The Most Influential People Across History

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#17301

Michael Heinemann

#181519
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Michael Heinemann is a German musicologist and university professor. Career Born in Bergisch Gladbach, Heinemann passed his Abitur at the Nicolaus-Cusanus-Gymnasium Bergisch Gladbach in 1977. From 1978 to 1985 he studied Catholic church music , music pedagogy and concert subject organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. From 1982 to 1988 he studied musicology, philosophy and art history at the universities of Cologne, Bonn and Berlin, graduating in 1988 with a Master's degree. From 1986 to 1989 he worked as a tutor at the Musicological Institute of the Technical University of Berlin with Carl Dahlhaus.
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#17302

Judith Weisenfeld

#141986
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Judith Weisenfeld is an American scholar of religion. She is Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at Princeton University, where she is also the Chair of the Department of Religion. Her research primarily focuses on African-American religion in the first half of the 20th century. In 2019, Weisenfeld was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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#17303

Levi Cooper Lane

1828 - 1902 (74 years)
Levi Cooper Lane was an American physician and surgeon. He established the Cooper Medical College, forerunner to the Stanford University School of Medicine, as well as laying the groundwork for Stanford's medical library and the Stanford School of Nursing. The university's medical library is still named Lane Medical Library in his honor.
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#17304

David Malebranche

#73465
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
David J. Malebranche is an American internal medicine physician, researcher, and public health advocate who specializes in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Early life and education Malebranche was born in Schenectady, New York to Roger and Donna Malebranche. He is a first-generation Haitian-American and his mother is European-American. His father, a surgeon, was born in Anse-à-Veau, Haiti and came to the United States in 1961.
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#17305

Max Fleischer

1861 - 1930 (69 years)
Richard Paul Max Fleischer was a German painter and bryologist. As a botanist, he is remembered for his work with Javan mosses. Biography He took art classes in Breslau, qualifying as an art teacher in 1881. He furthered his studies in Munich and Paris, where his interest in natural sciences grew. He subsequently moved to Zurich in 1892 in order to study geology. In the latter part of the 1890s, he was invited by botanist Melchior Treub to Java as an illustrator. On Java, along with his artistic duties, he collected regional botanical specimens and conducted investigations of the island's mosses.
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#17306

Show Lo

#151512
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Show Lo Chih Hsiang is a Taiwanese singer, actor, television host, and dancer. He is commonly known by his nickname Hsiao Chu . Lo is recognized for his trademark dance music and comedic talent. He has over 50 million followers on Chinese micro-blogging platform Weibo as of June 2018.
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#17307

Francis of Meyronnes

1285 - 1327 (42 years)
Francis of Meyronnes was a French scholastic philosopher. He was a distinguished pupil of Duns Scotus, whose teaching he usually followed. He acquired a great reputation for ability in discussion at the Sorbonne, and was known as the Doctor Illuminatus 'Enlightened teacher', as Magister Acutus or Doctor acutus, and as Magister abstractionum 'Master of abstractions'.
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#17308

Steven Seifert

Steven Seifert
#81709
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Steven A. Seifert was an American medical toxicologist. He was a professor of emergency medicine at the University of New Mexico, as well as the medical director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center. Since 2017, he was the editor-in-chief of Clinical Toxicology. He was also a jazz tenor saxophonist.
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#17309

Hendrika B. Cantwell

#87319
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Hendrika Bestebreurtje Cantwell is a German-born American retired physician, professor emerita of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver, advocate for abused and neglected children, and parenting educator. She was one of the first physicians in the United States to work for a child protection agency, serving with the Denver Department of Social Services from 1975 to 1989. Her work there brought her in contact with an estimated 30,000 cases of suspected child abuse and she testified as an expert witness in thousands of court cases. An author of peer-reviewed journal articles, book cha...
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#17310

