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,
#14801
Hubert Unverricht
#150407
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Hubert Johannes Unverricht was a German musicologist and a lecturer at various universities. Life Unverricht worn in Liegnitz. After the Flight and expulsion of Germans in 1946 and a short stay in the Kleinwelka camp near Bautzen, he passed his Abitur in Großenhain in 1947. He then studied musicology , German studies and philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin until 1951. In 1952, he moved to the Free University of Berlin, where he completed his studies in 1953 with the dissertation Hörbare Vorbilder in der Instrumentalmusik bis 1750. Untersuchungen der Vorgeschichte der Programmmusik.
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Shirley Graham Du Bois
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American-Ghanaian writer, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works.
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John Matthew Rispoli
1582 - 1639 (57 years)
John Matthew Rispoli was a major Maltese philosopher of great erudition. He was held in high esteem by the Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller Order, the Bishops of Malta, the Viceroys of Sicily, cardinals, bishops, inquisitors, and the common people. Perhaps the most eminent Maltese philosopher of the Middle Ages, the various extant writings of his are witness to his philosophical aptitude and dexterity as to his high calibre as a philosopher. These qualities were highly appreciated during his lifetime, in Malta as in France and Italy. He lived a busy life, both as an intellectual and as an administrator.
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James Marsh
1794 - 1842 (48 years)
James Marsh was an American philosopher, Congregational clergyman and president of the University of Vermont from 1826 to 1833. Biography Marsh was born in Hartford, Vermont, and educated at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1817 from the college-in-exile in opposition to Dartmouth University, the state university that was set up in an attempt to destroy the Dartmouth College. He then graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1822, meanwhile serving as tutor at Dartmouth 1818–1820, and spending several months in study at Cambridge, Massachusetts. In October 1824, he was ordained as a Cong...
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Kevin Williamson
#96260
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kevin Williamson is a writer, publisher, and activist originally from Caithness. He is a Scottish socialist and republican and was an activist for the Scottish Socialist Party . He was also the architect of their radical drug policy, which included the legalisation of cannabis and the provision under the National Health Service of free synthetic heroin to addicts under medical supervision to combat the problems of drugs in working class communities. He wrote a regular weekly column, "Rebel Ink", for the Scottish Socialist Voice.
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Akio Mori
#21194
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
is a Japanese physiologist, sports scientist and writer. He is also the founder and the former head of the Japanese learned society . Mori was originally known for his physiology researches, but began to write books about human neuroscience, coining the term "game brain" in his 2002 book . He claimed that the brains of people who played video games were physically damaged. Game Nō no Kyōfu received much attention from critics such as Tamaki Saitō.
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David S. Ingram
#176216
Overall Influence
#14808
Sendurai Mani
#59151
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sendurai A. Mani is an Indian-American oncologist and a Molecular Bilogist. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and Dean's Chair for Translational Oncology at Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School. He is also the associate director for Translational Oncology at the Legorreta Cancer Center at Alpert Medical School, Brown University. Previously, he was a co-director of Metastasis Research Center and co-director, the Center for Stem Cell & Developmental Biology, and a professor of Translational Molecular Pathology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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René Joyeuse
#25828
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
René Joyeuse, M.D., MS, FACS was a Swiss, French and American soldier, physician and researcher. He distinguished himself as an agent of Allied intelligence in German-occupied France during World War II.
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Mireille Hildebrandt
#86720
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mireille Hildebrandt is a Dutch lawyer and philosopher who works at the intersection of law and computer science. She is the Research Professor on 'Interfacing Law and Technology' at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and holds the Chair of Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen.
Go to Profile#14811
Damo
600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)
Damo was a Pythagorean philosopher said by many to have been the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. Early life Tradition relates that she was born in Croton, Magna Graecia, and was the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. According to Iamblichus, Damo married Meno the Crotonian. Some accounts refer to her as an only daughter, while others indicate that she had two sisters, Arignote and Myia . With her brother Telauges, they became members of the Pythagorean sect founded by their father.
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Karl Aschenbrenner
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Karl W. Aschenbrenner was an American philosopher, translator and prominent American specialist in analytic philosophy and aesthetics, author and editor of more than 48 publications including five monographs, 27 articles and 16 book reviews. His principal academic post was at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Philosophy. Aschenbrenner co-edited, with Arnold Isenberg, a collection of essays on the subject of aesthetic theory. As co-translator with William B. Holther, Aschenbrenner published the principal work of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and, with Donald Nichol...
