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 Literature,
#9351
Carl Michael Bellman
1740 - 1795 (55 years)
Carl Michael Bellman was a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, poet, and entertainer. He is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a powerful influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature, to this day. He has been compared to Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Hogarth, but his gift, using elegantly rococo classical references in comic contrast to sordid drinking and prostitution—at once regretted and celebrated in song—is unique.
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John McCarten
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
John McCarten was an American writer who contributed about 1,000 pieces for The New Yorker, serving as the magazine's film critic from 1945 to 1960 and Broadway theatre critic from 1960 to 1967. McCarten was born in Philadelphia into an Irish-American family. After serving in the Merchant Marine, he started writing for American Mercury, Fortune, and Time during the 1930s.
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Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller
1812 - 1890 (78 years)
Wilhelm Konrad Hermann Müller was a philologist of Germanic studies. From 1830 he studied philology and theology at the University of Göttingen as a student of Karl Otfried Müller. In 1841 he started work as a lecturer of German language and literature at Göttingen, becoming an associate professor in January 1845. From 1856 up until his death in 1890, he was a full professor of philology at Göttingen.
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Joseph Bosworth
1788 - 1876 (88 years)
Joseph Bosworth was an English scholar of the Anglo-Saxon language and compiler of the first major Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Biography Born in Derbyshire in 1788, Bosworth was educated at Repton School as a 'Poor Scholar' but left in his early teens and did not go to university. Despite the lack of a degree he somehow gained sufficient academic standing for the Church of England to allow him to become a priest. He became a curate in Bunny, Notts in 1814 and three years later became vicar of Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire. He was proficient in many European languages and made a particular study of Anglo-Saxon.
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Adolf Stern
1835 - 1907 (72 years)
Adolf Stern was a German literary historian and poet. He was born in Leipzig. He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Jena, and in 1868 was appointed professor of the history of literature in the Königlich-Sächsischen Polytechnikum of Dresden. His publications include the compilation Fünfzig Jahre deutscher Dichtung ; two collections of essays, Aus dem achtzehnten Jahrhundert , Geschichte der neuern Litteratur ; Grundriss der allgemeinen Literaturgeschichte ; and editing of Hauff, Herder, and Körner, Sr. His literary works include: Gedichte ; fourth edition, 19001866188018871911Leipzig...
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Jakob Bernays
1824 - 1881 (57 years)
Jacob Bernays was a German philologist and philosophical writer. Life Jacob Bernays was born in Hamburg to Jewish parents. His father, Isaac Bernays was a man of wide culture and the first orthodox German rabbi to preach in the vernacular; his brother, Michael Bernays, was also a distinguished scholar.
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Augustin Daly
1838 - 1899 (61 years)
John Augustin Daly was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America. He exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and earned him the title "the autocrat of the stage." He formed a permanent company in New York and opened Daly's Theatre in New York in 1879, and a second one in London in 1893.
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Nicolaus Delius
1813 - 1888 (75 years)
Nicolaus Delius was a German philologist. Delius was born at Bremen; he was distinguished especially as a student of Shakespeare and for his edition of Shakespeare's works. Life and work Nikolaus Delius went to school in Bremen. After passing his A-levels he read philosophy, history, Greek literature, and Sanskrit at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. In 1838 Delius finished his studies with a promotion in Bonn and taught at Berlin University afterwards. In 1844/1845 he wrote articles amongst others for the new Weser-Zeitung in Bremen. About a year later he made up his mind to work as a private lecturer at Bonn University.
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Hermann Fränkel
1888 - 1977 (89 years)
Hermann Ferdinand Fränkel was a German American classical scholar. He served as professor of Ancient Greek philology at Stanford University until 1953. Son of professor Max Fränkel and younger brother of Charlotte Fränkel, Fränkel studied classics at Berlin, Bonn and Göttingen. He later lectured at Göttingen, but was denied a professorship after the Machtergreifung. Eluding increasing racial discrimination by the Nazis, Fränkel immigrated to the United States in 1935. He was offered a professorship at Stanford shortly after. He also held guest professorships at University of California, Berke...
