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,
#18551
Stephen Smith
1823 - 1922 (99 years)
Stephen Smith was a New York City surgeon and civic leader who made important contributions to medical education, nursing education, public health, housing improvement, mental health reform, charity oversight, and urban environmentalism. Smith maintained an active medical practice, was an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital for thirty-seven years, and authored three surgical texts, but he was best known for his public service. Three mayors, seven governors, and two U.S. presidents appointed Smith to almost fifty years of public responsibilities. Shortly before Smith’s death in 1922, Colu...
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Peter Strasser
1876 - 1918 (42 years)
Peter Strasser was chief commander of German Imperial Navy Zeppelins during World War I, the main force operating bombing campaigns from 1915 to 1917. He was killed when flying the German Empire's last airship raid over the United Kingdom.
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Georg Puppe
1867 - 1925 (58 years)
Georg Puppe was a German social physician and medical examiner. Life Georg Puppe attended the Raths- and Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kostrzyn nad Odrą, where he graduated in 1884. He then studied medicine in Berlin and Göttingen. In 1887, he became a member of the fraternity Burschenschaft Brunsviga. In 1888, Puppe completed his exams in Berlin and received his doctorate in the same year with the subject: "Investigations on the sequelae after Abortus".
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Paul Fürbringer
1849 - 1930 (81 years)
Paul Walther Fürbringer was a German physician and chemist born in Delitzsch, in the Prussiann Province of Saxony. He was a brother to anatomist Max Fürbringer . He studied medicine at the Universities of Jena and Berlin. He served as an assistant physician during the Franco-Prussian War, afterwards working as an assistant in the institute of pathology at Jena, and in Nikolaus Friedreich's clinic at the University of Heidelberg. In 1876 he received his habilitation for pharmacology and medicinal chemistry with a dissertation involving oxalic acid excretion in the urine.
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Karl Nef
1873 - 1935 (62 years)
Karl Nef was a Swiss musicologist. Life Born in St. Gallen, Nef first studied cello at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, but then turned to musicology under the influence of Hermann Kretzschmar. In 1896 his dissertation "Die Collegia Musica in der deutschen reformierten Schweiz von ihrer Entstehung bis zum Beginn des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. With an introduction on the reformed and the cultivation of profane music in Switzerland in the early days" at the Zollikofer'sche Buchdruckerei St. Gallen. In 1897, he moved to Basel, where he first worked as an editor for the Schweizer Musi...
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Georg Ledderhose
1855 - 1925 (70 years)
Georg Otto Ledderhose was a German surgeon, professor and pioneering traumatologist. Biography Early life He was born in the Bockenheim district of Frankfurt am Main. His father was the politician and university rector Karl Ledderhose and his mother was Wilhelmine Justine Charlotte . Wilhelmine's father was Johann Georg Heinrich Pfeiffer , the third son of Johann Jakob Pfeiffer, and brother of Burkhard Wilhelm, Carl Jonas, and Franz Georg Pfeiffer. Two of Ledderhose's uncles, the husbands of his mother's sisters, were the chemist Friedrich Wöhler and the jurist Otto Bähr, and another of his mother's sisters was the mother of the Prussian cavalry general Adolf von Deines.
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Joseph Shaw Bolton
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Joseph Shaw Bolton was a British physician, pathologist, psychiatrist and neurologist who was Professor of Mental Diseases at the University of Leeds. Early life and education After education at Spring Hill School in Whitby, Bolton worked as an assistant without formal qualification at an asylum and as an assistant to a general practitioner in Manchester. He graduated BSc in 1888. He then studied at University College London Medical School where he graduated MB ChB in 1894 and became a demonstrator of anatomy. By 1896 he graduated MD.
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Edgar Crookshank
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Edgar March Crookshank was an English physician and microbiologist. Biography Crookshank studied at King's College London and qualified for medicine in 1881. He served briefly as an assistant to Joseph Lister, a physician noted for his work promoting antiseptics and sterile surgery. In 1882, Crookshank served as a doctor with the British armed forces sent to Egypt as a result of the Urabi Revolt; he was decorated for his service at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir.
