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
#19301
Juliette Binoche
#19312
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Juliette Binoche is a French actress. She has appeared in more than 60 films, particularly in French and English languages, and has been the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award and a César Award.
Go to Profile#19302
Gilbert Gottlieb
#19313
Overall Influence
1929 - 2006 (77 years)
Gilbert Gottlieb was an American psychologist. After receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Miami, he received his Ph.D. in the psychology - zoology program at Duke University. He observed the differences in bird development, by both observing egg hatching and manipulating variables important to bird development, including calls. Gottlieb's major contribution to the field of psychology was his theory of probabilistic epigenesis, which explains that there is no predetermined path to trait development. Gottlieb died 13 July 2006 in Raleigh, North Carolina, outlived by his wife, Nora Lee Willis Gottlieb, his children, Jonathan B.Gottlieb, Aaron L.
Go to Profile#19303
Roberto Ago
#19314
Overall Influence
1907 - 1995 (88 years)
Roberto Ago was an Italian jurist. He served as a judge on the International Court of Justice from 1979 until 1995. Ago served as Professor of International Law at the Universities of Catania , Genoa , and finally Rome . He specialized in both private and public international law. He gave his first Hague Academy of International Law lecture in 1936 at the age of twenty-eight, on general conflict of laws rules. He also gave lectures at the Hague Academy of International Law in 1939, 1956, 1971, and 1983, on topics ranging from international torts to the Grotian conception of international law.
Go to Profile#19304
Mark Bedau
#19315
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mark A. Bedau is an American philosopher who works in the field of artificial life. He is the son of the philosopher Hugo Bedau . Bedau teaches philosophy at Reed College. He is also the co-founder of the European Center for Living Technology and Visiting Professor, Ph.D. Program in Life Sciences: Foundations and Ethics, European School of Molecular Medicine. Bedau is also the editor of the Artificial Life Journal.
Go to Profile#19305
Elizabeth Dowdeswell
#19316
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Violet Elizabeth Dowdeswell is a Canadian public servant who served as the 29th lieutenant governor of Ontario from 2014 to 2023. As lieutenant governor, Dowdeswell was the viceregal representative of the Crown in Right of Ontario and the first in over seven decades to serve under two different Canadian sovereigns. A champion of democracy and civil society, she is also the longest-serving lieutenant governor in Ontario's history.
Go to Profile#19306
Clayton Spencer
#19317
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ava Clayton Spencer is an American attorney and was the eighth president of Bates College. She had previously served as the vice president for institutional policy at Harvard University from 2005 to 2012.
Go to Profile#19307
Jon C. Teaford
#19318
Overall Influence
Jon C. Teaford is professor emeritus in the History Department at Purdue University. He specializes in American urban history and early on in his career he specialized in legal history. Teaford became interested in history at a young age, stemming from his fascination with president Theodore Roosevelt. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1973; his dissertation, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650–1825, was also published as a book in 1975. Many of his books received critical acclaim. He retired in 2003. In 2011–2012 he served as pr...
Go to Profile#19308
Alison Levine
#19319
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alison Levine is an American mountain climber, motivational speaker and leadership consultant. She is the author of On the Edge: The Art of High Impact Leadership and the executive producer of a documentary, The Glass Ceiling. She has ascended the highest peaks on every continent and also skied to both the North and South Poles. In 2010, she completed the Adventure Grand Slam by reaching the summit of Mount Everest. She served as an adjunct instructor at the U.S. Military Academy.
Go to Profile#19309
Jürgen Melzer
#19320
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Jürgen Melzer is an Austrian former professional tennis player. Melzer reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 8 in April 2011, and a doubles ranking of world No. 6 in September 2010. He has a younger brother, Gerald Melzer, with whom he played doubles in several tournaments.
