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,
#8751
Peter Arnott
1931 - 1990 (59 years)
Peter D. Arnott was a puppeteer and Professor of drama at Tufts University. He wrote many books and translated many classical plays. Early life Arnott was born in Ipswich, England in 1931 where he earned bachelor's degrees from both the University of Wales and Oxford University. He earned a PhD in drama from the University of Wales before moving to the United States where he taught drama at the University of Iowa. In 1969, Arnott was hired by Tufts University where he was their youngest professor.
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Jacopo Facciolati
1682 - 1769 (87 years)
Jacopo Facciolati was an Italian lexicographer and philologist. Biography He was born at Torreglia, in what is now the province of Padua , in 1682. He was admitted to the seminary of Padua thanks to Cardinal Barberigo, who had formed a high opinion of the boy's talents. As a professor of logic and regent of the schools, Facciolati became the leading academic of Padua university during a period of forty-five years. He published improved editions of several philological works, such as the Thesaurus Ciceronianus of Nizolius, and in 1719 he brought out a revised edition of the Lexicon Septem Ling...
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Richard Croke
1489 - 1558 (69 years)
Richard Croke was an English classical scholar and a royal tutor and agent. Early life and education He was educated at Eton College. He took his BA at King's College, Cambridge in 1510 and proceeded to travel. He studied Greek with William Grocyn in London and Oxford and then with Erasmus and Aleander in Paris in 1511. In 1514, he was called to the University of Leipzig, where he remained for some years. Among his pupils were Joachim Camerarius, Hieronymus Dungersheim, who had studied with Croke in Dresden, and Caspar Creuziger. He was replaced by Petrus Mosellanus. As a young man, he was i...
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Gunnar Høst
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Gunnar Fougner Høst was a Norwegian philologist and literary historian. He was a lecturer at the University of Oslo from 1930 to 1968. Biography He was born in Kristiania , Norway. He moved with his family to Bergen in 1907 and returned to Kristiania in 1915. He was a son of Sigurd Høst and Isabella Vibe . He was a great-grandson of Ludvig Vibe, and a half-brother of Inger Alver Gløersen. He married literary researcher Else Marie Røysland in 1931.
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Joseph Gouge Greenwood
1821 - 1894 (73 years)
Joseph Gouge Greenwood was an English classical scholar, second principal of Owens College, Manchester, and vice-chancellor of the Victoria University, Manchester. Early life He was the son of the Rev. Joseph Greenwood, a congregationalist minister at Petersfield, Hampshire, and his wife Maria, whose maiden name was Gouge. At the age of fourteen he was sent to University College School, of which Thomas Hewitt Key and Henry Malden had recently been appointed joint head-masters. He then went to University College as a student, and in 1840 he graduated B.A. in the University of London, with hono...
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Otto Adolf Wenzel Kade
1927 - 1980 (53 years)
Otto Adolf Wenzel Kade was a German specialist in Russian language and translation scholar. During the postwar years he started out as a self-taught interpreter of Russian and teacher of Czech and Russian. Afterwards he has appointed at several posts at the translation institute of Karl Marx University, Leipzig. His doctoral dissertation Subjektive und objektive Faktoren im Übersetzungsprozeß was probably the first translation studies dissertation in Germany; it appeared as a supplement to the journal Fremdsprachen under the title "Zufall und Gesetzmäßigkeit in der Übersetzung" . In this wor...
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Francisco Adolfo Coelho
1847 - 1919 (72 years)
Francisco Adolfo Coelho was a Portuguese philologist He is known for his monograph of Portuguese dialects spoken outside of Portugal and is the first person to have recorded the use of Macanese Patuá, a critically endangered creole language spoken in Macau.
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René Marill Albérès
1921 - 1982 (61 years)
René Marill Albérès, or R. M. Albérès, was the pseudonym of René Marill , a French writer and literary critic. He published book-length studies of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, André Gide, Gérard de Nerval, Jean Giraudoux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Butor, Franz Kafka, as well as surveys of the novel in twentieth-century European literature.
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Julius Hoffory
1855 - 1897 (42 years)
Johann Peter Julius Hoffory was a Danish-German philologist, phonetician, and Germanic scholar. Biography He studied general and Nordic linguistics at Copenhagen , then continued his education in Berlin and Strasbourg , receiving his doctorate in 1883 at Copenhagen with a thesis on Old Norse consonant studies. Afterwards he worked as a lecturer of Nordic philology and general phonetics at the University of Berlin, where in 1887 he became an associate professor.
