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,
#10051
Pieter Burman the Younger
1713 - 1778 (65 years)
Pieter Burman , also known as Peter or Pieter Burmann and distinguished from his uncle as , was a Dutch philologist. Life Born at Amsterdam, he was brought up by his uncle in Leiden, and afterwards studied law and philology under CA Duker and Arnold von Drakenborch at Utrecht. In 1735 he was appointed professor of eloquence and history at Franeker, with which the chair of poetry was combined in 1741. In the following year he left Franeker for Amsterdam to become professor of history and philology at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam. He was subsequently professor of poetry , general librarian , and inspector of the gymnasium .
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Ann Stanford
1916 - 1987 (71 years)
Ann Stanford was an American poet. Early life and education Ann Stanford was born in La Habra, California and attended Stanford University where she graduated in 1938 Phi Beta Kappa, and University of California, Los Angeles, with an M.A. in journalism in 1958, an M.A. in English in 1961, and a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1962.
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Konrad Hofmann
1819 - 1890 (71 years)
Konrad Hofmann was a German philologist, who specialized in Old French and German literature. He initially studied medicine for three years at the University of Munich, where his interests ultimately changed to philology. He then furthered his education at the universities of Erlangen, Berlin and Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1848 as a student of Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer. After graduation, he traveled to Paris, where he carried out research of the French Middle Ages. In 1853 he succeeded Johann Andreas Schmeller as an associate professor at Munich, becoming a full professor in 1856....
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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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Nikolay Shcherbina
1821 - 1869 (48 years)
Nikolay Fyodorovich Shcherbina was a 19th-century Russian poet. Nikolay Shcherbina was born in the Mius district of the Don Cossack Host in the mansion of his mother. His father was of Ukrainian descent, and his mother of Greek and Don Cossack descent. His parents moved to the city of Taganrog, populated by Greek and Italian colonists. This influenced his aesthetic feelings and acquainted him with the Greek way of life and popular legends. Shcherbina studied at the Taganrog Boys Gymnasium , where he fell in love with Greek language lessons and wrote the long poem Sappho at the age of thirteen...
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Thomas Hewitt Key
1799 - 1875 (76 years)
Thomas Hewitt Key, FRS was an English classical scholar. Life He was born in London and educated at St John's and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and graduated 19th wrangler in 1821. From 1825 to 1827 he was the founding professor of Pure mathematics in the University of Virginia; Key owned at least one slave during his time there. After his return to England was appointed in 1828 professor of Latin in the newly founded University of London.
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Karl Heinrich Heydenreich
1764 - 1801 (37 years)
Karl Heinrich Heydenreich was a German philosopher and poet. Heydenreich was born in Stolpen and was educated at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig and the University of Leipzig. In 1787 he became professor of philosophy at Leipzig. Writing works on Spinoza in the late 1780s, he became increasingly influenced by Immanuel Kant: his Betrachtungen was "the first real example of a Kantian philosophical theology". Forced to give up his professorship in 1797, he died unsalaried in Burgwerben.
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Guillaume de Machaut
1300 - 1377 (77 years)
Guillaume de Machaut was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the from the subsequent movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer.
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Gabdulla Amantay
1907 - 1938 (31 years)
Gabdulla Amantay was a Bashkir poet, writer and playwright. In 1937, he was arrested for his views on the protection of the people. He was rehabilitated posthumously, only in the 1990s. Creation His scientific works are devoted to the principles of the definition of national literature, problems in the study of Bashkir folklore and literary language.
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Robert Wilson
1540 - 1600 (60 years)
Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles. He was connected with sixteen plays intended for Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre, in partnership with other playwrights who also produced copy for Henslowe. While mentioned as a dramatist by Francis Meres in 1598, most existing information on his dramatic career is derived from Henslowe's papers.
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Rudolf von Raumer
1815 - 1876 (61 years)
Rudolf von Raumer was a German philologist and linguist, known for his extensive research of the German language. He was the son of geologist Karl Georg von Raumer. Biography He studied classical and Germanic philology at the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen, where his instructors were Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann and Jacob Grimm. From 1840, he was privatdocent at the University of Erlangen, where in 1846 he became an associate professor. In 1852, he became a full professor of German language and literature at Erlangen.
