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
#34401
Fernando Q. Gouvêa
#34413
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Fernando Quadros Gouvêa is a Brazilian number theorist and historian of mathematics who won the Lester R. Ford Award of the Mathematical Association of America in 1995 for his exposition of Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. He also won the Beckenbach Book Prize of the MAA in 2007 for his book with William P. Berlinghoff, Math through the Ages: A Gentle History for Teachers and Others . He is the Carter Professor of Mathematics at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
Go to Profile#34402
Steven Shafer
#34414
Overall Influence
Steven Shafer is a professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University. In 2011, the International Society of Anaesthetic Pharmacology gave him their lifetime achievement award. Education Shafer graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. He received his M.D. from Stanford and completed his anesthesia residency at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#34403
P. E. Easterling
#34415
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Patricia Elizabeth Easterling, FBA is an English classical scholar, recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first — and, so far, only — woman to hold the post.
Go to Profile#34404
Danièle Pistone
#34416
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Danièle Pistone is a French musicologist, emeritus professor at the University Paris Sorbonne 4. Biography In addition to her musical studies Since 1971, she has been teaching at the University of Paris-Sorbonne where she was appointed professor of history of music in 1981.
Go to Profile#34405
David Mellor
#34417
Overall Influence
1930 - 2009 (79 years)
David Rogerson Mellor was an English designer, manufacturer, craftsman and retailer. Regarded as one of the best-known designers in Britain, Mellor specialised in metalwork and especially cutlery. He also produced many other designs, including for bus shelters and the traffic light system in use across the United Kingdom, British Crown Dependencies, and British overseas territories.
Go to Profile#34406
C. Nash Herndon
#34418
Overall Influence
1916 - 1998 (82 years)
Claude Nash Herndon Jr. was an American human geneticist who taught and conducted research at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. He was the school's senior associate dean for research and development for many years.
Go to Profile#34407
Marcus Morton Rhoades
#34419
Overall Influence
1903 - 1991 (88 years)
Marcus Morton Rhoades was an American cytogeneticist. Education He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1927, a Master of Science degree in 1928 from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. degree in 1932 from Cornell University where he was a trainee of Rollins A. Emerson alongside future Nobel Prize winners George Beadle and Barbara McClintock, and completed a thesis on the topic of cytoplasmic male sterility in maize.
Go to Profile#34408
Scott Sheffield
#34420
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Scott Sheffield is a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research field is theoretical probability. Research Much of Sheffield's work examines conformal invariant objects which arise in the study of two-dimensional statistical physics models. He studies the Schramm-Loewner evolution SLE and its relations to a variety of other random objects. For example, he proved that SLE describes the interface between two Liouville quantum gravity surfaces that have been conformally welded together. In joint work with Oded Schramm, he showed that contour lines of the Gaussian free field are related to SLE.
Go to Profile#34409
Gregory Clark
#34421
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Gregory Clark is a British-Australian diplomat, journalist, author and educator resident in Japan since 1976. Biography Clark was born in Cambridge, England, where his father Colin Clark was a statistician who worked with John Maynard Keynes at the University of Cambridge. The family moved to Australia in 1938 and Clark grew up there. He enrolled in the University of Oxford at the age of sixteen.
Go to Profile#34410
AnnMarie Wolpe
#34422
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
AnnMarie Wolpe was a South African anti-apartheid activist, sociologist and feminist. Her husband Harold Wolpe was also a South African anti-apartheid activist who was imprisoned along with Nelson Mandela.
Go to Profile#34411
Torsten Oltmanns
#34423
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Torsten Oltmanns is a German manager, consultant and author. He focuses on strategy and stakeholder management as well as digitalisation. Life Torsten Oltmanns studied economics at the University of Cologne and at the same time he was trained at the Cologne School of Journalism on economics and politics. In 1993 he obtained his diploma from the University of Cologne with a thesis on journalism. He published several articles touching on economic themes.
Go to Profile#34412
Sabina Leonelli
#34424
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sabina Leonelli is a philosopher of science and professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. She is well known for her work on scientific practices, data-centric science, and open science policies. She was awarded the 2018 Lakatos award for her book Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study .
Go to Profile#34413
G. Alexander Heard
#34425
Overall Influence
1917 - 2009 (92 years)
George Alexander Heard was chancellor of Vanderbilt University from 1963 to 1982. He was also a political scientist and adviser to U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Go to Profile#34414
Sarah Broadie
#34426
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Sarah Jean Broadie was a British philosopher, a Professor of Moral Philosophy and Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews. Broadie specialised in ancient philosophy, with a particular emphasis on Aristotle and Plato. Her work engages with metaphysics and both ancient and contemporary ethics. She has achieved numerous honours throughout her career as an academic philosopher. Broadie studied Greats at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1960. Previously she has worked at the University of Edinburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Yale, Rutgers, and Princeton.
