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 female people in Philosophy,
#2452
M. F. Cleugh
1913 - 1986 (73 years)
M.F. Cleugh was a philosopher and educationalist. For many years she worked at the University of London in their Education department. On retirement she went to live in Shropshire. She is most known for her 1936 PhD work The problem of time, with special reference to its importance for modern thought also at the University of London, which was published in 1937 by Methuen and which has been reprinted several times. Her later work took a psychological slant on the education of those with particular difficulties... the old, the mature or the "slow" learners. She led a one-year course for teach...
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Juana Inés de la Cruz
1651 - 1695 (44 years)
Juana de Asuaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , was a colonial Mexican writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, as well as a Hieronymite nun, nicknamed "The Tenth Muse" and "The Phoenix of America" by her contemporary critics. As a Spanish-criolla from the New Spain, she was among the main American-born contributors to the Spanish Golden Age, alongside Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Garcilaso de la Vega "el Inca", and presently considered one of the most important female authors in Spanish language and Mexico's literary history.
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Johanna Charlotte Unzer
1725 - 1782 (57 years)
Johanna Charlotte Unzer , was a German writer and philosopher, famed for her progressive views on women's education. She was awarded the imperial Dichterkrone in 1753. She is known for her anacreontic poetry.
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Emily Carr
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist and writer who was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist style, Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her 1929 work, The Indian Church , which is now her best known, until she changed her subject matter from Aboriginal themes to landscapes — forest scenes in particular, evoking primeval grandeur in British Columbia. As a writer Carr was one of the earliest chroniclers of life in her surroundings. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a ...
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Nicarete of Megara
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Nicarete or Nicareta of Megara was a philosopher of the Megarian school, who flourished around . She is stated by Athenaeus to have been a hetaera of good family and education, and to have been a disciple of Stilpo. Diogenes Laërtius states that she was Stilpo's mistress, though he had a wife.
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Theano
600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)
Theano was a 6th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher. She has been called the wife or student of Pythagoras, although others see her as the wife of Brontinus. Her place of birth and the identity of her father is uncertain as well. Many Pythagorean writings were attributed to her in antiquity, including some letters and a few fragments from philosophical treatises, although these are all regarded as spurious by modern scholars.
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Harriet Robinson
Harriet Latham Robinson is an American vaccine researcher who is founder and Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus at GeoVax. She is the former Chief of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Microbiology at Emory University. Her research considered HIV vaccine development. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Ingerid Dal
1895 - 1985 (90 years)
Ingerid Dal was a Norwegian linguist known for her work and research of German, English and the Nordic languages. Early life and education Dal was born in Drammen, Norway. She attended Kristiana University after moving to Oslo at age 19. Following World War I, she moved to Germany where she attended Heidelberg University and studied philology and philosophy. She then attended the University of Hamburg where she continued her studies and, in 1925, presented her thesis on Lask's Kategorienlehre in relation to Kant's philosophy. In 1930, she finished her thesis at the University of Oslo on the o...
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Leontion
400 BC - 360 BC (40 years)
Leontion was a Greek Epicurean philosopher. Biography Leontion was a pupil of Epicurus and his philosophy. She was the companion of Metrodorus of Lampsacus. The information we have about her is scant. She was said to have been a hetaera – a courtesan or prostitute.
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Catharine Trotter Cockburn
1674 - 1749 (75 years)
Catharine Trotter Cockburn was an English novelist, dramatist and philosopher who wrote on various subjects, including moral philosophy and theology, and maintained a prolific correspondence. Trotter's writings encompass a wide range of topics, such as necessity, the infinitude of space and substance. However, her primary focus was on moral issues. She believed that moral principles were not inherent but could be discovered by each individual through the use of reason, a faculty bestowed by God. In 1702, she published her first significant philosophical work, titled "A Defence of Mr. Lock's [...
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Dorothy Hansine Andersen
1901 - 1963 (62 years)
Dorothy Hansine Andersen was an American physician, pediatrician, and pathologist who first identified cystic fibrosis. She was the first to describe the disease, and name it. In 1939, she was awarded the E. Mead Johnson Award for her identification of the disease. In 2002, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
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Mary Putnam Jacobi
1842 - 1906 (64 years)
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi was an English-American physician, teacher, scientist, writer, and suffragist. She was the first woman admitted to study medicine at the University of Paris and the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college in the United States.
