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
#3451
Peter Straub
#3456
Overall Influence
1943 - 2022 (79 years)
Peter Francis Straub was an American novelist and poet. He had success with several horror and supernatural fiction novels, among them Julia , Ghost Story and The Talisman , the latter co-writen with Stephen King. He explored the mystery genre with the Blue Rose trilogy, consisting of Koko , Mystery and The Throat . He fused the supernatural with crime fiction in Lost Boy, Lost Girl and the related In the Night Room . For the Library of America, he edited the volume H. P. Lovecraft: Tales and the anthology American Fantastic Tales. Straub received such literary honors as the Bram Stoker A...
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R. K. Narayan
#3457
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami , better known as R. K. Narayan, was an Indian writer and novelist known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.
Go to Profile#3453
J. Anthony Blair
#3458
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
John Anthony Blair is a Canadian philosopher. Along with his colleague Ralph Johnson, he has been credited as one of the founding members of the informal logic movement in North America. The two co-published one of the movement's most influential texts, "Logical Self-Defense". Blair is also co-founder of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric, co-founder of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation , and a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation .
Go to Profile#3454
Michel Crozier
#3459
Overall Influence
1922 - 2013 (91 years)
Michel Crozier was a French sociologist and member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques from 1999 until his death. He also was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a laureate of the Prix Alexis de Tocqueville .
Go to Profile#3455
Jerrold E. Marsden
#3460
Overall Influence
1942 - 2010 (68 years)
Jerrold Eldon Marsden was a Canadian mathematician. He was the Carl F. Braun Professor of Engineering and Control & Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology. Marsden is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher.
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Steve Woolgar
#3461
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Stephen William Woolgar is a British sociologist. He has worked closely with Bruno Latour, with whom he wrote Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts . Education Stephen Woolgar holds a BA in engineering and a PhD in sociology, both at the University of Cambridge.
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Paul Lorenzen
#3462
Overall Influence
1915 - 1994 (79 years)
Paul Lorenzen was a German philosopher and mathematician, founder of the Erlangen School and inventor of game semantics . Biography Lorenzen studied at the University of Göttingen until he earned his PhD there in 1938 under Helmut Hasse with a thesis titled Zur Abstrakten Begründung der multiplikativen Idealtheorie. In 1933, he joined the SA and the German Nazionalist Studenti Union , while, four years later, he became a member of the Nazi Party. In early 1940 he was drafted into the Army. Through Hasse's mediation, Lorenzen worked with Wilhelm Tranow from July 1940 to April 1941 on the Bavy...
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Chris Hadfield
#3463
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Chris Austin Hadfield is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician, and writer. The first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also served as commander of the International Space Station . Prior to his career as an astronaut, he served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years as an Air Command fighter pilot.
Go to Profile#3459
Eberhard Bethge
#3464
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Eberhard Bethge was a German theologian and pastor, best known for being the close friend and biographer of the theologian and anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Early life Bethge was born in Warchau, Landkreis Jerichow II, Province of Saxony, the Kingdom of Prussia, near Magdeburg, on August 29, 1909. He attended several universities, as is customary for theology students in Germany, before attending the underground Finkenwalde Seminary in Pomerania where Bonhoeffer taught in the name of Germany's Confessing Church . Bethge became Bonhoeffer's close friend and confidant. With the help of pietist...
Go to Profile#3460
David Liddle
#3465
Overall Influence
David Liddle is co-founder of Interval Research Corporation, consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University. While at Xerox PARC he was credited with heading development of the Xerox Star computer system. In 1982 he co-founded Metaphor Computer Systems. He has served on the board of many corporations. He was chair of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute from 1994 to 1999. Liddle holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in EECS from the University of Toledo, in Ohio.
Go to Profile#3461
Gaetano Badalamenti
#3467
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Gaetano Badalamenti was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. Don Tano Badalamenti was the capofamiglia of his hometown Cinisi, Sicily, and headed the Sicilian Mafia Commission in the 1970s. In 1987, he was sentenced in the United States to 45 years in federal prison for being one of the leaders in the so-called "Pizza Connection", a $1.65 billion drug-trafficking ring that used pizzerias as fronts to distribute heroin from 1975 to 1984. He was also sentenced in Italy to life imprisonment in 2002 for the 1978 murder of Peppino Impastato.
