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,
#10451
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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Paul Yu Pin
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Paul Yu Pin was a Chinese cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Nanking from 1946 until his death, having previously served as its Apostolic Vicar, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1969.
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Eileen Brooke
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Eileen Minnie Brooke was a British statistician and health policy professional. Education Eileen Minnie Brooke attended East London College, earning a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1926, and an M.Sc. in mathematics in 1929. She completed doctoral studies in 1952.
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Abu Said Gorgani
850 - 845 (-5 years)
Abu Sa'id al-Dharir al-Jurjani , also Gurgani, was a 9th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer from Gurgan, Iran. He wrote a treatise on geometrical problems and another on the drawing of the meridian. George Sarton considers him a pupil of Ibn al-A'rabi, but Carl Brockelmann rejects this opinion.
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Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos
1844 - 1911 (67 years)
Konstantinos M. Mitsopoulos was a writer, geologist, mineralogist, chemist, and professor. His uncle Iraklis Mitsopoulos was the father of modern natural sciences in Greece. He followed in his uncle's footsteps, and was the first student to receive a doctorate degree in the natural sciences at the University of Athens in 1868. He was one of the first scientists in Greece to publicly promote Darwin's theory of evolution. He edited and published the periodical known as Prometheus in 1890, promoting Darwinist views. The publication was shut down by the church two years later.
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George Henry Bolsover
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
George Henry Bolsover CBE was the director of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London from 1947 to 1976. The school, now known as UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, is part of University College, London.
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Yang Zhuoxin
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Yang Zhuoxin was a Chinese educator and mathematician who served as president of Hunan University from August 1930 to March 1931. Biography Yang was born and raised in Xinhua County, Hunan. He attended Zijiang School. He graduated from Hunan High College in 1908. He was sent abroad to study at the expense of the government in 1903. He studied at Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received his master's degree from the University of Illinois and doctor's degree from Syracuse University. He then studied at Cambridge University , the University of London , the Univers...
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Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri
900 - Present (1126 years)
Abu al-Abbas Iranshahri was a 9th-century Persian philosopher, mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer and author. According to traditional sources, he is the first figure in the wider Muslim world to be associated with philosophy after the advent of Islam.
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Sebastián Vizcaíno
1548 - 1623 (75 years)
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Asia. Early career Vizcaíno was born in 1548, in Extremadura, Crown of Castile . He saw military service in the Spanish invasion of Portugal during 1580–1583. Coming to New Spain in 1583, he sailed as a merchant on a Manila galleon to the Spanish East Indies in 1586–1589. In 1587, he was on board the Santa Ana as one of the merchants when Thomas Cavendish captured it, robbing him and others of their personal cargoes of...
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Theodore Clarke Smith
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Theodore Clarke Smith was professor of American history at Williams College from 1903 to 1938. Smith was an educationalist and curriculum reformer who served on the Committee on Curriculum of 1911-1927 and the Advisory Committee of 1911-1935.
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Gottfred Eickhoff
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Gottfred Eickhoff was a Danish sculptor. Inspired by French trends, his work contrasted with that of his predecessors, exhibiting a spirit of harmony, peace and balance. Early life After matriculating from high school in 1920, Eickhoff embarked on law studies but changed paths in 1926 when he became a pupil of Harald Giersing. Realizing he would now concentrate on sculpture, he continued his studies in Paris from 1927 to 1933 under Charles Despiau, associating with a wide range of sculptors including Jean Osouf and Paul Cornet from France, Charles Leplae from Belgium, Han Wezelaar from the Ne...
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Haseb-i Tabari
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Ayyub-i Haseb-i Tabari was a Persian astronomer. All of his works are in Persian language and none of them are written in Arabic . Not much is known about his life. His works are among the oldest scientific works in Persian language. He used many Persian equivalents for Arabic words. He was from Amol, Tabaristan.
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Norrie Paramor
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Norman William Paramor , known professionally as Norrie Paramor, was a British record producer, composer, arranger, pianist, bandleader, and orchestral conductor. He is best known for his work with Cliff Richard and the Shadows, both together and separately, steering their early careers and producing and arranging most of their material from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Paramor was a composer of studio albums, theatrical productions, and film scores.
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William Watson
1884 - 1952 (68 years)
William Watson FRSE was a 20th-century Scottish physicist and mathematician. Life He was born on 15 June 1884 in Musselburgh just east of Edinburgh, the son of Janet Watson of Tranent and her husband, William Watson of Fossoway, then headmaster of Musselburgh Grammar School. He attended his father's school from 1891 to 1898 then completed his education at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He was school dux in 1902.
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Concetta Scaravaglione
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Concetta Scaravaglione was an American sculptor. Her parents immigrated from Calabria, Italy, and Concetta was the youngest of nine children. She is known for her monumental figurative sculpture, her work for the Federal Art Project , and her teaching career.
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Gerrard Winstanley
1609 - 1676 (67 years)
Gerrard Winstanley was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during the period of the Commonwealth of England. Winstanley was the leader and one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers. The group occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. True Levellers was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term Diggers was coined by contemporaries.
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Arturo Salazar Valencia
1855 - 1943 (88 years)
Arturo Edmundo Salazar Valencia was a scientist, researcher, innovator and professor of electrical engineering in Chile, who in his role as a self-taught individual, explored a wide variety of fields of interest and is considered a true pioneer in the technological development of his country.
