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
#36951
Jane I. Guyer
#36963
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jane I. Guyer is the George Armstrong Kelly Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Biography Before coming to Hopkins, Guyer taught at Northwestern University, Harvard University, and Boston University. She has published extensively on economic development in West Africa, on the productive economy, the division of labor, and the management of money. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008 and serves on several international and national committees, including the International Advisory Group to the World Bank and the governments of Chad and...
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Cristina Lafont
#36964
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Cristina Lafont is Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Biography Lafont graduated 'cum laude' with a Licenciatura in philosophy from the Universidad de Valencia in 1987. From there, she moved to Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt , where she obtained her PhD in philosophy 'summa cum laude' in 1992 under the supervision of Jürgen Habermas. At the same university, she was awarded the Habilitation in the year 2000. Cristina Lafont has held numerous positions as a distinguished lecturer or visiting professor in the English-speaking, Spanish-speaking and German-speaking academic world.
Go to Profile#36953
Kent John Chabotar
#36965
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Kent John Chabotar is an American political scientist and academic administrator. He was a professor of political science and president of Guilford College from 2002 to 2014. Biography Education Chabotar was born in New York City. He graduated magna cum laude from Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pa., in 1968 with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. He served two terms as student government president. He earned a master of public administration degree with distinction and doctor of philosophy degree in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public ...
Go to Profile#36954
John F. Callahan
#36966
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John F. Callahan is the literary executor for Ralph Ellison, and was the editor for his posthumously-released novel Juneteenth. In addition to his work with Ellison, Callahan has written or edited numerous volumes related to African-American literature, with a particular emphasis on 20th century literature. Some of Callahan's other works include In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in 20th Century Black Fiction, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Casebook, and The Illusions of a Nation: Myth and History in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Callahan also edited Ellison's short st...
Go to Profile#36955
Ramez Elmasri
#36967
Overall Influence
1950 - 2022 (72 years)
Ramez A. Elmasri was an Egyptian-American computer scientist and a noted researcher in the field of database systems. He was also professor and associate chairman in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas. He was best known as the author of the textbooks: "Fundamentals of Database systems" . His book has been a leading textbook in the database area worldwide for last 25 years. It is now in its seventh edition, having been translated into Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Greek, Euskara , and Arabic.
Go to Profile#36956
Philipp Petzschner
#36968
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Philipp Petzschner is a retired German professional tennis player. He was known for his hard-hitting forehand and backhand slices. He reached a career-high doubles ranking of world No. 9, which he achieved in April 2011.
Go to Profile#36957
Tim Lincecum
#36969
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Timothy Leroy Lincecum , nicknamed "the Freak", "the Franchise", "the Freaky Franchise", and "Big Time Timmy Jim", is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball for the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Angels . A two-time Cy Young Award winner, Lincecum helped the Giants win three World Series championships from 2010 through 2014.
Go to Profile#36958
Roman Słowiński
#36970
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Roman Słowiński is a Polish computer scientist and professor. Since 2019 he has been Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a Professor and Founding Chair of the Laboratory of Intelligent Decision Support Systems at the Institute of Computing Science, Poznań University of Technology, Poland. Since 2003 he is also a professor at the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Go to Profile#36959
Skip Garibaldi
#36971
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Skip Garibaldi is an American mathematician doing research on algebraic groups and especially exceptional groups. Biography Garibaldi dropped out of high school to attend Purdue University, where he earned B.S. degrees in mathematics and in computer science. He then obtained a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego in 1998. His doctoral thesis was on triality and algebraic groups. After holding positions at ETH Zurich and the University of California, Los Angeles, he joined the faculty at Emory University in 2002, and was eventually promoted to Winship Distinguished Research Professor.
Go to Profile#36960
Carole Bayer Sager
#36972
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Carole Bayer Sager is an American lyricist, singer, songwriter, and painter. Early life and career Carole Bayer was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Anita Nathan Bayer and Eli Bayer. Her family was Jewish. She graduated from New York University, where she majored in English, dramatic arts, and speech. She had already written her first pop hit, "A Groovy Kind of Love", with Toni Wine, while still a student at New York City's High School of Music and Art. It was recorded by the British invasion band The Mindbenders, whose version was a worldwide hit, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Go to Profile#36961
Eva-Maria Neher
#36973
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Eva-Maria Neher is a German scientist in the fields of biochemistry and microbiology. She founded the Göttingen Xlab and has been its Executive Director since 2000. The Göttingen Xlab is an experimental laboratory for training young people from student to scientist level. She is married to Erwin Neher who is a Nobel laureate for his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She is the recipient of many awards including the Lower Saxony State Prize.
