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,
#19151
Olexander Chyrkov
#96333
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Olexander Chyrkov, the head of the department of Germanic Philology and Foreign Literature, the head of Scientific and Artistic Complex "Dramaturgy" of the Institute of Foreign Languages Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, member of the Academy of Sciences of Higher Education of Ukraine, Doctor of Philology, Professor.
Go to Profile#19152
Nuri Saryal
#88541
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Nuri Saryal was a Turkish educator of the Azerbaijani origin. He served as rector of Middle East Technical University from 1977 to 1979. Early life He was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR as the son of Ismail and Helena Seyitzade. He became a Turkish citizen in 1931, when the family name changed to Saryal. In 1947 he graduated from Atatürk Gymnasium in Ankara. From 1947–1948 he attended English medium prep school. In 1952 he graduated from Robert College Engineering School B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering. He attended Purdue University, earning a MSc. Mechanical Engineering. In 1956 he graduated from the Technical University of Berlin with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.
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Harriet Louise Hardy
#83051
Overall Influence
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
Harriet Louise Hardy was an American pioneer in occupational medicine and the first woman professor at Harvard Medical School. Her main points of study were toxicology and environmental related illness. She died on October 13, 1993, of cancer of the immune system at Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Willem Wilmink
#108685
Overall Influence
1936 - 2003 (67 years)
Willem Wilmink was a Dutch poet and writer. He was best known for the large number of songs he wrote for popular children programs and his accessible, straightforward poetry. Life and career Wilmink was born in Enschede and studied Dutch and history at the University of Amsterdam. From 1960 to 1978, he taught modern literature at the same university. He wrote many songs for musicals and wrote a number of novels for young adults. At first he mainly wrote for adults, but later mainly for children.
Go to Profile#19155
Tamara Minko
#109729
Overall Influence
Tamara Minko is a distinguished professor and chair of the department of pharmaceutics at Rutgers University, Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. She has an H-index of 43 since 2016 and over 17,800 citations of her work.
Go to Profile#19156
Ole Mørk Sandvik
1875 - 1976 (101 years)
Ole Mørk Sandvik was a Norwegian educator, musicologist and folk-song collector. Background Sandvik was born on the island of Helgøya in Hedmark, Norway. He was a son of school inspector Paul Knutsen Barstad Sandvik and his wife Nikoline Petrine Mørk . His parents hailed from Ørsta and Volda. Three years later, his family moved to Hamar where he grew up. He graduated examen artium in 1893. He then began studying at the University of Kristiania. In 1897 he undertook theology studies. He graduated cand.theol. in 1902. He also graduated from the seminary at Hamar in 1895.
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John McMichael
#173115
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Sir John McMichael FRSE LLD was a 20th-century Scottish cardiologist. He developed the Royal Post Graduate Medical School at Hammersmith. Life He was born on 25 July 1904 in Gatehouse of Fleet in Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of a butcher and farmer of a smallholding. He was educated at Girthon School by William Learmonth, father of James Learmonth who encouraged him to enter Kirkcudbright Academy where he became school dux. He then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh graduating MB ChB in 1927 and then became an Ettles Scholar and assistant to Sir Stanley Davidson.
Go to Profile#19158
Bergis Jules
#189370
Overall Influence
Bergis Jules is an American archivist and scholar. He is known for digital humanities projects that aim to diversify and democratize the historical record, and for his scholarly research on community-based archives.
Go to Profile#19159
Fazale Rana
#192346
Overall Influence
#19160
Ethel Collins Dunham
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Ethel Collins Dunham , and her life partner, Martha May Eliot, devoted their lives to the care of children. Dunham focused on premature babies and newborns, becoming chief of child development at the Children's Bureau in 1935. She established national standards for the hospital care of newborn children and expanded the scope of health care for growing youngsters by monitoring their progress in regular home visits by Children's Bureau staff.
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Nassar Mansour
#180028
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Nassar Mansour , , is an artist, calligrapher, academic and designer in the field of Islamic Arts, specializing in Islamic Calligraphy. He is considered to be one of the most accomplished contemporary Arab calligraphers today.