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Mildred Fay Jefferson
#18403
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Mildred Fay Jefferson was an American physician and anti-abortion political activist. The first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, the first woman to graduate in surgery from Harvard Medical School and the first woman to become a member of the Boston Surgical Society, she is known for her opposition to the legalization of abortion and her work as president of the National Right to Life Committee.
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Nelson Thomas Potter Jr.
#146196
Overall Influence
1939 - 2013 (74 years)
Nelson Thomas Potter Jr. was a professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States. Intellectual biography In 1961, he graduated summa cum laude from Monmouth College and in 1969, he received as Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins University in philosophy. In 1965, he became a faculty member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and was chair of the department from 1980 to 1985. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His philosophical research focused on ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of Kant. ...
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Hannah E. Hashkes
#154934
Overall Influence
Dr. Hannah E. Hashkes is an Israeli philosopher of Jewish thought. Hashkes studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on American pragmatism. It is entitled “Philosophy and the Role of the Philosopher in American Pragmatism”. In this work, Hashkes provided a detailed and careful examination of the thought of the main classical American pragmatists - Peirce, James, and Dewey - while analyzing the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty in comparison to them.
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Robert von Welz
1814 - 1878 (64 years)
Robert von Welz was a German physician and ophthalmologist. From 1832 he studied sciences and medicine at the University of Würzburg, receiving his medical doctorate in 1838. For several years he worked as an assistant physician at the Juliusspital in Würzburg, then in 1849 traveled to Paris, where he conducted research of syphilis. In Paris he became engaged in a dispute with Philippe Ricord in regard to the transferability of syphilis. His interests later turned to ophthalmology, and in 1854/55 he studied the subject with Albrecht von Graefe in Berlin. In 1857 he opened an eye clinic in Würzburg, and in 1866 he was named a professor of ophthalmology at the university.
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Nils Roll-Hansen
#105259
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Nils Roll-Hansen is a historian and philosopher of 19th and 20th century biology at University of Oslo. He is the author of four books and many academic articles. His book The Lysenko Effect was praised in Nature. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
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Paul de Sorbait
1624 - 1691 (67 years)
Paul de Sorbait was an Austrian physician and sanitary engineer. He went to school in Paderborn, then attended the University of Padua, where apparently he obtained his degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine. He practiced as a physician in Rome, Cologne, and Arnhem, and in August, 1652, was made a member of the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. In 1655 he became professor of theoretical medicine at the same university, and in 1666 professor of practical medicine. In 1658 he was appointed court-physician to the Empress-Dowager Eleonora. In 1676 he rebuilt at his own expense the students' hall "Goldberg" and added a chapel to it.
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Johannes B. Reitsma
#176316
Overall Influence
#14820
Shri Mohan Jain
#113552
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Prof. Dr. Shri Mohan Jain is an Indian-born plant biotechnology scientist. He worked several years for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. He has done research on genetically modified food, mutation breeding, ornamental plants, date palm, and tropical fruit, such as banana. He has edited 44 internationally sold books.
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Charles Gordon Roland
#101501
Overall Influence
1933 - 2009 (76 years)
Charles "Chuck" Gordon Roland was born on January 25, 1933, in Winnipeg, Manitoba to Jack and Leona Roland. After a long and distinguished career as an author, editor, and Hannah Professor of the History of Medicine at McMaster University, Roland died at the age of 76 on June 9, 2009, in Burlington, Ontario.
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Vladimir Khavinson
#28670
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Vladimir Khavinson - is a professor, Treasurer of the European region of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics; Main gerontologist of the Health Committee of the Government of Saint Petersburg, Russia; Director of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology; Vice-president of Gerontological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Chair of Gerontology and Geriatrics of the North-Western State Medical University, St-Petersburg; Colonel of medical service , retired.
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Federico Luisetti
#150366
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Federico Luisetti is an Italian philosopher, he is Associate professor of Italian Culture and Society at the University of St. Gallen. From 2005 to 2017, he taught Italian Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was the chair of the Department of Romance Studies from 2014 to 2017. He is the author of books and essays on philosophy, literature, visual studies, the Avant-gardes, and political thought. He has also worked on decolonial thought and anthropology.
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Sid Watkins
#2252
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Eric Sidney Watkins , commonly known within the Formula One fraternity as Professor Sid or simply Prof, was an English neurosurgeon. Born in Liverpool, Watkins enrolled at the University of Liverpool where he graduated in 1952. He later served four years in the Royal Army Medical Corps before specialising in neurosurgery in Oxford and later, in London. Watkins also acted as a race track doctor at weekends which he continued at Watkins Glen International when he was appointed a Professor of Neurosurgery at State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.
