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
#42301
Jeff Thomson
#42314
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jeffrey Robert Thomson is a former Australian cricketer. Known as "Thommo", he is one of the fastest bowlers in the history of cricket; he bowled a delivery with a speed of 160.6 km/h against the West Indies in Perth in 1975, which was the fastest recorded delivery at the time, and the fourth-fastest recorded delivery of all time.
Go to Profile#42302
Ralph Russell
#42315
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Ralph Russell SI was a British scholar of Urdu literature and a Communist. Biography Russell was born in Hammerton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and grew up in Loughton, Essex. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, where he read classics and geography, graduating in 1940 with an ordinary degree. He learnt Urdu while serving in India on attachment to the Indian Army during World War II, achieving "considerable fluency at the level of everyday communication with my sepoys." During the war he had "no opportunity of making the acquaintance of Urdu literature", but following demo...
Go to Profile#42303
Emma Sulkowicz
#42316
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Emma Sulkowicz is best known as a political activist and performance artist. While still a college student, Sulkowicz developed a national reputation with the performance artwork Mattress Performance . In 2019, she said she had stopped making art and began a master's program in traditional Chinese medicine.
Go to Profile#42304
Susan Gal
#42317
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Susan Gal is the Mae & Sidney G. Metzl Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology, of Linguistics, and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago She is the author or co-author of several books and numerous articles on linguistic anthropology, gender and politics, and the social history of Eastern Europe.
Go to Profile#42305
Guillermo Oliver
#42318
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Guillermo Oliver is a Uruguayan-American research scientist. He is currently the Thomas D. Spies Professor of Lymphatic Metabolism at Northwestern University, and director of the Center for Vascular and Developmental Biology at the Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute. Oliver is an elected member of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Academia de Ciencias de América Latina.
Go to Profile#42306
Carl Lavie
#42319
Overall Influence
Carl J. "Chip" Lavie is an American cardiologist. He is the medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and preventive cardiology at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is also a professor at the Ochsner Clinical School of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the editor-in-chief of the medical journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.
Go to Profile#42307
Erhan Afyoncu
#42320
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Erhan Afyoncu is a Turkish historian, writer, academician, television programmer and columnist. Rector of the National Defense University. Personal life He saw his primary and secondary education in Tokat, the place of birth. After graduating from Gazi Osman Paşa High School in 1984, Marmara University Atatürk Education Faculty Department of Social Studies Education Department began.
Go to Profile#42308
Maureen O'Sullivan
#42321
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Maureen O'Sullivan was an Irish actress who played Jane in the Tarzan series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a century and performed with such actors as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Bros. and Woody Allen. In 2020, she was listed at number eight on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Go to Profile#42309
John Lucas II
#42322
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Harding Lucas II is an American professional basketball coach and former player who most recently served as an assistant coach for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association . He played basketball and tennis at the University of Maryland, College Park and was an All-American in both.
Go to Profile#42310
Henry E. Brady
#42323
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Henry E. Brady is an American political scientist specializing in methodology and its application in a diverse array of political fields. He is Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley and holds the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. He was elected President of the American Political Science Association, 2009–2010, giving a presidential address entitled "The Art of Political Science: Spatial Diagrams as Iconic and Revelatory." He has published academic works on diverse topics, co-authoring with colleagues at a variety of institutions and ranks, as well as many solo authored works.
Go to Profile#42311
Rob Brydon
#42324
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Robert Brydon Jones is a Welsh actor, comedian, impressionist, presenter, singer and writer. Brydon gained prominence for his roles in film, television and radio. Brydon was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honours in 2013 for services to comedy and broadcasting, and for charitable services.
Go to Profile#42312
Derek Thompson
#42325
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Derek Kahn Thompson is a self-described "progressive" American podcaster and journalist. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction. Early life Derek Thompson was born in McLean, Virginia, the son of Robert Thompson and Petra Kahn, both deceased. Before graduating from high school, he appeared in several theatrical productions at the Folger Shakespeare Theater and the Shakespeare Theater. After attending the Potomac School, Thompson graduated from Northwestern University in 2008.
