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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#6301
Kunle Olukotun
#6310
Overall Influence
Oyekunle Ayinde "Kunle" Olukotun is a British-born Nigerian computer scientist who is the Cadence Design Systems Professor of the Stanford School of Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Olukotun is known as the “father of the multi-core processor”, and the leader of the Stanford Hydra Chip Multiprocessor research project. Olukotun's achievements include designing the first general-purpose multi-core CPU, innovating single-chip multiprocessor and multi-threaded processor design, ...
Go to Profile#6302
David C. Rapoport
#6311
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
David Charles Rapoport is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles who focuses on the study of terrorism. Biography Rapoport received his Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in 1960. In 1962 he joined the UCLA political science department. In the late 1960s he became interested in terrorism and in 1969 taught the first terrorist course in the U.S. In 1989, he established the journal Terrorism and Political Violence and is its chief editor., credited as “one of two journals which has made terrorism into an academic field”. He received 12 Award...
Go to Profile#6303
Michel Odent
#6312
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Michel Odent is a French obstetrician and childbirth specialist. Education Born in a French village in 1930, Odent studied medicine in Paris and was educated as a surgeon in the 1950s. He has been presented in Lancet as “one of the last real general surgeons”.
Go to Profile#6304
Morris Hirsch
#6313
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Morris William Hirsch is an American mathematician, formerly at the University of California, Berkeley. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Hirsch attained his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1958, under supervision of Edwin Spanier and Stephen Smale. His thesis was entitled Immersions of Manifolds. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
Go to Profile#6305
Paula Scher
#6314
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator in design. She also served as the first female principal at Pentagram, which she joined in 1991. Education Scher studied at the Tyler School of Art, in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1970.
Go to Profile#6306
Jimmy Breslin
#6315
Overall Influence
1928 - 2017 (89 years)
James Earle Breslin was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various newspapers in his hometown of New York City. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper until his death.
Go to Profile#6307
Avedis Donabedian
#6316
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Avedis Donabedian was a physician and founder of the study of quality in health care and medical outcomes research, most famously as a creator of The Donabedian Model of care. Early life Avedis Donabedian was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in an Armenian family from Western Armenia. Although the rest of his parents' families perished from the Armenian genocide, Donabedian's immediate family was able to escape, ultimately migrating to Palestine. His father had qualified as a doctor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and soon after set up practice in the small Christian town of Ramallah, near Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#6308
Leos Carax
#6317
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Alex Christophe Dupont , best known as Leos Carax , is a French film director, critic and writer. Carax is noted for his poetic style and his tortured depictions of love. His first major work was Boy Meets Girl , and his notable works include Les Amants du Pont-Neuf , Holy Motors and Annette . For the last, he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. His professional name is an anagram of his real name, 'Alex', and 'Oscar'.
Go to Profile#6309
John B. Conway
#6318
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
John Bligh Conway is an American mathematician. He is currently a professor emeritus at the George Washington University. His specialty is functional analysis, particularly bounded operators on a Hilbert space.
Go to Profile#6310
Ivan Supek
#6319
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Ivan Supek was a Croatian physicist, philosopher, writer, playwright, peace activist and humanist. Early years and education Supek was born in Zagreb, Croatia . During his high school days, he organized a local section of the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia at his school, and was a member of the League until the Hitler-Stalin Pact. On one occasion, he secretly smuggled a briefcase to a man in Vienna he later found to be Josip Broz Tito. After finishing grammar school in Zagreb in 1934, he continued pursuing his education in Vienna for a brief period, then moved to Zürich studying mathematics, physics, biology and philosophy.
Go to Profile#6311
Paul Keating
#6320
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Paul John Keating is an Australian former politician who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party . He previously served as the treasurer of Australia in the Hawke government from 1983 to 1991 and as the 7th deputy prime minister of Australia from 1990 to 1991.
Go to Profile#6312
Les Daniels
#6321
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
Leslie Noel Daniels III, better known as Les Daniels , was an American writer. Background Daniels attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on Frankenstein, and he worked as a musician and as a journalist.
Go to Profile#6313
Sara Cox
#6322
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sara Joanne Cyzer is an English broadcaster. She presented Radio 1 Breakfast on BBC Radio 1 from 3 April 2000 until 19 December 2003. Since January 2019, she hosts the BBC Radio 2 drivetime show, Monday–Friday 4pm–7pm .
