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
#24351
Tahsin Özgüç
#24362
Overall Influence
1916 - 2005 (89 years)
Tahsin Özgüç was an eminent Turkish field archaeologist. The careers of Tahsin Özgüç and his wife, Nimet Özgüç, began after World War II and lasted for nearly 60 years. He was said to be the doyen of Anatolian archaeology.
Go to Profile#24352
John A. Hostetler
#24363
Overall Influence
1918 - 2001 (83 years)
John A. Hostetler was an American author, educator, and scholar of Amish and Hutterite societies. Some of his works are still in print. Life John Andrew Hostetler was born to an Old Order Amish family in the Kishacoquillas Valley region of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, the fifth of seven children of Joseph and Nancy Hostetler. At the age of eleven, his parents moved to Iowa. As a youth he supervised his father's turkey operation, took courses on poultry raising, and received a poultry-judging license from the American Poultry Association. He discovered that he enjoyed reading more than raising turkeys and feeding hogs.
Go to Profile#24353
James A. McNamara
#24364
Overall Influence
James A. McNamara Jr. is an American-trained, board certified, orthodontist. He is known for his development of McNamara analysis, one of the more popular methods of cephalometric analysis in cephalometry.
Go to Profile#24354
Jiří Grygar
#24365
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Jiří Grygar is a Czech astronomer, popularizer of science and Kalinga Prize laureate. Career After studying physics at the Masaryk University in Brno and astronomy at the Charles University in Prague he joined the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Department of Stellar Astronomy in Ondřejov. Twenty years later he moved to the Institute of Physics, Low Temperature Physics Department at Řež, where he remained for more than ten years. Shortly after the Velvet Revolution he joined the High Energy Physics Department at the same institution. From 1992 to 1998, Grygar chaired the Czech Astronomical Society.
Go to Profile#24355
Gerry Conway
#24366
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Gerard Francis Conway is an American comic book writer, comic book editor, screenwriter, television writer, and television producer. He is known for co-creating the Marvel Comics vigilante antihero the Punisher as well as the Scarlet Spider , and the first Ms. Marvel, and also writing the death of the character Gwen Stacy during his long run on The Amazing Spider-Man in the story arc, "The Night Gwen Stacy Died".
Go to Profile#24356
Robert Morgan
#24367
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Robert Morgan is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist. Life He studied at North Carolina State University as an engineering and mathematics major, transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an English major, graduating in 1965, and completed an MFA degree at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 1968.
Go to Profile#24357
Jeremy Jennings
#24368
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jeremy Jennings is an English political theorist and professor of political theory at King's College London. He is predominantly interested in the history of political thought, often with specific reference to France. He has authored a number of books on political topics, including the works of Georges Sorel, syndicalism and socialism. He became the founding editor of the European Journal of Political Theory. His other interests include political ideology and contemporary political theory. Jennings has been employed by the universities of Swansea and then Birmingham.
Go to Profile#24358
Michael Klausner
#24369
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Michael Klausner is the Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He has been a member of the Stanford Law School faculty since 1997. He works in the areas of corporate law, corporate governance, and financial regulation.
Go to Profile#24359
Hank Azaria
#24370
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Henry Albert Azaria is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He is known for voicing many characters in the animated sitcom The Simpsons since 1989, most notably Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy, Snake Jailbird, and formerly Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Lou, Carl Carlson, and Bumblebee Man, among others. He gained recognition after becoming a series regular in its second season. For his work, he has won six Primetime Emmy Awards, an Annie Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Go to Profile#24360
Rubel Shelly
#24371
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dr. Rubel Shelly is an author, minister, and professor at Lipscomb University. He is the former president of Rochester University . Life Shelly began as an instructor in the department of Religion and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University in 1975. In 1978, Shelly began preaching as Senior Minister for the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, formerly known as the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, in Nashville, Tennessee where he continued until 2005. While preaching at Woodmont Hills, he also taught at Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Tennessee State University. ...
Go to Profile#24361
Van Johnson
#24372
Overall Influence
1916 - 2008 (92 years)
Charles Van Dell Johnson was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson was described as the embodiment of the "boy-next-door wholesomeness" which made him a popular Hollywood star in the 1940s and 1950s, playing "the red-haired, freckle-faced soldier, sailor, or bomber pilot who used to live down the street" in MGM films during the war years, with such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, A Guy Named Joe, and The Human Comedy. He made occasional World War II films through the end of the 1960s, and he played a military officer in one of his final feature films in 1992.
