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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18601
Michele Savonarola
1384 - 1468 (84 years)
Michele Savonarola was an Italian physician, humanist and historian. He was professor of practical medicine at Padua before in 1440 becoming court physician to the House of Este at Ferrara. His grandson was the Dominican Order friar and preacher Girolamo Savonarola.
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Otto von Schrön
1837 - 1917 (80 years)
Otto von Schrön was a German physician and epidemiologist born in Hof, Bavaria. He served as a professor of anatomy at the University of Napoli. Biography From 1855 he studied medicine at the Universities of Erlangen and Munich. After obtaining his medical degree, he relocated to Italy, working at the Universities of Turin and Pavia. In 1864 he became a professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Naples.
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Gertrude Van Wagenen
1893 - 1978 (85 years)
Gertrude L. Van Wagenen was an American biologist. She was also a collector of anatomical illustrations and models. Early life Gertrude L. Van Wagenen was the daughter of Anthony Van Wagenen , a judge and lawyer in Sioux City, Iowa, and his wife Gertrude . She completed undergraduate studies at Iowa State University in 1913, where she majored in zoology and was a member of the Beta Zeta chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. For a few years after graduating, she taught in Ottumwa, Iowa, and endured a case of scarlet fever, with the quarantine it required. In 1918, she collected corals, ...
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Edgar A. Singer Jr.
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
Edgar Arthur Singer Jr. was an American philosopher, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and proponent of experimentalism. Life and work Singer was a graduate student of George S. Fullerton at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1894 with the thesis entitled "On the composite nature of consciousness." After his dissertation, he briefly taught at Harvard for William James as an instructor in the psychology laboratory. He was professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1909 until 1943. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1925.
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Ulrich Hugwald
1496 - 1571 (75 years)
Ulrich Hugwald was a Swiss humanist scholar and Reformer. Born in Wilen near Bischofszell, county of Thurgau, he was enrolled in the theological faculty in Basel University from 1519. He published critical pamphlets with Basel printer Adam Petri from 1520. He was in correspondence with a number of reformers, such as Vadianus, Michael Stifel, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Guillaume Farel. He also opened a private school of rhetorics in Basel. In 1524, he debated with Oecolampadius and Thomas Müntzer on the topic of believer's baptism. He joined the Basel Anabaptists in 1525, and was consequently imprisoned.
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Yi Eonjeok
1491 - 1553 (62 years)
Yi Eon-jeok , sometimes known by his art name Hoejae, was a Korean philosopher and politician during the Joseon dynasty. He was a public official and intellectual of the middle era of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea. He was born and died in Gyeongju, then the capital of Gyeongsang province. Like most intellectuals from Gyeongsang in this period, he was a member of the Sarim faction. He contributed to the polarity-nonpolarity debate in classical Korean Confucianism.
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Filippo De Filippi
1869 - 1938 (69 years)
Filippo De Filippi was an Italian medical doctor, scientist, mountaineer and explorer. De Filippi was born in Turin on 6 April 1869 to Giuseppe De Filippi, a lawyer, and Olimpia Sella. Personal and professional life Working as a doctor De Filippi specialised in physiological chemistry and in experimental aspects of surgery, lecturing at Bologna and Genoa universities.
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Luciano Salce
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
Luciano Salce was an Italian film director, comedian, tv host, producer, actor and lyricist. His 1962 film Le pillole di Ercole was shown as part of a retrospective on Italian comedy at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
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Gustav Behrend
1847 - 1925 (78 years)
Gustav Behrend was a German dermatologist who was a native of Neustettin . In 1870 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Berlin, and during the Franco-Prussian War, he served as an assistant at the Reserve Lazareth in Berlin. In 1882 he became a lecturer at Berlin, and in 1891 was appointed chief physician at the Municipal Dispensary for Sexual Diseases. In 1897 he received the title of professor.
