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,
#5801
Donald Armstrong
#124737
Overall Influence
#5802
Edward R. Garrett
#124739
Overall Influence
#5803
Jean- Jacques Rousseau
#124745
Overall Influence
#5804
Gerhard Heinzmann
#114844
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gerhard Heinzmann He is known for his work on the philosophy of Henri Poincaré and founded the Archives Henri Poincaré in Nancy in 1992. He is an editor of the journal Philosophia Scientiae and of the Publications des Archives Henri Poincaré and a member of the Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Sciences, the Institut International de Philosophie and the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences.; He was director of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Lorraine from 2007 to 2014, member of the Council of the Division for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Techn...
Go to Profile#5805
Lawrie William Powell
#124758
Overall Influence
#5806
Chi Van Dang
#35583
Overall Influence
Chi Van Dang is a hematological oncologist and researcher, currently serving as the Scientific Director of Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. He is known for his research on genetics, the MYC gene and the cellular energy metabolism of cancer.
Go to Profile#5807
Camran Nezhat
#24075
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Camran Nezhat, FACOG, FACS is an American laparoscopic surgeon, reproductive endocrinology and infertility sub-specialist who has been teaching and practicing medicine and surgery as an adjunct clinical professor of surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California since 1993. Nezhat is also chair of the Association of the Adjunct Clinical Faculty, Stanford University School of Medicine, and a clinical professor of OB/GYN at the University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#5808
Antonio L’abbate
#124800
Overall Influence
#5809
Ian Olver
#77625
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ian Olver AM is an Australian medical oncologist, cancer researcher and bio-ethicist. He is a former chief executive officer of Cancer Council Australia and a noted authority and media commentator on cancer issues.
Go to Profile#5810
Brett Kissela
#120902
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Brett Mancos Kissela is an American vascular neurologist. He is the Senior Associate Dean of Clinical Research, Chief of Research Services for UC Health, and the Albert Barnes Voorheis Endowed Chair and Professor.
Go to Profile#5811
Stanley Lombardo
#41142
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Stanley F. "Stan" Lombardo is an American Classicist, and former professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is best known for his translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid . The style of his translations is a more vernacular one, emphasizing conversational English rather than the formal tone of some older American English translations of classical verse. Lombardo designs his translations to be performed orally, as they were in ancient Greece. He also performs the poems, and has recorded them as audio books. In performance he also likes to play the drums, much like Ezra...
Go to Profile#5812
Cai‐cun Zhou
#124825
Overall Influence
#5813
Milton Irwin Roemer
#124830
Overall Influence
#5814
Kenneth Kitchen
#8770
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, England. He specialises in the ancient Egyptian Ramesside Period , and the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, as well as ancient Egyptian chronology, having written over 250 books and journal articles on these and other subjects since the mid-1950s. He has been described by The Times as "the very architect of Egyptian chronology".
Go to Profile#5815
Rivka Weinberg
#109764
Overall Influence
Rivka Weinberg is an American philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at Scripps College. She specializes in bioethics, the ethics of procreation, and the metaphysics of birth, death, and existence.
Go to Profile#5816
Jason Jorjani
#46746
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Jason Reza Jorjani is an American philosopher, writer, former New Jersey Institute of Technology lecturer, former editor-in-chief of the European New Right publishing company Arktos Media, and co-founder of the AltRight Corporation with Richard Spencer. Jorjani is interested in the possibility that parapsychology offers insights into metaphysics.
Go to Profile#5817
Michael Komajda
#124901
Overall Influence
#5818
Cansu Canca
#13776
Overall Influence
Cansu Canca is a moral and political philosopher, with a Ph.D. specializing in applied ethics, and founder and director of AI Ethics Lab. Formerly, she was a bioethicist at the University of Hong Kong, and an ethics researcher at Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, and the World Health Organization.
Go to Profile#5819
David Beerling
#81182
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
David John Beerling FLSW is the Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate change mitigation and Sorby Professor of Natural Sciences in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Go to Profile#5820
John C. Morris
#124946
Overall Influence
#5821
Jan Lexell
#33070
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jan Lexell is a Swedish physician and academic, who is a specialist in rehabilitation medicine and neurology. He is head of the rehabilitation medicine research group in the Department of Health Sciences at Lund University, Lund. One of his research areas is the effect of physical activity on the aging process. Lexell is also senior consultant in the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at Skane University Hospital, Lund. Lexell's research is frequently cited; in particular, his work during the 1980s on examining the vastus lateralis muscle immediately post-mortem, which helped...