Margaret Seward

1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Margaret Seward MBE became the earliest Chemist on staff at the Women's College , from 1896 to 1915. She became the pioneer woman to obtain a first class in the honour school of Natural Science and later received an MBE for her work on nutrition during World War I.
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#17311

Barys Kit

Barys Kit
#15684
Overall Influence
1910 - 2018 (108 years)
Boris Uladzimiravich Kit was a Belarusian-American rocket scientist. Biography Kit was born on April 6, 1910, in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire to the family of an employee at the Post and Telegraph Department of Belarusian origin. His true surname is Kita. In 1918 Kit's family moved to their native village of Aharodniki, now the town of Karelichy, Grodno Region. In 1921 this area became a part of the Second Polish Republic.
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#17312

Leo Laporte

Leo Laporte
#114676
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Leo Laporte is the former host of The Tech Guy weekly radio show and a host on TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host and a technology author. On November 19, 2022, actor, writer, musician, and comedian Steve Martin called into Laporte's radio show to announce Leo's retirement from The Tech Guy radio show. Laporte's last new radio show was December 18, 2022 with reruns for the remainder of the year. Rich DeMuro later appeared on the show to announce that he will be taking over in January with a weekly show, recorded on Saturd...
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#17313

Hans Schmidt

#178686
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Hans Schmidt was a German musicologist. Life Born in Bonn, Schmidt was professor of musicology at the University of Cologne and a long-standing Beethoven researcher like his father Joseph Schmidt-Görg, who directed the Bonn Beethoven House from 1945 to 1972. Schmidt received his doctorate in 1954 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn for his thesis Untersuchungen zu den Tractus des zweiten Tones aus dem Codex St. Gallen 359.
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#17314

Amin J. Barakat

#20844
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Amin J. Barakat is a Lebanese-American physician known for the diagnosis Barakat syndrome. Barakat was in full-time pediatric practice at Northern Virginia Pediatric Associates before retiring in 2020. He is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics. He is also clinical professor of pediatrics and pediatric nephrology at Georgetown University. Barakat is a member of the ALSAC/St Jude Children's Research Hospital Leadership Council, and president of the American Foundation for Saint George Hospital.
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#17315

William Paul Jones

William Paul Jones
#117386
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
William Paul Jones is a pioneer of the field of personal information management . He has written extensively on the topic, holds seven patents relating to search and personal information management, and was noted for his early contribution to Planz. In 2005, he organized a seminal National Science Foundation -sponsored event the His 2007 Annual Review of Information Systems and Technology survey Personal Information Management continues to be strongly cited. His 2008 book Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management was well-received and followed by a ...
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#17316

Augustus Fendler

Augustus Fendler
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Augustus Fendler , alternatively written as August Fendler, was a Prussian-born American natural history collector. Early travels Fendler first attended preparatory school at the age of 12. After four years, he discontinued his education for financial reasons and apprenticed for the town clerk. He disliked the work, and yearned for travel.
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#17317

Carolina Scotto

#187347
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Silvia Carolina Scotto is an Argentinian history professor, with degrees in philosophy and politics. In 2007, she became the first woman to take over as rector of the National University of Córdoba, in an institution that is more than 400 years old. In 2013, she was elected a member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies for the Front for Victory in the Córdoba Province. On 6 August 2014, she resigned for "strictly personal reasons".
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#17318

Lisette Burrows

#124205
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Lisette C. Burrows is a New Zealand physical education academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 1999 PhD from the University of Wollongong titled 'Developmental discourses in school physical education,' Burrows worked at the University of Otago from 1991, rising to full professor in 2015 before moving to the University of Waikato in 2017.
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#17319

Joseph C. Gambone

#36981
Overall Influence
Joseph C. Gambone is an osteopathic physician, clinical professor at Western University of Health Sciences, and emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of California, Los Angeles . Gambone is the Executive Editor of the textbook Essentials of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He currently practices reproductive endocrinology and infertility in Durango, Colorado. A former Lieutenant in the US Navy, Gambone Peak in Antarctica was named in his honor.
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#17320

