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 Theology,
#1851
Filippo Santoro
#171549
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Filippo Santoro is an Italian Roman Catholic prelate. He was made archbishop of Taranto in 2011. In 2023, he resigned as archbishop
Go to Profile#1852
John Barwick
#154381
Overall Influence
John Barwick was an English theologian. Life Barwick took his name from Berwick, where he appears to have been born or brought up. From Berwick he seems to have removed to the Franciscan schools at Oxford, at which university he became a Doctor of Theology, and is enumerated as the twenty-second reader of divinity belonging to that order in the early years of the fourteenth century. He appears to have studied at Paris likewise; for we are told by Dempster and Bale that he also went by the name of Breulanlius; and this Breulanlius is mentioned towards the end of the fifteenth century by the al...
Go to Profile#1853
Jean Margain
#173726
Overall Influence
1931 - 2012 (81 years)
Jean Margain was a French Hebraist. He is known by his Semitic and Samaritan studies. Life Education Margain got his Doctor of Arts in 1988 with his thesis Les particules dans le Targum samaritain de Genèse-Exode: jalons pour une histoire de l'araméen samaritain at Université Paris III.
Go to Profile#1854
ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá
#86340
Overall Influence
1912 - 2007 (95 years)
ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá was a prominent adherent of the Baháʼí Faith. He was the longest surviving Hand of the Cause of God, an appointed position in the Baháʼí Faith whose main function is to propagate and protect the religion on the international level.
Go to Profile#1855
Eduard Nielsen
#192235
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Eduard Mikael V. Nielsen was a Danish theologian. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1956 to 1991. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1987.
Go to Profile#1856
John Meehan
#177659
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
John Meehan SJ is a Canadian Jesuit priest, historian and academic. He is Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He was president and vice-chancellor of the University of Sudbury in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada from September 2019 until 2021. He was formerly rector of the Church of the Gesù in Montreal and president of Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Go to Profile#1857
Inés Talamantez
#110119
Overall Influence
Inés M. Talamantez was an ethnographer and scholar of religion. She was professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara . She was an expert on Native American religion and philosophy.
Go to Profile#1858
Juan Ignacio Larrea Holguín
#27011
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Juan Ignacio Larrea Holguín , was archbishop of Guayaquil for ten years, and the first member of the prelature of Opus Dei in Ecuador. He was also a distinguished lawyer, frequently consulted about Ecuadorian Civil law and the author of more than 60 books about jurisprudence.
Go to Profile#1859
Anne van der Meiden
#160920
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Anne van der Meiden was a Dutch theologian, translator, and professor at Utrecht University. He translated the bible into Tweants dialect.
Go to Profile#1860
Julián Carrón
#99105
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Julián Carrón is a Spanish Catholic priest, and theologian and the former leader of the Italian Communion and Liberation movement.
Go to Profile#1861
Edvard Kovač
#129680
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Fr. Edvard Kovač is a Slovenian theologian, philosopher and author. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor and professor at the University of Ljubljana Theological Faculty and the Catholic University of Toulouse.
Go to Profile#1862
Bernadette Porter
#90088
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Sister Dr. Bernadette Mary Porter is a British Roman Catholic nun, educator and academic administrator. She was educated at Merrow Grange Grammar School , Digby Stuart College and King's College London . She served as Vice-Chancellor, Roehampton University from 1999 to 2004, having previously held various posts at Roehampton Institute.
Go to Profile#1863
José Antonio Dammert Bellido
#167618
Overall Influence
1917 - 2008 (91 years)
José Antonio Dammert Bellido was a Peruvian bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Bellido was born in Lima, Peru and ordained a priest on December 21, 1946. Bellido was appointed Auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Lima, along with Titular Bishop of Amathus in Palaestina, on April 14, 1958 and ordained bishop May 15, 1958. On March 15, 1962 he was appointed Bishop of Diocese of Cajamarca and would remain in post until his retirement on December 1, 1992.
Go to Profile#1864
Barhadbshabba of Hulwan
#188398
Overall Influence
Barḥadbshabba of Ḥulwān was a 7th-century theologian and Christian bishop of the Church of the East who wrote many religious works and a history of the School of Nisibis which is of historical interest.