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Alexander Marcet
1770 - 1822 (52 years)
Alexander John Gaspard Marcet FRS , was a Genevan-born physician who became a British citizen in 1800. His wife Jane Marcet was a prolific author, whose series of books entitled 'Conversations' treated topics such as chemistry, botany, religion and economics.
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Judah ben Moses Romano
1293 - 1330 (37 years)
Judah ben Moses Romano was an Italian Jewish philosopher and translator of the fourteenth century. He was a cousin of Immanuel of Rome. He was a significant early translator of works of scholastic philosophy from Latin into Hebrew. He was the first Hebrew translator of Thomas Aquinas; he also translated Albertus Magnus, Giles of Rome, Alexander of Alessandri, Domenicus Gundissalinus and Angelo of Camerino.
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Francisco Foreiro
1523 - 1581 (58 years)
Francisco Foreiro was a Portuguese Dominican theologian and biblist. Biography Born in 1523 in Lisbon, he studied arts and theology and entered among the Dominicans in February 1539. King John III sent him to study theology in the university of Paris and, on his return to Lisbon, he appointed Foreiro his preacher. Prince Louis at the same time entrusted to him the education of his son, António.
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James of Metz
James Metz was a fourteenth century philosopher and Dominican theologian. Very little is known about his life. It is a not known when he was born and when he died, but what is known is that he was philosophically active in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Of his works that survive, much remains unedited, and only a dozen manuscript copies still exist. James was known as a Dominican theologian, which meant following the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. However, he earned the reputation for being a "critical-Thomist," as he openly disagreed some of Aquinas's positions. One accou...
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Adam Pulchrae Mulieris
Adam Pulchrae Mulieris, also called Adam de Puteorumvilla, was a Paris master who studied under Peter of Lamballe, who flourished in the first half of the 13th century. Little is known of his life. He has been described as one of the “metaphysicians of light” . He was a contemporary of William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, and his works are cited by Richard de Fournival, Gerard of Abbeville and Thomas Aquinas. The origin of his name is unknown.
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Heinrich Füger
1751 - 1818 (67 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Füger was a German classicist portrait and historical painter. Biography Füger was a pupil of Nicolas Guibal in Stuttgart and of Adam Friedrich Oeser in Leipzig. Afterward, he traveled and spent some time in Rome and Naples, where he painted frescoes in the Palazzo Caserta. On his return to Vienna he was appointed court painter, professor, and vice-director of the Academy, and in 1806 director of the Belvedere Gallery.
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Alexander Dyce Davidson
1835 - 1886 (51 years)
Alexander Dyce Davidson MD FRSE was Scottish academic and surgeon. He was Professor of Materia Medica at Aberdeen University. He was described as a "sweet and amiable character". He specialised in ophthalmic surgery.
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Patrick Forbes
1776 - 1847 (71 years)
Patrick Forbes was a Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the period 1829 to 1830. He was Professor of Humanities and Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen.
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Arthur Purdy Stout
1885 - 1967 (82 years)
Arthur Purdy Stout was an American surgeon and pathologist. Early years and education Arthur Purdy Stout was the fourth son of Joseph and Julia Frances Stout. He attended the Pomfret School and Yale University, where he earned an A.B. degree in 1907. After spending a year abroad, Arthur entered the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University. He completed his M.D. degree in 1912.
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Paul North Rice
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Paul North Rice was an American librarian who served as Chief of the Reference Department of the New York Public Library, Executive Secretary of the Association of Research Libraries and President of the American Library Association.
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Helinand of Froidmont
1160 - 1229 (69 years)
Helinand of Froidmont was a medieval poet, chronicler, and ecclesiastical writer. Biography He was born of Flemish parents at Pronleroy in France around 1150. He studied under Ralph of Beauvais. His talents as a minstrel won the favor of King Philip Augustus, and for some time he freely indulged in the pleasures of the world, after which he became a Cistercian monk at the in the diocese of Beauvais about the year 1190. From being a self-indulgent man of the world he became a model of piety and mortification in the monastery. Whatever time was not consumed in monastic exercises he devoted to ecclesiastical studies and, after his ordination to the priesthood, to preaching and writing.
