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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#6151
Constantin Floros
#28349
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Constantin Floros is a Greek-German musicologist. He studied law at the University of Thessaloniki and then composition and conducting at the Vienna Music Academy. At the same time he studied musicology with Erich Schenk at the Vienna University as well as art history , philosophy and psychology. In 1955 he obtained the doctorate in Vienna with a dissertation on Campioni. He continued his musicological studies with Husmann at Hamburg University , where in 1961 he completed his Habilitation in musicology with a work on the Byzantine kontakion. In 1967 he became supernumerary professor, in 1972 professor of musicology and in 1995 professor emeritus at the University of Hamburg.
Go to Profile#6152
Robert K. C. Forman
#64011
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Robert K. C. Forman, is a former professor of religion at the City University of New York, author of several studies on religious experience, and co-editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Forman has worked as professor of religion at City University of New York, both Hunter College and City College, and is Founding Executive Director of The Forge Institute for Spirituality and Social Change. His books include The Problems of Pure Consciousness, The Innate Capacity and "Enlightenment Ain't What It's Cracked Up to Be".
Go to Profile#6153
Liam Kofi Bright
#71618
Overall Influence
Liam Kofi Bright is a British philosopher of science and assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Methods at the London School of Economics. He works primarily on science and truth, as well as formal social epistemology. Some of his other work has been on Africana philosophy and formal modelling of social phenomena like intersectionality. Bright won the Philip Leverhulme Prize in the category of philosophy and theology in 2020.
Go to Profile#6154
Andreas Jaszlinszky
1715 - 1783 (68 years)
Andreas Jaszlinszky was the Slovak-born author of the early physics textbooks Institutiones physicae pars prima, seu physica generalis and Institutiones physicae pars altera, seu physica particularis .
Go to Profile#6155
Nicholas Cook
#22704
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nicholas Cook, is a British musicologist and writer born in Athens, Greece. From 2009 to 2017, he was the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Darwin College. Previously, he was professorial research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he directed the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music . He has also taught at the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney, and University of Southampton, where he served as dean of arts.
Go to Profile#6156
Joseph Droz
1773 - 1850 (77 years)
François-Xavier-Joseph Droz was a reactionary French writer on ethics, political science and political economy. Biography He was born at Besançon, where his family had supplied many notable members of the legal profession. Droz's own legal studies led him to Paris in 1792; he arrived the day after the dethronement of King Louis XVI of France, and was present during the massacres of September. On the declaration of war he joined the volunteer battalion of the Doubs, and for the next three years served in the Army of the Rhine. Discharged on health grounds, he obtained a much more congenial pos...
Go to Profile#6157
Henry Aldrich
1647 - 1710 (63 years)
Henry Aldrich was an English theologian, philosopher, architect, and composer. Life Aldrich was educated at Westminster School under Dr Richard Busby. In 1662, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1689 was made Dean in succession to the Roman Catholic John Massey, who had fled to the Continent. In 1692, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford until 1695. In 1702, he was appointed Rector of Wem in Shropshire, but continued to reside at Oxford, where he died on 14 December 1710. He was buried in Christ Church Cathedral without any memorial, at his own request. However, a medal...
Go to Profile#6158
John Kjekshus
#97506
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
John Karsten Kjekshus is a Norwegian professor of medicine. He grew up at Solli. He took the Cand.med. degree in 1969 and the Dr.med. degree in 1972, both at the University of Oslo. He also studied at the University of California, San Diego from 1969 to 1970. He was a chief physician at Bærum Hospital from 1984 to 1992, then a professor at the University of Oslo and Rikshospitalet from 1992 to 2006. He chaired the Norwegian Cardiological Society from 1992 to 1994 and has chaired the National Association for Public Health from 2005. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letter...
Go to Profile#6159
Léon Dumont
1837 - 1877 (40 years)
Léon Dumont was a French psychologist and philosopher. He influenced William James and is perhaps best known for his treatise on the causes of laughter . Dumont's closing thoughts from the last page of Des causes du rire The miserable beggar said to the King of France, "Thy image is everywhere except in my pocket." One has seen that to laugh is to disarm hate and anger and to extract from some judges indulgence for a sin. In a word, the good joke, applied appropriately to any subject, has the effect of sweetening the deal for us: Ridiculum acri fortius et melius magnus plerumque secat res. - ...
Go to Profile#6160
Gottfried von Hagenau
1270 - 1313 (43 years)
Gottfried von Hagenau was a medieval priest, physician, theologian and poet from Alsace. As his name suggests, he was probably born in Haguenau, before 1275. After having studied medicine and theology in Strasbourg and in Paris, he worked as a headmaster in Basel, Switzerland, before settling as a physician in Strasbourg, where he applied for the post of canon at the St Thomas' Church. He was at first rejected but successfully sued against that decision before the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, and was instated as canon of St Thomas' Church in 1300. He died on 26 September 1313 and is buried in the church, where his ornate Gothic ledger stone is preserved to this day.
