The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#15551
Sultan Walad
1226 - 1312 (86 years)
Baha al-Din Muhammad-i Walad , more popularly known as Sultan Walad was the eldest son of Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Persian poet, Sufi, Hanafi Maturidi Islamic scholar and one of the founders of the Mawlawiya order.
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John Brown
1715 - 1766 (51 years)
John Brown was an English Anglican priest, playwright and essayist. Life He was born in 1715 at Rothbury, Northumberland, the son of the Rev. John Brown , vicar of Wigton from that year, and his wife Eleanor Troutbeck, née Potts. He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge in 1732, graduating B.A. 1736, and M.A. 1739; he became D.D. in 1755.
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Nicolas Bergasse
1750 - 1832 (82 years)
Nicolas Bergasse was a French lawyer, philosopher, and politician, whose activity was mainly carried out during the beginning of the French Revolution during its early Monarchiens phase. Life After studying philosophy and law, Bergasse became a lawyer at the Parlement of Paris. He was very interested in the Enlightenment and in particular meeting Sieyès and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1781, he became a disciple of Franz Mesmer, and published in 1784 a systemization of Mesmerism titled Considérations sur le magnetisme animal. In the Kornmann case, his quarrel with Beaumarchais made him a famous ...
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Mark Catesby
1683 - 1749 (66 years)
Mark Catesby was an English naturalist who studied the flora and fauna of the New World. Between 1729 and 1747, Catesby published his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America. It included 220 plates of birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, mammals and plants.
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William Hunter
1718 - 1783 (65 years)
William Hunter was a Scottish anatomist and physician. He was a leading teacher of anatomy, and the outstanding obstetrician of his day. His guidance and training of his equally famous brother, John Hunter, was also of great importance.
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Yasuo Kuniyoshi
1893 - 1953 (60 years)
Yasuo Kuniyoshi was an eminent 20th-century Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker. Early life Kuniyoshi was born on September 1, 1889, in Okayama, Japan. He immigrated to the United States in 1906 at 17, choosing not to attend military school in Japan. Kuniyoshi originally intended to study English and return to Japan to work as a translator.
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Theano
600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)
Theano was a 6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher. She has been called the wife or student of Pythagoras, although others see her as the wife of Brontinus. Her place of birth and the identity of her father is uncertain as well. Many Pythagorean writings were attributed to her in antiquity, including some letters and a few fragments from philosophical treatises, although these are all regarded as spurious by modern scholars.
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Heinrich Quincke
1842 - 1922 (80 years)
Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke was a German internist and surgeon. His main contribution to internal medicine was the introduction of the lumbar puncture for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. After 1874, his main area of research was pulmonary medicine.
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W. F. R. Hardie
1902 - 1990 (88 years)
William Francis Ross Hardie was a Scottish classicist, philosopher and academic. He was President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1950 to 1969. Early life and education Hardie was born on 25 April 1902 in Edinburgh, Scotland to William Hardie, classical scholar. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, then an all-boys private school. He studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a double first Bachelor of Arts degree in 1924: he was awarded a number of undergraduate prizes in classics and philosophy.
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John Evan Turner
1875 - 1947 (72 years)
John Evan Turner , best known as J. E. Turner was a Welsh idealist philosopher and writer. Turner was born in the Everton district of Liverpool to Welsh parents. He obtained his BA and MA degrees from University of Liverpool. From 1919, he lectured on philosophy for the University Extension Board. He obtained his PhD from University of Liverpool in 1926 and taught at the university until his retirement in 1941.
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Harriet Robinson
Harriet Latham Robinson is an American vaccine researcher who is founder and Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus at GeoVax. She is the former Chief of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Microbiology at Emory University. Her research considered HIV vaccine development. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Soga Ryōjin
1875 - 1971 (96 years)
Soga Ryōjin was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher and priest of the Ōtani-ha of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. He served as the 17th president of Ōtani University from 1961 to 1967. Biography Soga was born in the city of Niigata, Niigata Prefecture. He entered Shinshu University, later known as Ōtani University, and graduated in 1901. After graduation from Shinshū, Soga returned to Niigata and became the adopted son-in-law of the priest of Jō'on-ji, a temple in Mitsuke, Niigata.
