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
#35451
Eberhard Zeidler
#35463
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Eberhard Hermann Erich Zeidler was a German mathematician, who worked primarily in the field of non-linear functional analysis. Life and work After attending the Leipzig Eberhard Zeidler began studying mathematics at the University of Leipzig in 1959. In 1961, he was exmatriculated because of critical statements, and was forced to work as a transport worker and absolve his military service in the East-German's NVA. In 1964, he was allowed to continue his studies. In 1967, he received his Dr. rer. nat. with his work "" under .
Go to Profile#35452
Lloyd Banks
#35464
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Christopher Charles Lloyd , better known by his stage name Lloyd Banks, is an American rapper. He began his career as a member of East Coast hip hop group G-Unit, alongside childhood friends 50 Cent and Tony Yayo. After the group released their debut album Beg for Mercy , Banks released his debut solo album, The Hunger for More in 2004. The album was met with positive reviews and peaked at number one on the Billboard 200—making him the only G-Unit signee besides 50 Cent to achieve this—and spawned the Billboard Hot 100 top ten hit single, "On Fire". He followed up with his second album Rotten Apple , which saw mixed reviews and a commercial decline.
Go to Profile#35453
Harry W. Greene
#35465
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Harry W. Greene is an American herpetologist, who retired in 2016 after working for many years as a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University. Early life Greene achieved a B.S. in Biology at Texas Wesleyan University in 1968, an M.A. in Biology from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1973, and a PhD in Zoology from the University of Tennessee in 1977. He worked as a US Army medic in Germany in 1968-1971.
Go to Profile#35454
Jane Ridley
#35466
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
The Honourable Jane Ridley FRSL is an English historian, biographer, author and broadcaster, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham. Ridley won the Duff Cooper Prize in 2002 for The Architect and his Wife, a biography of her great-grandfather Edwin Lutyens.
Go to Profile#35455
Mark Horton
#35467
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mark Chatwin Horton, FSA, is a British maritime and historical archaeologist, television presenter, and writer. Academic career Horton attended Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating and receiving a doctorate. He is Professor of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Bristol. One of his former students is the archaeologist and television presenter Sam Willis. He is part of a project to establish the Cultural Heritage Institute in the former Great Western Railway carriage works at Swindon, offering research ...
Go to Profile#35456
Dan Kimball
#35468
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dan Kimball is an author and was a leading voice in the beginning years of the Emerging Church movement in the United States. Kimball's writings focus on encouraging churches and Christians to creatively make any changes needed in order to break the negative stereotypes of church and Christianity that inaccurately may exist. Kimball focuses on doing this through the arts, apologetics and Christians removing themselves from the Christian subculture. Kimball began using phrases such as "Vintage Faith" and "Vintage Christianity" which are used to express the desire to be returning to the historic...
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Erik Gundersen
#35469
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Erik Gundersen is a former motorcycle speedway rider. Gundersen is one of the most successful speedway riders of all time, having won the Speedway World Champion on three occasions, the Long Track World Championship twice and the World Pairs Championship five times. In addition he is a seven time World Team Cup winner with Denmark.
Go to Profile#35458
M. Elizabeth Magill
#35470
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mary Elizabeth Magill is an American legal scholar and academic administrator, currently serving as the 9th president of the University of Pennsylvania since July 2022. Magill previously served as provost of the University of Virginia from 2019 to 2022 and dean of Stanford Law School from 2012 to 2019.
Go to Profile#35459
Jonathan Haslam
#35471
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jonathan Haslam is George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge with a special interest in the former Soviet Union. He has written many books about Soviet foreign policy and ideology.