Go to Profile#6314
James M. Robinson
#6323
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
James McConkey Robinson was an American scholar who retired as Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, specializing in New Testament Studies and Nag Hammadi Studies. He was a member of the Jesus Seminar and arguably the most prominent Q and Nag Hammadi library scholar of the twentieth century. He was also a major contributor to The International Q Project, acting as an editor for most of their publications. Particularly, he laid the groundwork for John S. Kloppenborg's foundational work into the compositional history of Q, by arguing its genre as an ancient wisdom collection.
Go to Profile#6315
Ezekiel Emanuel
#6324
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ezekiel Jonathan "Zeke" Emanuel is an American oncologist, bioethicist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the current Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Previously, Emanuel served as the Diane and Robert Levy University Professor at Penn. He holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Wharton School and was formerly an associate professor at the Harvard Medical School until 1998 when he joined the National Institutes of Health...
Go to Profile#6316
Allen Walker Read
#6325
Overall Influence
1906 - 2002 (96 years)
Allen Walker Read was an American etymologist and lexicographer. Born in Minnesota, he spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University in New York. Read's work Classic American Graffiti is well regarded in the study of latrinalia and obscenity. His etymological career included his discovery of the origin of the word "OK", a longtime puzzle, and his scholarly study of the history and use of the common English vulgarity "fuck."
Go to Profile#6317
Luis Valdez
#6326
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
Go to Profile#6318
Steven Shapin
#6327
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Steven Shapin is an American historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is considered one of the earliest scholars on the sociology of scientific knowledge, and is credited with creating new approaches. He has won many awards, including the 2014 George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society for career contributions to the field.
Go to Profile#6319
Leopoldo López
#6328
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza is a Venezuelan opposition leader. He co-founded the political party Primero Justicia in 2000 with Julio Borges. López was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas in the regional elections held in July 2000. He is the National Coordinator of another political party, Voluntad Popular, which he founded in 2009.
Go to Profile#6320
Otto Friedrich Bollnow
#6329
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Otto Friedrich Bollnow was a German philosopher and teacher. Biography He was born the son of a rector in Stettin in what was then northwest Germany and went to school in the town of Anklam. After gaining his Abitur he studied mathematics and physics at Göttingen University, where he was influenced by the philosopher Herman Nohl. Bollnow received a doctorate in physics in 1925 and successfully completed his habilitation with Georg Misch at Göttingen in 1931. He taught at Göttingen for some years without being appointed to the faculty. Bollnow was a member of the Militant League for German C...
Go to Profile#6321
Lawrence H. White
#6330
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Lawrence Henry White is an American economics professor at George Mason University who teaches graduate level monetary theory and policy. He is considered an authority on the history and theory of free banking. His writings support the abolition of the Federal Reserve System and the promotion of private and competitive banking.
Go to Profile#6322
Renaud Camus
#6331
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Renaud Camus is a French novelist, conspiracy theorist, and white nationalist writer. He is the inventor of the "Great Replacement", a far-right conspiracy theory that claims that a "global elite" is colluding against the white population of Europe to replace them with non-European peoples.
Go to Profile#6323
Shlomo Ben-Ami
#6332
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli diplomat, politician, and historian. Biography Shlomo Benabou was born in Tangiers, Morocco. He immigrated to Israel in 1955. He was educated at Tel Aviv University and St Antony's College, Oxford from which he received a D.Phil. in history. Ben-Ami speaks fluent Hebrew, Spanish, French, and English.
Go to Profile#6324
James Colliander
#6333
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
James Ellis Colliander is an American-Canadian mathematician. He is currently Professor of Mathematics at University of British Columbia and served as Director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences during 2016-2021. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and lived there until age 8 and then moved to Hastings, Minnesota. He graduated from Macalester College in 1989. He worked for two years at the United States Naval Research Laboratory on fiber optic sensors and then went to graduate school to study mathematics. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1997 and was advised by Jean Bourgain.
Go to Profile#6325
Heinrich Heesch
#6334
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Heinrich Heesch was a German mathematician. He was born in Kiel and died in Hanover. In Göttingen he worked on Group theory. In 1933 Heesch witnessed the National Socialist purges of university staff. Not willing to become a member of the National Socialist organization of university teachers as required, he resigned from his university position in 1935 and worked privately at his parents' home in Kiel until 1948.
Go to Profile#6326
William Standish Knowles
#6335
Overall Influence
1917 - 2012 (95 years)
William Standish Knowles was an American chemist. He was born in Taunton, Massachusetts. Knowles was one of the recipients of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He split half the prize with Ryōji Noyori for their work in asymmetric synthesis, specifically for his work in hydrogenation reactions. The other half was awarded to K. Barry Sharpless for his work in oxidation reactions.
