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 Literature,
#8651
Andrew Young
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
Andrew John Young was a Scottish poet and clergyman, although recognition of his poetry was slow to develop. Life Andrew Young was born to the stationmaster of Elgin in Scotland in 1885. Two years later his father moved to Edinburgh, where young Andrew attended the Royal High School and later took an arts degree at the University of Edinburgh. The disappearance of his brother David in discreditable circumstances in 1907 so affected him that he gave up his intention to become a barrister and instead studied theology at the local New College. Old habits died hard, however, and his first collect...
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Jakob Ulrich
1856 - 1906 (50 years)
Jakob Ulrich was a Swiss Romance philologist. He studied Indo-European linguistics and Romance philology in Zürich and Paris, where his teachers included Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer. In 1879 he received his doctorate at Zürich under the direction of Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler with the thesis Die formelle Entwicklung des Participium Praeteriti in den romanischen Sprachen. In 1880 he obtained his habilitation for Romance philology at the University of Zürich, where in 1901 he attained a full professorship. After his death, he was succeeded at the university by Louis Gauchat.
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Miftahetdin Akmulla
1831 - 1895 (64 years)
Miftakhetdin Kamaletdinovich Kamaletdinov, known as Akmulla was a Bashkir, Kazakh and Tatar educator, poet and philosopher. Biography Born 14 December 1831 in the village of Tuhanbay, Kulil-Minsk volost Belebeyevsk Uyezd, Orenburg Governorate .
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Dumitru Evolceanu
1865 - 1938 (73 years)
Dumitru Evolceanu was a Romanian literary critic. Born in Botoșani, he attended high school in his native city, followed by the literature faculty of Iași University, from which he graduated in 1889. He then took specialty courses at the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France , the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin . Upon returning home, Evolceanu was hired as an assistant professor of Latin language and literature at the University of Bucharest's literature faculty. He rose to associate professor in 1902 and was a full professor from 1906 to 1935. In Convorbiri Literare between 1894 and 1901, he published criticism of Romanian literature.
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Choi Jae-seo
1908 - 1964 (56 years)
Choi Jae-seo was a South Korean literary scholar, a critic of English literature, and a novelist. He graduated from Keijō Imperial University , received his M.A. from the University of London, and later taught at Yonsei University. As editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Humanities Review, he was a forerunner of progressive literary criticism. Although he later presided over pro-Japanese literary journals under pressure from the ruling Japanese, he undoubtedly remains an important figure in Korean modernism of the 1930s.
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Clifford Leech
1909 - 1977 (68 years)
Clifford Leech was a prolifically published British-born professor of English at University College at the University of Toronto 1963-74. In The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe , Patrick Cheney, its editor, describes Leech's contribution to Christopher Marlowe studies "historically important." His publications mainly concerned Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including William Shakespeare, John Webster and John Ford. He also wrote a book on American playwright Eugene O'Neill.
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Jean Garrigue
1914 - 1972 (58 years)
Jean Garrigue was an American poet. In her lifetime, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a nomination for a National Book Award. Life Jean Garrigue was born Gertrude Louise Garrigus in Evansville, Indiana, to Allan Colfax and Gertrude Garrigus. She was born in 1912 but later gave 1914 as her birth year. She had one sister, Marjorie, and one brother, Ross.
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Jakob Sverdrup
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Jakob Sverdrup was a Norwegian philologist and lexicographer. Personal life He was born in Leikanger as a son of the bishop and politician Jakob Sverdrup . He was a brother of Georg Johan Sverdrup, uncle of historian Jakob Sverdrup, a first cousin of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup Jr., and Leif Sverdrup, a nephew of Georg Sverdrup and Edvard Sverdrup, grandson of Harald Ulrik Sverdrup Sr., grandnephew of Johan Sverdrup and great-grandson of Jacob Liv Borch Sverdrup.
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Wang Chi-chen
1899 - 2001 (102 years)
Chi-chen Wang was a Chinese-born American literary scholar and translator. He taught as a professor at Columbia University from 1929 until his retirement in 1965. Life and career Wang was born in Huantai County, Shandong province. His father Wang Caiting achieved the Jinshi degree, the highest level of the civil service examinations and was a county magistrate in Guangdong, where Chi-chen lived for several years.