Go to Profile#6161
Greg Dyke
#2136
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Gregory Dyke is a British media executive, football administrator, journalist, and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has had a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am. In the 1990s, he held chief executive positions at LWT Group, Pearson Television, and Channel 5.
Go to Profile#6162
Gordon M. L. Cragg
#99703
Overall Influence
#6163
James F. McGrath
#22391
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
James Frank McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University and is known for his work on Early Christianity, Mandaeism, criticism of the Christ myth theory, and the analysis of religion in science fiction. He received his Ph.D. from Durham University in 1998.
Go to Profile#6164
Frederick Andermann
#62562
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Frederick Andermann was a Canadian neurologist and epileptologist. Biography He was born and initially raised in Chernivtsi, belonging at that time to Romania, today Ukraine. When this area was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, his family first moved to Bucharest, then to Switzerland and France , before they immigrated to Canada in 1950, where he trained in medicine at the Université de Montréal and then neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital.
Go to Profile#6165
Stuart H. Yuspa
#99727
Overall Influence
#6166
Geoffrey Scarre
#95056
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Geoffrey Scarre is a moral philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Durham. His research focuses on a cluster of topics in applied ethics and moral philosophy broadly construed, including evil, the Holocaust, death, forgiveness, courage, the ethics of archaeology, and utilitarianism, with a special interest in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill.
Go to Profile#6167
Lynn Pasquerella
#34876
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Lynn C. Pasquerella is an American academic and the 14th president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Before she assumed this position, she was the 17th president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, serving from 2010 to 2016. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island for 19 years before becoming URI's Associate Dean of the Graduate School. From 2006 to 2008 she was vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school at the University of Rhode Island. She was the Provost of the University of Hartford from 2008-10. She a...
Go to Profile#6168
Anirban Maitra
#99806
Overall Influence
#6169
Stanley H. Appel
#99810
Overall Influence
#6170
Walter Reed
1851 - 1902 (51 years)
Walter Reed was a U.S. Army physician who in 1901 led the team that confirmed the theory of Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay that yellow fever is transmitted by a particular mosquito species rather than by direct contact. This insight gave impetus to the new fields of epidemiology and biomedicine, and most immediately allowed the resumption and completion of work on the Panama Canal by the United States. Reed followed work started by Finlay and directed by George Miller Sternberg, who has been called the "first U.S. bacteriologist".
Go to Profile#6171
Mark M. A. Mintun
#99846
Overall Influence
#6172
Robert Zollinger
#71192
Overall Influence
1903 - 1992 (89 years)
Robert Milton Zollinger was an American general surgeon and professor of surgery at Ohio State University. He described Zollinger–Ellison syndrome. In 1947, he became a professor of surgery and chair of the department of surgery at Ohio State University.
Go to Profile#6173
Stephen L. Hauser
#54243
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Stephen L. Hauser is a professor of the Department of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco specializing in immune mechanisms and multiple sclerosis . He has contributed to the establishment of consortia that have identified more than 50 gene variants that contribute to MS risk.
Go to Profile#6174
Elisabeth Bik
#27939
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Elisabeth Margaretha Harbers-Bik is a Dutch microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant. Bik is known for her work detecting photo manipulation in scientific publications, and identifying over 4,000 potential cases of improper research conduct, including 400 research papers published by authors in China from a research paper mill company. Bik is the founder of Microbiome Digest, a blog with daily updates on microbiome research, and the Science Integrity Digest blog.
Go to Profile#6175
Walter Peñaloza
#52469
Overall Influence
1920 - 2005 (85 years)
Walter Peñaloza was a Peruvian philosopher and educator recognised for his contribution to the professional training of Peruvian teachers. He studied at the former Anglo-Peruvian College in Lima, today the Colegio San Andrés . Later, while working as a teacher on the same campus, he won the First "Gonzales Prada" Prize in 1944, granted by the Directorate of Artistic Education Cultural Extension to the best philosophy work.
Go to Profile#6176
Joseph Franz Molitor
1779 - 1860 (81 years)
Franz Joseph Molitor, or Joseph Franz Molitor was a German writer and philosopher. Life Molitor was born the son of a Kurmainz civil servant. Beginning in 1797, he studied at the University of Mainz and from 1799 at the University of Marburg. He initially studied law but then switched to history and philosophy. He studied the works of Kant, Reinhold, Fichte and Schelling. From 1802, he was co-editor of the short-lived Zeitschrift für eine künftig aufzustellende Rechtswissenschaft nach dem Princip eines transscendentalen Realismus. Under the influence of theosophist Franz Xaver von Baader, h...
