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
#6601
John T. Cacioppo
#6610
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
John Terrence Cacioppo was the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He founded the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and was the director of the Arete Initiative of the Office of the Vice President for Research and National Laboratories at the University of Chicago. He co-founded the field of social neuroscience and was member of the department of psychology, department of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience, and the college until his death in March 2018.
Go to Profile#6602
Agnes de Mille
#6611
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer. Early years Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors. Her mother, Anna Angela George, was the daughter of Henry George, the economist. On her father's side, Agnes was the granddaughter of playwrights Henry Churchill de Mille and Matilda Beatrice deMille. Her paternal grandmother was of German-Jewish descent.
Go to Profile#6603
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
#6612
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen is a professor of Comparative Literature and French at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the author of many works on the history and philosophy of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and hypnosis. Born to Danish parents, he began his studies in France and emigrated to the United States in 1986. His constructivist analysis of the co-production of psychical "facts" emphasises the accuracy of historical accounts of mental disorders.
Go to Profile#6604
AK Abdul Momen
#6613
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Abul Kalam Abdul Momen , known as AK Abdul Momen, is a Bangladeshi economist, diplomat, and politician who is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh since January 2019. He served as Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations from August 2009 until October 2015. He was elected a member of Jatiya Sangsad from the Sylhet-1 constituency at the 2018 general elections. Following his election, he was appointed the minister of foreign affairs by the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Go to Profile#6605
Paulien Hogeweg
#6614
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Paulien Hogeweg is a Dutch theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher studying biological systems as dynamic information processing systems at many interconnected levels. In 1970, together with Ben Hesper, she defined the term bioinformatics as "the study of informatic processes in biotic systems".
Go to Profile#6606
Alfredo Di Stéfano
#6615
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Alfredo Stéfano Di Stéfano Laulhé was a professional footballer and coach who played as a forward, regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time. Nicknamed "Saeta rubia" , he is best known for his achievements with Real Madrid, where he was instrumental in the club's domination of the European Cup and La Liga during the 1950s and 1960s. Along with Francisco Gento and José María Zárraga, he was one of only three players to play a part in all five European Cup victories, scoring goals in each of the five finals. Di Stéfano played international football mostly for Spain after moving to...
Go to Profile#6607
Nicholas Wade
#6616
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Nicholas Michael Landon Wade is a British author and journalist. He is the author of numerous books, and has served as staff writer and editor for Nature, Science, and the science section of The New York Times.
Go to Profile#6608
Klaus Scherer
#6617
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Klaus Rainer Scherer is former Professor of Psychology and director of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences in Geneva. He is a specialist in the psychology of emotion. He is known for editing the Handbook of Affective Sciences and several other influential articles on emotions, expression, personality and music.
Go to Profile#6609
Henrietta Moore
#6618
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Dame Henrietta Louise Moore, is a British social anthropologist. She is the director of the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity at University College, London, part of the Bartlett, UCL's Faculty of the Built Environment.
Go to Profile#6610
William Damon
#6619
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
William Damon is a professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is one of the world's leading scholars of human development. Damon has done pioneering research on the development of purpose in life and wrote the influential book The Path to Purpose. Damon has helped design innovative developmental methods such as peer learning. Damon also is known for his studies of effective philanthropy. His current work includes a study exploring purpose in higher education and a study of family purpose across generations. Dr. Damon writes on intellectual and social development through the lifespan.
Go to Profile#6611
Jürg Gutknecht
#6620
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jürg Gutknecht is a Swiss computer scientist. He developed, with Niklaus Wirth, the programming language Oberon and the corresponding operating system Oberon. Biography Jürg Gutknecht was full professor in the computer science department at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule until April 2014.
Go to Profile#6612
Sanjeev Bhaskar
#6621
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Sanjeev Bhaskar is an English actor, comedian and television presenter. He is best known for his work in the BBC Two sketch comedy series Goodness Gracious Me and as the star of the sitcom The Kumars at No. 42. He also presented and starred in a documentary series called India with Sanjeev Bhaskar in which he travelled to India and visited his ancestral home in today's Pakistan. Bhaskar's more dramatic acting roles include the lead role of Dr Prem Sharma in The Indian Doctor and a main role as DI Sunny Khan in Unforgotten. Bhaskar has been the Chancellor of the University of Sussex since 200...
Go to Profile#6613
Renata Salecl
#6622
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Renata Salecl is a Slovene philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana, and holds a professorship at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has been a visiting professor at London School of Economics, lecturing on the topic of emotions and law. Every year she lectures at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law , on Psychoanalysis and Law, and she has also been teaching courses on neuroscience and law. Since 2012 she has been visiting professor at the Department of Social Science, Heath and Medicine at King's College London.
