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 Mathematics,
#9151
William Gilham
1818 - 1872 (54 years)
William Henry Gilham was an American soldier, teacher, chemist, and author. A member of the faculty at Virginia Military Institute, in 1860, he wrote a military manual which was still in modern use 145 years later. He served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, and became president of Southern Fertilizing Company in Richmond after the War.
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Louis Awad
1915 - 1990 (75 years)
Louis Awad was an Egyptian intellectual and a writer. Born in the upper Egypt, in Sharuna village, in Minya, Egypt, Awad studied at the literature department of Cairo University before setting off to England for further studies before the Second World War. He returned to Egypt in 1941, after which he lived in the Cairo district of Dokki for much of his adult life.
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Percy John Harding
1845 - 1943 (98 years)
Percy John Harding was an English mathematician, noteworthy as an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1912. The elder son of William Harding, a surgeon in London, Percy J. Harding received his B.A. in 1869 and his M.A. in 1874 from Cambridge University. He became a lecturer at University College, London and Bedford College, London. On 1 March 1906 at Bedford College, London, he gave a talk The History and Human Side of Mathematics with lantern illustrations. Using lantern slides, he gave a talk The history and evolution of arithmetic division at the ICM at 9 PM ...
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Rudolph Goclenius the Younger
1572 - 1621 (49 years)
Rudolph Goclenius the Younger was a German physician and professor at Philipps University of Marburg. Goclenius was born in Wittenberg, the oldest son of Rudolph Goclenius, who was also professor of physics, logic, mathematics and ethics at Marburg. He enrolled at the University of Marburg at the age of 15. As a student, Goclenius was a respondent to his father in a physical disputation and received his master's degree in 1591. After obtaining his medical degree in 1601, Goclenius became the first rector of the newly founded gymnasium in Büdingen and a personal physician to Wolfgang Ernst I, Count of Isenburg-Büdingen.
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Hannes Leitgeb
#9156
Peter Laird McKinlay
1901 - 1972 (71 years)
Dr Peter Laird McKinlay FRSE FSS was a Scottish medical statistician. His report on the effects of milk on schoolchildren brought about the introduction of Free School Milk in British Schools from the Education Act 1944.
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Henricus Brucaeus
1530 - 1593 (63 years)
Heinrich Brucaeus, also Heinrich van den Brock, sometimes falsely Heinrich Brucaeus of Aalst was a German physician, astronomer and mathematician. Life Heinrich Brucaeus was born in Aalst, Flanders as the son of the patron Gerhard van den Brock. He was educated at schools and universities in Ghent, Paris, and Bologna, studied medicine and philosophy, and became a doctor of both disciplines at University of Paris. After that, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Leuven
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Karl von den Steinen
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Karl von den Steinen was a German physician , ethnologist, explorer, and author of important anthropological work, which is particularly to the study of Indian cultures of Central Brazil, and the art of the Marquesas. He laid the permanent foundations for Brazilian ethnology.
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Rita Hayworth
1918 - 1987 (69 years)
Rita Hayworth was an American actress. She achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars, appearing in 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II.
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John Cruickshank
1787 - 1875 (88 years)
John Cruickshank was a Scottish mathematician. Life He was born at Barnhills farm near Rothiemay on 5 July 1787, the son of James Cruickshank , a weaver living on the farm. In 1794, on the death of his father, the family moved to be with an aunt at Knowehead farm in Marnoch. His early years were spent as a shepherd boy and he had little education.
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Nazım Terzioglu
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Nazım Terzioğlu was one of the first mathematicians in Turkish academia. Early life Nazım Terzioğlu completed his primary education in his place of birth, Kayseri. He started his secondary education in Istanbul and then continued in Izmir until his graduation from Izmir High School in 1930. At that time, some of Turkey's most qualified mathematics teachers worked at Izmir High School. Alumni of that school included mathematicians such as Cahit Arf and Tevfik Oktay Kabakcıoğlu .
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George Francis Hardy
1855 - 1914 (59 years)
Sir George Francis Hardy was a British actuary, Egyptologist and amateur astronomer. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1877 and was President of the Institute of Actuaries from 1908 to 1910.
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Robert Henderson
1871 - 1942 (71 years)
Robert Henderson was a Canadian-American mathematician and actuary. Education and career Robert Henderson matriculated at age 16 at the University of Toronto and graduated there in 1891 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He spent a year as a fellow of the University of Toronto and then in 1892 was employed at the Government Insurance Department in Ottawa until he left Canada in 1897. From 1897 until his retirement in 1936 he worked for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. There he was from 1903 to 1911 an assistant actuary, from 1911 to 1920 an actuary, from 1920 t...