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Enid Starkie
1897 - 1970 (73 years)
Enid Mary Starkie CBE , was an Irish literary critic, known for her biographical works on French poets. She was a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and Lecturer and then Reader in the University.
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Alexander Adam
1741 - 1809 (68 years)
Alexander Adam was a Scottish teacher and writer on Roman antiquities. Life Alexander Adam was born near Forres, in Moray, the son of a farmer. From his earliest years he showed uncommon diligence and perseverance in classical studies, notwithstanding many difficulties and privations. In 1757 he went to Edinburgh, where he studied at the University of Edinburgh. During this period he lodged with a Mr Watson on Restalrig.
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Paul Lehmann
1884 - 1964 (80 years)
Paul Lehmann was a German paleographer and philologist. Biography Paul Lehmann was the son of businessman Gustav Lehmann and his wife Louisa Meyer. After attending school in his hometown, Lehmann started studying at the University of Göttingen. A successor to Ludwig Traube, Paul Lehmann began as docent at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1911 and became professor of medieval Latin philology there in 1917. Author of a dissertation on Franciscus Modius and a Habilitationsschrift on Johannes Sichardus, he made numerous contributions to the Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie. He is best known for Parodie im Mittelalter .
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Stuart Sherman
1881 - 1926 (45 years)
Stuart Pratt Sherman was an American literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencken outlived Sherman by three decades.
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Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
1177 - 1274 (97 years)
Sayyid Usman Marwandi, popularly known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar , was a Sufi saint and poet who is revered in South Asia. Born in Marwand, Sistan, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar eventually settled in Sindh and is revered by the local Sindhi population.
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Christina Stead
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a member of the Communist Party. She spent much of her life outside Australia, although she returned before her death.
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Khalil Mardam Bey
1895 - 1959 (64 years)
Khalil Mardam Bey was a Syrian poet and critic who is most notable for composing the lyrics of the Syrian National Anthem. Early life and career Mardam Bey was born in Ottoman Damascus to a well-known family of Turkish origin. His father was Ahmed Mukhtar Mardam Bey and his mother was Fatima Mahmoud Hamzaoui; they had six children - of which Mardam Bey was the only son. He was one of the descendants of the Ottoman general, statesman, and Grand Vizier Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha. He was chosen as the leader of the Syrian Literature Association, which was founded in 1926 and annulled by the French.
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Rod Serling
1924 - 1975 (51 years)
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator/on-screen host, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.
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Giuseppe Giacosa
1847 - 1906 (59 years)
Giuseppe Giacosa was an Italian poet, playwright and librettist. Life He was born in Colleretto Parella, now Colleretto Giacosa, near Turin. His father was a magistrate. Giuseppe went to the University of Turin, studying in the University of Turin, Faculty of Law. Though he gained a degree in law, he did not pursue a legal career.
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Karl Hoeck
1794 - 1877 (83 years)
Karl Friedrich Christian Hoeck was a German classical historian and philologist as well as a librarian. Life After attending the gymnasium at Wolfenbüttel, Hoeck studied classical studies in Göttingen from 1812 until 1816. During his period as a student he was already connecting to the university library; in 1814 he became accessist, and in 1815 secretary. Towards the end of his studies he was a member, together with Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen, Karl Lachmann and Ernst Schulze, of the Philological Seminary and specialized in ancient history under the direction of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren.
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Saadi Shirazi
1210 - 1291 (81 years)
Saadi Shīrāzī, better known by his pen name Saadi , also known as Sadi of Shiraz , was a Persian poet and prose writer of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts.
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Ella Young
1867 - 1956 (89 years)
Ella Young was an Irish poet and Celtic mythologist active in the Gaelic and Celtic Revival literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. Born in Ireland, Young was an author of poetry and children's books. She emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1925 as a temporary visitor and lived in California. For five years she gave speaking tours on Celtic mythology at American universities, and in 1931 she was involved in a publicized immigration controversy when she attempted to become a citizen.