Go to Profile#36962
Massimiano Bucchi
#36974
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Massimiano Bucchi is an Italian sociologist, writer and a scholar of the relationships among science, technology and society. Biography After graduating in sociology at the University of Trento, Italy, he pursued his studies in the United Kingdom at Sussex University and in the United States at University of Wisconsin and University of California Berkeley, receiving a doctorate in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. Since 2005 he has been associate professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, where since 2007 h...
Go to Profile#36963
Patrik Aspers
#36975
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#36964
Lev Pavlovich Rapoport
#36976
Overall Influence
1920 - 2000 (80 years)
Lev Pavlovich Rapoport was well known for his pioneering works in nuclear and atomic theoretical physics. Early work His first works in this field concerned the simplest of atoms, atomic hydrogen, and, more specifically, light scattering from, and two-photon ionization of, hydrogen atoms. His analytical calculations of the cross sections for those processes are now considered classic works, and the methods he used to derive the corresponding formulas have formed the basis of many subsequent theoretical works by researchers both in Russia and abroad.
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Paul Simon
#36977
Overall Influence
1928 - 2003 (75 years)
Paul Martin Simon was an American author and politician from Illinois. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1985 and in the United States Senate from 1985 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, he unsuccessfully ran for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.
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Porter Wagoner
#36978
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Porter Wayne Wagoner was an American country music singer known for his flashy Nudie and Manuel suits and blond pompadour. In 1967, he introduced singer Dolly Parton on his television show, The Porter Wagoner Show. She became part of a well-known vocal duo with him from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
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Roy Acuff
#36979
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the "King of Country Music", Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful. In 1952, Hank Williams told Ralph Gleason, "He's the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn't worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God."
Go to Profile#36968
Corneliu E. Giurgea
#36980
Overall Influence
1923 - 1995 (72 years)
Corneliu E. Giurgea was a Romanian psychologist and chemist. In 1964 he synthesised Piracetam, which he has described as a nootropic. Giurgea coined the term nootropic in 1972. Nootropic characteristics He stated that nootropic drugs should have the following characteristics:They should enhance learning and memory.They should enhance the resistance of learned behaviors/memories to conditions which tend to disrupt them .They should protect the brain against various physical or chemical injuries .They should increase the efficacy of the tonic cortical/subcortical control mechanisms.They should ...
Go to Profile#36969
Joseph C. Gambone
#36981
Overall Influence
Joseph C. Gambone is an osteopathic physician, clinical professor at Western University of Health Sciences, and emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of California, Los Angeles . Gambone is the Executive Editor of the textbook Essentials of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He currently practices reproductive endocrinology and infertility in Durango, Colorado. A former Lieutenant in the US Navy, Gambone Peak in Antarctica was named in his honor.
Go to Profile#36970
Benny Andrews
#36982
Overall Influence
1930 - 2006 (76 years)
Benny Andrews was an African-American artist, activist and educator. Born in Plainview, Georgia, Andrews earned a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958, and soon after moved to New York. He is known for his expressive, figurative paintings that often incorporated collaged fabric and other material. Andrews helped found the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, which agitated for greater representation of African-American artists and curators in New York’s major art museums in the late 1960s and 70s. He also led the group in founding an arts education program in...
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Larry Temkin
#36983
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Larry Temkin is an American philosopher specializing in normative ethics and political philosophy. His research into equality, practical reason, and the nature of the good has been very influential. His work on the intransitivity of the "all things considered better than"-relation is groundbreaking and challenges deeply held assumptions about value, practical reasoning, and the goodness of outcomes. His 1993 book Inequality was described by the Times Literary Supplement as "brilliant and fascinating," and as offering the reader more than any other book on the same subject.
Go to Profile#36972
John Foxx
#36984
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
John Foxx is an English singer, musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, writer, teacher and lecturer. He was the original lead singer of the new wave band Ultravox, before leaving to embark on a solo career in 1980 with the album Metamatic.
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Anatoly Gromyko
#36985
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Anatoly Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet and Russian scientist and diplomat. He specialized in American and African studies as well as international relations, and was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Union of Russian Artists.
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Frederick Gehring
#36986
Overall Influence
1925 - 2012 (87 years)
Frederick William Gehring was an American mathematician who worked in the area of complex analysis . Personal life Both of Fred Gehring's parents graduated from the University of Michigan. His father, Carl Ernst Gehring, was a journalist who worked for the Ann Arbor News and a music critic. His mother, Hester Reed Gehring, was a foreign language examiner for students who needed to prove competency as a requirement for their graduate degree. She was also the daughter of John Oren Reed, a physics professor and Dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Mic...