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H. W. J. Thiersch
1817 - 1885 (68 years)
Heinrich Wilhelm Josias Thiersch , usually known as H. W. J. Thiersch, was a German Evangelical theologian and philologist, who served as a minister in the short-lived Catholic Apostolic Church. Early life Thiersch was born in Munich, the son of well-known classicist Friedrich Thiersch, and brother of surgeon Karl Thiersch and painter Ludwig Thiersch. He studied philology at the University of Munich from 1833 to 1835, primarily under his father but also under Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Joseph Görres. He switched to theology and moved to the University of Erlangen, where from 1835...
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Ágoston Pável
1886 - 1946 (60 years)
Ágoston Pável, also known in Slovenian as Avgust Pavel was a Hungarian Slovene writer, poet, ethnologist, linguist, and historian. Education Ágoston Pável was born in Cankova as the third child of Iván Pável, a tailor, and Erzsébet Obal. He attended elementary school in his native village. Although Slovene was his native language, Ágoston Pável graduated with excellence from a Hungarian-speaking high school in Szentgotthárd, being the top student among 28 from 1897 through 1901. In these early days, a friendly relationship developed between Pável and his class teacher Győző Schmidt. Schmidt,...
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Wilhelm Schubart
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Schubart was a German ancient historian. He was leading authority in the field of papyrology. Shubart was born on 21 October 1873 in Liegnitz, then part of the German Empire. He studied classical philology and philosophy at the Universities of Tübingen, Halle, Berlin and Breslau, earning his PhD at the latter institution in 1897. In 1900 he obtained his habilitation in ancient history at Berlin, becoming an associate professor in 1912. From 1931 to 1937 he was an honorary professor in Berlin, later serving as a professor of ancient history at the University of Leipzig...
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Ernst Maass
1856 - 1929 (73 years)
Ernst Maass was a German classical philologist. From 1875 he studied at the universities of Tübingen and Greifswald, receiving his doctorate in 1879 as a student of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. After graduation, he took an extended study trip to Italy, Paris and London , and afterwards qualified as a lecturer in Berlin with the habilitation-thesis Analecta Eratosthenica. In 1886, he was named a professor at the University of Greifswald, and from 1895 to 1924, served as a professor and director of the philological seminary at the University of Marburg. In 1910/11 he was rector at the u...
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Aleksandr Evlakhov
1880 - 1966 (86 years)
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Evlakhov was a Russian literary critic and doctor. Professor, Rector of Rostov State University in 1920. Biography Aleksandr Mikhailovich Evlakhov was born on 8 August 1880 in Odessa in the family of a gymnasium teacher. In 1898 he entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Saint Petersburg University, but already a year later he moved to the History and Philology Department, which he graduated in 1903. In 1902 he also graduated from the St. Petersburg Archaeological Institute and worked there for a while. In 1907 he became a Master of Literature. Privatdocent of St.
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Thomas Blackburn
1916 - 1977 (61 years)
Thomas Eliel Fenwick Blackburn was a British poet. His work is noted for its self-examination and spiritual imagery. His memoir, A Clip of Steel , portrays the effects of a childhood under a repressive clergyman father.
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William Logan
1841 - 1914 (73 years)
William Logan was a Scottish officer of the Madras Civil Service under the British Government. Before his appointment as Collector of Malabar, he had served in the area for about twenty years in the capacity of Magistrate and Judge. He was conversant in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. He is remembered for his 1887 guide to the Malabar District, popularly known as the Malabar Manual.
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Vanja Radauš
1906 - 1975 (69 years)
Vanja Radauš was a Croatian sculptor, painter and writer. Life After attending elementary and high school in his home town of Vinkovci, he studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb from 1924 to 1930. During World War II he participated in the National Liberation movement. He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1945 to 1969.
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Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 - 1797 (38 years)
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
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Marian Auerbach
1882 - 1941 (59 years)
Marian Auerbach a.k.a. Mayer [Majer] Auerbach was a Polish classical philologist of Jewish background. He graduated from the Philology Department of the University of Lwów, where he received his doctorate in 1911 and his habilitation in 1932. Auerbach lectured there, and was murdered by the Gestapo during the Holocaust in Poland.
