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,
#17901
Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr.
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. , was an American conservationist. He was longtime president of the New York Zoological Society . Biography Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1887. Born into the wealthy and influential Osborn family, he was the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn, a prominent paleontologist, eugenicist and "distinguished Aryan enthusiast". After obtaining his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, he went on to study biology at Cambridge University but then pursued a career in international business. Towards the end of the First World War, he served bri...
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William C. F. Robinson
1834 - 1897 (63 years)
Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson was an Irish colonial administrator and musical composer, who wrote several well-known songs. He was born in County Westmeath, Ireland, and was educated at home and at the Royal Naval School. He joined the Colonial Office service in 1858 and became the president of Montserrat in 1862.
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Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern
1845 - 1900 (55 years)
Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern was a German internist born in Ingolstadt. In 1869 he received his doctorate from the University of Munich, later working as an assistant of clinical medicine in Munich under Karl von Pfeufer and Joseph von Lindwurm . After the death of Felix von Niemeyer , he served as interim head of the medical clinic in Tübingen prior to the appointment of Carl von Liebermeister as Niemeyer's permanent replacement. Leichtenstern remained at the Tübingen clinic for several years, afterwards serving as head physician of internal medicine at the city hospital in Cologne .
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Philip Edward Smith
1884 - 1970 (86 years)
Philip Edward Smith was an American endocrinologist who is best known for his work studying the pituitary gland. He developed methods for removing pituitary glands from tadpoles and rats and showed that such removal resulted in cessation of growth, and atrophy of other endocrine glands such as the adrenal cortex and the reproductive organs. After graduating with a PhD in Anatomy from Cornell University in 1912, he joined the Department of Anatomy, Berkeley California until 1926. From 1927 to 1952 he served as Professor of Anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
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Christian Friedrich Michaelis
1770 - 1834 (64 years)
Christian Friedrich Michaelis was a German philosopher, music aesthete, and essayist. Life Michaelis was the son of a doctor and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1787, and in Jena from 1792. In 1793 he became a private lecturer in Leipzig and published numerous philosophical articles and writings, including the work Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst . He was also a frequent contributor to the music journal Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His hopes of becoming a professor failed, presumably due to his closeness to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was dismissed in 1799 as a result of the atheis...
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Richard William Hunt
1908 - 1979 (71 years)
Richard William Hunt was a scholar, grammarian, palaeographer, editor, and author of a number of books about medieval history. He began his career as a lecturer in palaeography at Liverpool University, and worked at Bush House during World War II. In 1945 he obtained the position of Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, and he relocated to Oxford, remaining in the position until 1975.
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Thomas Gann
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Thomas William Francis Gann was a medical doctor by profession, but is best remembered for his work as an amateur archaeologist exploring ruins of the Maya civilization. Personal history Thomas Gann was born in Murrisk Abbey, County Mayo, Ireland, the son of William Gann of Whitstable, England, and Rose Garvey of Murrisk Abbey. He was raised in Whitstable, where his parents were prominent in the social life of the town. Gann trained in medicine in Middlesex, England.
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Simon of Tournai
1130 - 1201 (71 years)
Simon of Tournai was a professor at the University of Paris in the late twelfth century. His date of birth is uncertain, but he was teaching before 1184, as he signed a document at the same time as Gerard de Pucelle, the Bishop of Coventry, who died that year.
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Jethro Bithell
1878 - 1962 (84 years)
Jethro Bithell was a collier's son, born at Birchall Farm, Hindley, near Wigan. He graduated with first-class honours in Modern Languages from Owens College, Manchester, in 1900. After gaining his M.A. there, he continued his studies in Munich and Copenhagen and then returned to Manchester as Lecturer in German. In 1910 he was appointed Head of the German Department at Birkbeck College, London, where he remained until his retirement in 1938.
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Martha May Eliot
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Martha May Eliot , was a foremost pediatrician and specialist in public health, an assistant director for WHO, and an architect of New Deal and postwar programs for maternal and child health. Her first important research, community studies of rickets in New Haven, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico, explored issues at the heart of social medicine. Together with Edwards A. Park, her research established that public health measures could prevent and reverse the early onset of rickets.
