So, who are your favourite scholars and why?

I may or may not be pimping this topic for reading suggestions...

So far, my favourites would be Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm for the things they contributed to folkloristics, linguistics, history, and comparative studies in general. Granted, a bit of their stuff is dated or wrong due to the number of resources they had and the perceptions of history they lived in (their era thought the Earth was only a few thousand years old, ect), but built the base for future studies to build off of.

Something makes me think I'll also like Jan De Vries's work, but I'm not certain yet. I have yet to read his stuff.