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
#11051
Richard Abel
#11062
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Richard L. Abel is a Professor of Law , a specialist in African Law Studies and a renowned socio-legal scholar. He received his B.A. from Harvard University , his LL.B. from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from the University of London where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has been a member of the faculty of the UCLA School of Law since 1974. He is a past president of the Law and Society Association and editor of the Law & Society Review.
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Marilyn McCord Adams
#11063
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
Marilyn McCord Adams was an American philosopher and Episcopal priest. She specialized in the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and medieval philosophy. She was Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale Divinity School from 1998 to 2003 and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2009.
Go to Profile#11053
Şerif Mardin
#11064
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Şerif Mardin was a prominent Turkish sociologist, political scientist, academic and thinker. In a 2008 publication, he was referred to as the "doyen of Turkish sociology." Early life and education He was born in Istanbul in 1927 as Ahmed Halil Şerif Arif Mardin. His father was Şemsettin Mardin, a Turkish ambassador. Şemsettin Mardin was a member of very long-established family and was uncle to Arif Mardin and Betul Mardin. Şerif Mardin's mother was Reya Mardin who was the daughter of Ahmet Cevdet, the founder of an Ottoman newspaper called İkdam. His ancestors claim direct lineage from Husain...
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Danny Quah
#11065
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Danny Quah is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Quah's work includes contributions to the fields of economic growth, development economics, monetary economics, macroeconometrics, and the weightless economy. Quah is best known for his research on estimation techniques for disentangling the effects of different disturbances on economies, for his studies on economic growth and convergence across nation states, and for his analyses of large-scale shifts in the global economy. Quah became the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew...
Go to Profile#11055
Stuart B. Schwartz
#11066
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Stuart B. Schwartz is the George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University, the Chair of the Council of Latin American and Iberian Studies, and the former Master of Ezra Stiles College. Education Schwartz was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate he studied at Middlebury College and the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Middlebury, he went on to study Latin American history at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1968.
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Ian Eagle
#11067
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ian Eagle is an American sports announcer. He calls NBA, NFL, and college basketball games on CBS, TNT, and TBS, as well as Brooklyn Nets games on the YES Network and French Open tennis for Tennis Channel. Other announcing experiences include Army–Navy football games, boxing, and NCAA track and field for CBS.
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Alain Pellet
#11068
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Alain Pellet is a French lawyer who teaches international law and international economic law at the Université de Paris Ouest - Nanterre La Défense. He was director of the university's Centre de Droit International between 1991 and 2001. He is the author of numerous books.
Go to Profile#11058
Dirk Polder
#11069
Overall Influence
1919 - 2001 (82 years)
Dirk Polder was a Dutch physicist working on solid-state physics, magnetism, molecular physics and nanoscale physics. Together with Hendrik Casimir, Polder first predicted the existence of what today is known as the Casimir-Polder force, sometimes also referred to as the Casimir effect or Casimir force. Using a similar theory, he developed the formalism to treat radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale.
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Joscha Bach
#11070
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Joscha Bach is a German artificial intelligence researcher and cognitive scientist focusing on cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. Early life and education Bach was born and grew up in East Germany. His parents are architect and artist Jochen Bach, and Gisa Bach. He is part of the Bach family.
Go to Profile#11060
Sheila Rowbotham
#11071
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sheila Rowbotham is an English socialist feminist theorist and historian. Early life Rowbotham was born on 27 February 1943 in Leeds , the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company and an office clerk. From an early age, she was deeply interested in history. She has written that traditional political history "left her cold", but she credited Olga Wilkinson, one of her teachers, with encouraging her interest in social history by showing that history "belonged to the present, not to the history textbooks".
Go to Profile#11061
Edward Boyden
#11072
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Edward S. Boyden is an American neuroscientist at MIT. He is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, a faculty member in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. In 2018 he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He is recognized for his work on optogenetics. In this technology, a light-sensitive ion channel such as channelrhodopsin-2 is genetically expressed in neurons, allowing neuronal activity to be controlled by light. There were early efforts to achieve targeted optical control dating back to 2002 that did not involve ...
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Günter Hotz
#11073
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Günter Hotz is a German pioneer of computer science. His work includes formal languages, digital circuits and computational complexity theory. In 1987, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research. In 1999 he was awarded the Konrad Zuse Medal of the Gesellschaft für Informatik.