Miranda Lubbers

#116774
Overall Influence
Miranda J. Lubbers is a Dutch social scientist specializing in the analysis of migration, segregation, and social identity through personal networks. She is Professor in Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and director of the COALESCE Lab.
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#17321

Susan Durham

#175728
Overall Influence
Susan Durham is an American Board Certified Neurosurgeon and a Member of The Society of Neurological Surgeons. A professor of neurosurgery at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, she is also Division Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles.
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#17322

Jon Stoessl

#92937
Overall Influence
Alexander Jon Stoessl is a Canadian neurologist and Parkinson's disease researcher. He is the director of the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre and Parkinson's Foundation Centre of Excellence at the University of British Columbia . He is also the head of the division of neurology at this university. He is currently the President of the World Parkinson Coalition.
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#17323

James Mason Hoppin

1820 - 1906 (86 years)
James Mason Hoppin was an American educator and writer. Biography James Mason Hoppin was born at Providence, Rhode Island on January 17, 1820. He graduated from Yale College in 1840 from Harvard Law School in 1842, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1845. He studied for some time abroad; and was pastor of a Congregational church at Salem, Massachusetts from 1850 to 1859. From 1861 to 1879 he was professor of homiletics at Yale, where he was also professor of art history from 1879 to 1899, when he became professor emeritus. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Science...
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#17324

Louise Maple-Brown

#138829
Overall Influence
Louise Maple-Brown is an Australian endocrinologist. She is a clinical researcher at the Royal Darwin Hospital , serving as the hospital's Head of Endocrinology and as NHMRC Practitioner Fellow with the Menzies School of Health Research at Charles Darwin University. She leads a clinical research program within the Wellbeing and Preventable Chronic Diseases division of Menzies with a focus on diabetes in Indigenous Australians and provides clinical diabetes services to urban and remote Northern Territory communities.
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#17325

Henrietta M. Smith

Henrietta M. Smith
#116544
Overall Influence
1922 - 2021 (99 years)
Henrietta M. Smith was an American academic, librarian, and storyteller, who edited four editions of the Coretta Scott King Award collection published by the American Library Association. In 2008, she was honored with the Association for Library Service to Children Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes significant contributions to library service to children and ALSC. She is also the recipient of the 2011 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement for her body of work as a significant and lasting literary contribution. She was honored during the 2014 Carle H...
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#17326

Ivo Meinhold-Heerlein

#178637
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ivo Meinhold-Heerlein is a German gynaecologist and obstetrician, honorary professor, university professor and deputy director of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the University Hospital RWTH Aachen University. He is known for his work in the fields of molecular characterization of ovarian cancer.
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#17327

Catharine Whiteside

#165332
Overall Influence
Catharine Isobel Whiteside, CM, FRCPC, FCAHS is a Canadian physician and medical researcher. She is Director, Strategic Partnerships of Diabetes Action Canada and Chair of the board of the Banting Research Foundation. Whiteside is the former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
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#17328

Maria Aloni

#173146
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Maria D. Aloni is an Italian logician and philosopher of language, interested in formal semantics and the development of forms of logic that can capture the deviations of human reasoning from classical logic. She is an associate professor in the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities, affiliated there with the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation.
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#17329

Siegfried Handloser

Siegfried Handloser
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Siegfried Adolf Handloser was a Nazi physician and convicted war criminal, convicted for overseeing medical atrocities at concentration camps. He was convicted at the 1947 Doctors' Trial during the subsequent Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was ultimately reduced to a 20-year term, though Handloser was released in 1954 and died of cancer the same year.
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#17330

Alexander Monro Primus

Alexander Monro Primus
1697 - 1767 (70 years)
Alexander Monro was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist. His father, the surgeon John Monro, had been a prime mover in the foundation of the Edinburgh Medical School and had arranged Alexander's education in the hope that his son might become the first Professor of Anatomy in the new university medical school.
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#17331

