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
#8751
Zvi Arad
#8761
Overall Influence
1942 - 2018 (76 years)
Zvi Arad was an Israeli mathematician, acting president of Bar-Ilan University, and president of Netanya Academic College. Biography Zvi Arad began his academic studies in the Mathematics Department of Bar-Ilan University. He received his first degree in 1964 and after army service went on to complete a second and third degree in the Mathematics Department of Tel Aviv University.
Go to Profile#8752
Cormac Ó Gráda
#8762
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#8753
Abdul Haris Nasution
#8763
Overall Influence
1918 - 2000 (82 years)
Abdul Haris Nasution was a high-ranking Indonesian general and politician. He served in the military during the Indonesian National Revolution and he remained in the military during subsequent turmoil of the Parliamentary democracy and Guided Democracy. Following the fall of President Sukarno from power, he became the Speaker of the People's Consultative Assembly under president Suharto. Born into a Batak Muslim family, in the village of Hutapungkut, Dutch East Indies, he studied teaching and enrolled at a military academy in Bandung.
Go to Profile#8754
Reece Shearsmith
#8764
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Reeson Wayne "Reece" Shearsmith is an English actor, writer and comedian. He is best known for being a member of The League of Gentlemen, with Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss, and Jeremy Dyson. He later created, wrote and starred in the sitcom Psychoville, with Pemberton, as well as the dark comedy anthology series, Inside No. 9. He has had notable roles in Spaced and The World's End.
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Kenneth M. Stampp
#8765
Overall Influence
1912 - 2009 (97 years)
Kenneth Milton Stampp , Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley , was a celebrated historian of slavery, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Colgate University, Commonwealth Lecturer at the University of London, Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Munich, and held the Harmsworth Chair at Oxford University. In 1989, he received the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction. In 1993, he won the prestigious Lincoln Prize for lifetime achievement ...
Go to Profile#8756
Peter Emil Becker
#8766
Overall Influence
1908 - 2000 (92 years)
Peter Emil Becker was a German neurologist, psychiatrist and geneticist. He is remembered for his studies of muscular dystrophies. Becker's muscular dystrophy and Becker myotonia are named after him. Since 1998, the Gesellschaft für Neuropädiatrie grants Peter-Emil-Becker-Preis for special achievements in the field of child neurology.
Go to Profile#8757
Mohammad Ataul Karim
#8767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mohammad Ataul Karim is a Bangladeshi American scientist and higher education administrator, with expertise in electro-optical systems, optical computing, and pattern recognition. Ataul Karim is ranked amongst the top 50 researchers who contributed most to Applied Optics in its 50-year history. Ataul Karim served as provost, executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth between june 2013-2020, and was for 9 years the first Vice President for Research of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
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Cynthia Haven
#8768
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Cynthia L. Haven is an American literary scholar, author, critic, Slavicist, and journalist. Her books include of Desire: A Life of René Girard, which the San Francisco Chronicle named one of the top books of 2018. The biography was also named a 2019 CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Her Czesław Miłosz: A California Life. was a finalist for a Northern California Book Award. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna and a visiting scholar at Stanford Un...
Go to Profile#8759
Louise Rosenblatt
#8769
Overall Influence
1904 - 2005 (101 years)
Louise Michelle Rosenblatt was an American university professor. She is best known as a researcher into the teaching of literature. Biography Rosenblatt was born in Atlantic City to Jewish immigrant parents. She attended Barnard College, the women's college at Columbia University in New York City, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1925. Her roommate was Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, who urged her to study anthropology. A year behind Mead at Barnard, Rosenblatt took over her position as editor-in-chief of the Barnard Bulletin. While Rosenblatt initially planned to travel to Samoa after graduation in order to do field research, she decided instead to continue her studies in France.
Go to Profile#8760
Kenneth Kitchen
#8770
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, England. He specialises in the ancient Egyptian Ramesside Period , and the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, as well as ancient Egyptian chronology, having written over 250 books and journal articles on these and other subjects since the mid-1950s. He has been described by The Times as "the very architect of Egyptian chronology".
Go to Profile#8761
Ashish Nanda
#8771
Overall Influence
Ashish Nanda is a business economist and professor who is the former Director of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad . Nanda joined IIMA as Director on 2 Sept 2013. Upon taking charge, Nanda described IIMA as "a hidden jewel."
