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,
#5751
Joel S. Schuman
#56941
Overall Influence
Joel S. Schuman, MD, FACS is Professor of Ophthalmology, the Kenneth L. Roper Endowed Chair, Vice Chair for Research Innovation and co-director of the Glaucoma Service at Wills Eye Hospital. Prior to this he was the Elaine Langone Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Ophthalmology at NYU Langone Medical Center, NYU Grossman School of Medicine; Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Professor of Neural Science in the Center for Neural Science at NYU College of Arts and Sciences. He chaired the ophth...
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Edward Ruscha
#6983
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also noted for creating several artist's books. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California.
Go to Profile#5753
Arthur Drews
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews was a German writer, historian, philosopher, and important representative of German monist thought. He was born in Uetersen, Holstein, in present-day Germany. Biography Drews became a professor of philosophy and German language at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe. During his career he wrote widely on the histories of philosophy, religions and mythology. He was a disciple of Eduard von Hartmann who claimed that reality is the "unconscious World Spirit", also expressed in history through religions and the formation of consciousness in the minds of philosophers.
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Thrasymachus of Corinth
#93870
Overall Influence
Thrasymachus of Corinth, was a philosopher of the Megarian school. Little is known about him except that he was colleague and friend of Ichthyas, and he had presumably been taught by Euclid of Megara, the founder of the school. He was said to have been the teacher of Stilpo.
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Sophonias
1250 - 1350 (100 years)
Sophonias was a Byzantine monk who wrote commentaries or paraphrases of the works of Aristotle including De Anima, Sophistici Elenchi, Prior Analytics, and the Parva Naturalia, which are still extant. Little is known about Sophonias, except that he was probably the monk sent by Michael IX Palaiologos on an abortive mission to arrange a marriage between Michael and a western princess around 1295.
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Peter Bieri
#57300
Overall Influence
1944 - 2023 (79 years)
Peter Bieri , better known by his pseudonym, Pascal Mercier, was a Swiss writer and philosopher. Academic background Bieri studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg. He took his doctoral degree in Heidelberg in 1971 after studies with Dieter Henrich and Ernst Tugendhat on the philosophy of time, with reference to the work of J. M. E. McTaggart. After the conferral of his doctorate, Bieri followed an academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
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Claus Goerg Roehrborn
#94964
Overall Influence
#5758
Mark S. Soloway
#94981
Overall Influence
#5759
David O. Carpenter
#79184
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
David O. Carpenter is a professor of environmental health sciences at the University at Albany, SUNY, where he is the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the academic journal Reviews on Environmental Health; and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Pollution.
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William F. Lawhead
#87605
Overall Influence
William F. Lawhead is an American philosopher. Lawhead is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at University of Mississippi having taught there since 1970 and served as the Chair of Department of Philosophy and Religion between 2005 and 2012. His main research interest has been in the history of philosophy.
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Paul J. Olscamp
#42009
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Paul J. Olscamp was a Canadian-American academic and university administrator, born in Montreal, Quebec. While attending the University of Western Ontario, Olscamp was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in 1958 and 1960, respectively. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1962, the first such degree awarded there. His continuing love of the subject was evident during his time at Bowling Green State University because he taught a philosophy course almost every semester, despite managing all his duties as president.
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Richard D. Klausner
#95022
Overall Influence
#5763
Deborah C. Poff
#35947
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Deborah C. Poff is a Canadian philosopher, educator, and journal editor. Deborah C. Poff is the former President and Vice-Chancellor at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba. She serves as editor of two major publications in the field of ethics. She was the Vice-President for Strategic Development at the Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences, Canada, before retiring.
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Robert Bartlett
#47488
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Robert Bartlett is an American physician and medical researcher who is credited with developing a lifesaving heart-lung technology known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation . He is an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School.
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Edmund Montgomery
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
Edmund Duncan Montgomery was a Scottish-American philosopher, scientist and physician. He was the husband of German-American sculptor Elisabet Ney. Early life Montgomery was born on the 19th of March, 1835, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His parentage is unknown, but the Elisabet Ney Museum relates the possibility that he was the son of Isabella Davidson and a prominent Scottish jurist, Duncan McNeill, 1st Baron Colonsay. He and his mother lived in Paris and Frankfurt, supplemented by a trust fund for him.
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Giulio Camillo
1480 - 1544 (64 years)
Giulio "Delminio" Camillo was an Italian philosopher. He is best known for his Theatre of Memory, described in his posthumously published work L’Idea del Theatro. Biography Camillo was born around 1480 in Friuli, now in the north-east of Italy, and probably spent his childhood in either Portogruaro or Udine. He took his family name, Delminio, from the birthplace of his father, in Dalmatia . He studied philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Padua in the years around 1500, and subsequently taught eloquence and logic at San Vito, an academy in Friuli. In 1508 he was involved in the short-lived Accademia Liviana at Pordenone.
