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.

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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,

#6051

Peter Lunenfeld

#61442

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Peter Lunenfeld is a critic and theorist of digital media, digital humanities, and urban humanities. He is a professor and the Vice Chair of the Design Media Arts department at UCLA, director of the Institute for Technology and Aesthetics , and founder of mediawork: The Southern California New Media Group.

#6052

Hanna Reitsch

1912 - 1979 (67 years)

Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler alive in the in late April 1945.

#6053

Gideon Mantell

1790 - 1852 (62 years)

Gideon Algernon Mantell MRCS FRS was an English obstetrician, geologist and palaeontologist. His attempts to reconstruct the structure and life of Iguanodon began the scientific study of dinosaurs: in 1822 he was responsible for the discovery of the first fossil teeth, and later much of the skeleton, of Iguanodon. Mantell's work on the Cretaceous of southern England was also important.

#6054

Jere H. Mitchell

#98401

Overall Influence

#6055

Oskar Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer

1888 - 1943 (55 years)

Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the workshop of sculpture. His most famous work is Triadisches Ballett , which saw costumed actors transformed into geometrical representations of the human body in what he described as a "party of form and colour".

#6056

Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich

1880 - 1949 (69 years)

Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich was a German religious psychologist and philosopher. Oesterreich was also interested in parapsychology. He argued against the philosophy of materialism. He was the author of Die Besessenheit , a book on demonic possession. It was translated into English in 1966. William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, was influenced by the book.

#6057

Anna Botsford Comstock

Anna Botsford Comstock

1854 - 1930 (76 years)

Anna Botsford Comstock was an acclaimed author, illustrator, and educator of natural studies. The first female professor at Cornell University, her over 900-page work, The Handbook of Nature Study , is now in its 24th edition. Comstock was an American artist and wood engraver known for illustrating entomological text books with her husband, John Henry Comstock including their first joint effort, The Manual for the Study of Insects . Comstock worked with Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Walton Spencer, Alice McCloskey, Julia Rogers, and Ada Georgia as part of the department of Nature Study at Cornell University.

#6058

Mandeep R. Mehra

#40097

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mandeep R. Mehra is The William Harvey Distinguished Chair in Advanced Cardiovascular Medicine and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the medical director of the Brigham Heart and Vascular Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and specializes in advanced heart failure, mechanical circulatory support and cardiac transplantation.

#6059

Michael D. Fox

#74068

Overall Influence

Michael D. Fox is an American neurologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts where he holds the Raymond D. Adams Distinguished Chair in Neurology and directs the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women's Hospital. His research has focused on resting state brain fMRI which uses spontaneous fluctuations in blood oxygenation to map brain networks including the default mode network. He developed the technique lesion network mapping to study the connectivity patterns of brain lesions to help understand the neuroanatomy of a diverse range of processes including addiction, criminality, blindsight, free will and religiosity.

#6060

José Jalife

#98475

Overall Influence

#6061

John L. Doppman

#98501

Overall Influence

#6062

Hosoi Heishu

1728 - 1801 (73 years)

Hosoi Heishū was a Japanese teacher of Confucian thought during the Edo period. He belonged to the eclectic school of Confucian philosophy, and his thought can be considered as the starting point of the eclectic brand of Confucianism.

#6063

Franklin G. Miller

#87441

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Franklin G. Miller is an American bioethicist and senior faculty member at the National Institutes of Health . Education Miller received his B.A. in philosophy in 1971 from Columbia College, Columbia University, and his PhD from Columbia University in 1977, also in philosophy.

#6064

Peter Hewitt Hare

#69294

Overall Influence

1935 - 2008 (73 years)

Peter Hewitt Hare was an American philosopher and Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University at Buffalo. Hare is known for his works addressing the problem of evil. Hare and Edward H. Madden's book Evil and the Concept of God is regarded as highly influential in the literature of problem of evil and has been cited by both critics and supporters.

#6065

Mark S. Gold

#63790

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mark S. Gold is an American physician, professor, author, and researcher on the effects of opioids, cocaine, tobacco, and other drugs as well as food on the brain and behavior. He is married to Janice Finn Gold.

#6066

Kiyokazu Washida

#57442

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

is a Japanese philosopher, specializing in clinical philosophy and ethics. He was born in Kyoto, Japan, and is currently a professor at Otani University. He was the 16th president of Osaka University and served on the screening committee of the Jirō Osaragi Prize, and the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities.

#6067

Adam Mahrburg

1855 - 1913 (58 years)

Adam Mahrburg was a Polish philosopher—the outstanding philosophical mind of Poland's Positivist period. Life Adam Mahrburg was a philosopher and theoretician of knowledge. He taught in Warsaw's secret university and published in learned and popular journals.

#6068

Franklin H. Epstein

#98586

Overall Influence

#6069

Laura Ruetsche

#58674

Overall Influence

Laura Ruetsche is an American philosopher focusing on the foundations of quantum physics, feminist philosophy and philosophy of science. Ruetsche is a Professor and Chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Michigan. Her book, Interpreting Quantum Theories: The Art of the Possible was published in 2011 and received the 2013 Lakatos Award. She has also published on a diverse array of topics, exploring, among other things, philosophically salient differences between non-relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, modal semantics for quantum physics and virtue-epistemological theories of warrant.

