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,
#9551
Ignazio Silone
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Secondino Tranquilli , known by the pseudonym Ignazio Silone , was an Italian political leader, novelist, and short-story writer, world-famous during World War II for his powerful anti-fascist novels. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature ten times.
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Emlyn Williams
1905 - 1987 (82 years)
George Emlyn Williams, CBE was a Welsh writer, dramatist and actor. Early life Williams was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family at 1 Jones Terrace, Pen-y-ffordd, Ffynnongroyw, Flintshire. He was the eldest of the three surviving sons of Mary a former maid-servant and Richard Williams, a greengrocer. He spoke only Welsh until the age of eight. Later, he said he would probably have begun working in the mines at age 12 if he had not caught the attention of Sarah Grace Cooke, the model for Miss Moffat in The Corn Is Green. She was a teacher of French at the grammar school in Holywell, Flintshire in 1915, where Williams had gone on a scholarship.
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Rolfe Humphries
1894 - 1969 (75 years)
George Rolfe Humphries was a poet, translator, and teacher. Life An alumnus of Towanda High School, Humphries graduated cum laude from Amherst College in 1915. He was a first lieutenant machine gunner in World War I, from 1917 to 1918. In 1925, he married Helen Ward Spencer.
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Ernst Bickel
1876 - 1961 (85 years)
Ernst Johann Friedrich Bickel was a German classical philologist. He studied philology at the Universities of Strasbourg and Bonn, becoming a lecturer in classical philology at Bonn in 1906. Soon afterwards, he relocated to Greifswald as an associate professor. From 1909 to 1921 he was an associate professor at the University of Kiel, and later on, a full professor at the University of Königsberg . From 1928 to 1948 he was chair of classical philology and Roman literature at the University of Bonn.
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Gottschalk Eduard Guhrauer
1809 - 1854 (45 years)
Gottschalk Eduard Guhrauer was a German philologist and biographer. He is known principally for his 1842 biography of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his completion of Theodor Wilhelm Danzel's biography of Lessing, G. E. Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke .
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Joseph Kopp
1788 - 1842 (54 years)
Joseph Kopp was a German classical philologist. He attended the lyceum in Munich as a pupil of Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs, and from 1810 to 1812 studied philology at the University of Heidelberg, where his teachers included August Böckh and Georg Friedrich Creuzer. Afterwards, he worked as schoolteacher in Munich, and in 1819 was named a professor of history and second director of the philological seminar at the lyceum. In 1827 he was appointed professor of philology at the University of Erlangen, where he became a good friend and colleague of orientalist Friedrich Rückert.
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Anton Baumstark
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
Anton Baumstark was a German classical philologist. He was the brother of economist Eduard Baumstark and the father of historian Reinhold Baumstark . His grandson, Carl Anton Baumstark , was a noted orientalist and liturgist.
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Giovanni Bertacchi
1869 - 1942 (73 years)
Giovanni Bertacchi was a poet, teacher and Italian literary critic. Biography His poetry was heavily influenced by Giovanni Pascoli, both in terms of the search for metric forms and the characteristic taste for landscape descriptions.
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Matteo Maria Boiardo
1441 - 1494 (53 years)
Matteo Maria Boiardo was an Italian Renaissance poet, best known for his epic poem Orlando innamorato. Early life Boiardo was born in 1440, at or near, Scandiano ; the son of Giovanni di Feltrino and Lucia Strozzi, he was of noble lineage, ranking as Count of Scandiano, with seignorial power over Arceto, Casalgrande, Gesso, and Torricella. Boiardo was an ideal example of a gifted and accomplished courtier, possessing both a gallant heart and deep humanistic learning.
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John Harris
1666 - 1719 (53 years)
John Harris was an English writer, scientist, and Anglican priest. He is best known as the editor of the Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , the earliest of English encyclopaedias; as the compiler of the Collection Collection of voyages and travels, published under his name; and as the author of an unfinished county history of Kent.
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Ivor Gurney
1890 - 1937 (47 years)
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from bipolar disorder through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music. Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".