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Oskar Lassar
1849 - 1907 (58 years)
Oskar Lassar was a German dermatologist who was a native of Hamburg. After earning his medical doctorate in 1872, he worked briefly as a hospital assistant at the Berlin Charité. He later started a private hospital for dermatology and syphilis in Berlin. His clinic was known for being technologically advanced, and it was the first to have a Finsen ultraviolet light therapy device and X-ray machine. In 1902 he became a professor at the University of Berlin.
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Edmund Lesser
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Edmund Lesser was a German dermatologist who was a native of Neisse. He studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Bonn and Strasbourg, earning his medical doctorate in 1876. Later he became an assistant to Oskar Simon at the dermatological clinic in Breslau, and in 1882 received his habilitation at the University of Leipzig. In 1892 he was an associate professor at the University of Bonn, and several years later was appointed chief physician of the syphilitic department at the Berlin-Charité . The following year he became head of the dermatological and syphilitic dispensary at the Univ...
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Dionysius the Renegade
330 BC - 250 BC (80 years)
Dionysius the Renegade , also known as Dionysius of Heraclea, was a Stoic philosopher and pupil of Zeno of Citium who, late in life, abandoned Stoicism when he became afflicted by terrible pain. Life He was the son of Theophantus. In early life he was a disciple of Heraclides, Alexinus, and Menedemus, and afterwards of Zeno, who appears to have induced him to adopt Stoicism. At a later time he was afflicted with terrible eye pain, which caused him to abandon Stoic philosophy, and to join the Cyrenaics, whose doctrine, that hedonism and the absence of pain was the highest good, had more charms for him than the austere ethics of Stoicism.
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Nathanael Gottfried Leske
1751 - 1786 (35 years)
Nathanael Gottfried Leske was a German natural scientist and geologist. After his studies at Bergakademie of Freiberg in Saxony and the Franckeschen Stiftungen in Halle, Leske became a special professor of natural history at the University of Leipzig in 1775.
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Mungo William MacCallum
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
Sir Mungo William MacCallum KCMG was Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1934 to 1936, and a noted literary critic. Early life Mungo William MacCallum was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Mungo MacCallum, merchant, and his wife Isabella, née Renton. He studied at the University of Glasgow and at Berlin and Leipzig. In Germany MacCallum concentrated on medieval literature, he published several articles in the Cornhill Magazine in 1879-80. In 1884 he published Studies in Low German and High German literature.
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Pan Pingge
1610 - 1677 (67 years)
Pan Pingge , was a notable Chinese philosopher during the late-Ming and early-Qing period. Biography Pan was born in Cixi City, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province in late Ming Dynasty in 1610. His courtesy name was Yongwei .
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Ellen Mitchell
1838 - 1920 (82 years)
Ellen M. Mitchell was an American philosopher, educator and education reformer. She was one of the first women to be appointed lecturer in a university, in addition to writing philosophy, literature and literary criticism.
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Lillias Hamilton
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Lillias Anna Hamilton was a British medical doctor and writer. She was born at Tomabil Station, New South Wales to Hugh Hamilton and his wife Margaret Clunes . After attending school in Ayr and then Cheltenham Ladies' College, she trained first as a nurse, in Liverpool, before going on to study medicine in Scotland, qualifying as a Doctor of Medicine in 1890.
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Claude de Bectoz
1490 - 1547 (57 years)
Claude de Bectoz was a French writer and philosopher of the Renaissance. Life Both her mother, Michelette de Salvaing, and father, Jacques de Bactoz, were from well-known families in the Dauphiné. Denys Fauchier taught her to write Latin and verse. Claude would later write prose and verse in both French and Italian.
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Francesco de Vieri
1524 - 1591 (67 years)
Francesco de' Vieri, also known as Verino the Second , was an Italian philosopher. He was the nephew of "Verino the First" Francesco de' Vieri. Like his homonymous ancestor, he was professor of logic and philosophy at the University of Pisa, and actively involved in the Accademia Fiorentina.
