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,
#17001
Salomon Gessner
1730 - 1788 (58 years)
Salomon Gessner was a Swiss painter, graphic artist, government official, newspaper publisher and poet; best known in the latter instance for his Idylls. Biography His father, Hans Konrad Gessner , was a printer, publisher, bookseller and member of the High Council of Zürich. From the age of six until his death, he lived in a home his father bought, at Münstergasse 9. He began an apprenticeship in 1749, at a bookshop in Berlin, but stayed for only a year, having decided to devote himself to landscape painting and etching. After a short stay in Hamburg, where he encountered the poetic works of...
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Gerrit Moll
1785 - 1838 (53 years)
Gerard "Gerrit" Moll LLD was a Dutch scientist and mathematician. A polymath in his interests, he published in four languages. Life From a family background in Amsterdam of commerce, Moll was drawn towards science. His teacher at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam was Jean Henri van Swinden. He took up astronomy with Jan Frederik Keijser in 1801. In 1809 he was awarded a Candidaat degree by Leiden University; and in 1810 he went to Paris, where he studied under Delambre. Moll is noted for his later animus against "Napoleonic science", the tradition of the revolutionary period in France.
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Zheng Xuan
127 - 200 (73 years)
Zheng Xuan , courtesy name Kangcheng , was a Chinese philosopher, politician, and writer near the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He was born in Gaomi, Beihai Commandery , and was a student of Ma Rong, together with Lu Zhi.
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Shlomo ibn Aderet
1235 - 1310 (75 years)
Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet was a medieval rabbi, halakhist, and Talmudist. He is widely known as the Rashba , the Hebrew acronym of his title and name: Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham. Aderet was born in Barcelona, Crown of Aragon, in 1235. He became a successful banker and leader of Spanish Jewry of his time. As a rabbinical authority his fame was such that he was designated as El Rab d'España . He served as rabbi of the Main Synagogue of Barcelona for 50 years. He died in 1310.
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Vladimir Odoyevsky
1803 - 1869 (66 years)
Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky was a prominent Russiann Imperial philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" and even the "Russian Faust" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.
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Johann Nepomuk Huber
1830 - 1879 (49 years)
Johann Nepomuk Huber , was a German philosophical and theological writer, and a leader of the "Old Catholic Church". Life He was born at Munich. Originally destined for the priesthood, he studied theology from childhood. The writings of Spinoza and Lorenz Oken attracted him to philosophy, and it was in philosophy that he "habilitated" in the university of his native place, where he ultimately became professor . With Döllinger and others he attracted a large amount of public attention. Firstly in 1869 by the challenge to the Ultramontane promoters of the First Vatican Council in the treatise Der Papst und das Koncil, which appeared under the pseudonym of "Janus,".
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Maitripada
1007 - 1085 (78 years)
Maitrīpāda , was a prominent Indian Buddhist Mahasiddha associated with the Mahāmudrā transmission of tantric Buddhism. His teachers were Shavaripa and Naropa. His students include Atisha, Marpa, Vajrapani, Karopa, Natekara , Devākaracandra , and Rāmapāla. His hermitage was in the Mithila region , somewhere in northern Bihar and neighboring parts of southern Nepal.
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Johann Lukas Schönlein
1793 - 1864 (71 years)
Johann Lukas Schönlein was a German naturalist, and professor of medicine, born in Bamberg. He studied medicine at Landshut, Jena, Göttingen, and Würzburg. After teaching at Würzburg and Zurich, he was called to Berlin in 1839, where he taught therapeutics and pathology. He served as physician to Frederick William IV.
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Camila Henríquez Ureña
1894 - 1973 (79 years)
Camila Henríquez Ureña , was a writer, essayist, educator and literary critic from the Dominican Republic who became a naturalized Cuban citizen. She descended from a family of writers, thinkers and educators; both her parents, Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal and Salomé Ureña, as well as her brothers Pedro and Max, were literary luminaries. Her essays have been published in Instrucción Pública, Ultra, Archipiélago , Casa de las Américas, La Gaceta de Cuba, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional, Revista de la Universidad de La Habana, and Revista Lyceum. A feminist and a humanist, she lectured durin...
