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,
#17401
Doug Girod
#95874
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Douglas Allan Girod is an American educator, medical doctor, and the 18th University of Kansas chancellor. Prior to becoming chancellor, he was the University of Kansas Medical Center's executive vice chancellor, a position he had held since February 2013. Before being promoted to the executive vice chancellor at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Girod was the senior dean for the School of Medicine while dually serving as a surgeon at the University of Kansas Health System where he began his career in 1994. He is also a veteran of the United States Navy Reserve.
Go to Profile#17402
John Williams
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
John Williams was a Tony Award-winning British stage, film, and television actor. He is remembered for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, as the chauffeur in Billy Wilder's Sabrina , as Mr. Brogan-Moore in Witness for the Prosecution , and as the second "Mr. French" on TV's Family Affair in its first season .
Go to Profile#17403
James Muecke
#84872
Overall Influence
James Sunter Muecke is an Australian ophthalmologist working in Adelaide, South Australia. He was the 2020 Australian of the Year, having been South Australian of the Year. He was sworn in as South Australia's new Lieutenant Governor on 27 January 2022, succeeding Brenda Wilson.
Go to Profile#17404
James W. Fraser
#92010
Overall Influence
James Walter Fraser is an American educationalist, pastor, and academic administrator. He is a professor of history and education and chair of the applied statistics, social science, and humanities department at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Fraser is dean of education at the University of the People. He is a past president of the History of Education Society. Fraser was the pastor at Grace Church Federated from 1986 to 2006.
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Gunnar Dahlberg
1893 - 1956 (63 years)
Gunnar Dahlberg was a Swedish physician, eugenist and geneticist. From 1922 to 1924 he was the assistant of Herman Lundborg at Statens institut för rasbiologi. In 1935, when Lundborg retired, Dahlberg succeeded him as the head of the institute. Dahlberg held the post until his death in 1956 and was succeeded by the geneticist Jan Arvid Böök.
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Alfred Sous
#164053
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Alfred Sous was a German classical oboist, University lecturer and writer. Life Born in Rheydt, at the age of 14 Sous began his music education at the . In 1942 he was drafted. After his training as a soldier he was sent to the Eastern Front and in 1943 to Soviet war captivity.
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Colin Timms
#132066
Overall Influence
Colin Ronald Timms is a musicologist and retired academic. He was Peyton and Barber Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham from 1992 until 2012, when he retired. After graduating from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he completed Master of Music and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at King's College London, the latter in 1977 for his thesis on the chamber duets of Agostino Steffani. He was a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast from 1970 to 1972, and the University of Birmingham from 1973. In 2004, the British Academy awarded him the Derek Allen Prize for M...
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Daniel Oliver
1787 - 1842 (55 years)
Daniel Oliver was an American physician. Oliver was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 9 September 1787; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 June 1842, was the son of Reverend Thomas Fitch Oliver and the great grandson of Andrew Oliver. He was graduated at Harvard in 1806, and at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1810. He practiced for many years at Salem, Massachusetts, lectured on chemistry at Dartmouth in 1815–16, and in 1820 removed to Hanover, New Hampshire, having been appointed professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and of materia medica and therapeutics.
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Thaddeus B. Wakeman
#171521
Overall Influence
Thaddeus B. Wakeman, also known as T.B. Wakeman, was an American attorney, politician, editor and political philosopher. He graduated from Princeton University. Generally ascribed as a liberal freethought philosopher, he was a speaker at the 1878 Freethinkers' Convention at Watkins, New York. He served as president of the National Liberal League, ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General in the New York state election of 1887, and was editor of the liberal paper Man. He was also the head of the Liberal University of Oregon, later relocated to Kansas City, Missouri.
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Ridgely Hunt
1887 - Present (139 years)
Ridgely Hunt Jr. was a publishing executive and professor. After a 10-year career in the book distribution and publishing industries, Hunt served as librarian of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a grandson of William H. Hunt, the Secretary of the Navy during the Garfield Presidential Administration. Hunt was also a nephew of William Henry Hunt, who served as territorial Governor of Puerto Rico and as a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit.
