stories that combine an intimate sense of reality with an acute social consciousness, revisiting the social novel and probing at close range the notion of "Americanity", creating works that are cultural multiplexers and whose geography tends to undo the very concept of "territory", physical or imaginary. In 2007, she ...
Go to Profile#5931
Rusty Morrison
#128075
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Rusty Morrison is an American poet and publisher. She received a BA in English from Mills College in Oakland, California, an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California, and an MA in Education from California State University, San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and was Poet in Residence at Saint Mary’s College in 2009. She has also served as a visiting poet at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Redlands, the University of Arizona, Boise State University, Marylhurst University, and Millikin University.
Go to Profile#5932
Amanda Holden
#96772
Overall Influence
1948 - 2021 (73 years)
Amanda Juliet Holden was a British pianist, librettist, translator, editor and academic teacher. She is known for translating opera librettos to more contemporary English for the English National Opera, and for writing new librettos, especially in collaboration with Brett Dean. She contributed to encyclopedias such as the New Penguin Opera Guide.
Go to Profile#5933
Nike Sulway
#171685
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Nike Sulway is an Australian novelist. Career Nike Sulway is a novelist, short story writer, researcher, and teacher who works across speculative and literary fiction. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Griffith University and is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop. Her short fiction and poetry have been published in a range of journals, including Lightspeed, Shimmer, Interzone, Fantasy Magazine, Review of Australian Fiction, Meanjin, Liminality, Southerly, Verity La, Cordite Poetry Review and ASIM . She has also had works included in a range of anthologies, including The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, vol.
Go to Profile#5934
Richard Harrison
#75832
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Richard Harrison is a Canadian poet and essayist. His 2017 book, On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood, won the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry and the Alberta Writers Guild Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.
Go to Profile#5935
Jeff Dolven
#73313
Overall Influence
Jeff Dolven is an American academic and poet. He is a professor of English at Princeton University, and the author of four books, one of which is a collection of his poems, and one of which was written in twenty-four hours.
Go to Profile#5936
Mary Koncel
#148261
Overall Influence
Mary Koncel is an American poet who has published three books of poetry. She is known for writing prose poetry. Biography Koncel was born and raised in Chicago and holds a BFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and MFA in English from MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She lives in Worthington, Massachusetts. Koncel teaches writing at Smith College, and is a writing consultant to Boston's Department of Public Health in the AIDS Bureau. Koncel is known for prose poetry that is a combination of humor and visual images.
Go to Profile#5937
Neil Shepard
#162307
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Neil Shepard is an American poet, essayist, professor of creative writing, and literary magazine editor. He is a recipient of the 1992 Mid-List Press First Series Award for Poetry, as well as a recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the MacDowell Colony. He routinely participates in poetry readings and writing workshops throughout the United States.
Go to Profile#5938
Karl Beckson
#153992
Overall Influence
1926 - 2008 (82 years)
Karl E. Beckson was an American educator, scholar, and author of numerous articles and sixteen books on British literature, culture, and authors including Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Henry Harland. Of particular interest to him was the late 19th century Symbolist Movement and its influence on late 19th century and early 20th century authors including James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Bernard Shaw. He co-authored, with Arthur Ganz, Literary Terms: A Dictionary, first published in 1960, and still available in its extensively revised 1990 third edition.
Go to Profile#5939
Emma Lou Thayne
#60473
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Emma Lou Warner Thayne was a poet and novelist. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and counted as one of the 75 most significant Mormon poets. Thayne graduated from the University of Utah in 1945. She would later return there to coach tennis and teach English. In the late 1960s, she completed a master's degree at the University of Utah. She was on the faculty over 30 years. In 1949, she married Mel Thayne; they became the parents of five daughters.
Go to Profile#5940
Michael Thomas
#119591
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Michael Thomas is an American author. He won the 2009 International Dublin Literary Award for his debut novel Man Gone Down, receiving a prize of €100,000. Man Gone Down is also recommended by The New York Times.
Go to Profile#5941
Mary Jacobus
#107983
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Mary Longstaff Jacobus, is a British literary scholar. Career Born on 4 May 1944 to Marcus and Diana Jacobus, Jacobus attended Oxford High School before going up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford , to read English; she graduated in 1965 and then completed her doctorate in 1970.
Go to Profile#5942
John Rosengren
#143251
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
John Rosengren is an American award-winning writer and journalist, and the author of ten books, mostly on sports. Personal life Rosengren was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on July 24, 1964. He holds a master's degree in creative writing from Boston University and a bachelor's degree from Saint John's University.
Go to Profile#5943
Debora Shuger
#95443
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Debora Kuller Shuger is a literary historian and scholar. She studies early modern, Renaissance, late 16th- and 17th century England. She writes about Tudor-Stuart literature; religious, political, and legal thought; Neo-Latin; and censorship of that period.
Go to Profile#5944
Fredrick Barton
#106954
Overall Influence
Fredrick Barton is an American novelist and well-known New Orleans film critic. He is the author of five novels: The El Cholo Feeling Passes, Courting Pandemonium, With Extreme Prejudice , A House Divided and In the Wake of the Flagship. He has also published a book of essays on “faith, love, politics and movies” titled Rowing to Sweden.
Go to Profile#5945
Greg Weisman
#127808
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Greg Weisman is an American novelist, writer, producer and voice actor. He is best known as a creator of the animated series Gargoyles, The Spectacular Spider-Man and Young Justice. Early life and career Weisman is a former English composition and writing teacher. He received a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a master's from USC. Between college and graduate school, he worked on staff in the editorial department of DC Comics, while also co-writing Captain Atom with Cary Bates. When he was 22 years old, he wrote a four-issue mini-series for DC Comics starring the superheroine Bl...
Go to Profile#5946
W. T. Pfefferle
#170517
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
W.T. Pfefferle is a Canadian author and poet born in 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, but who was based in Texas for many years. He's the author of five books. The most recent is My Coolest Shirt, published in April 2015 by The Word Works Press. His early poetry collection, The Meager Life and Modest Times of Pop Thorndale, won the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Prize in 2007.
Go to Profile#5947
Tzachi Zamir
#106517
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Tzachi Zamir is an Israeli philosopher and literary critic specialising in the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of theatre, and animal ethics. He is Professor of English and General & Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#5948
Stephen Collis
#153076
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Stephen Collis is a Canadian poet and professor. Collis is the author of several books of poetry, including On the Material and three parts of the on-going “Barricades Project”: Anarchive , The Commons , and To the Barricades . He is also the author of three books of non-fiction: Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten , Dispatches from the Occupation , and Phyllis Webb and the Common Good . In 2011, he won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for the collection On the Material . In 2019, he won the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. He wrote Mine in 2001, Anarchive in 200...
Go to Profile#5949
Yuli Raizman
#103832
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Yuli Yakovlevich Raizman was a Soviet Russian film director and screenwriter. Career In 1924 he became a literary consultant for Mezhrabpom-Rus, the German-Russian film studio. He was assigned as assistant to Yakov Protazanov in 1925 and made his directorial debut in 1927 with The Circle, first drawing attention the following year with Penal Servitude. His next success was The Earth Thirsts in 1930, the Soviet Union's first sound film.
Go to Profile#5950
Judith A. Boss
#93104
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Judith A. Boss is an ethicist and author of several college textbooks with McGraw-Hill Education, including THiNK, Ethics for Life, and Analyzing Moral Issues. She is also author of a romantic/suspense novel set in Antarctica titled Deception Island as well as a YA suspense novel titled Fall from Grace .
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