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Patrick Anderson
1915 - 1979 (64 years)
Patrick John MacAllister Anderson was an English-Canadian poet. He was educated at Oxford, where he was elected President of the Union, and Columbia. He taught in Montreal at Selwyn House School from 1940 to 1946 and at McGill University between 1948 and 1950. One of his students at both schools was Charles Taylor.
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H. M. Posnett
1855 - 1927 (72 years)
Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett was an Irish-New Zealand lawyer and scholar who was a pioneer in the field of comparative literature. Posnett was born in Dublin, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College in that city.
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Charles Forster Smith
1852 - 1931 (79 years)
Charles Forster Smith was an American classical philologist, who focused on the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Life Charles Forster Smith, the son of Pastor James F. Smith and his wife Julia Forster Smith, studied at Wofford College , Harvard University and then from 1874 to 1875 at the universities in Leipzig and Berlin. He then taught as a professor of Classical and German Philology at Wofford College . In 1881 completed a PhD at Leipzig University.
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Henry Alfred Todd
1854 - 1925 (71 years)
Henry Alfred Todd, Ph. D. was an American Romance philologist. Biography Henry Alfred Todd was born at Woodstock, Illinois on March 13, 1854. He was educated at Princeton , and at Paris, Berlin, and Madrid, , and at Johns Hopkins University , where he taught for several years. He held the chair or Romance languages at Stanford, 1891–93, and became professor of Romance philology at Columbia.
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Alice Voinescu
1885 - 1961 (76 years)
Alice Voinescu was a Romanian writer, essayist, university professor, theatre critic, and translator. She was the first Romanian woman to become a Doctor of Philosophy, which she did at the Sorbonne in 1913 in Paris. In 1922, she became a professor of theatrical history at what would become the Royal Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bucharest, where she taught for over two decades. In 1948, she was removed from her department and spent a year and seven months in prisons in Jilava and Ghencea. After her detention, she was kept under house arrest in the village of Costești near Târgu Frumos until 1954.
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Janet Lewis
1899 - 1998 (99 years)
Janet Loxley Lewis was an American novelist, poet, and librettist. Biography Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was a member of a literary circle that included Glenway Wescott, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and her future husband Yvor Winters. She was an active member of the University of Chicago Poetry Club. She taught at both Stanford University in California, and the University of California at Berkeley.
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Helen Magill White
1853 - 1944 (91 years)
Dr. Helen Magill White was an American academic and instructor. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. Early life and education Helen Magill was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Edward Hicks Magill and Sarah Warner Beans. She was the eldest of six children in a Quaker family. Magill was brought up to believe that she deserved the same education as a man and all five Magill daughters were educated to become college teachers. In 1859, the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where Magill enrolled as the only female student in the Boston Public Latin School. Her fath...
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Andrew Dalzell
1742 - 1806 (64 years)
Andrew Dalzell FRSE was a Scottish scholar and prominent figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life He was born in Gateside, Newliston near Linlithgow on 6 October 1742 the youngest son of William Dalzell, a carpenter, and his wife Alice Linn. His father died in 1751 and the young Dalzell then fell into the financial care of his namesake and uncle, the Rev Andrew Dalzell of Stoneykirk but remaining in Newliston under the supervision of Rev John Drysdale of Kirkliston. His early education was at Kirkliston Parish School, and t...
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Ludvig Holm-Olsen
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Ludvig Holm-Olsen was a Norwegian philologist. He was born in Tromøy as a son of shipmaster and accident investigator Peter Olsen and Louise Holm . He was a nephew of Magnus Olsen. Since 1941 he was married to Elsa Dorothea Triseth.
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Eiliv Skard
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Eiliv Skard was a Norwegian classical philologist. Personal life He was born in Levanger as a son of educators Matias Skard and Gyda Christensen . The family moved to Kristiansand in 1901. He was a nephew of Johannes Skar and Christopher Bruun, a brother of Bjarne and Sigmund Skard and a half-brother of Olav and Torfinn Skard. When Sigmund Skard married Åse Gruda Skard, Åsa became Eiliv's sister-in-law.