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Alice Weld Tallant
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Alice Weld Tallant was an American physician and medical school professor. When her employment as a professor of obstetrics was terminated at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, it sparked the "Tallant Affair", in which students staged a strike and several colleagues resigned their positions in protest.
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Pat Sullivan
1887 - 1933 (46 years)
Patrick Peter Sullivan was an Australian-American cartoonist, pioneer animator, and film producer best known for producing the first Felix the Cat silent cartoons. Early life Sullivan was born in Paddington, New South Wales, the second son of Patrick Sullivan, an immigrant from Ireland and his Sydney-born wife Margaret, née Hayes. Around 1909, Sullivan left Australia and spent a few months in London, England, before moving to the United States around 1910. He worked as assistant to newspaper cartoonist William Marriner and drew four strips of his own. When Marriner died in 1914, Sullivan joined the new animated cartoon studio set up by Raoul Barré.
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Hugo Sabatino
#96500
Overall Influence
Hugo Sabatino is an Argentine-Brazilian physician, scientist and university professor affiliated to the Medical School of the State University of Campinas, in Campinas, State of São Paulo. Sabatino's main specialty is obstetrics. He has contributed to a new form of natural childbirth delivery method using a squatting position.
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Arnulf Krause
#90014
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Arnulf Krause is a German philologist who specializes in Germanic studies. Biography Arnulf Krause was born in Zell im Wiesental, Germany. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn in 1989. He is a professor of Old Norse language and literature at the University of Bonn, where he also lectures in Germanic studies. Krause specializes in early Germanic literature and religion. He is the author of numerous books about Germanic peoples, Celts and Vikings.
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Maria Mayerchyk
#104524
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Maria Mayerchyk is a Ukrainian feminist academic and the editor in chief of Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies. She is noted for her analysis of feminism at the Euromaidan protests.
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James Graham
1856 - 1913 (57 years)
Sir James Graham was a Scottish-born physician and politician, active in Australia. He was Mayor of Sydney in 1901. Graham was born in Edinburgh, son of Thomas Graham, marble polisher, and his wife Jane . Graham graduated M.A. at University of Edinburgh in 1879 and M.B. and C.M. in 1882. Graham migrated to Sydney in 1884 but then returned to Europe in August 1888 and studied at Berlin, Vienna and Paris. In 1888, he obtained the M.D. degree of Edinburgh Medical School with gold medal for his thesis on "Hydatid Disease in its Clinical Aspects". Returning to Sydney he was appointed superintende...
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Gloria Werner
#135572
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Gloria Stolzoff Werner was an American librarian. She worked for forty years, from 1962 to 2002, as a librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles , including twelve years as University Librarian. She served a term as president of the Association of Research Libraries in 1997.
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Cordelia Gundolf
#167912
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
Cordelia Gundolf was an Italian Language educator in Australia, and an expert in Italian Literature, publishing a number of works on the topic. Background Born in Munich, Germany on 31 November 1917, Gundolf came from a famous literary family, being the daughter of Friedrich Gundolf and godchild of Melchior Lechter, a noted graphic artist. She originally worked in Rome as a translator. Gundolf's grandfather was Jewish; her mother was concerned this would make problems for the family following Adolf Hitler's accession to power in Germany, so she asked Albert Einstein, a family friend for advice.
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Ana Amado
#190098
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ana Amado was an Argentine journalist, filmmaker, academic and feminist. In Mexico while in exile, she produced films under the name Cristina Benítez. Amado grew up in rural Argentina and, after training to be a teacher, earned a degree in political science from the Catholic University of Santiago del Estero. During her schooling, she began to work as a television news producer and print journalist. Orphaned when she was young, she moved to Buenos Aires after her graduation and worked for several different television news stations. Traveling abroad with her job, she interviewed subjects like Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi.
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André-François Bourbeau
#103978
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Andre-Francois Bourbeau is a noted Canadian survival expert and professor emeritus at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Bourbeau co-founded the survival skills Outdoor Adventure Program at that university and taught there for more than 30 years. The students at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi have affectionately given Bourbeau the nickname "Doc Survival" due to his skills.