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Helga Salvesen
#98821
Overall Influence
1963 - 2016 (53 years)
Helga Birgitte Salvesen was a Norwegian physician and professor of medicine at the University of Bergen. Early life and education Salvesen was born in Asker, but moved to Bergen at the age of four. She took the cand.med. degree in 1991 and the dr.med. degree in 2000, with the doctoral thesis Tumor Biomarkers and Prognostic Factors in Endometrial Carcinoma.
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Dominic Lam
#86067
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Dominic Man-Kit Lam is a Chinese doctor and artist. Lam is most notable for inventing the painting technique called Chromoskedasic Painting. Early life and education Lam was raised in Hong Kong and in 1965, moved to the Fort William in Ontario, Canada, and received a scholarship to attend Lakehead University. Lam received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. Lam went on to achieve a Master of Science in physics from the University of British Columbia and later promoted to D.Phil in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto in 1970.
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Arthur G. Hunt
#35270
Overall Influence
Arthur G. Hunt is an American plant and soils scientist who is currently a professor at the University of Kentucky and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Education He earned his B.S at University of Lowell in 1976 and his Ph.D at Brandeis University in 1982.
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Renate Soulen
#90564
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Renate L. Soulen, MD, FSIR is an American physician. She is credited as one of three women co-founders of the Society for CardioVascular and Interventional Radiology , a founding member of the Philadelphia Angio Club, and the first female president of the Philadelphia Roentgen Ray Society.
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Stephen Laurence
#92101
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Stephen Laurence is a scientist and philosopher, currently at the University of Sheffield, whose primary areas of research interest are the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and cognitive science.
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Gunnar Bovim
#62034
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gunnar Bovim is a Norwegian physician and civil servant. He has been the rector at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology from August 1, 2013 to August 21, 2019. After that he will be working with policy matters related to education and research at NTNU and be of disposal to NTNUs top management.
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Henry Koffler
#46455
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Henry Koffler was an Austrian-born American scientist, academic and artist. Early life Koffler was born in Vienna, Austria. In 1939, at the age of 17, he emigrated by himself to the United States. The second recipient of the International Scholar by the University of Arizona, Koffler received his B.S. degree in Agricultural Chemistry in 1943 from the University of Arizona, and from the University of Wisconsin, his M.S. in Microbiology in 1944 and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Biochemistry in 1947.
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Abdelmalek Sayad
#34878
Overall Influence
1933 - 1998 (65 years)
Abdelmalek Sayad , was a sociologist, first as an assistant to Pierre Bourdieu, then as a research director at the French CNRS and at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. An expert of the North-African community in France, he was central to the introduction of the study of migration issues in French social sciences.
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Thomas K. Donaldson
#47342
Overall Influence
1945 - 2006 (61 years)
Thomas K. Donaldson was a mathematician and well-known cryonics advocate. He was born in the state of Kentucky in the United States, and took his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1969. He also lived in Sunnyvale, California, and for many years in Canberra, Australia, where he taught mathematics at Australian National University. He founded both the Cryonics Association of Australia and the Institute for Neural Cryobiology, which has funded ground-breaking research in cryopreservation of brain tissue.
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H. S. Krishnaswamy Iyengar
#89511
Overall Influence
1920 - 2008 (88 years)
Haleyuru Srinivasa Krishnaswamy Iyengar was a Kannada columnist, essayist, novelist, critic and teacher of Economics and Commerce studies in Mysore. He is remembered for his character sketches and short essays on personalities and issues of national & international import, in his weekly column "Varada Vyakthi" . These appeared in the Kannada magazine "Sudha" continuously for nearly two decades. His literary critique "Kannadadalli Vidambana Sahitya" won him the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981. His perspective on elements of Vishistadvaita in the works of Kuvempu were brought forth in his book "Kuvempu Sahityadalli Vishistadvaita – Darshana".
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Sandra Wolin
#38829
Overall Influence
Sandra Lynn Wolin is an American microbiologist and physician-scientist specialized in biogenesis, function, and turnover of non-coding RNA. She is chief of the RNA Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute.
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Gerald Mast
1940 - 1988 (48 years)
Gerald Mast was an author, film historian, and member of the University of Chicago faculty. He was a contributor to the modern discipline of film studies and film history. Life and career Mast was born in Los Angeles in 1940; his family included his mother, Bessie, and Linda, his sister. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in English. He taught at New York University, Oberlin College, and the Richmond College of the City University of New York, before joining the faculty of his alma mater in 1978. He chaired the Department of...