Go to Profile#6614
Kazuhiko Nishijima
#6623
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Kazuhiko Nishijima was a Japanese physicist who made significant contributions to particle physics. He was professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University until his death in 2009.
Go to Profile#6615
Giorgio Strehler
#6624
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Giorgio Strehler was an Italian stage director, theatre practitioner, actor and politician. He was one of the most significant figures in Italian theatre during his lifetime, described by Mel Gussow as "the grand master of Italian theater" and "one of the world's boldest and most innovative directors." He co-founded Italy's first and most significant repertory company, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, and the Union of the Theatres of Europe.
Go to Profile#6616
Louis Bouyer
#6625
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Louis Bouyer, CO , was a French Catholic priest and former Lutheran minister who was received into the Catholic Church in 1939. During his religious career he was an influential theological thinker, especially in the fields of history, liturgy and spirituality, and as peritus helped shape the vision of the Second Vatican Council. Along with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others, he was a co-founder of the international review Communio. He was chosen by the pope to be part of a team to initiate the International Theological Commission in 1969.
Go to Profile#6617
Mamphela Ramphele
#6626
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mamphela Aletta Ramphele is a South African politician, anti-apartheid activist, medical doctor and businesswoman. She was a partner of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, with whom she had two children. She is a former vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town and a former managing director at the World Bank. Ramphele founded political party Agang South Africa in February 2013 but withdrew from politics in July 2014. Since 2018, she has been the co-president of the Club of Rome
Go to Profile#6618
Bruce Kleiner
#6627
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Bruce Alan Kleiner is an American mathematician, working in differential geometry and topology and geometric group theory. He received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California, Berkeley. His advisor was Wu-Yi Hsiang. Kleiner is a professor of mathematics at New York University.
Go to Profile#6619
Thomas Molnar
#6628
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
Thomas Steven Molnar was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist. Life Molnar completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Brussels in Belgium and received his Ph.D. in philosophy and history from Columbia University in New York City.
Go to Profile#6620
Queen Paola of Belgium
#6629
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Paola is a member of the Belgian royal family who was Queen of the Belgians during the reign of her husband, King Albert II, from 9 August 1993 to 21 July 2013. Early life and family background Paola Margherita Maria-Antonia Consiglia Ruffo di Calabria was born in Forte dei Marmi, Tuscany, Italy, the seventh and youngest child of Fulco, Prince Ruffo di Calabria, 6th Duke of Guardia Lombarda , who was a World War I Italian flying ace. Her mother was Donna Luisa Gazelli dei Conti di Rossana e di Sebastiano , a matrilineal descendant of the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution.
Go to Profile#6621
David Omand
#6630
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sir David Bruce Omand is a British former senior civil servant who served as the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters from 1996 to 1997. Background Omand was born on 15 April 1947. His father, Bruce, was a Justice of the Peace. Omand was educated at Glasgow Academy and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, receiving an economics degree.
Go to Profile#6622
Mario Lemieux
#6631
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mario Lemieux is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player. He played parts of 17 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Pittsburgh Penguins between 1984 and 2005, and he assumed ownership of the franchise in 1999. Nicknamed "The Magnificent One", "Le Magnifique", and "Super Mario" his combination of size, strength, athleticism, and creativity made him one of the greatest players of all time. A gifted playmaker and fast skater despite his large size, Lemieux often beat defencemen with fakes and dekess.
Go to Profile#6623
Gerald Graff
#6632
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Gerald Graff is a professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1959 and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford University in 1963. He has taught at the University of New Mexico, Northwestern University, the University of California at Irvine and at Berkeley, as well as Ohio State University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Chicago. He has been teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2000.
Go to Profile#6624
J. Richard Gott
#6633
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Richard Gott III is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He is known for his work on time travel and the Doomsday argument. Exotic matter time travel theories Paul Davies's bestseller How to Build a Time Machine credits Gott with the proposal of using cosmic strings to create a time machine. Gott's machine depends upon the antigravitational tension of the strings to deform space without attracting nearby objects. The traveler would follow a precise path around rapidly separating strings, and find that he or she had moved backwards in time. Gott's solution does...
Go to Profile#6625
Alan Prince
#6634
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alan Sanford Prince is a Board of Governors Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Prince, along with Paul Smolensky, developed Optimality Theory, which was originally applied to phonology, but has been extended to other areas of linguistics such as syntax and semantics.
Go to Profile#6626
Bertram Raphael
#6635
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Bertram Raphael is an American computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence. Early life and education Raphael was born in 1936 in New York. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1957, and an MS degree in Applied Math from Brown University in 1959. He was a student of Marvin Minsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his PhD in mathematics in 1964.
