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
#26151
Ben Marcus
#26162
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ben Marcus is an American author and professor at Columbia University. He has written four books of fiction. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in publications including Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, The New York Times, GQ, Salon, McSweeney's, Time, and Conjunctions. He is also the fiction editor of The American Reader. His latest book, Notes From The Fog: Stories, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2018.
Go to Profile#26152
Lawrence J. DeLucas
#26163
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lawrence James DeLucas is an American biochemist who flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-50 as a Payload Specialist. He was born on July 11, 1950, in Syracuse, New York, and is currently married with three children. His recreational interests include basketball, scuba diving, bowling, model airplanes, astronomy and reading.
Go to Profile#26153
Marisa Tomei
#26164
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Marisa Tomei is an American actress. Her early appearances were in the soap opera As the World Turns and the first season of the sitcom A Different World . She gained prominence for her comedic performance in My Cousin Vinny , which earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received further nominations in the category for In the Bedroom and The Wrestler .
Go to Profile#26154
Daniel Richter
#26165
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Daniel Richter is a German artist. He is based in Berlin, and was previously active in Hamburg. He is known for large-scale oil paintings. Life and work Daniel Richter was born in 1962 in Eutin, West Germany. Richter attended Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1991 to 1995. Between 1992 and 1996 he studied with Werner Büttner, one of the protagonists, along with Martin Kippenberger, of the revival of expressive trends in painting during the 1980s, and worked as assistant to Albert Oehlen.
Go to Profile#26155
George Seifert
#26166
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
George Gerald Seifert is an American former football coach. He served as the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League . Seifert owned the second-greatest winning percentage in NFL history by a head coach at the time of his resignation as the 49ers head coach, second to Guy Chamberlin. Among coaches with at least 100 wins, his winning percentage is fifth best in football history.
Go to Profile#26156
Sergio Asti
#26167
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Sergio Asti was an Italian designer and architect, primarily known for his industrial designs for firms such as Artemide, Brionvega, , Gabbianelli, Heller, Knoll, Salviati, and Zanotta. Life and career Asti was born in Milan. After receiving his degree in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan, he opened his own design studio in 1956. That same year he became one of the founders of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale.
Go to Profile#26157
Curt Gowdy
#26168
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
Curtis Edward Gowdy was an American sportscaster. He called Boston Red Sox games on radio and TV for 15 years, and then covered many nationally televised sporting events, primarily for NBC Sports and ABC Sports in the 1960s and 1970s. He coined the nickname "The Granddaddy of Them All" for the Rose Bowl Game, taking the moniker from the Cheyenne Frontier Days in his native Wyoming.
Go to Profile#26158
Andrey Kuraev
#26169
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrey Vyacheslavovich Kuraev is an Orthodox theologian and missionary and a defrocked Protodeacon of the Russian Orthodox Church. Biography Kuraev studied at the Moscow Theological Academy Seminary between 1985 and 1988, and graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1992. He studied at the Bucharest Theological Institute, Bucharest, Romania between 1988 and 1990.
Go to Profile#26159
Roy Fuller
#26170
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Roy Broadbent Fuller CBE was an English writer, known mostly as a poet. He was born at Failsworth, Lancashire to lower-middle-class parents Leopold Charles Fuller and his wife Nellie , whose father was clerk to a workhouse master. His father, born at Fulham in 1884, was the illegitimate son of Minnie Augusta Fuller , daughter of a Soham police constable, Richard Fuller. Orphaned and subsequently raised with his elder sister, Minnie at Caithness, Leopold worked his way up to the position of works manager of a rubber-proofing mill at Hollinwood, Greater Manchester, dying in 1920.
Go to Profile#26160
Cristiano Castelfranchi
#26171
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Cristiano Castelfranchi is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Italian National Research Council. He teaches Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Siena. In 2003, he was made a fellow at the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence for pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence.
Go to Profile#26161
Josep Joan Moreso
#26172
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Josep Joan Moreso is a Spanish former head of Pompeu Fabra University and professor of philosophy of law. External links Presentation in Universia Personal website
Go to Profile#26162
Alonso Cueto
#26173
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alonso Cueto Caballero is a Peruvian author, university professor and newspaper columnist. His writing career has spanned nearly four decades, during which he has produced dozens of works of fiction, articles and essays. He has won numerous accolades for his work, and several of his novels have been adapted for film.
Go to Profile#26163
Krishna Palepu
#26174
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Krishna Palepu is an American academic, author, consultant and director of various corporations. He is the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He serves as Senior Adviser to the President of Harvard University for Global Strategy.
Go to Profile#26164
Rakesh Mishra
#26175
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Rakesh Kumar Mishra is an Indian scientist specializing in genomics and epigenetics. Mishra retired as the 6th director of CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, on the April 30th, 2021. He is currently the Director of TIGS, Bengaluru and holds J. C. Bose Fellowship at CCMB.
