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,
#5801
Nathan Lopes Cardozo
#49540
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Nathan Lopes Cardozo is a Dutch-born Israeli rabbi and Jewish philosopher, founder of the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem. Childhood and education Nathan Lopes Cardozo was born in Amsterdam and named after his father's youngest brother who was killed in the Holocaust. His father was a secular Jew who was proud of his Portuguese Jewish origin. His mother was an orphan. When her Christian parents died, she was raised by Jewish family members and became part of the community and spoke their language. During the Holocaust, she saved her husband and his family by hiding them in her apartment in the center of Amsterdam while it was under Nazi occupation.
Go to Profile#5802
Eduard Magnus
1799 - 1872 (73 years)
Eduard Magnus was a German painter, primarily known for portraits. Biography Magnus was born in Berlin as the third son of Johann Matthias Magnus, the founder of the Prussian Magnus-Bank. He studied simultaneously at the Prussian Academy of Arts, Bauakademie, and University of Berlin, becoming educated in medicine, architecture, and philosophy. He took to painting, as a student of Jakob Schlesinger, exhibiting for the first time in 1826 with promising results. He later traveled to Paris and Italy, returning to Germany in 1829. He went to Italy again in 1831, and traveled through Paris and England before returning again in 1835.
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Samuel Adler
1809 - 1891 (82 years)
Samuel Adler was a leading German-American Reform rabbi, Talmudist, and author. Early life Samuel Adler was born on December 3, 1809, in Worms, Confederation of the Rhine . He received his early religious education from his father Isaac, who was one of the associate rabbis in Worms and instructed him in Hebrew and the Biblical and Rabbinic literature of the Jews. When Rabbi Isaac Adler died on December 23, 1822, thirteen-year-old Samuel, his four young siblings, and their mother were left in straitened circumstances. In spite of innumerable difficulties and extreme privation, Samuel continued...
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Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng
#48821
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng was a Norwegian philosopher, illustrator, mountain climber, environmental activist and politician. He was born in Trondheim. Among his publications are Musikk-kritikk og kommunikasjon from 1966, Økokrise, natur og menneske from 1976, and Mangfold og tid. Pyramide-mennesket ved skillevegen: System, frihet eller kaos? from 2001.
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Ludovico Carracci
1555 - 1619 (64 years)
Ludovico Carracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna. His works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion and are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism. He died in Bologna in 1619.
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J. D. Trout
#62854
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
J. D. Trout is an American philosopher of science, cognitive scientist, lecturer and nonfiction author who holds the Calamos Endowed Chair in Philosophy at Illinois Institute of Technology. His research centers on the nature of scientific progress, and its influence on human understanding and well-being.
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Sathanur R. Srinivasan
#95596
Overall Influence
#5808
John Alexander Gunn
1896 - 1975 (79 years)
John Alexander Gunn was a philosopher who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool and worked there as a fellow. He went on to be appointed as a professor at the University of Melbourne in 1923 and retired in 1938. His successor as Director of Extension was Colin R. Badger.
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Samuel Gershon
#95610
Overall Influence
#5810
Sitanath Tattwabhushan
1856 - Present (170 years)
Pandit Sitanath Tattwabhushan was the official theologian and philosopher of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. His hymns still form the basis of Brahmo rites and liturgies. Early life He was born Sitanath Dutta, in a village in Sylhet in 1856. He arrived in Calcutta for higher education in 1871. Although he initially joined Keshub Chunder Sen's Brahmo Niketan where he developed an interest in the philosophy of religion. However following the closure of that institute, he joined Alexander Duff's General Assembly's Institution in 1875. In 1879, he joined Anandamohan Bose's City School as a teacher. La...
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Heinrich Carl Breidenstein
1796 - 1876 (80 years)
Heinrich Carl Breidenstein was a German musicologist. In Bonn he was university professor of musicology, and active in the musical life of the city. Life Breidenstein was born in 1796 in Steinau an der Straße, Hesse, son of Friedrich Ernst Breidenstein, schoolteacher and organist, and his wife Juliane. He was educated at a Gymnasium in Hanau, then studied law in Berlin and later in Heidelberg, where he turned to studying philology. He became a senior teacher at the Gymnasium in Heidelberg, also joining the choral society of Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, a jurist and amateur musician.