Go to Profile#19310
Francis T. McAndrew
#19321
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Francis T. "Frank" McAndrew is an American social psychologist and the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. At Knox, he founded the environmental studies program and chaired the psychology department for a decade. McAndrew is an elected fellow of numerous professional organizations, including the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Midwestern Psychological Association . He received a B.S. in psychology from King's College in Pennsylvania and also a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#19311
Richard Grove
#19322
Overall Influence
1955 - 2020 (65 years)
Richard Hugh Grove was a British historian, environmental activist, and one of the contemporary founders of environmental history as an academic field. His prizewinning book, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860 , was considered a pioneering account of colonial environmental impacts and an origin for early western ideas on environmentalism.
Go to Profile#19312
John Harbaugh
#19323
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
John William Harbaugh is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League . Previously, he coached the defensive backs for the Philadelphia Eagles and served as the Eagles special teams coach for nine years. Harbaugh and his younger brother, former San Francisco 49ers and current University of Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh, are the first pair of brothers in NFL history to serve as head coaches. Jack Harbaugh, Jim and John's father, served 45 years as a college defensive coach, an assistant coach, and a running backs coach. John and t...
Go to Profile#19313
Anand Kumar
#19324
Overall Influence
2001 - Present (25 years)
Anand Kumar is an Indian Mathematics educator, best known for his Super 30 programme, which he started with Abhayanand in Patna, Bihar in 2002, known for coaching underprivileged students for JEE- Main & JEE-Advanced, the entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology . Kumar was named in Time magazine's list of Best of Asia 2010. In 2023, he was awarded the Padma Shri, country's fourth highest civilian award by the Government of India for his contributions in the field of literature and education.
Go to Profile#19314
Athene Donald
#19325
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dame Athene Margaret Donald is a British physicist. She is Professor Emerita of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge. Early life and education Donald was born Athene Margaret Griffith in London, to Walter Griffith and Annette Marian Tylor. She was educated at Camden School for Girls and Girton College, Cambridge. She earned a bachelor's degree in Natural Science , followed by a PhD in 1977 for research on electron microscopy of grain boundary embrittled systems.
Go to Profile#19315
Anthony C. Hearn
#19326
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Anthony C. Hearn is an Australian-American computer scientist and adjunct staff member at RAND Corporation and at the Institute for Defense Analyses Center for Computing Sciences. He is best known for his pioneering contributions in mathematical software development, most notably in developing the computer algebra system REDUCE, which is the oldest such system still in active use. He was also one of the founders of the CSNET computer network, for which he shared the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award with Peter J. Denning, David Farber, and Lawrence Landweber in 2009. He was elected a Fellow of ...
Go to Profile#19316
Nico Perrone
#19327
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Nico Perrone is an Italian essayist, historian and journalist. He firstly discovered papers on the plot for killing Enrico Mattei, the Italian state tycoon for oil in the 1950s. He is the author of twenty books, and some fifty shorter essays published in Italy, Denmark and the USA. He is the author also of a thousand leading articles and other contributions to Italian and Swiss newspapers.
Go to Profile#19317
Tomasz Dietl
#19328
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Tomasz Dietl is a Polish physicist, a professor and a head of Laboratory for Cryogenic and Spintronic Research at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences and professor of The Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Warsaw. His research interest includes semiconductors, spintronics and nanotechnology. With over 20,000 citations he is considered one of the leading Polish physicists.
Go to Profile#19318
Ewine van Dishoeck
#19329
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory, and served as the President of the International Astronomical Union and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics . She is one of the pioneers of astrochemistry, and her research is aimed at determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra.
Go to Profile#19319
Thurman Thomas
#19330
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Thurman Lee Thomas is an American former football running back who played in the National Football League for 13 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills. He was selected by the Bills in the second round of the 1988 NFL Draft, where he spent all but one season of his professional career. Thomas spent his final NFL year as a member of the Miami Dolphins in 2000.
Go to Profile#19320
Nancy Kress
#19331
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Nancy Anne Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain, which became a novel in 1993. She also won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2013 for After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, and in 2015 for Yesterday's Kin. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops. During the winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress was the Picador G...