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Olympiodorus the Elder
500 - 600 (100 years)
Olympiodorus the Elder was a 5th-century AD Neoplatonist who taught in Alexandria, then part of the Byzantine Empire. He is most famous for being the teacher of the important Neoplatonist Proclus , whom Olympiodorus wanted his own daughter to marry. He is not to be confused with Olympiodorus the Deacon, an Alexandrian writer of Bible commentaries.
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Henri Berr
1863 - 1954 (91 years)
Henri Berr was a French philosopher and lycée teacher, known as the founder of the journal Revue de synthèse. He is credited with moving the centre of gravity of the study of history in France, in accordance with his ideas on "synthesis". Despite the lack of recognition of his concepts by the academic establishment of the time, and its adverse effect on his own career, he had a large impact on the younger generation of French historians. He is considered to have anticipated significant aspects of the later Annales School.
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Édouard Séguin
1812 - 1880 (68 years)
Édouard Séguin was a French physician and educationist born in Clamecy, Nièvre. He is remembered for his work with children having cognitive impairments in France and the United States. Background and career in France He studied at the Collège d’Auxerre and the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris, and from 1837 studied and worked under Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who was an educator of deaf-mute individuals, that included the celebrated case of Victor of Aveyron, also known as "The Wild Child". It was Itard who persuaded Séguin to dedicate himself to study the causes, as well as the training of individuals with intellectual disabilities.
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Alejandro Deustua
1849 - 1945 (96 years)
Alejandro Octavio Deustua Escarza was a Peruvian philosopher, educator and statesman. He was the Prime Minister of Peru from 9 August 1902 until 4 November 1902. Biography Deustua was born in Huancayo, Peru. His parents were Remigio Deustua and Toribia Escarza. Deustua studied in Guadalupe National School and graduated from Universidad de San Marcos in Lima, Peru. He died on 6 August 1945 at the age of 96 in Lima, Peru.
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Josephus Flavius Cook
1838 - 1901 (63 years)
Josephus Flavius Cook , commonly known as Joseph Cook, was an American philosophical lecturer, clergyman, and writer. Life and career Born in Ticonderoga, New York, he attended Phillips Academy, and then entered Yale College, later transferring to Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1865. He married Georgiana Hemingway on June 30, 1877.
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Franciscus Bonae Spei
1617 - 1677 (60 years)
Franciscus Bonae Spei was a Catholic scholastic theologian and philosopher. He was born in Lille under the name of François Crespin, and entered the Carmelite order in 1635 under the religious name of Franciscus Bonae Spei . During many years, he taught philosophy and theology in Leuven. He also held numerous charges within his order: he was Provincial, traveled three times to Rome and twice to Madrid, and died as prior of the Carmelite convent in Brussels. He wrote two vast philosophy and theology courses, of high quality. As all reformed Carmelites, he follows broadly the doctrine of Thomism, but discussed numerous contemporary issues.
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John Coldstream
1806 - 1863 (57 years)
John Coldstream was a Scottish physician. Life Coldstream, only son of Robert Coldstream, merchant in Timber Bush, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Phillips of Stobcross, Glasgow, was born at Leith on 19 March 1806, and after attending the Royal High School, Edinburgh, continued his studies at the university. He took an interest in Bible and missionary societies, and in 1822 wrote the report of the Leith Juvenile Bible Society.
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Pamprepius
440 - 484 (44 years)
Pamprepius was a philosopher and a pagan poet who rebelled against the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. Damascius described him as a brilliant poet, Malchus as an acute politician, but ugly, arrogant, unscrupulous and treacherous. Rhetorius, an Egyptian astrologer, called him a charlatan and a libertine. He has been compared to Claudian, as both these poets enjoyed eight years of political power at the side of usurpers. He is considered the last Roman pagan poet.
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Ludwig Dill
1848 - 1940 (92 years)
Wilhelm Franz Karl Ludwig Dill was a German ship and landscape painter who was a founding member of the Munich Secession. Life and work He was the only son of the Tax Assessor for the Grand Duchy of Baden. The family moved several times, finally settling in Stuttgart in 1862.
