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).
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List of the most influential people
#4801
Martin E. Marty
#4809
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Martin Emil Marty is an American Lutheran religious scholar who has written extensively on religion in the United States. Early life and education Marty was born on February 5, 1928, in West Point, Nebraska, and raised in Iowa and Nebraska. He was a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and was educated at Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. Marty continued with graduate work, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1956. He served as a Lutheran pastor from 1952 to 1967 in the suburbs of Chicago.
Go to Profile#4802
Lester del Rey
#4810
Overall Influence
1915 - 1993 (78 years)
Lester del Rey was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.
Go to Profile#4803
Jodi Dean
#4811
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jodi Dean is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state. She held the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professorship of the Humanities and Social Sciences from 2013 to 2018. Dean has also held the position of Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is the author and editor of thirteen books. Her most recent book is titled Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging .
Go to Profile#4804
Pierre Cartier
#4812
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Pierre Émile Cartier is a French mathematician. An associate of the Bourbaki group and at one time a colleague of Alexander Grothendieck, his interests have ranged over algebraic geometry, representation theory, mathematical physics, and category theory.
Go to Profile#4805
Chie Nakane
#4813
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
was a Japanese anthropologist and Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Tokyo. Education and career Nakane was born in Tokyo and spent her teenage years in Beijing. She graduated from Tsuda College in 1947 and then completed her graduate work specializing in China and Tibet at the University of Tokyo in 1952. In 1953–1957, she did fieldwork in India and studied in the London School of Economics. Nakane served as Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago at the invitation of Sol Tax from 1959 to 1960 and as Visiting Lecturer in the...
Go to Profile#4806
Carl Andre
#4814
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Carl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary artist and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public artworks , to large interior works exhibited on the floor , to small intimate works .
Go to Profile#4807
Hans Albert
#4815
Overall Influence
1921 - Present (105 years)
Hans Albert was a German philosopher. He was professor of social sciences at the University of Mannheim from 1963, and remained at the university until 1989. His fields of research were social sciences and general studies of methods. He was a critical rationalist, paying special attention to rational heuristics. Albert was a strong critic of the continental hermeneutic tradition coming from Heidegger and Gadamer.
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Igor Kon
#4816
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Igor Semyonovich Kon was a Soviet and Russian philosopher, psychologist, and sexologist. His scientific publications have been translated into many languages, such as English, German, and French. Biography Kon was born in Leningrad . He was evacuated during the Siege of Leningrad and returned after the lifting of the blockade in 1944. He graduated from Herzen State Pedagogical University with a degree in history in 1947 and was awarded a candidate of sciences degree by the same university in 1950. He was awarded the doctor of sciences degree by Leningrad State University in 1959.
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Hoàng Tụy
#4817
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Hoàng Tụy was an prominent Vietnamese applied mathematician. He was considered one of two founders of the mathematical institutions of Vietnam; the other was Lê Văn Thiêm. Career Hoàng Tụy's early career coincided with the French war , which interrupted his studies. In December 1946, after two months as a mathematics student at Hanoi University, he had to return to the south, because the French had invaded and seized Hanoi, and the University had closed. Hoàng Tụy taught secondary school in Quảng Ngãi province in the Fifth Liberated Zone from 1947 to 1951, during which time he wrote a geometr...
Go to Profile#4810
Bobby Fischer
#4818
Overall Influence
1943 - 2008 (65 years)
Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11–0 score, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6–0 scores. After winning another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US an...
Go to Profile#4811
Michel Raynaud
#4819
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Michel Raynaud was a French mathematician working in algebraic geometry and a professor at Paris-Sud 11 University. Early life and education He was born in Riom, France as a single son to a modest household. His father was a carpenter and his mother cleaned houses. He attended the local primary school at Châtel Guyon and Riom, and attended high school at the boarding school in Clermont-Ferrand.
Go to Profile#4812
Pierre Hohenberg
#4820
Overall Influence
1934 - 2017 (83 years)
Pierre Hohenberg was a French-American theoretical physicist, who worked primarily on statistical mechanics. The Hohenberg-Kohn theorems, formulated by Hohenberg and Walter Kohn gave rise to the density functional theory . He is also known for the development of dynamic scaling theory of critical phenomena, along with Bertrand Halperin.
