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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#17151
Jessica Kandel
#70078
Overall Influence
Jessica Kandel is the Mary Campau Ryerson Professor of Surgery and the Vice-Chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago. Education Kandel graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1981, and completed her MD degree at Columbia University in 1985. She then went on to a General Surgery residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston . During her residency, Kandel completed a two-year surgical research fellowship with Dr. Judah Folkman at the Boston Children's Hospital, investigating mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis .
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Hans Joachim Marx
#129091
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Hans Joachim Marx is a German music historian. He has been professor of European music history at the University of Hamburg. Life Born in Leipzig, Marx first studied music at the Academy of Music in Leipzig. In 1956 he escaped from East Germany to Freiburg im Breisgau in West Germany. After 1958 he studied musicology, German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Freiburg and Basel. In 1966 he obtained his doctorate in Basel under Arnold Schmitz with a dissertation on "The Organ Tablature of Clemens Hör". In the following years, sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation, he...
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Lotsee Patterson
#76650
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Lotsee Patterson is a Comanche librarian, educator, and founder of the American Indian Library Association. She has written numerous articles on collection development, tribal libraries and Native American Librarianship. A Native American, Lotsee Patterson first became interested in collecting Native American objects, as her mother was a collections director. In the late 1950s, she read the 1983 publication The Museum Handbook of Native American History. She saw that Native Americans were less well documented than other cultures and often paid exorbitant prices for materials that were soon obsolete.
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Glenn Watkins
#96855
Overall Influence
1927 - 2021 (94 years)
Glenn E. Watkins , was the Earl V. Moore Professor of Music History and Musicology at the University of Michigan and a specialist in the study of Renaissance and 20th-century music. Biography Born in McPherson, Kansas, Watkins served in the United States Army from 1944-46. During this period he was enrolled in the ASTP engineering program at the University of Oklahoma, the Japanese language programs at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Minnesota, and was later stationed in Tokyo with the "Allied Translator and Interpreter Section" of MacArthur's General Headquarters. Imm...
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Sir Thomas Barlow, 1st Baronet
1845 - 1945 (100 years)
Sir Thomas Barlow, 1st Baronet, was a British royal physician, known for his research on infantile scurvy. Early life Barlow was the son of a Lancashire cotton manufacturer and Mayor of Bolton, James Barlow . The family were well known as philanthropists in their home village of Edgworth, Lancashire where they funded charities connected with the Methodist church including the Children's Home.
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Michelle Leech
#125720
Overall Influence
Michelle Leech is the Deputy Dean of Medicine at Monash University and an academic clinician-scientist. Leech oversees the delivery of the Monash medical program and maintains an active research profile and clinical practice as a rheumatologist.
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Cornelius Odarquaye Quarcoopome
#83369
Overall Influence
1924 - 2003 (79 years)
Cornelius Odarquaye Quarcoopome, was a Ghanaian physician and academic. He was an ophthalmologist and professor at the University of Ghana Medical School. He and others have been described as pioneers of the medical profession in Ghana.
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Berthold Wulf
#105371
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
Berthold Wulf was a German priest, poet and philosopher. Life Wulf was born in Hanover, Province of Hanover. He was the third child of Bertha Wulf and Karl Wulf, who was a musician and conductor. He spent his childhood with his elder brother and his twin brother in Hildesheim near Hanover. When he was 17 he had to join the German army. He survived World War II as a common soldier.
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John K. Frost
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
John Kingsbury Frost was an American physician specializing in the field of cytopathology - the microscopic study of individual body cells to detect cancer and other diseases. The first area of the body to be studied in this way was the female genital tract, using the Pap smear invented by Georgios Papanikolaou. Frost and other physicians expanded the field to allow for cytopathologic evaluation of the lung, bladder, and many other body sites. Frost was best known as a teacher of cytopathology. He organized and directed a school of cytotechnology and created and led a postgraduate Institute t...
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Rowena Spencer
#50693
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Rowena Spencer was an American physician who specialized in pediatric surgery at a time when it was unusual for a female to become a surgeon. She was the first female surgical intern at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the first female appointed to the full-time surgery staff at Louisiana State University, and the first female surgeon in Louisiana.
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Konstantin Buteyko
#81630
Overall Influence
1923 - 2003 (80 years)
#17162
Wolfram Steude
#116831
Overall Influence
1931 - 2006 (75 years)
Wolfram Steude was a German musicologist and musician. Life Born in Plauen, Steude is the grandson of the Dresden architect . He graduated from the Dresden Kreuzschule and was a Crucian under Rudolf Mauersberger for two years. He studied Church music and organ at the Church Music Institute of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig and at the . Afterwards he studied music and art until 1958. He received his doctorate in 1973 in Rostock with Rudolf Eller.