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Anthony Wood
1632 - 1695 (63 years)
Anthony Wood , who styled himself Anthony à Wood in his later writings, was an English antiquary. He was responsible for a celebrated Hist. and Antiq. of the Universitie of Oxon. Early life Anthony Wood was born in Oxford on 17 December 1632, as the fourth son of Thomas Wood , BCL of Oxford, and his second wife, Mary , daughter of Robert Pettie and Penelope Taverner.
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Franz Hamburger
1874 - 1954 (80 years)
Franz Hamburger was an Austrian medical doctor and university lecturer. Biography Hamburger attended high school in Wiener Neustadt, and studied medicine at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Munich and Graz. In Heidelberg in 1892 he was a member of the Corps Rhenania. In 1898 he passed the state medical examination for qualification as a doctor. After gaining his doctorate in medicine he became a ship's doctor, then worked as a doctor in Heidelberg, Vienna and Graz. Following specialist training as a pediatrician, he graduated in 1900 with Theodor Escherich. In 1906 he completed his habilitation thesis and worked as a lecturer.
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John William Miller
1895 - 1978 (83 years)
John William Miller was an American philosopher in the idealist tradition. His work appears in six published volumes, including The Paradox of Cause and most recently The Task of Criticism . His principal philosophical ambitions were 1
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Dimitris Glinos
1882 - 1943 (61 years)
Dimitris Glinos was a Greek philosopher, educator and politician. Life Glinos was born in Smyrna, the eldest of twelve children of Alexandros Glinos. After graduating from the Smyrna Evangelical School, he went to Athens in 1899 and enrolled in the Philosophy Department of the University of Athens. He graduated in 1905 and proceeded to study philosophy, pedagogy, and experimental psychology in Germany at the University of Jena , and at the University of Leipzig . In Germany, he was acquainted with Georgios Skliros who introduced Glinos to socialist ideology and had decisive effect on his lat...
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Paul Karl Feyerabend
#17016
Wilhelm Marstrand
1810 - 1873 (63 years)
Nicolai Wilhelm Marstrand , painter and illustrator, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Nicolai Jacob Marstrand, instrument maker and inventor, and Petra Othilia Smith. Marstrand is one of the most renowned artists belonging to the Golden Age of Danish Painting.
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Arvid Wallgren
1889 - 1973 (84 years)
Arvid Wallgren was a Swedish pediatrician. He was Professor of Pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute, a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute and editor-in-chief of Acta Paediatrica from 1950 til 1964.
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Alexander Berkman
1870 - 1936 (66 years)
Alexander Berkman was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing. Berkman was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vilna in the Russian Empire and emigrated to the United States in 1888. He lived in New York City, where he became involved in the anarchist movement. He was the one-time lover and lifelong friend of anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, undertaking an act of propaganda of the deed, Berkman made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead strike, for which he served 14 years in prison.
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Stanley Spencer
1891 - 1959 (68 years)
Sir Stanley Spencer, CBE RA was an English painter. Shortly after leaving the Slade School of Art, Spencer became well known for his paintings depicting Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, the small village beside the River Thames where he was born and spent much of his life. Spencer referred to Cookham as "a village in Heaven" and in his biblical scenes, fellow-villagers are shown as their Gospel counterparts. Spencer was skilled at organising multi-figure compositions such as in his large paintings for the Sandham Memorial Chapel and the Shipbuilding on the Clyde series, the former ...
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Édouard Hugon
1867 - 1929 (62 years)
Édouard Hugon , Roman Catholic Priest, French Dominican, Thomistic philosopher and theologian trusted and held in high esteem by the Holy See, from 1909 to 1929 was a professor at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, as well as a well-known author of philosophical and theological manuals within the school of traditional Thomism.