Go to Profile#4813
Irvin D. Yalom
#4821
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Irvin David Yalom is an American existential psychiatrist who is emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, as well as author of both fiction and nonfiction. Early life Yalom was born in Washington, D.C. About fifteen years prior to his birth in the United States, Yalom's Jewish parents emigrated from Russia and eventually opened a grocery store in Washington DC. Yalom spent much of his childhood reading books in the family home above the grocery store and in a local library. After graduating from high school, he attended George Washington University and then Boston University ...
Go to Profile#4814
Harry Redknapp
#4822
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Henry James Redknapp is an English former football manager and player. He has previously managed AFC Bournemouth, West Ham United, Portsmouth, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham City. In his second spell at Portsmouth, he managed the side that won the 2008 FA Cup. At the conclusion of the 2009–10 season, he guided Tottenham into the UEFA Champions League. Redknapp announced his retirement from football management in 2017.
Go to Profile#4815
Peter Schuster
#4823
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter K. Schuster is a theoretical chemist known for his work with the German Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen in developing the quasispecies model. His work has made great strides in the understanding of viruses and their replication, as well as theoretical mechanisms in the origin of life.
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Gerald Vizenor
#4824
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Gerald Robert Vizenor (born 1934) is an American writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. After a stint in the military upon returning to the United States in 1953, Vizenor took advantage of G.I. Bill funding to complete his undergraduate degree at New York University.
Go to Profile#4817
Toyo Ito
#4825
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
is a Japanese architect known for creating conceptual architecture, in which he seeks to simultaneously express the physical and virtual worlds. He is a leading exponent of architecture that addresses the contemporary notion of a "simulated" city, and has been called "one of the world's most innovative and influential architects."
Go to Profile#4818
Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy
#4826
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy is a member of the British royal family. Queen Elizabeth II and Alexandra were first cousins through their fathers, King George VI and Prince George, Duke of Kent. Alexandra's mother Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark was also a first cousin of the Queen's husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#4819
N. Katherine Hayles
#4827
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nancy Katherine Hayles is an American postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature. She is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature, Literature, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University.
Go to Profile#4820
Ross Ihaka
#4828
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
George Ross Ihaka is a New Zealand statistician who was an associate professor of statistics at the University of Auckland until his retirement in 2017. Alongside Robert Gentleman, he is one of the creators of the R programming language. In 2008, Ihaka received the Pickering Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand, for his work on R.
Go to Profile#4821
Boris Babayan
#4829
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Boris Artashesovich Babayan is a Soviet and Russian computer scientist of Armenian descent, notable as the pioneering creator of supercomputers in the former Soviet Union and Russia. Biography Babayan was born in Baku, Soviet Union to an Armenian family. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1957. He completed his Ph.D. in 1964 and his doctorate of science in 1971.
Go to Profile#4822
Edward Gorey
#4830
Overall Influence
1925 - 2000 (75 years)
Edward St. John Gorey was an American writer, Tony Award-winning costume designer, and artist, noted for his own illustrated books as well as cover art and illustration for books by other writers. His characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depict vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.
Go to Profile#4823
Robert W. Vishny
#4831
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Robert Ward Vishny is an American economist and is the Myron S. Scholes Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Go to Profile#4824
Võ Nguyên Giáp
#4832
Overall Influence
1911 - 2013 (102 years)
Võ Nguyên Giáp was a self-taught general of the People's Army of Vietnam , communist revolutionary and politician. Regarded as one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century, Giáp commanded Vietnamese communist forces in various wars. He served as the military commander of the Việt Minh and later the PAVN from 1941 to 1972, as the minister of defence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and later Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1946–1947 and from 1948 to 1980, and as deputy prime minister from 1955 to 1991. He was also a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietn...
Go to Profile#4825
Keith Devlin
#4833
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#4826
K. Alex Müller
#4834
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
Karl Alexander Müller was a Swiss physicist and Nobel laureate. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 with Georg Bednorz for their work in superconductivity in ceramic materials. Biography Müller was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 20 April 1927, to Irma and Paul Müller. His mother is Jewish. His family immediately moved to Salzburg, Austria, where his father was studying music. Alex and his mother then moved to Dornach, near Basel, to the home of his grandparents. Then they moved to Lugano, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, where he learned to speak Italian fluently. His ...