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William Taylor
1765 - 1836 (71 years)
William Taylor , often called William Taylor of Norwich, was a British essayist, scholar and polyglot. He is most notable as a supporter and translator of German romantic literature. Early life He was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England on 7 November 1765, the only child of William Taylor , a wealthy Norwich merchant with European trade connections, by his wife Sarah , second daughter of John Wright of Diss, Norfolk. William Taylor was taught Latin, French and Dutch by John Bruckner, pastor of the French and Dutch Protestant churches in Norwich, in preparation for continuing his father's continental trading in textiles.
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Petru Th. Missir
1856 - 1929 (73 years)
Petru Th. Missir was a Romanian literary critic, journalist and jurist. Born in Roman, Principality of Moldavia, into a family of ethnic Armenian merchants, he graduated from Iași's National College in 1873. While a student at the University of Vienna's law faculty, he entered and became secretary of the România jună society. He later studied law at Berlin University, where he earned a doctorate in 1879. A member of Junimea, he also served as the organization's attorney; he was both a lifelong friend to Ion Luca Caragiale and close to Titu Maiorescu and Petre P. Carp. After working as a magis...
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Jean-Michel Charlier
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Jean-Michel Charlier was a Belgian comics writer. He was a co-founder of the famed Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote. Life Charlier was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1924. In 1945 he got a job as a draughtsman in Brussels with World Press, the syndicate of Georges Troisfontaines, which worked mainly for Spirou magazine. The following year he and artist Victor Hubinon created the four-page comic strip L'Agonie du Bismarck. Charlier wrote the script and also drew the ships and airplanes. In 1947, Charlier and Hubinon began the long-running air-adventure comic strip Buck Danny. After a few year...
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Adib Pishavari
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Seyyed Ahmad Adib Pishavari , also known as Sayyed Ahmad B. Sehab al-Din Razawi , was a Sufi scholar who born in or near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, and was descended from Omar Sohravardi. Adib was a master of Persian literature.
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Ferdinand Holthausen
1860 - 1956 (96 years)
Ferdinand Holthausen was a German scholar of English and old Germanic languages. Life Holthausen received his doctorate in 1884 from Universität Leipzig with his thesis Studien zur Thidrekssaga. He received his Habilitation in 1885 at Heidelberg. He then helds posts at Göttingen and Gießen , before becoming Professor für Altgermanistik at the University of Gothenburg. From 1900 until his retirement in 1925, he was Professor ordinarius for English studies at Universität Kiel. He then became an emeritus professor, but from 1927 to 1935 he was also a guest professor at Universität Frankfurt.
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Henry Martyn Clark
1857 - 1916 (59 years)
Henry Martyn-Clark was an Afghan-born adopted British medical missionary stationed in Amritsar in the late 19th century. Biography Clark was born to Afghan parents, and was adopted after his mother's death by Elizabeth and Rev. Robert Clark in 1859. It is thought that he was named Henry Martyn after the Anglican missionary to Persia and India. Clark was educated at the University of Edinburgh and received his MD in 1892. In 1881 he was accepted by the Church Missionary Society to start the Amritsar Medical Mission as a Medical Missionary. He left for Amritsar to join his father on 4 February 1882.
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Caroline Ransom Williams
1872 - 1952 (80 years)
Caroline Ransom Williams was an Egyptologist and classical archaeologist. She was the first American woman to be professionally trained as an Egyptologist. She worked extensively with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other major institutions with Egyptian collections, and published Studies in ancient furniture , The Tomb of Perneb , and The Decoration of the Tomb of Perneb: The Technique and the Color Conventions , among others. During the Epigraphic Survey of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute's first season in Luxor, she helped to develop the "Chicago House method" ...
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George Stuart
1715 - Present (311 years)
George Stuart FRSE LLD was an 18th-century Scottish classicist. He was joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Life From 1741 to 1775 he was Professor of Humanities at the University of Edinburgh also serving as the University Librarian during this period. The humanities course included the teaching of Latin and the study of Roman Antiquities.