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Yoshioka Yayoi
1871 - 1959 (88 years)
Yoshioka Yayoi was a Japanese physician, educator, and women's rights activist. She founded the Tokyo Women's Medical University in 1900, as the first medical school for women in Japan. She was also known as Washiyama Yayoi.
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Pearl Louise Weber
1878 - 1975 (97 years)
Pearl Louise Hunter Weber was an American philosopher and educator. Biography Weber was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1878. Her maiden name was Pearl Louise Hunter. She earned a philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1899, where she was the first woman to graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Weber entered Cornell University in 1901 with a Sage Fellowship in philosophy and ethics. She married in 1902, and had four children, but eventually separated from her husband and returned to her career. Weber conducted graduate work under John Dewey and received a masters degree in philosophy fro...
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Linda Eastman
1867 - 1963 (96 years)
Linda Anne Eastman was an American librarian. She was selected by the American Library Association as one of the 100 most important librarians of the 20th century. Eastman served as the head Librarian of the Cleveland Public Library from 1918 to 1938 and president of the ALA from 1928 to 1929. At the time of her appointment in Cleveland, she was the first woman to head a library system the size of Cleveland's. She was also a founding member and later president of the Ohio Library Association, and a professor of Library Science at Case Western Reserve University.
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Alva Belmont
1853 - 1933 (80 years)
Alva Erskine Belmont , known as Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896, was an American multi-millionaire socialite and women's suffrage activist. She was noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention.
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Dorotea Bucca
1360 - 1436 (76 years)
Dorotea Bocchi was an Italian noblewoman known for studying medicine and philosophy. Dorotea was associated with the University of Bologna, though there are differing beliefs regarding the extent of her participation at the university ranging, from whether she taught or held a position there. Despite these debates, there is consensus that she flourished and was active at the university for more than 40 years, beginning from 1390 onwards.
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Virginia M. Alexander
1900 - 1949 (49 years)
Virginia M. Alexander was an American physician, public health researcher, and the founder of the Aspiranto Health Home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early life Virginia M. Alexander was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 4, 1899, to Hilliard Alexander and Virginia Pace, who were both born into slavery in the US. She had four siblings, including the prominent attorney Raymond Pace Alexander. Alexander's mother died when she was 4 years old, and at age 13 her father's riding academy closed. Alexander withdrew from school to help relieve the resulting economic strain on her family...
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Susan McKinney Steward
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Susan Maria McKinney Steward was an American physician and author. She was the third African-American woman to earn a medical degree, and the first in New York state. McKinney-Steward's medical career focused on prenatal care and childhood disease. From 1870 to 1895, she ran her own practice in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She sat on the board and practiced medicine at the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People. From 1906, she worked as college physician at the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1911, she...
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Damo
600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)
Damo was a Pythagorean philosopher said by many to have been the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. Early life Tradition relates that she was born in Croton, Magna Graecia, and was the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. According to Iamblichus, Damo married Meno the Crotonian. Some accounts refer to her as an only daughter, while others indicate that she had two sisters, Arignote and Myia . With her brother Telauges, they became members of the Pythagorean sect founded by their father.
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Park Rehyun
1920 - 1976 (56 years)
Park Rehyun was a Korean painter. She is regarded as a pioneer of modern Korean art during the late Japanese Colonial period and the following decades. Biography Park was born in the city of Jinnampo in South Korea's South Pyongan Province. Graduating from Gyeongseong high school in 1937, she entered the Tokyo Women's School of Fine Arts in 1941 during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
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Ann Baynard
1672 - 1697 (25 years)
Ann Baynard was a British natural philosopher and model of piety. She sought discussions with atheists and non-Christians. Later, during her eulogy, Reverend Prude called her philosophical knowledge of this 20-year-old woman the same size as that of an "old bearded male philosopher"
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Jessie Gray
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
Jessie Catherine Gray was a Canadian cancer surgeon, educator, and researcher. Known as the Canadian "First Lady of Surgery", Gray is described as a trailblazer for women surgeons and an example that women could excel in the male-dominated field of general surgery. During her career, she was considered one of the top four cancer surgeons in North America, and she earned many firsts and fellowships in her field.
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Ellen Bliss Talbot
1867 - 1968 (101 years)
Ellen Bliss Talbot was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, chairing the department of philosophy and psychology for 32 years. She is considered one of the first professional academic women philosophers.