Go to Profile#34415
Peter Pulay
#34427
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter Pulay is a theoretical chemist. He is the Roger B. Bost Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arkansas, United States. One of his most important contributions is the introduction of the gradient method in quantum chemistry. This allows the prediction of the geometric structure of a molecule using computational chemical programs to be almost routine. He is the main author of the PQS computational chemistry program.
Go to Profile#34416
Alison Singer
#34428
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Alison Singer is the president of the Autism Science Foundation . She has also served on the IACC. She was formerly an executive vice president of Autism Speaks and as a vice president at NBC. Research and advocacy Singer started the Autism Science Foundation after resigning from Autism Speaks in 2009, due to her view that it should not spend money on studying the scientifically discredited link between MMR vaccine and autism. She discourages their portrayal of a false balance on this issue. Singer has been described as a strong candidate for combating the perception of a link between autism and vaccines.
Go to Profile#34417
Richard Ferrero
#34429
Overall Influence
Richard Ferrero is a microbiologist. He is a senior research fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council . In the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute, he also holds the position of senior scientist and head of the Gastrointestinal Infection and Inflammation Research Group.
Go to Profile#34418
Antônio Carlos Jobim
#34430
Overall Influence
1927 - 1994 (67 years)
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim , also known as Tom Jobim , was a Brazilian composer, pianist, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, and singer. Considered one of the great exponents of Brazilian music, Jobim internationalized bossa nova and, with the help of important American artists, merged it with jazz in the 1960s to create a new sound, with popular success. As a result, he is sometimes known as the "father of bossa nova".
Go to Profile#34419
Tracy L. Cross
#34431
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Tracy L. Cross is an educational psychologist and developmental scientist. Since 2009 he has held the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education endowed chair at The College of William & Mary, has been the executive director for William & Mary's Center for Gifted Education , and founded the Institute for Research on the Suicide of Gifted Students in 2012. Previously he served as the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Gifted Studies Ball State University , the founder and executive director of both the Center for Gifted Studies and Talen...
Go to Profile#34420
Layne Staley
#34432
Overall Influence
1967 - 2002 (35 years)
Layne Thomas Staley was an American singer and songwriter who was the original lead vocalist of Alice in Chains, which rose to international fame in the early 1990s as part of Seattle's grunge movement. He was known for his distinctive vocal style as well as his harmonizing with guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell. Staley was also a member of the glam metal bands Sleze and Alice N' Chains, and the supergroups Mad Season and Class of '99.
Go to Profile#34421
Ronny Turiaf
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#34433
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Ronny Turiaf is a French former professional basketball player who played 10 seasons in the National Basketball Association . Turiaf grew up in France and played college basketball for the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the United States, where he led the West Coast Conference in scoring in his senior year. After graduating from Gonzaga, he entered the 2005 NBA draft and was picked by the Los Angeles Lakers. He later played for the Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, Washington Wizards, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves. Turiaf won an NBA championship with Miami in 2012. H...
Go to Profile#34422
Gabrielle Union
#34434
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Gabrielle Monique Union-Wade is an American actress. Her career began in the 1990s, when she made dozens of appearances on television sitcoms, prior to landing supporting roles in 1999 teen films She's All That and 10 Things I Hate About You. She rose to greater prominence the following year, after she landed her breakthrough role in the teen film Bring It On.
Go to Profile#34423
Bernard Maurey
#34435
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bernard Maurey is a French mathematician who deals with functional analysis and especially the theory of Banach spaces. He received in 1973 his Ph.D. from the University Paris VII under Laurent Schwartz with thesis Théorèmes de factorisation pour les opérateurs linéaires à valeurs dans les espaces Lp. Maurey is a professor at the University of Paris VII and a member of the CNRS's Laboratoire d'Analyse et de Mathématiques Appliquées of the University of Marne-la-Vallée. He was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1974 in Vancouver.
Go to Profile#34424
J. Ronald Eastman
#34436
Overall Influence
Dr. J. Ronald Eastman is a Professor of Geography at Clark University and the author and chief developer of IDRISI GIS Software. At Clark he teaches the class Advanced Topics in GIS. In 2003, Eastman received the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors from the Association of American Geographers . Eastman was awarded the Distinguished Career Award at the 2010 Annual AAG Meeting.
Go to Profile#34425
Lawrence Yannuzzi
#34437
Overall Influence
Lawrence Yannuzzi is an American physician, ophthalmologist, and vitreo-retinal surgeon who is noted as an internationally recognized retinal specialist. Early career and family Yannuzzi graduated from Harvard College. He graduated from the Boston University School of Medicine where he received an M.D. degree in 1964. He did a residency in ophthalmology at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital from 1965 to 1968. He was board certified in ophthalmology in 1971.