Go to Profile#26165
Patrick X. Gallagher
#26176
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Patrick Ximenes Gallagher was an American mathematician who pioneered large sieve theory and invented the larger sieve. Biography Early life Patrick Ximenes Gallagher was born on January 2, 1935, in Elizabeth, New Jersey to school superintendent Ralph P. Gallagher and elementary school teacher Natalie Forcheimer Gallagher. Gallagher graduated from Bound Brook High School and received a scholarship from the Harvard Club of New Jersey to attend Harvard University.
Go to Profile#26166
Sidney Redner
#26177
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sidney Redner is a Canadian-born physicist, professor, and a resident faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. He was formerly department chair of physics at Boston University. Redner has published over 200 journal articles, authored a book titled A Guide to First-Passage Processes , and coauthored a book titled A Kinetic View of Statistical Physics with Pavel L. Krapivsky and Eli Ben-Naim. His research focuses mainly on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and network structure. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 under Gene Stanley, ...
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Richard A. Tapia
#26178
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Richard Alfred Tapia is an American mathematician and University Professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, the university's highest academic title. In 2011, President Obama awarded Tapia the National Medal of Science. He is currently the Maxfield and Oshman Professor of Engineering; Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Office of Research and Graduate Studies; and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University.
Go to Profile#26168
Howard Stein
#26179
Overall Influence
1926 - 2011 (85 years)
Howard Mathew Stein was an American financier who is widely considered one of the fathers of the mutual fund industry. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine on August 24, 1970. Stein invented the first "no load" money market fund and created the first tax-free municipal bond fund.
Go to Profile#26169
Paul R. Patton
#26180
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul Robert Patton is Scientia Professor of Philosophy in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, where he has been since 2002. Patton is known for his publications and conference presentations on Australian Continental political philosophy.
Go to Profile#26170
Edward L. G. Bowell
#26181
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Edward L. G. "Ted" Bowell , is an American astronomer. Bowell was educated at Emanuel School London, University College, London, and the University of Paris. He was principal investigator of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search . He has discovered a large number of asteroids, both as part of LONEOS and in his own right before LONEOS began. Among the latter are the Jovian asteroids 2357 Phereclos, 2759 Idomeneus, 2797 Teucer, 2920 Automedon, 3564 Talthybius, 4057 Demophon, and 1988 AK. He also co-discovered the periodic comet 140P/Bowell-Skiff and the non-periodic comet C/1980 E1.
Go to Profile#26171
Daniel Siebert
#26182
Overall Influence
Daniel J. Siebert is an ethnobotanist, pharmacognosist, and author who lives in Southern California. Siebert has studied Salvia divinorum for over twenty years and was the first person to unequivocally identify Salvinorin A as the primary psychoactive substance of Salvia divinorum. In 1998, Siebert appeared in the documentary Sacred Weeds shown in the United Kingdom. He has discussed Salvia divinorum on National Public Radio, Fox News, CNN, Telemundo and his comments have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Times.
Go to Profile#26172
Robert Bierstedt
#26183
Overall Influence
1913 - 1998 (85 years)
Robert Bierstedt was an American sociologist who often wrote about sociological theory, culture, and constitutional law. He was a native of Burlington, Iowa, and graduated in philosophy from the University of Iowa in 1934. He received a master's degree in philosophy in 1935 and a doctorate in sociology in 1946 from Columbia University.
Go to Profile#26173
William Roy Branch
#26184
Overall Influence
1946 - 2018 (72 years)
William Roy "Bill" Branch was a British-South-African herpetologist. Branch studied at the University of Southampton where he remained until completing his Ph.D. degree . From 1972 he worked as a scientist in the Life Sciences Division of the Atomic Energy Board in Pretoria doing research on, inter alia, liver cancer, but returned to the University of Southampton in 1976 to take up a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Biology studying the synthesis of chemicals in the liver of foetal rabbits.
Go to Profile#26174
Nicholas de Lange
#26185
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Nicholas Robert Michael de Lange is a British Reform rabbi and historian. He is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge. Academic and literary career Nicholas de Lange is an emeritus fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has written and edited several books about Judaism and translated numerous works of fiction by Amos Oz, S. Yizhar and A. B. Yehoshua into English. In November 2007, he received the Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Translation from the Hebrew for his translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz.
Go to Profile#26175
William H. Macy
#26186
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
William Hall Macy Jr. is an American actor. His film career has been built on appearances in small, independent films, though he has also appeared in mainstream films. His starring roles include those in Fargo , Boogie Nights , Mystery Men , Jurassic Park III , Cellular , Bobby , Wild Hogs , and Shorts . Macy has won two Emmy Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards, while his performance in Fargo earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. From 2011 to 2021, he played Frank Gallagher, a main character in Shameless, the Showtime adaptation of the British television series.
