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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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#5651

Alicia Miyares Fernández

Alicia Miyares Fernández

#61343

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Alicia Miyares Fernández is a Spanish philosopher, feminist, researcher, and women's rights activists. She has served as the spokesperson for several feminist organizations including anti-womb renting No Somos Vasijas and Recav. She has been involved with the efforts to keep abortion legal, writing the manifesto for the 2014 Tren de la Libertad. Miyares Fernández was active in advocating feminist causes ahead of the 2019 Spanish general elections.

#5652

Pierre Schaeffer

#20160

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète . His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime.

#5653

Jerzy Giedymin

#80013

Overall Influence

1925 - 1993 (68 years)

Jerzy Giedymin was a philosopher and historian of mathematics and science. Life Giedymin, of Polish origin, was born in 1925. He studied at the University of Poznań under Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. In 1953 Jerzy Giedymin succeeded Adam Wiegner at the Chair of Logic at the Faculty of Philosophy.

#5654

Demetrius the Cynic

Demetrius , a Cynic philosopher from Corinth, who lived in Rome during the reigns of Caligula, Nero and Vespasian . Biography Demetrius was the intimate friend of Seneca, who wrote about him often, and who describes him as the perfect man: Demetrius, who seems to have been placed by nature in our times that he might prove that we could neither corrupt him nor be corrected by him; a man of consummate wisdom, though he himself disclaimed it, constant to the principles which he professed, of an eloquence worthy to deal with the mightiest subjects, scorning mere prettinesses and verbal niceties, but expressing with infinite spirit, the ideas which inspired it.

#5655

Johann Reuchlin

Johann Reuchlin

1455 - 1522 (67 years)

Johann Reuchlin , sometimes called Johannes, was a German Catholic humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew, whose work also took him to modern-day Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France. Most of Reuchlin's career centered on advancing German knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.

#5656

Paul E. Lacy

#93855

Overall Influence

#5657

Michael Buckland

#11602

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Michael Keeble Buckland is an emeritus professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and co-director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. Buckland was born and grew up in England. He entered library work as a trainee at the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford after studying history at that university. After taking his professional qualification in librarianship from the University of Sheffield in 1965, he joined the staff at the Lancaster University Library in 1965, one year after it was founded. From 1967 to 1972 he was responsible on a day-to-day basis for the Univers...

#5658

Emiel F. M. Wouters

#93862

Overall Influence

#5659

Benjamin Eiseman

#5660

Robert Truog

#68069

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Robert D. Truog is an American bioethicist and pediatrician. He is the Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, where he is also the Director of the Center for Bioethics. He also practices in the pediatric intensive care unit at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he previously served as chair of the Division of Critical Care Medicine.

#5661

Marianna Florenzi

Marianna Florenzi

1802 - 1870 (68 years)

Marchioness Marianna Florenzi , née Marianna Bacinetti, was an Italian noblewoman, philosopher and translator of philosophical works. She was also known by her married name of Marianna Florenzi Waddington.

#5662

Majid Samii

#8755

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Majid Samii is an Iranian neurosurgeon and medical scientist. Biography Samii was born in Tehran, Iran on 19 June 1937. After having completed his high school education in Iran, he moved to Germany, where he started his medical studies at the University of Mainz.

#5663

Volodymyr Vynnychenko

1880 - 1951 (71 years)

Volodymyr Kyrylovych Vynnychenko was a Ukrainian statesman, political activist, writer, playwright and artist who served as the first prime minister of the Ukrainian People's Republic. As a writer, Vynnychenko is recognized in Ukrainian literature as a leading modernist writer in pre-revolutionary Ukraine, who wrote short stories, novels, and plays, but in Soviet Ukraine his works were forbidden, like that of many other Ukrainian writers, from the 1930s until the mid-1980s. Prior to his entry onto the stage of Ukrainian politics, he was a long-time political activist, who lived abroad in Western Europe from 1906 to 1914.

#5664

Harold Percival Himsworth

#43742

Overall Influence

1905 - 1993 (88 years)

Sir Harold Percival Himsworth, KCB, FRS was a British scientist, best known for his medical research on diabetes mellitus. Early life He was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, the son of Joseph Arnold Himsworth and Amy Eliza Barraclough. He was educated at the local Spring Grove School and King James's Grammar School, Almondbury. He married Charlotte Gray in 1932: they had two sons.

#5665

Philip Hallie

#73257

Overall Influence

1922 - 1994 (72 years)

Philip Paul Hallie was an author, philosopher and professor at Wesleyan University for 32 years. During World War II he served in the US Army. His degrees were from Harvard, Oxford and Grinnell College.