Go to Profile#5822
David John Doukas
#74100
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
David John Doukas , is an American family physician and bioethicist. He holds the James A. Knight Chair of Humanities and Ethics in Medicine, and directs the Program in Medical Ethics and Human Values at Tulane University's School of Medicine. Prof. Doukas is also the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Tulane University. Professor Doukas was Founding President of the Academy for Professionalism in Health Care from 2012 to 2019, for which he was awarded the first Presidential Award at the Academy for Professionalism in Health Care Annual Meeting i...
Go to Profile#5823
Michael A. Wulder
#124955
Overall Influence
#5824
Karsten Friis Johansen
#115594
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Karsten Friis Johansen was a Danish philosopher and classical philologist. He was a brother of Holger Friis Johansen. He was a librarian at the Royal Library, Denmark from 1957 to 1968, took the dr.phil. degree with the thesis Studier over Platons Parmenides in 1964 and was a professor of antique and medieval philosophy at the University of Copenhagen from 1969 to 1998. He was a fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Society for Danish Language and Literature. He also chaired Platonselskabet and Den Arnamagnæanske Stiftelse...
Go to Profile#5825
John E. Repine
#124971
Overall Influence
#5826
Francesco Forastiere
#124985
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5827
H. A. Len Fozzard
#125006
Overall Influence
#5828
Seth Lazar
#41291
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Seth Lazar is an Australian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He leads the Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory Lab. Lazar won the Frank Chapman Sharp Prize in 2011 "for the best unpublished monograph on the philosophy of war and peace". He is known for his research on defensive war.
Go to Profile#5829
Michael Schachter
#125014
Overall Influence
#5830
James Demske
#45952
Overall Influence
1922 - 1994 (72 years)
James M. Demske, S.J., was an American Jesuit priest, academic, academic administrator and, expert on existentialism. Demske served as the President of Canisius College, a private Jesuit college in Buffalo, New York, for 27-years from 1966 until 1993. Under Demske's administration, Canisius College established its school of business. Demske also increased Canisius' endowment from just $1 million in 1966 to more than $27 million by 1993.
Go to Profile#5831
Richard William Price
#125030
Overall Influence
#5832
Robert E. Marx
#125043
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5833
Donald Wayne Seldin
#125060
Overall Influence
#5834
Julie Louise Gerberding
#125061
Overall Influence
#5835
J. Yellowlees Douglas
#28022
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jane Yellowlees Douglas is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction I Have Said Nothing, was one of the first published works of hypertext fiction.
Go to Profile#5836
Tomas L. Kirchhausen
#125067
Overall Influence
#5837
Patrick J. Casey
#74946
Overall Influence
Patrick J. Casey is a biochemist and molecular pharmacologist and is a James B. Duke Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. In 2005, he relocated to Singapore to help found the Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore, where he served as its Senior Vice Dean of Research through July, 2023.
Go to Profile#5838
Joseph Anthony Carcillo
#125143
Overall Influence
#5839
Tu Youyou
#1565
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Tu Youyou is a Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist. She discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.
Go to Profile#5840
Justin Leiber
#53386
Overall Influence
1938 - 2016 (78 years)
Justin Fritz Leiber was an American philosopher and science fiction writer. He was the son of fantasy, horror and science fiction author Fritz Leiber and the grandson of stage and film actor Fritz Leiber, Sr. Previously a professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, Leiber was most recently a professor emeritus of philosophy at Florida State University. He was a visiting fellow at Linacre College, Oxford during the Trinity term on numerous occasions.
Go to Profile#5841
Andrew Jess Dannenberg
#73469
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Andrew Jess Dannenberg is a U.S. physician and former researcher specializing in molecular mechanisms of cancer, formerly associated with Weill Medical College/M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Beginning in 2020 some of Dannenberg's published papers were retracted due to irregularities with the data or figures.
Go to Profile#5842
Thaddeus P. Dryja
#125183
Overall Influence
#5843
Dan Larhammar
#45825
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dan Larhammar is a Swedish academic professor in molecular cell biology at Uppsala University. His research concerns evolution, neurobiology, endocrinology and pharmacology. As of 2021 Larhammar leads a research team at Uppsala that studies receptors for brain neurotransmitters and uses zebrafish as a model species to investigate the localization and functions of memory proteins. Larhammar also serves as President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2018 and is a skepticism activist.
Go to Profile#5844
Herbert Budka
#125202
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#5845
Richard J. Miller
#125218
Overall Influence
#5846
David Rowitch
#108161
Overall Influence
David Rowitch, FMedSci, FRS is an American physician-scientist known for his contributions to developmental glial biology and treatment of white matter diseases. He heads the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Cambridge and is an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco .
Go to Profile#5847
Richard E. Sampliner
#125250
Overall Influence
#5848
James H. Lewis
#125302
Overall Influence
#5849
Scott E. Kern
#125308
Overall Influence
#5850
Henry H. Balfour
#125328
Overall Influence
