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,
#14601
Louis Shores
1904 - 1981 (77 years)
Louis Shores was a librarian who worked for the promotion of the library as the center of all learning, in both public and academic institutions. Shores was recognized for his integration of audiovisual materials into library collections. He was named one of the “100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century” by American Libraries, and the impact of his vision can be seen today in libraries across the country.
Go to Profile#14602
Richard Creath
#174655
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Richard Creath is an American philosopher and President's Professor of Life Sciences and of Philosophy at Arizona State University. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#14603
Eduardo Fermé
#133277
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Eduardo Fermé is an Argentinian computer scientist and philosopher known for his work in belief revision and non monotonic reasoning. He is Full Professor at the University of Madeira. Career Fermé studied Computer Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, graduating in 1991. After that, he obtained a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Universidad de Buenos Aires under supervision of Carlos Alchourrón and Sven Ove Hansson in 1999. In 2011 he obtained a doctoral degree in philosophy from the Kungliga Tekniska högskolan under supervision of John Cantwell. He has more than 70 publicat...
Go to Profile#14604
Philip R. Lee
#35280
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Philip Randolph Lee was an American physician who served as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969 and President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1998.
Go to Profile#14605
Fukuzawa Yukichi
1835 - 1901 (66 years)
Fukuzawa Yukichi was a Japanese educator, philosopher, writer, entrepreneur and samurai who founded Keio University, the newspaper Jiji-Shinpō, and the Institute for Study of Infectious Diseases. Fukuzawa was an early advocate for reform in Japan. His ideas about the organization of government and the structure of social institutions made a lasting impression on a rapidly changing Japan during the Meiji period. He appears on the current 10,000-Japanese yen banknote.
Go to Profile#14606
Tina Lavender
#148771
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Professor Dame Tina Lavender is a British midwife and Professor of Maternal and Newborn Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine . She is the director of the Centre for Childbirth, Women's, and Newborn Health which is a collaboration between WHO and LSTM. She is also Chief Investigator at the NIHR Global Health Unit on the Prevention and Management of Stillbirths and Neonatal Deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
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Cornelis Bontekoe
1647 - 1685 (38 years)
Cornelis Bontekoe , whose real name was Cornelis Dekker, was a Dutch physician known also as a popular essayist, particularly on his promotion of tea, and editor of the works of Arnold Geulincx, a Belgian philosopher. He also applied what were generally Cartesian theories in medicine, but with innovations such as a purely hydraulic and muscular explanation of the mechanism of the heart.
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Stephanie Zacharek
#50585
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Stephanie Zacharek is an American film critic at Time, based in New York City. From 2013 to 2015, she was the principal film critic for The Village Voice. She was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism.
Go to Profile#14609
Lois Jovanovic
#131996
Overall Influence
Lois Jovanovic was the chief executive officer of the Diabetes Research Institute at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara, California. She pioneered in medical practice that helped many diabetic women give birth to healthier babies.
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Nagarur Gopinath
#35718
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
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Gemma Figtree
#171605
Overall Influence
Gemma Alexandra Figtree is an Interventional Cardiologist at Royal North Shore Hospital, Professor in Medicine at the University of Sydney, chair of the Federal Government's 10-year Mission for Cardiovascular Health, and co-leader of the Cardiovascular Theme for Sydney Health Partners.
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Viviane Tabar
#72164
Overall Influence
Viviane Tabar is an American neurosurgeon, the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since 2017. Biography Tabar took her medical degree from the American University of Beirut. It was followed by a neurosurgical residency at the University of Massachusetts. She did postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
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Sarah Hackett Stevenson
1841 - 1909 (68 years)
Sarah Ann Hackett Stevenson was an American physician in Illinois, and the first female member of the American Medical Association , as an Illinois State Medical Society delegate in 1876. She was a leader and advocate for the emancipation of women and for the equal treatment of men and women.
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Mark Brill
#64476
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Mark Brill is an American musicologist, particularly known for his work on Latin American Music. He is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Life and career Brill was born in Houston, Texas on January 19, 1964. He grew up in Mexico City, Mexico, where he attended the Lycée Franco Mexicain, receiving the French Baccalauréat in 1983. He then attended Oberlin College , the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law , Tulane University , and the University of California, Davis . His doctoral dissertation was a study of colonial music at the cathedral in Oaxaca, M...
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James Freeman Dana
1793 - 1827 (34 years)
James Freeman Dana was an American chemist. Biography He graduated from Harvard in 1813, and from the medical school in 1817. He studied with Dr. John Gorham, and developed such ability that in 1815 he was selected by the authorities of Harvard to procure for the chemical laboratory a new outfit of apparatus. For this purpose, he visited London, where for six months he worked in the laboratory of Friedrich Christian Accum.