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Mikayel Nalbandian
1829 - 1866 (37 years)
Mikayel Nalbandian was a Russian-Armenian writer, poet, political theorist and activist. Nalbandian was born in Nakhichevan-on-Don, an Armenian town in southern Russia, and traveled extensively, although he visited Armenia itself only once. A radical intellectual, Nalbandian was an avid advocate of secularism and anti-clericalism, the use of modern Armenian and a vocal critic of the conservative clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He also espoused anti-Catholicism. Inspired by the Enlightenment and the Italian unification, Nalbandian advocated reform, cultural nationalism and agrarianism among Armenians.
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Lucian Müller
1836 - 1898 (62 years)
Lucian Müller was a German classical scholar. Life Müller was born in Merseburg in the Province of Saxony. After studying at the universities of Berlin and Halle, he lived for five years in the Netherlands, working on his Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in den Niederlanden . Unable to obtain a university appointment in Germany, he accepted the professorship of Latin at the Imperial Historico-Philological Institute in St Petersburg.
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Vera Lachmann
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Vera Lachmann was a German poet, classicist and educator. After founding a school for Jewish children in Nazi Germany, she emigrated to the United States in 1939 and established Camp Catawba, a summer camp for boys.
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William Henry Ogilvie
1869 - 1963 (94 years)
William Henry Ogilvie was a Scottish-Australian narrative poet and horseman, jackaroo, and drover, and described as a quiet-spoken handsome Scot of medium height, with a fair moustache and red complexion. He was also known as Will Ogilvie, by the pen names including 'Glenrowan' and the lesser 'Swingle-Bar', and by his initials, WHO.
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Peadar O'Donnell
1893 - 1986 (93 years)
Peadar O'Donnell was one of the foremost radicals of 20th-century Ireland. O'Donnell became prominent as an Irish republican, socialist activist, politician and writer. Early life Peadar O'Donnell was born into an Irish-speaking family in Meenmore, near Dungloe, County Donegal in 1893. He was the fifth son of James O'Donnell, a kiln worker, migrant labourer, and musician, and Brigid Rodgers. His uncle Peter was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World in Butte, Montana, whom Peadar met on trips home to Ireland.
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Viktorin Kornel of Všehrdy
1460 - 1520 (60 years)
Viktorin Kornel ze Všehrd or simply Všehrd , was a Czech humanist and lawyer, working towards the end of the 15th century as Vice-scribe at the Land Court in the Prague Castle. He is famous for the most penetrating analysis of the Czech common law that he has put forward on some 460 pages under the title "On the Laws of the Czech Land Nine Books" . He has also translated some Latin texts.
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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
1647 - 1680 (33 years)
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court, who reacted against the "spiritual authoritarianism" of the Puritan era. Rochester embodied this new era, and he became as well known for his rakish lifestyle as for his poetry, although the two were often interlinked. He died as a result of a sexually transmitted infection at the age of 33.
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Curt Wachsmuth
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Curt Wachsmuth was a German historian and classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to philologist Friedrich Ritschl. Academic biography From 1856 to 1860 he studied at the universities of Jena and Bonn, where he later received his habilitation in classical philology and ancient history. In 1864 he became a professor in ancient history at the University of Marburg, followed by professorships in classical philology at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg . From 1885 to 1905 he was a professor of classical philology and ancient history at the University of Leipzig. In 1897/98 he serve...
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August Fischer
1865 - 1949 (84 years)
August Fischer was a German orientalist. From 1883 to 1889 he studied theology and Oriental philology at the universities of Berlin, Marburg and Halle, receiving his doctorate with a thesis on the source biographies of Ibn Ishaq, Biographien von Gewährsmännern des Ibn Ishaq. In 1890 he obtained his habilitation for Oriental philology at the University of Halle, and several years later became an associate professor in Berlin. From 1900 to 1930 he was a full professor of Oriental philology at the University of Leipzig, where in 1914/15 he served as dean to the faculty of philosophy. For several...
