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,
#17751
Luigi Calori
1807 - 1896 (89 years)
Luigi Calori was an Italian physician who was Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Bologna for over 50 years. Life Luigi Calori was born in San Pietro in Casale in 1807, son of Teresa Gibelli and Francesco Calori. His father was a country doctor. He first studied at the Jesuit college in Ferrara before going on the University of Bologna. He graduated on 7 July 1829 with a medical degree. During his years of study he met several exponents of Italian culture including Gioachino Rossini. He was appointed anatomical prosector at the university on 4 November 1830. He obtained a degree in Surgery on 4 April 1833.
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Ricardo Punzalan
#121833
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Ricardo L. Punzalan is a Filipino American archivist who is an Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information. He has shaped the fields of archival science, virtual reunification, repatriation, reparative description, and has studied the nature of collections in both museums and archives. He holds undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of the Philippines and a doctorate in information science from the University of Michigan.
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Peter Verigin
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Peter Vasilevich Verigin often known as Peter "the Lordly" Verigin was a Russian philosopher, activist, and leader of the Community Doukhobors in Canada. The prepetrators of his assassination in 1924 have never been identified.
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József Rácz
#158861
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
József Rácz is a Hungarian physician, psychiatrist, addiction doctor, full professor and the former Head of the Department of Counselling Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University and the Head of the Department of Addictology, Faculty of Health Sciences at the Semmelweis University, director at Blue Point Drug Counseling and Outpatient Centre. His books, papers and talks focus on qualitative social psychological research of the drug users.
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Bhaskar Vishwananth Ghokale
1903 - 1962 (59 years)
Bhaskar Vishwanath Gokhale , also known as Vaidya Bhaskar Vishwanath Gokhale, and popularly called Mama Gokhaleji, was an Indian Ayurveda practitioner, Ayurvedic teacher, freedom fighter, and philosopher.
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Frederick Madison Allen
1879 - 1964 (85 years)
Frederick Madison Allen was a physician who is best remembered for his carbohydrate-restricted low-calorie diet for sufferers of diabetes mellitus. He was known for pioneering the "starvation diet".
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Alexander M. Schweitzer
#185249
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Alexander M. Schweitzer is a German theologian and musician. Biography From 1984 to 1992 Schweitzer studied philosophy, Catholic theology and church music in Rome, Cremona and Munich. After years of activity in biblical pastoral ministry, from 2001 to 2011 Schweitzer served as General Secretary of the Catholic Biblical Federation. In 2008 Pope Benedict XVI appointed him expert for the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God.
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Richard Petzoldt
1907 - 1974 (67 years)
Richard Johannes Petzoldt was a German musicologist and music critic. Life Petzoldt was born in Plauen in 1907 as the son of a merchant and grew up in Berlin. After graduating from high school, he studied musicology at the Friedrich Wilhelms University with Johannes Wolf, Hermann Abert, Arnold Schering, Hans Joachim Moser, Friedrich Blume, Erich von Hornbostel, Curt Sachs and Georg Schünemann. In 1933, he received his PhD from Arnold Schering with his dissertation The church compositions and secular cantatas of Reinhard Keiser.
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Đorđe Andrejević-Kun
1904 - 1964 (60 years)
Đorđe Andrejević-Kun was a Serbian painter and academic. He designed the coat of arms of the City of Belgrade and reputedly designed the coat of arms of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Yugoslav orders and medals .
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Rosa-Linda Fregoso
#101834
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Rosa-Linda Fregoso is the Professor and former Chair of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Biography Fregoso was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. She received her Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies: Language, Society and Culture from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied under American media critic and scholar, Herbert Schiller, and literary scholar, Rosaura Sánchez.
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Jonathan Dunsby
#181554
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jonathan Mark Dunsby is a British classical pianist, musicologist, author and translator, particularly known for his research in musical analysis. His introductory textbook, Music Analysis in Theory and Practice , co-authored with Arnold Whittall, is a standard work in the field. Dunsby has held professorships at the University of Reading in the UK, and SUNY University at Buffalo and the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in the United States, and was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Music Analysis .
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Roderick Long
#189998
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#17763
Anders Indset
#181943
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Anders Indset is a Norwegian philosopher, author investor and public speaker. Among the philosophical and socio-political ideas he has advanced are The Quantum Economy, Reflection on the Simulation Hypothesis, Weltbildung and the final narcissistic injury of mankind.