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Demetrios Spandidos
#45311
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Demetrios A. Spandidos is a Greek virologist and cancer researcher. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Crete where he was professor of virology from 1989 till 2015. He is also the founder of Spandidos Publications and the editor-in-chief of all eight of its journals.
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David B. Zilberman
1938 - 1977 (39 years)
David Beniaminovich Zilberman was a Russian-American philosopher and sociologist, scholar of Indian philosophy and culture. He was well-versed in the study of languages and knew Russian, Sanskrit, English, Slavic languages, Ancient Greek, French, and German.
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Marika Tiggemann
#95668
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5815
Tarcísio Padilha
#43464
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Tarcísio Meirelles Padilha was a Brazilian philosopher and chairman of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 17 April 1928, the son of Raymundo Delmiriano Padilha and D. Mayard Meirelles Padilha. In 1951, he married Ruth Maria Fortuna Padilha, and the couple has six children.
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Robert N. Hoover
#95681
Overall Influence
#5817
Johann Klein
1788 - 1856 (68 years)
Johann Klein was professor of obstetrics at the University of Salzburg and at the University of Vienna. Johann Baptist Chiari was his son-in-law. In Vienna, he was succeeded by professor Carl Braun in 1856.
Go to Profile#5818
Abdulkarim Zanjani
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Sheikh Abdulkarim Zanjani was born in modern-day Iran, in the city of Zanjan, in the village of BarroBarrout. He went to Tehran to study, and became concerned with politics relating to Islamic nations. At 22 years old, he went to Najaf, and became a pupil of renowned religious scholars, such as Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Yazdi and Seyyed Mohammad Firouz Abadi. He demonstrated insight and skills in the sphere of Islamic philosophy. He is recognized primarily for two accomplishments: one concerned with the reconciliation and nearness of sects and Islamic cults, and another with the development of Is...
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Erich Heller
1911 - 1990 (79 years)
Erich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Biography Heller was born at Chomutov in Bohemia , to the family of a Jewish physician. He graduated a doctor of law from the German University in Prague on 11 February 1935, at the age of 23. In 1939 he emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he began his professional career as a Germanist, being active at Cambridge and London and at Swansea . Heller became a British subject in 1947. From 1960 onwards he was based in the...
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Robert Roy Recker
#95756
Overall Influence
#5821
John Buse
#40265
Overall Influence
John B. Buse is the Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine . He is also the director of UNC's Diabetes Care Center and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute. In 2008, he held the position of President, Medicine & Science on the board of the American Diabetes Association .
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Ned Kock
#11712
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Nereu Florencio "Ned" Kock is a Brazilian-American philosopher. He is a Texas A&M Regents Professor of Information Systems at Texas A&M International University. Background Kock holds a B.E.E. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal Technological University of Parana at Curitiba, Brazil, a M.Sc. in computer science from the Institute of Aeronautical Technology, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in management with a concentration in information systems from the School of Management Studies, University of Waikato, New Zealand.
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Giorgio Walter Canonica
#93586
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Giorgio Walter Canonica is an Italian allergist, pulmonologist and professor of Respiratory Medicine at Humanitas University, Milan, Italy and Director Personalized Medicine Asthma & Allergy Center at Humanitas Research Hospital IRCCS-Milano Italy since December 2016. He is known for his research work related to innovative treatment strategies for allergic diseases which includes biological response modifier in form of targeted immunotherapy with primary emphasis on sublingual immunotherapy . He has served as Secretary General and President elect of World Allergy Organisation for six consecutive years and has served as president of the same organization during 2007–09.
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Gilbert White
1720 - 1793 (73 years)
Gilbert White was a "parson-naturalist", a pioneering English naturalist, ecologist, and ornithologist. He is best known for his Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Life White was born on 18 July 1720 in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. His grandfather, also Gilbert White was at that time vicar of Selborne. Gilbert White's parents were John White a trained barrister and Anne Holt . Gilbert was the eldest of eight surviving siblings, Thomas , Benjamin , Rebecca , John , Francis , Anne , and Henry . Gilbert's family lived briefly at Compton, Surrey, before moving ...