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Yocasta Brugal
#173994
Overall Influence
Yocasta Clara Brugal Mena is a Puerto Rican forensic pathologist and academic administrator. She is the president and dean of San Juan Bautista School of Medicine. Brugal leads the department of clinical pathology.
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Sarah Rowland-Jones
#120675
Overall Influence
Sarah Rowland-Jones is a British physician who is a Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford. She works on immune responses to HIV infection. She has focussed her research on problems caused by HIV in Africa, with a hope to create a successful HIV vaccine. She is the former president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Go to Profile#19174
Siobhan Leachman
#123769
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Siobhan Leachman is a New Zealand citizen scientist, open knowledge advocate, and Wikimedian whose work focuses on natural history. Life and career Leachman is a lawyer by background and a self-described "stay-at-home mother of two". Bored after her children began attending kindergarten, she began her volunteer work at the instigation of her twin sister Victoria Leachman with the Smithsonian Transcription Center, transcribing diaries and field journals such as those of Vernon and Florence Bailey and categorising bumblebee collections of Arthur Wilson Stelfox. She moved on to volunteer project...
Go to Profile#19175
Rita Reed
#171777
Overall Influence
Rita Reed is an American photojournalist and professor. She is currently a University of Missouri journalism professor, where has held the O.O. McIntyre Professorship in 2014. She is also known as the author of Growing Up Gay: The Sorrows and Joys of Gay and Lesbian Adolescence.
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Annette Lewis Phinazee
1920 - 1983 (63 years)
Alethia Annette Lewis Hoage Phinazee was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University. She was called a trailblazer for her work as a librarian and educator.
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Joseph Lieutaud
1703 - 1780 (77 years)
Joseph Lieutaud was a French physician. Biography Early life Joseph Lieutaud was born on 21 June 1703 at 31 Rue Cardinale in Aix-en-Provence. His father was Jean-Baptiste Lieutaud, a lawyer, and his mother, Louise Garibel. He started studying botany, following in the wake of his uncle, Pierre Joseph Garidel, and went on to be called upon as a doctor in the Hotel-Dieu in Aix-en-Provence. He graduated from the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1725.
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Willy A. Flegel
#108897
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Willy Albert Flegel is a German-American medical researcher, geneticist, and physician who is best known for his work in the field of the Rh blood group. Flegel is the chief of the laboratory services section of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center .
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Guan Bee Ong
#152312
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
Guan Bee Ong OBE, PSM, DSc was a Hong Kong academic surgeon who was professor of surgery at the University of Hong Kong. Born in Raj of Sarawak, he acquired a reputation as a skilled and innovative surgeon in British Hong Kong, who encouraged original research among surgical trainees. Originally a general surgeon whose practice included cardiac and neurosurgery, under his leadership surgical specialities and subspecialties were developed in Hong Kong.
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Krzysztof Dębnicki
#172458
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Krzysztof Dębnicki is a Polish scientist and diplomat serving as a Poland ambassador to Malaysia , Pakistan and Mongolia . Education Krzysztof Dębnicki studied at the University of Ghana . He earned his Master's of Arts degree in history from the University of Warsaw. In 1984, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on political transitions in Nepal between 1950 and 1980. In 2008, he gained post-doctoral degree – habilitation – on political system of India.
Go to Profile#19181
Ståle Wikshåland
#159240
Overall Influence
1953 - 2017 (64 years)
Ståle Wikshåland was a Norwegian musicologist. He was born in Stavanger. Wikshåland was a co-editor for the music magazine Ballade, and worked for Henie Onstad Kunstsenter from 1981 to 1984. From 1988 to 2017 he was appointed professor in musicology at the University of Oslo. He was also a music critic for Dagbladet for thirty years, and contributed to the contemporary debate on music and art in society. Wikshåland died in 2017 of thrombosis, aged 63.
