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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#5601
Dimitris Tousoulis
#93212
Overall Influence
#5602
Maynard Adams
#86460
Overall Influence
1919 - 2003 (84 years)
Elie Maynard Adams was an American philosopher of value and meaning devoted to understanding and criticizing the philosophical foundations of modern Western culture and developing an intellectual vision that makes sense of the human condition.
Go to Profile#5603
Todd Huntley Baron
#93231
Overall Influence
#5604
Lauren Swayne Barthold
#78497
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Lauren Swayne Barthold is an American philosopher and Philosophy Professor at Emerson College. Previously she was Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gordon College, with tenure, and has also taught at Haverford College, Siena College and Endicott College. Barthold is known for her works on Gadamer's thought. She is a co-founder and former president of the North American Society of Philosophical Hermeneutics. In 2018 she co-founded the Heathmere Center for Cultural Engagement, a non-profit devoted to dialogue and deliberation, and currently serves as its program developer.
Go to Profile#5605
Alf L. Nachemson
#93248
Overall Influence
#5606
Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
#55635
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Aaron Ben-Ze'ev is an Israeli philosopher. He was President of the University of Haifa from 2004 to 2012. Biography Aaron Ben-Ze'ev and his two older brothers Yehuda and Avinoam were born to Israel and Haika Ben-Ze'ev and were raised on kibbutz Ein Carmel. When Aaron was 18, his eldest brother Yehuda, 32, was killed in the Six-Day War. Aaron is married to Ruth, with whom he has two sons, Dean and Adam.
Go to Profile#5607
Elizabeth Kiss
#41787
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Elizabeth Kiss is an American philosopher and academic administrator, specialising in moral and political philosophy. Since 2018, she has been the Warden of Rhodes House, Oxford University, and CEO of the Rhodes Trust. She is responsible for administering the Rhodes Scholarship, providing pastoral support to existing Rhodes Scholars and coordinating the Rhodes Trust. She is the first woman to hold this role. Previously she served as president of Agnes Scott College.
Go to Profile#5608
Janna Thompson
#68394
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Janna Lea Thompson was an American-born philosopher and ethicist, who spent the majority of her academic career in Melbourne, Australia. She is best known for her work on reparative and intergenerational justice.
Go to Profile#5609
David A. Savitz
#30949
Overall Influence
David A. Savitz is a professor of Community Health in the Epidemiology Section of the Program in Public Health, Vice President for Research, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, at The Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and Associate Director for Perinatal Research in The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital, both in Providence, Rhode Island. Savitz is the author of Interpreting epidemiologic evidence: strategies for study design and analysis and more than 275 peer-reviewed articles. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2007.
Go to Profile#5610
Jorge Ángel Livraga Rizzi
#42033
Overall Influence
1930 - 1991 (61 years)
Jorge Ángel Livraga Rizzi was an Argentinian poet, novelist, self-taught philosopher, essayist, educator and lecturer of Italian heritage best known for having founded and directed New Acropolis, an international philosophical educational and cultural organisation.
Go to Profile#5611
Stephen Schwartz
#79583
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Stephen M. Schwartz was an American pathologist at the University of Washington. He researched vascular biology, investigating the structure of blood vessels and smooth muscle cells. He died from complications brought on by COVID-19 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Seattle.
Go to Profile#5612
Paul Marks
#35434
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Paul Alan Marks was a medical doctor, researcher and administrator. He was a faculty member and president at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Background Marks was born in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, in 1926, to Robert Marks and Sarah Bohorad. Marks attended Columbia College and Columbia Medical School. After completing postdoctoral research at the United States National Institutes of Health and at the Institut Pasteur in France, he joined the faculty at Columbia University. Marks served as dean of the Medical Faculty at Columbia University from 1970 to 1973. He was president and chief executive officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering from 1980 until 1999.
Go to Profile#5613
Steven T. DeKosky
#23806
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Steven T. DeKosky is the Aerts-Cosper Professor of Alzheimer's Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, deputy director of UF’s Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute and associate director of the 1Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
Go to Profile#5614
Otto Lilienthal
1848 - 1896 (48 years)
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliderss, therefore making the idea of "heavier than air" a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical.