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Amerigo Vespucci
1454 - 1512 (58 years)
Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Florence, from whose name the term "America" is derived. Between 1497 and 1504, Vespucci participated in at least two voyages of the Age of Discovery, first on behalf of Spain and then for Portugal . In 1503 and 1505, two booklets were published under his name, containing colourful descriptions of these explorations and other alleged voyages. Both publications were extremely popular and widely read across much of Europe. Although historians still dispute the authorship and veracity of these accounts, at the time they...
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Walter L. Miller
Walter L. Miller is an American endocrinologist and professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco . Miller is expert in the field of human steroid biosynthesis and disorders of steroid metabolism. Over the past 40 years Miller's group at UCSF has described molecular basis of several metabolic disorders including, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, pseudo vitamin D dependent rickets, severe, recessive form of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, 17,20 lyase deficiency caused by CYP17A1 defects, P450scc deficiency caused by CYP11A1 defects, P450 oxidoreductase deficiency .
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Elena Oznobkina
#65196
Overall Influence
1959 - 2010 (51 years)
Elena Oznobkina was a philosopher, theorist, historian of philosophy, lecturer, translator, editor, journalist, researcher of penitentiary systems, and Russian human rights activist. She is best known as a researcher of modern Western philosophy, a translator and editor of translations of Nietzsche and Husserl into Russian, a critic of the Russian penitentiary system, and the editor of the Russian edition of Index on Censorship magazine.
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Steven E. Wilson
#87814
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Steven Eugene Wilson is an American ophthalmologist and professor at Cleveland Clinic, where he is a surgeon and directs corneal research. He has also received honors for several published historical fiction novels.
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Nessos of Chios
Nessos of Chios was a pre-Socratic ancient Greek philosopher from the island of Chios. Biography Little is known about the life and work of Nessos. The only thing that is known that was Democritus philosophy and the compatriot Metrodorus was his student. That is supported in commentaries of interpretations of Homeric and Hesiod works.
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Hugo Mujica
#53736
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Hugo Mujica is an Argentine Catholic priest, poet, writer, and former Trappist monk. Biography Mujica was born in Avellaneda, a neighborhood near the city of Buenos Aires, to an anarchist syndicalist father. As his father became blind after a work accident when Mujica was only thirteen years of age, he began to work in a glass factory, continuing with high school at night school. At the same time he pursued studies in Fine Arts. Amidst the fervour of the sixties he settled in Greenwich Village, New York. There he began to study philosophy at the experimental Free University of New York, and resumed painting at School of Visual Arts.
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Fred Feldman
#85011
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Fred Feldman is an American philosopher who specializes in ethical theory. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he taught from 1969 until his retirement in 2013. His research primarily focuses on normative ethics, metaethics, the nature of happiness, and justice. He has long been fascinated by philosophical problems about the nature and value of death. He received a NEH research fellowship for the academic year of 2008/09; he received a Conti Faculty research fellowship for the academic year of 2013/14.
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John A. Jane
#15981
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
John A. Jane, Sr. was an American neurosurgeon, and Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia. He was Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia from 1969 to 2006.
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James Stuart Forrester
#95944
Overall Influence
#5834
Elisabetta Dejana
#85474
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Elisabetta Dejana is an Italian cell biologist and an expert on regulation of vascular system development. She has published widely and is frequently cited for her work. She has received several important awards. Dejana is a full professor at the University of Milan and has also been appointed full professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University in Sweden.
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Anthony C. Yu
#30779
Overall Influence
1938 - 2015 (77 years)
Anthony Christopher Yu was an American literary theorist, sinologist, and theologian. He was a scholar of literature and religion, both East Asian and Western; and was the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Literature in the Chicago Divinity School; as well as a member of the Departments of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and English Language and Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Yu has published widely in the fields of religion and compa...
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Dalmacio Negro Pavón
#30981
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Dalmacio Negro Pavón is a Spanish university professor and author, member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Social Sciences. He is an attorney at law and holds an MA in philosophy and a PhD in political science. Former positions include: associate professor of "Foundations in Philosophy", associate professor of "Philosophy in History" and professor of "History of ideas and Political Forms" at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain.