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Malcolm Slesser
#66477
Overall Influence
1926 - 2007 (81 years)
Malcolm Slesser was a Scottish energy analyst, scientist and mountaineer. Biography Slesser was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He began mountain climbing when he was young. In the 1950s Slesser joined an expedition to the Arctic. He wrote widely on mountain climbing and was considered to be an expert in the field.
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Elham Emami
#118832
Overall Influence
Elham Emami is an Iranian-Canadian clinician scientist. She is the dean of McGill University Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences. Born and raised in Iran, Emami moved to Canada in 2002 to pursue her PhD and MSc at the Université de Montréal.
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Jennifer Trusted
#186383
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Jennifer Lesley Trusted was a British philosopher of physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the history of science. Trusted was born in Cambridge on 28 March 1925. She died on 13 April 2017, at the age of 93.
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Al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik
1019 - 1097 (78 years)
Abu al-Wafa' al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik was an Arab philosopher and scholar well versed in the mathematical sciences and also wrote on logic and medicine. He was born in Damascus but lived mainly in Egypt during the 11th century Fatimid Caliphate. He also wrote an historical chronicle of the reign of al-Mustansir Billah. However, the book he is famed for and the only one extant, Kitāb mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kalim , the "Selected Maxims and Aphorisms", is a collection of sayings attributed to the ancient sages translated into Arabic. The date of composition given by the author is 1048–...
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Franson Manjali
#179837
Overall Influence
Franson Davis Manjali was an Indian professor of linguistics, translator and editor. His work was based on the philosophy of language in the tradition of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and, most importantly, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. He was a professor of linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India and retired in 2020. He died on 14 June 2023 in New Delhi, India.
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Alec Ekeroma
#179690
Overall Influence
Aiono Alec Joseph Ekeroma is a Samoan physician, academic, and civil servant. He was the first Pacific academic to hold a professorial role in a specialised area of medicine in New Zealand. He helped establish the National University of Samoa's medical school, and currently serves as the university's vice-chancellor.
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Diane Francis
#23999
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Diane Marie Francis is a Canadian journalist, author and editor-at-large for the National Post newspaper since 1998. Background Francis was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 14 November 1946. She immigrated to Canada in 1966 and became a naturalized Canadian citizen. She is married and has two adult children.
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Mordechai Shani
#38693
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Mordechai Shani is an Israeli physician. He is Professor of Healthcare Systems at Tel Aviv University. He served as the Director General of the Sheba Medical Center. He was the recipient of the Israel Prize in 2009.
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Anoop Misra
#188219
Overall Influence
#17172
Franz Ignaz Oefele
1721 - 1797 (76 years)
Franz Ignaz Oefele was a German painter, etcher, and miniaturist. His name is sometimes spelled "Öffele" and is occasionally seen as "Oeffele-Piekarski", for reasons unknown. Life His father was a watchmaker from Bavaria, who died before Oefele was a year old, so he was raised by an uncle in Landsberg am Lech who operated a brewery. There, apparently having displayed some artistic inclinations, he took lessons from a local painter, then went on to Ingolstadt, where he studied with and, finally, to Augsburg for lessons with Gottfried Bernhard Göz. He then went to work for Balthasar Augustin Albrecht, the Bavarian court painter.
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Albert Döderlein
1860 - 1941 (81 years)
Albert Sigmund Gustav Döderlein was a German obstetrician and gynecologist. He was the father of gynecologist Gustav Döderlein. Biography He studied medicine at the University of Erlangen, and from 1893 to 1897 was an associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Leipzig. Afterwards, he was a full professor at the Universities of Groningen , Tübingen and Munich .
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Marion Murdoch
1849 - 1943 (94 years)
Marion Murdoch was an American minister in Iowa. Murdoch was said to be the first woman in America to receive the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Early years and education Murdoch was born in Garnavillo, Iowa, October 9, 1849. Her father, Judge Samuel Murdoch, was the last living member of the Territorial legislature of Iowa. He had been a member of the state legislature and judge of the district court. Her mother had come from New York in 1837. Murdoch's early life was spent in outdoor pursuits, developing in her that love of nature and desire for a life of freedom for women. Of the family o...
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Lynn Spigel
#63512
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lynn Spigel is the Frances E. Willard Professor of Screen Cultures at the School of Communication at Northwestern University. She has written extensively on numerous topics including post-war culture and popular media. She has also edited numerous anthologies including Television after TV and Feminist TV Criticism . She is the editor of the Console-ing Passions book series from Duke University Press.