Go to Profile#34426
Monica Aldama
#34438
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Monica Aldama is an American cheerleading coach. She is the coach of the co-ed cheerleading team at Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas. Education A graduate of Corsicana High School, Aldama enrolled at Tyler Junior College where she joined the cheerleading squad. She subsequently transferred to the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a BBA in Finance from the McCombs School of Business, and was a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha women's fraternity. She went on to graduate from the University of Texas at Tyler with a Master of Business Administration.
Go to Profile#34427
Alan F. Segal
#34439
Overall Influence
1945 - 2011 (66 years)
Alan Franklin Segal was a scholar of ancient religions, specializing in Judaism's relationship to Christianity. Segal was a distinguished scholar, author, and speaker, self-described as a "believing Jew and twentieth-century humanist." Segal was one of the first modern scholars to write extensively on the influences of Judaism on Paul of Damascus.
Go to Profile#34428
Jean Kuntzmann
#34440
Overall Influence
1912 - 1992 (80 years)
Jean Kuntzmann was a French mathematician, known for his works in applied mathematics and computer science, pushing and developing both fields at a very early time. Kuntzmann earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Paris under supervision of Georges Valiron .
Go to Profile#34429
Joey Jordison
#34441
Overall Influence
1975 - 2021 (46 years)
Nathan Jonas Jordison was an American musician. He was the original drummer and co-founder of the heavy metal band Slipknot, in which he was designated #1, and the guitarist of the horror punk supergroup Murderdolls.
Go to Profile#34430
Russell H. Dilday
#34442
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
Russell Hooper Dilday was an American pastor, educator, seminary president, and chancellor of the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute. He was best known for his tenure as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary until his abrupt dismissal in 1994 during the Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence.
Go to Profile#34431
Dieter Kotschick
#34443
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dieter Kotschick is a German mathematician, specializing in differential geometry and topology. Biography At age fifteen, Kotschick moved from Transylvania to Germany. He first studied at Heidelberg University and then at the University of Bonn. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1989 under the supervision of Simon Donaldson with thesis On the geometry of certain 4-manifolds and held postdoctoral positions at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge. He became a professor at the University of Basel in 1991 and a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1998.
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Jean-Pierre Beltoise
#34444
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Jean-Pierre Maurice Georges Beltoise was a French Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Formula One driver who raced for the Matra and BRM teams. He competed in 88 Grands Prix achieving a single victory, at the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix, and a total of eight podium finishes.
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Stephen Gostkowski
#34445
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Stephen Carroll Gostkowski is an American former professional football player who was a placekicker for 15 years in the National Football League , primarily with the New England Patriots. Gostkowski played college football for the Memphis Tigers. He was selected in the fourth round of the 2006 NFL Draft by the Patriots, where he spent his first 14 seasons and became the franchise's all-time leading scorer. Gostkowski led the league in scoring five times during his career, including four consecutive from 2012 to 2015, and is the first post-merger player to lead the league in scoring for more than two consecutive seasons.
Go to Profile#34434
Vladimír Mařík
#34446
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Vladimír Mařík is a Czech scientist. Education Mařík received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Control Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Career Mařík was appointed Full Professor at the Czech Technical University in 1990. He acted as the head of the Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University since 1999 when he established the Department until 2013.
Go to Profile#34435
Coit D. Blacker
#34447
Overall Influence
Coit Dennis Blacker is the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. He served as Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council under National Security Advisor Anthony Lake during the Clinton administration. From 2003 to 2012, he was the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and is a current Study Group Member of the National Commiss...
Go to Profile#34436
Colin Jackson
#34448
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Colin Ray Jackson, is a Welsh former sprint and hurdling athlete who specialised in the 110 metres hurdles. During a career in which he represented Great Britain and Wales, he won an Olympic silver medal, became world champion twice, world indoor champion once, was undefeated at the European Championships for 12 years and was twice Commonwealth champion. His world record of 12.91 seconds for the 110 m hurdles stood for over 10 years and his 60 metres hurdles world record stood for nearly 27 years.
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Vicki Bruce
#34449
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dame Victoria Geraldine Bruce, , known as Vicki Bruce, is an English psychologist, Professor of Psychology and former Head of the School of Psychology at Newcastle University. She is known for her work on human face perception and person memory, including face recognition and recall by eyewitnesses and gaze. and other aspects of social cognition. She is also interested in visual cognition more generally. She was made a Dame in the 2015 Birthday Honours list.
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Jesse Bering
#34450
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Jesse Michael Bering is an American psychologist, writer, and academic. He is a professor in Science Communication at the University of Otago , as well as a frequent contributor to Scientific American, Slate, and Das Magazin . His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Guardian, and The New Republic, and has been featured on NPR, the BBC, Playboy Radio and elsewhere.
