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,
#15151
Josep Figueras
#83005
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Josep Figueras Marimont is a Spanish physician, health policy expert, and health services researcher who serves as the director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Biography Born in Medinyà, Girona, Spain, Josep was educated at the University of Barcelona where he received his medical degree with honors in 1983, after which he specialized in family medicine in 1987 at the University of Valencia. He proceeded to move to the United Kingdom where he obtained a Master of Public Health from the University of Leeds, and a MSc and Ph.D. in health planning and financing from ...
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Henry Clerke
1621 - 1687 (66 years)
Henry Clerke was an English academic and physician, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1672. Life He was son of Thomas Clerke of Willoughby, Warwickshire, England, and matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 20 April 1635, at the age of 16. He obtained a demyship at Magdalen College, and was probationer fellow there from 1642 to 1667. He graduated B.A. on 4 December 1641, and M.A. on 21 June 1644. He was reader in logic at his college in 1643, bursar in 1653, 1656, and 1662, vice-president in 1655, and again in 1663. He seems to have submitted to the parliamentary visitors in May ...
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Roland Desné
#100072
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Roland Desné was a French writer, philosopher, and historian. Biography The son of a railway worker, Desné joined the French Communist Party with his philosophy professor, Guy Besse. In Paris, he met numerous other philosophers, including Louis Aragon, Arthur Adamov, Paul Éluard, Pierre Soulages, and René Étiemble. He published in France Nouvelle, La Nouvelle Critique, La Pensée, and Les Éditions sociales.
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Arun Garg
#66493
Overall Influence
1947 - 2018 (71 years)
Arun Garg is an Indo-Canadian physician in the province of British Columbia who is recognized for contributing linkages between Canada and India, his country of origin. Early life Garg was born in the Indian city of Agra. His reputation for academic excellence started at an early age. When he was six years old, he entered school at a Grade 4 level. By age 16, he graduated from Agra University with a Master's in Chemistry. Being too young to enter medical school in India, Garg emigrated to the prairie province of Saskatchewan in Canada.
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Emanual Maverakis
#98115
Overall Influence
Emanual Maverakis is an American physician-scientist, immunologist working in the field of immunogenetics, and a professor at the University of California, Davis. Early life and education Emanual Maverakis was born in Oakland, California, and spent his early childhood in South Central Los Angeles. His family eventually relocated to Moorpark, California, where he attended high school. He is of mixed heritage. His mother's family immigrated to the United States from Jalisco Mexico and his father's family immigrated from Crete. Although he would become an accomplished academician, following high school, Maverakis did not immediately pursue a university education.
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Brian Bruya
#131623
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Brian Bruya , is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Michigan University, and an author of books and articles in the fields of comparative philosophy, cognitive science, and educational psychology. Bruya is known for his work in the study of "effortless attention", and showing that it is possible to foster wisdom in an educational setting. He is also a translator and has published translations of a number of popular comic books on Chinese philosophy, which have been featured in The New York Times.
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Wendy Rogers
#176422
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Wendy Anne Rogers is a professor of clinical ethics at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She was nominated as one of Nature's 10 people who mattered in 2019 for revealing ethical failures in China’s studies on organ transplantation.
Go to Profile#15158
Jules Henri Saiset
#146222
Overall Influence
1925 - 1995 (70 years)
Jules Henri Saiset was a prominent French existentialist philosopher, dramatist, novelist, and critic, who contributed significantly to the field of existentialism. He was born in Paris on July 11, 1925, and grew up in the aftermath of the First World War, which had a profound impact on his worldview.
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Juan Latino
1518 - Present (508 years)
Juan Latino was a Spanish professor of Ethiopian descent at the University of Granada during the sixteenth century. He could be considered the first African who studied at a European university and who reached a professorship on Grammar and Latin Language at the University of Granada.
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Buddhisagarsuri
1874 - 1925 (51 years)
Buddhisagarsuri was a Jain ascetic, philosopher and author from British India. Born in a Hindu family, he was influenced by a Jain monk and later was initiated in asceticism, and later elevated to the title of Acharya. He wrote more than hundred books.
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Pierre Grégoire
1540 - 1597 (57 years)
Pierre Grégoire was a French jurist and philosopher Career and key ideas Grégoire was born to a poor Catholic family in Toulouse. He studied the law and made a career for himself as an influential and at times controversial Catholic jurist. He taught law at Cahors and Toulouse from 1566 until 1582 when his patron, Charles III of Lorraine, procured a professorship in civil and canon law for him at the university of Pont à Mousson. Here Grégoire found himself colleague to the Scottish jurist William Barclay, best known for his invention of the term ‘monarchomach’ and his political treatise De Regno et Regali Potestate .
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Komitas
1869 - 1935 (66 years)
Soghomon Soghomonian, ordained and commonly known as Komitas, was an Armenian priest, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer, and choirmaster, who is considered the founder of the Armenian national school of music. He is recognized as one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology.
