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,

#18701

Rudolph Angermüller

#100434
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Rudolph Kurt Angermüller was a German musicologist, who rendered great services to Mozart studies in particular. Life Born in near Bielefeld, Angermüller took classes in piano, double bass and music theory at the Fösterling-Konservatorium in Bielefeld. He obtained his Abitur in 1961. From 1961 to 1970 he studied musicology, Romance studies and history at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, and the University of Salzburg, with Arnold Schmitz, Günther Massenkeil, Hellmut Federhofer and Gerhard Croll. From 1968 to 1975, he was a lecturer of musicology at the University of Salzburg.
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#18702

Curt Schimmelbusch

1860 - 1895 (35 years)
Curt Theodor Schimmelbusch was a German physician and pathologist who invented the Schimmelbusch mask, for the safe delivery of anaesthetics to surgical patients. He was also a key figure in the development of mechanical methods of sterilisation and disinfection for surgical procedures, on which his Anleitung zur aseptischen Wundbehandlung was considered a seminal work.
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#18703

Katarina Jovanović

1869 - 1954 (85 years)
Katarina A. Jovanović was a Serbian translator, literary historian, publicist, philosopher, journalist and humanitarian. She translated into German Petar II Petrović Njegoš's masterpiece "Mountain Wreath" .
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#18704

Bruce Conforth

#137870
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bruce Michael Conforth is an American academic, author, lecturer, and musician. He was the first curator of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Early years Conforth was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in New Jersey and New York City. He became an artist and musician at an early age. In 1966 he appeared on an album called It's Happening Here as the bass player for a band called The Nightwatch. He was an athlete in high school, winning several letters and medals for his abilities as a long jumper, quarter-miler, and a member of the mile-relay team.
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#18705

Nicolas d'Orbellis

1500 - 1472 (-28 years)
Nicolas d'Orbellis was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher, of the Scotist school. Biography He was born about 1400. He seems to have entered the monastery of the Observantines, founded in 1407, one of the first in France.
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#18706

Sebastián Fox Morcillo

Sebastián Fox Morcillo
1526 - 1559 (33 years)
Sebastian Fox Morcillo , a Spanish scholar and philosopher, was born in Seville between 1526 and 1528. Around 1548 he studied in Leuven. Following the example of the Spanish Jew Judas Abarbanel, he published commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, in which he endeavoured to reconcile their teachings. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos, son of Philip II, but he was lost at sea on his way to Spain to take up the post.
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#18707

Sheo Bhagwan Tibrewal

#153111
Overall Influence
Sheo Bhagwan Tibrewal is an Indian born UK-based orthopedic surgeon. He is a Research Fellow at University of Oxford and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at King's College London GKT School of Medical Education. Born to Mohan Tibrewal, he graduated in medicine in 1973 from Ranchi University.
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#18708

James Wetzel

#190566
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
James Wetzel is Chair of Saint Augustine, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Augustinian Institute at Villanova University. He obtained his doctorate from Columbia University. Works
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#18709

E. A. Badoe

#69999
Overall Influence
E. A. Badoe was an Emeritus Professor in surgery at the University of Ghana Medical School. He was educated at Achimota School. University of Ghana Medical School Prior to the first medical school being set up in Ghana, Badoe was one of the committee along with Alexander Kwapong and Charles Odamtten Easmon who as part of their work visited the newly opened University of Lagos and the University of Ibadan Medical Schools. He later became professor of surgery at the same medical school based on the campus of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.
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#18710

William Clarke Wescoe

#144098
Overall Influence
1920 - 2004 (84 years)
W. Clarke Wescoe was an American medical educator, physician, pharmacologist and academic administrator. He was selected as the dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine at the age of 32 and served in that capacity from 1952 to 1960. He was the 10th chancellor of the University of Kansas from 1960 to 1969, leading the University during a time of both campus growth with the near doubling in enrollment and unrest during the 1960s. More than $40 million in new construction was completed, including most of the Daisy Hill residence halls.
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#18711

