Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#5401

William R. Markesbery

#90736

Overall Influence

#5402

Theodore A. Slotkin

#90743

Overall Influence

#5403

Wim Blok

#74034

Overall Influence

1947 - 2003 (56 years)

Willem Johannes "Wim" Blok was a Dutch logician who made major contributions to algebraic logic, universal algebra, and modal logic. His important achievements over the course of his career include "a brilliant demonstration of the fact that various techniques and results that originated in universal algebra can be used to prove significant and deep theorems in modal logic."

#5404

Christine Seidman

Christine Seidman

#65676

Overall Influence

Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.

#5405

Edward Stinson

#65231

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Edward B. Stinson is an American retired cardiothoracic surgeon living in Los Altos, United States, who assisted Norman Shumway in America's first adult human-to-human heart transplantation on 6 January 1968 at Stanford University.

#5406

Kerry Courneya

#86635

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Kerry Stephen Courneya is a Canadian kinesiologist. As a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Cancer at the University of Alberta, his research focuses on physical activity after a cancer diagnosis .

#5407

Thomas Chubb

1679 - 1747 (68 years)

Thomas Chubb was a lay English Deist writer born near Salisbury. He saw Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign over religion. He questioned the morality of religions, while defending Christianity on rational grounds. Despite little schooling, Chubb was well up on the religious controversies. His The True Gospel of Jesus Christ, Asserted sets out to distinguish the teaching of Jesus from that of the Evangelists. Chubb's views on free will and determinism, expressed in A Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects , were extensively criticised by Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of...

#5408

Mpho Tshivhase

#71857

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

#5409

John Butler Mulliken

#90848

Overall Influence

#5410

Jinul

1158 - 1210 (52 years)

Jinul Puril Bojo Daesa , often called Jinul or Chinul for short, was a Korean monk of the Goryeo period, who is considered to be the most influential figure in the formation of Korean Seon Buddhism. He is credited as the founder of the Jogye Order, by working to unify the disparate sects in Korean Buddhism into a cohesive organization.

#5411

Vilhjálmur Árnason

#42864

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Vilhjálmur Árnason is professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland. Internationally, he is best known for his research on ethical aspects of controversial genetic research in Iceland by deCODE Genetics.

#5412

Adrian William Moore

Adrian William Moore

#58660

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Adrian William Moore is a British philosopher and broadcaster. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and tutorial fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. His main areas of interest are Kant, Wittgenstein, history of philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic and language, ethics and philosophy of religion.

#5413

Marcia Citron

#16276

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Marcia Judith Citron is an American professor of musicology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is a leading musicologist specializing in issues regarding women and gender, opera and film. Life and career Marcia Citron graduated from Brooklyn College with a BA in 1966 and from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an MA in 1968 and a PhD in 1971. She has been recognized with the Martha and Henry Malcolm Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology award, and has received grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic and Exchange Service and Rice University.

#5414

Stanley Perlman

#89124

Overall Influence

Stanley Marc Perlman is an American microbiologist and coronavirus researcher. He is professor of microbiology and immunology, professor of pediatrics, and the Mark Stinski Chair in Virology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. He has been researching coronaviruses for 38 years. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and a member of the American Society for Microbiology.

#5415

Joseph Kerman

#15630

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Joseph Wilfred Kerman was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field". He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

#5416

Michael W. Holmes

#23438

Overall Influence

Michael W. Holmes is the former Chair of the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota and has taught at Bethel since 1982. Life Holmes received a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara , an MA in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School , and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary . He did his PhD work under Bruce Metzger, who was widely considered to be one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century. Holmes' primary research areas are in New Testament textual criticism and the A...

#5417

Piotr Ponikowski

#45948

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Piotr Ponikowski is a Polish cardiologist, Professor of Medical Sciences, Vice-Rector of the Wrocław Medical University and Head of the Polish Cardiological Society . His scientific interests include research on heart failure, coronary heart disease and heart arrhythmia.

#5418

Alessandro Achillini

Alessandro Achillini

1463 - 1512 (49 years)

Alessandro Achillini was an Italian philosopher and physician. He is known for the anatomic studies that he was able to publish, made possible by a 13th-century edict putatively by Emperor Frederick II allowing for dissection of human cadavers, and which previously had stimulated the anatomist Mondino de Luzzi at Bologna.

#5419

Evarts Ambrose Graham

Evarts Ambrose Graham

1883 - 1957 (74 years)

Evarts Ambrose Graham was an American academic, physician, and surgeon. Early years and military service Born in Chicago, Illinois to a surgeon, David Wilson Graham, and Ida Ansbach Barned Graham, Evarts attended college at Princeton University and received his M.D. degree from Rush Medical College in 1907. Graham then trained as a surgery resident at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, and subsequently as a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Chicago. There, he met his wife, Helen Tredway, Ph.D. , a biochemist and pharmacologist. Evarts served as a Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1917 to 1919, and was initially posted to Camp Lee .

#5420

Samuel Berkovic

#71808

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Professor Samuel Frank Berkovic is an Australian neurologist and Laureate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne and Director of the Epilepsy Research Centre at Austin Health.

