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,
#17301
Gunnar Landtman
1878 - 1940 (62 years)
Gunnar Landtman was a Finnish philosopher as well as a sociology and philosophy professor. A pupil of Edvard Westermarck, he graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1905. He later became an associate professor there from 1910 to 1927 and then a temporary professor until his death in 1940. At the university, Landtman was a member of the Prometheus Society, a student society promoting freedom of religion. Landtman was the first modern sociological anthropologist. His most important journey was a two-year trip to Papua New Guinea where he lived with the Kiwai Papuans from 1910 to 1912. He w...
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Gerard van Swieten
1700 - 1772 (72 years)
Gerard van Swieten was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and transformed the Austrian health service and medical university education. He was the father of Gottfried van Swieten, patron of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
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John Argyropoulos
1415 - 1487 (72 years)
John Argyropoulos was a lecturer, philosopher and humanist, one of the émigré Greek scholars who pioneered the revival of classical Greek learning in 15th century Italy. He translated Greek philosophical and theological works into Latin besides producing rhetorical and theological works of his own. He was in Italy for the Council of Florence during 1439–1444, and returned to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople, teaching in Florence in 1456–1470 and in Rome in 1471–1487.
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Elizur Wright
1804 - 1885 (81 years)
Elizur Wright III was an American mathematician and abolitionist. He is sometimes described in the United States as "the father of life insurance", or "the father of insurance regulation", as he campaigned that life insurance companies must keep reserves and provide surrender values. Wright served as an insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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Richard Burthogge
1638 - 1705 (67 years)
Richard Burthogge of Devon, England, was a physician, magistrate and philosopher. Life Richard Burthogge was the son of a Captain of Foot at the garrison of Plymouth, and was baptised in Plympton St Maurice on 30 January 1637 . He attended Exeter Grammar School, was admitted to All Souls College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1654, migrated to Lincoln College, Oxford, and graduated B.A. "completed by determination" in 1658. He matriculated at the University of Leiden in October 1661. His doctoral thesis was entitled "De lithiasi et calculo" and submitted on 27 February 1662.
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Magdalena Aebi
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Magdalena Aebi was a Swiss philosopher known for her fundamental criticism of Immanuel Kant. Life Magdalena Aebi was born on 4 February 1898 in Burgdoft into the family of Hans Aebi and Marie A. Nubile. After attending high school in Burgdorf she studied classical philology, art history and archeology in Zurich and Munich, as well as philosophy with Ernst Cassirer in Hamburg. In 1943 she obtained her doctorate with a critical thesis on Immanuel Kant soughting to refute fundamental Kantian arguments related to transcendental logic. In 1947 on the basis of her dissertation Aebi published a book...
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Ibn Kammuna
1215 - 1284 (69 years)
Sa'd ibn Mansur Ibn Kammuna Works Ibn Kammuna's commentary on Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi's Talwihat, the core text of Illuminationist philosophy is deemed as one of the most thorough examination of that branch of thought.
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Sallustius
400 - 400 (0 years)
#17309
Tommaso Campailla
1668 - 1740 (72 years)
Tommaso Campailla was an Italian philosopher, physician, politician and poet. Life Tommaso Campailla was born in Modica, near Syracuse, in 1668. His family belonged to the local nobility. At sixteen he was sent to Catania to study law. He employed his leisure hours in the study of literature, philosophy, science, astronomy, and physics. He studied both neo-Scholastic and Cartesian philosophy, and adopted a mechanical view of the universe.
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Abu'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī
1080 - 1165 (85 years)
Abu'l-Barakāt Hibat Allah ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī was an Islamic philosopher, physician and physicist of Jewish descent from Baghdad, Iraq. Abu'l-Barakāt, an older contemporary of Maimonides, was originally known by his Hebrew birth name Baruch ben Malka and was given the name of Nathanel by his pupil Isaac ben Ezra before his conversion from Judaism to Islam later in his life.
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Zhou Yu
175 - 210 (35 years)
Zhou Yu , courtesy name Gongjin , was a Chinese military general and strategist serving under the warlord Sun Ce in the late Eastern Han dynasty of China. After Sun Ce died in the year 200, he continued serving under Sun Quan, Sun Ce's younger brother and successor. Zhou Yu is primarily known for his leading role in defeating the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao at the Battle of Red Cliffs in late 208, and again at the Battle of Jiangling in 209. Zhou Yu's victories served as the bedrock of Sun Quan's regime, which in 222 became Eastern Wu, one of the Three Kingdoms.
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Domenico Vandelli
1735 - 1816 (81 years)
Domenico Agostino Vandelli was an Italian naturalist, who did most of his scientific work in Portugal. He studied at the University of Padua, from which he received a doctorate in Natural Philosophy and Medicine in 1756. While active as naturalist in Italy he began a correspondence with the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, which continued for several years. In 1763 he was invited by Catherine the Great of Russia to join the faculty of the University of St. Petersburg, but he declined.
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Johann Heinrich Loewe
1808 - 1892 (84 years)
Johann Heinrich Loewe was an Austrian philosopher born in Prague. Dr. and k.k. Professor of philosophie, Wife Magdalena Babitsch, born in Vienna 1814, dead 17.9.1880 in Gross-Gmain. 3 daughters, From 1839 to 1851 he was a professor of philosophy in Salzburg, and in 1851 was appointed professor of theoretical and moral philosophy at the University of Prague. He was a prominent supporter of philosopher Anton Günther, and author of a biography on minister Johann Emanuel Veith . Other noted works by Loewe include:Über den Begriff der Logik, , 1849Das spekulative System des René Descartes, , 1854Die Philosophie Fichtes.
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Masaharu Taniguchi
1893 - 1985 (92 years)
Masaharu Taniguchi was a Japanese New Thought leader, founder of Seicho-no-Ie. He began studying English literature at the Waseda University, Tokyo. In parallel, he also studied the works of Fenwicke Holmes, and subsequently translated Holmes' book, The Law of Mind in Action into Japanese. In 1929, after much study and contemplation, he reported having received a divine revelation followed by the healing of his daughter. This led in 1930 to the creation of a magazine, Seicho-no-Ie . The movement grew during the 1930s, although was suppressed during World War II. In 1952, he co-authored a book...
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Anton Ambschel
1746 - 1821 (75 years)
Anton Ambschel was a Slovenian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer. Anton Ambschel besides Jakob Štelin, Martin Kuralt and Franz Samuel Karpe presents a group of Slovene Enlightenment philosophers from the 17. and the 18. century. He was writing in Latin and later German.
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Gasper Grima
1680 - 1745 (65 years)
Gasper Grima was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics and logic. Life Grima was born at Mdina, Malta, around 1680. He joined the Franciscan friars towards the end of the 1690s, and studied philosophy and theology with the Franciscans at Val di Noto, Sicily. Grima taught philosophy and theology at Sicily, and even occupied high offices within his religious order. In 1719, he went to Palestine to do missionary work for a year. Back from the Holy Land, he settled in Malta. He lectured at the College of Philosophy and Literature which the Franciscans had at Rabat, Mal...
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Constance Vella
1687 - 1759 (72 years)
Constance Vella was a major Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in physics, logic, cosmology, and metaphysics. Vella's speciality is that, despite being a Scholastic, he was not an Aristotelic-Thomist one , but rather an Aristotelic-Scotist philosopher, that is more in the line of John Duns Scotus.
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Seit Devdariani
1879 - 1937 (58 years)
Seit Devdariani was a Georgian philosopher and political activist who was a deputy of the National Council of Georgia and the Constituent Assembly of Georgia . He was executed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.
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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
#17334
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
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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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