Go to Profile#1865
Niels Jørgen Cappelørn
#130505
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Niels Jørgen Cappelørn is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI . He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.
Go to Profile#1866
Jorunn Økland
#130326
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jorunn Økland is a Norwegian gender studies expert and biblical scholar with a background in Classics. She is currently Director at the Norwegian Institute at Athens and Professor of Gender Studies in the Humanities at the University of Oslo , and former Director of its Centre for Gender Research . Her fields of expertise are Pauline Studies, ancient mediterranean material culture, feminist critique of religion, gender and sacred texts, Bible translation, and cultural/secular uses of the Bible.
Go to Profile#1867
Richard of Campsall
#191317
Overall Influence
Richard of Campsall was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, at the University of Oxford. He was a Fellow of Balliol College and then of Merton College. He is now considered a possible precursor to the views usually associated with William of Ockham.
Go to Profile#1868
John Trillo
#133012
Overall Influence
1915 - 1992 (77 years)
Albert John Trillo was a Church of England bishop. John Trillo grew up in Cricklewood, North London, and was educated at the Quintin School and King's College, London. On leaving school he worked in the film industry, for British Lion, and obtained his BA degree as a part-time student. He was ordained in 1938 and was a curate at Christ Church, Fulham before becoming the priest in charge of St Michael's, Cricklewood. From 1945 he worked for the Student Christian Movement, pioneering its work in Yorkshire grammar schools and becoming its secretary. From 1950-1955 he was rector of Friern Barn...
Go to Profile#1869
Dirck Coornhert
1522 - 1590 (68 years)
Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert , also known as Theodore Cornhert, was a Dutch writer, philosopher, translator, politician, theologian and artist. Coornhert is often considered the Father of Dutch Renaissance scholarship.
Go to Profile#1870
Daniel Cramer
1568 - 1637 (69 years)
Daniel Cramer was a German Lutheran theologian and writer from Reetz , Brandenburg. He was an opponent of the Ramists and the Jesuits. Life He became professor and archdeacon at Stettin. Earlier, in the 1590s, he was at the University of Marburg, writing on Aristotle.
Go to Profile#1871
Johann Leonhard Hug
1765 - 1846 (81 years)
Johann Leonhard Hug , was a German Roman Catholic theologian, orientalist and biblical scholar. Life In 1783 he entered the University of Freiburg, where he became a pupil in the seminary for the training of priests, and soon distinguished himself in classical and Oriental philology as well as in biblical exegesis and criticism. In 1787 he became superintendent of studies in the seminary, and held this appointment until the breaking up of the establishment in 1790. In the following year he was called to the Freiburg chair of Oriental languages and Old Testament exegesis; to the duties of this ...
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Jan Jacob van Oosterzee
1817 - 1882 (65 years)
Jan Jacob van Oosterzee , Dutch divine, was born at Rotterdam. He was educated at the University of Utrecht 1835–1839. He was also known as Jan Jakob van Oosterzee, JJ van Oosterzee, or Johannes Jacobus van Oosterzee.
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Emil Albert Friedberg
1837 - 1910 (73 years)
Emil Albert Friedberg was a German canonist. Friedberg was born at Konitz, Province of Prussia. His Jewish parents had joined the Evangelical Church in Prussia before his birth, letting him baptised Protestant. Friedberg was educated at Berlin and Heidelberg. After having been a member of the faculty at Berlin, Halle, and Freiberg, he was appointed professor at Leipzig in 1869.
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Salomon van Til
1643 - 1713 (70 years)
Salomon van Til was a theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church and a leading theological thinker of the post-Cocceius era. Background Van Til was born in Weesp, the son of Johannes van Til and his wife Barbara le Grand. He was raised within the Dutch Reformed Church; his father was a pastor and wished for his son to follow in his foot-steps. To this end, he attended the Latin school in Alkmaar and then the University of Utrecht. A minor speech impediment forced him to focus on medicine, rather than theology, for fear that he would be unable to articulate theological concepts. But van Til remai...