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Elias Bongmba
#109221
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Elias Kifon Bongmba is a Cameroonian-American theologian. Biography Bongmba received a BA from Sioux Falls College in 1987, an M.Div. from North American Baptist Seminary in Sioux Falls in 1989, an MA from the University of Iowa in 1991, and a Ph.D. from Iliff School of Theology in 1995. He is Professor of Religion at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and holds the Harry and Hazel Chair in Christian Theology. His research focuses on Global Christianity and African and African Diaspora religions. He currently serves as the editor of Journal of Religion in Africa, is a member of the American A...
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Priscilla Kincaid-Smith
#88675
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Priscilla Sheath Kincaid-Smith, Mrs. Fairley, AC, CBE , was an Australia-based South African physician and researcher, specializing in nephrology. She was a past President of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians , World Medical Association and International Society of Nephrology .
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Howard Pollack
#149357
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Howard Pollack is a prominent American pianist and musicologist, known for his biographies of American composers. Biography Pollack was born in Brooklyn and studied piano with Jennie Glickman while attending James Madison High School. He continued his piano studies with John Kollen and Eugene Bossart at the University of Michigan, where he received his Bachelor of Music in 1973; and with Adele Marcus at the Aspen Music Festival in 1970. He received a Master of Arts degree and Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University, where he wrote his thesis, "Walter Piston and His Music", under the supervision of William Austin.
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Mikheil Makharadze
#187334
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mikheil Makharadze is a Georgian politician and historian of philosophy, who was the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara from July 20, 2004, to October 28, 2012. Education and academic career Born in a teacher's family in the Khulo district, Adjara, an autonomous republic of then-Soviet Georgia, Makharadze graduated from the Tbilisi State University with a degree in philosophy in 1970. Since then he has been working for the Tbilisi-based Institute of Philosophy, now part of the Ilia State University. In 2000, he became a professor at the Tbilisi State University.
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Edwin H. Land
#120957
Overall Influence
1909 - 1991 (82 years)
Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision, among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.
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Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko was a German librarian and scholar, born in Neustadt, Silesia. Biography From 1859 to 1863 he studied classical philology at the universities of Breslau and Bonn. At Bonn, he was influenced by philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl and worked as an assistant at the university library. In 1863, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the prologues of Plautus and Terence. Following graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher in Opole and then in Lucerne .
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James Murdoch
#136901
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
James Rupert Jacob Murdoch is a British-American businessman. He is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former chief executive officer of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019. He was the chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia of News Corporation until 2013 when it was split into News Corp and 21st Century Fox. He was formerly a director of News Corp and was a member of the office of the chairman.
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Francisco De Venanzi
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Francisco Antonio De Venanzi was a Venezuelan doctor, scientist and academic. He was rector of the Universidad Central de Venezuela from 1959 to 1963. His biography was published as volume 51 of the Biblioteca Biográfica Venezolana.
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Alexander Russell Simpson
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Sir Alexander Russell Simpson FRCPE FRSE LLD was a Scottish physician and Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. He invented the axis-traction forceps also known as the obstetrics forceps which assisted in childbirth and reducing pain.
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Arlene Dávila
#130992
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Arlene Dávila is an American professor of Latino/a Studies. She has contributed to the field of Latino/a Studies as both an author and professor. She is the founding director of The Latinx Project, and has written eight books and many articles on issues ranging from depictions of public images of Latinos, marketing to Latinos, cultural politics in Puerto Rico, and Latinization of the United States. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, media studies, and Puerto Rican national identities. She is a professor at New York University.
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Dora Mbanya
#188970
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dora Ngum Shu Mbanya is a Cameroonian Professor of Haematology at the University of Yaoundé I and the head of the Cameroon branch of Africa Society for Women and Aids in Africa. Biography Dora Mbanya was born on 13 December 1956 in the North West region of Cameroon. She is a physician and specialises in haematology. She obtained a medical degree in General Medicine from cameroon and bagged her PhD in Medicine/Haematology from Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She holds a Dîplome Universitaire in Transfusion Medicine from the Université d’Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She is also the General Manager o...
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#17423
Ian K. Smith
#23810
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ian K. Smith is an American physician, author and television host best known for hosting The Doctors. In 2007, he launched the 50 Million Pound Challenge, a national weight loss initiative sponsored by CVS Pharmacy and State Farm.