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Ernst Heinrich Kneschke
1798 - 1869 (71 years)
Ernst Heinrich Kneschke was a German heraldist, ophthalmologist and writer. Life Ernst Heinrich Kneschke was the second son of Johann Gottfried Kneschke , who was Co-rector of Zittau Gymnasium and librarian of the council library, and his wife Juliana Therese Kühn . On 10 May 1817, Kneschke enrolled at the University of Leipzig and on 24 September 1828 he graduated with the medical baccalaureate. On 29 October 1828 he received the licentiate . He achieved the promotion for medicine from Leipzig in 1828 for his thesis entitled De hydrothorace. In 1828 he achieved his habilitation and he continued to teach courses until his death in December 1869.
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Robert Williams
1830 - 1877 (47 years)
Robert Williams , usually referred to by his bardic name Trebor Mai, was a Welsh language poet, born at Ty'n-yr-ardd near Llanrhychwyn, near Llanrwst, in the old county of Caernarfonshire, the son of a tailor. He was educated at a local Llanrhychwyn school and for a period attended the free school at Llanrwst. Around 1843, he moved with his family to Llanrwst and he applied himself to his father's craft. After he married on 13 October 1854 he commenced business as a tailor himself in Llanrwst, and remained there for the rest of his life. He died in 1877, aged 47.
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Gertrud Herzog-Hauser
1894 - 1953 (59 years)
Gertrud Herzog-Hauser was an Austrian classical philologist. She was specialised in ancient mythology and religion as well as Latin literature and published Latin school textbooks. She campaigned for equal rights for women in education.
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Joaquín Setantí
1550 - 1617 (67 years)
Joaquín Setantí y Alcina was an important figure in the municipality of Barcelona at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He contributed several monographs to the movement known as tacitism including Frutos de historia . His collection of moral aphorisms, Centellas de varios conceptos , stands out, due to its originality. Setantí was a precursor of Baltasar Gracián and of the other great cultivators of aphorisms during the Spanish Baroque. His 500 dense Centellas are said to "reveal a modern political and personal attitude that marks an important milestone in Spanish sententious litera...
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Hiroshi Shimizu
1903 - 1966 (63 years)
Hiroshi Shimizu was a Japanese film director, who directed over 160 films during his career. Biography Early years Shimizu was born in Shizuoka Prefecture and attended Hokkaidō University, but left before graduating. He joined the Shochiku film studio in Tokyo in 1921, making his directorial debut in 1924 at the age of just 21.
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Sidney Clare
1892 - 1972 (80 years)
Sidney Clare was an American comedian, dancer and composer. His best-known songs include "On the Good Ship Lollipop" , "You're My Thrill" , and "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" . In 1929, Clare wrote his first full film score for Street Girl. He did the film scores for Tanned Legs, Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, Sing and Be Happy, Hit the Deck, Jimmy and Sally, Bright Eyes, The Littlest Rebel and Rascalss.
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Clara Beranger
1886 - 1956 (70 years)
Clara Beranger was an American screenwriter of the silent film era and a member of the original faculty of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Biography Beranger was born Clara Strouse in Baltimore, Maryland, to Benjamin and Fannie Strouse. Her family was of German Jewish descent. Benjamin and his brothers had emigrated and opened a dry-goods store in Indiana.
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Nicol Stenhouse
1806 - 1873 (67 years)
Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse was a Scottish-born lawyer, writer and literary patron in colonial Australia. Stenhouse was born in Coldstream, Berwickshire, Scotland and was a writer of taste and a great lover of literature. He was clerk to Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet when the latter was practising as an advocate in Edinburgh. He was also a friend of Thomas De Quincey. Having embraced the legal profession, he emigrated to New South Wales, and practised for many years as an attorney and solicitor in Sydney. He was a veritable Mæcenas to many needy and struggling literary men in Sydney. Not long before his death he was, on the motion of that great scholar, Dr.
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Julius Petersen
1878 - 1941 (63 years)
Julius Petersen was a German literary scholar and university professor, principally at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. He did much to rediscover the works of Theodor Fontane for twentieth century readers. Petersen himself has been described as one of the most influential academics in the field of German studies during the interwar period, but after 1945 he disappeared from university reading lists. During the 1960s interest in his life and works resurfaced, though it has frequently been on account of evident contradictions in his attitude to National Socialism during the fin...