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Valerie Beral
#36987
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dame Valerie Beral AC DBE FRS FRCOG FMedSci was an Australian-born British epidemiologist, academic and a preeminent specialist in breast cancer epidemiology. She was Professor of Epidemiology, a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford and was the Head of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford and Cancer Research UK from 1989.
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Samuil Bernstein
#36988
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Samuil Borisovich Bernstein was a Soviet linguist, known for his work on Slavic languages, in particular Bulgarian. Life and work Samuil Bernstein was born in Barguzin, a village east of Lake Baikal in what is today Republic of Buryatia, in the Jewish family of Boris Samuilovich Bernstein, a revolutionary exiled to Siberia. With his parents' family, he moved around the Soviet Far East, including a few years in Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky, then the capital of Soviet Sakhalin Oblast. As there was no high school in town, he left his parents to attend a high school on the mainland, in Nikolsk Ussuriyski .
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Ronitt Rubinfeld
#36989
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ronitt Rubinfeld is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. Education Rubinfeld was born in 1964 in Ohio and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a child, she attended Huron High School and went on to graduate from the University of Michigan with a BSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering . Following that, she received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley , under the supervision of Manuel Blum. In the years 1990–1992 she did a post-doctorate at Princet...
Go to Profile#36978
Hank Klibanoff
#36990
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Hank Klibanoff is an American journalist, now a professor at Emory University. He and Gene Roberts won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History for the book The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.
Go to Profile#36979
Peter G. Traber
#36991
Overall Influence
Peter George Traber is an American pharmaceutical company executive. He is the Chief Medical Officer for Selecta Biosciences. https://selectabio.com/ He has been the president and chief executive officer of Baylor College of Medicine and the John and Clara Whitmore Professor of Medicine. Traber succeeded Ralph Feigin to become the fourth president of BCM in March 2003, and was president until November 2008. Prior to joining Baylor, he served as Senior Vice President for Clinical Development & Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to that, Traber held positions ...
Go to Profile#36980
Marek Żukowski
#36992
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Marek Żukowski is a Polish theoretical physicist and lecturer at the University of Gdańsk. He specializes in quantum mechanics, his area of interest in particular concerns the Bell's theorem and quantum interferometry.
Go to Profile#36981
Cristiano Dal Sasso
#36993
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Cristiano Dal Sasso is an Italian paleontologist. Biography He was born in Monza, Italy and has been working since 1991 for the Milan Natural History Museum where he is the curator of fossil reptiles and birds. He was the technical coordinator of the excavations of Besano, which brought to light the complete skeleton of a Middle Triassic marine reptile of the order of Ichthyosaurs, the Besanosaurus with embryos in the belly, published in 1996 along with Giovanni Pinna.
Go to Profile#36982
Don Slater
#36994
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Don Slater is a British sociologist. A reader in sociology at the London School of Economics, Slater has researched the use of light in public infrastructure, and new media. He became chief editor of the British Journal of Sociology in 2013, succeeding Richard T. Wright. Slater was replaced by Nigel Dodd in 2014.
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Karthik Muralidharan
#36995
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Karthik Muralidharan is an Indian economist who currently serves as a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, where he also holds the Tata Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Economics. His primary research interests include development economics, public economics, and labour economics. Moreover, Muralidharan is co-chair of the education programme of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab . He also founded CEGIS, an organization aimed to improve lives by helping state governments deliver better development outcomes.
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Eileen Chang
#36996
Overall Influence
1920 - 1995 (75 years)
Eileen Chang , also known as Chang Ai-ling or Zhang Ailing, or by her pen name Liang Jing , was a Chinese-born American essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. She was a well-known feminist woman writer of Chinese literature, known for portraying life in 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong.
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Pierre Sikivie
#36997
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Pierre Sikivie is an American theoretical physicist and currently the Distinguished Professor of Physics at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He invented the axion haloscope and the axion helioscope and has played an important role in the development of axion cosmology.
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James W. Valentine
#36998
Overall Influence
1926 - 2023 (97 years)
James William Valentine was an American evolutionary biologist, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology.
Go to Profile#36987
Becca Heller
#36999
Overall Influence
Rebecca Heller is a lawyer specializing in human rights. She is known for her opposition to the Trump travel ban, and for her work providing legal assistance to refugees through the International Refugee Assistance Project, which she co-founded and directs.
Go to Profile#36988
Peter Harvey
#37000
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Brian Peter Harvey is a contemporary British scholar of Buddhism. He is Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland. Career Peter Harvey received his Ph.D under the supervision of Ninian Smart at Lancaster University. Harvey is the author of An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices published by Cambridge University Press, whose 1st edition sold over 55,000 copies. He has also authored a book on anatta, The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism, and An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Practices published by the Cambridge University Press.