Go to Profile#4827
Raimon Panikkar
#4835
Overall Influence
1918 - 2010 (92 years)
Raimon Panikkar Alemany, also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar , was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of Interfaith dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.
Go to Profile#4828
Ronald Noble
#4836
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ronald Kenneth "Ron" Noble is an American law enforcement officer who served as the secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization from 2000 to 2014. He was the organization's first American and youngest secretary-general at the time of his appointment. Noble previously worked as a public servant in various U.S. government agencies, including the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Department of Justice and the Treasury.
Go to Profile#4829
Georg Kreisel
#4837
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Georg Kreisel FRS was an Austrian-born mathematical logician who studied and worked in the United Kingdom and America. Biography Kreisel was born in Graz and came from a Jewish background; his family sent him to the United Kingdom before the Anschluss in 1938. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then, during World War II, worked on military subjects. Kreisel never took a Ph.D., though much later, in 1962, he was awarded the Cambridge degree of Sc.D., a `higher doctorate' given on the basis of published research.
Go to Profile#4830
Pete Rose
#4838
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Peter Edward Rose Sr. , also known by his nickname "Charlie Hustle", is an American former professional baseball player and manager. Rose played in Major League Baseball from 1963 to 1986, most prominently as a member of the Cincinnati Reds lineup known as the Big Red Machine for their dominance of the National League in the 1970s. He also played for the Philadelphia Phillies and the Montreal Expos. During and after his playing career, he served as the manager of the Reds from 1984 to 1989.
Go to Profile#4831
Allan Gotthelf
#4839
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Allan Stanley Gotthelf was an American philosopher. He was a scholar of the philosophies of both Aristotle and Ayn Rand. Academic career Allan Stanley Gotthelf was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 30, 1942. He received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1963 and a Master of Arts in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1964. He then received a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in philosophy from Columbia University in 1972 and 1975, respectively, where he studied under professors such as Aristotelian scholar John Herman Randall, Jr. An ...
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Edward J. Nell
#4840
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Edward J. Nell is an American economist and a former professor at the New School for Social Research. Nell was a member of the New School faculty from 1969 to 2014. He achieved the rank of Malcolm B. Smith Professor of Economics in 1990.
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Maria Mies
#4841
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Maria Mies was a German professor of sociology, a Marxist feminist, an activist for women's rights, and an author. She came from a rural background in the Volcanic Eifel, and initially trained to be a teacher. After working for several years as a primary school teacher and qualifying as a high school instructor, she applied to the Goethe Institute, hoping to work in Africa or Asia. Assigned to a school in Pune, India, she discovered that while her male students took German courses to further their education, women for the most part took her classes to avoid marriage. Returning to study at the...
Go to Profile#4834
Lani Guinier
#4842
Overall Influence
1950 - 2022 (72 years)
Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated...
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Philippa Gregory
#4843
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Philippa Gregory is an English historical novelist who has been publishing since 1987. The best known of her works is The Other Boleyn Girl , which in 2002 won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association and has been adapted into two films.
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Ibram X. Kendi
#4844
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Ibram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he as director. Kendi was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Kendi has attracted criticism for his comments on Amy Coney Barrett as well as for alleged financial mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research.
Go to Profile#4837
Luigi Pasinetti
#4845
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
Luigi L. Pasinetti was an Italian economist of the post-Keynesian school. Pasinetti was considered the heir of the "Cambridge Keynesians" and a student of Piero Sraffa and Richard Kahn. Along with them, as well as Joan Robinson, he was one of the prominent members on the "Cambridge, UK" side of the Cambridge capital controversy. His contributions to economics include developing the analytical foundations of neo-Ricardian economics, including the theory of value and distribution, as well as work in the line of Kaldorian theory of growth and income distribution. He also developed the theory of ...