Go to Profile#11063
Emanuele Severino
#11074
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Emanuele Severino was an Italian philosopher. Biography Severino studied at the University of Brescia and graduated at the University of Pavia under Gustavo Bontadini with the first Italian dissertation on Martin Heidegger and the Metaphysics. Subsequently, Severino broke publicly from Bontadini in 1970 while both were members of faculty of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. A student of his as a young man at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore was Cardinal Angelo Scola, who later served as Archbishop of Milan.
Go to Profile#11064
Andrew Dilnot
#11075
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sir Andrew William Dilnot, is a British economist and broadcaster. He was Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 1991 to 2002, and Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford from 2002 to 2012, when he became Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford. He served as Chair of the UK Statistics Authority from April 2012 until March 2017.
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Charles Parsons
#11076
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Charles Dacre Parsons is an American philosopher best known for his work in the philosophy of mathematics and the study of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He is professor emeritus at Harvard University.
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Susan E. Mayer
#11077
Overall Influence
Susan E. Mayer is a professor and former Dean of the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. She is a behavioral economist and sociologist who studies poverty and education. Her research examines the role of money in parenting outcomes. She was previously the director of Northwestern/Chicago's Joint Center on Poverty Research, and is currently the co-director of the Behavioral Insights in Parenting Lab with fellow University of Chicago professor Ariel Kalil. She served as the Dean of the Harris School of Public Policy from 2002 to 2009.
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Margaret Somers
#11078
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Margaret R. Somers is an American sociologist and Professor of Sociology and History at the University of Michigan She is the recipient of the inaugural Lewis A. Coser Award for Innovation and Theoretical Agenda-Setting in Sociology, Somers's work specializes in historical, political, economic, and cultural sociology and social theory.
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Robert J. C. Young
#11080
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert J. C. Young FBA is a British postcolonial theorist, cultural critic, and historian. Life Young was educated at Repton School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he read for a B.A. and D.Phil., taught at the University of Southampton, and then returned to Oxford University where he was Professor of English and Critical Theory and a fellow of Wadham College. In 2005, he moved to New York University where he is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature. From 2015 - 2018, he was Dean of Arts & Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Go to Profile#11070
Nayyar Ali Dada
#11081
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nayyar Ali Dada is a Pakistani architect. Early life and education Nayyar Ali Dada was born on 11 November 1943 in Delhi, British India, to a Sayyid family. His family migrated to Lahore, Pakistan in the 1950s. After finishing his basic education at the University of Punjab, Lahore in 1957, he enrolled in the National College of Arts , Lahore as a student. In 1964, he graduated from NCA but chose to remain attached with it by working there as a teacher. The principal of NCA Shakir Ali and Dada became friends. According to Overseas Pakistanis Foundation website, "The relationship with Shakir Ali grew, and the two became close friends.
Go to Profile#11071
G. E. M. de Ste. Croix
#11082
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix, , known informally as Croicks, was a British historian who specialised in examining Ancient Greece from a Marxist perspective. He was Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at New College, Oxford, from 1953 to 1977, where he taught scholars including Robin Lane Fox, Robert Parker and Nicholas Richardson.
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Adrien Douady
#11083
Overall Influence
1935 - 2006 (71 years)
Adrien Douady was a French mathematician born in La Tronche, Isère. He was the son of Daniel Douady and Guilhen Douady. Douady was a student of Henri Cartan at the École normale supérieure, and initially worked in homological algebra. His thesis concerned deformations of complex analytic spaces. Subsequently, he became more interested in the work of Pierre Fatou and Gaston Julia and made significant contributions to the fields of analytic geometry and dynamical systems. Together with his former student John H. Hubbard, he launched a new subject, and a new school, studying properties of iterated quadratic complex mappings.
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Bill Wyman
#11084
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
William George Wyman is an English musician who was the bassist for the rock band the Rolling Stones from 1962 to 1993. Wyman was part of the band's first stable lineup and performed on their first 19 albums. Since 1997, he has performed as the vocalist and bassist for Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Rolling Stones in 1989. Wyman briefly returned to recording with the Rolling Stones in 2023.
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Mark Wilkinson
#11085
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mark Wilkinson is an English illustrator. He is best known for the detailed surrealistic cover art he created for a number of British bands. Wilkinson's breakthrough came through his association with the neo-progressive rock band Marillion in the 1980s. He went on to design art for the subsequent solo career of their lead singer, Fish, as well as bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Though versed in a number of techniques, he is considered to be a master of the airbrush.