Go to Profile#26176
John Kelsey
#26187
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
John Kelsey is a cryptographer who works at NIST. His research interests include cryptanalysis and design of symmetric cryptography primitives , analysis and design of cryptographic protocols, cryptographic random number generation, electronic voting, side-channel attacks on cryptography implementations, and anonymizing communications systems. He previously worked at Certicom and Counterpane Internet Security.
Go to Profile#26177
James J. Wynne
#26188
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James J. Wynne is an American physicist at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. Wynne pioneered the use of excimer lasers for medical applications, most notably LASIK. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on February 2, 2013, from U.S. President Obama, together with Rangaswamy Srinivasan and Samuel Blum for their contributions to laser eye surgery.
Go to Profile#26178
Lee Edwards
#26189
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Lee Willard Edwards is an American academic and author, currently a fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is a historian of the conservative movement in the United States. Early life and education Edwards was born in Chicago in 1932. Edwards says he was influenced by the politics of his parents, both anti-communist. His father Willard was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune.
Go to Profile#26179
John Byrne
#26190
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Patrick Byrne was a Scottish playwright and designer. He wrote The Slab Boys Trilogy, plays which explore working-class life in Scotland, and the TV dramas Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne was also a painter, printmaker and theatre designer.
Go to Profile#26180
Graeme Clark
#26191
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Graeme Milbourne Clark AC is an Australian Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. Worked in ENT surgery, electronics and speech science contributed towards the development of the multiple-channel cochlear implant. His invention was later marketed by Cochlear Limited.
Go to Profile#26181
Nobuyo Maeda
#26192
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Nobuyo N. Maeda is a Japanese geneticist and medical researcher, who works on complex human diseases including atherosclerosis, diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly known for creating the first mouse model for atherosclerosis. Maeda has worked in the United States since 1978; as of 2017, she is the Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#26182
Vladimir Kadyshevsky
#26193
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Vladimir Kadyshevsky was a Russian theoretical physicist. Biography Kadyshevsky was born on 5 May 1937 in Moscow. He studied at the Suvorov Military School in Sverdlovsk from 1946 to 1954, before entering the physics department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University .
Go to Profile#26183
Matthew Pinsent
#26194
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Sir Matthew Clive Pinsent, is an English rower and broadcaster. During his rowing career, he won 10 world championship gold medals and four consecutive Olympic gold medals. Since retiring, he has worked as a sports broadcaster for the BBC.
Go to Profile#26184
Tom Hardy
#26195
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Edward Thomas Hardy is an English actor, producer, and screenwriter. After studying acting at the Drama Centre London, he made his film debut in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down . He had supporting roles in Star Trek: Nemesis and RocknRolla , and went on to star in Bronson , Warrior , Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , Lawless , This Means War , and Locke . In 2015, he starred as "Mad" Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road and both Kray twins in Legend, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Revenant. He has appeared in three Christopher Nolan films: Inception , The Dark Knight Rises as Bane, and Dunkirk .
Go to Profile#26185
Hiroshi Inose
#26196
Overall Influence
1927 - 2000 (73 years)
was a Japanese electrical engineer, known as the inventor of the Time-Slot Interchange system , which is basic to modern digital telephone switches. Inose was highly involved within his career. He held positions such as director general, chairman, associate professor, and president specific committees pertaining to engineering and technology. He was awarded with many honorific titles. In 1976 he received the Marconi Prize, in 1993 the Harold Pender Award, and in 1994 the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal.
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Gareth Barry
#26197
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Gareth Barry is an English former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He made 653 Premier League appearances for Aston Villa, Manchester City, Everton and West Bromwich Albion, the highest number of Premier League appearances in history. He also represented England at international level.
Go to Profile#26187
R. S. Krishnan
#26198
Overall Influence
1911 - 1999 (88 years)
Rappal Sangameswaran Krishnan was an Indian experimental physicist and scientist. He was the Head of the department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science and the vice chancellor of the University of Kerala. He is known for his pioneering researches on colloid optics and a discovery which is now known as Krishnan Effect. He was a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the Institute of Physics, London and a recipient of the C. V. Raman Prize. 25 students were guided by RSKrishnan for Ph D. Dr T N Vasudevan was the 25th. Prof Vasudevan retired from ...
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Anthony Aveni
#26199
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Anthony Francis Aveni is an American academic anthropologist, astronomer, and author, noted in particular for his extensive publications and contributions to the field of archaeoastronomy. With an academic career spanning over four decades, Aveni is recognized for his influence on the development of archaeoastronomy as a discipline in the latter 20th century. He has specialized in the study of ancient astronomical practices in the Americas, and is one of the founders of research into the historical astronomy of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. He held an endowed chair as the Russell Colga...