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Wilfrid Zogbaum
1915 - 1965 (50 years)
Wilfrid "Zog" Zogbaum was an American painter, sculptor, and educator. He was also a commercial photographer in the late 1940s, and started a sculpture studio in Montauk. Life Wilfrid Zogbaum was born in 1915 in Newport, Rhode Island. Zogbaum's father was Admiral Rufus F. Zogbaum, Jr., and his grandfather was painter Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum.
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Daniel Blain
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
Daniel Blain, M.D. was an American physician and was the first medical director of the American Psychiatric Association , the first professional medical society, founded in the United States in 1844. He may be credited with the leadership which brought changes in the practice of psychiatry after World War II and in advocating the treatment for people with mental disorders.
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Phaedrus the Epicurean
138 BC - 70 BC (68 years)
Phaedrus was an Epicurean philosopher. He was the head of the Epicurean school in Athens after the death of Zeno of Sidon around 75 BC, until his own death in 70 or 69 BC. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who became acquainted with him in his youth at Rome. During his residence in Athens Cicero renewed his acquaintance with him. Phaedrus was at that time an old man, and was already a leading figure of the Epicurean school. He was also on terms of friendship with Velleius, whom Cicero introduces as the defender of the Epicurean tenets in the De Natura Deorum, and especially with Atticus. Cicero especially praises his agreeable manners.
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Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert
1768 - 1837 (69 years)
Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert was a French dermatologist born in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, Aveyron. He was a pioneer of dermatology. Life and work Originally planning to enter the priesthood, Alibert did not begin studying medicine until he was 26 years old. As a medical student in Paris, he studied with renowned physicians that included Pierre-Joseph Desault , Jean-Nicolas Corvisart , Xavier Bichat and Philippe Pinel . In 1801 he was appointed to the Hôpital Saint-Louis , where he administered to patients with skin disorders, syphilis and leprosy. Following the Restoration of the French monarchy, Alibert became a personal physician to Louis XVIII.
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Ludwig Thienemann
1793 - 1858 (65 years)
Friedrich August Ludwig Thienemann was a German physician and naturalist. Ludwig Thienemann was the son of Johann August Thienemann and Johanne Eleonora Friederike née Schreiber . He graduated as a doctor in 1819 and then travelled in Europe for two years, spending thirteen months in Iceland. He published a report on his travel in 1824–1827.
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Isaac Pennington
1745 - 1817 (72 years)
See Isaac Penington for other people with a similar name.Sir Isaac Pennington was an English physician, of whom there are two portraits in the National Portrait Gallery. Isaac Pennington was educated at Sedbergh School and St John's College, Cambridge. From 1773 to 1817 he was physician to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and from 1793 to 1817 Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University.
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Edmund Rose
1836 - 1914 (78 years)
Edmund Rose was a German surgeon who was a native of Berlin. He studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg, and subsequently was an assistant to surgeon Robert Ferdinand Wilms in Berlin from 1860 until 1864. From 1867 to 1881, he was a professor of surgery at the University Hospital of Zurich, and afterwards a professor at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin . Among his assistants at Zurich was surgeon Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein.
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Ercole Sassonia
1551 - 1607 (56 years)
Ercole Sassonia, also known as Hercules de Saxonia, Hercules Saxonia Patavinus, or Hercules of Saxony , was an Italian physician. Sassoonia was born and died in Padua, and was one of the great Italian clinicians of the Renaissance. He was educated in his hometown, and graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Padua. In 1575 he became the professor of medical practice at the university. Becoming famous as a teacher, he was invited to Vienna by Emperor Maximilian II, where he remained until 1600. His chief scientific works were in the fields of diagnostics, skin diseases, a...
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Thomas Sewall
1786 - 1845 (59 years)
Thomas Sewall was an American physician, writer and academic. He gained notoriety for being convicted of body snatching, and later went on to become a professor. Early life Thomas Sewall was on April 16, 1786, in Hallowell, Maine. In August 1812, he graduated from Harvard Medical School and began practicing medicine.