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Jane Clapperton
1832 - 1914 (82 years)
Jane Hume Clapperton was a British philosopher, birth control pioneer, socialist, social reformer and suffragist. Life Her father was Alexander Clapperton and mother Anne Clapperton . She had eleven siblings. Her father ran a company, Clapperton & Co., in Edinburgh and moved from 43 Lauriston Place close to George Heriot's School to 126 George Street in the year Jane was born.
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Su Xuelin
1897 - 1999 (102 years)
Su Xuelin or Su Hsüeh-lin was a Chinese writer and scholar. Early life Su Xuelin was born to a family of officials native to Anhui province in 1897. Her grandfather, Su Jinxin, served as a magistrate in several counties in Zhejiang province, where Su Xuelin was born. Her mother was surnamed Tu, but had no formal first name, instead going by the nickname To-Ni. Su's father held a minor official position, first under the Qing dynasty and then the Republic of China. Su had three brothers and two sisters.
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Hilda Lloyd
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Dr. Dame Hilda Nora Lloyd, DBE was a British physician and surgeon. She was the first woman to be elected as president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Born in Birmingham, the younger of two daughters, she attended King Edward VI High School, Edgbaston before entering Birmingham University .
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Laura Bentivolgio Davia
1689 - Present (337 years)
Laura Bentivoglio Davia was an Italian aristocratic philosopher engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and natural philosophy. She was known primarily for creating relationships with leading natural philosophers associated with the University of Bologna and the Istituto delle Scienze .
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Emilia Rensi
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Emilia Rensi was an Italian philosopher, free thinker, writer and teacher. She wrote for anarchist and progressive magazines, such as Flavia Steno's La Chiosa, Volontà , Umanità Nova and Franco Leggio's Sicilia Libertaria . She began publishing books on social, cultural and ethical subjects from the late 1960s onwards.
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Theodora Kimball Hubbard
1887 - 1935 (48 years)
Theodora Kimball Hubbard was the first librarian of the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture, and a contemporary of and collaborator with many significant figures in landscape architecture in expanding the body of knowledge in that subject area.
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Themista of Lampsacus
300 BC - 260 BC (40 years)
Themista of Lampsacus , the wife of Leonteus, was a student of Epicurus, early in the 3rd century BC. Epicurus' school was unusual in the 3rd century, in that it allowed women to attend, and we also hear of Leontion attending Epicurus' school around the same time. Cicero ridicules Epicurus for writing "countless volumes in praise of Themista," instead of more worthy men such as Miltiades, Themistocles or Epaminondas. Themista and Leonteus named their son Epicurus.
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Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider
1891 - 1990 (99 years)
Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider was a German-Australian physicist and philosopher. She is best known for her collaboration and correspondence with physicists Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Max Planck. Rosenthal-Schneider earned a PhD in philosophy in 1920 at the University of Berlin, where she first met Albert Einstein. After leaving Nazi Germany and emigrating to Australia in 1938, she became a tutor in the German department at the University of Sydney in 1945 and taught history and philosophy of science. In the 1940s and 1950s, she exchanged a series of letters with Albert Einstein about philo...
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Mae Murray
1885 - 1965 (80 years)
Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen".
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Adelaide Underhill
1860 - 1936 (76 years)
Adelaide Underhill was an American librarian. She was hired to catalog and update the organization of volumes in the Vassar College library. She used the Dewey Decimal System and, along with help from her lifelong companion, Lucy Maynard Salmon, built Vassar's into one of the most impressive collections for a liberal arts college at the time.
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Elizabeth Smith Shortt
1859 - 1949 (90 years)
Elizabeth Smith Shortt was one of the first three women to earn a medical degree in Canada. She was one of the women medical students expelled from Queen's University, Ontario following a hostile backlash from male staff and students at the presence of women in the medical school. Shortt went on to complete her studies at a newly established women's college and practised medicine in Hamilton, Ontario. She was a long-serving and active member of the National Council of Women of Canada and spearheaded a number of public health and women's welfare initiatives.