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Wilhelm Peters
1815 - 1883 (68 years)
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich Peters was a German naturalist and explorer. He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Berlin Zoological Museum. Encouraged by Müller and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Peters travelled to Mozambique via Angola in September 1842, exploring the coastal region and the Zambesi River. He returned to Berlin with an enormous collection of natural history specimens, which he then described in Naturwissenschaftliche Reise nach Mossambique... in den Jahren 1842 bis 1848 ausgeführt . The work was comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, river fish, insects and botany.
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Ihsan El-Kousy
1900 - Present (126 years)
Ihsan El-Kousy was the first Egyptian Muslim woman to graduate from the American University of Beirut. Early life Ihsan El-Kousy was born in 1900 in Al Qusea, an ancient city in central Egypt near the Nile. During that time education for girls wasn't common or encouraged, however, Ihsan received an education and continued her studies until she earned a graduate degree and then a PhD in UK. This was due to the fact that both her parents and grandparents kept on motivating her, in addition to generally being raised up surrounded by books. In fact, Ihsan then moved to Lebanon and became the firs...
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Roderich Stintzing
1854 - 1933 (79 years)
Georg Hieronymus Roderich Stintzing was a German internist born in Heidelberg. Stintzing studied medicine at the Universities of Bonn, Leipzig and Tübingen, receiving his doctorate in 1878 at Bonn. Following graduation he remained in Bonn as an assistant in the institute of physiology of Eduard Pflüger . Later he was an assistant to Hugo von Ziemssen at the medical clinic in Munich, and in 1890 became an associate professor and director of the medical clinic at the University of Jena.
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Bartholomew of Bologna
Bartholomew of Bologna was an Italian Franciscan scholastic philosopher. He was a follower of John Pecham. He studied at the University of Bologna, and then for a degree at the University of Paris. He preached in Paris in 1270.
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John Murray
1775 - 1807 (32 years)
John Murray was a seaman and explorer of Australia. He was the first European to land in Port Phillip, the bay on which the cities of Melbourne and Geelong are situated. He is notable for his explorations and surveying work in Victoria and New South Wales, including being the first European captain to enter Port Phillip Bay, then known as Narrm-Narrm by the local Aboriginal people, and exploring the area around present-day Melbourne.
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Marie Lloyd
1870 - 1922 (52 years)
Matilda Alice Victoria Wood , professionally known as Marie Lloyd , was an English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", "My Old Man " and "Oh Mr Porter What Shall I Do". She received both criticism and praise for her use of innuendo and double entendre during her performances, but enjoyed a long and prosperous career, during which she was affectionately called the "Queen of the Music Hall".
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James William Abert
1820 - 1897 (77 years)
James William Abert was an American soldier, explorer, bird collector and topographical artist. Early life Abert, the son of John James Abert, was born in Mount Holly Township, New Jersey, and graduated from West Point in 1842.
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Sinbuya Asvari
Abu Yunis Sinbuya Asvāri was the originator of the idea of Qadariyah, the doctrine of free-will in Islam. He was a Persian who was put to death by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik, or, according to other narratives, by al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf. His idea was already taught in Damascus at the end of the seventh century of our era by Ma'bad al-Juhani , who had imbibed the doctrine from Sinbuya.
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Mehmed Tahir Münif Pasha
1830 - 1910 (80 years)
Mehmed Tahir Münif Pasha was an Ottoman writer and statesman. A veteran official, he served thrice as Minister of Education and twice as ambassador to Qajar Iran . During his first ambassadorship to Iran, he was awarded the Order of the Lion and the Sun medal. He also served as a trusted advisor to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, until he fell out of grace.
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Adam Kuhn
1741 - 1817 (76 years)
Adam Kuhn was an American physician and naturalist, and one of the earliest professors of medicine in a North American university. Formative years Kuhn was born in Germantown, Province of Pennsylvania, a son of German immigrant parents. He studied medicine under his father, Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn. Then he went to Sweden and studied medicine and natural history 1761–1764 at Uppsala University, where he studied with Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus named a flower in Kuhn's honor: Kuhnia eupatoriodes. He continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated as M.D. in June 1767, and publi...