Go to Profile#36989
Joanne Cohn
#37001
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joanne Cohn is an American astrophysicist known for her work in cosmology and particle physics. She is also known for her role in the creation of the ArXiv.org e-print archive. Cohn is a Senior Space Fellow and Full Researcher in the Space Sciences Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#36990
Davis McCaughey
#37002
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
John Davis McCaughey was an Irish-born Australian academic theologian, Christian minister, university administrator and the 23rd Governor of Victoria from 1986 to 1992. Early life and academic career McCaughey was born in Belfast, Ireland, on 12 July 1914. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1941 and during the next decade he also worked for the British Council of Churches.
Go to Profile#36991
Noon Meem Danish
#37003
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Noor Mohammed Danish , also known as Noon Meem Danish, is a Pakistani poet of African and Baloch descent. Early life and education Danish was born in 1958 in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan to a working-class family. He was raised in Lyari, a largely Sheedi neighbourhood, which he describes as "Karachi's Harlem". He did his early education at the Okhai Memon School in Kharadar, and began writing poetry in 1974. His African appearance often led people around him to assume he was a foreigner; he describes being asked frequently where he was from and why he spoke Urdu so well.
Go to Profile#36992
Ivet Bahar
#37004
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ivet Bahar is a Turkish-American computational biologist, currently serving as the Director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Louis & Beatrice Laufer Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Stony Brook University, School of Medicine. Before joining Stony Brook University, she served as Distinguished Professor, John K. Vries Chair and Founder of the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , and as Assistant , Associate and Full Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Go to Profile#36993
Barry L. Gan
#37005
Overall Influence
Barry L. Gan is an American academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at St. Bonaventure University. From 1986 until 2020 he directed the Center for Nonviolence, formerly the Peace Studies program at St. Bonaventure University. For twenty-six years, from 1990 to 2016, he was editor of The Acorn: Journal of the Gandhi-King Society, now called The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence. For two years in the 1990s he served as program committee chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest and largest interfaith peace group in the United States, and also serv...
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C. Barry Carter
#37006
Overall Influence
C. Barry Carter is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. He is a CINT Distinguished Affiliate Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Science. Carter's research areas of focus include Transmission Electron Microscopy and Atomic-force microscopy.
Go to Profile#36995
Georgia Warnke
#37007
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Georgia Warnke is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center for Ideas & Society at the University of California, Riverside. She chaired the Department from 2002 to 2004. She also acted as the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at UCR from 2006 to 2011.
Go to Profile#36996
Susanna Hoffs
#37008
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Susanna Hoffs is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, author, and actress. Hoffs, Debbi and Vicki Peterson founded the Bangles in 1981. They released their first album All Over the Place on Columbia Records in 1984. The group's third album, Everything included the US top-ten hit In Your Room and number one Eternal Flame, both written by Hoffs with Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Following tensions in the band that included resentment at Hoffs being perceived as the band's leader, the group split in 1989. The Bangles re-formed in 1999 and released albums in 2003 and 2011.
Go to Profile#36997
David W. Johnson
#37009
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
David W. Johnson is a social psychologist whose research has focused on four overlapping areas: cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts; constructive controversy; conflict resolution and peer mediation and experiential learning to teach interpersonal and small group skills. Johnson has developed and applied psychological knowledge in effort to improve practices within educational systems. Johnson's books have been translated into 20 different languages and his work has been applied in many countries.
Go to Profile#36998
Myles Mace
#37010
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Myles La Grange Mace was a long-time professor at the Harvard Business School. He was a pioneer in the study of entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Early life Mace was born in Montevideo, Minnesota, son of Jack Mace. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1934 and William Mitchell College of Law in 1936. He was admitted to the Minnesota Bar, but decided to further his education at the Harvard Business School, where he received his M.B.A. in 1938. He took a job at HBS after graduation as a research associate before leaving for military service four years later. He left the U.S.
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Siegfried Gottwald
#37011
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Siegfried Johannes Gottwald was a German mathematician, logician and historian of science. Life and work Gottwald was born in Limbach, Saxony in 1943. From 1961 to 1966, he studied mathematics at the University of Leipzig, where he was awarded his doctor title in 1969 and his habilitation in 1977.
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Anthony Dent
#37012
Overall Influence
Anthony Dent is an American songwriter and producer, best known for co-writing global hit "Survivor" for Destiny's Child, as well as "Friend of Mine" for Kelly Price. Originally a member of Bad Boy Records' famed production outfit The Hitmen, Dent left to create his own production company, State Of Mind Muzic Inc., where he began mentoring and signing new artists, including singer-songwriter Keri Hilson.
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