Go to Profile#19321
Léo Ferré
#19332
Overall Influence
1916 - 1993 (77 years)
Léo Ferré was a French-born Monégasque poet and composer, and a dynamic and controversial live performer. He released some forty albums over this period, composing the music and the majority of the lyrics. He released many hit singles, particularly between 1960 and the mid-seventies. Some of his songs have become classics of the French chanson repertoire, including "Avec le temps", "C'est extra", "Jolie Môme" and "Paris canaille".
Go to Profile#19322
Meg Cabot
#19333
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Meggin Patricia Cabot is an American novelist. She has written and published over 50 novels of young adult and adult fiction and is best known for her young adult series The Princess Diaries, which was later adapted by Walt Disney Pictures into two feature films. Cabot has been the recipient of numerous book awards, including the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, the American Library Association Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, the Tennessee Volunteer State TASL Book Award, the Book Sense Pick, the Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, the IRA/CBC Young Adult Choice, and many others.
Go to Profile#19323
Scott Hall
#19334
Overall Influence
1958 - 2022 (64 years)
Scott Oliver Hall was an American professional wrestler. He was best known for his tenures with World Championship Wrestling under both his real name and ring name, the Diamond Studd, and with the World Wrestling Federation under the ring name Razor Ramon.
Go to Profile#19324
Richard Jolly
#19335
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Sir Arthur "Richard" Jolly, is a leading development economist who was named one of the fifty key thinkers globally in this field of economics. Jolly currently serves as Honorary Professor and Research Associate of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex focusing on issues of world development and the role of the UN in global governance. From 1982 to 2000 he was an Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, first as deputy executive director of UNICEF and from 1996 as Coordinator of the UNDP’s Human Development Report. He co-authored the influential book Adjustment with ...
Go to Profile#19325
Tim Curry
#19336
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Timothy James Curry is an English actor and singer. He played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show , reprising the role he had originated in the 1973 London and 1974 Los Angeles musical stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show.
Go to Profile#19326
Jean-Pierre Mignard
#19337
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jean-Pierre Mignard is a prominent French lawyer, lecturer, political advisor and author born in Saint-Cloud in 1951. He is most noted for his work as a lawyer and for his political involvement in France. Mignard is a longtime friend and informal advisor to former French President François Hollande and the godfather of two of his children. As chairman of the Haute Autorité pour les Primaires, he oversaw the organization of the French Socialist Party presidential primary of 2011, which was the first-ever major party open presidential primary to be held in the country. In 2016, just one day a...
Go to Profile#19327
Christoph Meinel
#19338
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Christoph Meinel is a German computer scientist and professor of Internet technologies and systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam. In the years 2004 to 2023 he was the scientific director and CEO of the HPI and has developed the openHPI learning platform with more than 1 million enrolled learners. In 2019, he was appointed to the New Internet IPv6 Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#19328
Donald Laub
#19339
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Donald R. Laub Sr. is an American retired plastic surgeon and founder of Interplast, which led multidisciplinary teams on reconstructive surgery missions to developing countries. Education Laub completed his undergraduate studies at Marquette University and earned an MD from the Marquette University School of Medicine in 1960. After completing his internship at the Yale School of Medicine, he moved westward to Stanford University, where he assumed an assistant professorship and co-founded a 6-year integrated surgical residency program as well as the Stanford Primary Care Associate Program. H...
Go to Profile#19329
Raghavan Narasimhan
#19340
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Raghavan Narasimhan was an Indian mathematician at the University of Chicago who worked on real and complex manifolds and who solved the Levi problem for complex manifolds. Early life and education He attended Loyola College in Madras, where, like many other well-known Indian mathematicians, he was taught by the French Jesuit priest Racine, and received his doctorate in 1963 from K. Chandrasekharan in Bombay. In 1966 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Narasimhan was a professor at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#19330
Walter Jackson Freeman III
#19341
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Walter Jackson Freeman III , was an American biologist, theoretical neuroscientist and philosopher who conducted research in rabbits' olfactory perception, using EEG. Based on a theoretical framework of neurodynamics that draws upon insights from chaos theory, he speculated that the currency of brains is primarily meaning, and only secondarily information.