Go to Profile#6327
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
#6336
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Sarah Hrdy is an American anthropologist and primatologist who has made major contributions to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. She is considered "a highly recognized pioneer in modernizing our understanding of the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates". In 2013, Hrdy received a Lifetime Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution from the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
Go to Profile#6328
Ludwig Landgrebe
#6337
Overall Influence
1902 - 1991 (89 years)
Ludwig Landgrebe was an Austrian phenomenologist and Professor of philosophy. He is the grandfather of award-winning German actor Max Landgrebe. Life Landgrebe studied philosophy, history and geography in Vienna. Influenced by Max Scheler, he continued his studies in Freiburg. In 1923 Landgrebe became assistant to Edmund Husserl . After the approval of his doctoral dissertation, Landgrebe transferred to Prague for his postdoctoral qualification under Oskar Kraus. From 1939 he collaborated with Eugen Fink at the Husserl-Archives in Leuven. Landgrebe's wife, Ilse Maria Goldschmidt, was of Jewish ancestry and sister of the writer Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt.
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André Michel Lwoff
#6338
Overall Influence
1902 - 1994 (92 years)
André Michel Lwoff was a French microbiologist and Nobel laureate of Russian-Polish origin. Education, early life and career Lwoff was born in Ainay-le-Château, Allier, in Auvergne, France, into a Jewish family, the son of Marie , an artist, and Solomon Lwoff, a psychiatrist. He joined the Institute Pasteur in Paris when he was 19 years old. In 1932, he finished his PhD and, with the help of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, moved with his wife and co-researcher Marguerite Lwoff to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research of Heidelberg to Otto Meyerhof, where he did research on the development of flagellates.
Go to Profile#6330
T. M. Scanlon
#6339
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Thomas Michael "Tim" Scanlon , usually cited as T. M. Scanlon, is an American philosopher. At the time of his retirement in 2016, he was the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity in Harvard University's Department of Philosophy, where he had taught since 1984. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
Go to Profile#6331
David Storey
#6340
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
David Malcolm Storey was an English playwright, screenwriter, award-winning novelist and a professional rugby league player. He won the Booker Prize in 1976 for his novel Saville. He also won the MacMillan Fiction Award for This Sporting Life in 1960.
Go to Profile#6332
Hamid Nawab
#6341
Overall Influence
S. Hamid Nawab is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Boston University who is a researcher, educator, and engineer in the signal processing and machine perception subfields of Electrical Engineering and their application to the machine/computer analysis of complex biosignals from auditory, speech, and neuromuscular systems.
Go to Profile#6333
James E. Grunig
#6342
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James E. Grunig is a public relations theorist, Professor Emeritus for the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. Biography Grunig was born on April 18, 1942. He received a B.S. from Iowa State University, 1964 in Agricultural Journalism and a MS from the University of Wisconsin, 1966 in Agricultural Economics. He then received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1968 with a thesis "Information, entrepreneurship, and economic development: A study of the decision making processes of Colombian latifundistas" He is married to Larissa A. Grunig,
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Robert Spaemann
#6343
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Robert Spaemann was a German Catholic philosopher. He is considered a member of the Ritter School. Spaemann's focus was on Christian ethics. He was known for his work in bioethics, ecology and human rights. Although not yet widely translated into languages other than his native German, Spaemann was internationally known, and his work was highly regarded by Pope Benedict XVI.
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John Penn Mayberry
#6344
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
John Penn Mayberry was an American mathematical philosopher and creator of a distinctive Aristotelian philosophy of mathematics to which he gave expression in his book The Foundations of Mathematics in the Theory of Sets. Following completion of a Ph.D. at Illinois under the supervision of Gaisi Takeuti, he took up, in 1966, a position in the mathematics department of the University of Bristol. He remained there until his retirement in 2004 as a Reader in Mathematics.
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John Hart Ely
#6345
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
John Hart Ely was an American legal scholar. He was a professor of law at Yale Law School from 1968 to 1973, Harvard Law School from 1973 to 1982, Stanford Law School from 1982 to 1996, and at the University of Miami Law School from 1996 until his death. From 1982 until 1987, he was the 9th dean of Stanford Law School.
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Kevin Padian
#6346
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Kevin Padian is an American paleontologist. He is Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Curator of Paleontology, University of California Museum of Paleontology, and was President of the National Center for Science Education from 2007 to 2008. Padian's area of interest is in vertebrate evolution, especially the origins of flight and the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs. He served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, and his testimony was repeatedly cited in the court's decision.