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Eusebius of Myndus
300 - Present (1726 years)
Eusebius of Myndus was a 4th-century philosopher, a distinguished Neoplatonist. He is described by Eunapius as one of the links in the "Golden Chain" of Neoplatonism. He was a pupil of Aedesius of Pergamum. He devoted himself principally to logic and ventured to criticize the magical and theurgic side of the doctrine. By this he exasperated the later Emperor Julian, who preferred the mysticism of Maximus and Chrysanthius.
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Fortunio Liceti
1577 - 1657 (80 years)
Fortunio Liceti , was an Italian physician and philosopher. Life and career He was born prematurely at Rapallo, near Genoa to Giuseppe Liceti and Maria Fini, while the family was moving from Recco. His father was a doctor and created a makeshift incubator, thereby saving Fortunio.
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J. Grimley Evans
#15575
Aristocles of Pergamon
100 - 200 (100 years)
Aristocles of Pergamon was a sophist and rhetorician who lived in the time of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian. He spent the early part of his life on the study of Peripatetic philosophy, and during this period he completely neglected his outward appearance. But afterwards he was seized by the desire of becoming a rhetorician, and went to Rome, where he enrolled himself among the pupils of Herodes Atticus. After his return to Pergamus, he made a complete change in his mode of life, and appears to have enjoyed a great reputation as a teacher of rhetoric. His declamations are praised for t...
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Henry of Oyta
1330 - 1397 (67 years)
Henry of Oyta was a German theologian and nominalist philosopher. Life He was born at Friesoythe in present-day Lower Saxony. Henry graduated M.A. at the University of Prague in 1355. He was then rector of a school in Erfurt, and returned to Prague in 1366. In the course of a long-running dispute, Adalbert Ranconis accused him of heresy in 1369–70. He began teaching at the University of Paris in 1377. For reasons connected with the Western Schism, he left Paris in 1381; he then taught at Prague, 1381 to 1381, lecturing there on the Psalms and Gospel of John. He was at the University of Vien...
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Erskine Childers
1870 - 1922 (52 years)
Robert Erskine Childers , usually known as Erskine Childers , was an English-born Irish nationalist who established himself as a writer with accounts of the Second Boer War, the novel The Riddle of the Sands about German preparations for a sea-borne invasion of England, and proposals for achieving Irish independence.
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Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti
1713 - 1757 (44 years)
Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti was an Italian poet, orator and philosopher. Biography Buondelmonti was born into a noble family, and was raised highly educated. He attended the University of Pisa, but was unable to graduate due to health issues. During this time he did write poetry, literary critiques, entries for an encyclopedia that was being put together, and a number of funeral orations. While in his 20s he joined the Freemasons, a decision which would have exposed him to serious danger, but he had the protection of his noble family's political connections to protect him. He was also involved in the church, where he was granted the rank Knight Commander of the Order of Malta.
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Alphonse Le Roy
1822 - 1896 (74 years)
Alphonse Le Roy was a professor at the University of Liège, in Belgium, who contributed over 150 entries to the Biographie Nationale de Belgique. Life Le Roy was born in Liège on 28 July 1822, the only son of Louis-Nicolas Le Roy and Henriette Streel. He studied philosophy at Liège University, graduating at the age of 19, and after abandoning a law degree went on to qualify as a teacher. He taught at a secondary school in Tienen for a number of years from 1844, helping set up the Journal de l'Instruction publique in 1845. On 12 September 1848 he married Marie-Françoise Elisa Delvaux . In 1850 he was appointed lecturer on logic and metaphysics at the University of Liège.
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Haly Abenragel
901 - 1040 (139 years)
Abū l-Ḥasan 'Alī ibn Abī l-Rijāl al-Shaybani was an Arab astrologer of the 10th to 11th century CE / 4th to 5th century AH best known for his Kitāb al-bāri' fī aḥkām an-nujūm. Life He was a court astrologer to the Tunisian prince al-Mu'izz ibn Bâdis in the first half of the 11th century CE / 5th century AH. Haly died after 1037/428 in Kairouan in what is now Tunisia.