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Ann Banfield
#11086
Overall Influence
Ann Banfield, is a professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Banfield has taught at Berkeley since 1975 and is a specialist in linguistics, critical theory and the use of philosophy as a cornerstone of modernism. In the field of narratology, Banfield has been given lasting credit for her concepts of narratorless subjectivity and addresseelessness in narration.
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Robert Osserman
#11087
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Robert "Bob" Osserman was an American mathematician who worked in geometry. He is specially remembered for his work on the theory of minimal surfaces. Raised in Bronx, he went to Bronx High School of Science and New York University. He earned a Ph.D. in 1955 from Harvard University with the thesis Contributions to the Problem of Type supervised by Lars Ahlfors.
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Ellen Markman
#11088
Overall Influence
Ellen Markman is Lewis M. Terman Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. She specializes in word learning and language development in children, focusing specifically on how children come to associate words with their meanings. Markman contends that in order to learn the meaning of a word, children make use of three basic principles: the whole object assumption , the taxonomic assumption , and the mutual exclusivity assumption . Related topics that Markman has studied include categorization and inductive reasoning in children and infants. Markman subscribes to the innatist school of de...
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Bob Edwards
#11089
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Robert Alan Edwards is an American broadcast journalist, a Peabody Award-winning member of the National Radio Hall of Fame. He hosted both of National Public Radio's flagship news programs, the afternoon All Things Considered, and Morning Edition, where he was the first and longest serving host in the latter program's history. Starting in 2004, Edwards then was the host of The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius XM Radio and Bob Edwards Weekend distributed by Public Radio International to more than 150 public radio stations. Those programs ended in September 2015. Edwards currently hosts a podcast f...
Go to Profile#11079
Andrew Samwick
#11090
Overall Influence
Andrew Alan Samwick is an American economist, who served as Chief Economist on the staff of the United States President's Council of Economic Advisors from July 2003 to July 2004. Samwick is currently Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and the director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences. He has also held teaching positions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. In 2009, Samwick was named the New Hampshire Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is also a current editor of Economics...
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Demetri Terzopoulos
#11091
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Demetri Terzopoulos is a Greek-Canadian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is currently a Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he directs the UCLA Computer Graphics & Vision Laboratory.
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John Lott
#11092
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
John William Lott is a professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for contributions to differential geometry. Academic history Lott received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 and M.A. degrees in mathematics and physics from University of California, Berkeley. In 1983, he received a Ph.D. in mathematics under the supervision of Isadore Singer. After postdoctoral positions at Harvard University and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan. In 2009, he moved to University ...
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Viktor Korchnoi
#11093
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi was a Soviet and Swiss chess grandmaster and chess writer. He is considered one of the strongest players never to have become World Chess Champion. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union , Korchnoi defected to the Netherlands in 1976, and resided in Switzerland from 1978, becoming a Swiss citizen. Korchnoi played four matches, three of which were official, against GM Anatoly Karpov. In 1974, Korchnoi lost the Candidates Tournament final to Karpov. Karpov was declared World Champion in 1975 when GM Bobby Fischer declined to defend his title. Korchnoi then won two consecutiv...
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Jane Fernandes
#11094
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jane Fernandes is a Deaf American educator and social justice advocate. As of August 2021, Fernandes is the President of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She previously served as president of Guilford College from 2014 to 2021.
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Peter Calvocoressi
#11095
Overall Influence
1912 - 2010 (98 years)
Peter John Ambrose Calvocoressi was a British lawyer, Liberal politician, historian, and publisher. He served as an intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II. Early years Calvocoressi was born in Karachi, British India , to a family of Greek origins from the island of Chios. His mother, Irene , was descended from one of the founders of Ralli Brothers, who were prominent Greek families of Chios who came to London at the time of the Greek Diaspora. When he was three months old, the family moved to Liverpool, England.
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Per Stjernquist
#11096
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Per Stjernquist was a Swedish law professor who was almost single-handedly responsible for establishing the teaching of the new field of sociology of law in Sweden from the 1960s. Stjernquist began his career as a local judge and court official. He became a doctoral student of the celebrated 'realist' jurist Karl Olivecrona in the 1940s but, as a left-leaning liberal, soon fell out with his supervisor over Olivecrona's authoritarian politics and vocal support in the war years for Nazi Germany's hegemony in Europe.