#5666

Robert J. Arceci

#93905

Overall Influence

#5667

Dr. D. J. Hearse

#93937

Overall Influence

#5668

Andrew Nicolaides

#69676

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Andrew Nicolaides is a British-Greek Cypriot surgeon, and an expert in cardiovascular disease and stroke prevention. Early life Nicolaides was born in 1938 in Nicosia, Cyprus. He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London. His postgraduate training was at Guy's, the University of Oxford and King's College School of Medicine.

#5669

Walter Schulz

#66994

Overall Influence

1912 - 2000 (88 years)

Walter Schulz was a German philosopher. Schulz studied classical philology, philosophy and protestant theology at the University of Marburg, University of Breslau and University of Leipzig. After being seriously wounded as a soldier in World War II, Schulz took his doctorate in 1944 with Hans-Georg Gadamer in Leipzig, and habilitated in 1950 in Heidelberg.

#5670

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

1836 - 1917 (81 years)

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was an English physician and suffragist. She was the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon. She was the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a British medical school, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor in Britain.

#5671

Antoine-Jacques Roustan

1734 - 1808 (74 years)

Antoine-Jacques Roustan was a Genevan pastor and theologian, who engaged in an extensive correspondence with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Unlike Rousseau, he believed that a Christian republic was practical - that the Christian religion was not incompatible with patriotism or republicanism.

#5672

Thomas J Kipps

#93962

Overall Influence

#5673

Rudolf Stephan

#42386

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Rudolf Stephan was a German musicologist. Life Stephan was born in Bochum. After studying violin at the conservatory, he entered the Institute of Heidelberg, where he studied musicology at the University under the direction of Wolfgang Fortner. With Heinrich Besseler, Stephan went to the University of Göttingen, where he obtained his doctorate in 1950 with a work on Die Tenores der Motetten ältesten Stils by musicologist Rudolf Gerber . Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig Finscher and Joachim Kaiser were among his classmates. He became known to the German-speaking public at large as the publisher of volume five of Das Fischer Lexikon's "Language", published in the Fischer Library in Frankfurt in 1957.

#5674

Francesco Casetti

#29155

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Francesco Casetti is an Italian naturalized US citizen film and television theorist. He is Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He has been described as "the best analyst of cinematographic enunciation."

#5675

Alessandro Serretti

#93972

Overall Influence

#5676

Edison Liu

#18882

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Edison T. Liu is an American chemist who is the former president and CEO of The Jackson Laboratory, and the former director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center . Before joining The Jackson Laboratory, he was the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore , chairman of the board of the Health Sciences Authority, and president of the Human Genome Organization . As the executive director of the GIS, he brought the institution to international prominence as one of the most productive genomics institutions in the world.

#5677

Frederick Burkhardt

#51575

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

Frederick Burkhardt was an American educator and foundation administrator. He was President of the American Council of Learned Societies , then after his retirement devoted decades of work on The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

#5678

Michael Von Korff

#83235

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Michael Rehn Von Korff is an American epidemiologist and medical researcher who studies the treatment of chronic pain and major depressive disorder. He works as a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente's Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. He is the co-founder of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, as well as a fellow of both AcademyHealth and the Society of Behavioral Medicine. He was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher in 2002.

#5679

Irving Singer

#69175

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Irving Singer was an American professor of philosophy who was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 55 years and wrote over 20 books. He was the author of books on various topics, including cinema, love, sexuality, and the philosophy of George Santayana. He also wrote on the subject of film, including writings about the work of film directors Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock.

#5680

Armen H. Jr. Tashjian

#94017

Overall Influence

#5681

Marsilius of Inghen

Marsilius of Inghen

1335 - 1396 (61 years)

Marsilius of Inghen was a medieval Dutch Scholastic philosopher who studied with Albert of Saxony and Nicole Oresme under Jean Buridan. He was Magister at the University of Paris as well as at the University of Heidelberg from 1386 to 1396.

#5682

Maciej Banach

#94046

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

#5683

John Robert Perfect

#94085

Overall Influence

#5684

Li Shizhen

1517 - 1593 (76 years)

Li Shizhen , courtesy name Dongbi, was a Chinese acupuncturist, herbalist, naturalist, pharmacologist, physician, and writer of the Ming dynasty. He is the author of a 27-year work, the Compendium of Materia Medica . He developed several methods for classifying herb components and medications for treating diseases.

#5685

Kenneth Clatterbaugh

#47687

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Kenneth C. Clatterbaugh is an American philosopher. He was Chair of the department of Philosophy at the University of Washington for fifteen years. He retired in 2012. His interests are modern philosophy, social philosophy, and gender studies, philosophy of religion. His latest book is a satirical look at some aspects of American Christianity. It is a novel, not an academic book although it contains considerable philosophical argument.