#6070

Ludovico Silva

1937 - 1988 (51 years)

Luis José Silva Michelena, best known as Ludovico Silva was a Venezuelan poet and philosopher. A Marxist philosopher, he developed an account of ideology as symbolic surplus. Life Luis José Silva Michelena was born in Caracas on February 16, 1937, the son of Hector Silva Urbano and Josefina Michelena. He was educated at a private school, the Colegio San Ignacio, Caracas, before travelling to study philosophy, literature and philology in Spain, France and Germany. From 1970 to 1986 he was a professor of philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela. From 1964 to 1968 he was head of the Caracas Athenaeum.

#6071

Olav Gjelsvik

#98100

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Olav Gjelsvik is a Norwegian philosopher. Born and raised in Røros, he graduated with a DPhil from Oxford University in 1986, and has since been employed by the University of Oslo; from 1991 as an associate professor, and from 1994 as a full professor. He has published papers in journals and anthologies on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and action, and has also worked and published on the phenomenon of addiction. He has held many offices at the University of Oslo, been Chair of Philosophy in Oslo for many years, and is Director of CSMN.

#6072

Gunnar Grimby

#98655

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

#6073

Steven Tainer

#73135

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Steven A. Tainer is a respected scholar and instructor of contemplative traditions. He is a logician, philosopher, teacher and writer with an extensive background in philosophy of science, mathematical logic and Asian contemplative traditions. One of the central themes of his work involves how different ways of knowing can be compared, contrasted, and/or integrated.

#6074

Jean Biès

#42381

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Jean Biès was a French philosopher and author. He is the recipient of the High Prize of the Society of French Poets , Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor , and a prolific modern proponent of the Traditionalist School. His works deal with the union of Eastern and Western philosophy.

#6075

Ruth Farwell

#33011

Overall Influence

Ruth Sarah Farwell retired as Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Buckinghamshire New University in February 2015. Farwell held a research fellowship in theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, in the early eighties. Her research is at the boundary between applied mathematics and theoretical physics. Her use of Clifford algebras in her mathematics generated her interest in the Victorian mathematician William Kingdon Clifford. She continues to research the mathematical contribution of Clifford, and mathematical models of particle physics, as well as undertaking research on higher education policy.

#6076

István Mészáros

#68076

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

István Mészáros was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher. Described as "one of the foremost political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries" by Monthly Review, Mészáros wrote mainly about the possibility of a transition from capitalism to socialism. His magnum opus, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition , was concerned not only with this theme but provided a conceptual distinction between capitalism and capital, and an analysis of the current capitalist society and its "structural crisis". He was interested in the critique of the "bourgeois ideology", includin...

#6077

Volkmar Falk

#98681

Overall Influence

#6078

John Gregory

1724 - 1773 (49 years)

John Gregory , a.k.a. John Gregorie, was an eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment physician, medical writer and moralist. Life Gregory was born in Aberdeen, Scotland to the professor of medicine James Gregorie and Anna Chalmers, his father's second wife; his grandfather was the distinguished mathematician and astronomer James Gregory. Following the death of his father when he was eight years old, Gregory's education was conducted by Principal Chalmers, his grandfather, and his half-brother James, a professor of medicine. His cousin Thomas Reid, the moral philosopher, also guided and influenced his education.

#6079

Richard Gallo

#73312

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Richard L. Gallo is an American dermatologist who is a Distinguished Professor and founding Chairman of Dermatology at the University of California, San Diego. His research accomplishments as a physician-scientist include discovery of antimicrobial peptides in mammalian skin, establishing new links between innate immunity and skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and rosacea, and defining the functions of the skin microbiome in host immune defense.

#6080

Wilibald Gurlitt

1889 - 1963 (74 years)

Wilibald Gurlitt was a German musicologist. Gurlitt, son of the art historian Cornelius Gurlitt, attended the St. Anne Semi-Classical Secondary School in Dresden and passed his maturity examination in 1908. He continued his studies at Heidelberg University and the University of Leipzig, predominantly philosophy and the history of civilization at first, but later chiefly music science, in particular the history of music in the 16th and 17th centuries.

#6081

Charles Waddington

Charles Waddington

1819 - 1914 (95 years)

Charles-Pendrell Waddington was a French philosopher, cousin of Richard and William H. Waddington. He was born in Milan, of a Protestant family of English origin. Graduating from the École normale supérieure at 19, he taught at various institutions, including the Protestant Seminary at Strasbourg, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and the Sorbonne, where in 1879 he was appointed professor of ancient philosophy. In 1888 he became a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. His works, notable for clearness and penetration, include:Ramus : Sa vie, ses écrits et ses opinions Essai de lo...

#6082

Lajos Szabó

1902 - 1967 (65 years)

Lajos Szabó was a Hungarian philosopher and one of the founders of the Budapest Dialogical School. Early life Lajos Szabó was born in Budapest on 1 July 1902. In 1919 he was dismissed from vocational secondary school due to his sympathies with the Hungarian Soviet Republic. At the beginning of the 1920s, he took part in the illegal Communist movement for a few months.

