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 Philosophy,
#5151
Phillip H. Wiebe
#81383
Overall Influence
1945 - 2018 (73 years)
Phillip H. Wiebe was a Canadian philosopher. He was the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy and former Dean of Arts and Religious Studies at Trinity Western University and its School of Graduate Studies. He was the author of God and Other Spirits and Visions of Jesus, both from Oxford University Press. His primary areas of research were in philosophy of religion and science, and epistemology.
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Marco Sgarbi
#76734
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Marco Sgarbi is an Italian philosopher and an historian of philosophy, with a special interest in the history of epistemology and logic. He is associate professor at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He is member of the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana.
Go to Profile#5153
Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus
870 - 940 (70 years)
Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus al-Qunnāʾī was an Arab Christian philosopher who played an important role in the transmission of the works of Aristotle to the Islamic world. He is famous for founding the Baghdad school of Aristotelian philosophers.
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Zvi Laron
#12570
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Zvi Laron is an Israeli paediatric endocrinologist. Born in Cernăuţi, Romania, Laron is a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University. In 1966, he described the type of dwarfism later called Laron syndrome. His research opened the way to the treatment of many cases of growth hormone disorders. He was the first to introduce the multidisciplinary treatment for juvenile diabetes.
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Sheldon Krimsky
#38095
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
Sheldon Krimsky was a professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, and adjunct professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Go to Profile#5156
Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot
#65725
Overall Influence
1928 - 2005 (77 years)
Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot was an expatriate Colombian philosopher, professor, translator and publisher. Career Rafael Guitérrez Giardot's father, a Conservative politician, was assassinated when Rafael was still a boy, prompting him to find solace and meaning through his studies. In 1947, Rafael attended classes at the recently created Institute of Philosophy at the National University of Colombia. Many of his early essays from this time appeared in the literary section of the conservative daily El Siglo, and he participated in the formation of a short-lived rightist political movement called...
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Miguel de Beistegui
#65145
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Miguel de Beistegui is a continental philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is known for his expertise on Heidegger's thought. Books Heidegger and the Political, Routledge, 1998Philosophy and Tragedy , Routledge, 2000Thinking with Heidegger: Displacements, Indiana University Press, 2003Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology, Indiana University Press, 2004The New Heidegger, Continuum, 2005Proust as Philosopher: The Art of Metaphor, Routledge, 2012Immanence and Philosophy: Deleuze, Edinburgh University Press, 2010Éloge de Chillida/In Praise of C...
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František Klácel
1808 - 1882 (74 years)
František Matouš Klácel was a Czech author, philosopher, pedagogue, and journalist. Since 1827 he was an Augustinian friar in Brno, co-brother of Gregor Mendel. A Varied Man During his rich and varied life Klácel used several pseudonyms He also called himself Matouš František K.- Matouš had been his monastic name. He was born into a poor family, and his father was a cobbler. After basic school in Třebová and junior school he went to grammar school in Litomyšl and after graduating spent the next two years studying philosophy. In 1827 he went to the Augustinian monastery in Brno where he became a member of the order and spent the years 1829–32 studying at the Brno theological institute.
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Abraham Tucker
1705 - 1774 (69 years)
Abraham Tucker was an English country gentleman, who devoted himself to the study of philosophy. He wrote The Light of Nature Pursued under the name of Edward Search. Biography Tucker was born in London of a Somerset family, the son of a wealthy city merchant. His parents died during his infancy, and he was brought up by his uncle, Sir Isaac Tillard. In 1721, he entered Merton College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, and studied philosophy, mathematics, French, Italian and music. He afterwards studied laws at the Inner Temple, but was never called to the bar.
Go to Profile#5160
Olive Schreiner
1855 - 1920 (65 years)
Olive Schreiner was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm , which has been highly acclaimed. It deals boldly with such contemporary issues as agnosticism, existential independence, individualism, the professional aspirations of women, and the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier.
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Dany-Robert Dufour
#39425
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dany-Robert Dufour is a French philosopher, professor of educational sciences at the university Paris-VIII. He teaches regularly abroad, particularly in Latin America. His main focus is symbolic processes with relevance to language philosophy, political philosophy and psychoanalysis. He is a frequent participant in cooperative artistic activities with music, literature or theatre.
Go to Profile#5162
Ioan Zalomit
1823 - 1885 (62 years)
Ioan Zalomit was a Romanian philosopher, professor and rector of the University of Bucharest. Biography Ioan Zalomit was born in Bucharest, in a family of merchants. His parents were probably of Greek origin, but they were born in Wallachia.