Go to Profile#42313
Trevor Bolder
#42326
Overall Influence
1950 - 2013 (63 years)
Trevor Bolder was an English rock musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his long association with Uriah Heep and his tenure with the Spiders from Mars, the backing band for David Bowie, although he also played alongside a variety of musicians from the early 1970s.
Go to Profile#42314
Amy Clampitt
#42327
Overall Influence
1920 - 1994 (74 years)
Amy Clampitt was an American poet and author. Life Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920, of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Grinnell College she began a study of English literature that eventually led her to poetry. Clampitt graduated from Grinnell College, and from that time on lived mainly in New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor.
Go to Profile#42315
Charles Musser
#42328
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Charles John Musser is a film historian, documentary filmmaker, and a film editor. Since 1992, he has taught at Yale University, where he is currently a professor of Film and Media Studies as well as American Studies and Theater Studies. His research has primarily focused on early cinema, and topics such as Edwin S. Porter, Oscar Micheaux, race cinema of the silent era, Paul Robeson, film performance, as well as a variety of issues and individuals in documentary. His films include An American Potter , Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter and Errol Morris: A Lightning...
Go to Profile#42316
Jim Baggott
#42329
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
James Edward Baggott is a British science writer living in Reading, Berkshire, England who writes about science, philosophy and science history. Baggott is the author of nine books, including Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth , Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation, Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle and The Quantum Story: A History in 40 moments.
Go to Profile#42317
Dan Markel
#42330
Overall Influence
1972 - 2014 (42 years)
Daniel Eric Markel was a Canadian-born attorney and a law professor, who wrote various works on retribution in criminal law and sentencing, with a focus on the role of punishment in the criminal justice system. A native of Toronto, he earned a J.D. degree from Harvard University in 2001 and after working as a law clerk to a federal judge and as an associate at a law firm, joined the faculty of Florida State University in 2005.
Go to Profile#42318
Amanda Barnard
#42331
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Amanda Susan Barnard is an Australian theoretical physicist working in predicting the real world behavior of nanoparticles using analytical models and supercomputer simulations and applied machine learning. Barnard is a pioneer in the thermodynamic cartography of nanomaterials, creating nanoscale phase diagrams relevant to different environmental conditions, and relating these to structure/property maps. Her current research involves developing and applying statistical methods and machine/deep learning in nanoscience and nanotechnology, and materials and molecular informatics. In 2014 she ...
Go to Profile#42319
Jalen Hurts
#42332
Overall Influence
1998 - Present (28 years)
Jalen Alexander Hurts is an American football quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League . He played his first three seasons of college football at the University of Alabama, where he made two consecutive College Football National Championship appearances and was a member of the team that won the 2018 title. Hurts used his final year of eligibility at the University of Oklahoma where he quarterbacked the Oklahoma Sooners to the 2019 Big 12 Conference title and an appearance in the 2019 College Football Playoff. At Oklahoma, Hurts was a finalist for the 2019 Heisma...
Go to Profile#42320
Mikael Fortelius
#42333
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mikael Fortelius is a professor of evolutionary palaeontology at the University of Helsinki and the coordinator of the Neogene of the Old World database of fossil mammals. His research involves the evolution of Eurasian land mammals and terrestrial environments during the Neogene, ecomorphology of ungulates, developmental biology, the function and evolution of mammalian teeth, and scaling problems . He is an expert on indricotheres. He has authored and co-authored a number of papers in peer-reviewed international journals as well as articles on popular science and other published material. ...
Go to Profile#42321
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
#42334
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is an American conceptual artist known for multidisciplinary, socially oriented sculpture, video and installations and urban community-based projects of the 1990s. His work often explores a dialectical relationships involving minimalist aesthetics, the utopian ambitions of modernism and science, and the resulting—often negative—social, geopolitical and ecological consequences of such ideologies. New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote that Manglano-Ovalle was adept in "distilling complex ideas into inviting visual metaphors," while Jody Zellen described his work as "i...