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Hugh Jones
1691 - 1760 (69 years)
The Reverend Hugh Jones is the most famous and accomplished of a sometimes confusing array of Anglican clergymen of the same name from the American colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Jones is best known for his authorship of The Present State of Virginia, and a short view of Maryland and North Carolina . For several years he taught mathematics at The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Jones Hall is named for him.
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James Waterman Glover
1868 - 1941 (73 years)
James Waterman Glover was an American mathematician, statistician, and actuary. Biography He received in 1892, his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and in 1895 his Ph.D. in mathematics under Maxime Bôcher from Harvard University with thesis Properties of the Partial Differential Equation . He became in 1895 an instructor, in 1903 an assistant professor, in 1906 an associate professor, and in 1911 a full professor at the University of Michigan, retiring as professor emeritus in 1938.
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Patrick Brendan Kennedy
1929 - 1966 (37 years)
Patrick Brendan Kennedy was an Irish chess champion, and an academic in Mathematics, notable for his work in complex analysis. Early life, family, and personal life Kennedy was the third child of Pat Kennedy and Kit O'Sullivan, his father, a master carpenter by trade, decided instead to join the police force in 1923, many on his mother's side were blacksmiths near Castlemaine. His parents moved to Ballylongford in 1936, and secured a transfer for Kennedy to attend the North Monastery secondary school in Cork.
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Homer E. Newell Jr.
1915 - 1983 (68 years)
Homer Edward Newell Jr. was a mathematics professor and author who became a powerful United States government science administrator—eventually rising to the number three position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . In the early 1960s, he either controlled or influenced virtually all non-military uncrewed space missions for the free world.
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John Septimus Roe
1797 - 1878 (81 years)
John Septimus Roe was the first Surveyor-General of Western Australia. He was a renowned explorer, a member of Western Australia's legislative and executive councils for nearly 40 years, but also a participant in the Pinjarra massacre on 28 October 1834.
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Johannes Acronius Frisius
1520 - 1564 (44 years)
Johannes Acronius Frisius was a Dutch doctor and mathematician of the 16th century. He was named after his city of birth, Akkrum in Friesland. From 1547 he worked as professor of mathematics in Basel, then after 1549 as professor of logic, and in 1564 of medicine. He died from the plague in the same year. Apart from mathematical and scientific works, he wrote Latin poetry and humanist tracts.
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John Hill
1810 - 1860 (50 years)
John Hill was an English explorer of South Australia and part of the European exploration of Australia. Hill was the first European to see and traverse the Clare Valley. An enigmatic and little-known individual, during the late 1830s John Hill sighted and named several important rivers of South Australia, as well as many lesser streams and creeks. The former unquestionably include the Wakefield and Hutt rivers, plus the Gilbert and Light rivers. He was also the first European to explore the headwaters of the Torrens and Onkaparinga rivers.
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Kirik the Novgorodian
1110 - 1157 (47 years)
Kirik the Novgorodian was a monk of the Antoniev Monastery and later a hieromonk in the entourage of Archbishop Niphont of Novgorod famous for writing the first mathematical treatise in Eastern Slavdom, the Uchenie o chislakh ; he also wrote entries in the Novgorod First Chronicle in the 1140s and asked some of the 152 questions of Niphont in a theological work known as the Voproshanie Kirika He also translated the works of Patriarch Nikephoros I of Constantinople as well as the Pentateuch.
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Filippo Ferrari
1551 - 1626 (75 years)
Filippo Ferrari was an Italian Servite friar and scholar, known as a geographer, and also noted as a hagiographer. Life He was born at Oviglio in Piedmont. It is near Alessandria, and he was nicknamed Alessandrino . He taught mathematics for 48 years at the University of Pavia.
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Perham Wilhelm Nahl
1869 - 1935 (66 years)
Perham Wilhelm Nahl was an American printmaker, painter, illustrator and an arts educator active in Northern California. Early life Perham Wilhelm Nahl was born to Annie and Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl in San Francisco, California. By the mid-1870s the extended Nahl family had moved to the nearby island town of Alameda, where Perham first studied drawing and painting with both his father and his uncle, the fine art painter Charles Christian Nahl. The young Nahl became a director and president of the Alameda Olympic Club, was a competitive diver at the Pacific Swimming Club, and served on the ...
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James McMahon
1856 - 1922 (66 years)
James McMahon was an Irish mathematician whose career was spent at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He was a committed educator, and an early proponent of professionalization in the teaching of advanced mathematics in America. A professor and Chairman of the Mathematics Department in Cornell University's College of Arts & Sciences, McMahon was one of the earliest members of the American Mathematical Society in 1891. For seven years he served as associate editor of the Annals of Mathematics. He was also the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Secretary , Section A ; General Secretary , and Vice-President .
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Serge Elisséeff
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Serge Elisséeff was a Russian-French scholar, Japanologist, and professor at Harvard University. He was one of the first Westerners to study Japanese at a university in Japan. He began studying Japanese at the University of Berlin, then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University in 1912, becoming the first Westerner to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University in Japanese as well as its first Western graduate student.