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Göran Wahlenberg
1780 - 1851 (71 years)
Georg Wahlenberg was a Swedish naturalist. He was born in Kroppa, Värmland County. Wahlenberg matriculated at Uppsala University in 1792, received his doctorate in Medicine in 1806, was appointed botanices demonstrator in 1814, and professor of medicine and botany in 1829, succeeding Carl Peter Thunberg. He was the last holder of the undivided chair that in the previous century had been held by Linnaeus. After his death in 1851, the chair was divided into more delimited professorships, and botany became the main duty of the borgströmian professorship, at the time held by Elias Fries.
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Karl Otto Weber
1827 - 1867 (40 years)
Karl Otto Weber was a German surgeon and pathologist born in Frankfurt am Main. Biography He received his early education in the gymnasium at Bremen which his father directed. There Weber showed a special interest in the natural sciences, and in 1846, when he went on to the University of Bonn, he studied botany, geology and mineralogy with an emphasis on paleontological botany. As a student at Bonn, he was a member of the Burschenschaft Franconia, which at that time also included Carl Schurz, Johannes Overbeck, Julius Schmidt, Friedrich Spielhagen, Ludwig Meyer and Adolf Strodtmann. In 1851, he received a degree of doctor of medicine and surgery from Bonn.
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George Fell
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
George Edward Fell was an American surgeon and inventor. He was an early developer of artificial ventilation and also investigated the physiology of electrocution, a line of research that led to Fell creating the final design for the first electric chair.
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Frederick Sefton Delmer
1864 - 1931 (67 years)
Frederick Sefton Delmer was an Australian linguistics university lecturer and journalist. Life He was born in Battery Point, Tasmania, to James Delmer and Margaret Sefton Burgess . Delmer studied at Trinity College of the University of Melbourne and continued his studies in Europe, where he made the acquaintance of Herman Grimm, son of Wilhelm Grimm. After his return to Australia, he was a teacher in 1896, but also wrote travel reports. He soon returned to Europe where he became a lecturer at the University of Königsberg in 1900 and, from 1901 to 1914, he was a lecturer at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin.
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Nathaniel Wallich
1786 - 1854 (68 years)
Nathaniel Wolff Wallich FRS FRSE was a surgeon and botanist of Danish origin who worked in India, initially in the Danish settlement near Calcutta and later for the Danish East India Company and the British East India Company. He was involved in the early development of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, describing many new plant species and developing a large herbarium collection which was distributed to collections in Europe. Several of the plants that he collected were named after him.
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Friedrich Benjamin Osiander
1759 - 1822 (63 years)
Friedrich Benjamin Osiander was an obstetrician at Göttingen, who invented uterine traction forceps. He was the father of obstetrician Johann Friedrich Osiander. He studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, and following graduation , settled as a general practitioner in Kirchheim unter Teck. In 1792 he became an associate professor of obstetrics at the University of Göttingen.
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Eugen Rehfisch
1862 - 1937 (75 years)
Eugen Rehfisch was a German physician of Jewish descent born in Kempen, Kingdom of Prussia . He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin and Würzburg, earning his doctorate in 1887. Soon afterwards he worked as a physician in Berlin, where he was a colleague of urologist Leopold Casper . From 1896 to 1900 he performed important urodynamic research at the university's institute of physiology. Later, he was awarded the title of professor.
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Arthur Kreindler
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Arthur Kreindler was a Romanian neurologist of Jewish origin, academic, professor of neurology at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, and director of the Institute of Neurology Research of the Romanian Academy.
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Karl Friedrich Canstatt
1807 - 1850 (43 years)
Karl Friedrich Canstatt was a German physician and medical author. Biography He received his education at the University of Vienna, followed by studies under Johann Lukas Schönlein at the University of Würzburg, where in 1831 he obtained his medical doctorate. The following year, he went to Paris to study Asiatic cholera, a disease that was then epidemic in the French capital. Canstatt's study of the disease, published in 1832, attracted the attention of the Belgian government, which commissioned him to take charge in establishment and management of a cholera hospital.
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Daniel Rutherford Haldane
1824 - 1887 (63 years)
Daniel Rutherford Haldane FRSE PRCPE LLD was a prominent Scottish physician, who became president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1881. Life His was born in Edinburgh the son of Rev James Haldane by his second wife Margaret Rutherford, a daughter of Professor Daniel Rutherford. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1848. He then undertook further postgraduate study in Vienna and Paris.