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Klaus Michael Beier
#110785
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Klaus Michael Beier is a German physician, psychotherapist and sexologist. He is director of the Institute for sexology and sexual medicine at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin in Berlin. Life Klaus Michael Beier began studying medicine in 1979 and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin in 1980. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1986 and two years later in philosophy. In 1988 he became a scientific assistant at the Research and Counselling Centre for Sexual Medicine of the University Hospital in Kiel. There he habilitated in 1994 in sexual medicine and in 1995 was appointed to the...
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Heather Ashton
#21349
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Heather Ashton was a British psychopharmacologist and physician. She is best known for her clinical and research work on benzodiazepine dependence. Biography Chrystal Heather Champion was born in Dehradun, northern India, to Harry Champion, a British silviculturist, and Chrystal Champion, a secretary. From the age of six, she attended a boarding school in Swanage, Dorset, England. When WWII began, she was evacuated to West Chester, Pennsylvania; during the crossing, her ship was attacked by a U-boat.
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Rick Altman
#76196
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Rick Altman is a professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa, Iowa City, United States. He has also published under the name Charles F. Altman.
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Walter Gerstenberg
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Walter Gerstenberg was a German musicologist and an expert on Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert. Publications Die Klavierkompositionen Domenico Scarlattis. Schiele, Regensburg 1931; also as . Bosse, Regensburg 1933 .as editor with Heinrich Husmann and Harald Heckmann: Bericht über den internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß Hamburg 1956. Bärenreiter, Kassel among others 1957, .as editor with Jan LaRue and Wolfgang Rehm: Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch zum 80. Geburtstag am 5. September 1963. Bärenreiter, Kassel atc. 1963, .
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Roger Tory Peterson
#14913
Overall Influence
1908 - 1996 (88 years)
Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, ornithologist, illustrator and educator, and one of the founding inspirations for the 20th-century environmental movement. Background Peterson was born in Jamestown, New York, a small, industrial city in western New York, on August 28, 1908. His father, Charles Gustav Peterson, was an immigrant from Sweden who came to America as an infant. At the age of ten, Charles Peterson lost his father to appendicitis and was sent off to work in the mills. After leaving the mills, he earned his living as a traveling salesman. Roger's mother, Henrietta Badar...
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Frédérick Têtu
#135178
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Frédérick Têtu is a teacher born in the city of Québec in 1967. He holds a B.A. and a master's degree in philosophy from the Université Laval , and a bachelor of law from McGill University . He has done further studies in political science at Boston College .
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Paul H. Silverman
#110110
Overall Influence
1924 - 2004 (80 years)
Paul Hyman Silverman was an American medical researcher in the fields of immunology, epidemiology, and parasitology. He was recognized for his research on stem cells and on the human genome. Early life and education Silverman was born on October 8, 1924, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Growing up, he became fascinated with reading, and he won a local prize for his reading comprehension ability. He attended the University of Minnesota as a pre-medical student while also working three part-time jobs. He went on to serve in a MASH in the United States Army during World War II. He received a bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University.
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John-Arne Røttingen
#58889
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
John-Arne Røttingen is a Norwegian medical scientist, research administrator and civil servant. He is currently Ambassador for Global Health in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has been a special advisor to the World Health Organization . 11 October 2023 Røttingen was named the new head of the Wellcome Trust.
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Henry J. M. Barnett
#41223
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Henry Joseph Macaulay Barnett was a Canadian physician, a leading stroke researcher and pioneer of the use of aspirin for stroke prevention. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, he graduated from the University of Toronto Schools and received his medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1944.
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Julia Adler-Milstein
#173027
Overall Influence
Julia Adler-Milstein is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2019, she was named a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.
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Christoph-Hellmut Mahling
#106877
Overall Influence
1932 - 2012 (80 years)
Christoph-Hellmut Mahling was a German musicologist and lecturer at various universities. Life and career Born in Berlin, Mahling studied musicology by Walter Gerstenberg, Georg Reichert, Joseph Müller-Blattau, and Walter Salmen at the University of Tübingen and the Saarland University from 1957 to 1962.
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Marcus Berquist
#174823
Overall Influence
1934 - 2010 (76 years)
Marcus Berquist was one of the founders of Thomas Aquinas College, a professor, and an expert on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. and his licentiate degree in philosophy from Université Laval in Quebec. He nearly completed his Ph.D. from Université Laval with Charles De Koninck as his mentor but did not due to De Koninck's death.