Go to Profile#6338
Mike Hedges
#6347
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mike Hedges is a British audio producer/engineer best known for his work with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Manic Street Preachers. During his career, Hedges has worked with an eclectic roster of artists ranging from rock and pop acts such as U2, Dido, Travis, Texas, The Beautiful South, and Everything but the Girl, to cult-indie band The Cooper Temple Clause and classically oriented projects, The Priests and Sarah Brightman. His creative input and influence dramatically impacted the trajectories of bands such as the Cure, The Associates, Manic Street Preachers, and Travis.
Go to Profile#6339
Keith Packard
#6348
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Keith Packard is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System. Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the late 1980s as a member of the MIT X Consortium, XFree86 and the X.Org Foundation.
Go to Profile#6340
Claudio Magris
#6349
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Claudio Magris is an Italian scholar, translator and writer. He was a senator for Friuli Venezia Giulia from 1994 to 1996. Life Magris graduated from the University of Turin, where he studied German studies, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978.
Go to Profile#6341
A. H. Armstrong
#6350
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Arthur Hilary Armstrong, was an English educator and author. Armstrong is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on the philosophical teachings of Plotinus . His multi-volume translation of the philosopher's teachings is regarded as an essential tool of classical studies.
Go to Profile#6342
V. Y. Mudimbe
#6351
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Valentin-Yves Mudimbe is a Congolese philosopher, professor, and author of poems, novels, as well as books and articles on African culture and intellectual history. Mudimbe is Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of Romance Studies and professor of comparative literature at Duke University and maître de conferences at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
Go to Profile#6343
Evsey Domar
#6352
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Evsey David Domar was a Russian American economist, famous as developer of the Harrod–Domar model. Life Evsey Domar was born on April 16, 1914, in the Polish city of Łódź, which was part of Russia at that time. He was raised and educated in Russian Manchuria in the Russian Far East, then emigrated to the United States in 1936.
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Hartmut Rosa
#6353
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Hartmut Rosa is a German sociologist and political scientist, most well known for his theory of resonance and temporal sociology of social acceleration. Life Hartmut Rosa was born in Lörrach. He grew up in Grafenhausen in the Black Forest, where he spoke the local Alemannic dialect and played the organ in the Protestant parish. After graduating from high school in 1985 and completing his civilian service, he began studying political science, philosophy and German studies at the University of Freiburg in 1986, which he graduated with honours in 1993. In 1997, he graduated summa cum laude from the Humboldt University of Berlin and received his Ph.D.
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Luca Maria Gambardella
#6354
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Luca Maria Gambardella is an Italian computer scientist and author. He is the former director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research in Manno, in the Ticino canton of Switzerland.
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Manfred Frank
#6355
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Manfred Frank is a German philosopher, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen. His work focuses on German idealism, romanticism, and the concepts of subjectivity and self-consciousness. His 950-page study of German romanticism, Unendliche Annäherung, has been described as "the most comprehensive and thoroughgoing study of early German romanticism" and "surely one of the most important books from the post-War period on the history of German philosophy." He has also written at length on analytic philosophy and recent French philosophy.
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Lee Friedlander
#6356
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fragments of store-front reflections, structures framed by fences, posters and street signs. His work is characterized by its innovative use of framing and reflection, often using the natural environment or architectural elements to frame his subjects. Over the course of his career, Friedlander has been the recipient of numerous awards and his work has been exhibited in major mu...
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Donald Wuerl
#6357
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Donald William Wuerl is an American prelate, a cardinal, of the Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington from 2006 to 2018. He was elevated by Pope John Paul II to serve as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Seattle , and bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh . Pope Benedict XVI named Wuerl as archbishop of Washington and made him a cardinal in 2010.
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Carlota Perez
#6358
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Carlota Perez is a British-Venezuelan scholar specialized in technology and socio-economic development. She researches the concept of Techno-Economic Paradigm Shifts and the theory of great surges, a further development of Schumpeter's work on Kondratieff waves. In 2012 she was awarded the Silver Kondratieff Medal by the International N. D. Kondratieff Foundation and in 2021 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Utrecht University.
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Nursultan Nazarbayev
#6359
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev is a Kazakh politician and military officer who served as the first President of Kazakhstan, from the country’s independence in 1991 until his formal resignation in 2019, and as the Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan from 1991 to 2022.
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