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Dion Boucicault
1820 - 1890 (70 years)
Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. Although The New York Times hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century," he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, had applied for and received American citizenship in 1873.
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Tom Brown
1662 - 1704 (42 years)
Thomas Brown , also known as Tom Brown, was an English translator and satirist, largely forgotten today save for a four-line gibe that he may have written concerning John Fell. Biography Early life Brown was born at either Shifnal or Newport in Shropshire; he is identified with the Thomas Brown, son of William and Dorothy Brown, who was recorded christened on 1 January 1663 at Newport. His father, a farmer and tanner, died when Thomas was eight years old. He took advantage of the free schooling offered in the county, attending Adams' Grammar School at Newport, before going up to Christ Churc...
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Jacob Baart de la Faille
1886 - 1959 (73 years)
Jacob Baart de la Faille compiled the first catalogue raisonné of the work of Vincent van Gogh, published in 1928. The catalogue was revised and republished by an editorial committee in 1970, and this version is considered to be the definitive catalogue of van Gogh's work.
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Paulin Martin
1840 - 1890 (50 years)
Jean-Pierre-Paulin Martin , often referred to as Abbé Paulin Martin, or simply Abbé Martin or Paulin Martin, was a French Catholic Biblical scholar. Life Paulin Martin's secondary studies were made at Montfaucon, and his theology at St. Sulpice. Here came under the influence of Le Hir. At the end of his course, Martin was too young for ordination; so he went to the French Seminary, Rome, attended the lectures at the Gregorian University, and was raised to the priesthood in 1863.
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Mihail Cruceanu
1887 - 1988 (101 years)
Mihail Cruceanu was a Romanian poet. He was born in Iași to Mihail Cruceanu, a doctor, and his wife Ecaterina . He attended high school in Ploiești and Pitești, earning his degree in 1906 at Bucharest's Saint Sava High School. Cruceanu enrolled in the University of Bucharest, where he took degrees in law and literature and philosophy . He subsequently taught high school at Alexandria, Craiova and Bucharest. He made his poetic debut in Revista literară in 1904. Although he associated with the Literatorul circle of Alexandru Macedonski, he was closer to Ovid Densusianu's Vieața Nouă group. His first published volume was the 1912 Spre cetatea zorilor.
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Adeline Rittershaus
1876 - 1924 (48 years)
Adeline Rittershaus was a German philologist, a scholar in old Scandinavian literature, and champion for the equality of women. She earned her doctorate in 1898, at the University of Zurich, being one of the first women to do so at that institution, and acquired in 1902, as the first woman, a Venia legendi at the Faculty of Arts of the same university. Her most famous work is a collection of Icelandic folk tales.
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Dumitru Popovici
1902 - 1952 (50 years)
Dumitru Popovici was a Romanian literary historian. Born in Dăneasa, Olt County, his parents were Ioan Popovici, a teacher, and his wife Ioana . After attending primary school in nearby Șerbănești from 1909 to 1914, he studied at Radu Greceanu High School in Slatina from 1914 to 1923. Popovici then went to the literature faculty of the University of Bucharest from 1923 to 1927, earning a doctorate there in 1935. From 1924 to 1926, he was honorific teaching assistant to Dumitru Caracostea. He taught high school in Slatina and Iași . From 1936 until his death, he was a professor in the literature faculty of the University of Cluj.
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D. Gwenallt Jones
1899 - 1968 (69 years)
David James Jones , commonly known by his bardic name Gwenallt, was a Welsh poet, critic, and scholar, and one of the most important figures of 20th-century Welsh-language literature. He created his bardic name by transposing Alltwen, the name of the village across the river from his birthplace.
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Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas
1523 - 1601 (78 years)
Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas , also known as El Brocense, and in Latin as Franciscus Sanctius Brocensis, was a Spanish philologist and humanist. Biography Sanctius was born in Brozas, province of Cáceres. His parents, Francisco Núñez and Leonor Díez, were of noble birth but had little money. Sancius was able to study thanks to the support of relatives, starting in Évora, where he learnt Latin and humanities, and then in Lisbon. There he served Queen Catherine I and King John III of Portugal and remained in the court of the Portuguese kingdom until the death of the princess in 1545. In acco...