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J. Eugene Gallery
1898 - 1960 (62 years)
Joseph Eugene Gallery was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit. He studied sociology at Georgetown University, before serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. Upon his return, he graduated, and entered business in Washington, D.C. He then entered the Society of Jesus in 1931, and was later ordained a priest. He became a professor of sociology at the University of Scranton, and also worked in child welfare and in arbitrating industrial disputes. In 1947, Gallery became the president of the University of Scranton. During his presidency, the university's graduate school was established. Hi...
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William A. Pusey
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
William A. Pusey was an American physician and past president of the American Medical Association. He advocated for the use of radiation in the treatment of skin diseases and he was an expert in the study of syphilis. Pusey authored several books, including the first history of dermatology written in English.
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Rudolf Maria Holzapfel
1874 - 1930 (56 years)
Rudolf Maria Holzapfel was a Poland-born Austrian psychologist, philosopher. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times. Literary works Panidealische Psychologie der sozialen Gefühle, 1901Panideal. Das Seelenleben und seine soziale Neugestaltung, 2 vols., new ed., 1923Welterlebnis, 2 vols., 1928Nachgelassene Schriften, 1932
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Michael Moore
1640 - 1726 (86 years)
Michael Moore was an Irish priest, philosopher and educationalist. Early life Moore – generally referred to as Moore or Moor in contemporary documents – was born in Dublin about 1639. He left Ireland at a young age to be educated in Nantes and Paris, where he taught philosophy and rhetoric at the Collège des Grassins. He was proposed for the position of rector at the University of Paris in June 1677 by a faction who wished to replace the then rector, Nicholas Pieres, but felt compelled to decline the offer.
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Chester Conklin
1886 - 1971 (85 years)
Chester Cooper Conklin was an early American film comedian who started at Keystone Studios as one of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops, often paired with Mack Swain. He appeared in a series of films with Mabel Normand and worked closely with Charlie Chaplin, both in silent and sound films.
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Samson Gemmell
1848 - 1913 (65 years)
Samson Gemmell FRFPS was a Scottish paediatrician who became Regius Professor of Practice of Medicine at the University of Glasgow. Life Gemmell was born in Catrine in 1848 and was educated at Glasgow High School. He applied to the University of Glasgow to study art, with a goal of joining the Civil Service, but a childhood deformity precluded this career move, and forced Gemmell to switch career to Medicine, graduating in 1872 with a Medicine and Surgery qualification with Honours.
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John Garrett Underhill
1876 - 1946 (70 years)
John Garrett Underhill was an American author and stage producer who translated the works of Jacinto Benavente, a Spanish dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and a number of other Spanish authors.
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Samuel Goldflam
1852 - 1932 (80 years)
Samuel Wulfowicz Goldflam was a Polish-Jewish neurologist best known for his brilliant 1893 analysis of myasthenia gravis . Biography Goldflam received his education in his native city of Warsaw. He graduated from secondary school in 1869, then studied medicine at Warsaw University. He qualified as a physician in 1875, then worked in internal medicine at Holy Ghost Hospital under Professor Wilhelm Dusan Lambl , known for the giardia parasite, Lamblia intestinalis. Lambl was not much of a mentor, so Goldflam worked largely by himself. His position at the internal-medicine clinic supplied him with ample research material.
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Gilbert Girdwood
1832 - 1917 (85 years)
Gilbert Prout Girdwood was an English army and civilian physician and surgeon, academic and author, noted for his service in the Canadian Army. He was a pioneer in medical education and radiography in Canada.
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Nikolai Zhilyayev
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Nikolay Sergeyevich Zhilyayev , was a musicologist, and the teacher of several 20th-century composers. He was a victim of political repression in the Soviet Union. He was a pupil of Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and Sergei Taneyev at the Moscow Conservatory in around 1904. He went on to teach there himself. His pupils included the composers Yevgeny Golubev, Aram Khachaturian, Lev Knipper, Alexei Fedorovich Kozlovsky, Alexei Vladimirovich Stanchinsky, Anatoly Nikolayevich Alexandrov and Samuil Evgenyevich Feinberg.