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Hugo Knorr
1834 - 1904 (70 years)
Hugo Knorr was a Prussian and German painter and teacher of art, specializing in landscape and marine art. Life Knorr was born at Königsberg in East Prussia. In 1852, when he was almost eighteen, he entered the Königsberg Academy of Art, where he chiefly studied landscape. Later, his master was the painter August Behrendsen.
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Christian Eduard Boettcher
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
Christian Eduard Boettcher, or Böttcher , was a German painter whose work comprised portraiture and genre painting. Career Boettcher first attended the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart under Johann Heinrich von Dannecker from 1833 to 1838 and trained as a lithographer, working as such for the Ebner'sche Verlagshaus , in Stuttgart and for the Arnz & Comp. lithographic institute in Düsseldorf.
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Hans Albrecht
1902 - 1961 (59 years)
Joachim Hans Albrecht was a German musicologist and university lecturer. He was professor at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Life Born in Magdeburg, Albrecht was son of Theodor Albrecht and Klara Emmy Brandt in Magdeburg, Province of Saxony. He spent his childhood and youth in Essen, where he already prepared himself for the music teacher examination during his period at the Essener Konservatorium and completed this in 1921 in the main subject piano. In 1921 he began studying musicology. After one semester at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität he moved to the Humboldt-Unive...
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Dino del Garbo
1280 - 1327 (47 years)
Dino di maestro Bono del Garbo da Firenze was an Italian medieval physician and philosopher. He was also known as Dino da Firenze, Aldobrandino and in Latin as Dinus Florentinus. He studied under Taddeo Alderotti in Bologna in 1295.
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Bob Russell
1914 - 1970 (56 years)
Bob Russell was an American songwriter born Sidney Keith Rosenthal in Passaic, New Jersey. Career Russell attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked as an advertising copywriter in New York; for a time, his roommate there was Sidney Sheldon, later a novelist. He turned to writing material for vaudeville acts, and then for film studios, ultimately writing complete scores for two movies: Jack and the Beanstalk and Reach for Glory. The latter film received the Locarno International Film Festival prize in 1962. A number of other movies featured compositions by Russell, incl...
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Carol Davila
1828 - 1884 (56 years)
Carol Davila was a prestigious Romanian physician of Italian ancestry. He is considered to be the father of Romanian medicine. Biography He started from humble beginnings, most probably as an abandoned child, and the surname Davila was bestowed on him by his adoptive family and guardian.
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Paul Leopold Friedrich
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Paul Leopold Friedrich was a German surgeon and bacteriologist born in the town of Roda, Saxe-Altenburg. In 1888 he received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig, and as a young assistant worked under Robert Koch at the Reich Health Office in Berlin. From 1894 he worked as a privat-docent of surgery in Leipzig, where in 1896 he became an associate professor. Later he served as a professor at the Universities of Greifswald , Marburg and Königsberg . At Greifswald he succeeded August Bier as director of the Surgical University Hospital. Two of Friedrich's well-known assistants were Fer...
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Liu Bowen
1311 - 1375 (64 years)
Liu Ji , courtesy name Bowen, better known as Liu Bowen, was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, and politician who lived in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. He was born in Qingtian County . He served as a key advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in the latter's struggle to overthrow the Yuan dynasty and unify China proper under his rule. Liu is also known for his prophecies and has been described as the "Divine Chinese Nostradamus". He and Jiao Yu co-edited the military treatise known as the Huolongjing .
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Max Schede
1844 - 1902 (58 years)
Max Schede was a German surgeon born in Arnsberg. Schede studied medicine at the Universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Zurich, obtaining his medical doctorate in 1866. After serving as a doctor in the Austro-Prussian War, he became an assistant to Richard von Volkmann at Halle. During the Franco-Prussian War, he was in charge of a Feldlazaretts. In 1875, he appointed head of the surgical department at Friedrichshain Hospital in Berlin, and from onward 1880, he practiced surgery at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg.
