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
#24551
Peter Flora
#24562
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Peter Flora is an Austrian citizen and taught until his retirement in spring 2009 as a professor of sociology at the University of Mannheim. Peter Flora is a son of the Austrian drawer, caricaturist, graphic artist and illustrator Paul Flora.
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Wacław Szybalski
#24563
Overall Influence
1921 - 2020 (99 years)
Wacław Szybalski was a Polish-American medical researcher, geneticist and professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison Medical School. Early life Wacław Szybalski was born in September 1921 in Lwów, Poland, into a Polish intelligentsia family. His father Stefan was an engineer, and his mother, Michalina née Rakowska, was a Doctor of Chemistry. The Szybalski family maintained close friendships with numerous leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia in Lwów, including Professor Jan Czekanowski, the father of Polish anthropology,...
Go to Profile#24553
Lorna Goodison
#24564
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017 , serving in the role until 2020.
Go to Profile#24554
Anita Baker
#24565
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Anita Denise Baker is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for her soulful ballads, particularly from the height of the quiet storm period in the 1980s. Starting her career in the late 1970s with the funk band Chapter 8, Baker released her first solo album, The Songstress, in 1983. In 1986, she rose to fame following the release of her Platinum-selling second album, Rapture, which included the Grammy-winning single "Sweet Love". , Baker has won eight Grammy Awards and has four Platinum albums, along with two Gold albums. Baker is a contralto with a range of nearly three octaves.
Go to Profile#24555
Maurice R. Stein
#24566
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Maurice R. Stein is an American sociologist and innovator in higher education. Stein is co-recipient of the 1987 Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed by the American Sociological Association's Community and Urban Sociology Section, while his pedagogical innovations have been highlighted of late by Harvard University's Jeffrey Schnapp in Schnapp's studies in the digital humanities . Retired from Brandeis University since 2002, Stein resides with his spouse, Phyllis Stein , at their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a long-time member of the Harvard Institute for L...
Go to Profile#24556
Hasso Spode
#24567
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Hasso Spode is a German historian and sociologist. Biography After his childhood in East Germany, Spode fled to West Berlin where he studied philosophy, history, theology, and sociology. He is a professor in Hanover and director of the Historical Archive on Tourism at the Technical University in Berlin. The main focus of his research is historical anthropology and cultural history, but he also works in the field of social and political history. He has written over 200 articles, mostly in German, sometimes in English, and written or edited more than a dozen books. He is co-editor of Annals of Tourism Research, Voyage.
Go to Profile#24557
Raghu Sundaram
#24568
Overall Influence
Rangarajan K. "Raghu" Sundaram is an Indian-born American academic. He is the Dean of the New York University Stern School of Business, and the author or co-author of two books. Early life Sundaram was educated in India, where he earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Madras in 1982 and a master in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1984. He earned a master's degree and a PhD in Economics from Cornell University in 1987 and 1988 respectively.
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David Rock
#24569
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
David Peter Rock is an English academic who specializes in the history of Argentina. He is a retired professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who now lives in England.
Go to Profile#24559
Azadeh Kian
#24570
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut is an Iranian-French academic, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Sciences department and Director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University Paris Cité. She is included and recognized in the BBC project 100 Women.
Go to Profile#24560
Eugene Gu
#24571
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Eugene Gu is an American physician and social media personality. While he was in medical school, he founded a company called Ganogen to develop methods to use fetal tissue implants in organ transplantation. Work at Ganogen had ceased when he started his residency in 2015, but in 2016 he was subpoenaed as CEO of the company by the United States House Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood following the Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy.
Go to Profile#24561
Robert A. Rescorla
#24572
Overall Influence
1940 - 2020 (80 years)
Robert A. Rescorla was an American psychologist who specialized in the involvement of cognitive processes in classical conditioning focusing on animal learning and behavior. One of Rescorla's significant contributions to psychology, with co-creator Allan Wagner, was the Rescorla-Wagner Model of conditioning. This model expanded knowledge on learning processes. Rescorla also continued to develop research on Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental training. Due to his achievements, Rescorla received the American Psychological Association Awards of the Distinguished Scientific Contributions in 1...
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Rodney Baxter
#24573
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Rodney James Baxter FRS FAA is an Australian physicist, specialising in statistical mechanics. He is well known for his work in exactly solved models, in particular vertex models such as the six-vertex model and eight-vertex model, and the chiral Potts model and hard hexagon model. A recurring theme in the solution of such models, the Yang–Baxter equation, also known as the "star–triangle relation", is named in his honour.
