  The history of intellectuals consists of a complicated web of influences and
interconnections of philosophers, scientists, writers, their work, and ideas.
How did these influences evolve over time? Who were the most influential
scholars in a period? To answer these questions, we mined a network of
influence of over 12,500 intellectuals, extracted from the Linked Open Data
provider YAGO. We enriched this network with a longitudinal perspective, and
analysed time-sliced projections of the complete network differentiating
between within-era, inter-era, and accumulated-era networks. We thus identified
various patterns of intellectuals and eras, and studied their development in
time. We show which scholars were most influential in different eras, and who
took prominent knowledge broker roles. One essential finding is that the
highest impact of an era's scholar was on their contemporaries, as well as the
inter-era influence of each period was strongest to its consecutive one.
Further, we see quantitative evidence that there was no re-discovery of
Antiquity during the Renaissance, but a continuous reception since the Middle
Ages.