Go to Profile#24362
Evgeny Golod
#24373
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Evgenii Solomonovich Golod was a Russian mathematician who proved the Golod–Shafarevich theorem on class field towerss. As an application, he gave a negative solution to the Kurosh–Levitzky problem on the nilpotency of finitely generated nil algebras, and so to a weak form of Burnside's problem.
Go to Profile#24363
Harvey Chochinov
#24374
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Harvey Max Chochinov is a Canadian academic and psychiatrist from Winnipeg, Canada. He is a leading authority on the emotional dimensions of end-of-life, and on supportive and palliative care. He is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba and a Senior Scientist at CancerCare Manitoba Research Institute.
Go to Profile#24364
Jennifer Jones
#24375
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Jennifer Jones , also known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress and mental-health advocate. Over the course of her career that spanned more than five decades, she was nominated for the Oscar five times, including one win for Best Actress, and a Golden Globe Award win for Best Actress in a Drama.
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Howard H. Stevenson
#24376
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Howard H. Stevenson is the Sarofim-Rock Baker Foundation Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Forbes magazine described him as Harvard Business School's "lion of entrepreneurship" in a 2011 article. Howard is credited with defining entrepreneurship as "the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control." INC Magazine described Howard's definition of entrepreneurship as "the best answer ever."
Go to Profile#24366
Takayuki Tatsumi
#24377
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Takayuki Tatsumi is a Japanese scholar. He is a professor at Keio University, where he has taught literary theory and American literature since 1989. As an avid science fiction fan, he authored many books and essays on science fiction. He received Nihon SF Taisho prize in 2000 for Nihon SF ronsōshi.
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Tamara Morshchakova
#24378
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Tamara Georgievna Morshchakova is a Soviet and Russian jurist. She worked as a judge in the Russian Constitutional Court. Tamara Morshchakova was a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights until 2019.
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Wilfrid Desan
#24379
Overall Influence
1908 - 2001 (93 years)
Wilfrid Desan was a professor in philosophy best known for introducing French existentialism and especially the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre to the United States. He was a native of Belgium who emigrated to the United States in 1948, where he gained a doctorate from Harvard University in 1951 and met his wife Elisabeth. In 1952, he gained a lectureship at the philosophy department of Kenyon College. In 1957, he joined Georgetown University where he remained for the rest of his academic career and where he enjoyed a good reputation as teacher and a clear writer. He also had appointments as dist...
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Daniel Johnson
#24380
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Daniel Benedict Johnson is a British journalist and author who was the founding editor of Standpoint magazine. Since 2018, he has been founding editor of online journalism platform www.thearticle.com, an associate editor of The Critic magazine and commentator for The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, and The Daily Telegraph.
Go to Profile#24370
Hans Dobbertin
#24381
Overall Influence
1952 - 2006 (54 years)
Hans Dobbertin was a German cryptographer who is best known for his work on cryptanalysis of the MD4, MD5, and original RIPEMD hash functions, and for his part in the design of the new version of the RIPEMD hash function. He was a member of the German Federal Office for Information Security and professor at the Ruhr University in Bochum.
Go to Profile#24371
Silvana Tenreyro
#24382
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
María Silvana Tenreyro is a British-Argentine economist who is professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and an external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee since July 2017. She served as the president of the European Economic Association for 2021.
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Melvin Laird
#24383
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Melvin Robert Laird Jr. was an American politician, writer and statesman. He was a U.S. congressman from Wisconsin from 1953 to 1969 before serving as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon. Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam War; he coined the expression "Vietnamization," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces. First elected in 1952, Laird was the last living Representative elected to the 83rd Congress at the time of his death.
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Harold M. Schulweis
#24384
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Harold M. Schulweis was an American rabbi and author. He was the longtime spiritual Leader at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California. Biography Schulweis was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1925 to secular parents who respected Zionism and Jewish traditions. His father was an editor of The Jewish Daily Forward. His early Jewish education was influenced by his grandfather, Rabbi Avraham Rezak, who introduced him to the Talmud. In 1945, Schulweis graduated Yeshiva University with a degree in philosophy. Later Schulweis enrolled in the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he studied under Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Go to Profile#24374
Dan Carey
#24385
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Daniel De Mussenden Carey is an English record producer, songwriter, mixer and remixer. He owns his own studio in South London and runs the record label Speedy Wunderground. In 2014, Carey received two Mercury Prize nominations for his production work on two nominated albums: Everybody Down by Kae Tempest and First Mind by Nick Mulvey. In 2019, Carey earned two further Mercury Prize nominations for his production work on the albums Schlagenheim by Black Midi and Dogrel by Fontaines D.C.
Go to Profile#24375
Rupert Murdoch
#24386
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media proprietor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK , in Australia , in the US , book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News . He was also the owner of Sky , 21st Century Fox , and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of billion Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world ...