Go to Profile#35460
Jane Glover
#35472
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Dame Jane Alison Glover is a British conductor and musicologist. Early life Born in Helmsley, Glover attended Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls. Her father, Robert Finlay Glover, MA , was headmaster of Monmouth School and it was through this connection that she was able to meet Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears aged only 16. She later described the meeting:
Go to Profile#35461
Philippe Contamine
#35473
Overall Influence
1932 - 2022 (90 years)
Philippe Contamine was a French historian of the Middle Ages who specialised in military history and the history of the nobility. Life Contamine was a president of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the Société de l'histoire de France, and the Societé des Antiquaires de France. He taught at the Université de Nancy, the Université de Paris X at Nanterre and Université de Paris IV . He was an officer of the Légion d’Honneur and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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Doug Williams
#35474
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Douglas Lee Williams is an American football executive and former quarterback and coach. Williams is best known for his performance with the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, making him the first black quarterback to both start and win a Super Bowl. He was named Super Bowl MVP after breaking two Super Bowl passing records: 340 yards total, and being the first to throw four touchdowns in a single quarter.
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Sampie Terreblanche
#35475
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Solomon Johannes "Sampie" Terreblanche was a South African academic economist and writer, author of numerous economics books and was most famous for his History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002. He was Professor emeritus of Economics at Stellenbosch University, where he built a reputation as a lecturer in History of economic thought, Economic history, the Economy of South Africa, and economic systems.
Go to Profile#35464
François de Singly
#35476
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
François de Singly was born in Dreux, is a French sociologist and professor of sociology at Paris Descartes University. He has worked a lot about family.
Go to Profile#35465
Geraldine Chaplin
#35477
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin is a British-American actress. She is a daughter of Charlie Chaplin, the first of eight children with his fourth wife, Oona O'Neill. After beginnings in dance and modeling, she turned her attention to acting, and made her English-language acting debut in her portrayal of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She made her Broadway acting debut in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes in 1967, and played the role of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti in Raúl Araiza's Nefertiti and Akhenaton alongside famous Egyptian actor Salah Zulfikar. Chaplin received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville .
Go to Profile#35466
Louise Prockter
#35478
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Louise Prockter is a planetary scientist and former supervisor of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. In 2016 the Universities Space Research Association announced the appointment of Prockter as Director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, effective September 6, 2016. She was the first woman to serve as LPI Director and led the LPI from 2016 to 2020. She is currently Chief Scientist, Space Exploration Sector, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Go to Profile#35467
Jason Witten
#35479
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Christopher Jason Witten is an American former professional football tight end for 17 seasons, primarily for the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League . He currently is the head football coach at Liberty Christian School, a private Christian school located in Argyle, Texas. He played college football for the University of Tennessee, and was drafted by the Cowboys in the third round of the 2003 NFL Draft. Witten ranks second in all-time career receptions and receiving yards by an NFL tight end, trailing only Tony Gonzalez. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tight ends of al...
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M.I.A.
#35480
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam , known by her stage name M.I.A. , is a British rapper, record producer, and singer. Her music combines elements of alternative, dance, electronic, hip hop and world music with electronic instruments and samples.
Go to Profile#35469
Enrico Coen
#35481
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Enrico Sandro Coen is a British biologist who studies the mechanisms used by plants to create complex and varied flower structures. Coen's research has aimed to define the developmental rules that govern flower and leaf growth at both the cellular level and throughout the whole plant to better understand evolution. He has combined molecular, genetic and imaging studies with population and ecological models and computational analysis to understand flower development.
Go to Profile#35470
Xiaoming Wang
#35482
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Xiaoming Wang is a Chinese-born American vertebrate paleontologist and geologist who lives and teaches in the United States. Areas of expertise Professor Wang specializes in the fossil evolution, systematics, and phylogeny of mammals of the Cenozoic. He has researched the biostratigraphy of Inner Mongolia and Asia as a whole, the geochronology of Asia, paleoenvironments of the Tibetan Plateau, and mammalian migrations between Eurasia and North America. Wang has also investigated the systematics and phylogeny of canids as well as Late Eocene through Pleistocene fossil mammals of Southern California and Mexico.
Go to Profile#35471
Rudolph Schild
#35483
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Rudolph E. Schild is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who has been active since the mid-1960s. He has authored or contributed to over 250 papers, of which 150 are in refereed journals.