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Heinrich Meibom
1638 - 1700 (62 years)
Johann Heinrich Meibom was a German physician and scholar. Life Heinrich Meibom was the son of physician Johann Heinrich Meibom , who was the author of De Usu Flagrorum. He studied medicine at Helmstedt, Groningen and Leyden and afterwards traveled to Italy, France and England for scientific studies. He received his doctorate in 1663 in Angers and in 1664 accepted a professorship in medicine at the University of Helmstedt. In 1678, he also became professor for history and poetry. He held these positions until his death in 1700.
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Jessica Huber
#125082
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jessica Eugenie Huber is an American speech scientist. She is a Professor of speech, language and hearing sciences and College of Health and Human Sciences associate dean for research at Purdue University.
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Frederick Maguire
1888 - 1953 (65 years)
Major General Frederick Arthur Maguire, was an Australian physician, gynaecologist, and soldier, who spent much of his career with the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, the University of Sydney and in the service of the Australian Army Medical Corps. Maguire served as Director General Australian Army Medical Services from 1941 to 1942 during the Second World War, and was later a founding member and chairman of the Australian Regional Council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
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Walsh McDermott
1909 - 1981 (72 years)
Walsh McDermott was an American physician, medical researcher and public health specialist. In his early career, he researched antibiotic agents against tuberculosis and syphilis, earning a Lasker Award for his work on isoniazid, a drug used to treat tuberculosis. His later career focused on public health efforts, and he became a professor in public health at Cornell University.
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Elijah Ateka
#66474
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Elijah Miinda Ateka is a Professor of Plant Virology at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He is involved with the diagnosis and characterisation of the sweet potato virus and the cassava virus, and is part of the Cassava Virus Action Project .
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George Edward Day
1815 - 1872 (57 years)
George Edward Day was a Welsh physician. Life He was born on 4 August 1815 at Tenby, Pembrokeshire. He was the son of George Day of Manorabon House, Swansea; his father had inherited the fortunes of his own father, George Day, physician to the Nawab of Arcot, and his uncle, Sir John Day, solicitor-general in Bengal. His mother was Mary Hale. After his father's ruin by the failure of a bank in 1826, he was brought up by his grandmother, Mrs. Hale.
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Oliver Crawford
#126992
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Oliver Crawford was an American screenwriter and author who overcame the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s to become one of the entertainment industry's most successful television writers. Shows that Crawford wrote for include Star Trek, Bonanza, Quincy, M.E., Perry Mason, and the Kraft Television Theatre.
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Walter Douglas Boyd
#65313
Overall Influence
Walter Douglas Boyd, M.D. is a notable Canadian cardiothoracic surgeon. born in Ottawa, he is a graduate of Carleton University, and the University of Ottawa for his medical degree. In 1999, he Boyd completed the world's first closed-chest, beating-heart coronary artery bypass surgery with the use of the ZEUS Robotic Surgical System, and has conducted pioneering work in cardiothoracic surgery and the use of robotic surgical systems. Dr. Boyd is also recognized for performing the first human extracellular matrix xenograft implant for cardiovascular repair in March 2006.
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Elmar Budde
#156563
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Elmar Budde is a German musicologist. He studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Training and career Born in Bochum, Budde studied piano and school music at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg where he passed his state examination in 1961. After subsequent studies in musicology and Germanistic at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, he received his doctorate in 1967 with a thesis on the early Anton Webern.
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João Lobo Antunes
#32095
Overall Influence
1944 - 2016 (72 years)
João Lobo Antunes was a Portuguese neurosurgeon. Life and career João Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon as the second of six sons of João Alfredo de Figueiredo Lobo Antunes , prominent Neurologist and Professor, close collaborator of Egas Moniz, Nobel prize of physiology, and wife Margarida da Beira Cardoso de Melo Machado, daughter of Joaquim José Machado, 70th, 82nd and 91st Governor of Mozambique and 110th Governor of Portuguese India, and wife Mariana Cardoso de Melo. His great-grandfather in male line was an illegitimate son of Bernardo António de Brito Antunes, 1st Viscount of Nazaré. He ...
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Alex Lee
#114522
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Alex Lee is an English musician. He has played guitar and keyboards for Goldfrapp, Massive Attack, Suede, Placebo, Strangelove and The Blue Aeroplanes amongst others. He has also worked as musical director with Florence And The Machine, Marina & The Diamonds and for the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as composing regularly for film and television.
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Charles Hamm
#60315
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Charles Edward Hamm was an American musicologist, writer, composer, and music educator. He is credited with being the first music historian to seriously study and write about American popular music. He also was one of the founders of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music .
