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
#12651
Olaf Scholz
#12662
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Olaf Scholz is a German politician who has been serving as the chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party , he previously served as Vice Chancellor in the fourth Merkel cabinet and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019, and Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2007 to 2009.
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John Patrick Crecine
#12663
Overall Influence
1939 - 2008 (69 years)
John Patrick "Pat" Crecine was an American educator and economist who served as President of Georgia Tech, Dean at Carnegie Mellon University, business executive, and professor. After receiving his early education at public schools in Lansing, Michigan, he earned a bachelor's degree in industrial management, and master's and doctoral degrees in industrial administration from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University. He also spent a year at the Stanford University School of Business.
Go to Profile#12653
Ken Ludwig
#12664
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ken Ludwigis an American playwright , author, screenwriter, and director whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages. He has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London’s West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged throughout the United States and around the world every night of the year.
Go to Profile#12654
Judith Plaskow
#12665
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Judith Plaskow is an American theologian, author, and activist known for being the first Jewish feminist theologian. After earning her doctorate at Yale University, she taught at Manhattan College for thirty-two years before becoming a professor emerita. She was one of the creators of the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion and was its editor for the first ten years. She also helped to create B'not Esh, a Jewish feminist group that heavily inspired her writing, and a feminist section of the American Academy of Religion, an organization of which she was president in 1998.
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Darold Treffert
#12666
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Darold A. Treffert was a psychiatrist and research director who specialized in the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders and savant syndrome. He lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He was on the staff at Agnesian HealthCare and served on the Board of Trustees of Marian University. Treffert was a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. He was also a clinical professor at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
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Ian Hamilton Finlay
#12667
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener. Life Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas, to James Hamilton Finlay and his wife, Annie Pettigrew, both of Scots descent. He was educated at Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire and later at Glasgow School of Art. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated to family in the countryside . In 1942, he joined the British Army. Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec and Ailie. He died in Edinburgh. He is buried alone in Abercorn Churchyard in West Lothian. The grave lies in the extreme south-east corner of the churchyard.
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Sarah Mullally
#12668
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dame Sarah Elisabeth Mullally is a British Anglican bishop, Lord Spiritual and former nurse. She has been Bishop of London since 2018, and is the first woman to hold the position. From 1999 to 2004, she was Chief Nursing Officer for England and the National Health Service's director of patient experience for England; from 2015 to 2018, she was Bishop of Crediton, a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Exeter.
Go to Profile#12658
Jean Haudry
#12669
Overall Influence
1934 - 2023 (89 years)
Jean Haudry was a French linguist and Indo-Europeanist. Haudry was generally regarded as a distinguished linguist by other scholars, although he was also criticized for his political proximity with the far-right. Haudry's L'Indo-Européen, published in 1979, remains the reference introduction to the Proto-Indo-European language written in French.
Go to Profile#12659
Paul M. Doty
#12670
Overall Influence
1920 - 2011 (91 years)
Paul Mead Doty was Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard University, specializing in the physical properties of macromolecules and strongly involved in peace and security policy issues. Biography Doty was born in Charleston, West Virginia. He graduated from Penn State University in 1941 and took his doctorate from Columbia University under Joseph Edward Mayer. From 1943-45, he was at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He joined the chemistry department Harvard University in 1948, became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1951, and became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1957.
Go to Profile#12660
Natalie Portman
#12671
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Natalie Portman is an Israeli-born American actress. She has had a prolific film career since her teenage years and has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, receiving multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
Go to Profile#12661
Mahlagha Mallah
#12672
Overall Influence
1917 - 2021 (104 years)
Mahlagha Mallah was an Iranian environmental activist and librarian, who founded the Women's Society Against Environmental Pollution. She was referred to as the "Mother of Iran's Environment". Early life Mallah was born on 21 September 1917, in a caravanserai close to Now Kandeh, whilst her parents were travelling to Mashhad on a pilgrimage. Her mother Khadijeh Afzal Vaziri, and her grandmother Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi, were both women's rights activists in Iran. Her father, Aghabzorg Mallah, worked for the government and lived in several cities. At age 17, Mallah married Hossein Abolhasani.
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Ken Starr
#12673
Overall Influence
1946 - 2022 (76 years)
Kenneth Winston Starr was an American lawyer and judge who as independent counsel authored the Starr Report, which served as the basis of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He headed an investigation of members of the Clinton administration, known as the Whitewater controversy, from 1994 to 1998. Starr previously served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1983 to 1989 and as the U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993 during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.