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Kwasi Wiredu
#8772
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Kwasi Wiredu was a Ghanaian philosopher. Often called the greatest African philosopher of his generation, his work contributed to the conceptual decolonisation of African thought. Life and career Wiredu was born in Kumasi, Gold Coast , in 1931, and attended Adisadel College from 1948 to 1952. It was during this period that he discovered philosophy, through Plato and Bertrand Russell. He gained a place at the University of Ghana, Legon. After graduating in 1958, he went to University College, Oxford to read for the B.Phil.
Go to Profile#8763
Harden M. McConnell
#8773
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Harden M. McConnell was an American physical chemist. His many awards included the National Medal of Science and the Wolf Prize, and he was elected to the National Academy of Science." Education and career Harden earned a B.S. degree in chemistry from George Washington University in 1947, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1951 with Norman Davidson. After serving for two years as a National Research Fellow in physics at the University of Chicago with Robert S. Mulliken and John Platt, he held a position as research chemist at Shell Development Company. He was recruited by Norman Davidson, John D.
Go to Profile#8764
Jon Anderson
#8774
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jon Roy Anderson is an English-American singer, songwriter and musician, best known as the former lead singer of the progressive rock band Yes, which he formed in 1968 with bassist Chris Squire. He was a member of the band across three tenures until 2008. Anderson was also a member of ARW along with former Yes bandmates Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin from 2016 to 2020. Together with bassist Lee Pomeroy and drummer Lou Molino III, they toured under the name Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman.
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Janet Rowley
#8775
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Janet Davison Rowley was an American human geneticist and the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers, thus proving that cancer is a genetic disease. Rowley spent the majority of her life working in Chicago and received many awards and honors throughout her life, recognizing her achievements and contributions in the area of genetics.
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Michel Demazure
#8776
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Michel Demazure is a French mathematician. He made contributions in the fields of abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, and computer vision, and participated in the Nicolas Bourbaki collective. He has also been president of the French Mathematical Society and directed two French science museums.
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Frans Kaashoek
#8777
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Marinus Frans Kaashoek is a Dutch computer scientist, entrepreneur, and Charles Piper Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to computer systems, distributed systems, and content-distribution networks.
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James Anaya
#8778
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Stephen James Anaya is an American lawyer and the 16th Dean of the University of Colorado Boulder Law School. He was formerly the James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy at the University of Arizona's James E. Rogers College of Law and previously served for more than ten years on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law. In March 2008, he was appointed by the United Nations as its Special Rapporteur on the situation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, replacing Rodolfo Stavenhagen. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical...
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Trevor Horn
#8779
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Trevor Charles Horn is an English record producer and musician. His influence on pop and electronic music in the 1980s was such that he has been called "the man who invented the eighties". Horn took up the bass guitar at an early age and taught himself to sight-read music. In the 1970s, he worked as a session musician, built his own studio, and wrote and produced singles for various artists. Horn gained fame in 1979 as a member of the Buggles, who achieved a hit single with "Video Killed the Radio Star". He was invited to join the progressive rock band Yes, becoming their lead singer.
Go to Profile#8770
Alfredo Stroessner
#8780
Overall Influence
1912 - 2006 (94 years)
Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda was a Paraguayan army officer, politician, statesman, and President of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 to 3 February 1989. Stroessner led a coup d'état on 4 May 1954 with the support of the army and the Colorado Party, with which he was affiliated. After a brief provisional government headed by Tomás Romero Pereira, he was the Colorado Party's presidential candidate for the 1954 general election, and was elected unopposed since all other parties were banned from 1947 to 1962.
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Werner Hamacher
#8781
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
Werner Hamacher was a German literary critic and theorist influenced by deconstruction. Hamacher studied philosophy, comparative literature and religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and the École Normale Supérieure , where he met and came to know Jacques Derrida. From 1998 to 2013 he was a Professor in the University of Frankfurt's Institute for General and Comparative Literature , and since 2003 he was on the faculty of the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
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Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow
#8782
Overall Influence
1929 - 2008 (79 years)
Patriarch Alexy II was the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Elected Patriarch of Moscow in 1990, eighteen months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became the first Russian Patriarch of the post-Soviet period.
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Ken Robinson
#8783
Overall Influence
1950 - 2020 (70 years)
Sir Ken Robinson was a British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education and arts bodies. He was director of the Arts in Schools Project and Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick , and Professor Emeritus after leaving the university. In 2003, he was knighted for services to the arts.