David Robinson

#94716
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
David Robinson is an English film critic and author. He is a former film critic for both the Financial Times and The Times and wrote the official biography of Charlie Chaplin. Life Robinson began to write for Sight and Sound and the Monthly Film Bulletin during the 1950s, becoming assistant editor of Sight and Sound and editor of the Monthly Film Bulletin from 1957 to 1958. He was film critic of the Financial Times from 1958 to 1973, before taking up the same post at The Times in 1973. He remained the paper's main film reviewer until around 1990 and a regular contributor until around 1996.
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#17332

Brian Herbert Medlin

#146639
Overall Influence
1927 - 2004 (77 years)
Brian Herbert Medlin was Foundation Professor of Philosophy at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, from 1967 to 1988. He pioneered radical philosophy in Australian universities and played an active role in the campaign against the Vietnam War.
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#17333

Mary Fowkes

#82751
Overall Influence
1954 - 2020 (66 years)
Mary Fowkes was an American physician and neuropathologist. She is noted for her early autopsies of COVID-19 victims that significantly contributed to the identification of long-term effects of the novel coronavirus. Her findings that victims had suffered multiple organ failures resulted in the recommendation for use of blood thinners as a part of the treatment process.
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#17334

Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

#100711
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ilora Gillian Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, FRCP, FRCGP, FLSW, FMedSci is a Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine, and a Crossbench member of the House of Lords. Born the only daughter of Professor Charles Beaumont Benoy Downman, Ilora married Andrew Yule Finlay in 1972, with whom she has two children.
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#17335

Sophie Nowicki

#182848
Overall Influence
Sophie Marie Jeanne Nowicki, is Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Geology of the University at Buffalo. She does research on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, focusing on their connections to global climate and sea level. Before that, she was physical scientist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre, investigating ice sheet changes.
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#17336

Ludwig Holtmeier

#186290
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ludwig Holtmeier is a German music theorist and piano player. Life Holtmeier studied piano at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold and at the Conservatoire de musique de Genève and Conservatoire de musique de Neuchâtel and passed the concert exam in 1992. In addition to piano he also studied music theory, musicology, school music, history and German studies in Freiburg and Berlin. In 2010 he collected his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin with a thesis on the reception of Jean-Philippe Rameau's music theory writings.
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#17337

Rotonya M. Carr

#175989
Overall Influence
Rotonya McCants Carr is an American hepatologist and physician-scientist who the function of lipid metabolites and lipid droplet proteins in relation to hepatic insulin signaling. She is the Cyrus E. Rubin Chair and division head of gastroenterology at the University of Washington.
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#17338

Josef Kyrle

1880 - 1926 (46 years)
Josef Kyrle was an Austrian pathologist and dermatologist who was a native of Schärding. He studied medicine at the University of Graz, and afterwards was an assistant to Anton Weichselbaum at the clinic of pathological anatomy at the University of Vienna. In 1907 he was an assistant to Ernst Finger at the dermatology clinic in Vienna, and in 1918 he became an associate professor.
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#17339

William P. C. Barton

William P. C. Barton
1786 - 1856 (70 years)
William Paul Crillon Barton , was a medical botanist, physician, professor, naval surgeon, and botanical illustrator. Biography Barton was born on November 17, 1786, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father William Barton, a lawyer, was the designer of the Great Seal of the United States. His uncle, Benjamin Smith Barton was an eminent medical botanist and vice-president of the American Philosophical Society. In 1813, the younger Barton was also elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
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#17340

Mark Morris

#64653
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Mark Morris is an English author known for his series of horror novels, although he has also written several novels based on the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He used the pseudonym J. M. Morris for his 2001 novel Fiddleback.
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#17341