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Yngve A. A. Larsson
#129500
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Yngve Axel Andreas Larsson was a Swedish pediatrician, medicine professor and diabetologist. Yngve Larsson was the fifth child of Stockholm vice mayor Yngve Larsson and Elin Larsson . He graduated from Uppsala University in 1938 and gained his Ph.D. at Karolinska Institute in 1956. From 1964 he worked for Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, first as a professor and 1965-1970 as director of the Ethio-Swedish Pediatric Clinic at Haile Selassie I University. In parallel, his wife pediatrician Ulla Larsson established the Lideta Maternal and Child Health Center nearby with financing from the Swedish branch of Save the Children.
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William Allen
1770 - 1843 (73 years)
William Allen was an English scientist and philanthropist who opposed slavery and engaged in schemes of social and penal improvement in early 19th-century England. Early life Allen was born in 1770, the eldest son in the Quaker family of Job Allen , a silk manufacturer, and his wife Margaret Stafford . He was educated at a Quaker school in Rochester, Kent, and then went into his father's business. As a young man in the 1790s, he became interested in science. He attended meetings of scientific societies, including lectures at St. Thomas's Hospital and Guy's Hospital, becoming a member of the Chemical Society of the latter establishment.
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Peter Baines
#155477
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter George Baines is an Australian geophysicist. He is an honorary senior fellow at University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria. Baines has published over 150 research articles and is the author of Topographic Effects in Stratified Flows, published in 1995 . His major research areas include climate dynamics on the decadal time scale, volcano dynamics and Rossby wave hydraulics.
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Damon Horowitz
#182569
Overall Influence
Damon Horowitz is a philosophy professor and serial entrepreneur. He is best known for his TED talks on teaching philosophy in prison and the ethics of the technology industry, and for his advocacy for the humanities in the technology industry.
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Chi-Ming Chow
#85417
Overall Influence
Chi-Ming Chow, FRCPC, FACC, FASE, is a Canadian cardiologist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is often interviewed on national media about issues involving cardiovascular health, and is regarded as an influential advocate for heart health in the Canadian Chinese community.
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Kevin Petrecca
#117781
Overall Influence
Kevin Petrecca is a neurosurgical oncologist, currently chief of the Department of Neurosurgery at the McGill University Health Centre and appointed as the William Feindel Chair in Neuro-Oncology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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David Goltzman
#78178
Overall Influence
David Goltzman is an endocrinologist, Professor of Medicine and Physiology, and A.G. Massabki Chair in Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has been the Director of the Centre for Bone and Periodontal Research and also holds the position of Senior Scientist at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute in the Metabolic Disorders and Complications Program.
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Thomas Stephen Cullen
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Thomas Stephen Cullen was a Canadian gynecologist associated with Johns Hopkins Hospital. Born in Bridgewater, Ontario, Cullen was educated at the Toronto Collegiate Institute and the University of Toronto, graduating from the latter school with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1890. He began studying at Johns Hopkins University the next year, before traveling to Germany and studying at Johannes Orth's laboratory at the University of Göttingen in 1893. From 1893 to 1896, Cullen was in charge of gynecological pathology at Johns Hopkins, and in 1919 he was named a professor of clinical gynecolo...
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Sethus Calvisius
1556 - 1615 (59 years)
Sethus Calvisius or Setho Calvisio, originally Seth Kalwitz , was a German music theorist, composer, chronologer, astronomer, and teacher of the late Renaissance. Biography He was born into a peasant family at Gorsleben in present-day Thuringia. By the exercise of his musical talents he earned money enough for the start, at Helmstedt, of a university career, which the aid of a wealthy patron enabled him to continue at Leipzig. He became director of the music-school at Pforta in 1572. In 1594 he was transferred to Leipzig in the same post, including directing the Thomanerchor at the Thomaskirche.
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Ban Tsui
#73984
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Chi Ho Ban Tsui is a Canadian anesthesiologist known for medical innovation in the field of anesthesia. Examples include describing the Tsui Test and developing the StimuLong Sono-Tsui for ease of pediatric epidural placement. Recently along with his son, Dr. Jonathan Jenkin Tsui, Dr. Tsui developed a catheter-over-needle kit allowing a continuous catheter placement to be performed with the ease of a single shot during peripheral nerve blocks.