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Camillo Wiethe
1889 - 1949 (60 years)
Camillo Wiethe was an Austrian otorhinolaryngologist. He received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1913, and later served as a front-line physician during World War I. From 1918 to 1936, he was a physician at the clinic for otorhinolaryngology in Vienna, and in the meantime qualified as a university lecturer . From 1936 to 1938, he was head of the department for otorhinolaryngology at Merchant's Hospital , and from 1938 to 1945 maintained a private practice on the Reichsratsstraße. In 1945 he became an associate professor and director of the second university clinic for ...
Go to Profile#19183
Øivind Larsen
#112765
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Øivind Larsen is a Norwegian physician and Professor Emeritus of history of medicine at the University of Oslo. He became a docent in medical history in 1971 and was promoted to Professor in 1985. He is currently chairman of the Norwegian Medical Society .
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Clemens Kühn
#177591
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Clemens Kühn is a German music theorician. Life Born in Hamburg, Kühn studied School music, Germanistic in Hamburg and Berlin as well as Music theory and composition with Diether de la Motte. In 1977 he was awarded a doctorate in musicology as a student of Carl Dahlhaus. After teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, he was appointed to the chair of music theory at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden in 1997.
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Paul Georges Dieulafoy
1839 - 1911 (72 years)
Paul Georges Dieulafoy was a French physician and surgeon. He is best known for his study of acute appendicitis and his description of Dieulafoy's lesion, a rare cause of gastric bleeding. Life, studies, and career Dieulafoy was born in Toulouse. He studied medicine in Paris and earned his doctorate in 1869. In 1863, during his third year of medical school, Dieulafoy went to Paris to attend the clinical department of Professor Armand Trousseau. The two men remained close until the former's death in 1867, with Dieulafoy being referred to as Trousseau's spiritual son. Dieulafoy later led an am...
Go to Profile#19186
Édouard Collignon
1831 - 1913 (82 years)
Édouard Charles Romain Collignon was a French engineer and scientist, known for the Collignon projection and for his role in building railways in Russia. Career After graduating from the l'École polytechnique in 1849, he became an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées. He became inspecteur des Ponts et chaussées in 1878.
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Agostino Crosti
1896 - 1988 (92 years)
Agostino Crosti , was an Italian dermatologist and professor of dermatology in Milan. Crosti's syndrome and Gianotti–Crosti syndrome are named after him.
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Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye
#24218
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye is a former professor of Veterinary Sciences from Senegal who has held many senior administrative positions in African educational institutions and organizations. Birth and education Ahmadou Lamine Ndiaye was born on 20 May 1937 in Saint-Louis, Senegal. He attended the Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis for his secondary education between 1950 and 1957. He studied at the Lycée Marcelin Berthelot de Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France for a year, and then was admitted to the National Veterinary School of Lyon , where he studied from 1958 to 1962. In 1963 he gained diplomas from the...
Go to Profile#19189
Dena Grayson
#98362
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dena Minning Grayson is an American medical doctor and researcher. In 2016, she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives for Florida's 9th congressional district.
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Mary E. Williamson
#67550
Overall Influence
1924 - 2012 (88 years)
Mary E. Williamson was an American aviator who served as a WASP during World War II. She was also a communications professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Early life, education and military service Mary E. Williamson was born on April 24, 1924, in Kansas City, Missouri, to Elmer C. Williamson and Ruth Peterman Williamson. Mary was an only child, whom her mother Ruth raised on her own. The two remained very close throughout her life.
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Paul Collins
#174767
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Paul Collins is a British actor. He is best known for his role as John Darling in the 1953 Walt Disney Pictures animated film Peter Pan. Filmography Film Challenge to Lassie - Tenement Child Rogues of Sherwood Forest - Arthur Lorna Doone - Charleworth as a Child Peter Pan - John Darling Midnight Lace - Kevin Without A Trace - ReporterFunny About Love - Bill HatcherGuilty by Suspicion - BernardThe Marrying Man - ButlerDefenseless - Campaign WorkerFor Richer, For Poorer - StuartDave - Secretary of TreasuryExecutive Decision - NelsonMother - LawyerDead Man on Campus - Professor...