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Snake Shyam
#111693
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
M. S. Balasubramania , popularly known as Snake Shyam, is a snake enthusiast, wildlife conservationist and lecturer in Mysore, India. He was elected to the Mysore City Corporation in 2013, a role he served until 2018.
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George H. Hitchings
#3266
Overall Influence
1905 - 1998 (93 years)
George Herbert Hitchings was an American medical doctor who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir James Black and Gertrude Elion "for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment", Hitchings specifically for his work on chemotherapy.
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Luigi Cavanna
#99515
Overall Influence
Luigi Cavanna is an Italian doctor. He is the head of the hematology and oncology ward at the Guglielmo da Saliceto hospital in Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna. COVID-19 pandemic During the second week of March 2020, in the beginning of the pandemic lockdown in Italy, Cavanna realized that too many critically-ill COVID-19 patients were arriving at his hospital and that they could have been treated earlier before the escalation of the symptoms. He therefore became one of the first doctors in Italy to focus on house calls for COVID-19 patients.
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António de Vasconcelos Nogueira
#120298
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
António Fernando de Vasconcelos Nogueira is a Portuguese philosopher, Social Science researcher, author, dramatist, and freelance journalist. Biography António de Vasconcelos Nogueira was born in Águeda, Portugal. He spent his childhood and part of his adolescence in Luanda, Angola, a former Portuguese colony in Africa, where he attended Catholic primary schools. Back in mainland Portugal, he continued his secondary education at Escola Secundária Marques de Castilho in Águeda and at Liceu Homem Cristo in Aveiro.
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William Doe
#117684
Overall Influence
1941 - 2022 (81 years)
William Fairbank Doe was an Australian-born gastroenterologist who was Provost of the Aga Khan University and professor of medicine and Dean of the University of Birmingham Medical School. From 1993 until 2001 he was the senior editor of the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. His scientific output includes over 150 scientific research publications in international scientific journals. Since 1999 Doe has been a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, United Kingdom. He was President of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia from 1989 until 1991.
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Richard Walker
1679 - 1764 (85 years)
Richard Walker was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Cambridge, noted as a supporter of Richard Bentley in his long legal battle with the fellowship of Trinity College. Life He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1706, Cambridge Master of Arts in 1710, Bachelor of Divinity in 1724, and Doctor of Divinity per regias literas in 1728. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity, but in 1708 left Cambridge to serve a curacy at Upwell in Norfolk. In 1717 Richard Bentley, who had a difference with the junior bursar, John Myers, removed him, and recalled Walker to Cambridge to fill his place.
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Thomas Nelson Baker Sr.
1860 - 1941 (81 years)
Reverend Dr. Thomas Nelson Baker, Sr. was a minister, author and philosopher. Born into slavery, Baker was the first African-American to receive a PhD in philosophy in the United States. Biography Baker was born in Eastville, Virginia, on August 11, 1860. His parents were Thomas Chadwick and Edith Nottingham Baker, who were slaves on Robert Nottingham's plantation in Northampton County, Virginia.
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Anita Holdcroft
#164610
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anita Holdcroft is an Emeritus Professor of Anaesthetics at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She specialised in acute pain in women and was the first to study the changes that occur in the brain during parturition.
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Åke Senning
#20897
Overall Influence
1915 - 2000 (85 years)
Åke Senning was a Swedish cardiac surgeon who worked at Zurich University Hospital from 1961 until his retirement in 1985. Biography Åke Senning was born to the Swedish veterinarian David Senning and the nurse Elly Senning, née Säfström. He finished his schooling in Uppsala with the baccalaureate. He actually wanted to become an engineer. However, as a nurse in World War 1, his mother persuaded him to study medicine. He subsequently completed the pre-clinical part of his studies in Uppsala, the clinical part and his state examination in Stockholm in 1948. His subsequent further training in Stockholm included general surgery, orthopaedics and thoracic and neurosurgery.
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Lorraine Code
#178360
Overall Influence
#15173
Robert Bentley Todd
1809 - 1860 (51 years)
Robert Bentley Todd was an Irish-born physician who is best known for describing the condition postictal paralysis in his Lumleian Lectures in 1849 now known as Todd's palsy. Early life The son of physician Charles Hawkes Todd and Elizabeth Bentley , Robert was born in Dublin, Ireland, 9 April 1809. He was the younger brother of noted writer and minister Rev. James Henthorn Todd, D.D. He is the older brother of Rev. William Gowan Todd, D.D. and Armstrong Todd, MD.