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Erik Spiekermann
#11097
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Erik Spiekermann is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design. Biography Spiekermann studied art history at Berlin's Free University, funding himself by running a letterpress printing press in the basement of his house.
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Mohammad Shahidehpour
#11098
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dr. Mohammad Shahidehpour is a Carl Bodine Distinguished Professor and Chairman in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Illinois Institute of Technology. He is the author of more than 300 technical papers and five books on electric power systems planning, operation, and control.
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Orlando Jones
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#11099
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Orlando Jones is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is known for being one of the original cast members of the sketch comedy series MADtv, for his role as the 7 Up spokesman from 1999 to 2002, and for his role as the African god Anansi on Starz's American Gods.
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Amelia Jones
#11100
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Amelia Jones , originally from Durham, North Carolina, is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, identity politics, and New York Dada. Jones's earliest work established her as a feminist scholar and curator, including through a pioneering exhibition and publication concerning the art of Judy Chicago; later, she broadened her focus on other social activist topics including race, class and identity politics. Jones has contributed significantly to the study of art and ...
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Richard Peet
#11101
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
J. Richard Peet is a retired professor of human geography at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester MA, USA. Peet received a BSc from the London School of Economics, an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and moved to the USA in the mid-1960s to complete a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching at Clark University shortly after completing his PhD from Berkeley, and has remained there with secondments in Australia, Sweden and New Zealand.
Go to Profile#11091
Irina Viner
#11102
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Irina Alexandrovna Viner , formerly Irina Alexandrovna Viner-Usmanova , is an Uzbek-born Russian rhythmic gymnastics coach who is head coach of the Russian national team, president of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, and former vice president of the Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation.
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Willie Soon
#11103
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Willie Wei-Hock Soon is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer who was long employed as a part-time externally funded researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian.
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Tommy J. Curry
#11104
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Tommy J. "T. J." Curry is an African American scholar, author and professor of philosophy. , he holds a Personal Chair in Africana philosophy and Black male studies at the University of Edinburgh. In 2018, he won an American Book Award for The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood.
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Yu Hao
#11105
Overall Influence
Yu Hao was a Chinese architect, structural engineer, and writer during the Song Dynasty. Legacy Yu Hao was given the title of Master-Carpenter for his architectural skill. He wrote the Mu Jing when he was active sometime between 965 and 995, considered an important piece of classical Chinese architectural literature, and although it no longer survives, Shen Kuo quoted from it. In 989, his architectural design and structural engineering work culminated in the construction of the Kai-Bao Pagoda, a wooden Chinese pagoda of medieval Kaifeng . The pagoda was lost in a 1040 lightning conflagratio...
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Tim Tebow
#11106
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Timothy Richard Tebow is an American sports broadcaster and former football quarterback. Tebow played college football for the Florida Gators and became the first underclassman to win the Heisman Trophy in 2007. He was a key contributor to two BCS National Championship teams at Florida and was named the MVP of the 2009 BCS National Championship Game. As a dual-threat quarterback, Tebow broke numerous passing and rushing records during his collegiate career, among them Southeastern Conference career records for highest passing efficiency rating and most rushing touchdowns and the NCAA record...
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Joshua Cohen
#11107
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joshua Cohen is an American philosopher specializing in political philosophy. He has taught at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a member of the faculty at Apple University and the University of California, Berkeley.
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Thomas Mathiesen
#11108
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Thomas Mathiesen was a Norwegian sociologist. Background Mathiesen grew up in the Norwegian county of Akershus, as the only child of Einar Mathiesen and Birgit Mathiesen . He is the grandson of surgeon Johan Berger Mathiesen .
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Marilyn Yalom
#11109
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Marilyn Yalom was a feminist author and historian. She was a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and a professor of French. She served as the institute's director from 1984 to 1985. Prior to teaching at Stanford, Yalom taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and California State University Hayward .
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Hossein Bashiriyeh
#11110
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Hossein Bashiriyeh, is an Iranian scholar in political theory and political sociology, who was born in 1953 in Hamedan, Iran. Bashiriyeh has been described as the "Father of political sociology in Iran", and was a prominent academic figure influencing the Iranian reform movement.
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Dovid Katz
#11111
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dovid Katz is an American-born Vilnius-based scholar, author, and educator specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian-Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has been known for combating the so-called "Double Genocide" revision of Holocaust history which asserts a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He is editor of the web journal Defending History which he founded in 2009. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website includes a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of...
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