Go to Profile#12663
Matt Vasgersian
#12674
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Matt Vasgersian is an American sportscaster and television host. Vasgersian is a play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Angels, as well as a studio host for MLB Network and FOX Sports. In the past, he has served as an announcer for Fox Sports' National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage, ESPN's coverage of Major League Baseball, NBC Sports' coverage of the Olympic Games, and NBC Sports' coverage of the original XFL. He formerly called play-by-play for the Milwaukee Brewers and the San Diego Padres.
Go to Profile#12664
Peter Richerson
#12675
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Peter James Richerson is an American biologist. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. Life Richerson studied entomology at UC Davis, earning his B.S. in 1965. In 1969, he completed his Ph.D. in zoology. After a postdoc and junior professorship, he was from 1977 until 2006 Professor of Environmental Science at UC Davis. He was a guest professor at University of California, Berkeley , Duke University , and the University of Exeter . In 1991 he was a guest researcher at the Bielefeld University. He has...
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John Daugman
#12676
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Gustav Daugman is a British-American professor of computer vision and pattern recognition at the University of Cambridge. His major research contributions have been in computational neuroscience, pattern recognition, and in computer vision with the original development of wavelet methods for image encoding and analysis. He invented the IrisCode, a 2D Gabor wavelet-based iris recognition algorithm that is the basis of all publicly deployed automatic iris recognition systems and which has registered more than 1.5 billion persons worldwide in government ID programs.
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Sally Alexander
#12677
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Sally A. Alexander is an English historian and feminist activist. Career When she was sixteen, Alexander trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as an actress. She completed a diploma in history at Ruskin College, Oxford from 1968 to 1970, before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in the same subject from University College London. While studying, she worked on The Black Dwarf, a radical newspaper. She helped to organise the United Kingdom's first National Women's Liberation Conference in 1970 at Ruskin College, as an activist with the Women's Liberation Movement. She was also an organiser of the 1970 Miss World protest.
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Ross Garnaut
#12678
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Ross Gregory Garnaut is an Australian economist, currently serving as a vice-chancellor's fellow and professorial fellow of economics at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of numerous publications in scholarly journals on international economics, public finance and economic development, particularly in relation to East Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
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Zoia Ceaușescu
#12679
Overall Influence
1949 - 2006 (57 years)
Zoia Ceaușescu was a Romanian mathematician, the daughter of Communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena. She was also known as Tovarășa Zoia . Biography Zoia Ceaușescu studied at High School nr. 24 in Bucharest and graduated in 1966. She then continued her studies at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Bucharest. She received her Ph.D. in 1977 with thesis On Intertwining Dilations written under the direction of Ciprian Foias. Ceaușescu then worked as a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. Her field of specialization was functional analysis.
Go to Profile#12669
Richard Revesz
#12680
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Richard L. Revesz is an American lawyer and academic. He is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. During his government employment, he is on leave as the AnBryce Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He served as dean of the New York University School of Law from 2002 to 2013, and as the director of the American Law Institute from 2014 to 2023.
Go to Profile#12670
Nancy Roman
#12681
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Nancy Grace Roman was an American astronomer who made important contributions to stellar classification and motions. The first female executive at NASA, Roman served as NASA's first Chief of Astronomy throughout the 1960s and 1970s, establishing her as one of the "visionary founders of the US civilian space program".
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A. Mitchell Polinsky
#12682
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Alan Mitchell Polinsky is the Josephine Scott Crocker Professor of Law and Economics at Stanford Law School. At Stanford, Polinsky is the founder and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics. He is also a past president of the American Law and Economics Association.
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R. S. Thomas
#12683
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Ronald Stuart Thomas , published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year's Turning , the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a troubler of the Welsh conscience. He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century."
Go to Profile#12673
Gerd Koch
#12684
Overall Influence
1922 - 2005 (83 years)
Gerd Koch was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. He was associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin . His field work was directed to researching and recording the use of artefacts in their indigenous context, to begin to understand these societies.
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Li Keqiang
#12685
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Li Keqiang was a Chinese economist and politician who served as the premier of the People's Republic of China from 2013 to 2023. He was also the second-ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party from 2012 to 2022. Li was a major part of the "fifth generation of Chinese leadership" along with Xi Jinping, the CCP general secretary.