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Zev Rosenwaks
#95129
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#5768
Johannes van Vloten
1818 - 1883 (65 years)
Johannes van Vloten was a Dutch scholar, literary historian and philosopher. He is known as a rediscoverer of Spinoza's work and a freethinker in his tradition, with a great deal of involvement in all kinds of social issues. Van Vloten was one of the founders of modern humanism.
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Robert G. Petersdorf
#5770
Christopher Robichaud
#75963
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Christopher Robichaud is a Philosopher and Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He received his doctorate in philosophy from MIT. His areas of research include ethics, political philosophy, and social epistemology. He also teaches at the Harvard Extension School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and in the past has taught at Texas A&M University, the University of Vermont, and Tufts University.
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Robert Y. Moore
#77303
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Robert Y. Moore is an American neurologist with interests in disorders of biological rhythms, movement disorders, and behavioral neurology. He is credited with discovering the function of the suprachiasmatic nucleus as the circadian clock, as well as, describing its organization. He is also credited with establishing the role of the mammalian retinohypothalamic tract as a photic entrainment pathway. Moore cin 2017 serves as a professor of neurology, with a secondary in psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, and as co-director of the National Parkinson Foundation Center...
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Max Brod
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Max Brod was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of writer Franz Kafka. Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death. Brod refused and had Kafka's works published instead.
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Werner Kalow
#95215
Overall Influence
#5774
Camillo Berneri
1897 - 1937 (40 years)
Camillo Berneri was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist. He was assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, presumably on the orders from Stalin's USSR. Biography
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Viktor Sonnenfeld
1902 - 1969 (67 years)
Viktor D. Sonnenfeld was prominent Croatian translator and philosopher. Biography Sonnenfeld was born to a Jewish family in Petrijevci, near Osijek, on 21 January 1902. In Osijek, Sonnenfeld finished elementary school and gymnasium, and in Zagreb and Marseille, he studied philosophy. All his life Sonnenfeld worked and acted in Osijek. He worked at the Osijek daily "Hrvatski list", and for 20 years at "Glas Slavonije" as the editor of cultural section. Sonnenfeld translated works of German philosophers and writers such as; Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche and others.
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Francesco Maria Zanotti
1692 - 1777 (85 years)
Francesco Maria Zanotti Cavazzoni was an Italian philosopher and writer. Besides being a writer, he was also a commentator on works of art. He was considered an authoritative source on many topics.
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Richard F. Spaide
#95252
Overall Influence
#5778
Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann
1801 - 1877 (76 years)
Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann was a German physiologist, anatomist, and philosopher. He specialized in the study of the nervous and optic system. Biography Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann was born in Leipzig, and enrolled in medicine there in 1821. Together with Gustav Theodor Fechner, who got his degree in medicine in 1822, and Rudolph Hermann Lotze , they formed a small intellectual group which dissolved only in 1837 when Volkmann received his professorship in Dorpat . In 1826 he obtained his doctorate and in 1828 he was habilitated as Privatdozent at the University of Leipzig. It was there that he became professor extraordinary of zootomy in 1834.
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Mark Kingwell
#48950
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Mark Gerald Kingwell is a Canadian professor of philosophy and associate chair at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. Kingwell is a fellow of Trinity College. He specialises in theories of politics and culture.
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John Kelsay
#45370
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
John Kelsay is an author and a Research Professor and Richard L. Rubenstein Professor of Religion at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in 1985 in Ethics from University of Virginia. He mainly focuses on religious ethics, particularly in relation to the Islamic and Christian traditions. His research interests include comparative religious ethics, political ethics, and religion and war.
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Hidesaburo Hanafusa
#12227
Overall Influence
1929 - 2009 (80 years)
Hidesaburo Hanafusa was a Japanese virologist. He shared the 1982 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael Bishop for demonstrating how RNA tumor viruses cause cancer, and elucidating their role in combining, rescuing and maintaining oncogenes in the viral genome.
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Cercidas
300 BC - 300 BC (0 years)
Cercidas was a poet, Cynic philosopher, and legislator for his native city Megalopolis. A papyrus roll containing fragments from seven of his Cynic poems was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1906. Life Cercidas was an admirer of Diogenes, whose death he recorded in some Meliambic lines. He is mentioned and cited by Athenaeus and Stobaeus. At his death he ordered the first and second books of the Iliad to be buried with him. Aelian relates that Cercidas died expressing his hope of being with Pythagoras of the philosophers, Hecataeus of the historians, Olympus of the musicians, and Homer of the po...