Pranas Čepėnas

1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Pranas Čepėnas was a Lithuanian historian, encyclopedist, journalist, and lexicographer. In 1926 Čepėnas earned a diploma in history from University of Lithuania. He worked as professor of history at Vilnius University. During World War II he emigrated to Germany and later to the U.S.
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#17342

Bernhard Münz

1856 - 1919 (63 years)
Bernhard Münz was an Austrian writer, philosopher, and librarian. Biography He was born in Leipnik to Jewish parents Johanna and Jakob Münz. His younger brother was journalist . Münz studied classical philology and philosophy at the Universities of Vienna, Innsbruck, and Munich, completing a Ph.D. at the former in 1877 under the supervision of Franz Brentano. After working briefly at the university library in Graz, he became in 1889 amanuensis in the library of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, and succeeded Samuel Hammerschlag as its director in 1900.
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#17343

Graziano Delrio

#90003
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Graziano Delrio is an Italian medical doctor and politician, who served in the government of Italy as Minister of Infrastructure and Transport from 2 April 2015 to 1 June 2018. He previously served as the state secretary to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He was minister for regional affairs and autonomy from 28 April 2013 to 22 February 2014 as part of the Letta Cabinet. He also served as the mayor of Reggio Emilia.
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#17344

Anne Hazen McFarland

Anne Hazen McFarland
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Anne Hazen McFarland was an American physician and medical journal editor who specialized in the treatment of mental illness in women. She criticized the contemporary idea that gynecological disorders caused insanity and nervousness in women.
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#17345

Yiftach Fehige

#184053
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Yiftach Fehige is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy for Christianity and Science at the University of Toronto. He is known for his works on thought experiments and philosophy of sexuality.
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#17346

Giovanni Niccolò Muscat

1735 - 1800 (65 years)
Giovanni Niccolò Muscat was a Maltese doctor of law, and a major philosopher. His area of specialisation in philosophy was chiefly jurisprudence. Biography Early life Muscat was born into a very poor family on 8 March 1735. He seems to have lost his parents at a very young age, as he was raised by his aunt. Despite her poverty, this aunt worked hard to pay for the young Muscat's formal education, although it is unknown where he undertook his initial studies. His aunt also paid for his university studies, and it is known that he studied law but it is not certain where, although the Jesuit Col...
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#17347

Laurenz Lütteken

#154501
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Laurenz Lütteken is a German musicologist. Since 2001, he has been Ordinarius for musicology at the University of Zürich. Since 2013, he is General editor of MGG Online. Writings As AuthorGuillaume Dufay und die isorhythmic motet. Hamburg 1993.: Die Apotheose des Chorals Homo absconditus. Stuttgart 1997.Das Monologische als Denkform in der Musik zwischen 1760 und 1785. Tübingen 1998.Contribution to Ludwig Finscher: Bowed string instrument. Stuttgart 2001.Mozart. Leben und Musik im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Beck, Munich 2017, .As publisher: Festschrift Klaus Hortschansky zum 60. Geburtstag. Tutzing 1995.Mass and Motets.
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#17348

Henry Alexander Miers

Henry Alexander Miers
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Sir Henry Alexander Miers, FRS was a British mineralogist and crystallographer. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896.
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#17349

Marcel Bessis

#35021
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Marcel Claude Bessis was a French physician known for research on blood cells. Bessis was born in Tunis on 15 November 1917. He was educated at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris, France. He developed an interest in microscopy in his teenage years and went on to study medicine at the University of Paris. During the Second World War, he served as a military physician and pioneered the technique of exchange transfusion to treat war injuries. He graduated with a medical degree in 1944. Later he studied exchange transfusion as a treatment for hemolytic disease of the newborn, uremia and acute leukemia.
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#17350

Karl Lauterbach

#86594
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Karl Wilhelm Lauterbach is a German scientist, physician, and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , who has served as Federal Minister of Health since 8 December 2021. He is professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne . Since the 2005 German federal election, he has been a member of the Bundestag .
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