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Arturo Carsetti
#133313
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Arturo Carsetti is an Italian Philosopher of sciences and former Professor of philosophy of science at the University of Bari and the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is the editor of the Italian Journal for the philosophy of science La Nuova Critica founded in 1957 by Valerio Tonini. He is notable for his contributions, also as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, to philosophy of science, epistemology, metabiology, cognitive science, semantics and philosophy of mind.
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Qanta A. Ahmed
#63002
Overall Influence
Qanta A. Ahmed is a British-American physician who came to prominence as a doctor specializing in sleep disorders. She has also worked as an author, women's rights activist, journalist and public commentator.
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Alexander Hegius von Heek
1430 - 1498 (68 years)
Alexander Hegius von Heek was a German humanist, so called from his birthplace Heek . Hegius learned, likely in Emmerich, Greek from Rodolphus Agricola. In 1474 he settled down at Deventer in the Netherlands, where he either founded or succeeded to the headship of a school, which became famous for the number of its distinguished alumni. First and foremost of these was Erasmus; others were Hermann von dem Busche and Murmellius, the missionaries of humanism, Conrad Goclenius , Conrad Mutianus and Frans van Cranevelt.
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Laurent Cesalli
#174464
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Laurent Cesalli is a Swiss historian of philosophy who focuses on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Life Laurent Cesalli was born in Vevey in 1968. After graduating from high school in 1987, he studied at the University of Fribourg and graduated in 1993 under the supervision of Ruedi Imbach. Upon graduation he focused on non-academic activities: in 1995–1996, he cycled from Geneva to Beijing and, in 1997, he became a mountain guide. In 1998, he began his Ph.D. in medieval philosophy at the University of Geneva under the supervision of Alain de Libera, completing it in 2003.
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Shreyas Vasanawala
#135732
Overall Influence
Shreyas Vasanawala is an American pediatric radiologist and biomedical engineer. In 2021, Vasanawala was appointed the Division Chief, Associate Chair, and Radiologist-in-Chief for Pediatric Radiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the inaugural William R. Brody Professor of Pediatric Radiology and Child Health.
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Ross Harrison
#71545
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ross Harrison is a British philosopher and academic. He served as Provost of King's College, Cambridge from 2006 to 2013. He was previously Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. Harrison's books include "Bentham" , which explores the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.
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Max Seiffert
1868 - 1948 (80 years)
Maximilian Seiffert was a German musicologist and editor of Baroque music. Biography Seiffert was born in Beeskow an der Spree, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a teacher. He was first educated at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium, in Berlin, where he studied under Philipp Spitta, and then at the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in 1891 for his dissertation J. P. Sweelinck und seine direkten deutschen Schüler .
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Werner Braun
#105726
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Werner Hermann Georg Braun was a German musicologist. Life Born in Sangerhausen, Braun studied musicology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1946 to 1950 with Max Schneider and school music with main instrument piano and Germanistics. In 1950 he passed the Staatsexamen for the teaching profession in the subjects music and German. From 1951 on he worked as and later as senior assistant at the musicological institute of the Martin-Luther-University in Halle. In 1952 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on Johann Mattheson. In 1958, the University of Halle-Wittenberg accepted his habilitation on the Central German Choral Passion in the 18th century.
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John Addington Symonds
1807 - 1871 (64 years)
John Addington Symonds was an English physician and author. Life He was born in Oxford, where his father John Symonds was a medical practitioner. His mother was Mary Williams, of Aston, Oxfordshire. Symonds was educated at Magdalen College School; at the age of sixteen he went to the University of Edinburgh for medical training, and graduated M.D. in 1828.
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Alberto Basso
#83182
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Alberto Basso is an Italian musicologist and librarian. He started his activity in 1952 with a monograph on Stravinsky. In 1956 he graduated in law at the University of Turin but his activity was then fully devoted to music. From 1961 to 1974 he taught history of music at the Conservatory of Turin, where he was also librarian from 1974 to 1993. From 1973 to 1979 and from 1994 to 1997 he was president of the Italian Society of Musicology. In 1986 Basso founded the Istituto per i Beni Musicali in Piemonte . In 1982 he became a member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Basso is also a ...
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Yun Jeung
1629 - 1714 (85 years)
Yun Jeung or Yun Chǔng was a Confucian scholar in Korea during the late period of the Joseon dynasty. He was known as being a progressive thinker and for his opposition to the formalism and ritualism in the predominant philosophy of Chu Hsi. Yun Chung refused government office because he thought the Korean monarchy was corrupt, and spend his life teaching Sirhak ideas. He is known for the quote, "The king could exist without the people, but the people could not exist without the king."