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David Kahne
#4846
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
David Kahne is an American record producer, musician, composer, and former record company executive. Professional career Kahne started his musical career as a working musician and soon became Director of A&R for America's first punk and new wave record label, San Francisco's 415 Records; a position he operated out of a closet-sized office upstairs at The Automatt recording studio. He did artist development and in-house production and engineering there for 415 and continued to produce records for artists on the 415 label when he left Automatt to accept a position in Los Angeles as vice president of A&R for Columbia Records.
Go to Profile#4839
Jan Assmann
#4847
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Johann Christoph "Jan" Assmann is a German Egyptologist. Life and works Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966–67, he was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, where he continued as an independent scholar from 1967 to 1971. After completing his habilitation in 1971, he was named a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. He was then named an Honorary Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where he is today.
Go to Profile#4840
Douglas Brinkley
#4848
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Douglas Brinkley is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities, and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is a history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Historical Society, and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. He is a public spokesperson on conservation issues. He joined the faculty of Rice University as a professor of history in 2007.
Go to Profile#4841
Steve Hanke
#4849
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Steve H. Hanke is an American economist and professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins University's Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise in Baltimore, Maryland.
Go to Profile#4842
Mark Hughes
#4850
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Leslie Mark Hughes is a Welsh football coach and former player who was most recently the head coach of Bradford City. During his playing career he usually operated as a forward or midfielder. He had two spells at Manchester United, and also played for Barcelona and Bayern Munich, as well as the English clubs Chelsea, Southampton, Everton and finally Blackburn Rovers. He made 72 appearances for Wales scoring 16 goals. He won a host of winners' medals during his playing career, including two Premier League titles, four FA Cups, three League Cups and two UEFA Cup Winners' Cups. He also collected an FA Cup runners-up medal and a League Cup runners-up medal.
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Elizabeth Zimmerman
#4851
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Elizabeth Abellana Zimmerman is the former wife of Rodrigo Duterte, the 16th President of the Philippines, and the mother of incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte. Early life Elizabeth Abellana Zimmerman was born on in the then-Province of Davao. Her parents are from Hilongos, Leyte and Tuburan, Cebu. According to the prevarication of Rodrigo Duterte, she is of patrilineal Jewish descent, with her father having fled to the Philippines from Nazi Germany. She attended the Ateneo de Davao and subsequently worked as a flight stewardess for Philippine Airlines.
Go to Profile#4844
Bruce Ackerman
#4852
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Bruce Arnold Ackerman is an American legal scholar who serves as a Sterling Professor at Yale Law School. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. Ackerman was also among the unranked bottom 40 in the 2020 Prospect list of the top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 era.
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Dwyane Wade
#4853
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr. is an American former professional basketball player. Wade spent the majority of his 16-year career playing for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association and won three NBA championships, was a 13-time NBA All-Star, an 8-time member of the All-NBA Team, and a 3-time member of the All-Defensive Team. Wade is also Miami's all-time leader in points, games, assists, steals, shots made, and shots taken. Wade is widely regarded as one of the greatest shooting guards in NBA history. Wade is currently the host of the American adaptation of The Cube.
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Michael Medved
#4854
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael Saul Medved is an American radio show host, author, political commentator, and film critic. His talk show, The Michael Medved Show, is syndicated from his home station KTTH in Seattle. It is syndicated via Genesis Communications Network.
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Shonda Rhimes
#4855
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Shonda Lynn Rhimes is an American television producer and screenwriter, and founder of the production company Shondaland. As of 2023, she is one of the richest women entertainers in America, with a net worth of $250 million.
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Paolo Savona
#4856
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Paolo Savona is an Italian economist, professor, and politician. He was the Italian Minister of European Affairs from 1 June 2018 until 8 March 2019, his second stint in government after 1993–1994. During the 2010s, Savona became one of the most fervent Eurosceptic economists in Italy.
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Sonia Sanchez
#4857
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children's books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, includ...
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Rudolf Haag
#4858
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Rudolf Haag was a German theoretical physicist, who mainly dealt with fundamental questions of quantum field theory. He was one of the founders of the modern formulation of quantum field theory and he identified the formal structure in terms of the principle of locality and local observables. He also made important advances in the foundations of quantum statistical mechanics.
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