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Richard Davies
1833 - 1877 (44 years)
Richard Davies was a popular Welsh-language poet, singer, and Eisteddfod conductor. The original source of the name Mynyddog is from Newydd Fynyddog, a hill near his home. Another submission is the name comes from Mynyddog Mwynfawr, a character in an early Welsh poem. Use of an adopted Welsh-language pseudonym or bardic name is common among Welsh poets.
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William Hamilton
1665 - 1751 (86 years)
William Hamilton was a Scottish poet. He wrote comic, mock-tragic poetry such as "The Last Dying Words of Bonny Heck" - a once-champion hare coursing greyhound in the East Neuk of Fife who was about to be hanged, for growing too slow. It is written in anglified Scots, with a sprightly narrative and wry comic touches.
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David Richards
1751 - 1827 (76 years)
David Richards , better-known by his bardic name Dafydd Ionawr, was a Welsh-language poet, born at Glanyrafon near Bryn-crug in the parish of Tywyn in Merionethshire , north-west Wales. He took an interest in poetry as a result of his acquaintance with Evan Evans , who was curate of St Cadfan's Church, Tywyn, and was later sent to a school at Ystradmeurig to obtain a better education than was available locally. After a period as a junior schoolmaster in Wrexham, he spent one term at Jesus College, Oxford, before going to teach at Oswestry grammar school. He then taught at the grammar school in Carmarthen before being appointed head of a free school in his native area.
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David R. Jones
1832 - 1915 (83 years)
David Richard Jones was a Welsh-American architect and poet. Early life Jones was born October 24, 1832, in Dolwyddelan, North Wales, the son of Richard James Jones and Ann Jones. On September 2, 1845, Richard, Ann and family immigrated to the United States. Richard purchased 480 acres of government land east of the village of Cambria, Wisconsin. He built a log house and moved there in the spring of 1846. The farm was named Oakland. In May 1852, David R. left Oakland for the city of Racine, Wisconsin, where he apprenticed with architect Lucas Bradley. His brother, Evan O. Jones, remained in...
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John Garrett Underhill
1876 - 1946 (70 years)
John Garrett Underhill was an American author and stage producer who translated the works of Jacinto Benavente, a Spanish dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a number of other Spanish authors.
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James Allen
1806 - 1886 (80 years)
James Allen , nicknamed "Dismal Jemmy", was an English-born writer, journalist and newspaper owner in Australia and New Zealand. Biography Allen was born in Birmingham and educated at Horton College. He was for some time a reporter on the London Morning Post, and was an associate of Charles Dickens.
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Arnaud d'Usseau
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Arnaud d'Usseau was a playwright and B-movie screenwriter who is perhaps best remembered today for his collaboration with Dorothy Parker on the play The Ladies of the Corridor. Career D'Usseau was born in Los Angeles and was the son of Leon d'Usseau, also a screenwriter and director of some repute during the silent era. His mother, Ottola “Tola” Smith D’Usseau, was a character actress. He first came to notice as the co-writer of Tomorrow, the World!, a 1943 drama about a German boy adopted by an American couple who then have to struggle with his Nazi upbringing. In 1945, another controversia...
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Thomas Platter
1499 - 1582 (83 years)
Thomas Platter the Elder was a Swiss humanist scholar and writer. Biography Thomas Platter was a master of several languages, knowing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, among others. He grew up in poverty and, as a student, made a prolonged tour through Germany. After his return he first lived in Zürich, where he was an assistant to reformator Huldrych Zwingli. In 1531 he was an eye-witness of the Battle of Kappel, when Huldrych Zwingli was killed. Considering the political situation in Zürich after this war, he left for Basel, together with his paternal friend and mentor, the Protestant theologian Oswald Myconius.
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Abu Sayeed Ayyub
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Abu Sayeed Ayyub was an Indian philosopher, teacher, literary critic and writer in both Bengali and English. Though born into a traditional, Urdu-speaking, Muslim family in Calcutta , he was so deeply captivated in his early teenage by the poems of the Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore that he taught himself Bengali so as to appreciate Tagore better. Later, when he started to write, it was mostly in his adopted language, Bengali. During the initial part of his writing career, Ayyub wrote on aesthetics, religion and socialism. However, it was his philosophical and scientific analysis ...
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Jennifer Clarvoe
1900 - Present (126 years)
Jennifer S. Clarvoe is an American poet and English professor at Kenyon College. She has published two books of poetry, Invisible Tender and Counter-Amores. She won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2001.