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Herman Branover
#24574
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Herman Branover is a Russian Israeli physicist and Jewish educator. He is best known in the Jewish world as an author, translator, publisher, and educator. Branover is known in the scientific community as a pioneer in the field of magnetohydrodynamics . In his personal conduct he adheres to the customs and mystical philosophy of Chabad Hasidism.
Go to Profile#24564
Moeletsi Mbeki
#24575
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Moeletsi Goduka Mbeki is a South African political economist and the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think tank based at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a political analyst for Nedcor Bank. He is a member of the executive council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies which is based in London. He is the younger brother of former President Thabo Mbeki and son of ANC leader Govan Mbeki. He has been a frequent critic of President Mbeki.
Go to Profile#24565
Jennifer Warnes
#24576
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jennifer Jean Warnes is an American singer and songwriter. She has performed as a vocalist on a number of film soundtracks. She has won two Grammy Awards, in 1983 for the Joe Cocker duet Up Where We Belong and in 1987 for the Bill Medley duet The Time of My Life. Warnes also collaborated closely with Leonard Cohen.
Go to Profile#24566
Eliezer Rafaeli
#24577
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Eliezer Rafaeli was the Israeli founding President of the University of Haifa. Biography Rafaeli was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was in the Palmach from 1944 to 1948, and in the Israel Defense Forces from 1948 to 1951. He lived in Kibbutz Mishmar Hanegev from 1946 to 1952, and Kibbutz Maagan Michael from 1952 to 1957.
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Kenneth Bulmer
#24578
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Henry Kenneth Bulmer was a British writer, primarily of science fiction. Life Born in London, he married Pamela Buckmaster on 7 March 1953. They had one son and two daughters, and they divorced in 1981. Bulmer lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent where he died on 16 December 2005.
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David O. Russell
#24579
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
David Owen Russell is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. His early directing career includes the comedy films Spanking the Monkey , Flirting with Disaster , Three Kings , and I Heart Huckabees . He gained critical success with the biographical sports drama The Fighter , the romantic comedy-drama Silver Linings Playbook , and the dark comedy crime film American Hustle . The three films were commercially successful and acclaimed by critics, earning Russell three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, as well as a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Silver Linings Playbook and a Best Original Screenplay nomination for American Hustle.
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Donald Ross
#24580
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Donald Nixon Ross, FRCS was a South African-born British thoracic surgeon who was a pioneer of cardiac surgery and led the team that carried out the first heart transplantation in the United Kingdom in 1968. He developed the pulmonary autograft, known as the Ross procedure, for treatment of aortic valve disease.
Go to Profile#24570
Carson Wentz
#24581
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Carson James Wentz is an American football quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League . Wentz played college football at North Dakota State University, where he won two consecutive NCAA FCS national championships as the starter. He was selected second overall by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2016 NFL Draft, making him the highest drafted FCS player.
Go to Profile#24571
Wolfgang Baumeister
#24582
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Wolfgang P. Baumeister is a German molecular biologist and biophysicist. His research has been pivotal in the development of Cryoelectron tomography. Education and career After completing his Abitur, Wolfgang Baumeister studied biology, chemistry, and physics from 1966 to 1967 at the University of Münster and from 1967 to 1969 at the University of Bonn. At the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf he was a graduate student from 1970 to 1973 and a research associate from 1973 to 1980 in the department of biophysics. He received his Promotion in 1973 and his Habilitation in 1978. From 1981 to 19...
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Ray William Clough
#24583
Overall Influence
1920 - 2016 (96 years)
Ray William Clough, , was Byron L. and Elvira E. Nishkian Professor of structural engineering in the department of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the founders of the finite element method . His article in 1956 was one of the first applications of this computational method. He coined the term “finite elements” in an article in 1960. He was born in Seattle.
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Johnny Giles
#24584
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael John Giles is an Irish former association football player and manager best remembered for his time as a midfielder with Leeds United in the 1960s and 1970s. After retiring from management in 1985, Giles served as the senior analyst on RTÉ Sport's coverage of association football from 1986 until 2016. The FAI voted Giles as the greatest Irish player of the last 50 years at the UEFA Jubilee Awards in 2004.
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Vera Kublanovskaya
#24585
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Vera Nikolaevna Kublanovskaya was a Russian mathematician noted for her work on developing computational methods for solving spectral problems of algebra. She proposed the QR algorithm for computing eigenvalues and eigenvectors in 1961, which has been named as one of the ten most important algorithms of the twentieth century. This algorithm was proposed independently by the English computer scientist John G.F. Francis in 1959.