Go to Profile#24376
Richard N. Gardner
#24387
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Richard Newton Gardner was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Spain and the United States Ambassador to Italy. He was also a professor emeritus of law at Columbia Law School.
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Bruce A. Ware
#24388
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Bruce A. Ware is an American theologian, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and a key figure in the debate over open theism. Education A.S. Judson Baptist CollegeCertif. Capernwray Bible SchoolB.A. Whitworth CollegeM.Div. and Th.M. Western Conservative Baptist SeminaryM.A. University of WashingtonPh.D. Fuller Theological Seminary
Go to Profile#24378
Michael Landau
#24389
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael Christopher Landau is an American musician, audio engineer, and record producer. He is a session musician and guitarist who has played on many albums since the early 1980s with Boz Scaggs, Minoru Niihara, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, Seal, Michael Jackson, James Taylor, Helen Watson, Luis Miguel, Richard Marx, Steve Perry, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins on "Two Hearts" and "Loco in Acapulco", Roger Daltrey, Stevie Nicks, Glenn Frey, Eros Ramazzotti, Vasco Rossi, Whitney Houston, and Miles Davis. Landau, along with fellow session guitarists Dean Parks, Steve Lukather, Michael Thompson and Dann Huff, played on many of the major label releases recorded in Los Angeles from the 1980s–1990s.
Go to Profile#24379
Glenn Danzig
#24390
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Glenn Allen Anzalone , better known by his stage name Glenn Danzig, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is the founder of the rock bands Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig. He owns the Evilive record label as well as Verotik, an adult-oriented comic book publishing company.
Go to Profile#24380
Amos Smith
#24391
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Amos B. Smith III is an American chemist. Biography He is most notable for his research in the total synthesis of complex natural product, as well as the chemistry of mammalian pheromones and chemical communication.
Go to Profile#24381
Laurent C. Siebenmann
#24392
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Laurent Carl Siebenmann is a Canadian mathematician based at the Université de Paris-Sud at Orsay, France. After working for several years as a Professor at Orsay he became a Directeur de Recherches at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in 1976. He is a topologist who works on manifolds and who co-discovered the Kirby–Siebenmann class.
Go to Profile#24382
Mitsuhiro Yanagida
#24393
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
is a Japanese molecular biologist known for research on cell cycle and chromosome structure using the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. He was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society on 11 May 2000.
Go to Profile#24383
Kajol
#24394
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Kajol Devgan , known mononymously as Kajol, is an Indian actress. Described in the media as one of the most successful actresses of Hindi cinema, she is the recipient of numerous accolades, including six Filmfare Awards, among which she shares the record for most Best Actress wins with her late aunt Nutan. In 2011, she was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.
Go to Profile#24384
Arthur H. Rosenfeld
#24395
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Arthur Hinton Rosenfeld was a University of California, Berkeley physicist and California energy commissioner, dubbed the "Godfather of Energy Efficiency", for developing new standards which helped improve energy efficiency in California and subsequently worldwide.
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Benedict Groeschel
#24396
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Benedict Joseph Groeschel, C.F.R. was an American Franciscan friar, Catholic priest, retreat master, author, psychologist, activist, and television host. He hosted the television talk program Sunday Night Prime on the Eternal Word Television Network, as well as several serial religious specials.
Go to Profile#24386
Mark Haiman
#24397
Overall Influence
Mark David Haiman is a mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley who proved the Macdonald positivity conjecture for Macdonald polynomials. He received his Ph.D in 1984 in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Gian-Carlo Rota. Previous to his appointment at Berkeley, he held positions at the University of California, San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Phil Ramone
#24398
Overall Influence
1934 - 2013 (79 years)
Philip Rabinowitz , better known as Phil Ramone, was a South African-born American recording engineer, record producer, violinist and composer, who in 1958 co-founded A & R Recording, Inc., a recording studio with business partner Jack Arnold at 112 West 48th Street, New York, upstairs from the famous musicians' watering hole, Jim & Andy's, and several doors east of Manny's Music. The success of the original A & R Recording allowed it to expand into several studios and a record production company. He was described by Billboard as "legendary", and the BBC as a "CD pioneer".
Go to Profile#24388
Levon Helm
#24399
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Mark Lavon "Levon" Helm was an American musician who achieved fame as the drummer and one of the three lead vocalists for The Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Helm was known for his deeply soulful, country-accented voice, multi-instrumental ability, and creative drumming style, highlighted on many of the Band's recordings, such as "The Weight", "Up on Cripple Creek", and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down".