#6083

Stanley Stewart Davis

#84669

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Stanley Stuart Davis is emeritus professor of pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. Early life and education Davis was born in Warwick, England. He obtained his bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the School of Pharmacy at the University of London in 1964. He remained at the same university to study for a PhD in colloid science .

#6084

Naftali Rothenberg

#44398

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Naftali Rothenberg is an Israeli scholar, rabbi and author. He is known for his studies on the wisdom of love in Jewish Canonical literature and his inclusive leadership in the Israeli rabbinate. Education and career In 1973 Rothenberg was ordained at Yeshivas Kaminetz of Jerusalem and in 1980-1984 studied philosophy and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University. He served as the chief rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Lima, Peru and chaplain and senior education officer in the IDF . Served as an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the School of Management of Touro College in the Jerusalem branch .

#6085

Steven D. Waldman

Steven D. Waldman

#45246

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Steven D. Waldman is a pain management specialist, author and a pioneer in the sub-specialty of interventional pain management. He holds joint academic appointments as Professor of Anesthesiology and Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine where he currently serves as Vice Dean and Chairman of the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics.

#6086

Friedrich Feuerbach

1806 - 1880 (74 years)

Friedrich Heinrich Feuerbach was a German philologist and philosopher. In the 1840s, he played an important role disseminating materialist and atheist philosophy. Life Friedrich Feuerbach was born on 29 September 1806 in Munich. He was the youngest son of the distinguished jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach . His older brothers were all distinguished scholars.

#6087

Thomas Erastus

1524 - 1583 (59 years)

Thomas Erastus was a Swiss physician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title . His name was later applied to Erastianism.

#6088

Hubert Beckers

1806 - 1889 (83 years)

Hubert Karl Philipp Beckers was a German philosopher known chiefly as an expositor of the philosophy of Schelling. Biography He was born at Munich, and studied at the university there. In 1832 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Lyceum at Dillingen, and in 1847 professor of philosophy at the University of Munich. In 1853 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

#6089

Myron F. Weiner

#98884

Overall Influence

#6090

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid

#7389

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua . She lives in North Bennington, Vermont and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.

#6091

Raphael Debono

#98918

Overall Influence

Raphael Debono was a Maltese minor philosopher. In philosophy he mostly specialised in logic. No portrait of him is known to exist. Life Almost nothing is known about the personal life of Debono. He was probably one of the thousands of Maltese emigrants in Cairo, Egypt, around the end of the 19th century.

#6092

Frank A. Chervenak

#37542

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Frank A. Chervenak, MD currently serves as Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lenox Hill Hospital; Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Associate Dean of International Medicine, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

#6093

Friedrich Blume

1893 - 1975 (82 years)

Friedrich Blume was professor of musicology at the University of Kiel from 1938 to 1958. He was a student in Munich, Berlin and Leipzig, and taught in the last two of these for some years before being called to the chair in Kiel. His early studies were on Lutheran church music, including several books on J.S. Bach, but broadened his interests considerably later. Among his prominent works were chief editor of the collected Praetorius edition, and he also edited the important Eulenburg scores of the major Mozart Piano Concertos. From 1949 he was involved in the planning and writing of Die Musik...

#6094

Camillo Ricordi

Camillo Ricordi

#54841

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Camillo Ricordi is a diabetes researcher based in Miami, FL. He currently serves as Director of the Diabetes Research Institute, a position he has held since 1996. He is the Chief Academic Officer of the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami and is director of the DRI's Cell Transplant Center. He has been active in stem cell research and its applications to treating diabetes, particularly Type 1 Diabetes. He specializes in pancreatic islet transplantation.

#6095

Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale

#64669

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale is a Norwegian biochemist. She is a senior scientist at Oslo University Hospital and Professor of molecular tumor biology at the University of Oslo. She received the 2002 Nordic Medical Prize. In 2015 she received the Fritjof Nansen medal and award for Outstanding Research from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and in 2017 she was appointed to Commander of the Royal Norwegian St. Olavs Order by the King of Norway.

#6096

Chris Beyrer

#30850

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Chris Beyrer is the Director of the Duke Global Health Institute. He was previously a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. He was president of the International AIDS Society from 2014 to 2016.

#6097

H. Bryan Jr. Brewer

#98985

Overall Influence

#6098

Thomas Royle Dawber

#99014

Overall Influence

#6099

Desmond Paul Henry

Desmond Paul Henry

#46643

Overall Influence

1921 - 2004 (83 years)

Desmond Paul Henry was a Manchester University Lecturer and Reader in Philosophy . He was one of the first British artists to experiment with machine-generated visual effects at the time of the emerging global computer art movement of the 1960s . During this period, Henry constructed a succession of three electro-mechanical drawing machines from modified bombsight analogue computers which were employed in World War II bombers to calculate the accurate release of bombs onto their targets . Henry's machine-generated effects resemble complex versions of the abstract, curvilinear graphics which accompany Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

#6100

David H. Ingvar

#99039

Overall Influence

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