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Polemon
400 BC - 270 BC (130 years)
Polemon of Athens was an eminent Greek Platonist philosopher and Plato's third successor as scholarch from 314/313 to 270/269 BC. A pupil of Xenocrates, he believed that philosophy should be practiced rather than just studied, and he placed the highest good in living according to nature.
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Saint Timothy
17 - 97 (80 years)
Timothy or Timothy of Ephesus was an early Christian evangelist and the first Christian bishop of Ephesus, who tradition relates died around the year AD 97. Timothy was from the Lycaonian city of Lystra or of Derbe in Asia Minor, born of a Jewish mother who had become a Christian believer, and a Greek father. The Apostle Paul met him during his second missionary journey and he became Paul's companion and missionary partner along with Silas. The New Testament indicates that Timothy traveled with Paul the Apostle, who was also his mentor. He is addressed as the recipient of the First and Second Epistles to Timothy.
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Jerrold Levy
#89859
Overall Influence
Jerrold H. Levy is an American critical care physician and cardiac anesthesiologist at Duke University Medical Center who currently serves as the co-director of Duke's Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit. He is most noted for his research in surgical hemostasis, coagulopathy in the critically ill, shock, anaphylaxis, and developing purified and recombinant therapeutic approaches to treat bleeding. He has authored over 400 publications, including scientific manuscripts, review articles, editorials, books, and book chapters. Additionally, he has authored a number of websites aimed at providing ...
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Geert Groote
1340 - 1384 (44 years)
Gerard Groote , otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life. He was a key figure in the Devotio Moderna movement.
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Bohuslav Balbín
1621 - 1688 (67 years)
Bohuslav Balbín was a Czech writer, historian, geographer and Jesuit, called the "Czech Pliny". He became well known also as an advocate of the Czech language in the time of incoming germanization of the Czech lands.
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Christopher Nolan
#6674
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Christopher Edward Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. His films have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide. The recipient of many accolades, he has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and six Golden Globe Awards. In 2015, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, and in 2019, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to film.
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Boris A. Novak
#36808
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Boris A. Novak is a Slovene poet, dramaturge and editor. Novak was born in 1953 in Belgrade where he also spent his early childhood. He completed secondary schooling in Ljubljana and studied Comparative literature and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and worked as a dramaturge at the Slovene National Theatre and as a lecturer at the University. He has also been involved in humanitarian work and was in 2002 elected vice-president of International PEN.
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1809 - 1865 (56 years)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French socialist, politician, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, using that term, and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of community and property". Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist...
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Randall T. Moon
#96040
Overall Influence
#5846
Dominik Szulc
1797 - 1860 (63 years)
Dominik Szulc was a Polish philosopher, historian, and a significant precursor to Polish positivism. In 1814 he began studies at the University of Vilnius. In 1818 became a teacher of Polish language in high school in Vilnius, and from 1823 a teacher of eloquence and logic in the gymnasium of Bialystok . From 1835 he taught at the gymnasium of Lublin, since 1840 in schools in Warsaw. In 1853 he retired. A member of the Kraków Scientific Society correspondence, and the Russian Geographical Society. In his works he defended the thesis of the Polish character of Copernicus. He believed that the ...
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Joaquim Clotet
#70598
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Joaquim Clotet Martí holds a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters, with outstanding work in the area of Ethics and Bioethics. Since 2004, he has been the President of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul , Porto Alegre, Brazil.
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Christopher. G. Goetz
#96051
Overall Influence
#5849
Luigi Naldini
#60712
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Luigi Naldini is an Italian gene therapist, professor of cell and tissue biology and of gene and cell therapy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, and the director of San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, Italy. Often considered as "the father of the lentivirus gene therapy", he is globally known as the pioneer of "the development and applications of lentiviral vectors for gene transfer" that allowed the gene therapy treatment of several genetic diseases. He is also a scientific co-founder of three biotech start-up companies, Genenta in Milan and New York, Chroma Medicine in Milan and Boston, Genespire in Milan.
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Loren Eiseley
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Loren Eiseley was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
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