Go to Profile#6627
Marcia McNutt
#6636
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#6628
Arthur Guyton
#6637
Overall Influence
1919 - 2003 (84 years)
Arthur Clifton Guyton was an American physiologist. Guyton is well known for his Textbook of Medical Physiology, which quickly became the standard text on the subject in medical schools. The first edition was published in 1956, the 10th edition in 2000 , and the 12th edition in 2010. The 14th edition is the latest version available. It is the world's best-selling medical physiology textbook and has been translated into at least 15 languages.
Go to Profile#6629
Tomasz Imieliński
#6638
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Tomasz Imieliński is a Polish-American computer scientist, most known in the areas of data mining, mobile computing, data extraction, and search engine technology. He is currently a professor of computer science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, United States.
Go to Profile#6630
R. Stephen Berry
#6639
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Richard Stephen Berry was an American professor of physical chemistry. He was the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor, emeritus,, at The University of Chicago. He was also special advisor for national security to the director, at Argonne National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#6631
Emerson Fittipaldi
#6640
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Emerson Fittipaldi is a Brazilian former automobile racing driver who won both the Formula One World Championship and the Indianapolis 500 twice each and the CART championship once. Moving up from Formula Two, Fittipaldi made his race debut for Team Lotus as a third driver at the 1970 British Grand Prix. After Jochen Rindt was killed at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, the Brazilian became Lotus's lead driver in only his fifth Grand Prix. He enjoyed considerable success with Lotus, winning the World Drivers' Championship in 1972 at the age of 25. At the time, he was the youngest ever F1 world champion, and he held the record for 33 years.
Go to Profile#6632
Sean Penn
#6641
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor and film director. He has won Academy Awardss for his roles in the mystery drama Mystic River and the biopic Milk . Penn began his acting career in television, with a brief appearance in episode 112 of Little House on the Prairie on December 4, 1974, directed by his father Leo Penn. Following his film debut in the drama Taps , and a diverse range of film roles in the 1980s, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Bad Boys , Penn garnered critical attention for his roles in the crime dramas At Close Range , State of Grace , and Carlito's Way . He beca...
Go to Profile#6633
John Yudkin
#6642
Overall Influence
1910 - 1995 (85 years)
John Yudkin FRSC was a British physiologist and nutritionist, and the founding Professor of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London. Yudkin wrote several books recommending low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss, including This Slimming Business . He gained an international reputation for his book Pure, White and Deadly , which warned that the consumption of sugar is dangerous to health, an argument he had made since at least 1957. Specifically, he wrote that sugar consumption was a factor in the development of conditions such as dental caries, obesity, diabetes, and h...
Go to Profile#6634
Lester Grinspoon
#6643
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Lester Grinspoon was an American psychiatrist and long-standing associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School best known for his groundbreaking works on the science and social policy of cannabis, psychedelics and other drugs, and for his commitment to changing harmful drug policies. He concurrently served as a senior psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts, for 40 years. Grinspoon was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association. He was founding editor of The American Psychiatric Association Annual Review and Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Go to Profile#6635
Hagen Kleinert
#6644
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Hagen Kleinert is professor of theoretical physics at the Free University of Berlin, Germany , Honorary Doctor at the West University of Timișoara, and at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Bishkek. He is also Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Creative Endeavors. For his contributions to particle and solid-state physics he was awarded the Max Born Prize 2008 with Medal. His contribution to the memorial volume celebrating the 100th birthday of Lev Davidovich Landau earned him the Majorana Prize 2008 with Medal. He is married to Dr. Annemarie Kleinert since 1974 with whom he has a ...
Go to Profile#6636
Donald Schön
#6645
Overall Influence
1930 - 1997 (67 years)
Donald Alan Schön was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning.
Go to Profile#6637
James H. Ellis
#6646
Overall Influence
1924 - 1997 (73 years)
James Henry Ellis was a British engineer and cryptographer. Born in Australia but raised and educated in Britain, Ellis joined GCHQ in 1952. He worked on a number of cryptographic projects, but is credited with some of the original thinking that developed into the field of Public Key Cryptography .
Go to Profile#6638
Trevor Huddleston
#6647
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston was an English Anglican bishop. He was the Bishop of Stepney in London before becoming the second Archbishop of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean. He was best known for his anti-apartheid activism and his book Naught for Your Comfort.
Go to Profile#6639
Frank Cioffi
#6648
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Frank L. Cioffi, of Baruch College is Frank Cioffi's nephew.Frank Cioffi was an American philosopher educated in New York and Oxford. Cioffi held posts at the University of Singapore, the University of Kent and the University of Essex, where he was a founding member of the Department of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#6640
Graeme Gibson
#6649
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
Thomas Graeme Cameron Gibson was a Canadian novelist. He was a Member of the Order of Canada , a Senior Fellow of Massey College and one of the organizers of the Writers Union of Canada . He was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.