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Nigel Mansell
#3468
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Nigel Ernest James Mansell, is a British retired racing driver who won both the Formula One World Championship and the CART Indy Car World Series . Mansell was the reigning F1 champion when he moved over to CART, becoming the first person to win the CART title in his debut season, and making him the only person to hold both the World Drivers' Championship and the American open-wheel National Championship simultaneously.
Go to Profile#3463
Alberta Ferretti
#3469
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alberta Ferretti is an Italian fashion designer and dressmaker. She designs for her namesake brand Alberta Ferretti, and designed for Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti until 2014. Her showroom is in Milan, Italy but her studio is in her native village of Cattolica, near Rimini, Italy. She was among a group of Italian designers who were invited to a reception for 200 designers and retailers held by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, in October 1988.
Go to Profile#3464
Hans-Werner Sinn
#3470
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Hans-Werner Sinn is a German economist who served as President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research from 1999 to 2016. He currently serves on the German economy ministry’s advisory council. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich.
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Dennis Meadows
#3471
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dennis Lynn Meadows is an American scientist and Emeritus Professor of Systems Management, and former director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire. He is President of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning and widely known as a coauthor of The Limits to Growth.
Go to Profile#3466
Gary Alan Fine
#3472
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gary Alan Fine is an American sociologist and author. Life and career The son of Bernard David Fine and Bernice Estelle Tanz, Fine grew up in Manhattan and went to the Horace Mann School. He studied psychology at the University of Pennsylvania . He attended graduate school at Harvard University from 1972 to 1976 and received his PhD from Harvard in social psychology. His dissertation advisor was the eminent small group theorist Robert F. Bales.
Go to Profile#3467
Wayne Rooney
#3473
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Wayne Mark Rooney is an English professional football manager and former player who is the manager of EFL Championship club Birmingham City. Widely considered one of the best players of his generation, Rooney is the record goalscorer for Manchester United, and was the record goalscorer for the England national team from 2015 to 2023. He has also made more appearances for England than any other outfield player. Rooney spent most of his playing career as a forward, but was also used in various midfield roles.
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W. Brian Arthur
#3474
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
William Brian Arthur is a Belfast-born economist credited with developing the modern approach to increasing returns. He has lived and worked in Northern California for many years. He is an authority on economics in relation to complexity theory, technology and financial markets. He has been on the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and a Visiting Researcher at the Intelligent Systems Lab at PARC. He is credited with the invention of the El Farol Bar problem.
Go to Profile#3469
Martin Esslin
#3475
Overall Influence
1918 - 2002 (84 years)
Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term "theatre of the absurd" in his 1961 book The Theatre of the Absurd. This work has been called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960s".
Go to Profile#3470
Bud Collins
#3476
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Arthur Worth "Bud" Collins Jr. was an American journalist and television sportscaster, best known for his tennis commentary. Collins was married to photographer Anita Ruthling Klaussen. Education Collins was born on June 17, 1929, in Lima, Ohio, and was raised in the Cleveland suburb of Berea, Ohio, where he graduated from Berea High School in 1947. Collins graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. After his U.S. Army service, Collins attended graduate school at Boston University. He drove the 700 miles from Lima to Boston with "The mission: convince Boston University to let him study journalism.
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Rupert Riedl
#3477
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Rupert Riedl was an Austrian zoologist. Biography Riedl was a scientist with broad interests, whose influence in epistemology grounded in evolutionary theory was notable, although less in English-speaking circles than in German or even Spanish speaking ones. His 1984 work, Biology of Knowledge: The evolutionary basis of reason examined cognitive abilities and the increasing complexity of biological diversification over the immense periods of evolutionary time.