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Ștefan Vârgolici
1843 - 1897 (54 years)
Ștefan G. Vârgolici was a Moldavian, later Romanian poet, critic and translator. Born in Borlești, Neamț County, he attended secondary school at Academia Mihăileană in Iași, followed by the literature and philosophy faculty at the University of Iași. After obtaining a degree in 1864, Vârgolici continued his studies at Madrid, Paris , and Berlin. Following his return home, he taught high school in Bârlad and Iași. In 1875, he was hired as a professor at the University of Iași's French language and literature department, which later became the department of the history of modern literatures, particularly Romance.
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Mary Abigail Dodge
1833 - 1896 (63 years)
Mary Abigail Dodge was an American writer and essayist, who wrote under the pseudonym Gail Hamilton. Her writing is noted for its wit and promotion of equality of education and occupation for women. She was an abolitionist.
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Patrick Russell
1726 - 1805 (79 years)
Patrick Russell was a Scottish surgeon and naturalist who worked in India. He studied the snakes of India and is considered the "Father of Indian Ophiology". Russell's viper, Daboia russelii, is named after him.
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Terrot R. Glover
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Terrot Reaveley Glover was a Cambridge University lecturer of classical literature. He was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He was also a Latinist, and is known for translating Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses to Latin.
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Adela Rogers St. Johns
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Adela Nora Rogers St. Johns was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays for silent movies, but is best remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 1920s and 1930s and her celebrity interviews for Photoplay magazine.
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William McGonagall
1825 - 1902 (77 years)
William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish poet of Irish descent. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work. He wrote about 200 poems, including "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous Tay Whale", which are widely regarded as some of the worst in English literature. Groups throughout Scotland engaged him to make recitationss from his work, and contemporary descriptions of these performances indicate that many listeners were appreciating McGonagall's skill as a comic music hall character. Collections of his vers...
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Margaret Wilson
1882 - 1973 (91 years)
Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson was an American novelist. She was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for The Able McLaughlins. Early years and education Born in Traer, Iowa, Wilson grew up on a farm and attended the University of Chicago, earning degrees in 1903 and 1904.
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Johan Peter Weisse
1832 - 1886 (54 years)
Johan Peter Weisse was a Norwegian philologist. Personal life He was born in Fluberg as a son of physician Joachim Frederik Weisse and his wife Grethe Fleischer. His grandfather had migrated to Norway from Brandenburg. The family moved to Trondhjem in 1833.
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Richard Fariña
1937 - 1966 (29 years)
Richard George Fariña was an American folksinger, songwriter, poet and novelist. Early years and education Fariña was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of an Irish mother, Theresa Crozier, and a Cuban father of Galician origin, also named Richard Fariña. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn Technical High School. He earned an academic scholarship to Cornell University, starting as an engineering major, but later switching to English. While at Cornell he published short stories for local literary magazines and for national periodicals, including Transatlantic Review and Mademoiselle.
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Marcus Musurus
1470 - 1517 (47 years)
Marcus Musurus was a Greek scholar and philosopher born in Candia, Venetian Crete . Life The son of a rich merchant, Musurus became at an early age a pupil of Janus Lascaris in Venice. In 1505, Musurus was made professor of Greek language at the University of Padua. Erasmus, who had attended his lectures there, testifies to his knowledge of Latin. However, when the university was closed in 1509 during the War of the League of Cambrai, he returned to Venice where he filled a similar post.
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Ji Kang
223 - 262 (39 years)
Ji Kang , sometimes referred to as Xi Kang, courtesy name Shuye , was a Chinese writer, poet, Daoist philosopher, musician and alchemist of the Three Kingdoms period. He was one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove who held aloof from the dangerous politics of third-century China to devote themselves to art and refinement.