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Muthuswami Dikshitar
1775 - 1835 (60 years)
Muthuswami Dikshitar , mononymously Dikshitar, was a South Indian poet, singer and veena player, and a legendary composer of Indian classical music, who is considered one of the musical trinity of Carnatic music. Muthuswami Dikshitar was born on 24 March 1775 in Tiruvarur near Thanjavur, in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu in India, to a family that is traditionally traced back to Virinichipuram in the northern boundaries of the state. His compositions, of which around 500 are commonly known, are noted for their elaborate and poetic descriptions of Hindu gods and temples and for capturing the essence of the raga forms through the vainika style that emphasises gamakas.
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Maurits Hansen
1794 - 1842 (48 years)
Maurits Christopher Hansen was a Norwegian writer. He was born in Modum as a son of Carl Hansen and Abigael Wulfsberg . In October 1816 he married teacher Helvig Leschly . He was a father-in-law of Eilert Sundt, and thus grandfather of Einar Sundt.
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Heinrich Schenkl
1859 - 1919 (60 years)
Heinrich Schenkl was an Austrian classical philologist. He was the son of classical philologist Karl Schenkl. From 1876 to 1880 he studied classical philology, archaeology and philosophy at the University of Vienna, where his instructors included Theodor Gomperz and Wilhelm von Hartel. For several years he worked as a gymnasium teacher in Vienna, and in 1892 became an associate professor at the University of Graz. From 1896 onward, he served as a full professor at Graz, being named university dean in 1899. In 1917 he appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Vienna.
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Edward Harper Parker
1849 - 1926 (77 years)
Edward Harper Parker was an English barrister and sinologist who wrote a number of books on the First and Second Opium Wars and other Chinese topics. On his return to England he ended his career as a university professor.
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Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko was a German librarian and scholar, born in Neustadt, Silesia. Biography From 1859 to 1863 he studied classical philology at the universities of Breslau and Bonn. At Bonn, he was influenced by philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl and worked as an assistant at the university library. In 1863, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the prologues of Plautus and Terence. Following graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher in Opole and then in Lucerne .
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Jean d'Arras
1350 - 1394 (44 years)
Jean d'Arras was a 14th-century writer from Northern France about whom little is known. He collaborated with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in putting together a collection of stories entitled L'Évangile des quenouilles . The frame story features a group of ladies at their spinning who relate the current theories on a great variety of subjects. The work is of considerable value for the light it throws on medieval manners, and for its echoes of folklore, sometimes deeply buried under layers of Christian tradition.
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Jack Brooks
1912 - 1971 (59 years)
Jack Brooks was an English-American lyricist. Brooks was born in Liverpool, England. His family was Jewish and originally from Russia, having changed their surname to Brooks from Bruch. He wrote lyrics of many popular songs, including "Ole Buttermilk Sky" "That's Amore" and " Wagon Train" the second theme used on the television program, Wagon Train. He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1946.
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Raymond Weeks
1863 - 1954 (91 years)
Raymond Weeks was an American linguist and academic. He was Chair of Romance Languages at the University of Missouri from 1895 to 1908, and later taught at Columbia University in New York City. Early life Raymond Weeks was born on January 2, 1863, in Tabor, Iowa. He was educated at Price High School in Kansas City, Missouri. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1890 and a master's degree in 1891.
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Fan Zhongyan
989 - 1052 (63 years)
Fan Zhongyan , courtesy name Xiwen , was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, poet, and politician of the Song dynasty. After serving the central government for several decades, Fan was appointed Prime Minister or Chancellor over the entire Song empire. Fan's philosophical, educational and political contributions continue to be influential to this day, and his writings remain a core component of the Chinese literary canon. His attitude towards official service is encapsulated by his oft-quoted line on the proper attitude of scholar-officials: "They were the first to worry the worries of All-under-Heaven, and the last to enjoy its joys".
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Nathaniel Cotton
1707 - 1788 (81 years)
Nathaniel Cotton was an English physician and poet. Cotton is thought to have studied at Leiden University, possibly under Herman Boerhaave. Cotton specialised in the care of patients with mental health issues, maintaining an asylum known as the Collegium Insanorum, at St Albans. William Cowper was one of his patients and held Cotton in high regard.