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Henri Laborit
#3478
Overall Influence
1914 - 1995 (81 years)
Henri Laborit was a French surgeon, neurobiologist, writer and philosopher. In 1952, Laborit was instrumental in the development of the drug chlorpromazine, published his findings, and convinced three psychiatrists to test it on a patient, resulting in great success. Laborit was recognized for his work, but as a surgeon searching for an anesthetic, he came to be at odds with psychiatrists who made their own discoveries and competing claims.
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Victor Vasarely
#3479
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work titled Zebra, created in 1937, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.
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Tyler Burge
#3480
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tyler Burge is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy.
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Meryl Streep
#3481
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress. Often described as "the best actress of her generation", Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accent adaptability. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including a record 21 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and a record 32 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning eight.
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Iggy Pop
#3482
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
James Newell Osterberg Jr. , known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter, actor, and radio broadcaster. He was the vocalist and lyricist of proto-punk band The Stooges, who were formed in 1967 and have disbanded and reunited many times since. Often called the "Godfather of Punk", he was named one of the 50 Great Voices by NPR. In 2010, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Stooges. Pop also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, for his solo work.
Go to Profile#3477
Barbara Fredrickson
#3483
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#3478
Yohji Yamamoto
#3484
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Yohji Yamamoto is a Japanese fashion designer based in Tokyo and Paris. Considered a master tailor alongside those such as Madeleine Vionnet, he is known for his avant-garde tailoring featuring Japanese design aesthetics.
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Duncan J. Watts
#3485
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Duncan James Watts is a sociologist and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in New York City, and is known for his work on small-world networks.
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Christian Louboutin
#3486
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Christian Louboutin is a French fashion designer. His stiletto footwear incorporates shiny, red-lacquered soles that have become his signature. Initially a freelance designer for fashion houses, he started his shoe salon in Paris, with his shoes finding favor with celebrity clientele. He has partnered with other organizations for projects including limited edition pieces, gallery exhibits, and a custom bar. His company has since branched out into men's luxury footwear, handbags, fragrances, and makeup.
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Mario Livio
#3487
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mario Livio is an Israeli-American astrophysicist and an author of works that popularize science and mathematics. For 24 years he was an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope. He has published more than 400 scientific articles on topics including cosmology, supernova explosions, black holes, extrasolar planets, and the emergence of life in the universe. His book on the irrational number phi, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number , won the Peano Prize and the International Pythagoras Prize for popul...
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David Nutt
#3488
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
David John Nutt is an English neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs that affect the brain and conditions such as addiction, anxiety, and sleep. He is the chairman of Drug Science, a non-profit which he founded in 2010 to provide independent, evidence-based information on drugs. Until 2009, he was a professor at the University of Bristol heading their Psychopharmacology Unit. Since then he has been the Edmond J Safra chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences there. Nut...
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W. Allen Wallis
#3489
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Wilson Allen Wallis was an American economist and statistician who served as president of the University of Rochester. He is best known for the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance, which is named after him and William Kruskal.
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Judith Jarvis Thomson
#3490
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Judith Jarvis Thomson was an American philosopher who studied and worked on ethics and metaphysics. Her work ranges across a variety of fields, but she is most known for her work regarding the thought experiment titled the trolley problem and her writings on abortion. She is credited with naming, developing, and initiating the extensive literature on the trolley problem first posed by Philippa Foot which has found a wide range use since. Thomson also published a paper titled "A Defense of Abortion", which makes the argument that the procedure is morally permissible even if it is assumed that a fetus is a person with a right to life.
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Alan J. Heeger
#3491
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Alan Jay Heeger is an American physicist, academic and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry. Heegar was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 for co-founding the field of conducting polymers and for pioneering work in making these novel materials available for technological applications.
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Donald D. Chamberlin
#3492
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Donald D. Chamberlin is an American computer scientist who is one of the principal designers of the original SQL language specification with Raymond Boyce. He also made significant contributions to the development of XQuery.
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Orlando Patterson
#3493
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Horace Orlando Patterson is a Jamaican-American historian and sociologist known for his work on the history of race and slavery in the United States and Jamaica, as well as the sociology of development. He is currently the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. Patterson's 1991 book Freedom in the Making of Western Culture won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction.