#5421

Ren Jiyu

#46759

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Ren Jiyu in Pingyuan County, Shandong Province was a philosopher, scholar in religious studies, historian, member of the Chinese Communist Party, and honorary director of the National Library of China. He died at 4:30 on July 11, 2009, in Beijing, at the age of 93.

#5422

Phintys

400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)

Phintys was a Pythagorean philosopher, probably from the third century BC. She wrote a work on the correct behaviour of women, two extracts of which are preserved by Stobaeus. According to Stobaeus, Phintys was the daughter of Callicrates, who is otherwise unknown. Holger Thesleff suggests that this Callicrates might be identified with Callicratidas, a Spartan general who died at the Battle of Arginusae. If so, this would make Phintys a Spartan, and date her birth to the late fifth century BC, and her floruit to the fourth century. I. M. Plant considers this emendation "fanciful". Iamblich...

#5423

John Smith

1580 - 1631 (51 years)

John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, admiral of New England, and author. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. He was knighted for his services...

#5424

Afdal al-Din Kashani

Afzal ad-Din Maragi Kashani also known as Baba Afzal was a Persian poet and philosopher. Several dates have been suggested for his death, with the best estimate being around 1213/1214. Life The information on his life is scanty and few. His writing portray a disdain for officials of his time and he is said to have once been imprisoned by the local governor on trumped-up charges of practicing sorcery. His tomb located in the village Maraq, forty-two km northwest of Kashan, is still a place of pilgrimage. The best summary of Persian of what is known about Baba Afza's life and work, is written...

#5425

J. Ukka T. Salonen

#91056

Overall Influence

#5426

Hans Henrik D. Parving

#5427

William Irwin

#52700

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

William Irwin is Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and is best known for originating the "philosophy and popular culture" book genre with Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing in 1999 and The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer in 2001.

#5428

Shankar Vaman Dandekar

1896 - 1969 (73 years)

Shankar Vaman Dandekar , also known as Sonopant Dandekar, was a philosopher and educationist from Maharashtra, India. Dandekar was an important interpreter of Warkari Bhakti Sampraday in Maharashtra. He served as a professor of philosophy and the principal of Sir Parashurambhau College in Pune for many years.

#5429

Bruno Pinchard

#78924

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Bruno Pinchard is a French writer and scholar, PhD, and professor of philosophy. Early life and career Bruno Pinchard was born into a family of musicians. His father is the composer Max Pinchard who gave him a musical education himself.

#5430

John Nathan

#7308

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

John Weil Nathan is an American translator, writer, scholar, filmmaker, and Japanologist. His translations from Japanese into English include the works of Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburō Ōe, Kōbō Abe, and Natsume Sōseki. Nathan is also an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and director of many films about Japanese culture and society and American business. He is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#5431

William Wallace

1844 - 1897 (53 years)

William Wallace was a Scottish philosopher and academic who became fellow of Merton College and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University. He was best known for his studies of German philosophers, most notably Hegel, some of whose works he translated into highly regarded English editions. While reputedly forbidding in manner, he was known as an able and effective teacher and writer who succeeded in greatly improving the understanding of German philosophy in the English-speaking world. He died at the age of 52 after a bicycle accident near Oxford.

#5432

Mark M. Ravitch

1910 - 1989 (79 years)

Mark Mitchell Ravitch was an American surgeon. He pioneered the use of surgical staples, the treatment of chest wall deformities, and non-operative management of intussusception. Early life and education Ravitch was born in 1910 in New York City. He attended the University of Oklahoma, where he was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and graduated with a degree in zoology in 1930. He received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1934 and remained at Johns Hopkins to complete his surgical training, which he finished in 1943 under the mentorship of Alfred Blalock.

#5433

Giuliano Toraldo di Francia

#42990

Overall Influence

1916 - 2011 (95 years)

Giuliano Toraldo di Francia was an Italian physicist and philosopher, known mainly for his experimental and theoretical studies in optics. Biography He was the son of the geographer and general Orazio Toraldo di Francia. After his high school studies he graduated in physics at the University of Florence in 1940 with Nello Carrara, of whom he soon became assistant at the Institute of Physics. At the same time, he carried out research activities at the National Institute of Optics in Arcetri, then directed by Vasco Ronchi. After the war, he worked at the Ducati optical research center in Bologn...

#5434

Antipater of Tyre

50 BC - 40 BC (10 years)

Antipater of Tyre was a Greek Stoic philosopher and a friend of Cato the Younger and Cicero. Life Antipater lived after, or was at least younger than, Panaetius. Cicero, in speaking of him, says, that he died "recently at Athens", which must mean shortly before 45 BC. He is mentioned by Strabo as a "famous philosopher" from Tyre. Antipater is said to have befriended Cato when Cato was a young man, and introduced him to Stoic philosophy:

#5435

William R. Schroeder

#81260

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

William Ralph Schroeder is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is known for his expertise on continental philosophy and ethics. He has authored several books about philosophy.

