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,

#17501

M. W. Barley

#128698
Overall Influence
1909 - 1991 (82 years)
Maurice Willmore Barley M.A., F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S., was an English historian and archaeologist, specialising in medieval settlements and historic buildings. Barley was born and raised in Lincoln; his father was a prominent member of the Workers' Educational Association. Barley studied history at Reading, taking a Dip. Ed in 1932. Here he met his future wife, Diana. Barley taught at a school in Grimsby, then went to work at University College, Hull in the Department of Local History. At this time he also taught local history and archaeology at adult education classes in Lindsey and East Yorkshire.
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#17502

E. J. Rapson

E. J. Rapson
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Edward James Rapson FBA was a British numismatist, philologist and professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge. He was a fellow of St. John's College. Rapson died following a sudden collapse at dinner at St. John's.
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#17503

Kgomotso Moahi

#172251
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Kgomotso Hildegard Moahi, is an academic and academic administrator in Botswana, who serves as a full professor and deputy vice chancellor – student services at the Botswana Open University. She has previously served in the Department of Library and Information Studies, at the University of Botswana, the country's largest public university as the chair of the department of information studies, dean of the Faculty of Humanities and as member of the Council of the University of Botswana. For a period of nine months in 2017, Moahi served as the acting vice chancellor of the university.
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#17504

Jožef Krajnc

Jožef Krajnc
1821 - 1875 (54 years)
Jožef Krajnc, also spelled Josef Krainc, Josef Krainz was an Austro-Hungarian lawyer, philosopher and politician of Slovenian ancestry. Life Krajnc was born in Škale in the Duchy of Styria to a farmer of the same name. From 1832 until 1841 he attended the Gymnasium in Celje, graduating with the Matura. From 1841 until 1845, he studied philosophy and law in Graz, obtaining a doctorate in both disciplines. From 1842 on, he financed his studies as a private tutor to a wealthy landowner's family in Graz and Bad Radkersburg. From 1845 on, Krajnc worked as judicial advisor first to the city council of Radkersburg, then to the council of Graz.
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#17505

Gerhardt Katsch

Gerhardt Katsch
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Gerhardt Katsch was a German internist. Between 1928 and 1957 he served as Professor of Internal medicine at the University of Greifswald. It was on the initiative of Katsch that in 1930 a residential facility providing clinical and socio-medical care for Diabetic patients was established at Garz on the Island of Rügen. It was the first institution of its kind in Germany. Gerhardt Katsch is widely regarded –⁠ alongside Oskar Minkowski and Karl Stolte –⁠ as one of the three principal pioneers of modern diabetes management in Germany.
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#17506

Peter Hansen

1868 - 1928 (60 years)
Peter Marius Hansen was a Danish painter who became one of the Fynboerne or "Funen Painters" group living and working on the island of Funen. Biography Hansen attended the Copenhagen Technical School before studying under Kristian Zahrtmann at the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler . His travels included the Netherlands , and several periods in Italy from 1899 where he was in Civita d'Antino with Zahrtmann and in Pompei with Theodor Philipsen . He also travelled to Belgium and Paris in 1909. His eldest son, David Shane Hansen would become one of the leading organizers of the 1909 general strike in Barcelona, Spain.
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#17507

Willis J. Potts

Willis J. Potts
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Willis John Potts was an American pediatric surgeon and one of the earliest physicians to focus on the surgical treatment of heart problems in children. Potts set up one of the country's first pediatric surgery programs at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
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#17508

Christian Feest

Christian Feest
#76231
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Christian Feest is an Austrian ethnologist and ethnohistorian. Biography Feest was born on July 20, 1945, in Broumov. He specializes in the Native Americans of eastern North America and the Northeastern United States and their material culture, ethnological image research and Native American anthropology of art. He is widely acknowledged for his pioneering research and publications on the early European-Native American colonial contact period, and on the history of museum collections.
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#17509

Juan Guiteras

Juan Guiteras
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Juan Guitéras y Gener , was a Cuban physician and pathologist specializing in yellow fever. Guiteras studied medicine at the University of Havana, and moved to the United States in 1873 to attend the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated that same year. He worked at Philadelphia Hospital until 1879, when he went into the U.S. Navy as a physician and began to research yellow fever, working with Stanford Chaillé and George Miller Sternberg in the Havana Yellow Fever Commission. On May 5, 1883 he married Dolores Gener in Cuba. He then taught at the Medical University of South Carolina from 1884 to 1888, and then taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1889 to 1898.
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#17510

Patricia Numann

#78987
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Patricia Joy Numann is an American endocrine surgeon. She is the founder of the Association of Women Surgeons, former president of the American College of Surgeons, and professor emeritus at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University.
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#17511