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Robert Benchley
1889 - 1945 (56 years)
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.
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Sultan Walad
1226 - 1312 (86 years)
Baha al-Din Muhammad-i Walad , more popularly known as Sultan Walad was the eldest son of Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Persian poet, Sufi, Hanafi Maturidi Islamic scholar and one of the founders of the Mawlawiya order.
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Pelham Edgar
1871 - 1948 (77 years)
Oscar Pelham Edgar was a Canadian teacher. He was a full professor and head of the Department of English at the Victoria College, Toronto from 1910 to 1938. He wrote many articles and several monographs on English literature. He had a talent for identifying and encouraging promising new authors. He was an active member of various literary societies, and was the force behind the establishment of the Canadian Writers’ Foundation to help needy authors.
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Gottfried Kinkel
1815 - 1882 (67 years)
Johann Gottfried Kinkel was a German poet also noted for his revolutionary activities and his escape from a Prussian prison in Spandau with the help of his friend Carl Schurz. Early life He was born at Oberkassel . Having studied theology at Bonn and Berlin, he established himself at Bonn in 1836 as a Privatdozent, or theology tutor, became master at the secondary school there, and was for a short time assistant preacher in Cologne.
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Stewart Parker
1941 - 1988 (47 years)
James Stewart Parker was a Northern Irish poet and playwright. Biography He was born in Sydenham, Belfast, of a Protestant working-class family. His birthplace is marked by an Ulster History Circle blue plaque. While still in his teens, he contracted bone cancer and had a leg amputated. He studied for an MA in Poetic Drama at Queen's University, Belfast, on a scholarship, before commencing teaching in the United States at Hamilton College and Cornell University.
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Carl Richard Unger
1817 - 1897 (80 years)
Carl Richard Unger was a Norwegian historian and philologist. Unger was professor of Germanic and Romance philology at the University of Christiania from 1862 and was a prolific editor of Old Norse texts.
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Thomas Gordon
1691 - 1750 (59 years)
Thomas Gordon was a Scottish writer and Commonwealthman. Along with John Trenchard, he published The Independent Whig, which was a weekly periodical. From 1720 to 1723, Trenchard and Gordon wrote a series of 144 essays entitled Cato's Letters, condemning corruption and lack of morality within the British political system and warning against tyranny. The essays were published as Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, at first in the London Journal and then in the British Journal. These essays became a cornerstone of the Commonwealth man tradition and were influential in shaping the ideas of the Country Party.
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Marion Davies
1897 - 1961 (64 years)
Marion Davies was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Educated in a religious convent, Davies fled the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl. As a teenager, she appeared in several Broadway musicals and one film, Runaway Romany . She soon became a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies.
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Mihail Sadoveanu
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting head of state for the communist republic . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as well as for his nature writing. An author whose career spanned five decades, Sadoveanu was an early associate of the traditionalist magazine Sămănătorul, before becoming known as a Realist writer and an adherent to the Poporanist current represented by Viața Românească journal. His books, critically acclaimed for...
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Eugen Prym
1843 - 1913 (70 years)
Eugen Prym was a German orientalist, who specialized in Semitic languages, especially Arabic and Aramaic. He was the brother of mathematician Friedrich Prym , and is the great-great grandfather of historian, philosopher, and MacArthur Fellow Jacob Soll.
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Alexandru Lambrior
1845 - 1883 (38 years)
Alexandru Lambrior was a Romanian philologist and folklorist. A native of Fălticeni in Moldavia, he studied at Iași University and, after beginning a career as a teacher, in Paris. He resumed teaching in 1878, but died of tuberculosis five years later. A pioneer of linguistics in his country, he revered the Romanian of the old medieval chronicles, deploring what he saw as the corrosive effects of neologisms. Lambrior compiled a successful anthology of texts covering some three centuries, and his work on early literature existed alongside an interest in folklore, about which he also proposed o...