Go to Profile#17424
Nick Ribush
#54379
Overall Influence
Nicholas Ribush was one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. A founder of Wisdom Publications, Ribush is today the director of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, a collection of thousands of teachings by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who pioneered the teaching of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
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Adriano Bausola
#103226
Overall Influence
1930 - 2000 (70 years)
Adriano Bausola was an Italian philosopher and academic. Biography Bausola was rector of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Among other tasks and functions is:Member of the National Academy of Lincei in philosophical sciences category;Member of the Institute Lombardo – Academy of Sciences and Letters;Board member of the Italian Philosophical Society;Vice President of the Organizing and Scientific Committee of the Social Weeks of Italian Catholics from 1985 to 1994;Consultant to the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education;Chairman of Committees of the Church's evangelization and human pr...
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George Dyson
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
Sir George Dyson was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.
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Anil Suri
#168601
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Anil Suri is a cancer researcher working in the field of Translational Cancer research at the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi, India. He is a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Medical Sciences, a fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India, editorial board member of Cancer Research, vice president of the Indian Society for the Study of Reproduction and Fertility and was an Executive Member of Indian Association of Cancer Research.
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Rebecca Hasson
#78779
Overall Influence
Rebecca Hasson is an Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. She researches the causes and consequences of pediatric obesity, how the environment impacts obesity related metabolic risk factors to inform health policies.
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Albrecht von Müller
#183467
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Albrecht von Müller is a German philosopher and former entrepreneur. Since 2000, Müller has been the director of the Parmenides Center for the Study of Thinking, which is run by the non-profit organization Parmenides Foundation and is associated with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He is also a teacher of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as teaching the theory of thinking at the MCA program of the international school for advanced studies in Trieste, SISSA His main fields of interest are the concept of time and the theory of thinking, and in these fields he has made various publications.
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Dirk De Ridder
#170907
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Dirk De Ridder is a Belgian neurosurgeon. He is a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. De Ridder spends half his time in New Zealand and half in Belgium, involved in setting up a dedicated neuromodulation clinic.
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Fabienne Peter
#189065
Overall Influence
Fabienne Peter is a British philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. She is a former head of the Department of Philosophy ; succeeded by current head, Guy Longworth. Peter has held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and is known for her works on political philosophy, moral philosophy, and social epistemology. She is a former editor of Economics and Philosophy and a former associate editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy.
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Samuel Gottlieb Vogel
1750 - 1837 (87 years)
Samuel Gottlieb von Vogel was a German physician. He is seen as the founding father of German seaside resorts. Vogel started studying medical science in Göttingen at the age of 14. In 1771 he attained a doctorate and in 1776 he achieved habilitation. He first started working as a physician in Göttingen, later moving to Ratzeburg. In the meantime he published several medicinal science books.
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Johannes Lippius
1585 - 1612 (27 years)
Johannes Lippius was an Alsatian theologian and music theorist. He coined the term "harmonic triad" in his Synopsis musicae novae . Life Lippius was born in Strasbourg, the son of the pastor of St. Peter, Johann Lippius , and his wife Susanna Klehmann. In early childhood, he had already received education in languages and the seven liberal arts, which allowed him to be appointed at the University of Strasbourg to the Master of Philosophy at a young age. By his twenty-first birthday he had given private and university lectures, after which he entered the University of Leipzig, 1606, the Univer...
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Robert Aronowitz
#116028
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Robert Alan Aronowitz is an American physician and medical historian based at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Making Sense of Illness, and Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society.
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Miloš M. Nikolić
#62786
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
[[File:|thumb|200px]] Miloš M. Nikolić is the Professor and Chairman, Department of Dermatovenereology, University of Belgrade School of Medicine. M. Nikolić is Director of the Clinic of Dermatovenereology, Clinical Center of Serbia, Belgrade and Head of the Division of Pediatric and Adolescent Dermatology. He was the Secretary and the President of the Dermatovenereology Section of the Serbian Medical Society. He was the President of the Serbian Association of Dermatovenereologists from 2011 to 2015. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology 2014-2019.
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Wiktor Dega
1896 - 1995 (99 years)
Wiktor Dega was a Polish surgeon and orthopedist who was well known for his work on polio. Dega served as an expert for the World Health Organization and was one of the founders of the Polish Orthopedic Society. He created new apparatus and devices to help accident victims and survivors of polio, as well as new therapies and operations for congenital dislocations of the hip.