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Christopher Frayling
#85686
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sir Christopher John Frayling is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture. Early life and education Christopher Frayling was born in Hampton, a suburb of London, in affluent circumstances. His father, Major Arthur Frederick Frayling, OBE , late of the Royal Army Service Corps, was chairman of the Hudson's Bay fur auction house in London and of the International Fur Trade Federation; his mother, Barbara Kathleen Imhof, the daughter of record and audio equipment store owner Alfred Imhof, was a driver in international car rallies, and won the RAC Rally with her brother, Godfrey Imhof, in 1952.
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Leslie Lazarus
#131715
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Leslie "Les" Lazarus was an Australian endocrinologist who was one of the first co-Directors of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney from 1966 to 1969 and sole Director from 1969 to 1990. At the Garvan Institute he led a joint laboratory and clinical research team studying diabetes and pituitary hormone secretions, in particular the secretion and clinical uses of human growth hormone.
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Viktoras Kulvinskas
#100243
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
#17189
Nikolaus Eglinger
1645 - 1711 (66 years)
Nikolaus Eglinger was a Swiss physician, based in Basel. Eglinger studied medicine at the University of Basel under Emmanuel Stupanus and Johann Bauhin. He produced a dissertation in 1661. In 1690, Johann Bernoulli produced his dissertation under the supervision of Eglinger.
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Alfred Whitehead
1887 - 1974 (87 years)
Alfred Ernest Whitehead was an English-born Canadian composer, organist, choirmaster, music educator, painter, whose works are held in a number of important private collections, and an internationally recognized authority in the field of philately. His The Squared-Circle Cancellations of Canada received its third edition shortly after his death.
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Jarle Ofstad
#181261
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Jarle Ofstad was a Norwegian physician. He was born in Ålesund. He became a chief physician at Haukeland University Hospital in 1965, docent at the University of Bergen in 1966 and professor of internal medicine at the University of Bergen from 1973, retiring in 2007. From 1977 to 1987 he was a chief physician at Haukeland University Hospital. From 1983 to 1992 he was the board chairman of the Chr. Michelsen Institute. He was decorated as a Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav.
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Richard Lloyd Anderson
#91791
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Richard Lloyd Anderson was an American lawyer and theologist of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University . His book Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses is widely considered the definitive work on this subject. Anderson was the brother of Karl Ricks Anderson.
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Ronald Verlin Cassill
#54953
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
R. V. Cassill, full name Ronald Verlin Cassill, was a writer, reviewer, editor, painter and lithographer. He is most notable for his novels and short stories, for which he won several awards and grants.
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David C. Lewis
#115713
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
David C. Lewis was Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Community Health and the Donald G. Millar Distinguished Professor of Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the United States' National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. He served on the Executive Committee and was former Executive Director of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse, and was the founder and a member of the Board of Directors of Physicians and Lawyers for National Drug Policy.
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Antonia Soulez
#186849
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Antonia Soulez is a French philosopher, musician, poet, and emerita professor of philosophy of Paris 8 St-Denis. Life She started teaching philosophy in Lille before relocating to Amiens. She then taught at Tunis University, Créteil, and Nancy before finally settling at the university of Paris 8 St-Denis. She co-directed the Collège international de philosophie between 2001 and 2004.
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Staffan Lindeberg
#47116
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Staffan Lindeberg was an associate professor of family medicine at the Department of Medicine, University of Lund, Sweden. He was a practicing GP at St Lars Primary Health Care Center, Lund, Sweden. Lindeberg researched the paleolithic diet.
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Nasser Sharify
#53103
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Nasser Sharify was born in Tehran, Iran. Since 1987, he served as a Distinguished Professor and Dean Emeritus of Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science in New York City. Education D.L.S Columbia University, School of Library Service, 1958 M.S. Columbia University, School of Library Service, 1954 B.A Tehran University, French Literature, 1947
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Kate Isabel Campbell
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Dame Kate Isabel Campbell, DBE, FRCOG was a noted Australian physician and paediatrician. Campbell's discovery, that blindness in premature babies was caused by high concentrations of oxygen, resulted in the alteration of the treatment of premature babies world-wide and for this she received global recognition.
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Claudius Maximus
200 - 200 (0 years)
Gaius Claudius Maximus was a Roman politician, a Stoic philosopher and a teacher of Marcus Aurelius. No works by him are known to exist; however, he is mentioned in a few prestigious works from classical literature.
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Elena Erosheva
#158653
Overall Influence
Elena Aleksandrovna Erosheva is a Russian-American statistician and social scientist whose research applies Bayesian hierarchical modeling and latent variable models to problems in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. She is a professor at the University of Washington, appointed jointly in the Department of Statistics and the School of Social Work, and the director of the university's Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences.
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