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Francis Harvey Green
1861 - 1951 (90 years)
Francis Harvey Green was an American educator, poet and lecturer. He served as Chair of English at West Chester Normal School for 30 years and as Headmaster of the Pennington School. The Francis Harvey Green Elementary School in Bethel Township, Pennsylvania, and two libraries at West Chester University were named in his honor.
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August Wilmanns
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
August Wilmanns was a German classical philologist and librarian. He studied classical philology at the Universities of Bonn and Tübingen, receiving his doctorate in 1863 with a dissertation on the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. In 1870 he began work as a librarian at the Universitätsbibliothek in Freiburg, followed by professorships at the Universities of Innsbruck and Kiel . In 1874 he was named Oberbibliothekar at the University of Königsberg, shortly afterwards, given the same title at the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Göttingen .
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Harley Granville-Barker
1877 - 1946 (69 years)
Harley Granville-Barker was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist. After early success as an actor in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, he increasingly turned to directing and was a major figure in British theatre in the Edwardian and inter-war periods. As a writer his plays, which tackled difficult and controversial subject matter, met with a mixed reception during his lifetime but have continued to receive attention.
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Constantijn Huygens
1596 - 1687 (91 years)
Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem , was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens.
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Martin Luther D'Ooge
1839 - 1915 (76 years)
Martin Luther D'Ooge was a Dutch-born American classics scholar. His Huguenot family emigrated to the US in 1851. He was Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Michigan from 1868 to 1912.
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Camille Roy
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Camille Roy was a Canadian priest and literary critic. He wrote extensively about the development of French-Canadian literature, and its importance in the promotion of French language and culture and of Christian ideals.
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John Lyly
1554 - 1606 (52 years)
John Lyly was an English writer, playwright, courtier, and parliamentarian. He was best known during his lifetime for his two books Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and its sequel Euphues and His England , but is perhaps best remembered now for his eight surviving plays, at least six of which were performed before Queen Elizabeth I. Lyly's distinctive and much imitated literary style, named after the title character of his two books, is known as euphuism. He is sometimes grouped with other professional dramatists of the 1580s and 1590s like Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, George Peele, and Thomas Lodge, as one of the so-called University Wits.
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Charles Lee
1870 - 1956 (86 years)
Charles James Lee was a British author. He published five novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in addition to many short stories and plays about the working people of Cornwall. Life Charles Lee was born in London to an artistic family. He was educated at Highgate School, was awarded a BA from London University in 1889 and published his first novel, Widow Woman, in 1896. Suffering from bad health, he visited Cornwall in 1900 for its better climate, and stayed in Cornwall for seven years. There he lived amongst the group of artists who formed the Newlyn School. His Cornish Tales ha...
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Antonio Minturno
1500 - 1574 (74 years)
Antonio Sebastiano Minturno was an Italian poet and critic, and Bishop of Ugento. His influential literary theories were largely Aristotelian. He was born at Minturno, then part of the Kingdom of Naples.
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Leslie Hotson
1897 - 1992 (95 years)
John Leslie Hotson, was a scholar of Elizabethan literary puzzles. Biography He was born at Delhi, Ontario, on 16 August 1897. He studied at Harvard University, where he obtained a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. He went on to hold a number of academic posts.
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William Young Sellar
1825 - 1890 (65 years)
William Young Sellar FRSE LLD was a Scottish classical scholar. Life Sellar was born at Morvich in Sutherland the son of Patrick Sellar of Westfield, Morayshire and his wife Anne Craig of Barmakelty, Moray. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy 1832 to 1839 and afterwards studied classics at the University of Glasgow. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, as a Snell Exhibitioner. Graduating with a first-class in classics, he was elected fellow of Oriel, and, after holding assistant professorships at Durham, Glasgow and St Andrews, was appointed professor of Greek at St Andrews . In 1863 he...
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Matthias Bernegger
1582 - 1640 (58 years)
Matthias Bernegger was a German philologist, astronomer, university professor and writer of Latin works. Life Bernegger's Protestant family was, like other so called exulanten, expelled from Habsburg monarchy during the counter reformation. They settled in Regensburg, where Bernegger attended the Gymnasium. In 1599, the 17-year-old began studies in Strasbourg, mainly in the fields of philology and natural sciences. He was fascinated by astronomy and was in contact with Johannes Kepler and Wilhelm Schickard.