Go to Profile#24389
Keith Botsford
#24400
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Keith Botsford was an American/European writer, Professor Emeritus at Boston University and editor of News from the Republic of Letters. Biography Keith Botsford was born in Brussels, Belgium of an expatriate American father and an Italian mother. His mother was born Carolina Elena Rangoni-Machiavelli-Publicola-Santacroce, 2nd. daughter of the Marchesa Alda Rangoni. He grew up in a trilingual house, and was educated in English boarding schools. His father returned to the United States early in 1939, and together with his mother and brother, the Botsfords were expelled from Italy on the outb...
Go to Profile#24390
Eddie Guerrero
#24401
Overall Influence
1967 - 2005 (38 years)
Eduardo Gory Guerrero Llanes was an American professional wrestler. He was best known for his tenures in World Wrestling Entertainment and World Championship Wrestling . A prominent member of the Guerrero wrestling family, being the son of first-generation wrestler Gory Guerrero, he was widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential professional wrestlers of all time.
Go to Profile#24391
David W. Slater
#24402
Overall Influence
1921 - 2010 (89 years)
David Walker Slater was a Canadian economist, civil servant and former President of York University. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, he received a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1942 from the University of Manitoba. After serving with the Canadian Army in World War II in Europe , he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1947 from Queen's University. He received a Master of Arts degree in 1950 and a Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#24392
Steven P. Croley
#24403
Overall Influence
Steven Paul Croley is an American lawyer, Chief Policy Officer and General Counsel of Ford Motor Company and the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor . His practice areas include law reform, legal policy, regulation, oversight, and political law, with special emphasis on energy and the environment. His academic research and writing focus on administrative law, civil procedure, good government, and regulatory policy.
Go to Profile#24393
Alfred Bloom
#24404
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Alfred H. Bloom is an American psychologist and linguist. He was the executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University from 2020 to 2021. Before that, he was the vice chancellor of New York University Abu Dhabi from 2008 to 2019 and the president of Swarthmore College from 1991 to 2009.
Go to Profile#24394
Christopher Locke
#24405
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Christopher Locke was an American business analyst, consultant, journalist, author and speaker. He is known as a coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of two other books: Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy. In a Financial Times Group survey from 2001, Locke was named as one of the fifty leading business thinkers in the world.
Go to Profile#24395
Fernando Távora
#24406
Overall Influence
1923 - 2005 (82 years)
Fernando Luís Cardoso de Meneses de Tavares e Távora, ComSE, simply known as Fernando Távora , was a renowned Portuguese architect and professor. Biography The sixth of seven children and third of three sons of José Pinto Tavares de Mendonça Ferrão or José Ferrão de Tavares e Távora and wife Maria José do Amaral Ferrão Lobo Machado or Maria José Lobo de Sousa Machado Cardoso de Meneses, of the Viscounts of Paço de Nespereira, he inherited from his mother the House of Covilhã. He graduated in architecture from the Porto School of Fine Arts in 1952. Having sat the examination in Fine Composition for Professor of Architecture, he was later invited to become a Professor at the school.
Go to Profile#24396
Hung-Chang Lin
#24407
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Hung Chang Lin was a Chinese-American inventor and a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland. Early life and education Lin was born in Shanghai, China. He attended Shanghai Jiaotong University, China on a tennis scholarship. Lin graduated with B.S. in electrical engineering in 1941. In 1948 he received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. In 1956 he received the Doctor of Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.
Go to Profile#24397
Tina Howe
#24408
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mabel Davis "Tina" Howe was an American playwright. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.
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Roland Carl Backhouse
#24409
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Roland Carl Backhouse is a British computer scientist and mathematician. , he is Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at the University of Nottingham. Early life and education Backhouse was born and raised in the Thorntree district of Middlesbrough, an industrial town in the north-east of England. In 1959, he won a place at the then all-male Acklam Hall Grammar School before going on to Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1966. His doctorate was completed under the supervision of Jim Cunningham at Imperial College London.
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Rip Torn
#24410
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Elmore Rual "Rip" Torn Jr. was an American actor whose career spanned more than 60 years. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Marsh Turner in Cross Creek . Torn's portrayal of Artie the producer on The Larry Sanders Show received six Emmy Award nominations, winning in 1996. He also won an American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Male in a Series, and two CableACE Awards for his work on the show. Torn is also known for his roles as Zed in the Men in Black franchise and Patches O'Houlihan in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story .
Go to Profile#24400
John Tileston Edsall
#24411
Overall Influence
1902 - 2002 (100 years)
John Tileston Edsall was a protein scientist, who contributed significantly to the understanding of the hydrophobic interaction. He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
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