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Moritz Wagner
1813 - 1887 (74 years)
Moritz Wagner was a German explorer, collector, geographer and natural historian. Wagner devoted three years to the exploration of Algiers: it was here that he made important observations in natural history, which he later supplemented and developed: that geographical isolation could play a key role in speciation.
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Edmund Law Lushington
1811 - 1893 (82 years)
Edmund Law Lushington was a classical scholar, a professor of Greek, and Rector of the University of Glasgow. Life Edmund Law Lushington was born on 10 January 1811 in Singleton, Lancashire, England. He was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington of the Inner Temple, a judge in Ceylon, and his wife Sophia Phillips. He was educated at Charterhouse School and as a Greek scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a close friend of Alfred Lord Tennyson in the late 1820s.
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Adolf Gaspary
1849 - 1892 (43 years)
Adolf Gaspary was a German Romance philologist, specializing in Italian literature. From 1868 he studied philosophy and art history at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Freiburg, receiving his promotion in 1873 . In 1873–75 he took a study trip to France, Spain, Portugal and Italy — in Naples he came under the influence of Francesco De Sanctis. He furthered his studies with Adolf Tobler at the University of Berlin, where in 1878 he obtained his habilitation with a thesis on the Sicilian poetry school of the 13th century, Die sicilianische Dichterschule des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. In 18...
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Walter Scott
1855 - 1925 (70 years)
Walter Scott was an English classical scholar, professor of classics at the University of Sydney and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. Scott was born in Newton Tracey, Devon, England, third son of George Erving Scott and his wife Agnes, née Ward. He was educated at Christ's Hospital School and Balliol College, Oxford from 1874, where he graduated with first-class honours in classics and the Ireland, Craven and Derby scholarships.
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G. Sankara Pillai
1930 - 1989 (59 years)
Gopala Pillai Sankara Pillai , better known as G. Sankara Pillai, was an Indian playwright, literary critic, and director, known to be one of the pioneers of modern Malayalam theatre. A proponent of total theater, he was the founder of Nataka Kalari movement in Kerala and the chairman of the Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi. He was a recipient of a number of awards including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Drama in 1964 for the work Rail Palangal and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for the best playwright in 1979.
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Irving Wallace
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Irving Wallace was an American best-selling author and screenwriter. He was known for his heavily researched novels, many with a sexual theme. Early life Wallace was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Bessie Liss and Alexander Wallace . The family was Jewish and originally from Russia. Wallace was named after his maternal grandfather, a bookkeeper and Talmudic scholar of Narewka, Poland. Wallace grew up at 6103 Eighteenth Avenue in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he attended Kenosha Central High School. He was the father of Olympic historian David Wallechinsky and author Amy Wallace.
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Anton Elter
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Anton Elter was a German classical philologist. He studied philology at the universities of Münster and Bonn, receiving his PhD in 1880 with a dissertation on the Greek anthologist Stobaeus. Following graduation, he spent several years in Rome, where he worked as a private tutor to the son of Onorato Caetani of Sermoneta. In 1887 he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Czernowitz, then returning to Bonn as an associate professor of classical philology in 1890, where two years later, he gained a full professorship and was named director of philosophical seminars.
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Agnes Sligh Turnbull
1888 - 1982 (94 years)
Agnes Sligh Turnbull was a bestselling American writer, most noted for her works of historical fiction based in her native Western Pennsylvania. Biography Her parents were Alexander Halliday Sligh, an immigrant from Scotland, and Lucinda Hannah McConnell, also of Scottish descent. She attended the village school, and went on to boarding school before enrolling at the Teachers College at what is now called Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She also attended the University of Chicago before starting her career as a high school English teacher.
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Terence MacSwiney
1879 - 1920 (41 years)
Terence James MacSwiney was an Irish playwright, author and politician. He was elected as Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork during the Irish War of Independence in 1920. He was arrested by the British Government on charges of sedition and imprisoned in Brixton Prison. His death there in October 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike brought him and the Irish Republican campaign to international attention.
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Yvonne Georgi
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Yvonne Georgi was a German dancer, choreographer and ballet mistress. She was known for her comedic talents and her extraordinary jumping ability. In her roles as a dancer, choreographer, and ballet mistress, she was an influential figure in dance for decades.