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Joseph Späth
1823 - 1896 (73 years)
Joseph Späth was professor of obstetrics in Vienna, and from 1873 to 1886 he was director of the second obstetrical clinic at the Vienna General Hospital. Following graduation at the University of Vienna in 1849, he became an assistant to Johann Baptist Chiari . Afterwards he worked at the maternity clinic for midwives until 1853. In 1861, he was appointed professor of obstetrics in Vienna, and in 1873, he became director of the second obstetrical-gynecological clinic. In 1872/73, he served as university rector.
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Fritz Stein
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Stein was a German theologian, conductor, musicologist and church musician. He found in an archive in Jena the score of the so-called Jena Symphony, which he published as possibly a work by the young Ludwig van Beethoven. After a long period in Kiel from 1919 to 1933, teaching at the Kiel University and as Generalmusikdirektor, he had a leading position in the Reichsmusikkammer of the Nazis in Berlin.
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James A. Doonan
1841 - 1911 (70 years)
James Aloysius Doonan was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit, who was the president of Georgetown University from 1882 to 1888. During that time he oversaw the naming of Gaston Hall and the construction of a new building for the School of Medicine. Doonan also acquired two historic cannons that were placed in front of Healy Hall. His presidency was financially successful, with a reduction in the university's burdensome debt that had accrued during the construction of Healy Hall.
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Francesco Cattani da Diacceto
1446 - 1522 (76 years)
Francesco Cattani da Diacceto was a Florentine Neoplatonist philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Life Diacceto was born in Florence on 16 November 1466, the son of Zanobi Cattani da Diacceto and Lionarda di Francesco di Iacopo Venturi. In his nineteenth year he married Lucretia di Cappone di Bartolomeo Capponi, with whom he had seven sons and six daughters. From 1491 to 1492 he studied philosophy under Oliviero Arduini at the University of Pisa. When he returned to Florence he became a disciple of Marsilio Ficino and a member of the intellectual group known as the Platonic Academy. He is sometimes considered Ficino's successor.
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John Walker
1731 - 1803 (72 years)
John Walker FRSE was a Scottish minister and natural historian. He was Regius Professor of Natural history at the University of Edinburgh from 1779 to 1803. He was joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1790.
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John Heydon
1629 - 1667 (38 years)
John Heydon was an English Neoplatonist occult philosopher, Rosicrucian, astrologer and attorney. Life Rosicrucian sources, including Heydon's own English Physician's Guide and Frederick Talbot's The Wise Man's Crown, give a florid biography for Heydon, including a claim to be descended from a King of Hungary. However, he was actually born in "Green Arbour" , London, the son of Francis Heydon and Mary . He was baptised at St. Sepulchre's Church. He had one sibling, a sister, Anne, two years his junior.
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Jan Gralewski
1912 - 1943 (31 years)
Jan Gralewski was a Polish philosopher, essayist and soldier. Member of Polish resistance during World War II, he died in the controversial 1943 Gibraltar B-24 crash. Life Gralewski was born on 3 March 1912 in Warsaw. He graduated from the University of Warsaw's philosophy department where he studied under Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He researched topics related to philosophy and literary theory, publishing several articles and essays on those topics even before graduating the university. Before World War II he published some essays in Arkady and Życie Sztuki. He continued writing and publishing...
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Samuel Martin Thompson
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Samuel Martin Thompson was an American philosopher, frequent contributor to scholarly journals and author of three bestselling textbooks of philosophy. His textbooks were used by many top universities and seminaries in the United States. An expert on the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant, he published analyses of Kant's work. Thompson was also one of the three authors of the Confession of 1967, one of the major statements of faith of the Presbyterian Church .
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Liu Yuxi
772 - 842 (70 years)
Liu Yuxi was a Chinese essayist, philosopher, and poet active during the Tang dynasty. Biography Family background and education His ancestors were Xiongnu nomadic people. The putative ‘seventh generation’ family head, Liu Liang, was an official of the Northern Wei , who followed the Emperor Xiaowen when he established the capital at Luoyang in 494. Following the government sinification policy, he became Han and register his surname as Liu. From then on the family was based in Luoyang.