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William Thomson
1856 - 1947 (91 years)
Sir William Thomson FRSE LLD was a 19th/20th century Scottish mathematician and physicist primarily working as a university administrator in South Africa. Life He was born on New Year's Eve, 31 December 1856, in the village of Kirkton of Mailler in Perthshire. He was educated at Perth Academy then studied mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with a BSc and MA in 1878 and began assisting in lectures at the University.
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Émile Merlin
1875 - 1938 (63 years)
Émile Alphonse Louis Merlin was a Belgian mathematician and astronomer. Merlin attended the secondary school Athénée royal de Bruxelles. He then studied at the University of Liège and the University of Ghent, where in 1900 he received his doctorate in mathematics. This was followed by a stay abroad between 1901 and 1903 in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and in Göttingen. In 1904 he became an assistant at the observatory in Uccle. In 1909 he was promoted to astronomer adjoint. From 1912 he was a lecturer on astronomy and geodesy at the University of Ghent and in 1919 he became...
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Henry Moseley
1801 - 1872 (71 years)
Henry Moseley was an English churchman, mathematician, and scientist. Biography The son of Dr. William Willis Moseley, who kept a school at Newcastle-under-Lyme, and his wife Margaret , he was born on 9 July 1801. He was sent at an early age to the grammar school there, and when fifteen or sixteen to a school at Abbeville. Later he attended, for a short time, a naval school in Portsmouth.
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Albert Pighius
1490 - 1542 (52 years)
Albert Pighius was a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, mathematician, and astronomer. Life He studied philosophy and began the study of theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, where Adrian of Utrecht, later Pope Adrian VI, was one of his teachers. Pighius completed his studies at Cologne, but it is not clear whether he received the degree of Doctor of Theology. When his teacher Adrian became pope, he went to Rome, where he also remained during the reigns of Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, and was repeatedly employed in ecclesiastical-political embassies. He had taught mathematics to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, afterward Paul III.
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Tadeusz Błotnicki
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Tadeusz Błotnicki was a Polish sculptor, active mainly in Kraków. He was a disciple of Parys Filippi, , and Kaspar von Zumbusch, from Vienna, and created many sculptures and busts in Cracow and throughout Galicia. He was also a known figure in the artistic spheres of pre-war Cracow and was friends with Gabriela Zapolska, Teofil Lenartowicz and Jacek Malczewski, who painted his portrait.
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Pietro Montana
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Pietro Montana was a 20th-century Italian-American sculptor, painter and teacher, noted for his war memorials and religious works. Biography He was born in Alcamo, Sicily, the third of six children of Ignazio and Marianna Montana. The family emigrated to the United States in 1904, and settled in Brooklyn, New York City. As a teen, he apprenticed under a photographer, then started his own photography studio in the family home. He attended night classes for six years at the School of Art, Cooper Union, studying under George Thomas Brewster and graduating in 1915. He also studied at the Mechani...
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Hugh Segar
1868 - 1954 (86 years)
Hugh William Segar was a New Zealand mathematician and university professor. He was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England in 1868. He was educated at Liverpool College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was 2nd Wrangler and a Yeats Prizeman. He was Professor of Mathematics at University College, Auckland.
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Giuseppe Lauricella
1867 - 1913 (46 years)
Giuseppe Lauricella was an Italian mathematician who contributed to analysis and theory of elasticity. Born in Agrigento , Lauricella studied at the University of Pisa, where his professors included Luigi Bianchi, Ulisse Dini and Vito Volterra. He taught in secondary schools from 1895 to 1898, then became a professor at the University of Catania. In 1907 he became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1908 in Rome.
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George Frederic Watts
1817 - 1904 (87 years)
George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
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Matthew Wyatt Joseph Fry
1863 - 1943 (80 years)
Matthew Wyatt Joseph Fry was an Irish mathematician and academic who served as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin from 1910 to 1925. Life and career Fry was born in County Clare, where his father was Rev Henry Fry of Kilkeedy parish , the family later moving to Bourney parish, Corbally, Roscrea, Co Tipperary. Matthew attended Galway Grammar school, and then TCD, studying mathematics. He was awarded BA , and MA and Fellowship , being appointed Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy that same year. In 1910 he became the Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy.
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Robert Aldrich
1918 - 1983 (65 years)
Robert Burgess Aldrich was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick auteur working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed mainly films noir, war movies, westerns and dark melodramas with Gothic overtones. His most notable credits include Vera Cruz , Kiss Me Deadly , The Big Knife , Autumn Leaves , Attack , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? , Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte , The Flight of the Phoenix , The Dirty Dozen , and The Longest Yard .