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Marion Murdoch
1849 - 1943 (94 years)
Marion Murdoch was an American minister in Iowa. Murdoch was said to be the first woman in America to receive the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Early years and education Murdoch was born in Garnavillo, Iowa, October 9, 1849. Her father, Judge Samuel Murdoch, was the last living member of the Territorial legislature of Iowa. He had been a member of the state legislature and judge of the district court. Her mother had come from New York in 1837. Murdoch's early life was spent in outdoor pursuits, developing in her that love of nature and desire for a life of freedom for women. Of the family o...
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Kate Isabel Campbell
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Dame Kate Isabel Campbell, DBE, FRCOG was a noted Australian physician and paediatrician. Campbell's discovery, that blindness in premature babies was caused by high concentrations of oxygen, resulted in the alteration of the treatment of premature babies world-wide and for this she received global recognition.
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Maude Abbott
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University.
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Alice Rebecca Brooks McGuire
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Alice "Sally" Rebecca Brooks McGuire was an American librarian. She was named Librarian of the Year by the Texas Library Association, and taught at the University of Texas in its Graduate School of Library Science.
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Margaret Mann
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Margaret Mann was a noted librarian and teacher who dominated the field of cataloging for almost fifty years. The bulk of her career was spent as a professor at the University of Michigan. She was hired as one of the first three full-time faculty members in the department of library science at Michigan in 1926 and retired in 1938. In 1999, American Libraries named her one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century".
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Margaret Seward
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Margaret Seward MBE became the earliest Chemist on staff at the Women's College , from 1896 to 1915. She became the pioneer woman to obtain a first class in the honour school of Natural Science and later received an MBE for her work on nutrition during World War I.
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Anne Hazen McFarland
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Anne Hazen McFarland was an American physician and medical journal editor who specialized in the treatment of mental illness in women. She criticized the contemporary idea that gynecological disorders caused insanity and nervousness in women.
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Mary Harris Thompson
1829 - 1895 (66 years)
Mary Harris Thompson, MD, , was the founder, head physician and surgeon of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, renamed Mary Harris Thompson Hospital after her death in 1895. She was one of the first women to practice medicine in Chicago.
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Frieda Fraser
1899 - 1994 (95 years)
Frieda Fraser was a Canadian physician, scientist and academic who worked in infectious disease, including research on scarlet fever and tuberculosis. After finishing her medical studies at the University of Toronto in 1925, she completed a two-year internship in the United States, studying and working in Manhattan and Philadelphia. Afterward, she conducted research in the Connaught Laboratories concentrating on infectious disease, making important contributions in the pre-penicillin age to isolation of the strains of streptococci likely to lead to disease. From 1928, she lectured in the Dep...
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Constance Mabel Winchell
1896 - 1983 (87 years)
Constance Mabel Winchell was an American librarian. Winchell worked at Columbia University for thirty-eight years before retiring in 1962. She is best remembered for producing the seventh and eighth editions of the Guide to Reference Books. In 1999, American Libraries included Constance Winchell in a list of 100 most influential individuals in the field of library and information science.
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Axiothea of Phlius
400 BC - 400 BC (0 years)
Axiothea of Phlius was a female student of Plato and Speusippus. She was born in Phlius, which was under Spartan rule when Plato founded his Academy. Axiothea is said by Themistius to have read Plato's Republic and then traveled to Athens to be his student. According to Dicearchus, Axiothea dressed as a man during her time at Plato's Academy. After Plato's death she continued her studies with Speusippus, Plato's nephew.
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Placida Gardner Chesley
1879 - 1966 (87 years)
Placida Gardner Chesley was an American medical doctor and college professor. She was the City Bacteriologist of Los Angeles, and worked in Europe with the Red Cross during World War I. Early life Vera Placida Gardner was born in Orange, California, the daughter of Henri F. Gardner and Emma Howard Gardner. She attended Santa Ana High School, and completed undergraduate studies the University of Southern California, graduating in 1910. She earned her medical degree at the University of Michigan, where she was elected to the medical honor fraternity Alpha Omega Alpha.
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Ana Aslan
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Ana Aslan was a Romanian biologist and physician of partial Armenian descent, born Anna Aslanyan, specialist in gerontology, academician from 1974 and the director of the National Institute of Geriatrics and Gerontology .
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Hannah Logasa
1879 - 1967 (88 years)
Hannah Logasa is considered a pioneer of school libraries. Credited with identifying the necessity of libraries in school, Logasa worked to achieve strong interaction between the library, students, and teachers at the University of Chicago Laboratory High School.
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