Go to Profile#5163
Adam of Bockenfield
1220 - Present (806 years)
Adam of Bockenfield was an English Franciscan philosopher, who taught at the University of Oxford in the early 1240s. He was an early commentator on a number of Aristotle's works, in particular those dealing with natural philosophy.
Go to Profile#5164
Benjamin Paul Blood
1832 - 1919 (87 years)
Benjamin Paul Blood was an American philosopher, mystic and poet. His idiosyncratic work explored his development of his pluralist philosophy, culminating in the posthumously published book Pluriverse.
Go to Profile#5165
Gustav Hartlaub
1814 - 1900 (86 years)
Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub was a German physician and ornithologist. Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and collect exotic birds, which he donated to the Bremen Natural History Museum. He described some of these species for the first time. In 1852, he set up a new journal with Jean Cabanis, the Journal für Ornithologie. He wrote with Otto Finsch, Beitrag zur Fauna Centralpolynesiens: Ornithologie der Viti-, Samoa und Tonga- Inseln. Halle, H. Schmidt. This 1867 work which has handcoloured lithographs was based on bird specimens collected by Eduard Heinrich Graeffe for Museum Godeffroy.
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Paul Henry Lang
#20739
Overall Influence
1901 - 1991 (90 years)
Paul Henry Lang was a Hungarian-American musicologist and music critic. Career Lang was born as "Pál Láng" in Budapest, Hungary, and was educated in Catholic schools. In 1918, as World War I was coming to an end, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army though he had not completed school, and sent to the Italian front. When the war ended, he had to make his own way home, and then studied at the University of Budapest and the Budapest Music Academy, under Zoltán Kodály and Erno Dohnanyi, among others. Kodály, learning that he only played piano, assigned him to learn to play the bassoon. A...
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Aron Katsenelinboigen
#16497
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Aron Iosifovich Katsenelinboigen was a founder of predispositioning theory, a subject in decision theory and systems theory that models development in the context of uncertainty. Career Katsenelinboigen was born in Izyaslavl in the Ukrainian SSR. At fourteen, he enrolled at the Uzbekistan Institute of Economics, transferring four years later, in 1945, to the Moscow State Institute of Economics. There he graduated the following year and spent a further three years pursuing post-graduate work. He received a PhD in Economics in 1957 and became a Doctor of Economic Science in 1966.
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Alfred Barratt
1844 - 1881 (37 years)
Alfred Barratt was an English barrister and philosopher. He trained in law at the University of Oxford, and published his first book, Physical Ethics, in 1869 while studying there. He died an early death in 1881 from overwork as a barrister, secretary to the Oxford University Commission, and philosopher. His second book, Physical Metempiric, was published posthumously in 1883.
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Petrus Ramus
1515 - 1572 (57 years)
Petrus Ramus was a French humanist, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was a victim of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Early life He was born at the village of Cuts, Picardy; his father was a farmer. He gained admission at age twelve to the Collège de Navarre, working as a servant. A reaction against scholasticism was in full tide, at a transitional time for Aristotelianism. On the occasion of receiving his M.A. degree in 1536, Ramus allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse , which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows:
Go to Profile#5170
Roger-Pol Droit
#58046
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Roger-Pol Droit is a French academic and philosopher. An alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, he has written numerous books, most notably 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life, which has been translated into 22 languages. For 25 years, he has studied the way the East is seen in Western philosophy.
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Diane Davis
#41503
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Diane Davis is a post-structuralist rhetorician and professor of Rhetoric and Writing, English, and Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She was the Director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab at UT from 2009 to 2017, and is now the chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing. She holds the Kenneth Burke Chair of Rhetoric and Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where she teaches intensive summer seminars on Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.
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Asao Hirano
#87560
Overall Influence
#5173
John E. Sanders
#37859
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John E. Sanders is an American Christian theologian. He currently serves as professor of religious studies at Hendrix College. Sanders is best known for his promotion of open theism but he has also written on cognitive linguistics and religious pluralism .
Go to Profile#5174
Rajab Ali Tabrizi
1650 - 1670 (20 years)
Rajab Ali Tabrizi was an Iranian and Shiat philosopher and mystic of the 17th century. He was educated in the Sheikh Lotf Allah school. Books 1- Resaleh-ye2- "Al Osul ol Asfiyeh" or "Asl ol Osul".3- "A book in theology".4- "The interpretation of Ayatolkorsi"5- "The divine instructions"6- His book of poetry
Go to Profile#5175
Nino Raspudić
#48119
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Nino Raspudić is a Croatian conservative philosopher, writer, political analyst and member of the Croatian Parliament. He is a professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb and the Faculty of Humanities in Mostar. He is a columnist for the Večernji list and Nezavisne novine, and is one of the editors of the Reflex, a political show on OBN Televizija.