Go to Profile#19331
Justin Chambers
#19342
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Justin Willman Chambers is an American actor and former model. He is best known for his role as Dr. Alex Karev in the ABC television medical drama Grey's Anatomy from 2005 to 2020. Born in Ohio, he went to Southeastern High School, South Charleston, and later studied acting at New York's HB Studio. Chambers began modeling after being approached by a modeling scout in Paris. He went on to represent fashion brands including Calvin Klein, Armani, and Dolce & Gabbana. Chambers began his acting career with a recurring role in the soap opera Another World and made his feature film debut with a supporting role in the comedy drama Liberty Heights .
Go to Profile#19332
Peter D. Hart
#19343
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Peter D. Hart is the chairman of Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1971, and is a senior counselor to TMG Strategies. Together with Robert Teeter or Bill McInturff, Hart and his company have provided NBC News and The Wall Street Journal with polls since 1989. More than 40 U.S. senators and 30 governors, among them Hubert Humphrey, Lloyd Bentsen, Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham, have been represented by Hart Research.
Go to Profile#19333
Karen Holbrook
#19344
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Karen Ann Holbrook is the regional chancellor of University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee since January 2, 2018. Career Holbrook earned her B.S. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in zoology. After teaching biology at Ripon College, she earned a Ph.D. in biological structure from the University of Washington School of Medicine in 1972, where she served as a postdoctoral fellow in dermatology, faculty member and research administrator. She then pursued further training in dermatology. She is an alumna of Gamma Phi Beta sorority.
Go to Profile#19334
Claudia Kemfert
#19345
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Claudia Kemfert is a German economics expert in the areas of energy research and environmental protection. She is a Professor of Energy Economics and Sustainability at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She heads the Energy, Transportation, and Environment department at the German Institute for Economic Research .
Go to Profile#19335
Eva Silverstein
#19346
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Eva Silverstein is an American theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and string theorist. She is a professor of physics at Stanford University and director of the Modern Inflationary Cosmology collaboration within the Simons Foundation Origins of the Universe initiative.
Go to Profile#19336
Douglas John Hall
#19347
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Douglas John Hall is an emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and a minister of the United Church of Canada. Prior to joining the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies in 1975 he was MacDougald Professor of Systematic Theology at St Andrew's College in the University of Saskatchewan , Principal of St Paul's College in the University of Waterloo , and minister of St Andrew's Church in Blind River, Ontario .
Go to Profile#19337
Colin Humphreys
#19348
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Sir Colin John Humphreys, is a British physicist. He is the Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. He is the former Goldsmiths' Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and the Professor of Experimental Physics at the Royal Institution in London. He served as President of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in 2002 and 2003. His research interests include "all aspects of electron microscopy and analysis, semiconductors , ultra-high temperature aerospace materials and superconductors." Humphreys also "studies the Bible when not purs...
Go to Profile#19338
Steven Salaita
#19349
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Steven Salaita is an American scholar, author and public speaker. He became the center of a controversy when the University of Illinois did not hire him as a professor of American Indian Studies following objections to a series of tweets critical of Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2014. He also experienced similar controversy during the hiring process at the American University of Beirut in 2016.
Go to Profile#19339
Jack Abramoff
#19350
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
Go to Profile#19340
Ralph Griswold
#19351
Overall Influence
1934 - 2006 (72 years)
Ralph E. Griswold was a computer scientist known for his research into high-level programming languages and symbolic computation. His language credits include the string processing language SNOBOL, SL5, and Icon.