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Udo Klement
#162915
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Udo Fritz Peter Klement is a German musicologist and music critic. Life Klement, non-denominational, was born in 1936 in Dresden as the son of a gear cutter and an agricultural worker and saleswoman. He attended the Dresdner Kreuzschule and the Oberschule Dresden West Abitur 1954at the 12-class secondary schoolup to grade 10
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Lilian Welsh
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Lilian Welsh was an American physician, educator, suffragist, and advocate for women's health. She was on the faculty at Woman's College of Baltimore and an active member of National American Woman Suffrage Association. Welsh was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.
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Pierre Rabischong
#111602
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Pierre Rabischong is a neuroanatomist and an emeritus professor at the University of Montpellier in France. He is known for his work in rehabilitation medicine and physiotherapy, as well as powered orthoses. He was the leader of the AMOLL project in 1975.
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Yimtubezinash Woldeamanuel
#131062
Overall Influence
Yimtubezinash Woldeamanuel Mulate is an Ethiopian physician and microbiologist researching infectious diseases, hospital-acquired infections, and antimicrobial resistance. She is an associate professor of medical microbiology at Addis Ababa University.
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Moses Schorr
1874 - 1941 (67 years)
Moses Schorr, Polish: Mojżesz Schorr was a rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and modern rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.
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William John Macleay
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Sir William John Macleay was a Scottish-Australian politician, naturalist, zoologist, and herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Caithness, Scotland, second son of Kenneth Macleay of Keiss and his wife Barbara, née Horne. Macleay was educated at the Edinburgh Academy 1834–36 and then to studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh; but when he was 18 years old his widowed mother died, and he decided to go to Australia with his cousin, William Sharp MacLeay. They arrived at Sydney in March 1839 on HMS Royal George. William Macleay took up land at first near Goulburn, and after...
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Grant Liddle
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Grant Winder Liddle was an American endocrinologist whose research focused largely on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. He was a professor at Vanderbilt University and chaired its Department of Medicine from 1968 to 1983.
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Adib Pishavari
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Seyyed Ahmad Adib Pishavari , also known as Sayyed Ahmad B. Sehab al-Din Razawi , was a Sufi scholar who born in or near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, and was descended from Omar Sohravardi. Adib was a master of Persian literature.
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Francesco Buonamici
1533 - 1603 (70 years)
Francesco Buonamici was an Italian philosopher, professor at the University of Pisa and writer who wrote about his ideas on motion in a treatise called De Motu. He was one of the teachers of Galileo.
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Wayne Jonas
#48899
Overall Influence
Wayne B. Jonas is an American family physician, retired army medical officer, and alternative medicine researcher. He is the former president and CEO of the Samueli Institute. The institute does research into the efficacy of alternative medicine, such as on the effects of prayer on treating disease, use of homeopathy to fight bioterrorism, and use of magnetic healing devices on orthopedic injuries, with Jonas commenting on these research programs, "There is a good case for looking at these things scientifically, because we don't know a lot about them". He is professor of family medicine at Geo...
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Walter Omar Kohan
#189106
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Walter Omar Kohan is a Professor of Philosophy of Education at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is also a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and the Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support Foundation . He was previously President of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children .
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Giulio Sirenio
1553 - 1593 (40 years)
Giulio Sirenio was an Italian philosopher from Brescia. He was professor of theology and metaphysics at the University of Bologna. Works
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Tadao Sato
#110412
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Tadao Satō was a Japanese film critic, theorist and historian. His real name was Tadao Iiri. Overviews Born in Niigata, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, He published more than a hundred books on film, and was one of Japan's foremost scholars and historians addressing film. He was recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on Japanese cinema specifically, although little of his work had been translated for publication abroad. He also wrote books on Chinese, Korean, American and European films.
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Dennis Fowler
#97627
Overall Influence
Dennis L. Fowler is the Vice President and Medical Director for Perioperative Services at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He is a pioneer in the field of endoscopic surgery and has been the first to perform numerous innovative laparoscopic surgical procedures, never before accomplished . Fowler was also the first general surgeon to use the Harmonic Scalpel , a device that uses wave frequency to divide the tissue and vibration to coagulate blood vessels .
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