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Jacques Deruyts
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Joseph Gustave Jacques Deruyts was a Belgian mathematician, known as a pioneer of group representation theory. He is the elder brother of the mathematician :fr:François Deruyts Deruyts received his doctorate in 1883 from the University of Liège and was appointed there as assistant to Louis Pérard in experimental physics. Deruyts joined the academic staff in mathematics and was appointed in 1883 a professor of geometry at the University of Liège, where he remained until retirement as professor emeritus.
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Emil Filla
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Emil Filla was a Czech painter. He was a leader of the avant-garde in Prague between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter. Early life Filla was born in Chropyně, Moravia, and spent his childhood in Brno, but later moved to Prague. Beginning in 1903, he studied at , but he left the school in 1906.
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Boris Kalin
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
Boris Kalin was a Slovene sculptor. He mainly created classical figures, public monuments, and nudes. Some of his sculptures are kept at Brdo Castle as part of its collection of modern Slovene art. Biography Kalin was born in Solkan, which was then a suburb of the Austro-Hungarian town of Gorizia and is now part of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. He attended the technical secondary school in Ljubljana and continued his studies between 1924 and 1929 at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts with the professors Rudolf Valdec, Frano Kršinić, Ivo Kredić, and Ivan Meštrović. From 1945 to 1970, Kalin taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana; he was also its dean for two terms.
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R. W. H. T. Hudson
1875 - 1904 (29 years)
Ronald William Henry Turnbull Hudson was a British mathematician. Ronald W.H.T. Hudson was considered in his day to be the most gifted geometer in all of Cambridge. Hudson's life was cut short when he died in a mountaineering accident at the age of 28, but his posthumously-published book Kummer's Quartic Surface allows mathematicians today access to his work.
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Charles-François-Maximilien Marie
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Charles-François-Maximilien Marie was a French mathematician, historian of mathematics. He was the author of History of the Mathematics and Theory of the variable imaginary functions , relating to the imaginary unit.
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Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was an American artist of African-American and Native American ancestry, known for her sculpture. She was the first African-American graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1918 and later studied at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the early 1920s. She became noted for her work in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1934, Prophet began teaching at Spelman College, expanding the curriculum to include modeling and history of art and architecture. Prophet died in 1960 at the age of 70.
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Zhu Zaiyu
1536 - 1611 (75 years)
Zhu Zaiyu was a Chinese mathematician, physicist, choreographer, and music theorist. He was a prince of the Chinese Ming dynasty. In 1584, Prince Zhu innovatively described the equal temperament via accurate mathematical calculation.
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Adele Astaire
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Adele Astaire Douglass , was an American dancer, stage actress, and singer. After beginning work as a dancer and vaudeville performer at the age of nine, Astaire built a successful performance career with her younger brother, Fred Astaire.
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William Fox
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
Sir William Fox was the second premier of New Zealand and held that office on four occasions in the 19th century, while New Zealand was still a colony. He was known for his confiscation of Māori land rights, his contributions to the education system , and his work to increase New Zealand's autonomy from Britain. He has been described as determined and intelligent, but also as bitter and "too fond" of personal attacks. Different aspects of his personality are emphasised by different accounts.
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Wang Qiming
1941 - 1989 (48 years)
Wang Qiming was a Chinese mathematician who was known for his work in differential geometry. He was considered as one of the best differential geometers in China of the time. Biography Wang Qiming was born in Yan'an, Shaanxi. In 1960, he graduated from Beijing 101 Middle School and was admitted to the five-year bachelor's degree programme of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Science and Technology of China. In 1965, he entered the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study under Wu Wenjun. Once Wang pointed out a mistake that Wu made in a lesson and told Wu the German book upon which he based.
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Roland P. Falkner
1866 - 1940 (74 years)
Roland Post Falkner was an American economist and statistician. Biography Robert P. Falkner was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on April 14, 1866. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1885; studied economics at Berlin, Leipzig and Halle-on-Saale, Germany; studied at the Collège de France; was instructor in accounting and statistics in the University of Pennsylvania in 1888–91, and professor of statistics 1891–1900.
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John Strong Newberry
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
John Strong Newberry was an American physician, geologist and paleontologist. He participated as a naturalist and surgeon on three expeditions to explore and survey the western United States. During the Civil War he served in the US Sanitary Commission and was appointed secretary of the western department of the commission. After the war he became professor of geology and paleontology at Columbia University School of Mines and chief geologist of the Geological Survey of Ohio.
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John McDouall Stuart
1815 - 1866 (51 years)
John McDouall Stuart , often referred to as simply "McDouall Stuart", was a Scottish explorer and one of the most accomplished of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, through the centre of the continent. His experience and the care he showed for his team ensured he never lost a man, despite the harshness of the country he encountered.
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George M. Cohan
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents and sister in a vaudeville act known as "The Four Cohans". Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". As a co...
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