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John Wells
#71699
Overall Influence
1936 - 1998 (62 years)
John Campbell Wells was an English actor, writer and satirist. Early life The son of a cleric, Wells was born in Ashford, Kent, in 1936. He was educated at Eastbourne College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
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Ivor Leclerc
#178372
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
Ivor Leclerc was an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America. Books The Philosophy of NatureThe Nature of Physical ExistenceWhitehead's metaphysics,: An introductory expositionThe Relevance of Whitehead: Philosophical Essays in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of Alfred North Whitehead
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John W. Kirklin
#19514
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
John Webster Kirklin was an American cardiothoracic surgeon, general surgeon, prolific author and medical educator who is best remembered for refining John Gibbon's heart–lung bypass machine via a pump-oxygenator to make feasible under direct vision, routine open-heart surgery and repairs of some congenital heart defects. The success of these operations was combined with his other advances, including teamwork and developments in establishing the correct diagnosis before surgery and progress in computerized intensive care unit monitoring after open heart surgery.
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Giovanni Garzoni
1419 - 1505 (86 years)
Giovanni Garzoni was an Italian humanist and physician from Bologna, where he was professor of medicine and teacher of rhetoric. Biography Born in Bologna in 1419 as the son of Bernardo Garzoni, a physician and rhetoric. Already in his youth, Garzoni's main interest was rhetorics, when he may have been instructed by his father Bernardo Garzoni and by Giovanni Lamola, and met humanists like Leonardo Bruni. When his father became one of the physicians of pope Nicholas V , Giovanni went along with him to Rome. The earliest extant texts by Barzoni date from this period, including a 300 folio lon...
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Timothy Johnson
#101274
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
G. Timothy Johnson is an American academic, pastor, physician, television journalist, and writer who, as "Dr. Tim Johnson", is known to television viewers as the longtime Chief Medical Correspondent for ABC News on the ABC television network.
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Ottó Károlyi
#80728
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
Ottó Károlyi , having studied in Budapest, Vienna, and London, was a musicologist and the Senior Lecturer of Music at the University of Stirling, Scotland, where he founded the Music department and remained employed even after the department's closure. He died in October 2016.
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Pierre Debray-Ritzen
#91515
Overall Influence
1922 - 1993 (71 years)
Pierre Debray-Ritzen was a French psychiatrist. He was a member of the Club de l'horloge. Publications L'Odeur du temps, roman, Casterman, 1963Le Défi aux étoiles, Plon, 1964Les Nervures de l'être : éléments d'une psychologie de la littérature, Rencontre, 1967La Dyslexie de l'enfant : origine, dépistage, mesure, rééducation, Casterman, 1970Un final vénitien, Fayard, 1971Génétique et Psychiatrie, Fayard, 1972Les Troubles du comportement de l'enfant, Fayard, 1973 La Scolastique freudienne, Fayard, 1973Psychologie de la littérature et de la création littéraire, Retz, 1977Lettre ouverte aux paren...
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Courtney Young
#95532
Overall Influence
Courtney Young is an American librarian and scholar, who served as the president of the American Library Association for the 2014–2015 year. On June 30, 2015, her term as ALA President ended, and she passed the title on to Sari Feldman.
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William Angus Sinclair
1905 - 1954 (49 years)
William Angus Sinclair OBE TD FRSE DLitt was a 20th-century Scottish philosopher. Life He was born in Edinburgh on 27 September 1905 the son of Elizabeth Campbell and her husband, Captain John Sinclair of the Mercantile Marine. He was educated at George Watson's College then studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MA. In 1932 he began lecturing in logic at the University.
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John Wilson
1840 - 1901 (61 years)
"John Wilson the Revealer of Peyote" was a Caddo medicine man who introduced the Peyote plant into a religion, became a major leader in the Ghost Dance, and introduced a new peyote ceremony with teachings of Christ. John Wilson's Caddo name was Nishkû'ntu, meaning "Moon Head."
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Helen Nicholson
#60609
Overall Influence
Helen Nicholson is a New Zealand medical academic specialising in male reproductive health. She is a full professor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Otago. Since March 2023, Nicholson has served as the university's acting vice-chancellor after Vice Chancellor David Murdoch took sick leave and subsequently resigned.
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Eli Bartra
#117077
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Eli Bartra is a feminist philosopher and a pioneer in researching women and folk art in different places of the world, but particularly, in Mexico. She is the daughter of the writers Anna Murià and Agustí Bartra, two Catalan refugees in Mexico.
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George R. Harker
#144128
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
George R. Harker , was an author and self-styled "cyberspace philosopher". He held bachelor's and master's degrees in Philosophy from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, and had taught for 21 years at Western Illinois University before being terminated. He had written many articles concerning the naturist movement, and contributed to the book Recreational Nudity and the Law by Gordon Gill. He was founder of the Church and School of International Détente, a lecturer and a book publisher. He died in 2020 in Hawaii.