Abdallah al-Qutbi

1879 - 1952 (73 years)
Abdallah ibn Mu'allim Yusuf al-Qutbi was a Somali polemicist, theologian and philosopher who lived in Qulunqul , Somalia. Biography Sheikh Al-Qutbi is best known for his Al-Majmu'at al-mubaraka , a five-part compilation of polemics that was published in Cairo ca. 1919–1920 . Sheikh Abdullahi Qutbi, a disciple of Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Shashi and member of Qadiriyyah congregation, an Islamic school of thought or tariqah.
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#18712

Marcin Król z Żurawicy

1422 - 1460 (38 years)
Marcin Król , also Martinus Ruthenus, Marcin z Żurawica, Marcin Król z Przemyśla, Martinus Polonus, Martinus Rex de Premislia was a Ruthenian-born Polish mathematician, astronomer, and doctor. Life Marcin Król, son of Stanisław Król, was born around 1422 in Żurawica near Przemyśl.
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#18713

Richard Merkin

#76063
Overall Influence
1938 - 2009 (71 years)
Richard Marshall Merkin was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Many of his works depict the interwar years, painting narrative scenes in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his outré sense of clothing style and collections of vintage pornography as he was for his painting and illustration work.
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#18714

Faʻafetai Sopoaga

#186981
Overall Influence
Faumuinā Faʻafetai Sopoaga is a Samoan-New Zealand academic specialising in Pacific health, Pacific workforce development, Pacific students, and Pacific communities. She is a professor at the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, Dunedin. When she was appointed, she became the first Pacific woman medical doctor to be appointed in a professorial role at any university in Australia or New Zealand, and the first Pacific woman to be appointed a professor at the University of Otago.
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#18715

Fatmah Baothman

#155058
Overall Influence
Fatmah Baothman is Saudi Arabian computer scientist who is the first woman in the Middle East with a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence. She was recently appointed the board president for the Artificial Intelligence Society. Baothman has worked over 25 years as, and is currently, an assistant professor at King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Computing & Information Technology Baothman established the women's Department which is the foundation of the Computer Science College at King Abdulaziz University, and became the first teaching assistant faculty member.
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#18716

Mary Carr Moore

Mary Carr Moore
1873 - 1957 (84 years)
Mary Carr Moore was an American composer, conductor, vocalist, and music educator of the twentieth century. She is best remembered today for her association with the musical life of the West Coast.
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#18717

Melih Abdulhayoğlu

Melih Abdulhayoğlu
#174371
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Melih Abdulhayoğlu is the CEO of MAVeCap, an incubator Venture Capital firm funded by his family office. MAVeCap focusses on building tomorrow's technology platform companies. His first company was Comodo. The firm is now branded as Sectigo.
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#18718

Sandra Welner

#113746
Overall Influence
1958 - 2001 (43 years)
Sandra Welner was an American physician, inventor, and advocate for disabled women's healthcare. Early life and education Sandra Leah Welner was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Nikodem and Barbara Safier Welner. Her parents were both Polish-born and British-educated; her father was a civil engineer, and her mother was a nurse. Sandra graduated from Hillel Academy in 1975, as valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar. Welner enrolled in an accelerated medical education program, where she completed undergraduate work at Lehigh University, and earned her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania, in 1981 .
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#18719

Edmund Hansen Grut

1831 - 1907 (76 years)
Edmund Hansen Grut was a Danish ophthalmologist born in Copenhagen. In 1857 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Copenhagen, and afterwards traveled to Berlin, where he studied with Albrecht von Graefe . In 1863 he opened an eye clinic at Nørregade, Copenhagen, and in 1873 founded an ophthalmic clinic at Havnegade , not far from the University Hospital.
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#18720

Takeshi Morishita

#191887
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Takeshi Morishita is a Japanese physician and scholar on cardiological imaging in Japan, an ex-professor at Toho University, school of medicine, Tokyo, and a councillor of the university. Born in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan in 1932, he graduated from Toho University in 1962. In 1979, he became vice-director of Omori Hospital attached to Toho University. After retiring as a professor in 1998, he served as director of Ofuna Chūō General Hospital in Kamakura until March 2006. He became director of Nukada Memorial Hospital in Kamakura in June 2006.
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#18721