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Carl Wurzinger
1817 - 1883 (66 years)
Carl Wurzinger was an Austrian history painter and a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Life and work His father was the caretaker for an estate. In 1832, at the age of fourteen, he became a student at the Academy of Fine Arts. He exhibited his first works in 1844. Three years later, he left Vienna to continue his education in Italy. He remained there for nine years.
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Christine Berg
#89494
Overall Influence
Christine Dorothy Berg is an American radiation oncologist and physician-scientist who was chief of the early detection research group at the National Cancer Institute. Life Berg completed a M.D. at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. She completed a residency in internal medicine from 1977 to 1981 at the McGaw Medical Center. Berg conducted a fellowship in hematology and medical oncology from 1981 to 1984 at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. She was a resident in radiation oncology from 1984 to 1986 with MedStar Health.
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Kermit E. Krantz
#54654
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Kermit Edward Krantz was a surgeon, inventor and faculty member at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is most known as the co-developer of the Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz , a medical procedure for stress urinary incontinence which he performed over 5000 times. He served as Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He was largely credited with desegregating the maternity ward of that hospital in the 1960s.
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Teresa Forcades
#18557
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Teresa Forcades i Vila is a Catalan physician, Benedictine nun and social activist. Forcades i Vila is known for her outspoken and sometimes controversial views on the church, public health and Catalan independence, and for her vaccine skepticism.
Go to Profile#14643
Suetonia Palmer
#112903
Overall Influence
Suetonia Cressida Palmer is a New Zealand nephrology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 2009 PhD titled Kidney function in cardiovascular disease at the University of Otago, Palmer rose to full professor.
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Josephine Gatt Ciancio
#112288
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Josephine Gatt Ciancio is a Maltese social scientist, and minor philosopher. In philosophy she is mostly interested in Possible-world theories. Life Gatt Ciancio was born at Msida, Malta, in 1946. She studied at the University of Malta, from who acquired a Bachelor of Arts in Maltese Language, English Language, and Mediterranean Studies . She also studied at the Pacific Western University in Los Angeles, California, United States. From here she acquired a Master’s degree in Science with a major in Neuroscience. She also conducted studies in Social Democracy and Political Economy. In 1967 Gatt...
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Aklilu Lemma
#19169
Overall Influence
1934 - 1997 (63 years)
Aklilu Lemma was an Ethiopian pathobiologist. In 1989, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award "for discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia." Education Lemma was educated at Addis Ababa University College and at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. where he obtained his D.Sc. in 1964. His dissertation was on sandfly-borne leishmaniasis.
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Hiroshi Matsumoto
#175103
Overall Influence
#14647
Dal Yong Jin
#63146
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dal Yong Jin is a media studies scholar. He is Distinguished SFU Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada where his research explores digital platforms, digital games, media history, political economy of communication, globalization and trans-nationalization, the Korean Wave, and science journalism. He has published more than 30 books and penned more than 200 journal articles, book chapters, and book reviews. Jin has delivered numerous keynote speeches, conference presentations, invited lectures, and media interviews on subjects such as digital platforms, video games, globalization, transnational culture, and the Korean Wave.
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James S. Economou
#78712
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James S. Economou is an American physician-scientist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles where he is also a surgical oncologist and tumor immunologist. He was Vice Chancellor for Research at UCLA where he promoted academic entrepreneurship, transdisciplinary research, and support of the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The UCLA research enterprise generates almost one billion dollars in extramural funds annually.
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Alisa Bokulich
#124214
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Alisa Bokulich is an American philosopher of science and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. Since 2010 she has been the Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, where she organizes the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, and serves as a Series Editor for Boston Studies in Philosophy and History of Science. She was the first woman ever to be tenured in the Philosophy Department at Boston University and the first woman to become a director of a center for history and philosophy of science in North America.
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Joseph Hilarius Eckhel
1737 - 1798 (61 years)
Joseph Hilarius Eckhel was an Austrian Jesuit priest and numismatist. Biography Eckhel was born at Enzersfeld, in Lower Austria. His father was farm-steward to Count Zinzendorf, and he received his early education at the Jesuits' College, Vienna, where at the age of fourteen he was admitted into the order. He devoted himself to antiquities and numismatics. After being engaged as professor of poetry and rhetoric, first at Steyr and afterwards at Vienna, he was appointed in 1772 keeper of the cabinet of coins at the Jesuits' College, and in the same year he went to Italy for the purpose of personal inspection and study of antiquities and coins.
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