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Werner Jeanrond
#24586
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Werner Günter Adolf Jeanrond was Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibility for Dogmatics at the University of Oslo. He is retired. Background Jeanrond is a German Roman Catholic theologian. He was born in 1955 in Saarbrücken in the Saar Protectorate, now Saarland, Germany. He was raised in Kleinblittersdorf, a village on the German-French border. His father served as the village's mayor twice. In 2018, he was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology with special responsibility for Dogmatics at the University of Oslo. He was the first Catholic theologian to hold this post in the university's traditionally Lutheran Faculty of Theology.
Go to Profile#24576
Saied Reza Ameli
#24587
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Saied Reza Ameli is a professor of communication at the University of Tehran. He is currently a member of Department of Communications and the director of the UNESCO Chair on Cyberspace and Culture, and Cyberspace Policy Research Center, Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. Over the past decade, Ameli has been working on issues of Muslim minority identity in the West, and Muslim minority rights in UK, France and the U.S. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of of Cyberspace Studies. He was also Secretary of Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. He is the member of Sup...
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Sylke Tempel
#24588
Overall Influence
1963 - 2017 (54 years)
Sylke Tempel was a German author and journalist. At the time of her death, she had been the editor-in-chief of the foreign policy magazine Internationale Politik since 2008. Biography Tempel was born in Bayreuth, a town in the Free State of Bavaria. She studied history, political science and Jewish studies at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, prior to receiving a scholarship in New York between 1989 and 1991. She gained a PhD from Bundeswehr University Munich where she served as an assistant to Michael Wolffsohn. Beginning her journalistic career in 1993, she worked in Israel as a Middle East correspondent.
Go to Profile#24578
David L. Felten
#24589
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
David L. Felten is an American neuroscientist. He is associate dean of clinical sciences at the University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and was formerly associate dean of research at Oakland University and vice president for research and medical director of the Beaumont Research Institute.
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Joe Tait
#24590
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Joseph Tait was an American sports broadcaster who was the play-by-play announcer on radio for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association and both TV and radio for the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball. With the exception of two seasons in the early 1980s and illness during his final season, he was the Cavaliers' radio announcer from the team's inception in 1970 through the 2010–11 season. He won the Basketball Hall of Fame 2010 Curt Gowdy Media Award.
Go to Profile#24580
John-Paul Himka
#24591
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John-Paul Himka is an American-Canadian historian and retired professor of history of the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Himka received his BA in Byzantine-Slavonic Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 1971 and 1977 respectively. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation was Polish and Ukrainian Socialism: Austria, 1867–1890. As a historian Himka was a Marxist in the 1970s–80s, but became influenced by postmodernism in the 1990s. In 2012 he defined his methodology in history as "eclectic".
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Theaster Gates
#24592
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Theaster Gates is an American social practice installation artist and a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he still lives and works.
Go to Profile#24582
Armin van Buuren
#24593
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Armin Jozef Jacobus Daniël van Buuren is a Dutch DJ and record producer. Since 2001, he has hosted A State of Trance , a weekly radio show, which is broadcast to nearly 40 million listeners in 84 countries on over 100 FM radio stations. According to the website DJs and Festivals, "the radio show propelled him to stardom and helped cultivate an interest in trance music around the world".
Go to Profile#24583
Sankar Das Sarma
#24594
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sankar Das Sarma is an India-born American theoretical condensed matter physicist, who has worked in the broad research topics of theoretical physics, condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, quantum physics, and quantum information. He has been a member of the department of physics at University of Maryland, College Park since 1980.
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Nadia Abu El Haj
#24595
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nadia Abu El-Haj is an American anthropologist at Barnard College and Columbia University. The author of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society and The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology , Abu El-Haj was the subject of dueling online petitions arguing whether she should be tenured during the 2006–07 academic year when she was recommended for tenure. Abu El-Haj received tenure in November 2007.
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Ilme Schlichting
#24596
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ilme Schlichting is a German biophysicist. Academic work Ilme Schlichting studied biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg from 1979 to 1987. She earned a PhD in biology there in 1990. Schlichting pursued post-doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and at Brandeis University in Boston in the United States as a Feodor Lynen Fellow. From 1994 to 2001 she was head of a working group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. Since 2002 she is director of the department for Biomolecular Mechanisms at the Max Planck Institute for Medical ...
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Nick Chater
#24597
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, who works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. Education Chater read Psychology at Cambridge University. He first worked at Warwick University in 1996.
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Miriam E. Nelson
#24598
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Miriam E. Nelson is an American health and nutrition scholar, policy advisor, and author. She is the former president and CEO of Newman's Own Foundation, an independent, private foundation formed in 2005 by actor and race car driver Paul Newman to sustain the legacy of his philanthropic work. An international leader, scientist, and social entrepreneur, Nelson has been the principal investigator of multiple studies on exercise, nutrition, and public health, which have informed national public policy initiatives to improve public health. She had a controversial tenure as president of Hampshire ...