#5436

Joel Moss

#91203

Overall Influence

#5437

Azeem Majeed

#14805

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Azeem Majeed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, London, as well as a general practitioner in South London and a consultant in public health. In the most recent UK University Research Excellence Framework results , Imperial College London was the highest ranked university in the UK for the quality of research in the “Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care” unit of assessment.

#5438

Valentin Asmus

1894 - 1975 (81 years)

Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus was a Soviet philosopher. He was one of the small group who continued the classical European philosophical tradition through the early Soviet times. He was an independent thinker and unorthodox Marxist, with interests in the history of philosophy and aesthetics.

#5439

Shaul G. Massry

#91256

Overall Influence

#5440

Karl Widerquist

#26419

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Karl Widerquist is an American political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University in their campus in Qatar. He is best known as an advocate of basic income, but is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism, right-libertarianism, social contract theory, and the belief that modern societies fulfill the Lockean proviso.

#5441

Archie J. Bahm

#40949

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Archie John Bahm was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico. Biography Bahm served as Acting Chair of the University of New Mexico's Department of Philosophy from 1954 to 1955 and again from 1964 to 1965. He was a member of numerous committees to support and promote the exchange of philosophical ideas and organized the Albuquerque Chapter of the Southwestern Regional American Humanist Association in 1954. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. He was also an organizer, past president, and past secretary-treasurer of the New Mexico Phi...

#5442

Jack Tuszyński

#10910

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Jack Tuszyński is a Polish professor of oncology and physicist. Biography Tuszyński graduated with a master's degree in physics from the University of Poznan in 1980 and obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics three years later from the University of Calgary. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the chemistry department the same year. From 1983 to 1988 he worked at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, then worked in the same department at the University of Alberta for two years. From 1990 to 1993 he was promoted to associate, then full professor, and as of 2005 became Allard Chair of the Cross Cancer Institute.

#5443

Sopater of Apamea

242 - 325 (83 years)

Sopater of Apamea was a distinguished sophist and Neoplatonist philosopher. Biography Sopater was a disciple of Iamblichus, after whose death , he went to Constantinople, where he enjoyed the favour and personal friendship of Constantine I.

#5444

H. Wildon Carr

1857 - 1931 (74 years)

Herbert Wildon Carr was a British philosopher. Life He was Professor of Philosophy, King's College, London from 1918 to 1925, and Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California from 1925 until his death on 8 July 1931 in Los Angeles, California, United States.

#5445

Bryan Higgins

1741 - 1818 (77 years)

Bryan Higgins was an Irish natural philosopher in chemistry. He was born in Collooney, County Sligo, Ireland. His father was also called Dr. Bryan Higgins. Higgins entered the University of Leiden in 1765, whence he qualified as a doctor of physics. He subsequently ran a School of Practical Chemistry at 13 Greek Street, Soho, London during the 1770s, which was patronised by the then Duke of Northumberland amongst others. He was more of a speculator than an experimenter, and published many works on chemistry and related disciplines. Joseph Priestley was an attendee of Higgins's lectures, but ...

#5446

Heidi Ravven

#46063

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Heidi M. Ravven is the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies at Hamilton College, where she has taught her specialization, Jewish Philosophy, and general Jewish Studies since 1983. She is a Fellow in Neurophilosophy of the Integrative Neurosciences Research Program, which is co-directed by Vilayanur Ramachandran and Kjell Fuxe. She has been appointed Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the School of Marxism at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China, for 2017-20.

#5447

Miguel León-Portilla

Miguel León-Portilla

#5854

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was a well-recognized scholar internationally. In 2013, the Library of Congress of the United States bestowed on him the Living Legend Award.

#5448

Hartmut Winkler

#56401

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Hartmut Winkler has been a professor of Media Studies, Media Theory and Media Arts at the University of Paderborn in Germany since April 1999. Winkler is influential in the field of digital media. His works include Switching/Zapping , Film Theory, Der Filmische Raum und der Zuschauer and Computers and Media Theory, Docuverse . Another one of his works is "Search Engines: Metamedia on the Internet?" , where he attempts to explain how a search engine is a black box, that is, he tries to show that the system of input and output many viewers use is not a legitimate neutral source. He also discus...

#5449

Pierre Poiret

1646 - 1719 (73 years)

Pierre Poiret Naudé was a prominent French mystic and Christian philosopher. He was born in Metz and died in Rijnsburg. Life and accomplishments After the early death of his parents, he supported himself by the engraver's trade and the teaching of French, at the same time studying theology, in Basel, Hanau, and, after 1668, Heidelberg. At Basel he was captivated by Descartes' philosophy, which never quite lost its hold on him. He read also Thomas à Kempis and Tauler, but was especially influenced by the writings of the Dutch Mennonite mystic Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt , whose works were pu...

#5450

Joseph Estlin Carpenter

Joseph Estlin Carpenter

1844 - 1927 (83 years)

Joseph Estlin Carpenter was an English Unitarian minister, the principal of Manchester College, Oxford. He was an expert in Sanskrit and a pioneer in the study of comparative religion. Biography Carpenter was born in Ripley, Surrey. He was the second son of William Benjamin Carpenter. His grandfather was Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter.

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