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John Holdren
#14095
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Paul Holdren is an American scientist who served as the senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues through his roles as assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
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Aeneas of Gaza
445 - 550 (105 years)
Aeneas of Gaza was a Neo-Platonic philosopher and a convert to Christianity who flourished towards the end of the fifth century. He is considered part of the Rhetorical School of Gaza, which flourished in Byzantine Palaestina in the fifth and sixth centuries.
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Stephen M. Drance
#62479
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Stephen Michael Drance was emeritus professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia. He was the head of glaucoma service at the Eye Care centre of Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Scudder Klyce
1879 - 1933 (54 years)
Scudder Klyce was an American philosopher, scientist and naval officer. He is known for his work, Universe, which attempted to accumulate the knowledge of mankind into a single book to collect and deliver a solution for all the problems of humanity.
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Gaspar Lax
1487 - 1560 (73 years)
Gaspar Lax was a Spanish mathematician, logician, and philosopher who spent much of his career in Paris. Biography Lax was born in Sariñena, the son of Leonor de la Cueva and Gaspar Lax, a physician, and had two brothers and four sisters. He studied the Seven Liberal Arts and theology at the University of Saragossa, where he acquired a master's degree. Also during this period of time, all along with another friend, Lax fatally wounded another student by hitting his head. He later moved to Paris, and there he taught in 1507–1508 at the Collège de Calvi and then at the Collège de Montaigu, where he was a student of John Mair and simultaneously was a teacher himself.
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Hermann Johannes Pfannenstiel
1862 - 1909 (47 years)
Hermann Johannes Pfannenstiel was a German gynecologist born in Berlin. In 1885 he received his doctorate in Berlin and afterwards worked as a hospital assistant in Posen. He later moved to Breslau, where in 1896 he became an associate professor. In 1902 he was appointed chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Giessen, and five years later, he attained a similar position at the University of Kiel.
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Frederick C. Dommeyer
1909 - 1988 (79 years)
Frederick Charles Dommeyer was an American philosopher and parapsychologist. Dommeyer was born in Warrington, Florida. He obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University. He worked at Syracuse University where he was head of the philosophy department . He was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research and contributed articles to the Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, The Philosophical Review and The Journal of Philosophy.
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Jean‐claude Reubi
#95402
Overall Influence
#5791
Giuseppe Giaccone
#95412
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#5792
Robert Klitzman
#63939
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Robert Klitzman is an American psychiatrist and bioethicist. Biography Early life Robert Klitzman was born on July 1, 1958. He attended Princeton University, where he studied with Clifford Geertz. He then worked for Dr. Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who had received the Nobel Prize for work on Kuru, a prion disease. Klitzman then conducted field research on Kuru in Papua New Guinea.
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Colin McLarty
#32709
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Colin McLarty is an American logician whose publications have ranged widely in philosophy and the foundations of mathematics, as well as in the history of science and of mathematics. Research Category theory He has written papers about Saunders Mac Lane, one of the founders of category theory.
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Lucien Jerphagnon
#61279
Overall Influence
1921 - 2011 (90 years)
Lucien Jerphagnon was a French scholar, historian and philosopher specialized in Greek and Roman philosophy. Biography Lucien Jerphagnon is the son of Émile Jerphagnon, a regional engineer of French Ministry of National Education and Madame Jerphagnon, born Jeanne Lallemand.
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Thomas de Zengotita
#60308
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Thomas de Zengotita is an author and contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University and teaches at the Dalton School and New York University. His book Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It won the Marshall McLuhan award in 2006 and, in 2010. He co-wrote the narration for a film directed by Adrian Grenier entitled Teenage Paparazzo.
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Ervin László
#30563
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Ervin László is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, originally a classical pianist. He is an advocate of the theory of quantum consciousness. Early life and education László was born in Budapest, Hungary, the son of a shoe manufacturer and a mother who played the piano; László himself started playing the piano when he was five years old, and gave his first piano concert with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra at the age of nine. After World War II, he moved to the United States.
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Xavier Antich
#66762
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Xavier Antich i Valero is a Spanish philosopher, writer and university professor from Catalonia. He is a professor of aesthetics at the University of Girona. He chaired the board of the Tàpies Foundation between 2011 and 2022. Since Feb 2022 he is the President of Catalan Civil Association Òmnium Cultural.
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Gregory Wheeler
#60771
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Gregory Wheeler is an American logician, philosopher, and computer scientist, who specializes in formal epistemology. Much of his work has focused on imprecise probability. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and has held positions at LMU Munich, Carnegie Mellon University, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and the New University of Lisbon. He is a member of the PROGIC steering committee, the editorial boards of Synthese, and Minds and Machines, and was the editor-in-chief of Minds and Machines from 2011 to 2016.
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Pierre Comon
#95509
Overall Influence
#5800
Daniel Little
#25160
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Daniel E. Little is professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He previously served as the Chancellor for the University of Michigan-Dearborn .
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