Alfons von Rosthorn

Alfons von Rosthorn
1857 - 1909 (52 years)
Alfons Edler von Rosthorn was a gynecologist in Austria-Hungary who was native of Oed, a village that is located in the district of Wiener Neustadt-Land. In 1885 he earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied zoology and medicine, and was a student of surgeon Theodor Billroth . Afterwards, he became an assistant to Rudolf Chrobak at the second university Frauenklinik in Vienna. In 1891 he was habilitated for gynecology and obstetrics, and in 1894 became a full professor of OB/GYN at the University of Prague. Later, he was a professor at the Universities of Graz , Hei...
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#18722

Günther Klaffenbach

1890 - 1972 (82 years)
Günther Klaffenbach was a German epigraphist. He was an editor of Inscriptiones Graecae from 1929, in succession to Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen.
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#18723

Padmini Murthy

#137453
Overall Influence
Padmini Murthy is a physician, Professor and Global Health Director at New York Medical College. In 2016 she was awarded the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal by the American Medical Women's Association for her contribution to the field of women in medicine.
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#18724

Allan Hamilton

#112338
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Allan J. Hamilton is an American physician and medical consultant to ABC's medical drama Grey’s Anatomy based in Tucson, Arizona. A professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, Dr. Hamilton was elected a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1994. In 1995, Dr. Hamilton was promoted to Chief of Neurosurgery and became Chairman of the Department of Surgery in 1998. He currently holds a tenured professorship in Neurosurgery, as well as additional professorships in the Departments of Psychology, Radiation Oncology, and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
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#18725

Anthony Costello

Anthony Costello
#46808
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anthony Costello is a British paediatrician. Until 2015 Costello was Professor of International Child Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health at the University College London. Costello is most notable for his work on improving survival among mothers and their newborn infants in poor populations of developing countries. From 2015 to 2018 he was director of maternal, child and adolescent health at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
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#18726

Marius Flothuis

Marius Flothuis
#180979
Overall Influence
1914 - 2001 (87 years)
Marius Flothuis, born and died in Amsterdam, was a Dutch composer, musicologist and music critic. Biography Flothuis first took courses at Vossius Gymnasium in Amsterdam. There he studied piano and music theory with . His musicology studies continued at the University of Amsterdam under the direction of Albert Smijers and . Flothuis graduated in 1969 with a thesis on the arrangements of the works of Mozart.
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#18727

Trilok Chandra Goel

#85887
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Trilok Chandra Goel worked as a Professor of Surgery in King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India between 1986 and 1999. He was re-appointed Emeritus Professor in 2015. Early life Son of Ganga Prasad Goel and his wife Sharbati Goel, Trilok Chandra Goel was born in Dankaur, a village in greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, India. He was educated in Ghaziabad and then graduated with Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree from King George's Medical University, Lucknow, India topping the final examination to win Hewett Medal in 1962. In 1965, he completed his Master of Surgery from t...
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#18728

Ernst Rothauser

#168278
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Ernst Rothauser was an Austrian computer scientist. As member of Heinz Zemanek's "Mailüfterl-Team", he worked on the country's first transistor computer. After finishing his dissertation he was hired by IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, retiring in 1995.
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#18729

Paul Morris

#114678
Overall Influence
Paul Morris, MA McM, PhD Lanc, is a religious studies scholar and an Emeritus Professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He was the Programme Director for Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and provides regular comment to the media on matters of religious diversity. He is the author of the New Zealand National Statement on Religious Diversity.
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#18730

David Epstein

#147550
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
David Mayer Epstein was an American composer, conductor, and music scientist who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was the author of Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance, a work on the neurological basis for various elements of music theory, and co-editor of Beauty and the Brain: Biological Aspects of Aesthetics.
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#18731