Go to Profile#5615
Dickinson W. Richards
1895 - 1973 (78 years)
Dickinson Woodruff Richards Jr. was an American physician and physiologist. He was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1956 with André Cournand and Werner Forssmann for the development of cardiac catheterization and the characterisation of a number of cardiac diseases.
Go to Profile#5616
Lawrence Shapiro
#43805
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lawrence Shapiro is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States. His research focuses in the philosophy of psychology. He also works in both the philosophy of mind, and philosophy of biology.
Go to Profile#5617
Donald Brian Calne
#93417
Overall Influence
#5618
Antoine Le Grand
1629 - 1699 (70 years)
Antoine Le Grand was a French Recollect and Cartesian philosopher. Life Born in Douai, Spanish Netherlands, he was attached at an early age to the English community of St. Bonaventure's convent there, and became a Franciscan Recollect friar, and taught philosophy and divinity. Sent on the English mission, he resided for many years in Oxfordshire, and in 1695 he was tutor in the family of Henry Fermor of Tusmore. His advocacy of Cartesianism met with strong resistance from Samuel Parker, who would become bishop of Oxford. Towards the close of his life he engaged in sharp controversies on metaphysical topics with John Sergeant, a secular priest.
Go to Profile#5619
Hilda D. Oakeley
1867 - 1950 (83 years)
Hilda Diana Oakeley was a British philosopher, educationalist and author. Life and career Hilda Oakeley was born in 1867 in Durham, UK. She was from a privileged upper-middle-class background. Her father, Sir Evelyn Oakeley was a member of a Shropshire gentry family. He and his wife Caroline had five children. In 1878 her father was promoted and the family moved to Manchester. Hilda attended the private Ellerslie Ladies' College. After finishing school she moved to London and independently studied philosophy and psychology. She attended some of the lectures of the philosopher Bernard Bosanqu...
Go to Profile#5620
Torsti Lehtinen
#46925
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Torsti Lehtinen was a Finnish writer and philosopher. Life and career Torsti Lehtinen was born in Helsinki on 25 July 1942. He studied philosophy, theology and literature at the University of Helsinki.
Go to Profile#5621
Xu Fancheng
#57460
Overall Influence
1909 - 2000 (91 years)
Xu Fancheng , Courtesy name Jihai , also known as Hu Hsu and F.C. Hsu in India, was a Chinese scholar and translator, indologist and philosopher. He translated 50 of the Upanishads into classical Chinese. He also translated Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, Kalidasa's lyric poem Meghaduuta , and several of Sri Aurobindo's works into Chinese. He was familiar with Greek, Latin, English, French, as well as Sanskrit and German. A 16-volume edition of his complete works was published in 2006.
Go to Profile#5622
Melvin M. Grumbach
#86842
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Melvin Malcolm Grumbach was an American pediatrician and academic who specialized in pediatric endocrinology. Called Edward B. Shaw Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, Grumbach was noted for his research and writing on the effect of hormones and the central nervous system on growth and puberty and their disorders; the function of the human sex chromosomes; and disorders of sexual development.
Go to Profile#5623
Aage Møller
#84713
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Aage R. Møller was an American professor of cognition and neuroscience. He was the Founders Professor and Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professorship at The University of Texas at Dallas is named after him.
Go to Profile#5624
Sean J. Morrison
#19660
Overall Influence
Sean J. Morrison is a Canadian-American stem cell biologist and cancer researcher. Morrison is the director of Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern, a nonprofit research institute established in 2011 as a joint venture between Children’s Health System of Texas and UT Southwestern Medical Center. The CRI was established in 2011 by Morrison with the mission to perform transformative biomedical research at the interface of stem cell biology, cancer, and metabolism to better understand the biological basis of disease. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#5625
Vanja Sutlić
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Vanja Sutlić was a Croatian philosopher. He was regarded as the father of the Heideggerian philosophy in Yugoslavia and its successor states, especially in Croatia and Slovenia. He was born in Karlovac, Yugoslavia. He graduated from philosophy at the University of Zagreb, where he also obtained his PhD. In, he was hired as an assistant professor at the University, but in 1952 he was removed by the Yugoslav Communist authorities and forcibly transferred to Nova Gradiška. Already in 1953, he could return to Zagreb, continuing his teaching position. Between 1956 and 1964, he taught at the University of Sarajevo.