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James B. Aguayo-Martel
#35484
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
James Benjamin Martel is a physician, surgeon and scientist. He is former chair of surgery, Mercy San Juan Medical Center, former chief of ophthalmology, otolaryngology , and plastic surgery, Sutter Roseville Medical Center. He is the former director of ophthalmology, Sutter General and Memorial Hospitals and assistant professor of ophthalmology and radiology, Johns Hopkins Medical School and Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute. He is currently clinical professor of ophthalmology and associate dean of graduate medical education in California Northstate University College of Medicine.
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Ruggero Santilli
#35485
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Ruggero Maria Santilli is an Italo-American nuclear physicist. Mainstream scientists dismiss his theories as fringe science. Biography Ruggero Maria Santilli was born September 8, 1935 In September 1981, Santilli established a one-man organization, the Institute for Basic Research in Boston; he told a reporter from St. Petersburg Times in 2007 that he left Harvard because scientists there viewed his work as "heresy".
Go to Profile#35474
Michael Corballis
#35486
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Michael Charles Corballis was a New Zealand and Canadian psychologist and author. He was Emeritus Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland. His fields of research were cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, encompassing visual perception, visual imagery, attention, memory, and the evolution of language.
Go to Profile#35475
David Wolfe
#35487
Overall Influence
David Wolfe is a mathematician and amateur Go player. Education and career Wolfe graduated from Cornell University in 1985, with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994, with a dissertation Mathematics of Go: Chilling Corridors combining both subjects and supervised by Elwyn Berlekamp.
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David Edwin Harrell
#35488
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
David Edwin Harrell Jr. was an American historian best known for his scholarship of religion in the United States. Harrell was born in Jacksonville, Florida to parents David Edwin and Mildred Lee Harrell . He attended David Lipscomb College as an undergraduate, and Vanderbilt University as a graduate student. He received a Ph.D. in 1962.
Go to Profile#35477
Robert Seyfarth
#35489
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Robert M. Seyfarth is an American primatologist and author. With his wife and collaborator Dorothy L. Cheney, he spent years studying the social behavior, communication, and cognition of wild primates in their natural habitat, including more than a decade of field work with baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Seyfarth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement, is a member of both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Yoshihisa Yamamoto
#35490
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Yoshihisa Yamamoto is the director of Physics & Informatics Laboratories , NTT Research, Inc. He is also Professor at Stanford University and National Institute of Informatics . Biography Yamamoto was born in Tokyo on November 21, 1950. In 1973 he received his B.S. degree from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He continued his studies at the University of Tokyo where he received his M.S. in 1975 and Ph.D. in 1978. From 1978 to 1992, he worked at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Tokyo. Since 1992, he has been a professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at Stanford University in the United States and currently a professor .
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Valtteri Bottas
#35491
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Valtteri Viktor Bottas is a Finnish racing driver currently competing in Formula One for Alfa Romeo, having previously driven for Mercedes from to and Williams from to . Bottas has scored race wins and podiums. He contributed to five constructors championship wins for Mercedes, and has been drivers' championship runner-up twice, in and .
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Mark D. West
#35492
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mark D. West is an American legal scholar, social scientist, and academic serving as the Nippon Life Professor of Law at the University of Michigan since 2003 and the David A. Breach Dean of Law from 2013 to 2023. He is the 17th dean of the University of Michigan Law School.
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Demis Roussos
#35493
Overall Influence
1946 - 2015 (69 years)
Artemios "Demis" Ventouris-Roussos was a Greek singer, songwriter and musician. As a band member he is best remembered for his work in the progressive rock music act Aphrodite's Child, but as a vocal soloist, his repertoire included hit songs like "Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye", "From Souvenirs to Souvenirs" and "Forever and Ever".
Go to Profile#35482
Bernard Pullman
#35494
Overall Influence
1919 - 1996 (77 years)
Bernard Pullman was a French theoretical quantum chemist and quantum biochemist. Pullman studied at the Sorbonne, then spent the Second World War as a French Army officer in Africa and the Middle East. Returning to Paris in 1946, he completed his licence ès sciences in 1946 and the Docteur-es-Science in 1948. From 1946 to 1954, he worked at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique . In 1954 he was appointed Professor at the Sorbonne. In 1959, he became Director of the Department of Quantum Biochemistry at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique. In 1963, he was promoted to Director of the Institute.