Go to Profile#42322
Evan Rachel Wood
#42335
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Evan Rachel Wood is an American actress. She is the recipient of a Critics' Choice Television Award as well as three Primetime Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations for her work in film and television.
Go to Profile#42323
Charles R. Doering
#42336
Overall Influence
1956 - 2021 (65 years)
Charles Rogers Doering was a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is notable for his research that is generally focused on the analysis of stochastic dynamical systems arising in biology, chemistry and physics, to systems of nonlinear partial differential equations. Recently he had been focusing on fundamental questions in fluid dynamics as part of the $1M Clay Institute millennium challenge concerning the regularity of solutions to the equations of fluid dynamics. With J. D. Gibbon, he notably co-authored the book Applied Analysis of the Navier-Stokes Equations, published by Cambridge University Press.
Go to Profile#42324
José Gilberto Montoya
#42337
Overall Influence
Dr. José Gilberto Montoya is a prominent researcher known for his contributions to the field of infectious diseases, particularly in the area of chronic fatigue syndrome and the role of infectious agents in its development. His research has shed light on the potential involvement of pathogens and immune dysregulation in the pathophysiology of CFS. He was a Professor of Medicine in Infectious Disease at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he led Stanford's Initiative on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He has worked on a wide variety of projects, including research focused on the efficacy of new smallpox vaccines.
Go to Profile#42325
Jesse Ausubel
#42338
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jesse Huntley Ausubel is an American environmental scientist and program manager of a variety of global biodiversity and ecology research programs. Ausubel serves as director and senior research associate of the Program for the Human Environment of The Rockefeller University. He was also a science advisor and program manager at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation where his main area of responsibility was supporting basic research in science and technology.
Go to Profile#42326
Charles Richard Stith
#42339
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Charles R. Stith is an American businessman, diplomat, former educator, author and politician. He is currently the Chairman of The Pula Group, LLC., which invests in high value opportunities in Africa. He is the non-executive chairman of the African Presidential Leadership Center, a Johannesburg-based NGO focused on leadership development and tracking economic and political trends in Africa. He established and formerly directed Boston University's African Presidential Center. Prior to this, Stith presented his letter of credence as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to the United Republic of Tanzania in September 1998.
Go to Profile#42327
John D. Dunne
#42340
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John D. Dunne is the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities through the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds a co-appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature. Until January 2016, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University.
Go to Profile#42328
Alice Twemlow
#42341
Overall Influence
Alice Twemlow is a writer, critic and educator from the United Kingdom whose work focuses on graphic design. She has been a guest critic at the Yale University School of Art, Maryland Institute College of Art , and Rhode Island School of Design . In 2006, the School of Visual Arts in New York named Twemlow the chair and co-founder of its Master of Fine Arts in Design Criticism . According to her SVA biography: "Alice Twemlow writes for Eye, Design Issues, I.D., Print, New York magazine and The Architect’s Newspaper." Twemlow is also a contributor to the online publication Voice: AIGA Journal of Design.
Go to Profile#42329
Joseph Uscinski
#42342
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Joseph E. Uscinski is an American political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracy theories. His most notable work is American Conspiracy Theories co-authored with Joseph M. Parent. He is an associate professor at the University of Miami's Political Science department, and author of several academic publications. He has been made a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in 2020.
Go to Profile#42330
Douglas V. Steere
#42343
Overall Influence
1901 - 1995 (94 years)
Douglas Van Steere was an American Quaker ecumenist. Biography He served as a professor of philosophy at Haverford College from 1928 to 1964 and visiting professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary from 1961 to 1962. Steere organized Quaker post-war relief work in Finland, Norway and Poland, was invited to participate as an ecumenical observer in the Second Vatican Council and co-founded the Ecumenical Institute of Spirituality. He authored, edited, translated and wrote introductions for many books on Quakerism, as well as other religions and philosophy.