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Nico Habermann
#8784
Overall Influence
1932 - 1993 (61 years)
Arie Nicolaas Habermann , often known as Nico Habermann, was a noted Dutch computer scientist. Habermann was born in Groningen, Netherlands, and earned his B.S. in mathematics and physics and M.S. in mathematics from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1953 and 1958. After working as a mathematics teacher, in 1967 he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Eindhoven University of Technology under advisor Edsger Dijkstra.
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Roberto Baggio
#8785
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Roberto Baggio is an Italian former professional footballer who mainly played as a second striker, or as an attacking midfielder, although he was capable of playing in several offensive positions. He is the former president of the technical sector of the Italian Football Federation. A technically gifted creative playmaker and set piece specialist, renowned for his curling free-kicks, dribbling skills, and goalscoring, Baggio is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. In 1999, he came fourth in the FIFA Player of the Century internet poll, and was chosen on the FIFA World Cup Dream Team in 2002.
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Daniel Friedmann
#8786
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Daniel Friedmann is a former professor at and dean of the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. He served as the Minister of Justice of Israel from 2007 to 2009, having been appointed by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He was sworn in on February 7, 2007, succeeding Tzipi Livni. In 2009 he was succeeded by Ya'akov Ne'eman.
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Arthur Ashe
#8787
Overall Influence
1943 - 1993 (50 years)
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only black man ever to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980.
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Shi-Kuo Chang
#8788
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Shi-Kuo Chang is a computer scientist and writer best-known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Life and career Chang was born in Chongqing in 1944 and grew up in Taiwan. After completing an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at National Taiwan University, Chang arrived in the United States in 1966 as a graduate student. In 1967 he completed his master's degree at University of California, Berkeley, in Computer Science, earning his doctorate in 1969. From 1969 to 1975, Chang worked as a research scientist at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In 1975 he joined the...
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Peter Tufano
#8789
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Peter Tufano was the dean of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford until 2021 before being replaced by Sue Dopson as interim acting dean. Before moving to Oxford in 2011, he spent over three decades at Harvard University where he completed his AB in Economics, MBA and PhD in Business Economics, as well as spending 22 years on the faculty.
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Ana Ivanovic
#8790
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Ana Schweinsteiger , is a Serbian former professional tennis player. She became the world No. 1 in 2008 after she won the 2008 French Open, and held the top ranking for a total of 12 weeks. She was also the runner-up at the 2007 French Open and the 2008 Australian Open, losing to Justine Henin and Maria Sharapova respectively. She qualified for the year-end WTA Tour Championships three times, in 2007, 2008 and 2014 and won the year-end WTA Tournament of Champions twice, in 2010 and 2011.
Go to Profile#8781
Jørgen Randers
#8791
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jørgen Randers is a Norwegian academic, professor emeritus of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and practitioner in the field of future studies. His professional field encompasses model-based futures studies, scenario analysis, system dynamics, sustainability, climate, energy and ecological economics. He is also a full member of the Club of Rome, a company director, member of various not-for-profit boards, business consultant on global sustainability matters and author. His publications include the seminal work The Limits to Growth , and Reinventing Prosperity.
Go to Profile#8782
Lorne Michaels
#8792
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lorne Michaels is a Canadian-American television writer and film producer. He created and produces Saturday Night Live and produced the Late Night series , The Kids in the Hall and The Tonight Show .
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Robert B. Oakley
#8793
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Robert Bigger Oakley was an American diplomat whose 34-year career as a Foreign Service Officer included appointments as United States Ambassador to Zaire, Somalia, and Pakistan and, in the early 1990s, as a special envoy during the American involvement in Somalia.
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Konstantin Sonin
#8794
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Konstantin Sonin is a Russian economist. He is a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research , London, and an associate research fellow at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics. In recognition for his outstanding research in the field of political economy, in December 2015, he was named the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of the University of Chicago.
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Luis Ernesto Derbez
#8795
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista is a Mexican politician and rector of the Universidad de las Américas Puebla . He served as Mexico's Secretary of Economy from 2000 to 2002 and Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2006.
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Bob Woffinden
#8796
Overall Influence
1948 - 2018 (70 years)
Robert Woffinden was a British investigative journalist. Formerly a reporter with the New Musical Express, he later specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice. He wrote about a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, Jeremy Bamber, Charles Ingram, Jonathan King, and Barry George.
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Veysel Eroğlu
#8797
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Veysel Eroğlu is a Member of Parliament for Afyonkarahisar of the ruling Justice and Development Party and a former Minister of Forestry and Water of Turkey. Early life Eroğlu was born on 18 August 1948 in the Şuhut district of Turkey's Afyonkarahisar Province. His father's name was İbrahim and his mother's name was Emine.