Zvi Keren

#168613
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Zvi Keren was a New York-born Israeli pianist, musicologist and composer. Upon his death was the last living pupil who was personally authorized by Joseph Schillinger. Considered to be among the pioneers of jazz playing in Israel, and the pioneer in an academic approach to jazz education in Israel, where he settled in 1951. Played an important role in the Israeli music scene as a composer, arranger and educator for generations of Israeli musicians.
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#18732

Afua Adwo Jectey Hesse

#50684
Overall Influence
Afua Adwo Jectey Hesse, , is a Ghanaian surgeon and the first Ghanaian-trained female doctor to become a paediatric surgeon. In August 2010, she became the first Ghanaian and second African to be elected President of the Medical Women's International Association .
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#18733

Alexander Pope

1763 - 1835 (72 years)
Alexander Pope was an Irish actor and painter. Life He was born in Cork, Ireland. He was educated to follow his father's profession of miniature painting. He continued to paint miniatures and exhibit them at the Royal Academy as late as 1821; but at an early date he took the stage, first appearing in London as Oroonoko in 1785 at Covent Garden. He remained at this theatre almost continuously for nearly twenty years, then at the Haymarket until his retirement, playing leading parts, chiefly tragic. He was well known as Othello and Henry VIII.
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#18734

Mohamed Ghoneim

#21617
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Mohamed Ahmed Ghoneim is an Egyptian urologist. Career Ghoneim is a graduate of the University of Cairo. He is one of the founders of the Ghoneim Urology and Nephrology Center for Management of Renal and Urological Disorders . He is a member of the International Society of Urology, and a member of both the British and the American Urology Associations. He is a colleague of Professor Nils Kock, the inventor of the Kock pouch.
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#18735

Thomas McCall Anderson

Thomas McCall Anderson
1836 - 1908 (72 years)
Sir Thomas McCall Anderson was a physician and a professor of practice of medicine, at the University of Glasgow. Life He was born in Glasgow on 9 June 1836, was second of three sons of Alexander Dunlop Anderson, M.D. medical practitioner in Glasgow, who in 1852 was president of the faculty of physicians and surgeons of Glasgow, by his wife Sara, daughter of Thomas McCall of Craighead, Lanarkshire. His father's family was descended on the maternal side from William Dunlop, principal of Glasgow University, 1690-1700; and in the male line from John Anderson , the stout defender of presbyteriani...
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#18736

A. James Hudspeth

A. James Hudspeth
#51813
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
A. James Hudspeth is the F.M. Kirby Professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, where he is director of the F.M. Kirby Center for Sensory Neuroscience. His laboratory studies the physiological basis of hearing.
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#18737

Adam Sterling

#65878
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Adam Sterling was the executive director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, a project of the Genocide Intervention Network, and a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles with degrees in Political Science and African American Studies.
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#18738

Giovanni Bovio

Giovanni Bovio
1837 - 1903 (66 years)
Giovanni Bovio was an Italian philosopher and a politician of the Italian Republican Party. Bovio was born in Trani. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy. He wrote a philosophical work in 1864 called Il Verbo Novello.
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#18739

Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger

#93023
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger is a Swiss musicologist. He became known through his activities as a juror and publications on Chopin. Life Born in Neuchâtel, Eigeldinger studied at the University of Neuchâtel, the Sorbonne and the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève.
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#18740

Daniel Levy

#82117
Overall Influence
Daniel Levy is a cardiologist who is the director of the Framingham Heart Study at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health . He is also Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. He is known for his research on the epidemiology and genetics of heart failure and hypertension.
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#18741

Chukwuedu Nwokolo

Chukwuedu Nwokolo
#79003
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Chukwuedu Nathaniel II Nwokolo was a Nigerian physician specialist in tropical diseases. He was recognised for discovering and mapping out the area of paragonimiasis lung disease in Eastern Nigeria, with a study of the disease in Africa and clinical research for its control. He founded SICREP: Sickle Cell Research Programme to effectively fight the disease in Nigeria and globally.
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#18742

