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 in Philosophy,
#5501
Massimo Cacciari
#57684
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Massimo Cacciari is an Italian philosopher, politician and public intellectual. Biography Born in Venice, Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua , where he also received his doctorate, writing a thesis on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. In 1985, he became professor of Aesthetics at the Architecture Institute of Venice. In 2002, he founded the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, where he was appointed Dean of the Department in 2005. Cacciari has founded several philosophical reviews and published essays centered on the ...
Go to Profile#5502
Frederick G. Hayden
#92089
Overall Influence
#5503
Luciano Gattinoni
#92126
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#5504
Fritz Berolzheimer
1869 - 1920 (51 years)
Fritz Berolzheimer, Juris Doctor was a German philosopher of law. He was the author of the five volume System der Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie . In 1907 he co-founded the Archiv für Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie .
Go to Profile#5505
Vincent O'Keefe
#24089
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Father Vincent O'Keefe S.J. was the Vicar General of the Society of Jesus and a President of Fordham University. Biography In 1981 the order's superior general, Pedro Arrupe, suffered a stroke. O'Keefe was appointed Vicar General to guide the Jesuits as they began the process of selecting a new General. The pope, in a highly unusual and historic decision, intervened and appointed instead Jesuit Father Paolo Dezza as a special pontifical delegate to serve as the Jesuits' interim leader.
Go to Profile#5506
Diego Bubbio
#87257
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Paolo Diego Bubbio is an Italian philosopher and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is known for his research on post-Kantian philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of religion . He is the editor of the "Contemporary Studies in Idealism" book series for Lexington Books.
Go to Profile#5507
Jean-Louis de Biasi
#65471
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jean-Louis de Biasi is a French writer, lecturer, and spiritual teacher. Early life and education De Biasi was born in Castillonnès in 1959. He holds a master's degree in philosophy . The title of his thesis was "Morals and Religion in the work of Nietzsche". He taught philosophy in France as a teacher for over 15 years, and also successfully graduated in Hebrew. He has been trained in Gestalt therapy with certification from the Institut Francais de Gestalt-Therapie .
Go to Profile#5508
Lothar Meyer
1830 - 1895 (65 years)
Meyer was a distinguished German chemist who some historians feel deserves credit for the invention of the periodic table of the elements. He was born in Varel, a small town in the Duchy of Oldenburg, the son of a physician. After graduating from Gymnasium (secondary school) in Oldenburg, the young Lothar (he never used his first given name) studied medicine at the University of Zurich with Carl Ludwig and at the University of Würzburg with Rudolf Virchow. In 1854, Meyer transferred to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied chemistry with Robert Bunsen (of Bunsen burner fame). Intrig...
Go to Profile#5509
Teodosio Lares
1806 - 1870 (64 years)
Teodosio Lares he was a Mexican lawyer and politician. He studied Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Seminary of Guadalajara. In 1827 he began his career as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of the State of Jalisco. He returned to Zacatecas, where he was magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice. In 1836 he was director of the Literary Institute of Zacatecas. In 1848 he was deputy to the General Congress for the state of Zacatecas. In 1850 he was appointed senator of the Tercio by the Chamber of Deputies.
Go to Profile#5510
Anna Brackett
1836 - 1911 (75 years)
Anna Callender Brackett was an American philosopher, translator, feminist, and educator. She translated Karl Rosenkranz's Pedagogics as a System and wrote The Education of American Girls, a response to arguments against the coeducation of males and females.
Go to Profile#5511
Theodor Litt
1880 - 1962 (82 years)
Theodor Litt was a German culture and social philosopher as well as a pedagogue. In the debate with Dilthey, Simmel and Cassirer, Litt developed an independent approach in cultural philosophy and philosophical anthropology, which was determined by the dialectical view of the relationship between the individual and society, man and the world, reason and life. At the same time, he projected these thoughts into a that had its starting point in progressive education at the beginning of the 20th century and, via Litt's student , extended into the discussion on educational reform in the 1970s. Lit...
Go to Profile#5512
William Kaelin Jr.
#10200
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins. In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.
Go to Profile#5513
Jaap Verweij
#92226
Overall Influence
#5514
Frank Oski
#47791
Overall Influence
1932 - 1996 (64 years)
Frank Aram Oski was an American pediatrician. After holding several faculty positions at medical schools, he spent several years as the chair of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was the founder and editor of the journal Contemporary Pediatrics, and he edited one of the most widely read textbooks in pediatrics.
Go to Profile#5515
Gérald Simonneau
#92252
Overall Influence
#5516
Raphael Demos
1892 - 1968 (76 years)
Raphael Demos was a Greek-American philosopher. He was Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, emeritus, at Harvard University and an authority on the work of the Greek philosopher Plato. At Harvard, he taught Martin Luther King Jr.