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Gerald Buckberg
#81341
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Gerald Buckberg was an American surgeon. His research initially centered in the area of myocardial protection and led to the introduction of blood cardioplegia, which is currently used by over 85% of surgeons in the United States and 75% of surgeons worldwide for adult and pediatric heart operations. He was a member of multiple surgical societies, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American Surgical Association, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He was Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
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Cornelis Erik Hack
#178454
Overall Influence
#15189
Lawrence M. Hinman
#178463
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Lawrence Michael Hinman is an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. He is known for his expertise on moral philosophy. Books Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. Fifth Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2013Contemporary Moral Issues: Diversity and Consensus .Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2012
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Eric Sorscher
#94243
Overall Influence
Eric Sorscher is an American medical researcher whose primary focus is cystic fibrosis. Some of his research interests include understanding the function of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator and its associated gene, as well as understanding mutations in the CFTR gene.
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Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider
1750 - 1822 (72 years)
Johann Gottlob Theaenus Schneider was a German classicist and naturalist. Biography Schneider was born at Collm in Saxony. In 1774, on the recommendation of Christian Gottlob Heine, he became secretary to the famous Strasbourg scholar Richard François Brunck, and in 1811 became professor of ancient languages and eloquence at Breslau where he died in 1822.
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Robert Osborne
#48142
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Robert Jolin Osborne was an American film historian, television presenter, author, actor and the primary host for more than 20 years of the cable channel Turner Classic Movies . Prior to hosting at TCM, Osborne had been a host on The Movie Channel, and earlier, a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. Osborne wrote the official history of the Academy Awards, published in 1988.
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Joan Cribb
#70362
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Joan Winifred Cribb was an Australian botanist and mycologist. Life and career Joan Winifred Herbert was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the daughter of botanists Vera and Desmond Herbert. She graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Master of Science. She married fellow botanist Alan Cribb in 1954, and several years later joined him at the University of Queensland as a part-time lecturer and tutor.
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Étienne Rabaud
1868 - 1956 (88 years)
Étienne Antoine Prosper Jules Rabaud was a French zoologist, known for his studies of animal behavior. From 1894 he served as an assistant in the laboratory of teratology at the École des Hautes-Études, and in 1898 he obtained doctorates in both medicine and sciences. In 1907 he became a maître de conférences at the faculty of sciences in Paris, where he was later named an assistant professor , professor without chair and a professor of experimental biology . From 1910 to 1919 he served as director of the laboratory at Wimereux.
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Frank Hölzle
#86948
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Frank Hölzle is a German surgeon. He is a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the RWTH Aachen University. He is chairman and head of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Hölzle is known for his work in the fields of plastic facial reconstruction with a focus on micro surgery. He is also specialised for the treatment of tumor diseases in the head and neck region, and of malformations like cleft lip and palate.
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Bahram H. Arjmandi
#173663
Overall Influence
Bahram H. Arjmandi is an American nutritionist. He is the Margaret A. Sitton Professor at Florida State University and is the founder and Director of the Center for Advancing Exercise and Nutrition Research on Aging . He is a researcher in the fields of functional foods and human health. He was among the first to detect the presence of estrogen receptors in the gut linking the importance of estrogen and estrogen receptors in calcium regulation independent of vitamin D.
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Jerilynn Prior
#98250
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jerilynn C. Prior is a Canadian endocrinologist and medical doctor specializing in menstrual cycles and the effects of hormones on women's health. She has been called a leader in understanding and treating perimenopause and menopause. She was born in the USA and moved to Canada in 1976, and has taken citizenship there.
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Paul M. Ellwood Jr.
#47681
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Paul Murdock Ellwood Jr. was an American physician and a controversial figure in American health care. Often referred to as the "father of the health maintenance organization", he not only coined the term, he also played a role in bringing about structural changes to the American health care system to simultaneously control cost and promote health by replacing fee-for-service with prepaid, comprehensive care. The term "HMO" was coined by Ellwood in a January 1970 Fortune magazine article. More recently, he had advanced an agenda for monitoring health outcomes, so that patients, providers, and...
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Lauro Zavala
#72321
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Lauro Zavala is a scholarly researcher, known for his work on literary theory, semiotics and film, especially in relation to irony, metafiction and micro-narratives. Faculty professor since 1984 at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco, in Mexico City, where he is head of the area on Intertextual Semiotics.
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Simon Shaw-Miller
#150585
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Simon Shaw-Miller is emeritus professor of history of art at the University of Bristol. He is a specialist in the relationships between art and music in the modern period. Early life and education Simon Shaw-Miller was born Simon Miller in 1960 in Pembury, on the outskirts of Royal Tunbridge Wells. He was brought up in the village of Hollingbourne and the council estates of Park Wood and Senacre on the outskirts of Maidstone, in Kent. He attended Oldborough Manor High School, and then went to Brighton Polytechnic to study for a joint degree in art with music, graduating in 1982. He did post ...
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