Go to Profile#1875
Carl Georg Rogberg
1789 - 1834 (45 years)
Carl Georg Rogberg was a Swedish priest and university teacher. Rogberg matriculated at Uppsala University in 1807 and studied at the faculty of theology where he graduated in 1818. He started to take seminaries to become a vicar at Heliga Trefaldighets congregation in Uppsala in 1823. In 1828 he became a member of the Bible commission, which was working on a new translation of the Bible into Swedish and in 1831 he became professor of pastoral theology in Uppsala.
Go to Profile#1876
Jonathan Parsons
1705 - 1776 (71 years)
Jonathan Parsons was a Christian New England clergyman during the late colonial period and a supporter of the American Revolution. Born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, he was the youngest son of Ebenezer Parsons and Margaret Marshfield of Springfield. Though intended for an artisan career, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, then a tutor at Yale, persuaded young Parsons to prepare for college.
Go to Profile#1877
Absalon
1128 - 1201 (73 years)
Absalon was a Danish statesman and prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the bishop of Roskilde from 1158 to 1192 and archbishop of Lund from 1178 until his death. He was the foremost politician and church father of Denmark in the second half of the 12th century, and was the closest advisor of King Valdemar I of Denmark. He was a key figure in the Danish policies of territorial expansion in the Baltic Sea, Europeanization in close relationship with the Holy See, and reform in the relation between the Church and the public. He combined the ideals of Gregorian Reform with loyal support o...
Go to Profile#1878
Harrison Gray Otis Dwight
1803 - 1862 (59 years)
Harrison Gray Otis Dwight was an American Congregational missionary. Biography Harrison Gray Otis Dwight was born on November 22, 1803, in Conway, Massachusetts. His father was Seth Dwight and mother was Hannah Strong .
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Vincent Taylor
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Vincent Taylor was a Methodist biblical scholar and theologian. He was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in 1954, specializing in theology. During his career, he was both Principal of Wesley College, Headingley, Leeds and, from 1930–58, Ferens Professor of New Testament Language and Literature there. He was also Examiner in Biblical Theology, London University. He is described as "one of the outstanding New Testament scholars of his day and theologian of great renown and influence" with an "immense" literary output. According to the British Academy, his principal publications ...
Go to Profile#1880
Martin Franzmann
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
Martin H. Franzmann was an American Lutheran clergyman and theologian. He was also a college professor and poet who wrote numerous books and hymns. Early life and education Martin Hans Franzmann was born in Lake City, Minnesota. He was the son of Rev. William Franzmann and Else Franzmann . His father was an immigrant from Germany and was a Lutheran minister. Franzmann graduated from Northwestern College before entering Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. He had also studied at the University of Chicago, but did not earn a degree. He later studied in Greece as a Daniel L. Shorey Traveling Fellow.
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Emani Sambayya
1905 - 1972 (67 years)
Canon Emani Sambayya was an Anglican Priest, who was born in Bodipalem in Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh. He has been described as an "eloquent speaker and a gifted writer." Early life and education Emani Sambayya was born in Bodipalem in Andhra Pradesh on 25 July 1905.
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Bartholomäus Ringwaldt
Bartholomäus Ringwaldt was a German didactic poet and Lutheran pastor. He is most recognized as a hymnwriter. Biography Bartholomäus Ringwaldt was born in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Germany. From 1543, he studied theology. After graduating, he first started his career as a teacher. He was ordained into the Lutheran Ministry during 1557 and served as pastor of two parishes. In 1566, he became the pastor of Langenfeld, Neumark. Starting during the 1570s, he wrote songs and poems which focused on his religious and theological beliefs. Ringwaldt was a prolific hymnist, and may have composed tunes as...
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Antonín Chráska
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Antonín Chráska was a Czech Protestant missionary, translator and theologian. Chráska translated the Protestant Bible into Slovene for the first time since the 1584 Dalmatian Bible. Born into a family of weavers, Chráska decided to study theology at the age of 21. In 1897 he married and moved with his wife to Ljubljana, where he learned Slovene and began missionary work.