Hjalmar August Schiøtz

Hjalmar August Schiøtz
1850 - 1927 (77 years)
Hjalmar August Schiøtz was a Norwegian physician, ophthalmologist and educator. Schiøtz is credited as being Norway's first professor of ophthalmology. He was born in Stavanger, Norway. In 1877 he received his medical degree from the University of Kristiania later studying ophthalmology in Vienna, where he befriended Ernst Fuchs , and in Paris, where he was employed as "directeur adjoint" in the ophthalmology laboratory at the Sorbonne. In 1884 he became head of a polyclinic for ear, nose, throat and eye diseases in Kristiania. Dating from 1898, he started teaching ophthalmology at the Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet.
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#18743

Sophia B. Jones

Sophia B. Jones
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Sophia Bethena Jones was a British North America-born American medical doctor and the first woman of African descent to graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School. She founded the Nursing Program at Spelman College, where she was the first black faculty member.
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#18744

Bruno Fleischer

1874 - 1965 (91 years)
Bruno Otto Fleischer was a German ophthalmologist. Kayser-Fleischer rings and Fleischer rings are named for him. Further reading
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#18745

William Thomson

1601 - 1753 (152 years)
William Thomson was a Scottish folk song collector and singer. He is said to have been the son of Daniel Thomson, one of the king's trumpeters for Scotland. As a boy singer, he sang at a concert – The Feast of St. Cecillia – in 1695. Before 1722, he had settled in London, and according to Charles Burney had a benefit concert that year. He appears to have become a fashionable singer, as his volume, dedicated to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, contains a lengthy list of notable persons as subscribers.
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#18746

Gary I. Wadler

#80719
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Gary Irwin Wadler was an American internist with special expertise in the field of drug use in sports. The lead author of the book Drugs and the Athlete, Wadler served on the World Anti-Doping Agency's Prohibited List and Methods Committee and on its Health, Medicine, and Research Committee. Additionally, he served as: Medical Advisor to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Trustee of the Board of the American College of Sports Medicine and of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Among his other sports medicine activities, he served as Tournament Physician of the U.S. Open Ten...
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#18747

Pablo César

#180435
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Pablo César is an Argentine film director, film producer, screenwriter and film professor. He began his filmmaking career in the Buenos Aires independent short film scene shot in the Super 8 format, making more than twenty works between the 1970s and 1980s, among which Del génesis , Ecce civitas nostra —co-directed with Jorge Polaco—and Memorias de un loco stand out. In 1983, César directed his first feature film De las caras del espejo, shot in Super-8. He turned to the 35 mm film format from his second feature onwards, La sagrada familia , an ironic film that works as a critique of the abu...
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#18748

Robert Arellano

Robert Arellano
#170636
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Robert Arellano is an American author, musician and educator from Talent, Oregon. His literary production includes pioneering work in electronic publishing, graphic-novel editions for Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint, and five novels published by Akashic Books. His guitar-playing for Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is featured on 'I See a Darkness', which Pitchfork magazine named one of the Top 10 albums of the 1990s, and since the 1980s he has been writing and recording songs for solo projects and his group Havanarama.
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#18749

Ian Jones

#178538
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Ian Edward Swainson Jones was an Australian television writer and director and an author specialising in the history of notorious outlaw Ned Kelly and his gang. Career Jones had a long career in Australian television, and is best remembered for his writing and directing work at Crawford Productions on shows such as Homicide, Matlock Police, The Bluestone Boys and The Sullivans, and for Against the Wind, a highly successful mini-series, created in collaboration with Bronwyn Binns, which explored Australia's convict past.
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#18750

Noriko Kamakura

#81419
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Noriko Kamakura :22 was a practitioner, researcher, and academic leader in occupational therapy. She was in the initial generation of people who became occupational therapists in Japan. She greatly influenced how occupational therapy developed in that country, contributing especially in clinical approaches to persons with central nervous disorders of executive functions. In addition, she explored function of the hand in enough detail to develop a system of taxonomies that can account for the vast majority of postures and movements of the hand.
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