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Amintore Galli
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Amyntor Flaminio Claudio Galli was an Italian composer, musicologist, and journalist. Life He was born in Perticara, Italy on 12 October 1845, but began his musical studies with his uncle Pio Galli in Rimini until 1862 when he enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to be a pupil of Alberto Mazzucato. He would there compose the aria Cesare al Rubicone to be performed in the Teatro Vittorio Emanuel II in Rimini in 1864 and 1865 and after serving in the Italian Army under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Battle of Bezzecca, graduated with the canata Espiazione.
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Fritz Volbach
1861 - 1940 (79 years)
Fritz Volbach was a German conductor, composer and musicologist. Life Volbach was born in 1861 in Wipperfürth. After he was briefly a pupil of the with Ferdinand Hiller, he resumed his school education in Bruchsal, where he also passed his Abitur. He studied philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. In 1886 he became a pupil of the Royal Institute for Church Music, before continuing his studies with Eduard Grell at the Academy of Arts, Berlin in the composition department; he was probably his last pupil. During his studies in ...
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Daisy Maud Bellis
1887 - 1971 (84 years)
Daisy Maud Bellis was an American painter. Bellis was a native of Waltham, Massachusetts; her birthplace has also been given as Branford, Connecticut, where she later lived. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Vermont, and the Breckenridge School of Painting, and had further lessons at institutions in Montreal and Paris.
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Murdoch Cameron
1847 - 1930 (83 years)
Murdoch Cameron was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow from 1894 to 1926. He was a pioneer of the Caesarean section under modern antiseptic conditions, becoming world famous after the success of his first such operation in 1888, at what was then the Glasgow Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary, now the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital, an institution he was deeply involved with. He was honorary President of the first international Congress on Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in 1892. His son Samuel James Cameron followed in his footsteps, becoming Reguis Profe...
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Henry Pelham
1749 - 1806 (57 years)
Henry Pelham was an American painter, engraver, and cartographer active during the late 18th century. Pelham's many illuminating letters, especially to his half-brother John Singleton Copley, provide an important contemporary perspective of the events of the American Revolution.
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Carl Ferdinand Becker
1804 - 1877 (73 years)
Karl Ferdinand Becker , was a German writer on music, composer and an organist. Biography Becker was the son of physician and writer Gottfried Wilhelm Becker. He attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig in his early years, where his teachers Johann Gottfried Schicht and Friedrich Schneider trained him in music. He made his debut as a pianist at 14. From 1820 to 1833, he was a violinist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1825, he became an organist in the Peterskirche and then in 1837 at the St. Nicholas Church. In 1846, he became an instructor of organ and music history at the University of Music and Theatre at Leipzig.
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Harrison Allen
1841 - 1897 (56 years)
Harrison Allen was an American physician and anatomist, born in Philadelphia. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1861, and in 1862 became a surgeon in the United States Army and served until the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.
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Earl Carroll
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Earl Carroll was an American theatrical producer, director, writer, songwriter and composer. Early life Carroll was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1893. He lived as an infant in the Nunnery Hill section of the North Side. Carroll later said he left the area "because there were too many tin cans and goats up there then."
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Belsazar Hacquet
1739 - 1815 (76 years)
Belsazar de la Motte Hacquet was a Carniolan physician of French descent in the Enlightenment Era. He was a war surgeon, a surgeon in the mining town of Idrija, and a professor of anatomy and surgery in Laibach . He researched the geology and botany of Carniola, Istria, and nearby places, and was the first explorer of the Julian Alps. He also did ethnographical work among the South Slavic peoples, particularly among the Slovene-speaking population. He self-identified primarily as a chemist and introduced the methods of chemical analysis to Carniola.
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Johann Jakob Müller
1650 - 1716 (66 years)
Johann Jakob Müller was a German moral philosopher. Life Johann Jakob Müller was born at Jena in 1650. His father, another Johann Müller , was the deputy head of the city school. Johann Jakob Müller attended the school, then under the rectorship of Johann Martin Ringler. Recognising an exceptional talent, his parents also arranged for him to receive private tutoring at home from Anton Mosnern, a churchman from nearby Saalfeld. Aged only 15 Müller started attending lectures at the university. At the Philosophy faculty his teachers included Johann Frischmuth, Erhard Weigel, , , , Joha...