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Stefan Lech Sokołowski
1904 - 1940 (36 years)
Stefan Lech Sokołowski was a Polish mathematician, climber and lieutenant of artillery in the Polish Land Forces. He was aLwów Eaglet, a group of children who defended the city of Lviv in 1918-1919 during the Polish-Ukrainian War. He was also a Doctor of mathematical sciences. He died as a result of the Katyn massacre, a Soviet massacre of Polish military officers in 1940.
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John Wood
1812 - 1871 (59 years)
John Wood was a Scottish naval officer, surveyor, cartographer and explorer, principally remembered for his exploration of central Asia. Biography Wood was born in Perth, Scotland. After schooling at Perth Academy, he joined the British Indian Navy, was made a Lieutenant, and soon demonstrated a flair for surveying. Many of the maps of southern Asia which he compiled remained standard for the rest of the 19th century.
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Jan Śleszyński
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
Ivan Vladislavovich Sleshinsky or Jan Śleszyński was a Polish-Russian mathematician. He was born in Lysianka, Russian Empire to Polish parents. Life Śleszyński's main work was on continued fractions, least squares and axiomatic proof theory based on mathematical logic. He and Alfred Pringsheim, working separately, proved what is now called the Śleszyński–Pringsheim theorem.
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Gabriel Bethlen
1580 - 1629 (49 years)
Gabriel Bethlen was Prince of Transylvania from 1613 to 1629 and Duke of Opole from 1622 to 1625. He was also King-elect of Hungary from 1620 to 1621, but he never took control of the whole kingdom. Bethlen, supported by the Ottomans, led his Calvinist principality against the Habsburgs and their Catholic allies.
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Gertrude Lawrence
1898 - 1952 (54 years)
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York. Early life Lawrence was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Klasen or some variant , of English and Danish extraction, in Newington, London. Her father was a basso profondo who performed under the name Arthur Lawrence. His heavy drinking led her mother Alice to leave him soon after Gertrude's birth.
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Carl Thomsen
1847 - 1912 (65 years)
Carl Christian Frederik Jacob Thomsen was a Danish painter and illustrator. He specialized in genre painting and also illustrated the works of several Danish authors. Biography Born in Copenhagen, Thomsen was the son of Chamber Councillor Ludvig Frederik Thomsen and the brother of the acclaimed linguist Vilhelm Thomsen . From an early age, Thomsen was interested in drawing but his parents first encouraged him to study philosophy. After he had graduated in 1866, he began studying art with Frederik Vermehren the same year. He then attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Wilhelm Marstrand, graduating in 1871.
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Alexander Wilson
1714 - 1786 (72 years)
Alexander Wilson was a Scottish surgeon, type-founder, astronomer, mathematician and meteorologist. He was the first scientist to use kites in meteorological investigations. He was the first Regius Professor of Practical Astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
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Stanisław Lentz
1861 - 1920 (59 years)
Stanisław Lentz was a Polish painter, portraitist, illustrator, and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1909. Biography Stanisław Lentz was born in Warsaw, Poland, and studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts with Feliks Szynalewski and Izydor Jabłoński 1877–1879, then continued his studies in Wojciech Gerson's drawing class in Warsaw. In 1880–1884 he studied abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Alexander von Wagner and Gyula Benczúr, and in 1884–1887 at the Académie Julian in Paris.
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George Frederick Barker
1835 - 1910 (75 years)
George Frederick Barker was an American physician and scientist. He graduated from the Yale Scientific School in 1858. He was successively chemical assistant in Harvard Medical School in 1858–1859 and 1860–1861, professor of chemistry and geology in Wheaton College. In 1864 he became the Professor of Natural Science at the Western University of Pennsylvania, now known as the University of Pittsburgh, where he undertook experiments to produce electric light by passing the current through a resisting filament which he claimed was "the first steady electric light generated in Pittsburgh, if not in the country".
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Howard Roberts
1843 - 1900 (57 years)
Howard Roberts was an American sculptor based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time of the 1876 Centennial Exposition, he was "considered the most accomplished American sculptor." But his output was small, his reputation was soon surpassed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and others, and he is now all but forgotten. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the U.S. Capitol.
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Jens Adolf Jerichau
1816 - 1883 (67 years)
Emil Jens Baumann Adolf Jerichau was a Danish sculptor. He belonged to the generation immediately after Bertel Thorvaldsen, for whom he worked briefly in Rome, but gradually moved away from the static Neoclassicism he inherited from him and towards a more dynamic and realistic style. He was a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and its director from 1857 to 1863.
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Howard Pyle
1853 - 1911 (58 years)
Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.
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Jessie Matthews
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Jessie Margaret Matthews was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period. After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, however, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.
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Samuel Collins
1576 - 1651 (75 years)
Samuel Collins was an English clergyman and academic, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Provost of King's College, Cambridge. Life He was son of Baldwin Collins, fellow and vice-provost of Eton College. He was born at Eton on 5 August 1576, and studied for nine years in Eton School. In 1591 he was elected to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1595–6, M.A. 1599, B.D. 1606. He became chaplain to Archbishop Richard Bancroft and to his successor, Archbishop George Abbot.
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