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Langdon Elwyn Mitchell
1862 - 1935 (73 years)
Langdon Elwyn Mitchell was an American playwright who was popular on Broadway during the early twentieth century. Early life Mitchell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 17, 1862. He was the son of a noted writer and neurologist, S. Weir Mitchell , and, his first wife, Mary Middleton Elwyn, a daughter of Dr. Elwyn of Philadelphia. His elder brother was John Kearsley Mitchell, a neurologist who married Anne Keppele Williams. After his mother died in 1862, his father married Mary Cadwalader.
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Cornelis van Eck
1662 - 1732 (70 years)
Cornelis van Eck was a Dutch jurist and poet. Born in Arnhem, he studied literature in Utrecht and law in Leiden, attaining his doctorate under Johannes Voet in 1682. His dissertation, De septem damnatis legibus, saw seven re-editions. He was called upon to teach in Franeker in 1686 and was appointed to a professorship in Utrecht in 1693.
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Ruth Bellamy
1906 - 1969 (63 years)
Ruth Bellamy , also known as Ruth Bellamy Brownwood, was an American writer, a journalist, dramatist, songwriter, actress, and poet, based in North Carolina and Japan. Early life and education Ruth Elizabeth Bellamy was born in Enfield, North Carolina, the daughter of Phesington Sugg Bellamy and Lula Spruill Bellamy. Her father was a businessman. Her mother, known as "Mamee", was a well-known social figure in Rocky Mount in her later years.
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Paolo Costa
1771 - 1836 (65 years)
Paolo Costa was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. The son of Domenico Costa and Lucrezia Ricciarelli, he began his studies in 1780 in Ravenna under modest teachers. He then moved to Padua and studied there under Melchiorre Cesarotti and Simone Stratico. His studies were interrupted by the French invasion and occupation in 1797, during which he held government roles in both Ravenna and Bologna.
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Fanny Brice
1891 - 1951 (60 years)
Fania Borach , known professionally as Fanny Brice or Fannie Brice, was an American comedian, illustrated song model, singer, and actress who made many stage, radio, and film appearances. She is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series The Baby Snooks Show.
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Viola Brothers Shore
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Viola Brothers Shore was an American author who worked in a variety of mediums from the 1910s through the 1930s. Married three times, she began her writing career as a poet and a writer of short stories and articles or magazines. Toward the end of the silent film era, she began writing screenplays, and eventually expanded into theatrical plays and novels. Her daughter, Wilma Shore, was also a successful writer.
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Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg
1818 - 1901 (83 years)
Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg was an American educator and Lutheran clergyman who served as president of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and as a Greek language and literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
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Levko Borovykovsky
1806 - 1889 (83 years)
Levko Borovykovsky After graduating in 1830 from Kharkiv University, Borovykovsky taught in a Kursk gymnasium and from 1839 in the Poltava Institute for Daughters of the Nobility. In 1852 he became a gymnasium inspector in Poltava gubernia and retired a few years later. His works were first published in 1828, and he was one of the first poets of the Kharkiv Romantic School.
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Robert Howard
1626 - 1698 (72 years)
Sir Robert Howard was an English playwright and politician. He fought for the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. Life He was born the 6th son of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Berkshire and his wife Elizabeth. As the 18-year-old son of a Royalist family, he fought at the battle of Cropredy Bridge and was knighted for the bravery he showed there. In the years after the English Civil War his royalist sympathies led to his imprisonment at Windsor Castle in 1658.
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William Drummond of Logiealmond
1770 - 1828 (58 years)
Sir William James Charles Maria Drummond of Logiealmond FRS FRSE DCL was a Scottish diplomat and Member of Parliament, poet and philosopher. His book Academical Questions is arguably important in the development of the ideas of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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Frederik Christian von Haven
1727 - 1763 (36 years)
Frederik Christian von Haven was a Danish philologist and theologian who took part in the Danish expedition to Yemen. Biography Background and early life Frederik von Haven was born on 26 June 1728 in the rectory of Vester Skerninge on the Danish island of Funen, where his father Lambert von Haven was a priest, and christened on 3 July in the Church of Our Lady in Odense. His mother was Maren, née Wielandt. He had three sisters; he was especially close to Pernille Elisabeth von Haven, who never married.