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Sanjay Gupta
#1434
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon, medical reporter, and writer. He serves as associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, associate professor of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine, member of the National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the chief medical correspondent for CNN.
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Dada Dharmadhikari
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Shankar Trimbak Dharmadhikari , better known as Dada Dharmadhikari, was an Indian freedom fighter, and a leader of social reform movements in India. He was a strong adherent of Mahatma Gandhi's principles. His eldest daughter was married to Adv. Tamasskar of Bemetara, now in Chattisgarh. His second child, son by name Pradyumna was also a freedom fighter and lived life as a common man. His third child, a son by name Yashwanth Shankar Dharmadhikari served as the Advocate-general of Madhya Pradesh and his youngest son Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari served as judge of Bombay High Court.
Go to Profile#5178
Roberto A. Bolli
#87646
Overall Influence
#5179
Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx
1796 - 1877 (81 years)
Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx was a German physician and college lecturer. Despite sharing the same name, he was not related to Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism. Life and works Marx was born on 10 March 1796 in Karlsruhe, the son of a Jewish antiquarian, and attended the Karlsruhe Lyceum, where he was taught by Johann Peter Hebel and Karl Christian Gmelin. In 1813 he began studies in philosophy and medicine in Heidelberg, where, in 1817, he participated in the Old Heidelberg Burschenschaft as a friend of Heinrich Carl Alexander Pagenstecher. He had contacts with Jean Paul and attended inter alia lectures by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, becoming a follower of his.
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Mitchell Lazar
#54768
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mitchell Lazar is an endocrinologist and physician-scientist known for his discovery of the hormone resistin and his contributions to the transcriptional regulation of metabolism. Lazar is the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor in Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, and the Director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Philippe Couillard
#3186
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Philippe Couillard is a Canadian business advisor and former neurosurgeon, university professor and politician who served as 31st premier of Quebec from 2014 to 2018. Between 2003 and 2008, he was Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services in Jean Charest's Liberal government and was MNA for Mont-Royal until he resigned in 2008. In the 2014 election, Couillard moved to the riding of Roberval, where he resides. He was the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party from 2013 to 2018. He resigned as Liberal leader and MNA on October 4, 2018.
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J. Roger Hindley
#10244
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
J. Roger Hindley is a prominent British logician best known for the Hindley–Milner type inference algorithm. Since 1998, he has been an Honorary Research Fellow at Swansea University. Education Hindley graduated in 1960 from Queen's University Belfast, remaining to earn an M.Sc. in 1961.
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John Constance Parnis
1695 - 1735 (40 years)
John Constance Parnis was a major Maltese mediaeval philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics, physics, and logic. Life Parnis was born at Mdina, Malta, in 1695. He began studying philosophy before he joined the Franciscans. His name at that time was John Baptist, and between 1712 and 1715 he followed courses given by Constance Vella at the Franciscans’ College of Philosophy and Literature at Rabat, Malta.
Go to Profile#5184
Gaston Milhaud
1858 - 1918 (60 years)
Gaston Milhaud was a French philosopher and historian of science. Gaston Milhaud studied mathematics with Gaston Darboux at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1881 he took a teaching post at the University of Le Havre. In 1891 he became professor of mathematics at Montpellier University, and in 1895 became professor of philosophy there. In 1909 a chair in the history of philosophy in its relationship to the sciences was created for him at the Sorbonne. Milhaud's successor in the chair was Abel Rey.
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Gregory the Illuminator
252 - 329 (77 years)
Gregory the Illuminator was the founder and first official head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He converted Armenia from Zoroastrianism to Christianity in the early fourth century , making Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church and in some other churches.
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Manfred Spitzer
#59951
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Manfred Spitzer is a German neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author. Life Manfred Spitzer was born on May 27, 1958, in Lengfeld, Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany. After his Abitur at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium in Groß-Umstadt, he studied medicine, philosophy and psychology at the University of Freiburg. During this time he earned his money for living as a street musician among other professions. Spitzer is the publisher of the trade journal Nervenheilkunde and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Stiftung Louisenlund. He has a controversial opinion on smartphones, saying that they make children "krank" , "dumm" and "süchtig" and should only be allowed without supervision at age 18 and up.