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Charles H. Liebermann
1813 - 1886 (73 years)
Charles H. Liebermann was a Russian-American physician and one of the co-founders of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Biography Liebermann was born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, a military surgeon, died when Liebermann was young, but his uncle ensured that he received a quality education. He studied medicine at the University of Dorpat in Russia, but he was arrested for his involvement in the Polish independence movement. He escaped from prison in Siberia and continued the study of medicine at the University of Berlin. He became an assistant to the surgeon...
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Luigi Nono
1850 - 1918 (68 years)
Luigi Nono was an Italian painter, known primarily for his genre scenes depicting life among the poor. Biography A young Nono entered the Accademia of Venice, then under the leadership of Pompeo Marino Molmenti. But by at the age of twenty years, he went to Polcenigo in the Friulian countryside, and he began to refine his style of landscape paintings, including Sull' Avemaria, Le sorgenti del Gorgazzo, Ritorno dai campi, and Verso sera. He later returned to painting genre subjects of everyday life, and these paintings would prove to be his most influential. If his contemporary, Giacomo Favret...
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Władysław Mazurkiewicz
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
Władysław Mazurkiewicz was a Polish physician and professor at the University of Warsaw. In May 1901, together with Aleksander Sulkiewicz, he helped Józef Piłsudski escape from a mental hospital in St. Petersburg, Russia, to which Piłsudski had been transferred from the Warsaw Citadel after feigning mental illness.
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Axel von Harnack
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Friedrich Hermann Julius Axel von Harnack was a German librarian, historian and philologist. He was the cousin of Arvid and Falk Harnack and worked to get Arvid and his wife, Mildred Harnack released from Nazi detention after they were arrested in connection with the Red Orchestra. He was the first in the family to be told of Arvid and Mildred's arrest, which had been kept secret by the Nazis. In 1947, he published a memoir of the trial that convicted Arvid and Mildred Harnack of high treason and sentenced them to death.
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Bob Haymes
1923 - 1989 (66 years)
Robert William Haymes , also known by the stage names Robert Stanton and Bob Stanton, was an American singer, songwriter, actor and radio and television presenter. He is best remembered for co-writing the song "That's All", part of the Great American Songbook. He was the younger brother of singer and actor Dick Haymes.
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Azalea Thorpe
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Azalea Thorpe was a Scottish-born American weaver and textile designer. Known for her innovative experimentation with both natural and synthetic materials, Thorpe was a featured instructor and lecturer throughout the United States. She has weavings in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. An annual award given in her honor is presented by the Institute of American Indian Arts for fiber arts.
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Marcus Pløen Ingstad
1837 - 1918 (81 years)
Marcus Pløen Ingstad was a Norwegian jurist and educator. He was a legal historian and scholar who was the author of several books on Roman law. He served as a Professor of Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo between 1870 and 1918.
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James Lawrence Cabell
1813 - 1889 (76 years)
Dr. James Lawrence Cabell was an American sanitarian and author. Life He was born in Nelson County, Virginia, the son of Dr. George Cabell, Jr., and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1833. He then studied medicine in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Paris, and became Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Virginia, where he was chairman of the faculty in 1846 and 1847. Cabell was a full professor at the School of Medicine for 52 years and was an early pioneer of the sanitary preparation of the surgical patient following Lister's principles.
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Ernst Friedrich Apelt
1812 - 1859 (47 years)
Ernst Friedrich Apelt was a German philosopher and entrepreneur. Life Apelt graduated from secondary school in Zittau and entered the University of Jena in 1831. He then continued his studies at the University of Leipzig. He received his doctorate in 1835 and four years later completed his habilitation in Jena. He taught there from 1840 and became a full professor in 1856.
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Frederick Forchheimer
1853 - 1913 (60 years)
Frederick Forchheimer was an American pediatrician known for describing Forchheimer spots. Biography Frederick Forchheimer was born in Cincinnati on September 25, 1853. He was educated in public schools and the Medical College of Ohio. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1873.
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Abai Qunanbaiuly
1845 - 1904 (59 years)
Ibrahim Qunanbaiūly was a Kazakh poet, composer and Hanafi Maturidi theologian philosopher. He was also a cultural reformer toward European and Russian cultures on the basis of enlightened Islam. Among Kazakhs he is known simply as Abai.
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