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David D. Friedman
#12686
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Director Friedman is an American economist, physicist, legal scholar, author, and anarcho-capitalist theorist. Although he studied chemistry and physics and not law or economics, he is known for his textbook writings on microeconomics and the libertarian theory of anarcho-capitalism, which is the subject of his most popular book, The Machinery of Freedom. Described by Walter Block as a "free-market anarchist" theorist, Friedman has also authored several other books and articles, including Price Theory: An Intermediate Text , Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matt...
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Catherine Pickstock
#12687
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Catherine Jane Crozier Pickstock is an English philosophical theologian. Best known for her contributions to the radical orthodoxy movement, she has been Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge since 2018 and a fellow and tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She was previously Professor of Metaphysics and Poetics.
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Remziye Hisar
#12688
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Remziye Hisar was a Turkish academic and chemist. As the first Turkish woman with a degree from Sorbonne University, she occupied academic positions at various Turkish universities during her career and published numerous articles, mostly on metaphosphates and Turkish herbs. She is considered to be one of the first modern women scientists of Turkey.
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Donald Tusk
#12689
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Donald Franciszek Tusk is a Polish politician who has served as leader of the Civic Platform party since 2021, having previously led the party from 2003 to 2014. He co-founded the party in 2001. He served as the Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. Tusk was also the president of the European People's Party from 2019 to 2022.
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John D. Teasdale
#12690
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John D. Teasdale was a leading researcher at Oxford University, and then in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. He dedicated his focus to understanding the cognition behind depression. Teasdale was a pioneer in the cognitive therapy advancements in the United Kingdom. He was one of the founders of Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy, MBCT. He has received many awards to compliment his work and is now retired but still teaching meditation and mindfulness. He has received a Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association, and has been elected Fellow of both the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences.
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Avery Schreiber
#12691
Overall Influence
1935 - 2002 (67 years)
Avery Lawrence Schreiber was an American actor and comedian. He was a veteran of stage, television, and movies who came to prominence in the 1960s in a comedy duo with Jack Burns. He acted in an array of roles mostly on television sitcoms and a series of popular advertisements for Doritos tortilla chips.
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Mark Anthony Neal
#12692
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Mark Anthony Neal is an American author and academic. He is the Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University, where he won the 2010 Robert B. Cox Award for Teaching. Neal has written and lectured extensively on black popular culture, black masculinity, sexism and homophobia in Black communities, and the history of popular music.
Go to Profile#12682
David Butler
#12693
Overall Influence
1924 - 2022 (98 years)
Sir David Edgeworth Butler, was an English political scientist who specialised in psephology, the study of elections. He has been described as "the father of modern election science." Early life Born in London, Butler was the son of Harold Edgeworth Butler, Professor of Latin at University College, London by his wife, Margaret, née Pollard. Through his mother, he was the grandson of the historian A. F. Pollard. The politician R. A. Butler was a second cousin.
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Harvey G. Stenger
#12694
Overall Influence
Harvey G. Stenger is an American educator and academic administrator, who is serving as the seventh president of Binghamton University since 2012. Background and education Harvey G. Stenger is a native of upstate New York. He received his B.S. from Cornell University in chemical engineering in 1979 and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. While at Cornell, he joined Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity.
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Philip Heymann
#12695
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Philip Benjamin Heymann was an American legal scholar and federal prosecutor who headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General during the Carter administration and was briefly Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration before he resigned over management and policy differences as well as perceived interference by the White House. He was involved internationally in supporting the rule of law in criminal justice systems. In domestic politics he was a vocal supporter of civil and political liberties and, as such, was actively critical of the George W.
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Dan Bongino
#12696
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Daniel John Bongino is an American conservative political commentator, radio show host, and author. For four years, from 1995 to 1999, he served as a New York City Police Department officer, and then as a Secret Service agent from 1999 to 2011. Bongino ran for Congress unsuccessfully as a Republican three times. He serves as a host of The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble, and served as host of the Unfiltered with Dan Bongino on Fox News until April 2023.
Go to Profile#12686
John Cioffi
#12697
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Mathew Cioffi is an American electrical engineer, educator and inventor who has made contributions in telecommunication system theory, specifically in coding theory and information theory. Best known as "the father of DSL," Cioffi's pioneering research was instrumental in making digital subscriber line technology practical and has led to over 400 publications and more than 100 pending or issued patents, many of which are licensed.
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Jeremy Adelman
#12698
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Jeremy Adelman is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, where he is also the director of the Global History Lab. Previously, he served as the director of the Council for International Teaching and Research, the director of the Program in Latin American Studies and chair of the History Department at Princeton. His areas of scholarship include Latin American and global history.