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Beatrice Heuser
#24599
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Beatrice Heuser , is an historian and political scientist. She holds the chair of International Relations at the University of Glasgow. Life Heuser has a B.A. in History from Bedford College, a M.A. in International History from the London School of Economics and a D.Phil. in Political Science from the University of Oxford. In addition, she holds a Higher Doctorate from the University of Marburg. From 1989 to 1991, she worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Subsequently, she became a lecturer and later a professor of Strategic Studies at King's College London. She ha...
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Doris Lessing
#24600
Overall Influence
1919 - 2013 (94 years)
Doris May Lessing was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia , where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing , the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence , The Golden Notebook , The Good Terrorist , and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives .
Go to Profile#24590
Hao Huang
#24601
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Hao Huang is a mathematician known for solving the sensitivity conjecture. Huang is currently an associate professor in the mathematics department at National University of Singapore. Huang was an assistant professor from 2015 to 2021 in the Department of Mathematics at Emory University. He obtained his Ph.D in mathematics from UCLA in 2012 advised by Benny Sudakov. His postdoctoral research was done at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and DIMACS at Rutgers University in 2012-2014, followed by a year at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications at University of Minnesota.
Go to Profile#24591
Arthur G. Bedeian
#24602
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Arthur G. Bedeian is an American business theorist and Emeritus Professor of Management at Louisiana State University, known from his book coauthored with Daniel A. Wren, titled "The evolution of management thought."
Go to Profile#24592
Rachel Cusk
#24603
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer. Childhood and education Cusk was born in Saskatoon to British parents in 1967, the second of four children with an older sister and two younger brothers, and spent much of her early childhood in Los Angeles. She moved to her parents' native Britain in 1974, settling in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She comes from a wealthy Catholic family, and was educated at St Mary's Convent in Cambridge. She studied English at New College, Oxford.
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Samir Nasri
#24604
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Samir Nasri is a French former professional footballer. He primarily played as an attacking midfielder and a winger, although he had also been deployed in central midfield. Nasri was known for his dribbling, ball control and passing ability. He was described as a player whose "vision and imagination make him an unpredictable opponent". His playing style, ability and cultural background drew comparisons to former French player Zinedine Zidane.
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Brian Conrey
#24605
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Brian Conrey is an American mathematician and the executive director of the American Institute of Mathematics. His research interests are in number theory, specifically analysis of L-functions and the Riemann zeta function.
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Joseph H. Eberly
#24606
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Joseph Henry Eberly is a physicist who holds the positions of Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. Early life and education Joseph Henry Eberly was born in 1935. Eberly completed his undergraduate studies at the Pennsylvania State University in 1957 and obtained his Ph.D in physics from Stanford University in 1962.
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Dawoud Bey
#24607
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dawoud Bey is an American photographer and educator known for his large-scale art photography and street photography portraits, including American adolescents in relation to their community, and other often marginalized subjects. In 2017, Bey was named a fellow and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and is regarded as one of the "most innovative and influential photographers of his generation".
Go to Profile#24597
Samuel O. Thier
#24608
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Samuel Osiah Thier was professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard University. He earned his medical degree at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1960. He previously served as the president of Brandeis University from 1991–1994 and the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1994-96.
Go to Profile#24598
Salem Chaker
#24609
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Salem Chaker is an Algerian linguist. A specialist in Berber linguistics , he is recognized as the "dean" of modern Berber studies. Biography Salem Chaker was born in 1950 in Nevers, France. In a family from Ait Iraten tribe of Kabylia. He studied at the University of Provence, then in Paris Descartes University where he received his Doctorat de troisième cycle in 1973 and a Doctorat d'Etat in 1978. After an early career in the Faculty of Letters of Algiers and CRAPE from 1973 to 1981, he joins University of Provence serving as an associate professor of Berber Language from 1981 to 1983, and...
Go to Profile#24599
Hermann Maurer
#24610
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Hermann Adolf Maurer is an Austrian computer scientist, serving as Professor of Computer Science at the Graz University of Technology. He has supervised over 40 dissertations, written more than 20 books and over 600 scientific articles, and started or been involved with a number of companies.
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Martin Anderson
#24611
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Martin Anderson was an American academic, economist, author, policy analyst, and adviser to US politicians and presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Under the Nixon administration, Anderson was credited with helping to end the military draft and creating the all-volunteer armed forces. Under Reagan, Anderson helped draft the administration’s original economic program that became known as “Reaganomics.” A political conservative and a strong proponent of free-market capitalism, he was influenced by libertarianism and opposed government regulations that limited individual freedo...
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