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Angelo Pirotta
1894 - 1956 (62 years)
Angelo Pirotta, O.P. was a Maltese philosopher and educator. In philosophy, his areas of specialization were epistemology and metaphysics. Life Early life Pirotta was born in Naxxar, Malta. His parents were John Mary Pirotta and Antonia Née Camilleri . He was the oldest of thirteen children, three of whom died in infancy.
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William Dampier
1651 - 1715 (64 years)
William Dampier was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. He has also been described as Australia's first natural historian, as well as one of the most important British explorers of the period between Sir Francis Drake and Captain James Cook ; he "bridged those two eras" with a mix of piratical derring-do of the former and scientific inquiry of the latter. His expeditions were among the first to identify and name a number of p...
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Bruce Arroll
#15593
Ferdinand Hartmann
1774 - 1842 (68 years)
Christian Ferdinand Hartmann was a German portrait and Classical history painter. Biography He was the youngest son of the Ducal finance councilor, and his wife Juliane Friederike née Spittler , daughter of the Mayor of Cannstatt. Three of his brothers also became well-known: , a State Councilor, , a paleontologist, and , an industrial entrepreneur. His father's home was also a literary salon, frequented by many notable writers, including Goethe, Schiller and Hölderlin.
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Samuel Maximilian Rieser
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Samuel Maximilian Rieser was an Austrian-born American lawyer and philosopher. Born in Kraków, where he went to school, he began the study of law in Vienna. His studies were interrupted by World War I, during which he lived in Switzerland. After the war he returned to Vienna, completed his law studies and obtained a position at an insurance company. In 1938 he opened a private law practice. Among his clients was Reinhold Hanisch, a childhood friend of Adolf Hitler. Rieser immigrated to the United States in 1939. Here he earned his living by writing under different pseudonyms for the New Yorker Staatszeitung.
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Clark H. Millikan
#15596
Hans Memling
1435 - 1494 (59 years)
Hans Memling was a painter active in Flanders, who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. Born in the Middle Rhine region, he probably spent his childhood in Mainz. During his apprenticeship as a painter he moved to the Netherlands and spent time in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. In 1465 he was made a citizen of Bruges, where he became one of the leading artists and the master of a large workshop. A tax document from 1480 lists him among the wealthiest citizens. Memling's religious works often incorporated donor portraits of the clergymen, aristocrats, and burgherss who were his patrons.
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David F. Swenson
1876 - 1940 (64 years)
David Ferdinand Swenson was an authority on the life and writings of the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. Work Swenson is best known as the first of the translators of the works of Danish writer Soren Kierkegaard into the English Language. He was born in Kristinehamn, Sweden and moved to Minnesota with his parents in 1882, when he was 6 years old. He was educated in the public schools of Minneapolis and in 1894 entered the University of Minnesota. Upon graduation he was offered a position as assistant professor in the department of philosophy at that same university. By 1917 Swenson had...
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August Friedrich Müller
1684 - 1761 (77 years)
August Friedrich Müller was a German legal scholar and logician. August Friedrich was born in Penig, the son of Johann Adam Müller and his wife Johanne Susanne, daughter of a pharmacist in Rochlitz, Johann Fromhold. Prefigured by his father, he attended school in 1697 and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1703. Here he completed a degree in early philosophical sciences; Andreas Rüdiger was his most important teacher. On the side he studied law under Gottlieb Gerhard Titius .
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Narushima Ryūhoku
1837 - 1884 (47 years)
Narushima Ryūhoku was a Japanese author and scholar born in Asakusa. His given name was Korehiro . The Narushima family were okujusha , or Confucian tutors to the Tokugawa shōguns, who were also involved in editing the Tokugawa jikki and other historical annals, including the Nochikagami . Ryuhoku participated in these editing projects as a young man.
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Syed Ahmad Khan
1817 - 1898 (81 years)
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan , also spelled Sayyid Ahmad Khan, was an Indian Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India. Though initially espousing Hindu–Muslim unity, he later became the pioneer of Muslim nationalism in India and is widely credited as the father of the two-nation theory, which formed the basis of the Pakistan movement. Born into a family with strong ties to the Mughal court, Ahmad studied science and the Quran within the court. He was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Edinburgh in 1889.
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