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Jacobus Wittichius
1677 - 1739 (62 years)
Jacobus Wittichius was a German-Dutch philosopher, a Cartesian and follower of Burchard de Volder, and holder of controversial views on the nature of God. Life He was the son of Tobias Wittich and nephew of Christophorus Wittichius, and was born in Aachen. He studied under Herman Alexander Roëll, at the University of Franeker.
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Konstantin Branković
1814 - 1865 (51 years)
Konstantin Branković was a Serbian pedagogue and publicist from the Kingdom of Hungary. He was one of the first six-member tutorial staff at the Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia in Kragujevac before Belgrade became the capital city and a new Lyceum was opened there.
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Martine J. Piccart
#17024
Elísio de Moura
1877 - 1977 (100 years)
Elísio de Moura Azevedo, was a Portuguese physician, professor, psychiatrist and the first president of the College of Physicians in 1939. Biography Elísio de Moura was notable for teaching and research in psychiatry and neurology. He contributed, in the beginning of the Republic, to keep the faculty of medicine at the University of Coimbra, which was at risk of moving to the new University of Lisbon and University of Porto.
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George F. C. Griss
1898 - 1953 (55 years)
George François Cornelis Griss , usually cited as G. F. C. Griss, was a Dutch mathematician and philosopher, who was occupied with Hegelian idealism and Brouwers intuitionism and stated a negationless mathematics.
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Agha Hossein Khansari
1637 - 1687 (50 years)
Agha Hossein Khansari , full name Hossein ibn Jamal al-Din Mohammad Khansari , known as Mohaghegh Khansari and also known as "Master of all in all" , who was nicknamed "the disciple of mankind" because of the many masters he acquired knowledge in their presence, was one of the great Iranian jurists of Isfahan jurisprudential school in the 11th century AH, who was also engaged in philosophy and wisdom. He was one of the high level scholars during the reign of Sultan Suleiman of the Safavid dynasty and after the death of Mir Seyyed Mohammad Masoom in 1683, he became the Shaykh al-Islām of Isfahan.
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Georg Gottlob Richter
1694 - 1773 (79 years)
Georg Gottlob Richter was a professor of medicine, philosophy, and philology. Education Before receiving his MD degree, Richter spent a year in Leiden listening to the lectures of Herman Boerhaave. He then obtained his MD under Johann Ludwig Hannemann at the University of Kiel in 1720.
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Agostino Nifo
1473 - 1538 (65 years)
Agostino Nifo was an Italian philosopher and commentator. Life He was born at Sessa Aurunca near Naples. He proceeded to Padua, where he studied philosophy. He lectured at Padua, Naples, Rome, and Pisa, and won so high a reputation that he was deputed by Leo X to defend the Catholic doctrine of immortality against the attack of Pomponazzi and the Alexandrists. In return for this he was made Count Palatine, with the right to call himself by the name Medici.
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Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt was a Swedish jurist and legislator, particularly known as a proponent of Scandinavian Legal Realism, having been strongly influenced by his compatriot, the charismatic philosopher Axel Hägerström. He studied law at Lund University and was a professor of law at the University of Uppsala from 1914 to 1947. Like Hägerström, Karl Olivecrona and Alf Ross, he resists the exposition of rights as metaphysical entities, arguing that realistic legal analysis should dispense with them. Lundstedt's main focus in his theoretical work became a sustained attack on what he called the method of justice.
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Johann David Michaelis
1717 - 1791 (74 years)
Johann David Michaelis was a German biblical scholar and teacher. He was member of a family that was committed to solid discipline in Hebrew and the cognate languages, which distinguished the University of Halle in the period of Pietism. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
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Emilio Uranga
1921 - 1988 (67 years)
Emilio Uranga González was a Mexican philosopher. Biography Emilio was born in 1921 in Mexico City. He studied at high school hermanos de las escuelas Cristianas, and proceeded to National Autonomous University of Mexico to study medicine in 1941 and left the university in 1944 to study philosophy. He made contact with the philosophical school of José Gaos, and between 1947 and 1948 he joined and lead the Groupo Hiperion, with philosophers Ricardo Guerra, Jorge Portilla, Salvador Reyes Nevares, Fausto Vega, and Luis Villoro, and acted as an introducer of French existentialism to Mexico and d...