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James Clarke Welling
1825 - 1894 (69 years)
James Clarke Welling was the President of Columbian University, now the George Washington University, Washington, DC, from 1871 to 1894. He was a cofounder of the National Geographic Society. Biography James Clarke Welling was born in Trenton, New Jersey on July 14, 1825. He graduated from Princeton University in 1844. During the Civil War, he wrote for the National Intelligencer. Welling was a professor at Princeton when in 1871 he accepted the presidency of Columbian College. He became the sixth president of the university.
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Eusebiu Popovici
1838 - 1922 (84 years)
Eusebiu Popovici was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian Orthodox cleric and professor. Born in Cernăuți, capital of the Duchy of Bukovina, his father Constantin Popoviciu was a professor. After attending high school and the theological institute , he studied church history and canon law at the University of Vienna . Returning to the institute, he was a substitute professor teaching the Old Testament from 1862 to 1866. He then taught in the church history and law department . From 1875 to 1908, he taught in the same department at the new Czernowitz University. During his lengthy teaching caree...
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Domingo Patricio Meagher
1703 - 1772 (69 years)
Domingo Patricio Meagher , known as the Father Meagher was a Spanish Jesuit priest, university professor and writer of Irish descent. He was born in San Sebastian, Spain on 17 March 1703 and died in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany on 21 September 1772. His father was an Irish merchant, who had settled in the Basque city.
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Frank Jevons
1858 - 1936 (78 years)
Frank Byron Jevons was a polymath, academic and administrator of Durham University. Early life He was educated at Nottingham High School and Wadham College, Oxford and appointed a lecturer in Classics at Durham in 1882.
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Diego Pérez de Valdivia
1510 - 1589 (79 years)
Diego Pérez de Valdivia was a Spanish disciple of John of Ávila who wrote on lay spirituality. Life Born in Baeza, Pérez de Valdivia was sent by John of Ávila to study at Salamanca. He taught philosophy at Granada for three years before becoming Professor of Holy Scripture at the University of Baeza from 1549 to 1577. He was archdeacon of Jaén from 1569 to 1574, but subjected to the Inquisition from 1574 to 1577 on suspicion of alumbradismo. From 1578 to 1589 he was Professor of Scripture at the University of Barcelona. He died on 28 February 1589.
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Dominicus Baudius
1561 - 1613 (52 years)
Dominicus Baudius, a Latinised form of Dominique Baudier, was a French Neo-Latin poet, scholar and historian. From 1603 to 1613 he was a teacher at the University of Leiden. Life Baudius was born in a calvinistic family in the Southern Netherlands in Lille. His original name was probably Dominique Baudier, though sources only show his Latinised name Dominicus Baudius. As a result of the arrival of the new regent of the low countries, the Duke of Alba in 1568, Baudius moved to Aachen along with his parents and sister. After finishing at the local school he proceeded to study theology first in Leiden from 1578 to 1579 and then in Geneva in 1581.
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William Wallace
1860 - 1940 (80 years)
William Wallace was notable as a Scottish classical composer and writer. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Music in the University of London. Early life and education Born at Greenock, Wallace studied ophthalmology at the University of Glasgow, and in Vienna and Paris. He became a qualified ophthalmic surgeon, but was also a poet, dramatist, writer on music and a painter.
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William S. Willis
1921 - 1983 (62 years)
William Shedrick Willis Jr. was born July 11, 1921, in Waco, Texas. He was an ethnohistorian, and an early pioneer in African American anthropology. He is best known for his publication of "Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet". He was the first Black scholar to the faculty of Southern Methodist University. While at SMU he was instrumental in the establishing of the African American Studies Program.
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Johann Nestroy
1801 - 1862 (61 years)
Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy was a singer, actor and playwright in the popular Austrian tradition of the Biedermeier period and its immediate aftermath. He participated in the 1848 revolutions and his work reflects the new liberal spirit then spreading throughout Europe.
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H. B. Goodwin
1827 - 1893 (66 years)
Hannah Elizabeth Bradbury Goodwin Talcott was an American novelist, poet and educator from Maine who resided in Boston for many years. She wrote under various pen names, including H. B., H. E. B., H. B. G., Mrs. H. B. Goodwin, and Mrs. Goodwin-Talcott.
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Robert Lowry
1826 - 1899 (73 years)
Robert Lowry was an American preacher who became a popular writer of gospel music in the mid- to late-19th century. His best-known hymns include "Shall We Gather at the River", "Christ Arose!", "How Can I Keep from Singing?" and "Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus".
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