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H. W. Garrod
1878 - 1960 (82 years)
Heathcote William Garrod was a British classical scholar and literary scholar. Early life and education Garrod was born in Wells, Somerset, the fifth of six children of solicitor Charles William Garrod and his wife, Louisa . He attended Bath College and Balliol College, Oxford. He received the 1900 Gaisford prize for Greek prose, and in 1901 the Newdigate Prize for an English poem. Following a first class in the Final Honour School of Literae Humaniores in the summer term of 1901, he was in October that year elected a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a position he kept for over 60 years.
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William Drennan
1754 - 1820 (66 years)
William Drennan was an Irish physician and writer who moved the formation in Belfast and Dublin of the Society of United Irishmen. He was the author of the Society's original "test" which, in the cause of representative government, committed "Irishmen of every religious persuasion" to a "brotherhood of affection". Drennan had been active in the Irish Volunteer movement and achieved renown with addresses to the public as his "fellow slaves" and to the British Viceroy urging "full and final" Catholic emancipation. After the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion, he sought to advance democratic reform through his continued journalism and through education.
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Richard Wünsch
1869 - 1915 (46 years)
Richard Wünsch was a German classical philologist. He studied classical philology at the University of Marburg, receiving his doctorate in 1893. Following graduation, he spent two years on an extended study trip to Paris, Spain, Italy and Greece. He obtained his habilitation in Breslau, and in 1902 was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Giessen. Later on, he held professorships at the universities of Königsberg and Münster . In World War I he died at Iłża, while serving as a battalion leader during an assault on the Russian army.
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Pierre-Henri Simon
1903 - 1972 (69 years)
Pierre-Henri Simon was a French intellectual, literary historian, essayist, novelist, poet, and literary critic. He won the Prix Ève Delacroix in 1963 Works Essays Destins de la personne, 1935L'Église et la Révolution sociale, 1938L'homme en procès: Malraux, Sartre, Camus, Saint-Exupéry L'Europe a-t-elle une conscience ?, 1953Contre la torture, 1957 Ce que je crois, 1966
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Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler
1815 - 1894 (79 years)
Heinrich Schweizer-Sidler was a Swiss philologist born in Elgg in the canton of Zürich. From 1835 to 1838 he received his education at the University of Zürich, where he had as instructors, Johann Caspar von Orelli, Hermann Sauppe and Bernhard Hirzel. In 1838 he continued his studies in Berlin, afterwards returning to Zürich, where in 1841 he received his habilitation. Later, he taught classes in secondary schools in Aarau and Zürich . In 1849 he became an associate professor at Zürich, and in 1864 was appointed a full professor of philology. In this position he specialized in Sanskrit and ...
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Einar Ólafur Sveinsson
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, often abbreviated Einar Ól. Sveinsson was an Icelandic scholar of Old Norse literature who was Professor of Icelandic Literature at the University of Iceland. His writings on and editions of sagas were particularly influential.
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Carl Wilhelm Böttiger
1807 - 1878 (71 years)
Carl Wilhelm Böttiger was a Swedish writer. Biography He was born in Västerås, and studied at the University of Uppsala, where, after extensive travels, he was appointed professor of modern literature in 1845, and in 1858 professor of aesthetics, from which post he retired in 1867.
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Anica Savić Rebac
1892 - 1953 (61 years)
Anica Savić-Rebac was a Serbian writer, classical philologist, translator, professor at the University of Belgrade. She wrote a number of essays and books about Njegoš, Goethe, Sophocles, Spinoza, Thomas Mann, Greek mystical philosophers, Plato, theory of literature. She also translated a number of works from Serbian into English, most notably The Ray of the Microcosm by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš.
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Xiong Foxi
1900 - 1965 (65 years)
Xiong Foxi was an American-educated Chinese playwright famous for his experimental drama in the Ding County, Hebei Province . His ambition was creating the peasants' drama of educative value. One of the plays, Sleeping on Brushwood and Tasting Gall popularized the topic of "national humiliation" through the image of Goujian, the Yue king of the Spring and Autumn period. He was the first President of the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
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