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Jan Steen
1626 - 1679 (53 years)
Jan Havickszoon Steen was a Dutch Golden Age painter, one of the leading genre painters of the 17th century. His works are known for their psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour.
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R. L. Nettleship
1846 - 1892 (46 years)
Richard Lewis Nettleship was an English philosopher. Life The youngest brother of Henry Nettleship, he was educated at Uppingham and Balliol College, Oxford, where he held a scholarship. He won the Hertford scholarship, the Ireland, the Gaisford Prize for Greek verse, a Craven scholarship and the Arnold prize, but took only a second class in literae humaniores.
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Sophonisba Breckinridge
1866 - 1948 (82 years)
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge was an American activist, Progressive Era social reformer, social scientist and innovator in higher education. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science and economics then the J.D. at the University of Chicago, and she was the first woman to pass the Kentucky bar. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her as a delegate to the 7th Pan-American Conference in Uruguay, making her the first woman to represent the U.S. government at an international conference. She led the process of creating the academic professional discipline and degree for social work.
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Kersey Graves
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Kersey Graves was a skeptic, atheist, rationalist, spiritualist, reformist writer, who was popular on the American freethought circuit of the late 19th century. Life Graves was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. His parents were Quakers, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, later moving to the Hicksite wing of Quakerism. According to one source, Graves did not attend school for more than three or four months in his life, but another source says that he received an "academical education", and at the age of 19 was teaching in a school at Richmond, a career he was to follow...
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Milton E. Kern
1875 - 1961 (86 years)
Milton Early Kern was an American Seventh-day Adventist educator and youth leader. He attended Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. From 1900 to 1904 Kern was head of the Bible and history departments at Union College. His success in working for Adventist young people led to a position as secretary of the young people's department of the Central Union Conference. At the General Conference Council held in 1907, at which the General Conference organized a "Young People's Department" he became the first chair with Matilda Erickson as the first secretary. Later in the year the new organization was...
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George Lansing Raymond
1839 - 1929 (90 years)
George Lansing Raymond, was a prominent professor of Aesthetic Criticism at Princeton University from 1881 to 1905, and author of a new system of esthetics. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
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Jan Szylling
1500 - Present (526 years)
Jan Szylling was a Polish Scholastic philosopher. Life Jan Szylling, a native of Kraków, studied with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples in Paris, France, in the first years of the 16th century. Later he was a cathedral canon in Kraków.
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David Rosin
1823 - 1894 (71 years)
David Rosin was a German Jewish theologian from Rosenberg, Silesia. Having received his early instruction from his father, who was a teacher in his native town, he attended the yeshiva of Kempen, of Myslowitz , and of Prague ; but, wishing to receive a regular school education, he went to Breslau, where he entered the gymnasium, and graduated in 1846. He continued his studies at the universities of Berlin and Halle and passed his examination as teacher for the gymnasium. Returning to Berlin, he taught in various private schools, until Michael Sachs, with whom he was always on terms of intima...
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Kazimierz Łyszczyński
1634 - 1689 (55 years)
Kazimierz Łyszczyński , also known in English as Casimir Liszinski, was a Polish nobleman, philosopher, and soldier in the ranks of the Sapieha family, who was accused, tried, and executed for atheism in 1689.
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Gustav Glogau
1844 - 1895 (51 years)
Gustav Glogau was a German philosopher of religion and an academic. He worked for the Technical College in Zurich as a private tutor and, later, ordinarius, teaching philosophy and pedagogy subjects. He taught as a professor at the Halle University , Kiel University .
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Jakob Wimpfeling
1450 - 1528 (78 years)
Jakob Wimpfeling was a Renaissance humanist and theologian. Biography Wimpfeling was born in Sélestat , Alsace, Lorraine. He went to the school at Sélestat, which was run by Ludwig Dringenberg, the founder of the Humanist Library of Sélestat. In 1464 he became a student at the University of Freiburg, where he received his baccalaureus in 1466; later he went to the University of Erfurt and the University of Heidelberg, where he received his magister in 1471. He then studied Canon law for three years, and finally theology.