Sigismondo Polcastro

1384 - 1473 (89 years)
Sigismondo Polcastro was an Italian physician and natural philosopher. He was born to a jurist father, Girolamo, of the ancient de Porcastris family of Vicenza, and Maddalena Volpe of Padua. Perhaps born in Vicenza, he moved to Padua while he was still a boy.
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#17512

Olcay Neyzi

#79225
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Remide Olcay Neyzi was a Turkish doctor and the former Director of the Department of Pediatrics, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine . As the first author of the most comprehensive pediatric textbook in Turkish, she greatly contributed to improving the level of medical education in Turkey.
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#17513

Garth Taylor

#106544
Overall Influence
1944 - 2005 (61 years)
The Honourable Dr. Garth Alfred Taylor, OJ, Ph.D. was a Jamaican ophthalmologist, professor, and humanitarian. Born in Montego Bay, Taylor was a Queen's Scout in his youth. He received his education at Cornwall College in Jamaica and Queen's University in Ontario. He later became an associate professor of ophthalmology at the latter institution, as well as chief of ophthalmology at Cornwall Community Hospital in Canada.
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#17514

Wilhelm Ehmann

1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Wilhelm Ehmann was a German musicologist, editor, church musician and conductor. He founded the choir Westfälische Kantorei that toured internationally and made many recordings. He was a cofounder and director of the later Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Herford.
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#17515

Emma Borg

#189114
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Emma Borg is a professor of philosophy at the University of Reading. She specialises in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science. Publications External links Profile at the University of Reading
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#17516

Helen Petousis-Harris

#160071
Overall Influence
Helen Aspasia Petousis-Harris is a New Zealand vaccinologist and associate professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland. She has been involved in research related to vaccination in New Zealand since 1998, with her main areas of focus being vaccine safety and effectiveness. Petousis-Harris has had a variety of lead roles in New Zealand and international organisations that focus on vaccination and is a regular media spokesperson in this field, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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#17517

William Robinson

#91397
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
William Francis Robinson AO is an Australian painter and lithographer. Early life William Robinson was born in Brisbane in 1936. He attended Brisbane State High School and Ballarat High School. After graduating from secondary education, he began working as an art instructor.
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#17518

Pierre de Villiers Pienaar

1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Pierre de Villiers Pienaar was a South African Afrikaans academic and Professor at University of the Witwatersrand and later at University of Pretoria, who pioneered Speech Language Therapy in South Africa and specialising in Audiology and Lexicography as well as being an Afrikaans author. As Lexicographer in 1973, he was part of the group of authors that established the Afrikaans Explanatory Dictionary alongside Prof M.S.B. Kritzinger and Prof F.J. Labuschagne.
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#17519

William of Auxerre

1145 - 1231 (86 years)
William of Auxerre was a French scholastic theologian and official in the Roman Catholic Church. The teacher by whom William was most influenced was Praepositinus, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. The names of teacher and pupil are mentioned in the same sentence by Thomas Aquinas.
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#17520

Ted Hines

1926 - 1983 (57 years)
Theodore Christian "Ted" Hines was a Washington, D.C.-born pioneer in the use of microcomputers and microcomputer programs in libraries. He attended undergraduate school at George Washington University and received his Masters of Library Science in 1958 and a PhD in 1960 both from Rutgers University. He began his career as a children's librarian, and later became a professor of Library Science at Rutgers, followed by Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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#17521

Mylin Torres

#180199
Overall Influence
Mylin Ann Torres is an American breast cancer radiation oncologist. Torres is the Louisa and Rand Glenn Family Chair in Breast Cancer Research and director of the Glenn Family Breast Center. Early life and education Torres was raised in Savannah, Georgia, US. After her best friend's mother died of cancer when she was in sixth grade, Torres was influenced to pursue a career in medicine. Following high school, Torres enrolled at Harvard University for her Bachelor's degree in biology. As an undergraduate student, Torres competed with the Harvard Crimson women's tennis team where she was voted Rookie of the Year in 1995.
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#17522

Lori Emerson

#108835
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Lori Emerson is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and founder of the Media Archaeology Lab, a museum dedicated to obsolete technologies spanning from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. She is known for her work in media archaeology, digital preservation, and digital archives.
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#17523

Johannes Hartmann

Johannes Hartmann
1568 - 1631 (63 years)
Johannes Hartmann was a German chemist. In 1609, he became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marburg. His teaching dealt mainly with pharmaceuticals. He was the father-in-law of Heinrich Petraeus.
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#17524

Ghyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki

1462 - 1542 (80 years)
Ghiyāth al-Din Mansur Dashtaki was an Iranian Safavid Islamic philosopher, the son of Sadr ad-Din Dashtaki. He has been called "the foremost philosopher of sixteenth-century Islam". "His works spanned an impressive range, from theological, mystical, and Quranic studies to treatises on medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology." He wrote Akhlaq-i Mansuri on ethics, a commentary on Suhrawardi's Hayākil al-nūr , and glosses on Tusi's Sharh al-isharat. He also wrote a medical treatise, Ma’alem-o-Shafa.
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#17525

Robert Gilbert

1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Robert Gilbert was a German composer of light music, lyricist, singer, and actor. His father was Max Winterfeld, a composer and conductor who went by the pen name of Jean Gilbert. His brother was Henry Winterfeld, an author of children's books. Sometimes described as a "divided author", his early depression-era poem "Stempellied" about living on the dole was set to music by Hanns Eisler. But "Am Sonntag will mein Süsser mit mir segeln gehen" and "Das gibt's nur einmal" , became his better known work.
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#17526

Larry Brilliant

Larry Brilliant
#129948
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lawrence Brilliant is an American epidemiologist, technologist, philanthropist, and author, who worked with the World Health Organization from 1973–1976 helping to successfully eradicate smallpox.
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#17527

Recep Akdağ

#64444
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Recep Akdağ is a Turkish physician and politician who is a member of the Justice and Development Party. He was one of the last Deputy Prime Ministers of Turkey from 19 July 2017 from 9 July 2018, and served as Minister of Health from 2016 to 2017, and from 2002 to 2013.
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#17528

Lawrence Schkade

#132972
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Lawrence L. Schkade was an American information systems and management science researcher. Schkade was a native of Port Arthur, Texas, who earned his doctorate at Louisiana State University. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas before joining the University of Texas at Arlington. At UTA, he was Ashbel Smith Professor of Information Systems and Management Sciences, later held the Jenkins Garrett Professorship in Information Systems and Operations Management, and also served as dean of the College of Business Administration. Schkade was granted emeritus status in October 2004.
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#17529

Ehren Kruger

#99300
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ehren Kruger is an American film screenwriter and producer. He is best known for writing three of the five installments in the original Transformers film series: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, and Age of Extinction, in addition to the American version of The Ring and its sequel The Ring Two and the American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.
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#17530

Alejandro Bárcenas

#188601
Overall Influence
Alejandro Barcenas Pardo is a Venezuelan philosopher and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University. He is known for his expertise on Machiavelli's thought. Books Machiavelli's Art of Politics. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2015. 175 pages.
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#17531

Fletcher Martin

Fletcher Martin
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
Fletcher Martin was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and educator. He is best known for his images of military life during World War II and his sometimes brutal images of boxing and other sports.
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#17532

Wolfgang Klemperer

Wolfgang Klemperer
1893 - 1965 (72 years)
Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of the Austrian nationals Leon and Charlotte Klemperer. He was in his time a prominent aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.
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#17533

Richard of Lavenham

#107352
Overall Influence
Richard of Lavenham was an English Carmelite, known as a scholastic philosopher. He is now remembered for his approach to the problem of future contingents. Life He was born at Lavenham, Suffolk, and, after becoming a Carmelite friar at Ipswich, studied at the University of Oxford, where he is said to have graduated D.D.; but in the colophon to his tract against John Purvey he is called simply 'magister'.
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#17534

Denham Harman

#189347
Overall Influence
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#17535

John Gutmann

#101213
Overall Influence
1905 - 1998 (93 years)
John Gutmann was a German-born American photographer and painter. Early life and education Gutmann was born in 1905 in Breslau, Germany to an upper-middle-class Jewish family. He earned a degree in art from and moved to Berlin in 1927, earning a post-graduate degree at Preussisches Shulkollegium for Hohere Erziehung.
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#17536

Leonardo Moledo

#58858
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Leonardo Moledo was an Argentine writer and philosopher. Life and work Leonardo Moledo was born in Buenos Aires, in 1947. He enrolled at the public secondary school, the National College of Buenos Aires. He was accepted into the University of Buenos Aires, where he received a degree from the School of Natural and Exact Sciences.
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#17537

Arthur Adams

1820 - 1878 (58 years)
Arthur Adams was an English physician and naturalist. Adams was assistant surgeon Royal Navy on board HMS Samarang during the survey of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, from 1843 to 1846. He edited the Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang . Adam White collaborated with him in the descriptions of the Crustacea from the voyage. In 1857, during the Second China War whilst serving as Surgeon on HMS Actaeon, he was present at the storming of Canton and awarded the China War Medal. He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870.
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#17538