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Roy Ridley
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Maurice Roy Ridley was a writer and poet, Fellow and Chaplain of Balliol College, Oxford. He was also a visiting professor at Bowdoin under the auspices of the Tallman Foundation, and shortly thereafter.
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Octav Botez
1884 - 1943 (59 years)
Octav Botez was a Romanian literary critic and historian. Born in Iași, his father Panait was a general in the Romanian Army, his mother was Smaranda and his brother was Eugeniu Botez. He attended primary school in the Sărărie neighborhood, followed by the National College and then the literature faculty of the University of Iași, where he studied between 1901 and 1906. His first published work appeared in 1904 in Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol's Arhiva review. He passed a qualifying examination in 1909 for French and philosophy, and taught high school from 1909 to 1913. In 1923, he earned a doc...
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Fanny Kemble
1809 - 1893 (84 years)
Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble was a British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and popular writer and abolitionist whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing, and works about the theatre.
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Max Koch
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Max Koch was a German historian and literary critic. Biography He studied at the University of Munich as a pupil of Michael Bernays, receiving his PhD in 1878. Subsequently, he continued his education in Berlin, London and Paris, and became a docent at the University of Marburg in 1879. He was appointed an assistant professor of literary history at the University of Breslau in 1890, where in 1895 he became a full professor. In 1918 he was named university rector.
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Karl Ferdinand Ranke
1802 - 1876 (74 years)
Karl Ferdinand Ranke was a German educator and classical philologist. He was the brother of historian Leopold von Ranke and theologians Friedrich Heinrich Ranke and Ernst Constantin Ranke . He studied theology and philology at the University of Halle, afterwards working as a schoolteacher at the Francke Foundations . In 1831 he was named director of the gymnasium in Quedlinburg, later transferring to Göttingen as successor to Friedrich August Grotefend as director of its gymnasium. In 1841 he became a professor at the University of Göttingen, and during the following year, was appointed di...
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Bonifaciu Florescu
1848 - 1899 (51 years)
Bonifaciu Florescu was a Romanian polygraph, the illegitimate son of writer-revolutionary Nicolae Bălcescu. Born secretly outside his parents' native Wallachia, at Pest, he was taken by his aristocratic mother in France, growing up as an erudite Francophone and Francophile. Florescu graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the University of Rennes, returning home at age 25 to become a successful lecturer, polemicist, and historian of culture. Influenced by his father's politics, he was for a while a prominent figure on the far-left of Romanian liberalism and nationalism, which pitted him a...
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Shishunala Sharif
1819 - 1889 (70 years)
Santha Shishunala Sharifa was an Indian social reformer, philosopher and poet. Birth and early life Santa Shishunala Sharifa was born on 7 March 1819 in Shishuvinahala, a village in Shigganvi taluk , Karnataka. He was the son of Imam Saheb, who was a disciple of Hajaresha Qadri, whose dream was to unite Hinduism and Islam. Hajaresha Qadri used to give "Linga Deeksha", or initiation by tying a linga around the neck of a disciple, as per the Lingayat tradition. His father used to teach him Ramayana, Mahabharata, and even the teachings of Allama Prabhu. Legend has it that Shishunala Sharifa was ...
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George Wither
1588 - 1667 (79 years)
George Wither was a prolific English poet, pamphleteer, satirist and writer of hymns. Wither's long life spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of England, during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, the Civil War, the Parliamentary period and the Restoration period.
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Otto Keller
1838 - 1927 (89 years)
Otto Keller was a German classical philologist who specialized in Horace. He also wrote a landmark two volume work on animals in antiquity. He was often called as "Horace Keller" to differentiate him from his father Adelbert von Keller who was also a philologist.
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Yeom Sang-seop
1897 - 1963 (66 years)
Yeom Sang-seop was a South Korean novelist and freedom fighter. He was an early pioneer of modern narrative in Korea and a "writer of the period of dissatisfaction". In this role, he was one of the first naturalistic and realistic writers in Korean literature. His role in the resistance to Japanese colonialism resulted in his arrest.
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