#5686

Kevin Chi Chung

#94130

Overall Influence

#5687

Jacob Klapwijk

#27279

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Jacob Klapwijk was a Dutch philosopher, and Emeritus Professor of Modern and Systematic Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, known for his work on Ernst Troeltsch and historicism, Reformational thinking, the transformational task of Christian philosophy, and the theory of emergent evolution.

#5688

Hourya Benis Sinaceur

#55236

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Hourya Sinaceur is a Moroccan philosopher. She is an expert in the theory and history of mathematics. Biography Hourya Benis was born in 1940 in Casablanca in Morocco. Sinaceur worked for Paris-Sorbonne University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research which is also in Paris, and the URS in Rabat. She has also served as a member of the National French Committee of History and Philosophy of Science

#5689

David H. M. Brooks

#64744

Overall Influence

1950 - 1996 (46 years)

David Havard Macleod Brooks was a South African philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Cape Town. He went to Cordwalles Preparatory School in Pietermaritzburg where his father, Ronald Charles Brooks, was headmaster. He then went to Michaelhouse and on to university in Pietermaritzburg. His second degree was his MA at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and his doctorate was from the University of Cape Town.

#5690

Wolfgang Koenig

#94161

Overall Influence

#5691

Ian Janssen

#94164

Overall Influence

#5692

James Bissett Pratt

1875 - 1944 (69 years)

James Bissett Pratt held the Mark Hopkins Chair of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Williams College. He was president of the American Theological Society from 1934 to 1935. Born in Elmira, New York, Pratt was the only child of Daniel Ransom Pratt and Katharine Graham Murdoch. He had an early appreciation of being read to by his mother, and particularly admired the idealism of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his youth. Pratt graduated from Elmira Free Academy in 1893, then attended Williams College, graduating in 1898.

#5693

Maxence Caron

#42156

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Maxence Caron is a French writer, poet, philosopher and musicologist. Biography He is agrégé in Philosophy , Docteur ès lettres Maxence Caron is the author of literary texts and poems and of several works about German thinking and about saint Augustine. Pianist, musicologist, Maxence Caron graduated with honours from the Conservatoire National de Paris in 1990.

#5694

Anna Howard Shaw

Anna Howard Shaw

1847 - 1919 (72 years)

Anna Howard Shaw was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. She was also a physician and one of the first ordained female Methodist ministers in the United States. Early life

#5695

Ülo Kaevats

#37961

Overall Influence

1947 - 2015 (68 years)

Ülo Kaevats was an Estonian statesman, academic and philosopher. In 1972, he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Chemistry of the University of Tartu with a qualification from a physicist and a research philosopher. Kaevats obtained a PhD from Vilnius State University in Lithuania. He served for many years as editor-in-chief of the Estonian Encyclopaedia, the main national work of reference; earlier, he worked as a research fellow at the Estonian and the USSR Academies of Sciences, mostly in the History of Science field. Until 2011, when he became emeritus, he was professor and chair of philosophy at Tallinn University of Technology .

#5696

Rolf Luft

#94194

Overall Influence

#5697

Paul Humphreys

#61924

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Paul Humphreys was a British professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia, specialising in philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. His interests included the metaphysics and epistemology of emergence, computational science, empiricism and realism.

#5698

George Minot

1885 - 1950 (65 years)

George Richards Minot was an American medical researcher who shared the 1934 Nobel Prize with George Hoyt Whipple and William P. Murphy for their pioneering work on pernicious anemia. Early life George Richards Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts to James Jackson Minot and Elizabeth Whitney. He was namesake of his great-great-grandfather George Richards Minot . His father was a physician; his father's cousin was anatomist Charles Sedgwick Minot ; one of his great-grandfathers was James Jackson , co-founder of Massachusetts General Hospital. He developed interest, first, in the natural sc...

#5699

Soumya Swaminathan

Soumya Swaminathan

#41215

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Soumya Swaminathan is an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the chief scientist at the World Health Organization under the leadership of Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Previously, from October 2017 to March 2019, she was the Deputy Director General of Programmes at the World Health Organization.

#5700

Bob Meyer

#83890

Overall Influence

1932 - 2009 (77 years)

Robert Kenneth Meyer was a logician and Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University. First trained to be a minister at the Union Congregational Church by the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1956, he completed his graduate studies in philosophy and logic at the University of Pittsburgh. He moved to Australia and joined the Australian National University in 1974. He worked on the semantics of relevant logic.

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