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Clifford Allbutt
1836 - 1925 (89 years)
Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt was an English physician best known for his role as president of the British Medical Association 1920, for inventing the clinical thermometer, and for supporting Sir William Osler in founding the History of Medicine Society.
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John Westbrook
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
John Aubrey Westbrook was an English actor. Born in Teignmouth, Devon, John Westbrook worked mainly in theatre and in radio. He also made occasional film and television appearances. His most famous role was as Christopher Gough in Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia. Noted for his deep, mellifluous voice, he also recorded radio plays and audiobooks, and provided the role of Treebeard in the 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Westbrook also recorded the spoken roles in the choral/orchestral works An Oxford Elegy by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Morning Heroes by Arthur Bliss, as wel...
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Francis Brodie Imlach
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Francis Brodie Imlach FRCSEd was a Scottish pioneer of modern dentistry, and the first person to use chloroform on a dental patient. He helped to raise the profile of dentistry from a back street trade to full professional status.
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Petrus Johann du Toit
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Petrus Johann du Toit was a South African veterinary scientist and the successor of Arnold Theiler as Director of Veterinary Services at Onderstepoort between 1927 and 1948. He was the son of Daniel Francois du Toit , one of the founders of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, and owner of the first Afrikaans newspaper, Die Patriot. His mother was Margaretha Magdalene van Nierop.
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Mohammad Gharib
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Mohammad Gharib was an Iranian physician, clinician, distinguished university professor and a pioneer of pediatrics in Iran. Gharib is known as the father of pediatrics in Iran. He was a graduate of Paris University Medical School.
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Hans-Jørgen Holman
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Hans-Jörgen Holman was a Norwegian-American pianist/ harpsichordist and professor of music at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Holman specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music, and his 1961 Indiana University doctoral dissertation The Responsoria Prolixa of the Codex Worcester F 160 is considered one of the principal authoritative works on the vocal music of the medieval church. One of the first musicologists to pioneer computer aided big-data studies, Holman built a database of 48.000 melodic phrases from European and Scandinavian sources in order to trace melodic migration and development.
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Jacob Micyllus
1503 - 1558 (55 years)
Jacob Micyllus, was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at the University of Heidelberg, during times of great cultural stress in Germany.
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J. Laurie Wallace
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
John Laurie Wallace was an Irish-born American painter. Wallace was born in Garvagh, Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when he was age 4. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He posed for several of Eakins's paintings, including The Crucifixion , Arcadia and The Swimming Hole , and for dozens of photographs. In 1881 he became Eakins's assistant.
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Nicholas Hill
1570 - 1610 (40 years)
Nicholas Hill was an English natural philosopher, considered a disciple of Giordano Bruno. He is known for his 1601 book Philosophia epicurea. Life He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford where he matriculated in 1587, graduated B.A. and became Fellow in 1590. He was removed from his fellowship in 1591.
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İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul
1855 - 1946 (91 years)
İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul was an Ottoman Empire and later Turkish writer and westernist thinker.
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Pietro Tabarrani
1702 - 1780 (78 years)
Pietro Tabarrani was an Italian physician and professor of Anatomy at the University of Siena. Biography He was born in Lombrici in the Republic of Lucca. He found patronage with Cardinal Salviati in Rome, where he studied anatomy. From there he moved to Bologna, where he became friends with the doctors Beccari and Galeazzi. He then moved to Padua to work under the renowned anatomist Morgagni. In 1759, he obtained a professorship in the University of Siena. He would die in Siena in 1779, and his pupil Paolo Mascagni would take his position. His Observatione Anatomiche was published in Lucca ...
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Ernst Gottfried Baldinger
1738 - 1804 (66 years)
Ernst Gottfried Baldinger , German physician, was born in Großvargula near Erfurt. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle and Jena, earning his MD in 1760 under the guidance of Ernst Anton Nicolai and in 1761 was entrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau.
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