Go to Profile#5517
David Loran Spiegel
#92282
Overall Influence
#5518
David Conway
#57607
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Conway is a British academic philosopher who has written several books on philosophy and politics. He has been described as "a classical liberal who thinks nations are essential". Conway grew up in London, read Philosophy as an undergraduate at Cambridge University in the 1960s and went on to obtain his doctorate in Philosophy from University College London. He taught at Middlesex University for over thirty years, where he was Professor of Philosophy. He subsequently worked at Roehampton University as a senior research fellow in Theology and Religious Studies. Conway then worked for CIV...
Go to Profile#5519
Androcydes
#49389
Overall Influence
Androcydes was a Pythagorean whose work On Pythagorean Symbols survives only in scattered fragments. The dating of his life is uncertain; he lived before the 1st century BC but possibly as early as the 4th. The frequency with which Androcydes is mentioned in other works indicates that he was a major source for the later Pythagorean tradition, and he is also of interest in studying the historical development of the literary and philosophical symbol.
Go to Profile#5520
Mieko Kamiya
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Mieko Kamiya was a Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagashima Aiseien Sanatorium. She was known for translating books on philosophy. She worked as a medical doctor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tokyo University following World War II. She was said to have greatly helped the Ministry of Education and the General Headquarters, where the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers stayed, in her role as an English-speaking secretary, and served as an adviser to Empress Michiko. She wrote many books as a highly educated, multi-lingual person; one of her books, titled On the Me...
Go to Profile#5521
Edward Mcauley
#92340
Overall Influence
#5522
Isaac Starr
1895 - 1989 (94 years)
Isaac "Jack" Starr , known as the father of ballistocardiography, was an American physician, heart disease specialist, and clinical epidemiologist notable for developing the first practical ballistocardiograph. His early academic positions included being an assistant professor in pharmacology and later the first Hartzell Professor of Research Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as well as dean of the school from 1945 to 1948.
Go to Profile#5523
Stephen Batchelor
#22193
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Stephen Batchelor is a Scottish Buddhist author and teacher, known for his writings on Buddhist subjects and his leadership of meditation retreats worldwide. He is a noted proponent of agnostic or secular Buddhism.
Go to Profile#5524
Jacques Chevalier
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Jacques Chevalier was a French Catholic philosopher and a politician. Chevalier was born in Cérilly, Allier, educated at the École normale supérieure and the University of Oxford and taught at the Faculty of Letters in Grenoble. He was a specialist of Plato and author of many books, mainly about the history of philosophy.
Go to Profile#5525
Lovis Corinth
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Lovis Corinth was a German artist and writer whose mature work as a painter and printmaker realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism. Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Secession group, later succeeding Max Liebermann as the group's president. His early work was naturalistic in approach. Corinth was initially antagonistic towards the expressionist movement, but after a stroke in 1911 his style loosened and took on many expressionistic qualities. His use of color became more vibrant, and he created portraits and landscapess of extraordinary vitality and power....
Go to Profile#5526
Anthony J. Furlan
#92401
Overall Influence
#5527
David Strong
#77965
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
David Strong is an American philosopher and educator. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Rocky Mountain College. Strong has been noted as a disciple of Albert Borgmann; Strong explores Borgmann's ideas on technology within the context of a philosophy of wilderness in his book, Crazy Mountains.
Go to Profile#5528
Richard A. Cash
#45750
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Richard Alan Cash is an American global health researcher, public health physician, and internist. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
Go to Profile#5529
Donald Adamson
#11392
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Donald Adamson , is a British literary scholar, philosopher and historian. Books which he has written include Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God and The Curriers' Company: A Modern History. His works are regarded as a gateway to European literature.
Go to Profile#5530
Kyle Stanford
#67915
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Kyle Stanford is an American philosophy professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in the philosophy of science. Education and career He earned his B.A. with Honors in Philosophy and Psychology from Northwestern University in 1991, and did his graduate work at the University of California, San Diego, earning his M.A. in philosophy, 1994, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy/Science Studies, in 1997, under the direction of Philip Kitcher.
Go to Profile#5531
Gregg Lambert
#44292
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Gregg Lambert is an American philosopher and literary theorist, who writes on Baroque and Neo-Baroque cultural history, critical theory and film, the contemporary university, and especially on the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. Between 2008 and 2014, he was the founding director of Syracuse University Humanities Center, where he currently holds the distinguished research appointment as Dean's Professor of Humanities, and was Principal Investigator and Founding Director of the Central New York Humanities Corridor between 2008-2019.CNY Corridor
Go to Profile#5532
Gerhard von Kügelgen
1772 - 1820 (48 years)
Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen was a German painter, noted for his portraits and history paintings. He was a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and a member of both the Prussian and Russian Imperial Academies of Arts. His twin brother, Karl von Kügelgen, was also a painter of note.