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Terrance Dicks
#3494
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Terrance William Dicks was an English author and television screenwriter, script editor and producer. In television, he had a long association with the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, working as a writer and also serving as the programme's script editor from 1968 to 1974. The Doctor Who News Page described him as "arguably the most prolific contributor to Doctor Who". He later became a script editor and producer of classic serials for the BBC.
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Lennart Carleson
#3495
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Lennart Axel Edvard Carleson is a Swedish mathematician, known as a leader in the field of harmonic analysis. One of his most noted accomplishments is his proof of Lusin's conjecture. He was awarded the Abel Prize in 2006 for "his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems."
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Mark Poster
#3496
Overall Influence
1941 - 2012 (71 years)
Mark Poster was Professor Emeritus of History and Film and Media Studies at UC Irvine, where he also taught in the Critical Theory Emphasis. He was pivotal to "bringing French critical theory to the U.S., and went on to analyse contemporary media."
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Frances Kamm
#3497
Overall Influence
Frances Myrna Kamm is an American philosopher specializing in normative and applied ethics. Kamm is currently the Henry Rutgers University Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is also the Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy Emerita at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, as well as Professor Emerita in the Department of Philosophy at New York University.
Go to Profile#3492
Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury
#3498
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mervyn Allister King, Baron King of Lothbury is a British economist and public servant who served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013. He is a School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He is also the Chairman of the Philharmonia.
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Breyten Breytenbach
#3499
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Breyten Breytenbach is a South African writer, poet, and painter who became internationally well-known as a dissident poet and vocal critic of South Africa under apartheid, and as a political prisoner of the National Party-led South African Government. Breytenbach is now informally considered by Afrikaans-speakers as their poet laureate and is one of the most important living poets in Afrikaans literature. He also holds French citizenship.
Go to Profile#3494
Gen Urobuchi
#3500
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
is a Japanese novelist, visual novel writer and anime screenwriter. He is known for being the co-creator of the highly acclaimed and commercially successful anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which earned him the Tokyo Anime Award for Best Scriptwriter, as well as the writer of the 2003 visual novel Saya no Uta, the 2012 anime Psycho-Pass, the light novel and anime Fate/Zero, and the 2013–2014 tokusatsu show Kamen Rider Gaim. He currently works at Nitroplus and Nitro+chiral. Anime written by Urobuchi that have won the Newtype Anime Awards have been Puella Magi Madoka Magica in 2011, Fate/...
Go to Profile#3495
David Held
#3501
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
David Jonathan Andrew Held was a British political scientist who specialised in political theory and international relations. He held a joint appointment as Professor of Politics and International Relations, and was Master of University College, at Durham University until his death. He was also a visiting Professor of Political Science at Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli. Previously he was the Graham Wallas chair of Political Science and the co-director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics.
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Huw Dixon
#3502
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Huw David Dixon , born 1958, is a British economist. He has been a professor at Cardiff Business School since 2006, having previously been Head of Economics at the University of York after being a professor of economics there , and the University of Swansea , a Reader at Essex University and a lecturer at Birkbeck College 1983–1987.
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N. David Mermin
#3503
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Nathaniel David Mermin is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term "boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ashcroft on solid-state physics, and for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information science.
Go to Profile#3498
Amina Wadud
#3504
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Amina Wadud is an American Muslim theologian. Wadud serves as Visiting Professor at Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies and was also a visiting scholar at Starr King School for the Ministry. Wadud has written extensively on the role of women in Islam.
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Brett Favre
#3505
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Brett Lorenzo Favre is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 20 seasons, primarily with the Green Bay Packers. Favre had 321 consecutive starts from 1992 to 2010, including 297 regular season games, the most in league history. He was also the first NFL quarterback to obtain 70,000 yards, 10,000 passes, 6,000 completions, 500 touchdowns, and victories over all 32 teams.
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Thomas M. Cover
#3506
Overall Influence
1938 - 2012 (74 years)
Thomas M. Cover [ˈkoʊvər] was an American information theorist and professor jointly in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Statistics at Stanford University. He devoted almost his entire career to developing the relationship between information theory and statistics.
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