William F. Bernhard

#81941
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
William F. Bernhard was an American cardiovascular surgeon, Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and cardiovascular surgical pioneer. Bernhard's cardiovascular work first came to public light with his 1963 breakthrough hyperbaric chamber work and use of the chamber to try to save Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Bernhard continued cardiovascular research at Boston Children's Hospital and developed innovative surgical alternatives for cardiovascular disease including the Ventricular Assist Device.
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#17539

Gerd Rienäcker

#163084
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Gerd Rienäcker was a German musicologist. Life Rienäcker was born on 3 May 1939 in Göttingen as son of the chemist . Rienäcker studied musicology from 1959 to 1964 with Ernst Hermann Meyer, Georg Knepler, Walther Vetter, Peter H. Feist and Carl Heinz Claasen at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and also musical composition with Hans Georg Görner.
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#17540

Ries Mulder

Ries Mulder
1909 - 1973 (64 years)
Marinus Mulder was a Dutch painter, lecturer and writer. His painting style was influenced by Cubism, which he taught during his tenure as a leading lecturer of Modern Art in Indonesia. Dutch Period until 1940 Ries grew up in a family of ten children. After three years at the Hogere Burgerschool he studied painting in Utrecht and decided to become a painter. Ries apprenticed to the painter Piet van Wijngaerdt. He also made contact with Otto van Rees , Lambert Simon and Charles Eyck. Between 1933 and 1939, he assisted Charles Eyck in creating several frescoes, including frescoes in the Genaz...
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#17541

Philippe Michel

#189379
Overall Influence
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#17542

Samuel James Cameron

Samuel James Cameron
1878 - 1959 (81 years)
Samuel James Cameron was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1934 until 1942. The son of Caesarean Section pioneer Prof Murdoch Cameron, S.J. Cameron was a foundation Fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, and for many years a member of the Gynaecological Visiting Society. A lifelong champion of the reputation of the founder of professional midwifery in the British isles, William Smellie, Cameron both named a maternity hospital at Lanark, Scotland, after him and saved Smellie's library from permanent loss.
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#17543

L. Emmett Holt Jr.

L. Emmett Holt Jr.
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Luther Emmett Holt Jr. was an American pediatrician. As a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and later New York University, he performed extensive research in the field of pediatric nutrition. He received the John Howland Award in 1966.
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#17544

Apoorvanand

#59605
Overall Influence
Apoorvanand is professor at the Hindi Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi. He is also a regular columnist and political commentator. He is known for his frequent interventions in day-to-day politics. He claimed in his video that Delhi riots should be seen by lens of communal with all responsibility on Hindus criticizing Delhi CM over calling names of Hindu victims.
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#17545

Ray Siemens

#174932
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Ray Siemens is a professor in the faculty of humanities at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and former Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing. Siemens is a recipient of the Antonio Zampolli Prize, presented by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations for outstanding contributions to the field of Digital Humanities.
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#17546

Frans Floris

Frans Floris
1519 - 1570 (51 years)
Frans Floris, Frans Floris the Elder or Frans Floris de Vriendt was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print artist and tapestry designer. He is mainly known for his history paintings, allegorical scenes and portraits. He played an important role in the movement in Northern Renaissance painting referred to as Romanism. The Romanists had typically travelled to Italy to study the works of leading Italian High Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and their followers. Their art assimilated these Italian influences into the Northern painting tradition.
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#17547

Lenny Moss

#107595
Overall Influence
Lenny Moss is a philosopher and a former biomedical scientist. He is presently an “Investigadore Visitantes” at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma De Mexico , Mexico City. He was previously a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in the United States and the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
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#17548

Friedrich Dessauer

1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Friedrich Dessauer was a German physicist, a philosopher, a socially engaged entrepreneur and a journalist. Friedrich Dessauer was born in Aschaffenburg, German Empire. As a young man he was fascinated by new discoveries in the natural sciences. He was particularly interested in the X-rays discovered by Röntgen and their medical applications. After attending the humanistic Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg, he studied electrical engineering and physics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and the University of Munich. Due to radiation damage during his research on the use of X-rays, his face was badly damaged and he was repeatedly treated with plastic surgery.
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#17549

Tarun Weeramanthri

#134775
Overall Influence
Tarun Weeramanthri is an Australian public health doctor who is an adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia . He was the Chief Health Officer of the Northern Territory from 2004 to 2007, and Western Australia from 2008 to 2018.
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#17550

Robert Bouvier

1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Robert Bouvier was a Swiss philosopher noted for popularising the work of Ernst Mach in French. Bouvier spent much his career teaching evening classes and doing translation work before becoming a privatdocent at the University of Geneva.
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