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Jean-Émile Charon
#29110
Overall Influence
1920 - 1998 (78 years)
Jean-Émile Charon was a French nuclear physicist, philosopher and writer. He was the author of over 20 books on physics, scientific philosophy, and computer science. He conducted nuclear research at France's Commissariat à l'énergie atomique .
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Jay Newman
#73434
Overall Influence
1948 - 2007 (59 years)
Jay Newman was a philosopher and Professor at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. Biography Newman was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lou Newman and his wife, Kitty. He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1968 before acquiring his master's degree from Brown University in 1969 and his Ph.D. from York University in Toronto, Canada, in 1971.
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Nicholas Campion
#20552
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nicholas Campion is a British astrologer and historian of astrology and cultural astronomy. He is the author of a number of books and currently pursues an academic career. Career Astrology Campion is a former Daily Mail astrologer, where he took over from John Naylor, the son of R. H. Naylor, the first sun sign astrologer. He was president of the Astrological Lodge of London from 1985 to 1987 and of the Astrological Association of Great Britain from 1994 to 1999. He published a number of books on the practice of astrology between 1987 and 2004 .
Go to Profile#5190
Ulrich L. Lehner
#19724
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ulrich L. Lehner is the Warren Foundation Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is a trained philosopher, theologian and historian. Life and Education After graduating from the in Straubing in 1996 he received a B.A. in philosophy from the Munich School of Philosophy and a B.A. in theology from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1999, and a diploma in theology from the University of Munich in 2003. In 2006 he received his PhD in theology from the Universität Regensburg with a thesis on the concept of providence of Immanuel Kant and Protestant scholasticism. In ...
Go to Profile#5191
Hartley Burr Alexander
1873 - 1939 (66 years)
Hartley Burr Alexander, PhD , was an American philosopher, writer, educator, scholar, poet, and iconographer. Family and early years Alexander was born in Syracuse, Nebraska, on April 9, 1873. His father, the Rev. George Sherman Alexander , was a Methodist minister and pioneer newspaper editor in Nebraska. These twin sources were to implant in young Hartley a delight in the written word and a distrust of Christianity. His mother, Abigail Smith Alexander , died when he was three and in 1877 his father remarried Susan Godding . Ms. Godding had been a teacher and chairperson in the Methodist Scho...
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Adrian Parr
#42294
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Adrian Parr is an Australian-born philosopher and cultural critic. She specializes in environmental philosophy and activism. In addition, she published on the sustainability movement, climate change politics, activist culture, and creative practice.
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Mazu Daoyi
709 - 788 (79 years)
Mazu Daoyi was an influential abbot of Chan Buddhism during the Tang dynasty. He is known as the founder of the Hongzhou school of Zen. The earliest recorded use of the term "Chan school" is from his Extensive Records.
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John C. Jr. Burnett
#87980
Overall Influence
#5195
Ahmet Arvasi
1932 - 1988 (56 years)
Ahmet Arvasi , commonly known as Seyyid Ahmet Arvasi, was a writer and philosopher of Arabic origin. He is known for expounding upon the ideology of the "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis Doctrine" and its effect on Turkey. He was born in Doğubeyazıt district of Ağrı, Turkey. His family is from Van Province. His father Seyyid Abdulhakim Arvasi was a Sunni Islamic scholar during the late Ottoman and early Republic periods of Turkey.
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Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi
1834 - 1904 (70 years)
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was a French sculptor and painter. He is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty. Early life and education Bartholdi was born in Colmar, France, 2 August 1834. He was born to a family of Alsatian Protestant heritage, with his family name adopted from Barthold. His parents were Jean Charles Bartholdi and Augusta Charlotte Bartholdi . Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was the youngest of their four children, and one of only two to survive infancy, along with the oldest brother, Jean-Charles, who became a lawyer and e...
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Robert McKim
#66105
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Robert McKim is an Irish philosopher of religion. He was born in Collooney , Co. Sligo and attended Wesley College for his Secondary Education in Dublin. As a student he worked in London during summer vacations. He has degrees in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies and philosophy from Yale University. He is Professor of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Go to Profile#5198
Stephen L. Harris
#21341
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Stephen L. Harris was Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He served there ten years as department chair and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University. Harris was a member of the American Academy of Religion, a fellow at the Westar Institute, a fellow of the controversial Jesus Seminar, and authored several books on religion, some of which are used in introductory university courses.
Go to Profile#5199
John Piper
#7162
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
John Egerton Christmas Piper CH was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles thr...
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Jan-carel Zadoks
#88134
Overall Influence