Go to Profile#6641
Michael A. Jackson
#6650
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Michael Anthony Jackson is a British computer scientist, and independent computing consultant in London, England. He is also a visiting research professor at the Open University in the UK. Biography Born in Birmingham to Montagu M. Jackson and Bertha Jackson, Jackson was educated at Harrow School in Harrow, London, England. There he was taught by Christopher Strachey and wrote his first program under Strachey's guidance. From 1954 to 1958, he studied classics at Merton College, Oxford; a fellow student, two years ahead of him, was C. A. R. Hoare. They shared an interest in logic, which was ...
Go to Profile#6642
Mika Häkkinen
#6651
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mika Pauli Häkkinen , nicknamed "The Flying Finn", is a Finnish former racing driver. He won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1998 and 1999, both times driving for McLaren. Häkkinen is one of three Formula One drivers from Finland that have won the World Drivers' Championship, and the only one to have done so more than once. He currently works in driver management and is a brand ambassador for various companies.
Go to Profile#6643
Matthew Desmond
#6652
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Matthew Desmond is a sociologist and the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, where he is also the principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. Desmond was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022.
Go to Profile#6644
Roger Clemens
#6653
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
William Roger Clemens , nicknamed "Rocket", is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball , most notably with the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, and New York Yankees. He was one of the most dominant pitchers in major league history, tallying 354 wins, a 3.12 earned run average , and 4,672 strikeouts, the third-most all time. An 11-time MLB All-Star and two-time World Series champion, Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards, more than any other pitcher in history. Clemens was known for his fierce competitive nature and hard-throwing pitching st...
Go to Profile#6645
Philippe Descola
#6654
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Areas of Specialization: Ethnology, Social Anthropology Philippe Descola is chair of anthropology at the Collège de France, most well-known for his research regarding the Achuar, an Amazonian community that was one of the last to be contacted by the outside world. He lived with and researched with the Achuar in Ecuador from 1976 to 1978. He is a highly-sought lecturer, and has delivered many notable lectures including the Munro Lecture at Edinburgh, the Victor Goldschmidt Lecture at Heidelberg, the Clifford Geertz Memorial Lecture at Princeton, and the Radcliffe-Brown Lecture at the British Academy.
Go to Profile#6646
Jack Hirshleifer
#6655
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Jack Hirshleifer was an American economist and long-time professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a B.S. from Harvard University in 1945 and a Ph.D. in 1950. He worked at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica from 1949 to 1955. He then taught at the University of Chicago from 1955 to 1960, and at UCLA until 2001. Hirshleifer was well known for his work on uncertainty and information in economics, the economic analysis of conflict, and bioeconomics. His undergraduate textbook, Price Theory and Applications, went into seven editions. A 1958 article by Hirshleifer began the triumphant comeback of Irving Fisher's theory of capital and interest, now deemed canonical.
Go to Profile#6647
Alanis Morissette
#6656
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Alanis Nadine Morissette is a Canadian and American singer and songwriter. She is known for her emotive mezzo-soprano voice and confessional songwriting. Morissette began her career in Canada in the early 1990s with two dance-pop albums. In 1995, she released Jagged Little Pill, an alternative rock-oriented album with elements of post-grunge. This album sold more than 33 million copies globally, propelling her to become a cultural phenomenon. It earned her the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1996 and was adapted into a rock musical of the same name in 2017. The musical earned fifteen Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical.
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Robert Edwards
#6657
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards was a British physiologist and pioneer in reproductive medicine, and in-vitro fertilisation in particular. Along with obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and nurse Jean Purdy, Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of Louise Brown on 1978. They founded the first IVF programme for infertile patients and trained other scientists in their techniques. Edwards was the founding editor-in-chief of Human Reproduction in 1986. In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of in vit...
Go to Profile#6649
Sarath Fonseka
#6658
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Field Marshal Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka, , commonly known as Sarath Fonseka, is a retired Sri Lankan army officer and politician. He was the eighteenth Commander of Sri Lanka Army, and under his command the Sri Lanka Army ended the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009, defeating the militant group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; he thereafter briefly served as the Chief of Defence Staff. After retiring from the Army with the rank of General, he entered politics as the common opposition candidate in the 2010 presidential election contesting against President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Go to Profile#6650
Beverly Cleary
#6659
Overall Influence
1916 - 2021 (105 years)
Beverly Atlee Cleary was an American writer of children's and young adult fiction. One of America's most successful authors, 91 million copies of her books have been sold worldwide since her first book was published in 1950. Some of her best known characters are Ramona Quimby and Beezus Quimby, Henry Huggins and his dog Ribsy, and Ralph S. Mouse.
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