Go to Profile#5533
George Q. Daley
#13291
Overall Influence
George Quentin Daley is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. He was formerly the Robert A. Stranahan Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Associate Director of Children's Stem Cell Program, a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is a past president of the International...
Go to Profile#5534
Junius Rusticus
100 - 170 (70 years)
Quintus Junius Rusticus , was a Roman teacher and politician. He was probably a grandson of Arulenus Rusticus, who was a prominent member of the Stoic Opposition. He was a Stoic philosopher and was one of the teachers of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, whom Aurelius treated with the utmost respect and honour.
Go to Profile#5535
Harvey J. Alter
#8562
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Harvey James Alter is an American medical researcher, virologist, physician and Nobel Prize laureate, who is best known for his work that led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Alter is the former chief of the infectious disease section and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. In the mid-1970s, Alter and his research team demonstrated that most post-transfusion hepatitis cases were not due to hepatitis A or hepatitis B viruses. Working independently, Alter and Edward Tabor, a scientist at the U.S.
Go to Profile#5536
Sabina Alkire
#9762
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sabina Alkire is the director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative , an economic research centre within the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, England, which was established in 2007. She is a fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association. She has worked with organizations such as the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the United Nations Human Development Programme Human Development Report Office, the European Commission, and the UK's Department for International Development.
Go to Profile#5537
Basil Clifford Morson
#92541
Overall Influence
#5538
Mitchell H. Gail
#88472
Overall Influence
Mitchell H. Gail is an American physician-scientist and biostatistician. He is a distinguished investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Life Gail completed a M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1968 and a Ph.D. in statistics from George Washington University in 1977. He joined the National Cancer Institute in 1969, and served as chief of the biostatistics branch from 1994 to 2008. Gail is a Fellow and former President of the American Statistical Association, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#5539
Elliot Scheiner
#5587
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Elliot Ray Scheiner is a music producer, mixer and engineer. Scheiner has received 27 Grammy Award nominations , four Emmy nominations , three TEC Awards nominations, a TEC Hall of Fame inductee, and was a recipient of the Surround Pioneer Award.
Go to Profile#5540
Vasa Stajić
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Vasa Stajić was a Serbian writer and philosopher. He was born in Mokrin in 1878, and died in Novi Sad in 1947 where he spent most of his life. He was secretary of the Serbian Cultural Society from 1920-1922 and its president twice . A statue of him appears in front of the Serbian Cultural Society.
Go to Profile#5541
Maurice Merleau-ponty
#92575
Overall Influence
#5542
Chris Ware
#6539
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth , Building Stories and Rusty Brown . His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
Go to Profile#5543
Sergei Tretyakov
1892 - 1937 (45 years)
Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov was a Soviet Russian constructivist writer, playwright, poet, and special correspondent for Pravda. Life and career Sergei Tretyakov was born to a Russian father, Mikhail Konstantinovich Tretyakov, and a Baltic German mother, Elizaveta Emmanuilovna Tretyakova . His father was a school teacher. Tretyakov graduated in 1916 from the department of law at Moscow University. He began to publish in 1913 and just before the Russian Revolution he became associated with the ego-futurists. In 1919 he married Ol’ga Viktorovna Gomolitskaya. Soon after the publication of Iro...
Go to Profile#5544
David Bomberg
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
David Garshen Bomberg was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson, and Dora Carrington. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme.
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Pyotr Fedoseyev
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
Pyotr Nikolaevich Fedoseyev was a Soviet philosopher, sociologist, politician and public figure. Biography Fedossev was born in to a peasant family. In 1930 he graduated from the Gorky Pedagogical Institute and in the same year, from among the students of the socio-economic department of the pedagogical faculty, he was approved as a nominee for preparation for teaching philosophy. In 1936 he completed his postgraduate studies at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, having defended his dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Philosophical Sciences on the topic "Formation of Philosophical Views of F.
Go to Profile#5546
Murray David Esler
#92613
Overall Influence
#5547
Per Venge
#92634
Overall Influence
#5548
Goran Švob
#45590
Overall Influence
1947 - 2013 (66 years)
Goran Švob was a Croatian philosopher, logician, and author. He was an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb where he taught logic and the philosophy of language, being employed there since 1975.
Go to Profile#5549
Balfour Mount
#7674
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Balfour M. Mount, is a Canadian physician, surgeon, and academic. He is considered the father of palliative care in North America. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, he received his medical degree from Queen's University in 1963 and studied surgery and urology at McGill University. In January 1973, Dr. Mount, an urologic-cancer surgeon, was influenced by a discussion group of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' book On Death and Dying to lead a study of the conditions at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. After visiting Cicely Saunders' St. Christopher's Hospice, he helped to create a similar ward within the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1974 and coined the term "palliative care".
Go to Profile#5550
Leopold G. Koss,
#92675
Overall Influence