Go to Profile#42331
Lawrence Sulak
#42344
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Lawrence Sulak is an American physicist, currently the David M. Myers Distinguished Professor at Boston University. Some of Sulak's research has included Higgs detection at the Compact Muon Solenoid in the Large Hadron Collider, neutrino physics, astrophysics, and contributing work for the Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observatory.
Go to Profile#42332
Walt Simonson
#42345
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Walter Simonson is an American comic book writer and artist, best known for a run on Marvel Comics' Thor from 1983 to 1987, during which he created the character Beta Ray Bill. He is also known for the creator-owned work Star Slammers, which he inaugurated in 1972 as a Rhode Island School of Design thesis. He has also worked on other Marvel titles such as X-Factor and Fantastic Four, on DC Comics books including Detective Comics, Manhunter, Metal Men and Orion, and on licensed properties such as Star Wars, Alien, Battlestar Galactica and Robocop vs. Terminator.
Go to Profile#42333
Shin Takamatsu
#42346
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Shin Takamatsu is a leading Japanese architect. After he obtained PhD from Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, in 1980, he became a lecturer at Osaka University of Arts in 1981, an associate professor at Kyoto Seika University in 1987, a professor at Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University in 1997 and professor emeritus at Kyoto University in 2013. Takamatsu's futuristic looking buildings often use anthropomorphic or mechanical imagery.
Go to Profile#42334
Richard Ayoade
#42347
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Richard Ellef Ayoade is a British comedian, actor, broadcaster, and filmmaker. He played the role of socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss in Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd , for which he won the 2014 BAFTA for Best Male Comedy Performance.
Go to Profile#42335
Martin Brasier
#42348
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Martin David Brasier FGS, FLS was an English palaeobiologist and astrobiologist known for his conceptual analysis of microfossils and evolution in the Precambrian and Cambrian. He was Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall. His research critically examined the context and character of the early fossil record, making use of field mapping, logging, optical petrography, stable isotope geochemistry, confocal microscopy, NanoSims microprobes, and lasers for high resolution 3D scanning and laser Raman spectroscopy.
Go to Profile#42336
Chris Killip
#42349
Overall Influence
1946 - 2020 (74 years)
Christopher David Killip was a Manx photographer who worked at Harvard University from 1991 to 2017, as a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies. Killip is known for his black and white images of people and places especially of Tyneside during the 1980s.
Go to Profile#42337
Frank L. Douglas
#42350
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Frank Lennox Douglas is a Guyanese-American biomedical researcher and business executive. Education and career Douglas was born April 30, 1943, in Georgetown, Guyana. He graduated with a BS in Engineering from Lehigh University in 1966. He went on to a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University, which he received at the beginning of 1973, with a thesis on chlorophyll-a. After a brief stint working at Xerox, Douglas moved to New York City to pursue a medical degree from the Cornell University Medical School. After finishing the MD, Douglas completed an internship and residency in inte...
Go to Profile#42338
Tillakaratne Dilshan
#42351
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Tillakaratne Mudiyanselage Dilshan , commonly known as TM Dilshan is a former Sri Lankan cricketer and former captain of the Sri Lanka national cricket team. He is often regarded as the best rated Sri Lankan player in run-chases in ODI history and one of the most innovative players of all time. Dilshan is considered to be a rare example of a cricketer with notable skills in all aspects of the game, who can bat, bowl, field and keep wicket. He is an aggressive right-hand batsman who invented the scoop, which has come to be known as the Dilscoop, a shot that hits the ball over the keeper. Apart from being an opening batsman, he is also a capable off-break bowler.