Go to Profile#5626
Douglas R. Lowy
#30194
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Douglas R. Lowy is the current Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and Chief of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology within the Center for Cancer Research at NCI. Lowy served as Acting Director of NCI between April 2015 and October 2017 following the resignation of Harold E. Varmus, M.D., and again between April and November 2019, while Director Norman Sharpless served as the Acting Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He resumed the role of Acting Director on May 1, 2022, when Sharpless stepped down until October 3, 2022 when Monica Bertagnolli was appointed Director.
Go to Profile#5627
Carmine Zoccali
#86331
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Carmine Zoccali is an Italian nephrologist and a clinical investigator. He has contributed to research in several fields, most notably hypertension and cardiovascular complications in chronic kidney disease , CKD progression and clinical epidemiology of kidney diseases at large. He is known for his studies on cardiovascular risk in CKD and dialysis patients. He was among the earliest investigators that focused on the relevance of endothelial dysfunction and inflammation for the high risk of cardiovascular disease in these populations. In this research area, he was the first to link endogenous inhibitors of the nitric oxide system with death and cardiovascular disease.
Go to Profile#5628
Max van Manen
#79361
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Max van Manen is a Dutch-born Canadian scholar who specializes in phenomenological research methods and pedagogy. There are several interesting publications to conduct phenomenology of practice. He is an emeritus professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, where he is also a Distinguished Scholar at the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology.
Go to Profile#5629
Robert Burton Nussenblatt
#93606
Overall Influence
#5630
Tom Sorell
#85260
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Tom Sorell is a Canadian philosopher based in the UK. His interests range from the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science to early modern philosophy, ethics and political philosophy. He is noted for his writings on Hobbes, scientism and applied ethics. Since 2008, he has worked in ethics and technology both as a researcher and as a consultant. He is the author of Hobbes ; Descartes ; Moral Theory and Capital Punishment ; Scientism ; Business Ethics ; Moral Theory and Anomaly ; Descartes Reinvented ; and Emergencies and Politics .
Go to Profile#5631
Cornelis Verhoeven
#59059
Overall Influence
1928 - 2001 (73 years)
Cornelis Verhoeven was a Dutch philosopher and writer. Early life and education Verhoeven was born in Udenhout, the fourth child of seven from a farmer's family in the south of the Netherlands. He attended a catholic priest seminary but was asked to leave. He then studied classics, philosophy and religious studies at the University of Nijmegen and earned his Ph.D. with the thesis Symboliek van de voet on 19 October 1956.
Go to Profile#5632
Johan Andreas Dèr Mouw
1863 - 1919 (56 years)
Johan Andreas Dèr Mouw was a Dutch poet and philosopher. During Dèr Mouw's life only some of his poems were published in literary journals. His penname "Adwaita" is Sanskrit for "he who is without two-ness".
Go to Profile#5633
John Punch
1603 - 1661 (58 years)
John Punch was an Irish Franciscan scholastic philosopher and theologian. Punch was ultimately responsible for the now classic formulation of Ockham's Razor, in the shape of the Latin phrase entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, "entities are not to be multiplied unnecessarily." His formulation was slightly different: Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate. Punch did not attribute this wording to William of Ockham, but instead referred to the principle as a "common axiom" used by the Scholastics.
Go to Profile#5634
Lester Luborsky
#35455
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Lester B. Luborsky was one of the founders of scientific research in psychotherapy. Luborsky was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from Philadelphia Central High School and then earned his bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile#5635
Habib Malik
#34304
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Habib Malik is a retired associate professor of history and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University . His father Charles Malik was a leading figure in the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Go to Profile#5636
Owen Witte
#29914
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Owen Witte is an American physician-scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, founding director of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, and the UC Regents’ David Saxon Presidential Chair in developmental immunology . Witte is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the President's Cancer Panel . He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2013.
Go to Profile#5637
Peter Helias
1100 - 1200 (100 years)
Peter Helias was a medieval priest and philosopher. Born in Poitiers, he became a pupil of Thierry of Chartres at Paris in the 1130s, also teaching grammar and rhetoric in his school. Around 1155 he returned to Poitiers where he later died.