Go to Profile#34439
Christian Enzensberger
#34451
Overall Influence
1931 - 2009 (78 years)
Christian Enzensberger was a German Professor of English studies, author and a translator of English literature into German. Life Born in Nuremberg, Enzensberger was one of the more enigmatic figures in German letters. Younger brother of the literary celebrity and political figure Hans Magnus Enzensberger, he maintained a relatively low media profile throughout his career, in spite of being embroiled in one of the more interesting literary scandals of early 70s Germany.
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Sophie Marceau
#34452
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Sophie Marceau is a French actress. As a teenager, she achieved popularity with her debut films La Boum and La Boum 2 , receiving a César Award for Most Promising Actress . She became a film star in Europe with a string of successful films, including L'Étudiante , Pacific Palisades , Fanfan and Revenge of the Musketeers . She became an international film star with her performances in Braveheart , Firelight , Anna Karenina and as Elektra King in the 19th James Bond film The World Is Not Enough . Some of her later films tackle critical social issues such as Arrêtez-moi , Jailbirds and Ever...
Go to Profile#34441
Rostislav Grigorchuk
#34453
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Rostislav Ivanovich Grigorchuk is a mathematician working in different areas of mathematics including group theory, dynamical systems, geometry and computer science. He holds the rank of Distinguished Professor in the Mathematics Department of Texas A&M University. Grigorchuk is particularly well known for having constructed, in a 1984 paper, the first example of a finitely generated group of intermediate growth, thus answering an important problem posed by John Milnor in 1968. This group is now known as the Grigorchuk group and it is one of the important objects studied in geometric group theory, particularly in the study of branch groups, automaton groups and iterated monodromy groups.
Go to Profile#34442
Teddy Kollek
#34454
Overall Influence
1911 - 2007 (96 years)
Theodor "Teddy" Kollek was an Israeli politician who served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, and founder of the Jerusalem Foundation. Kollek was re-elected five times, in 1969, 1973, 1978, 1983, and 1989. After reluctantly running for a seventh term in 1993 at the age of 82, he lost to Likud candidate and future Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert.
Go to Profile#34443
Julius Weinberg
#34455
Overall Influence
Julius Weinberg is a British academic and previously the Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University. He was educated at The Queen's College, Oxford and the Open University. Weinberg is a governor of the Independent school Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith.
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Barbara Keyfitz
#34456
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Barbara Lee Keyfitz is a Canadian-American mathematician, the Dr. Charles Saltzer Professor of Mathematics at Ohio State University. In her research, she studies nonlinear partial differential equations and associated conservation laws.
Go to Profile#34445
Norm Nixon
#34457
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Norman Ellard Nixon is an American former professional basketball player who played for the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Diego/Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association . He also played with Scavolini Pesaro in Italy. Nicknamed "Stormin' Norman", he is a two-time NBA All-Star. He won two NBA championships with the Lakers in 1980 and 1982, at the beginning of their Showtime era.
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Timo Penttilä
#34458
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Timo Jussi Penttilä was one of Finland's most important modernist architects and was for over 15 years a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria. He is most renowned for the design of the Helsinki City Theatre .
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Renate Loll
#34459
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Renate Loll Is a German physicist. She is a Professor in Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics of the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. She previously worked at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Utrecht University. She received her Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, in 1989. In 2001 she joined the permanent staff of the ITP, after spending several years at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm, Germany. With Jan Ambjørn and Polish physicist Jerzy Jurkiewicz she helped develop a new approach to nonpe...
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Marie Boas Hall
#34460
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Marie Boas Hall was a historian of science and is considered one of the postwar period pioneers of the study of the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries. Biography and career Marie Boas was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1940. During World War II, she worked in the MIT Radiation Laboratory with Henry Guerlac in writing the history of the laboratory and of the operational use of radar during the war. She continued her work with Guerlac at Cornell University and received her PhD in 1949. Her thesis covered the mechanical philosophy of Robert Boyle and was published in the history of science journal Osiris in 1952.
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Sheila Whiteley
#34461
Overall Influence
1941 - 2015 (74 years)
Sheila Whiteley was an English musicologist known for studying popular music, such as progressive rock music and Britpop. In 1999, she was named professor and chair of popular music at the University of Salford, the first such position in Great Britain. From 1999 to 2001, she was the general secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. She held visiting professorships at the University of Aarhus in 2008, and at the University of Brighton from 2007 to 2009.
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I. William Zartman
#34462
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Ira William Zartman is Professor Emeritus at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He earlier directed the school's Conflict Management and African Studies programs. He holds the Jacob Blaustein Chair in International Organizations and Conflict Resolution. He is a founder and current Board Chairman of the International Peace and Security Institute .
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