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Catharine Trotter Cockburn
1674 - 1749 (75 years)
Catharine Trotter Cockburn was an English novelist, dramatist and philosopher who wrote on various subjects, including moral philosophy and theology, and maintained a prolific correspondence. Trotter's writings encompass a wide range of topics, such as necessity, the infinitude of space and substance. However, her primary focus was on moral issues. She believed that moral principles were not inherent but could be discovered by each individual through the use of reason, a faculty bestowed by God. In 1702, she published her first significant philosophical work, titled "A Defence of Mr. Lock's [...
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John of Garland
1195 - 1300 (105 years)
Johannes de Garlandia or John of Garland was a medieval grammarian and university teacher. His dates of birth and death are unknown, but he probably lived from about 1190 to about 1270. Life John of Garland was born in England, and studied at Oxford and then at the medieval University of Paris, where he was teaching by 1220. He lived and taught on the Left Bank at the Clos de Garlande, after which Rue Galande is named. This is the origin of the name by which he is usually known. The main facts of his life are stated in his long poem De triumphis ecclesiae .
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Tommaso Campailla
1668 - 1740 (72 years)
Tommaso Campailla was an Italian philosopher, physician, politician and poet. Life Tommaso Campailla was born in Modica, near Syracuse, in 1668. His family belonged to the local nobility. At sixteen he was sent to Catania to study law. He employed his leisure hours in the study of literature, philosophy, science, astronomy, and physics. He studied both neo-Scholastic and Cartesian philosophy, and adopted a mechanical view of the universe.
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Nathan Bodington
1848 - 1911 (63 years)
Sir Nathan Bodington was the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Leeds having been Principal and Professor of Greek at the Yorkshire College since 1883. From 1897 to 1901 he was also Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University.
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Leo Kiacheli
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Leo Kiacheli was a Soviet and Georgian writer. He is noted for the novels Gvadi Bigva, Tavadis Kali Maya , Almasgir Kibulan, and Haki Adzba. Major works Novels and novellas Tariel Golua Almazgir Kibulan Blood Tavadis Kali Maya Haki Adzba Gvadi Bigva Man of Mountain
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John Logan
1923 - 1987 (64 years)
John B. Logan was an American poet and teacher. Logan was born in Red Oak, Iowa. He earned a bachelor's degree from Coe College, his master's degree from the Iowa University, and did graduate work at Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame in philosophy.
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Mehdi Bayani
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Mehdi Bayani was the founder and the first head of the National Library of Iran, specialist in Persian manuscripts and calligraphy, writer, researcher, and professor at the University of Tehran. Life and careers Mehdi Bayani was born in 1906 in Hamedan, Iran. His father, "Mirza Mohammad Khan Mostofi Farahani", was from the succession of teachers and accountant of Farahan and his maternal ancestor was "Mirza Soleimaan Bayan ol-Saltaneh Farahani", the head of the royal exchequer and the author of "the treatise on the rules of clerking and accounting". At the age of two, his father died and his mother came to Tehran with him and other children.
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Mohammed Abdul-Hayy
1944 - 1989 (45 years)
Mohammed Abdul-Hayy or Muhammad Abd al-Hayy was a member of the first generation of post-colonial Sudanese writers and academics. Together with Ali El-Mak and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, he is regarded as a pioneer of modern poetry in Sudan.
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Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida
1740 - 1811 (71 years)
Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida , from Lisbon, was the foremost Portuguese satirical poet of the 18th century. Beginning at age 20, Tolentino studied law for three years at the University of Coimbra; he then ended those studies to teach rhetoric. He was sent to Lisbon in 1776 to fill a post, and was named professor of rhetoric a year later. His interests soon shifted once again, from teaching, to public office. He wrote against the Marquis of Pombal, and therefore gained the favor of Pombal's successor. He was awarded with a sinecure office in the royal administration. In 1790, he was honored wit...
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Georgiana Simpson
1866 - 1944 (78 years)
Georgiana Rose Simpson was a philologist and the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in the United States. Simpson received her doctoral degree in German from the University of Chicago in 1921.
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August Rossbach
1823 - 1898 (75 years)
August Rossbach was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. He is known for his investigations of ancient Greek metrics, defined as a discipline that studies the patterns and arrangements of syllables and words that characterize Greek poetry.
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