Go to Profile#5638
Stephen Chanock
#79357
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Stephen Jacob Chanock is an American physician and geneticist. He currently serves as Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the U.S. National Cancer Institute . Biography Stephen Chanock is the son of NIH scientist Robert M. Chanock, discoverer of human respiratory syncytial virus.
Go to Profile#5639
Jorge Sérgio Reis‐filho
#93696
Overall Influence
#5640
Howard Adelman
#51990
Overall Influence
1938 - 2023 (85 years)
Howard Adelman was a Canadian philosopher and university professor. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at York University in 2003. Adelman was one of the founders of Rochdale College, as well as the founder and director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies. He was editor of Refuge for ten years, and since his retirement he has received several honorary university and governmental appointments in Canada and abroad. Adelman was the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and presented the inaugural lecture in a series named in his honor at York University in 2008.
Go to Profile#5641
Deni Elliott
#58747
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Deni Elliott, D.Ed. is an ethicist and ethics scholar, and has been active in ethics scholarship and application since the 1980s. She is professor emeritus at University of South Florida. She held the Eleanor Poynter Jamison Chair in Media Ethics and Press Policy, professor in the Department of Journalism and Digital Communication and served as Interim Regional Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and was Department Chair . University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus. Elliott is co-Chief Project Officer for the National Ethics Project and is one of 33 content experts for the National Center of Disability and Journalism.
Go to Profile#5642
İbrahim Özdemir
#60489
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
İbrahim Özdemir is a Kurdish philosopher, academic and Islamic environmentalist. He is a professor of philosophy at Uskudar University and Director General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Education, Turkey.
Go to Profile#5643
Diogenes of Babylon
240 BC - 150 BC (90 years)
Diogenes of Babylon was a Stoic philosopher. He was the head of the Stoic school in Athens, and he was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC. He wrote many works, but none of his writings survived, except as quotations by later writers.
Go to Profile#5644
Chester Keefer
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Chester Scott Keefer was an American physician. He served as "penicillin czar" during World War II, responsible for managing distribution and allocation of the then-new drug for civilian uses in the United States, and was dean of the Boston University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#5645
Harvey Locke
#27643
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Harvey Locke is a Canadian conservationist, writer, and photographer. He is a recognized global leader in the field of parks, wilderness, wildlife and large landscape conservation. He is a founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, with the goal to create a continuous corridor for wildlife from Yellowstone National Park in the United States to the Yukon in Northern Canada. In 2017, Locke was appointed chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Beyond the Aichi Targets Task Force, with the goal of ensuring the new global conservation targets set at the next Conferen...
Go to Profile#5646
Gunnar Beck
#29690
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gunnar Beck is a German politician, academic and lawyer. He is Member of the European Parliament for the Alternative for Germany party and currently hold the position of deputy leader of the AfD in the European Parliament and Vice-President of the Identity & Democracy Group. He previously was, and currently remains, a reader in law at the SOAS, University of London.
Go to Profile#5647
Bhudev Mukhopadhyay
1827 - 1894 (67 years)
Bhudev Mukhopadhyay was a writer and intellectual in 19th century Bengal. His works were considered ardent displays of nationalism and philosophy in the period of the Bengal renaissance. His novel Anguriya Binimoy was the first historical novel written in Bengal.
Go to Profile#5648
Thomas R. Dr Demeester
#93783
Overall Influence
#5649
Claus Dierksmeier
#54294
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Claus Dierksmeier is a German philosopher. He holds a chair for globalization ethics at the University of Tübingen and works as a strategic consultant in politics and business. Career After finishing his dissertation at the University of Hamburg in 1997, Dierksmeier obtained a Dr. phil. habil. degree from the University of Jena in 2002. In 2001 and 2002 he was a visiting scholar at various universities in Spain, Uruguay and Argentina before becoming an associate professor at the Institute for Philosophy at Stonehill College, Boston, where he was subsequently a full professor and "Distinguished Professor of Globalization Ethics" since 2011.
Go to Profile#5650
Milan Kujundžić Aberdar
1842 - 1893 (51 years)
Milan Kujundžić Aberdar was a Serbian poet, philosopher and politician. Biography He was born in Belgrade and given the name Janićije but later he changed it to Milan. His pseudonym Aberdar came from his collected poems.
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