Go to Profile#19341
Peter L. Hagelstein
#19352
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peter L. Hagelstein is an associate professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , affiliated with the Research Laboratory of Electronics . Hagelstein received a B.S. and M.S. in 1976 and Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1981, from MIT.
Go to Profile#19342
Roy M. Anderson
#19353
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sir Roy Malcolm Anderson is a leading international authority on the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases. He is the author, with Robert May, of the most highly cited book in this field, entitled Infectious Diseases of Humans: Dynamics and Control. His early work was on the population ecology of infectious agents before focusing on the epidemiology and control of human infections. His published research includes studies of the major viral, bacterial and parasitic infections of humans, wildlife and livestock. This has included major studies on HIV, SARS, foot and mouth disease, bov...
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Grover Krantz
#19354
Overall Influence
1931 - 2002 (71 years)
Grover Sanders Krantz was an American anthropologist and cryptozoologist; he was one of few scientists not only to research Bigfoot, but also to express his belief in the animal's existence. Throughout his professional career, Krantz authored more than 60 academic articles and 10 books on human evolution, and conducted field research in Europe, China, and Java. He was a member of Mensa and Intertel, high-IQ societies.
Go to Profile#19344
Jan Bergstra
#19355
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Johannes Aldert "Jan" Bergstra is a Dutch computer scientist. His work has focussed on logic and the theoretical foundations of software engineering, especially on formal methods for system design. He is best known as an expert on algebraic methods for the specification of data and computational processes in general.
Go to Profile#19345
John Clarke
#19356
Overall Influence
1948 - 2017 (69 years)
John Morrison Clarke was a New Zealand comedian, writer and satirist who lived and worked in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in both radio and television and also in print. He is principally known for his character Fred Dagg and his long-running collaboration with fellow satirist Bryan Dawe, which lasted from 1989 to his death in 2017, as well as for his success as a comic actor in Australian and New Zealand film and television.
Go to Profile#19346
William Ratliff
#19357
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
William Ratliff was a research fellow and curator of Americas Collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing in Latin America, China and U.S. foreign policy. He was also a research fellow of the Independent Institute and wrote on the economic and political development in East/Southeast Asia and Latin America. For over 20 years he was the editor for the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs and the Journal of Interamerican Studies. He testified before the U.S. Congress on his work monitoring elections around Latin America.
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Pier Paolo Pandolfi
#19358
Overall Influence
Pier Paolo Pandolfi is an Italian doctor, geneticist, molecular biologist, and cancer researcher. Early life and education Originally from Rome, Italy, Pandolfi studied medicine at the University of Perugia in Umbria in central Italy, where he began his research into acute promyelocytic leukemia. He received his MD in 1989, his Ph.D. in 1995, and did postgraduate work at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.
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Jon Franklin
#19359
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jon Daniel Franklin is an American writer. He was born in Enid, Oklahoma. He won the inaugural Pulitzer Prizes in two journalism categories both for his work as a science writer with the Baltimore Evening Sun. Franklin holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Maryland. He is currently professor emeritus of journalism at his alma mater; previously, Franklin taught creative writing at the University of Oregon and was the head of the technical journalism department at Oregon State University. He received honorary degrees from the University of Maryland in 1981 and Notre Dame de Namur Un...
Go to Profile#19349
Dave Cowens
#19360
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David William Cowens is an American former professional basketball player and NBA head coach. At , he played the center position and occasionally played power forward. Cowens spent most of his playing career with the Boston Celtics. He was the 1971 NBA Rookie of the Year and the 1973 NBA Most Valuable Player. Cowens won NBA championships as a member of the Celtics in 1974 and 1976. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1991. Cowens has also held coaching positions in the NBA, CBA, and WNBA.
Go to Profile#19350
David Harbater
#19361
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Harbater is an American mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania, well known for his work in Galois theory, algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry. Early life and education Harbater was born in New York City and attended Stuyvesant High School, where he was on the math team. After graduating in 1970, he entered Harvard University.
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