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Alfred Tooming
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Alfred Tooming was an Estonian prelate who served as the Archbishop of Tallinn and Primate of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church between 1967 and 1977. He was born on Idu farm in Ülejõe, Anija Parish, Governorate of Estonia in the Russian Empire, the son of Tõnu Tooming and Miina Roop. He studied at Kehra Municipal School between 1916 and 1919 and in 1927 graduated from the Jakob Westholm Gymnasium. From 1927 to 1932 he studied at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu. He was ordained priest in St. Mary's Cathedral, Tallinn on 2 September 1934.
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Henry James Sr.
1811 - 1882 (71 years)
Henry James Sr. was an American theologian and the father of the philosopher William James, the novelist Henry James, and the diarist Alice James. Following a dramatic moment of spiritual enlightenment, he became deeply absorbed in Swedenborgianism, repudiating materialism and following the utopian path to grace. In this way, he was generally out of sympathy with contemporary American leaders of philosophical thought. His influence was felt more in frequent lively debates within his own circle of friends than in public life. He said “I love the fireside rather than the forum."
Go to Profile#1886
Randolph Sinks Foster
1820 - 1903 (83 years)
Randolph Sinks Foster was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1872. Biography Born on February 22, 1820, at Williamsburg, Ohio, U.S., the son of Israel Foster and Mary "Polly" Kain, he attended Augusta College in Kentucky, but left to become a Preacher in the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church when he was only seventeen. He was ordained to the Traveling Ministry by Bishops Waugh and Hedding. He went on to become the pastor of the Mulberry Street M.E. Church in New York City, where he met Daniel Drew, the financier who provided the original funding...
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Palladius of Ratiaria
301 - 400 (99 years)
Palladius of Ratiaria was a late 4th century Arian Christian theologian, based in the Roman province of Dacia in modern Romania. He was deposed from his office, together with Secundianus of Singidunum, at the Council of Aquileia, held in 381 AD.
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Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi
1903 - 1964 (61 years)
Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi , OCSO was an Igbo Nigerian priest of the Catholic Church who worked in the Archdiocese of Onitsha and later became a Trappist monk at Mount Saint Bernard Monastery in England.
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Orlando Costas
1941 - 1987 (46 years)
Orlando Enrique Costas was a Hispanic Evangelical theologian and missiologist. Biography Costas was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico to Methodist parents, Ventura Enrique Costas and Rosaline Rivera. He moved with his father to the United States, living first in the Bronx and then Bridgeport, CT. He finished his high school years at Bob Jones Academy and studied at the Missionary College of Nyack. Costas returned to Puerto Rico, where he was ordained in the American Baptist Churches of Puerto Rico, pastored a local church, and studied at the Interamerican University. He returned to the United States...
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David Friedrich Weinland
1829 - 1915 (86 years)
David Friedrich Weinland was a German zoologist and novelist. The son of a pastor, Weinland attended the Protestant Seminary in Maulbronn from 1843 to 1847. He studied theology at the University of Tübingen 1847–51, followed by two semester of studying natural sciences. He earned his PhD in 1852. then worked as an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Berlin. From 1855 he conducted scientific investigations in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean and worked for three years in Louis Agassiz's microscopical laboratory at Harvard University.
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David Pareus
1548 - 1622 (74 years)
David Pareus was a German Reformed Protestant theologian and reformer. Life He was born at Frankenstein in Schlesien on 30 December 1548. At some point, he hellenized his original surname, Wängler , as Parēus .
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George William Alberti
1723 - 1758 (35 years)
George William Alberti was a German essayist and theologian, who spent many years in England. Biography He was born at Osterode am Harz in 1723, and studied philosophy and theology under Heumann and Oporin at Göttingen, where he graduated in 1745. He spent some years in England. He became minister of Tundern in Hanover, and died there on 3 September 1758.
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Lars Anton Anjou
1803 - 1884 (81 years)
Lars Anton Anjou was a Swedish bishop, church historian and politician. Biography Anjou studied at Uppsala University, where he became a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1827, a Master of Philosophy in 1830, a Bachelor of Theology in 1834 and a Doctor of Theology in 1845. He was ordained a priest in 1827. In 1845, Anjou was appointed professor and pastor in the parish of Helga Trefaldighet, and in the parish of Denmark in 1851. In the academic year 1851–1852, he was rector of Uppsala University and was appointed minister of education and ecclesiastical affairs on 9 March 1855 as the successor of Henrik Reuterdahl.