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Julien Hoffman
#27043
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Julien I.E. Hoffman, FRCP was a pediatric cardiologist and professor emeritus of pediatrics and a senior member of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. He has also worked at the Moffitt-Long Hospital at the UCSF Medical Center, and served on the medical advisory committee for the SIDS Alliance.
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Ibn Sab'in
1217 - 1270 (53 years)
Ibn Sab'īn was an Arab Sufi philosopher, the last philosopher of the Andalus in the west land of Islamic world. He was born in 1217 in Spain and lived in Ceuta. It has been suggested that he was a Neoplatonic philosopher, a Peripatetic philosopher, a Pythagorean philosopher, a Hermeticist, a Kabbalist, an alchemist, a heterodox Sufi, a crypto-Shīʿī, a plagiarizer, a pantheist, and an arrogant seeker of fame, though none of these adequately characterise Ibn Sab'in.
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Kath Maitland
#166418
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kathryn Maitland is a British paediatrician who is professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, director of the ICCARE Centre at the Institute of Global Health Innovation and an Honorary Fellow at Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit, University College, London. Since 2000 she has been based at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, in Kilifi, Kenya.
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Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam
#38119
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Kanagaratnam Shanmugaratnam was a Singaporean histopathologist considered Singapore's "father of pathology". He was known for his research on nasopharyngeal carcinoma and founded the Singapore Cancer Registry.
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Nikolay Milkov
#172888
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nikolay Milkov is a German-Bulgarian philosopher and professor at the University of Paderborn. Biography Nikolay Milkov studied philosophy at the University of Sofia from 1974 to 1978. Five years later he defended the PhD thesis "Critical Analysis of the Philosophy of Logical atomism" at the Lomonossov State University in Moscow where he was a doctoral student. From August 1983 Milkov held a research position at the Institute for Philosophy of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. From October 1989 he was a research fellow at Bielefeld University, Germany, first as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow and later as a Fritz Thyssen fellow.
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Mike Pringle
#115162
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael Alexander Leary Pringle CBE is a British physician and academic. He is the emeritus professor of general practice at the University of Nottingham, a past president of the Royal College of General Practitioners , best known for his primary care research on clinical audit, significant event audit, revalidation, quality improvement programmes and his contributions to health informatics services and health politics. He is a writer of medicine and fiction, with a number of publications including articles, books, chapters, forewords and guidelines.
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Daniel Friedman
#176403
Overall Influence
#14844
Park Ynhui
#115121
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Park Ynhui is a South Korean poet and writer who publishes under the name Park Yeemun in Korean. Life Park was born in 1930 and graduated from Seoul National University with an undergraduate degree in French literature. He then attended the Sorbonne in Paris, from which he received a PhD in Philosophy. Park spent 30 years as a professor in, Japan, Germany, France, and the United States. He taught in Boston [at Simmons College] until his retirement in 1993 at which point he returned to South Korea where he taught at Pohang University and Yonsei University.
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John Leonard Watling
#150235
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
John Leonard Watling was a British philosopher and Head of philosophy department at University College London. External links Watling Archive
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Robert D. Acland
#48472
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
Robert D. Acland, MBBS, FRCS was a surgeon and academic credited with being one of the pioneers in plastic and reconstructive microsurgery. He was the younger son of Richard Acland and his wife Anne. He developed one of the first microsurgical instruments, the Acland micro-vessel clamp, as well as the 10-0 nylon sutures and needles that are still used today. He published the first edition of Acland's Practice Manual for Micro-vascular Surgery, also known as the "Red Book", a manual on microsurgical techniques . The current edition was revised in 2008 and is still an essential tool for any tr...
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Charles Kennedy
#176430
Overall Influence
#14848
Marianne Legato
#88461
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Marianne J. Legato is an American physician, author, lecturer, and renowned expert in gender-specific medicine, which focuses on understanding how biological sex and gender influence human health and the experience of diseases.
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Vitangelo Bisceglia
1749 - 1817 (68 years)
Vitangelo Bisceglia was an Italian botanist, agronomist and professor. He taught inside the University of Altamura. Because of his being a polymath, he's been described as "an encyclopedic spirit, the honor of the Muses".
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Pittacus of Mytilene
650 BC - 570 BC (80 years)
Pittacus was an ancient Mytilenean military general and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Biography Pittacus was a native of Mytilene and son of Hyrradius. He became a Mytilenaean general who, with his army, was victorious in the battle against the Athenians and their commander Phrynon. In consequence of this victory, the Mytilenaeans held Pittacus in the greatest honour and presented the supreme power into his hands. After ten years of reign, he resigned his position and the city and constitution were brought into good order.
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