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Charles H. Fernald
1838 - 1921 (83 years)
Charles Henry Fernald was an American entomologist, geologist, and zoologist, who is credited as the first college professor of economic entomology. Fernald grew up at Fernald Point in Mount Desert, Maine, and went on to prepare for college at Maine Wesleyan Seminary before joining the navy in 1862. After receiving a master's degree from Bowdoin College he went on to serve as principal of several academies in Maine. Throughout his career he would document and describe several species of microlepidoptera and in 1886 became the first full-time professor and chair of the natural sciences at what is now the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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John Wickham Legg
1843 - 1921 (78 years)
John Wickham Legg was an English physician and published on medical subjects, and later almost exclusively on liturgy and ecclesiology. Life and career He was the third son of the printer and bookseller George Legg, and was born at Alverstoke near Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, on 28 December 1843. He was educated at Winchester College and from there he went to New College, Oxford and subsequently opted to read Medicine at University College, London, where he studied under Sir William Jenner. Having qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was recommended by Jenner for th...
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Sam Charles
1887 - 1949 (62 years)
Sam Charles was an American artist, pianist and professor. He was born in Agawam, Massachusetts, and was a life-long New Englander, living primarily in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He served on the music faculty of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and at Groton School. He admired and performed the music of modern French composers, particularly Claude Debussy. He was a well-known New England artist, painting primarily landscapes in watercolor, with a unique, free-flowing style, making skilled use of unpainted space.
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Francis Darby Boyd
1866 - Present (160 years)
Francis Darby Boyd CB CMG FRCPEd was a Scottish physician, and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Life Boyd was born on 19 October 1866, at 27 Melville Street, Edinburgh. His aunt Mary was married to Francis Darby Syme, who is Boyd’s namesake.
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Johannes Walaeus
1607 - 1649 (42 years)
Johannes Walaeus was a Dutch physician and illustrious professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Leiden University. He was graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1631, when he defended his dissertation, entitled Disputiatio medica de febribus at Leiden University. Two years after that, he was nominated Professor extraordinarius. In 1648, he was offered full professorship at Leiden University. Johannes Walaeus was a son of the theologian Antonius Walaeus.
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William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong
1810 - 1900 (90 years)
William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, was an English engineer and industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing concern on Tyneside. He was also an eminent scientist, inventor and philanthropist. In collaboration with the architect Richard Norman Shaw, he built Cragside in Northumberland, the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. He is regarded as the inventor of modern artillery.
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William Henry Hadow
1859 - 1937 (78 years)
Sir William Henry Hadow was a leading educational reformer in Great Britain, a musicologist and a composer. Life Born at Ebrington in Gloucestershire and baptised there on 29 January 1860 by his father, he was the eldest child of the Reverend William Elliot Hadow and his wife Mary Lang Cornish . His grandfather, the Reverend William Thomas Hadow, had married Eleanor Ann Bethune, daughter of Colonel John Drinkwater Bethune.
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J. Ph. Vogel
1871 - 1958 (87 years)
Jean Philippe Vogel , popularly known by his initials J. Ph. Vogel, was a Dutch Sanskritist and epigraphist who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India from 1901 to 1914 and later, as Professor in the University of Leiden.
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Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet, was a Welsh orthopaedic surgeon who helped to establish the modern specialty of orthopaedic surgery in Britain. He was an early proponent of the use of radiography in orthopaedics, and in 1902 described the eponymous Jones fracture.
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Leslie Walton
1895 - 1960 (65 years)
Leslie Bannister Walton was an academic in Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a Hispanist. Life Walton was educated at University College, London and Jesus College, Oxford, where he was awarded a first-class degree in medieval and modern languages. His association with the University of Edinburgh began in 1920, and he rose to become Forbes Reader in Spanish and head of the Department of Hispanic Studies. His writings included a critical study of the Spanish novelist Perez Galdos and editions of classical Spanish works. He also lectured for the Ministry of Information and the British Council in Spain and South America.