Go to Profile#26189
Philip Kaufman
#26200
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Philip Kaufman is an American film director and screenwriter who has directed fifteen films over a career spanning nearly five decades. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award along with nominations for an Academy Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. He has been described as a "maverick" and an "iconoclast," notable for his versatility and independence often directing eclectic and controversial films. He is considered an "auteur" whose films have always expressed his personal vision. Kaufman's works have included genres such as realism, horror, fantasy, erotica, western, and ...
Go to Profile#26190
Edwina Currie
#26201
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Edwina Currie is a British writer, broadcaster and former politician, serving as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire from 1983 until 1997. She was a Junior Health Minister for two years, resigning in 1988 during the salmonella-in-eggs controversy.
Go to Profile#26191
Olivier Dubuquoy
#26202
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Olivier Dubuquoy is a French geographer, film director and environmental activist known for his fight against the pollution of the Mediterranean by red sludge and his fighting for an end to our dependency on fossil fuels responsible for global warming. He is the founder of the citizens' movement Nation Océan and the society for the preservation of climate and the marine environment ZEA.
Go to Profile#26192
Jessica Chastain
#26203
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Jessica Michelle Chastain is an American actress and producer. Known for primarily starring in projects with feminist themes, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, in addition to nominations for two Tony Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012.
Go to Profile#26193
Vaughan Lowe
#26204
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alan Vaughan Lowe KC is a barrister and academic specialising in the field of international law. Chichele Professor of Public International Law in the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, 1999–2012; Emeritus Professor of International Law and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, since 2012. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales at Gray's Inn, of which he is a Bencher, in 1993 and appointed Queen's Counsel on 28 March 2008. He practices from Essex Court Chambers, London. He is a member of l'Institut de droit international.
Go to Profile#26194
Jiyuan Yu
#26205
Overall Influence
1964 - 2016 (52 years)
Jiyuan Yu was a Chinese moral philosopher noted for his work on virtue ethics. Yu was a long-time and highly admired Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York, starting in 1997. Prior to his professorship, Yu completed a three-year post as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England . He received his education in China at both Shandong University and Renmin University, in Italy at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and in Canada at the University of Guelph. His primary areas of research and teaching included Ancient Greek Philosoph...
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Cherri M. Pancake
#26206
Overall Influence
Cherri M. Pancake is an ethnographer and computer scientist who works as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and Intel Faculty Fellow at Oregon State University, and as the director of the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science & Engineering. She is known for her pioneering work on usability engineering for high performance computing. In 2018 she was elected for a two-year term as president of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Go to Profile#26196
Wolfgang Schluchter
#26207
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Wolfgang Schluchter is a German sociologist and, as of 2006, professor emeritus at Heidelberg University. Schluchter is recognized as a leading sociologist of religion and an authority on the history of sociological theory, in particular on the work of Max Weber. He was one of the editors of the , alongside Wolfgang J. Mommsen and . succeeded Mommsen after he died in 2004. The project was completed in June 2020, with forty-seven volumes. Schluchter was visiting professor at several universities worldwide, including the University of Pittsburgh, The New School for Social Research, and the Uni...
Go to Profile#26197
Jonah Raskin
#26208
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jonah Raskin is an American writer who left an East Coast university teaching position to participate in the 1970s radical counterculture as a freelance journalist, then returned to the academy in California in the 1980s to write probing studies of Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg and reviews of northern California writers whom he styled as "natives, newcomers, exiles and fugitives." Beginning as a lecturer in English at Sonoma State University in 1981, he moved to chair of the Communications Studies Department from 1988 to 2007, while serving as a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat.
Go to Profile#26198
D. G. Hart
#26209
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Darryl G. Hart is an American religious and social historian. Hart is Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He previously served as dean of academic affairs at Westminster Seminary California from 2000 to 2003, taught church history and served as librarian at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, directed the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College, and was Director of Partnered Projects, Academic Programs, and Faculty Development at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. He is ...
Go to Profile#26199
Jacques Lewiner
#26210
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jacques Lewiner is a French physicist and inventor. He is Professor and Honorary Scientific Director of École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris , and dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at PSL Research University.
Go to Profile#26200
André Miquel
#26211
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
André Miquel was a French Arabist and historian, specialist of Arabic literature and Arabic language. Biography André Miquel was born in Mèze, Hérault on 26 September 1929. He studied literature. A student of the École normale supérieure which he joined in 1950, agrégé de grammaire and docteur ès lettres, from 1976 to 1997, he was holder of the Chair of classical Arabic language and literature at the Collège de France, of which he was general administrator from 1991 to 1997, after being that of the Bibliothèque nationale from 1984 to 1987.
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