Go to Profile#35483
Jay Smith
#35495
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Jay Smith is an American Christian evangelist. Since 1983, he has been a full-time missionary with the Brethren in Christ Church with a focus on apologetics and polemics among the Muslims of London.
Go to Profile#35484
Leo Eitinger
#35496
Overall Influence
1912 - 1996 (84 years)
Leo Eitinger was a Norwegian psychiatrist, author and educator. He was a Holocaust survivor who studied the late-onset psychological trauma experienced by people who went through separation and psychological pain early in life only to show traumatic experience decades later. He devoted a long period studying posttraumatic stress disorder among Holocaust survivors, which had led Holocaust survivors including Paul Celan , Primo Levi and many others to commit suicide several decades after the experience. Eitinger was a pioneer of research into psychological trauma among refugees, and also la...
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Oswald Szemerényi
#35497
Overall Influence
1913 - 1996 (83 years)
Oswald John Louis Szemerényi, FBA was a Hungarian Indo-Europeanist with strong interests in comparative linguistics in general. Biography He was educated in Hungary, at Eötvös Loránd University, and he studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. He was influenced by Hungarian linguist Gyula Laziczius. In 1942 he was appointed lecturer in Greek at Budapest University. In 1944 he habilitated with a thesis on Balto-Slavic unity, and in 1947 he was appointed professor of comparative Indo-European linguistics in Budapest. He returned to England in 1948, where he worked for Bedford College until 1960.
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Richard Wallace
#35498
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Richard Wallace was the editor of British newspaper the Daily Mirror until May 2012. Early career Wallace began his Fleet Street career working for the Daily Mail and The Sun. In 1990 he joined the Daily Mirror. During Piers Morgan's editorship of the paper he became show business editor, before becoming head of news in 2000. Notable among Wallace's scoops was the news that actor Ross Kemp was leaving the BBC soap opera EastEnders in favour of working for rival channel ITV. He was also responsible for the creation of the gossip columnists The 3AM Girls.
Go to Profile#35487
Jin Kemu
#35499
Overall Influence
1912 - 2000 (88 years)
Jin Kemu is a Chinese poet, scholar, translator and essay writer, professor of Beijing University. In 1935 he started to write poems and novels. In his early years he had different careers as a librarian, newspaper editor and English teacher. In 1941 he went to India, studied ancient Indian literature, Buddhism, philosophy and returned China in 1946. At the time he was one of few scholars in China who knew Sanskrit and Pali language.
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John Britton
#35500
Overall Influence
1925 - 1994 (69 years)
John Bayard Britton was an American physician. He was assassinated in Pensacola, Florida, by anti-abortion extremist Paul Jennings Hill. Britton's death was the second assassination of a Pensacola abortion provider in under a year and a half; he had replaced David Gunn after the latter's 1993 murder by another anti-abortionist.
Go to Profile#35489
Monique Desroches
#35501
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Monique Desroches is a Canadian ethnomusicologist from Quebec who specializes in the music of the West Indies and the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. Early life Desroches was born in Grand-Mère in Quebec on March 18, 1948. From 1968 to 1974, Desroches was part of a folk group, "Les Contretemps" who released two LPs and three 45s and toured in Canada, the United States and Japan.
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Robin Day
#35502
Overall Influence
1915 - 2010 (95 years)
Robin Day, OBE, RDI, FCSD was one of the most significant British furniture designers of the 20th century, enjoying a long career spanning seven decades. An accomplished industrial and interior designer, he was also active in the fields of graphics and exhibitions.