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A. N. Murthy Rao
1900 - 2003 (103 years)
Akkihebbalu Narasimha Murthy Rao was an Indian writer. He wrote in Kannada. Biography Kannadiga scholar and critic A. N. Murthy Rao, popularly known for his book "Devaru", was born on June 18, 1900, in Akkihebbal, Mandya district. He was born to M. Subbarao and Puttamma. He spent his childhood in Melukote and Nagamangala. After completing his early education at Wesley Mission School in Mysore in 1913, he joined Mysore Maharaja's College. He completed his B.A. in 1922 and M.A. in 1924.
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Julian Aleksandrowicz
1908 - 1988 (80 years)
Julian Aleksandrowicz was a Polish medical professional, professor of medicine, and a notable specialist on leukemia. He is known for having developed concepts of comprehensive psychotherapy of persons suffering from somatic diseases, as well as of the ecological prevention of cancer and leukaemia.
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Mary J. Safford
1834 - 1891 (57 years)
Mary Jane Safford-Blake was a nurse, physician, educator, and humanitarian. As a nurse in the Union army she worked closely with Mary Ann Bickerdyke treating the sick and injured near Fort Donelson, and was nicknamed the "Cairo Angel" for her service in Cairo, Illinois. After the war she became one of the first female gynecologists in the United States and was the first woman to perform an ovariotomy. She later taught at Boston University, and was one of the first women elected to the Boston School Committee.
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Marcus Whitman
1802 - 1847 (45 years)
Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary. In 1836, Marcus Whitman led an overland party by wagon to the West. He and his wife, Narcissa, along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, and William Gray, founded a mission at present-day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity. In the winter of 1842, Whitman went back east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train of settlers across the Oregon Trail. These new settlers encroached on the Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission and were unsuccessful in their efforts to Christianize the tribe.
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Jan Krzysztof Damel
1780 - 1840 (60 years)
Jan Krzysztof Damel, also known as Jonas Damelis and Johann Damehl in other languages was a Polish neoclassicist artist in the age of Partitions, associated with the School of Art at Vilnius University .
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Friedrich Boerner
1723 - 1761 (38 years)
Friedrich Boerner or Börner was a German physician. Boerner was born in Leipzig. His father, Christian Friedrich Boerner, wanted him to study theology and he started to study theology at the University of Wittenberg, but eventually he finish medicine. He was a professor of this university until he had to come back to Leipzig the raising of Seven Years' War . He died in Leipzig in 1761.
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Jeshua ben Judah
Jeshua ben Judah was a Karaite scholar, exegete and philosopher, who lived in eleventh-century Iraq or at Jerusalem. He was pupil of Joseph ben Abraham ha-Ro'eh. Jeshua was considered one of the highest authorities among the Karaites, by whom he is called "the great teacher" .
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Grigory Gurev
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Grigory Abramovich Gurev was a Soviet philosopher, popularizer of anti-religious knowledge, the author of several books on the history of religion and atheism. Major works: "The Great Conflict" , "The Story of a Single Misconception" , "Charles Darwin and Atheism" .
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Maksim Sedej
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Maksim Sedej was a Slovene painter, one of the key figures of the mid-20th-century art scene in Slovenia. Sedej was born in Dobračeva on the northern outskirts of Žiri in 1909. He studied art at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts between 1928 and 1932. His work was exhibited amid the selection of Yugoslav art at the Venice Biennale in 1940 and 1954. He worked as a professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design.
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Arnold Walter
1902 - 1973 (71 years)
Arnold Maria Walter, OC was a Canadian musicologist, educator, composer and writer. He founded the Canadian Opera Company, and was Director of Music at University of Toronto. Early years Arnold Maria Walter was born in Hanušovice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary . He studied law at the University of Prague, then musicology at the University of Berlin. In addition, he had private music lessons in piano and composition with Rudolf Breithaupt, Frederic Lamond, and Franz Schreker.
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Martha H. Mowry
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Martha H. Mowry was an American physician and the first woman physician in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. She was also an advocate for women's suffrage and human welfare reform. Early life and education
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