Go to Profile#12688
Ira Mellman
#12699
Overall Influence
Ira Mellman is an American cell biologist who discovered endosomes. He serves as Vice President of Research Oncology at Genentech in South San Francisco, California. Research Mellman's work has examined the role of endocytosis in cell metabolism and human disease. He was among the first to characterize the endosomal system. Later projects include investigation of LDL cholesterol receptor internalization, cellular sorting machinery, and the cellular basis for immunity. He is an authority on the cell biological mechanisms and function of dendritic cells, the cell type responsible for initiat...
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Martin Charles Golumbic
#12700
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Martin Charles Golumbic is a mathematician and computer scientist known for his research on perfect graphs, graph sandwich problems, compiler optimization, and spatial-temporal reasoning. He is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Haifa, and was the founder of the journal Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence.
Go to Profile#12690
Barbara Newman
#12701
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Barbara Jane Newman is an American medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author. She is Professor of English and Religion, and John Evans Professor of Latin, at Northwestern University. Newman was elected in 2017 to the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#12691
Jon Beckwith
#12702
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Jonathan Roger Beckwith is an American microbiologist and geneticist. He is the American Cancer Society Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#12692
Henry David Abraham
#12703
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Henry David Abraham is an American physician. He was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Education Abraham completed his undergraduate studies in 1963 at Muhlenberg College in Allentown with honors such as Omicron Delta Kappa, Pennsylvania, where he was valedictorian. He received his medical degree in 1967 from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. After completing postgraduate training in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1968, he completed a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in ...
Go to Profile#12693
Roy Pea
#12704
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Roy D. Pea is David Jacks Professor of Learning Sciences and Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He has extensively published works in the field of the Learning Sciences and on learning technology design and made significant contributions since 1981 to the understanding of how people learn with technology.
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Jerome Rothenberg
#12705
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Jerome Rothenberg is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Early life and education Jerome Rothenberg was born and raised in New York City, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, and is a descendant of the Talmudist rabbi Meir of Rothenburg. He attended the City College of New York, graduating in 1952, and in 1953 he received a Master's Degree in Literature from the University of Michigan. Rothenberg served in the U.S. Army in Mainz, Germany from 1953 to 1955, after which he did further graduate study at Columbia University, finishing in 1959.
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John H. McArthur
#12706
Overall Influence
1934 - 2019 (85 years)
John Hector McArthur was a Canadian-American organizational theorist. He served as Professor of Business Administration and the 7th Dean of the Harvard Business School . Personal life McArthur was born on March 31, 1934 in Vancouver, McArthur grew up in nearby Burnaby, British Columbia. His father was a government grain inspector and his mother was a nurse. He graduated from Burnaby South High School, attended the University of British Columbia and earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Forestry in 1957. He earned MBA and doctorate degrees from the Harvard Business School in 1959 and 1963, ...
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Derrick de Kerckhove
#12707
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Derrick de Kerckhove is the author of The Skin of Culture and Connected Intelligence and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology from 1983 until 2008.
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Robert Gellately
#12708
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert Gellately is a Canadian academic and noted authority on the history of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. Education and career He earned his B.A., B.Ed., and M.A. degrees at Memorial University of Newfoundland and his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.
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Ellen Lupton
#12709
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ellen Lupton is a graphic designer, curator, writer, critic, and educator. Known for her love of typography, Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art. Previously she was the Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City and was named Curator Emerita after 30 years of service. She is the founding director of the Graphic Design M.F.A. degree program at Maryland Institute College of Art , where she also serves as director of the Center for Design Thinking. She has written numerous books on graphic design for a variety of audiences.
Go to Profile#12699
Jean Cerf
#12710
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Jean Cerf is a French mathematician, specializing in topology. Education and career Jean Cerf was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1928. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure, graduating in sciences in 1947. After passing his agrégation in mathematics in 1950, he obtained a doctorate with thesis supervised by Henri Cartan. Cerf became a maître de conférences at the University of Lille and was later appointed a professor at the University of Paris XI. He was also a director of research at CNRS.
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Susumu Nakanishi
#12711
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Susumu Nakanishi is a scholar of Japanese literature, particularly of the Man'yōshū. Overview He is the honorary president of the Nara Prefecture Complex of Manyo Culture, president of the Koshinokuni Museum of Literature, and has been a guest lecturer at Princeton University.
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