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Mihai Netea
#35503
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mihai G. Netea is a Romanian Dutch physician and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, specialized in infectious disease, immunology, and global health. Netea studied medicine at the Medico-Pharmaceutical Institute in Cluj-Napoca. He received a doctoral degree in 1998 at Radboud University, with a dissertation on the role of cytokines in sepsis, written under the direction of Jos van der Meer.
Go to Profile#35492
Paul LeBlanc
#35504
Overall Influence
Paul J. LeBlanc is the fifth and current president of Southern New Hampshire University. Early life and education Born into a French-speaking family in Canada, LeBlanc's family immigrated to the United States when he was a child. He became the first person in his extended family to attend college. He enrolled at Framingham State University, where he earned his bachelor's degree. He then received his master's degree from Boston College and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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David P. Wright
#35505
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
David Pearson Wright is an American theologian and the professor of Bible and the Ancient Near East at Brandeis University. He is a scholar in the field of the Hebrew Bible, especially the composition of the Pentateuch and inner-biblical exegesis, as well as Near Eastern and biblical ritual and law in comparative perspective.
Go to Profile#35494
Larry Graham
#35506
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Larry Graham Jr. is an American bassist and baritone singer, both with the psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone and as the founder and frontman of Graham Central Station. In 1980, he released the single "One in a Million You", which reached the top ten on the US Billboard Hot 100. He is credited with the invention of the slapping technique on the electric bass guitar, which radically expanded the tonal palette of the bass, although he himself refers to the technique as "thumpin' and pluckin' ". In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Sly and the Family Stone.
Go to Profile#35495
Sander Greenland
#35507
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sander Greenland is an American statistician and epidemiologist with many contributions to statistical and epidemiologic methods including Bayesian and causal inference, bias analysis, and meta-analysis. His focus has been the extensions, limitations, and misuses of statistical methods in nonexperimental studies, especially in postmarketing surveillance of drugs, vaccines, and medical devices. He received honors Bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Regent's and National Science Foundation Fellow in Mathematics, and then recei...
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Peter Vitousek
#35508
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Peter Morrison Vitousek is an American ecologist, particularly known for his work on the nitrogen cycle. Born in Hawaii, Vitousek graduated from Amherst College in 1971 and received his Ph.D. in biology from Dartmouth College in 1975. Since then, he has worked as an Assistant Professor of Zoology and Biology at Indiana University , an Associate Professor of Botany and Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , and a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University since 1984. He is married to fellow Stanford professor and ecologist Pamela Matson.
Go to Profile#35497
Alfred P. Smyth
#35509
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Professor Alfred P. Smyth was an Irish-born historian specialising in the mediaeval history of the British Isles. In 2002 he was named Dean of Arts and Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church University College, having been Director of Research there since 1999. He was also Warden of St. George's House, Windsor Castle. Earlier, he was Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of Kent, when he was Master of Keynes College.
Go to Profile#35498
Boris Ford
#35510
Overall Influence
1917 - 1998 (81 years)
Richard Boris Ford , was a literary critic, writer, editor and educationist. Early life The son of an Indian Army officer, Brigadier Geoffrey Noel Ford, and his Russian wife Ekaterina, Ford was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, eventually becoming head chorister under Boris Ord. He was then educated at Gresham's School, and through his English master there, Denys Thompson, was introduced to F.R. Leavis under whom he studied at Downing College, Cambridge. Even before graduating, Ford's essay on Wuthering Heights was published by Leavis in Scrutiny in March 1939. Although he came to sh...
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Luo Xiang
#35511
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Luo Xiang is a Chinese jurist. He serves as the professor and director of the Institute of Criminal Law of the China University of Political Science and Law. He is also a lawyer with his field of study centered on criminal justice and sex crimes. He is best known for his tutorials with humorous analogies and thorough interpretations on the National Judicial Examination of Chinese Mainland going viral on social medias including Bilibili, where he receives pervasive critical acclaim among the younger generation.
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Charlotte Witt
#35512
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Charlotte Witt is a professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of New Hampshire. Education and career Witt double majored at Swarthmore College, graduating in 1975 with degrees both classics and philosophy. She went on to receive her master's and doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1978 and 1980, respectively.
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