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Alessandro Politi
1679 - 1752 (73 years)
Alessandro Politi , was an Italian philologist. Biography Alessandro Politi was born July 10, 1679, at Florence. After studying under the Jesuits, he entered at the age of fifteen the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, and was conspicuous among its members by his rare erudition. He was called upon to teach rhetoric and peripatetic philosophy at Florence in 1700. Barring a period of about three years, during which he was a professor of theology at Genoa , he spent the greatest part of his life in his native city, availing himself of the manifold resources he could find there to improve his knowledge of Greek literature, his favorite study.
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Johann Christian Friedrich Steudel
1779 - 1837 (58 years)
Johann Christian Friedrich Steudel was a German Lutheran theologian. He was a brother of botanist Ernst Gottlieb von Steudel . From 1797 he studied Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen. Beginning in 1803, he worked as a vicar in Oberesslingen, and two years later, became a tutor at Tübinger Stift. In 1808 he traveled to Paris, where he studied with Silvestre de Sacy and Carl Benedict Hase. Following his return to Germany, he served as a deacon in Cannstatt and Tübingen . In 1815 he became an associate professor of theology at the University of Tübingen, where in 1822 he gained a full professorship.
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Richard Capel
1586 - 1656 (70 years)
Richard Capel was an English nonconforming clergyman of Calvinist views, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and for a period of his life a practicing physician. Life He was born at Gloucester, the son of Christopher Capel, an alderman of the city, and his wife Grace, daughter of Richard Hands. His father was a good friend to ministers who had suffered for nonconformity. Richard was educated in Gloucester, and became a commoner of St. Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1601. He was afterwards elected a demy of Magdalen College, and in 1609 was made perpetual fellow there, being then M.A.
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Johan Robeck
1672 - 1735 (63 years)
Johan Robeck was a Swedish-German theologian and philosopher who justified and committed suicide. Life Robeck was born in Kalmar, Sweden, and raised in the reformed religion. He studied in Uppsala, before going to Hildesheim in Germany, where he converted to Catholicism in 1704. He joined the Jesuits and lived in Rinteln, Westphalia.
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Paul Laurentius
1554 - 1624 (70 years)
Paul Laurentius , Lutheran divine, was at Oberwiera, where his father, of the same names, was pastor. From a school at Zwickau he entered the University of Leipzig, graduating in 1577. In 1578 he became rector of the Martin school at Halberstadt; in 1583 he was appointed towns preacher at Plauen, and in 1586 superintendent at Oelsnitz. On October 20, 1595, he took his doctorate in theology at Jena. His thesis on the Symboluin Atzanasii , gaining him similar honours at Wittenberg and Leipzig. He was promoted to be pastor and superintendent at Dresden, and transferred to the superintendence at Meissen, where he died on February 24, 1624.
Go to Profile#1899
Joseph Lebon
1879 - 1957 (78 years)
Joseph Lebon was a Belgian priest and professor of theology at the University of Louvain. He is best known for his immense work devoted to the reception of the Council of Chalcedon in the Syriac and Armenian domains. His 1909 thesis devoted to Monophysite resistance to the Chalcedonian definition or horos centred on the writings of Severus of Antioch and the influence of Cyril of Alexandria. Editions of the surviving Syriac translations of Severus in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium and ground-breaking articles in Le Muséon followed at regular intervals. The climax of Lebon's w...
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Johannes Bilberg
1646 - 1717 (71 years)
Johannes Bilberg was a Swedish theologian, professor and bishop. As a professor he was involved in the controversy over Cartesianism. He was the son of school principal and vicar Jonas Amberni and his wife Ingrid Denckert. At the age of thirteen Bilberg started studying at Uppsala University. After he graduated with Bachelor of Arts, he took employment as a tutor for a young baron named Ulf Bonde on a trip around the continent of Europe when they visited royal courts and universities. When he returned home in 1677 he was named professor of mathematics at Uppsala University.
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