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Flora Belle Ludington
1898 - 1967 (69 years)
Flora Belle Ludington was an American librarian and author. Ludington served as the head librarian for Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, from 1938 until 1964. Life Born in Huron County, Michigan, Ludington moved to Wenatchee, Washington, as a young girl. At fourteen, she began her library career as a volunteer in the Carnegie public library in Wanatchee. She worked as an assistant in the University of Washington library, where she received a bachelor's degree in librarianship in 1920. She left Washington to be a reference librarian at Mills College, where she went on to study and receive a master's degree in history fin 1925.
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Philip Ledger
#103354
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Sir Philip Stevens Ledger, CBE, FRSE was an English classical musician, choirmaster and academic, best remembered as Director of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge in 1974–1982 and of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama from 1982 until he retired in 2001. He also composed choral music and played the organ, piano and harpsichord.
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Joseph Jefferson
1829 - 1905 (76 years)
Joseph Jefferson III , often known as Joe Jefferson, was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedians. Beginning as a young child, he continued as a performer for most of his 76 years. Jefferson was particularly well known for his adaptation and portrayal of Rip Van Winkle on the stage, reprising the role in several silent film adaptations. After 1865, he created no other major role and toured with this play for decades.
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Sardar Anjum
#43098
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
Sardar Anjum was an Indian poet Awards and recognition Padma Bhushan Award — Anjum was honoured with the Padma Bhushan Award in 2005 Citation Literature and Education. This is India's third largest civilian honourPadma Shri Award , India's fourth highest civilian honour.The Millennium Peace Award - Anjum has been honored by many literary societies, cultural forums and creative foundations both in India and Abroad. In 2000, former first lady Hillary Clinton presented "The Millennium Peace Award" to Anjum on behalf of "International Peace Foundation of New York". The citation of this award reads - The Millennium Peace Award to Padmashri Dr.
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Aza Rakhmanova
#104343
Overall Influence
1932 - 2015 (83 years)
Aza Rakhmanova or Aza Hasanovna Rakhmanova was a Russian AIDS and Hepatitis expert. She was credited with organizing AIDS prevention and control in St. Petersburg. She was one of the first to be treating HIV in the Soviet Union in 1987.
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Jean-Paul C. Montagnier
#89136
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Jean-Paul C. Montagnier is a French musicologist. He studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he received two first prizes in musical analysis and music history , before completing a PhD at Duke University under the supervision of Professor Peter Williams . He is currently Professor of musicology at the University of Lorraine , and Associate Member of the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie . He also was Adjunct Professor at McGill University. He was involved with Musica Gallica, an edition of the works of the musical patrimony of France. He serves on the editorial board of the Collected Works of Jean-Baptiste Lully published by Olms .
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Wilhelm von Diez
1839 - 1907 (68 years)
Albrecht Christoph Wilhelm von Diez was a German painter and illustrator of the Munich School. Life He attended a trade school in Munich, followed by the Polytechnic School from 1853 to 1855 and, from 1855, the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, where he was briefly a student of Karl von Piloty. He didn't stay at the Academy very long, preferring to teach himself draftsmanship and painting.
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Kenneth Baker
#131078
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J. is a Roman Catholic priest in the Society of Jesus. Besides his pastoral duties as a priest he has served as a professor of theology and a university president. He has also worked to bring the message of the Roman Catholic Church into more forms of communication media, most notably as editor-in-chief in the magazine the Homiletic and Pastoral Review which has been called "one of the most important magazines for priests in the English speaking world".
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Ilaria Testa
#182733
Overall Influence
Ilaria Testa is an Italian-born scientist who is a Fellow at the SciLifeLab in Stockholm and an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Physics at the School of Engineering Science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She has made major contributions to advanced microscopy, particularly superresolution microscopy .
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Antonio Carini
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Antonio Carini was an Italian physician, bacteriologist and professor. He worked in the public health services of São Paulo, Brazil for over forty years. Carini showed that rabies of herbivores could be transmitted by bats, and discovered a parasitic fungus , which causes pneumocystosis.
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Matthew Nudds
#190068
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Matthew Nudds is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick where he is also Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is known for his works on philosophy of mind and philosophy of perception.
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Johann Major
1533 - 1600 (67 years)
Johann Major was a German Protestant theologian, humanist and poet. Life Major was born in Sankt Joachimsthal in the Kingdom of Bohemia. He matriculated in 1549 at the University of Wittenberg, and died in Zerbst.
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Giselle Corbie-Smith
#144695
Overall Influence
Giselle Corbie-Smith is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She serves as Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research and Associate Provost of the Institute of Rural Innovation. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018. Her research considers racial disparities in healthcare.