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Louis Waldenburg
1837 - 1881 (44 years)
Louis Waldenburg was a German physician. Waldenburg was born in Filehne, Posen. He graduated from the University of Berlin . After a postgraduate course at Heidelberg he established himself in Berlin as a specialist in chest and throat diseases. From 1864 to 1868 he co-edited the Allgemeine Medizinische Central-Zeitung . In 1865 he earned the title of Privatdozent at Berlin University. From 1868 until his death he edited the Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift . In 1871 he was appointed assistant professor, and in 1877 department physician, at the Charité hospital in Berlin.
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Georg Forster
1510 - 1568 (58 years)
Georg Forster was a German editor, composer and physician. Forster was born at Amberg, in the Upper Palatinate. While a chorister at Elector Ludwig V’s court in Heidelberg around 1521, he was a colleague of Caspar Othmayr who would also become a composer of renown. Forster received his first instruction in composition from the Kapellmeister Lorenz Lemlin. Forster died at Nuremberg.
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Ernest H. Sanders
#106398
Overall Influence
1918 - 2018 (100 years)
Ernest Helmut Sanders was a German-born American musicologist. Born Ernst Helmut Salomon in Hamburg to banker Paul Salomon and his wife on 4 December 1918, Sanders was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He left Germany for the United States in 1938 and assumed the surname Sanders. His parents remained in Germany, where both committed suicide in September 1941. Sanders was admitted to the Juilliard School and studied under pianist Irwin Freundlich from 1947 to 1950. Sanders then attended Columbia University, where he met Paul Henry Lang, among others. After Sanders received a master's degree from Columbia, he became a lecturer there.
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Carl Ebert
1887 - 1980 (93 years)
Carl Anton Charles Ebert , was a German actor, stage director and arts administrator. Ebert's early career was as an actor, training under Max Reinhardt and becoming one of the leading actors in his native Germany during the 1920s. During that decade he was also appointed to administrative posts, both theatrical and academic. In 1929 he directed opera for the first time, and during the 1930s established a reputation as an operatic director in Germany and beyond. A strong opponent of Nazism, he left Germany in 1933 and did not return until 1945.
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Georg Lotheissen
1868 - 1941 (73 years)
Georg Lotheissen was an Austrian surgeon born in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1892 he earned his medical doctorate in Vienna, and following graduation was an assistant to Emil Zuckerkandl , and a surgical apprentice under Theodor Billroth and Carl Gussenbauer . From 1895 to 1901, he served as first assistant to Viktor von Hacker at the surgical clinic at Innsbruck, where in 1899 he received his habilitation in surgery. In 1902 he returned to Vienna, where in 1915 he became an associate professor.
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Virpi Hämeen-Anttila
#62645
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Virpi Hämeen-Anttila is a Finnish writer, translator, and researcher. She was the recipient of the Eino Leino Prize in 2002 along with her husband Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, for their work in translating and promoting multicultural literature. In addition to being a best-selling novelist, she is a translator and non-fiction writer. She also teaches Sanskrit and the history of Indian art at Helsinki University.
Go to Profile#19198
Arthur Groenouw
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Arthur Groenouw was a German ophthalmologist born in Bosatz, a village near Ratibor. He studied medicine in Breslau, and was an assistant to physiologist Rudolf Heidenhain and ophthalmologist Wilhelm Uhthoff . In 1892 he was habilitated for ophthalmology in Breslau, and in 1899 attained the title of professor.
Go to Profile#19199
Lydia Jennings
#137184
Overall Influence
Lydia L. Jennings is a Native American soil microbiologist and environmental scientist. Her research interests are soil health, environmental remediation, indigenous science, mining policy, and environmental data ownership by tribal nations. She works with organizations initiatives that support Indigenous geoscientists and the integration of geoscience with Indigenous knowledge. Her work is featured in the 2020 documentary Run to Be Visible, produced by Patagonia.
Go to Profile#19200
Robert C. Brunham
#185289
Overall Influence
Robert Conrad Brunham is a Canadian infectious disease specialist. He is the former Director of the UBC Centre for Disease Control and executive director and Scientific Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.
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