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Joannis Vislicensis
1485 - 1520 (35 years)
Joannis Vislicensis was a medieval author of epic poetry in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland, a representative of the Polish-Latin branch of poetry. Biography There is virtually no biographical information about Joannis beyond his poetic works and related correspondence with his teacher, Pavel the Ruthenian, and most of biographical details are uncertain or deduced indirectly. From his letter to Pavel the Ruthenian one may deduce he was a Pole From his agnomen it is deduced he was born in a Wislica. Polish historians consider Wislica in Poland to be his birthplace. Belar...
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John Fante
1909 - 1983 (74 years)
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel Ask the Dust about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depression-era Los Angeles. It is widely considered the great Los Angeles novel, and is one in a series of four, published between 1938 and 1985, that are now collectively called "The Bandini Quartet". Ask the Dust was adapted into a 2006 film starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek. Fante's published works while he lived included five novels, one novella, and a short story collection. Additional w...
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Dwijendranath Tagore
1840 - 1926 (86 years)
Dwijendranath Tagore was an Indian Bengali poet, song composer, philosopher, mathematician and painter. He was one of the pioneers of shorthand and notation in Bengali script. He was the eldest son of Debendranath Tagore and the eldest brother of Rabindranath Tagore.
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Wu Jingzi
1701 - 1754 (53 years)
Wu Jingzi , was a Chinese novelist during the Qing dynasty. He was born in the city now known as Quanjiao, Anhui and who died in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. He was the author of The Scholars, often seen as the foremost Chinese satiric novel.
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Julia Irvine
1848 - 1930 (82 years)
Julia Josephine Thomas Irvine was the fourth president of Wellesley College, serving from 1894 to 1899. Irvine was the daughter of Indiana suffragist Mary M. Thomas. A Cornell University graduate, she came to Wellesley College as a professor of Greek in 1890. During her tenure as Wellesley president, she enacted a number of reforms and eliminated some of the rules for students such as silent time, domestic work, the prohibition on Sunday library hours and mandatory Chapel attendance. She replaced several professors, especially those without advanced degrees, as part of an overhaul of academic...
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Clinton Scollard
1860 - 1932 (72 years)
Clinton Scollard was an American poet and writer of fiction. He was a Professor of English at Hamilton College. Professional career Scollard was born at Clinton, Oneida County, New York on September 18, 1860, son of James Isaac and Mary Elizabeth Scollard. He graduated from the Clinton Liberal Institute in 1877 and Hamilton College in 1881, and in 1881–1883 attended Harvard University, where his friends included poets Bliss Carman and Frank Dempster Sherman. At Hamilton, where he was a member of the Chi Psi fraternity, he played varsity baseball and is credited with introducing the curveball...
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F. C. Burnand
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
Sir Francis Cowley Burnand , usually known as F. C. Burnand, was an English comic writer and prolific playwright, best known today as the librettist of Arthur Sullivan's opera Cox and Box. The son of a prosperous family, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge and was expected to follow a conventional career in the law or in the church, but he concluded that his vocation was the theatre. From his schooldays he had written comic plays, and from 1860 until the end of the 19th century, he produced a series of more than 200 Victorian burlesques, farces, pantomimes and other stage works. His early su...
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Immanuel Gottlieb Huschke
1761 - 1828 (67 years)
Immanuel Gottlieb Huschke was a German classical philologist. Academic background He studied theology and philology at the University of Jena. After several years spent working in the Netherlands, he returned to Germany in 1800, taking up residence with his brother in the town of Munden. In 1802 he gained his habilitation at the University of Göttingen, where he taught classes in Greek and Latin literature.
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José Fernández Montesinos
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
José Fernández-Montesinos Lustau was a Spanish historian and literary critic belonging to the so-called Generación del 27, a generation he himself referred to as "this ill-fated, mistreated and dispersed generation of mine".
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