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Angie Jones
#8798
Overall Influence
Angie Jones is a software engineer and automation architect who specializes in software testing and development. Jones has contributed to several open-source testing tools and libraries, including Selenium and Appium.
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Thomas R. Insel
#8799
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Thomas Roland Insel is an American neuroscientist, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and author who led the National Institute of Mental Health from 2002 until November 2015. Prior to becoming Director of NIMH, he was the founding Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known for research on oxytocin and vasopressin, two peptide hormones implicated in complex social behaviors, such as parental care and attachment. He announced on Sept. 15, 2015, that he was resigning as the director of the NIMH to join the Life Science division of Google X .
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Jaroslav Nešetřil
#8800
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Jaroslav Nešetřil is a Czech mathematician, working at Charles University in Prague. His research areas include combinatorics , graph theory , algebra , posets , computer science . Education and career Nešetřil received his Ph.D. from Charles University in 1973 under the supervision of Aleš Pultr and Gert Sabidussi. He is responsible for more than 300 publications. Since 2006, he is chairman of the Committee of Mathematics of Czech Republic .
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Artur Avila
#8801
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Artur Avila Cordeiro de Melo is a Brazilian and naturalized French mathematician working primarily in the fields of dynamical systems and spectral theory. He is one of the winners of the 2014 Fields Medal, being the first Latin American and lusophone to win such an award. He has been a researcher at both the IMPA and the CNRS . He has been a professor at the University of Zurich since September 2018.
Go to Profile#8792
Neil Woodford
#8802
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Neil Russell Woodford CBE is a former fund manager and the founding partner of the defunct Woodford Investment Management. Early life Woodford was born in March 1960. He was brought up in Berkshire and attended Maidenhead Grammar School. His father was a printer. He graduated in Economics and Agricultural Economics from the University of Exeter in 1981.
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Brian Robbins
#8803
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Brian Levine , better known as Brian Robbins, is an American film and television producer and director. He has been the president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon since 2021, and is also the CCO of the Kids & Family division of Paramount+. In 2012, he co-founded the media network Awesomeness TV.
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Walter Bodmer
#8804
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Sir Walter Fred Bodmer is a German-born British human geneticist. Early life Bodmer was born in Frankfurt, Germany. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and went on to study the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge as a student of Clare College, Cambridge. He was awarded his PhD in 1959 from Cambridge for research on population genetics in the house mouse and Primula vulgaris supervised by Ronald Fisher.
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Tom Jones
#8805
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Sir Thomas Jones Woodward is a Welsh singer. His career began with a string of top 10 hits in the 1960s and he has since toured regularly, with appearances in Las Vegas from 1967 to 2011. His voice has been described by AllMusic as a "full-throated, robust baritone".
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Joanna Jędrzejczyk
#8806
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Joanna Jędrzejczyk is a Polish former professional mixed martial artist and Muay Thai kickboxer. She has been called the greatest female strawweight mixed martial artist of all time, including by Daniel Cormier, who credited her with putting the weight class "on the map". Jędrzejczyk holds several records in the Ultimate Fighting Championship , where she is a former UFC Women's Strawweight Champion, including most successful strawweight title defenses , most consecutive wins at strawweight , and is the first Polish champion and first female European champion.
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Duncan Dowson
#8807
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Duncan Dowson was a British engineer who was Professor of Engineering Fluid Mechanics and Tribology at the University of Leeds. Early life and education Dowson's father, Wilfrid Dowson, was an ornamental blacksmith, and as a child his son helped him in his work.
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Erik Verlinde
#8808
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Erik Peter Verlinde is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the identical twin brother of physicist Herman Verlinde. The Verlinde formula, which is important in conformal field theory and topological field theory, is named after him. His research deals with string theory, gravity, black holes and cosmology. Currently, he works at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam.
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Burt Lancaster
#8809
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
Burton Stephen Lancaster was an American actor and producer. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series. He was a four-time nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actor , and he also won two BAFTA Awards and one Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor. The American Film Institute ranks Lancaster as of the greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
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Debora Spar
#8810
Overall Influence
Debora L. Spar is the current Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online and former President of Barnard College, a liberal arts college for women of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Spar was appointed Barnard's 7th president in July 2008 and replaced Judith Shapiro, Barnard's 6th president, after a teaching career at Harvard Business School where she was Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development. Spar was appointed the 10th president of Lincoln Center f...
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