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Athenodorus Cananites
100 BC - 100 BC (0 years)
Athenodorus Cananites was a Stoic philosopher. Life Athenodorus was born in Canana, near Tarsus ; his father was Sandon. He was a student of Posidonius of Rhodes, and the teacher of Octavian at Apollonia. He was a personal friend of Strabo, from whom we derive some knowledge of his life.
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John Hunter
1728 - 1793 (65 years)
John Hunter was a British surgeon, one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine. He was a teacher of, and collaborator with, Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine. He paid for the stolen body of Charles Byrne, and proceeded to study and exhibit it against the deceased's explicit wishes. His wife, Anne Hunter , was a poet, some of whose poems were set to music by Joseph Haydn.
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Adriaan Koerbagh
1633 - 1669 (36 years)
Adriaan Koerbagh was a Dutch physician, scholar, and writer who was a critic of religion and conventional morality. He was in the circle of supporters of Baruch Spinoza. Life Adriaan Koerbagh and his younger brother Johannes were sons of a ceramics maker, who died young leaving them funds allowing them to pursue extended schooling. Adriaan studied at the universities of respectively Utrecht, Franeker and Leiden, becoming a doctor in medicine in 1659 and master in jurisprudence in 1661. He was one of the most radical figures of the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting and reviling the church and ...
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Franz Defregger
1835 - 1921 (86 years)
Franz Defregger was an Austrian artist known for producing genre art and history paintings set in his native county of Tyrol. Biography Franz Defregger was born on 30 April 1835 at the Ederhof in Stronach, Tyrol in the Austrian Empire. He was the second son of Maria and Michael Defregger, a farmer, who also had five daughters. His mother and two of his sisters died in 1841 during a typhoid epidemic. Franz himself nearly died from the fever. During his early years, Franz developed a strong love of music, and learned to play the flugelhorn. He soon became a member of a local band in Dölsach, playing at weddings, assemblies, and balls.
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Clemens von Pirquet
1874 - 1929 (55 years)
Clemens Peter Freiherr von Pirquet was an Austrian scientist and pediatrician best known for his contributions to the fields of bacteriology and immunology. Career Born in Vienna, he studied theology at the University of Innsbruck and philosophy at the University of Leuven before he enrolled at the University of Graz where he became a doctor of medicine in 1900. He started practicing at the Children's Clinic in Vienna.
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Andrea Cesalpino
1524 - 1603 (79 years)
Andrea Cesalpino was a Florentine physician, philosopher and botanist. In his works he classified plants according to their fruits and seeds, rather than alphabetically or by medicinal properties. In 1555, he succeeded Luca Ghini as director of the botanical garden in Pisa. The botanist Pietro Castelli was one of his students. Cesalpino also did limited work in the field of physiology. He theorized a circulation of the blood. However, he envisioned a "chemical circulation" consisting of repeated evaporation and condensation of blood, rather than the concept of "physical circulation" popular...
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Friedrich Leibniz
1597 - 1652 (55 years)
Friedrich Leibniz was a Lutheran lawyer and a notary, registrar and professor of moral philosophy within Leipzig University, where is also served as Dean of Philosophy. He was the father of Gottfried Leibniz.
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Hermann Abert
1871 - 1927 (56 years)
Hermann Abert was a German historian of music. Life Abert was born in Stuttgart, the son of Johann Josef Abert , the Hofkapellmeister of that city. From 1890 to 1896 he studied classical philology at the Universities of Tübingen, Berlin and Leipzig. While at Tübingen he joined the Akademische Gesellschaft Stuttgardia, a student fraternity which shaped the political views of the liberalism in southern Germany. His philological studies ended in 1896 at Halle, where he had done work on Ancient Greek music. For the next three years he studied music theory at Berlin. In 1902 he qualified as lectur...
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