Go to Profile#42339
Joshua S. Goldstein
#42352
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Joshua S. Goldstein is professor emeritus of international relations at American University. He graduated with a BA from Stanford University in 1981 and earned his doctorate at MIT 1986. He was appointed professor in 1993. He was on the faculty at the University of Southern California and American University and was a research scholar in political science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Go to Profile#42340
Ganesh Nagaraju
#42353
Overall Influence
Ganesh Nagaraju is an Indian biochemist, geneticist, cancer biologist and a full professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Indian Institute of Science. He has been studying DNA damage responses in mammalian cells, and mechanisms underlying chromosome instability genetic diseases and cancer. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2015. In 2018, Nagaraju received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in Biological Sciences from CSIR. This ...
Go to Profile#42341
Clancy Blair
#42354
Overall Influence
Clarence Bissell Blair Jr. is an American developmental psychologist and Professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He previously taught at Pennsylvania State University for ten years. He is known for his research on the development of emotional self-regulation in children.
Go to Profile#42342
Deniz Baykal
#42355
Overall Influence
1938 - 2023 (85 years)
Deniz Baykal was a Turkish politician. A member of the Republican People's Party who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 1996. Having served in numerous government positions, Baykal led the CHP from 1992 to February 1995, from September 1995 to 1999 and again from 2000 to 2010. Between 2002 and 2010, he also served as the Leader of the Opposition by virtue of leading the second largest party in the Parliament.
Go to Profile#42343
Delbert Mann
#42356
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
Delbert Martin Mann Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty , adapted from a 1953 teleplay of the same name which he had also directed. From 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America. In 2002, he received the DGA's honorary life member award. Mann was credited to have "helped bring TV techniques to the film world."
Go to Profile#42344
Cao Tianqin
#42357
Overall Influence
1920 - 1995 (75 years)
Cao Tianqin , also known as Tien-chin Tsao, was a Chinese biochemist and a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry. With a research focus on muscle protein, he discovered the myosin light chain and pioneered the study of tropomyosin and paramyosin using electron microscopes. He was a strong advocate and main leader for the synthesis of insulin, and spearheaded the research of plant viruses in China.
Go to Profile#42345
Howard Rosenthal
#42358
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Howard Lewis Rosenthal was an American political scientist who was professor of politics at New York University. He also taught at Carnegie-Mellon University and Princeton University, where he was the Roger Williams Straus professor of social sciences.
Go to Profile#42346
Nicole Loraux
#42359
Overall Influence
1943 - 2003 (60 years)
Nicole Loraux was a French historian of classical Athens. Biography She was born in Paris and died in Argenteuil. She graduated in Classics at the École normale supérieure des filles . In 1965, she obtained the agrégation de lettres classiques , before writing a PhD thesis under the supervision of Pierre Vidal-Naquet.
Go to Profile#42347
Douglas Erwin
#42360
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Douglas Hamilton Erwin is a paleobiologist, Curator of Paleozoic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Chair of the Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Current Biology.
Go to Profile#42348
Jonathan Losos
#42361
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jonathan B. Losos is an American evolutionary biologist and Herpetologist. Life Losos studied biology at Harvard University, from which he received a Bachelor's degree in 1984. Later on, in 1989, he received a PhD in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley . Starting in 1987, he worked as a Teaching assistant in Berkeley. After receiving his PhD, he moved to the University of California, Davis in 1990 to become one of the inaugural postdoctoral fellows at the Center for Population Biology. Losos then, from 1992 on, was assistant professor at the Washington University in St. Louis...
Go to Profile#42349
Scott Hamilton
#42362
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Scott Scovell Hamilton is a retired American figure skater and Olympic gold medalist. He won four consecutive U.S. championships , four consecutive World Championships , and a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics. His signature move, the backflip, a feat few other figure skaters could perform at the time, is against U.S. Figure Skating and Olympic competition rules. Yet, he would include it in his exhibition routines as an amateur to please the crowd. Later, he also used the backflip in his professional competition routines. He is widely recognized for his innovative footwork sequences. In retirem...
Go to Profile#42350
David Madden
#42363
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
David "Dave" Madden is an American game show contestant, academic competition organizer, and art historian. He is a former 19-day champion on Jeopardy! and holds the eighth-longest streak in Jeopardy history .
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