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Munjed Al Muderis
#45560
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Munjed Al Muderis is an Australian adjunct clinical professor in orthopaedic surgery, author and human rights activist. He has done pioneering work on prosthetics, especially on titanium devices. Al Muderis was born in Iraq to a rich family and became a surgeon under the regime of Saddam Hussein. He was a medical student in Basra at the start of the Gulf War in August 1990. As a junior surgeon, he emigrated from Iraq to Australia. He travelled through Indonesia and Malaysia and reached Australia where he was kept in at an immigration detention centre near Derby, Western Australia. He was rele...
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Heinrich Petraeus
1589 - 1620 (31 years)
Heinrich Petraeus was a German physician and writer. He was Professor of Medicine at the University of Marburg. He was son-in-law of the chemist Johannes Hartmann . He is known for his Nosologia Harmonica Dogmatica et Hermetica. This was an attempt to find concord between rival medical theories of the time: those of the progressive chemical physicians and those of the tradition-based Galenists.
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Hemendra Nath Chatterjee
#31021
Overall Influence
Hemendra Nath Chatterjee was an Indian scientist from West Bengal known for the earliest publication of a formula for Orally Rehydrated Saline for diarrhea management in 1952. Although his results were published in The Lancet, they didn't receive much recognition from Western scientists until later. Some argue this was for cultural reasons as his treatment protocol included traditional medicine, and also because the scientific underpinnings of ORS weren't well understood. However, some argue he shouldn't be given credit for its invention at all, as some of his results contradict the results o...
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Octave Hamelin
1856 - 1907 (51 years)
Octave Hamelin was a French philosopher. He taught as a professor at the University of Bordeaux and the University of Sorbonne . Hamelin was a close friend of the sociologist Émile Durkheim, with whom he shared an interest in the French philosopher Charles Renouvier. He is also known as a translator of classical Greek philosophers.
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Meyer Balter
#175666
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Meyer Stanley Balter, MD, FRCPC, FACP, FCCP is a Canadian physician specializing in asthma, sarcoidosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease . He earned an M.D. from McGill University Faculty of Medicine . He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1989. He currently is Director, Asthma Education Clinic and Director, Internal Medicine Residency Training Program at Mount Sinai Hospital , and Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto.
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Sara Howard
#186205
Overall Influence
Sara Howard is a British speech therapist and Professor Emerita of Clinical Phonetics at the University of Sheffield. Career Howard earned a BA in English and an MA in Linguistics at the University of Leeds before receiving a BSc in Speech & Language Therapy at Leeds Metropolitan University and a PhD in Clinical Phonetics at the University of Sheffield. She works in the area of the phonetics/phonology interface in developmental speech impairments .
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Alonso Duralde
#91024
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Alonso Duralde is an American film critic, author, and podcaster. He has been a writer and editor for The Film Verdict, The Wrap, The Advocate and MSNBC.com. Personal life Duralde was born in East Point, Georgia, the youngest of seven children born to Spanish immigrants. He attended Vanderbilt University and currently lives in West Hollywood, California with his husband, fellow writer and film critic Dave White. They co-host the podcast Linoleum Knife, which began in late 2010. He was raised Catholic, but now identifies as an atheist.
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Merlin Swartz
#94561
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Merlin Swartz was an American scholar of religion. Swartz attended Eastern Mennonite University , Goshen College , and Harvard University . He was Professor Emeritus of Religion at Boston University, having taught previously at the American University in Beirut and Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies. His research and teaching focused primarily on the religious and intellectual history of medieval Islam.
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Andrew Fernando Holmes
1797 - 1860 (63 years)
Andrew Fernando Holmes was a Canadian physician, academic, and one of the founders of the Montreal Medical Institution, the first medical school in Canada. In 1797, Holmes' parents, Thomas Holmes and Susanna Scott, and his older brother, Benjamin were emigrating to North America when they were captured by a French frigate. They were taken to Cádiz, Spain, where Holmes was born. The family eventually reached British North America in 1801, settling in Montreal.
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Michael Foucault
#190112
Overall Influence
#17799
Glen Dudbridge
#117007
Overall Influence
1938 - 2017 (79 years)
Glen Dudbridge FBA was a British Sinologist, specialising in the literature and religious culture of China, ranging between the eighth and seventeenth centuries AD, with particular attention to narrative traditions and to vernacular culture.
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Mario Toral
#79358
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Mario Toral Muñoz is a Chilean painter and photographer. Career At the age of 16, Toral moved to Buenos Aires, where he saved money to enroll in the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Montevideo, Uruguay. He later went to Brazil, where at 21 the first exhibition of his work was shown at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art. In 1957, Toral moved to France, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Paris.
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