Go to Profile#6177
Pierre Musso
#51880
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Pierre Musso is a French philosopher and historian of technology. Life Musso studied philosophy at the École nationale supérieure des postes, télégraphes et téléphones , before gaining a Ph.D. in political science at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Supervised by Lucien Sfez, his thesis dealt with the ideal of the telecommunications network in the thought of Henri Saint-Simon and his followers.
Go to Profile#6178
Ira Byock
#23374
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Ira Robert Byock is an American physician, author, and advocate for palliative care. He is founder and chief medical officer of the Providence St. Joseph Health Institute for Human Caring in Torrance, California, and holds appointments as active emeritus professor of medicine and professor of community health and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. He was director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center, from 2003–14, and associate director for patient and family-centered care at the affiliated Norris-Cotton Cancer Center.
Go to Profile#6179
Antonio M. Jr. Gotto
#99946
Overall Influence
#6180
Juan Manuel Burgos
#67732
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Juan Manuel Burgos Velasco is a Spanish Personalist philosopher. He holds a PhD in physics, and a PhD in philosophy . He is professor at the University San Pablo CEU, Madrid and at the John Paul II Institute, Madrid, a member of the Jacques Maritain International Institute, and distinguished guest professor at Galileo University . In 2007, he became an honorary professor at the Institute of Family Sciences for his contribution to family sciences through his anthropology studies.
Go to Profile#6181
Pierre Lasserre
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Pierre Lasserre was a French literary critic, journalist and essayist. He became Director of the École des Hautes-Études. He was an agrégé in philosophy, contemporary with Henri Vaugeois and Louis Dimier. As a young man he was a strong nationalist and anti-Dreyfusard. He was the leading literary critic of Action française and the author of the first work on Charles Maurras. Along with Georges Valois, Lasserre was one of the first to work to incorporate Nietzschean themes into neoroyalism.
Go to Profile#6182
K. J. Popma
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Klaas Johan Popma was one of the second generation of reformational philosophers arising from the Free University in Amsterdam, after the first generation of Herman Dooyeweerd and D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. Other second generationers were: Hendrik Van Riessen, S. U. Zuidema and J. P. A. Mekkes.
Go to Profile#6183
Andreas Radbruch
#99964
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#6184
Mario Vella
#32382
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Mario Vella is a Maltese philosopher, economist and politician. He was Governor of the Central Bank of Malta from 2016 to 2020. Biography Studies and academic career Vella was born to a Maltese family in Tripoli, Libya, and lived his boyhood within the Italian community there. He started his education at a Catholic school in Tripoli, then returned to Malta with his family and attended De La Salle College at Cottonera.
Go to Profile#6185
Sebastian Petrycy
1554 - 1626 (72 years)
Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno , in Latin known as Sebastianus Petricius, was a Polish philosopher and physician. He lectured and published notable works in the field of medicine but is principally remembered for his masterly Polish translations of philosophical works by Aristotle and for his commentaries to them. Petrycy made major contributions to nascent Polish philosophical terminology.
Go to Profile#6186
Margaret Elizabeth Egan
1905 - 1959 (54 years)
Margaret Elizabeth Egan was an American librarian and communication scholar who is best known for “Foundations of a Theory in Bibliography,” published in Library Quarterly in 1952 and co-authored with Jesse Hauk Shera. This article marked the first appearance of the term "social epistemology" in connection with library science.
Go to Profile#6187
Anselm Feuerbach
1829 - 1881 (52 years)
Anselm Feuerbach was a German painter. He was the leading neoclassical painter of the German 19th-century school. Biography Early life Feuerbach was born at Speyer, the son of the archaeologist Joseph Anselm Feuerbach and the grandson of the legal scholar Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach. The house of his birth is now a small museum.
Go to Profile#6188
Adolf Lasson
1832 - 1917 (85 years)
Adolf Lasson was a German Jewish philosophical writer, strident Prussianist, and the father of Georg Lasson. Biography Born into a Jewish family, converted to Christianity, changing name from 'Lazarussohn.'He was educated at the Gymnasium Carolinum, Neu-Strelitz, and the University of Berlin . In 1858 he became teacher at the Friedrichsgymnasium, and from 1859 to 1897 he occupied the same position at the Louisenstädtisches Real-Gymnasium. In 1861 he took the Ph.D. degree at Leipzig University, and in 1877 became privatdozent in philosophy at Berlin University. Since 1874 he lectured on the history of German literature at the Viktoria Lyceum.
Go to Profile#6189
Timothy J. Wilt
#100087
Overall Influence
#6190
Cristiano Castelfranchi
#26171
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Cristiano Castelfranchi is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Italian National Research Council. He teaches Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Siena. In 2003, he was made a fellow at the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence for pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence.
Go to Profile#6191
Michael Fossel
#53796
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael B. Fossel is a former professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University and is the author of several books on aging, who is best known for his views on telomerase therapy as a possible treatment for cellular senescence. Fossel has appeared on many major news programs to discuss aging and has appeared regularly on National Public Radio . He is also a respected lecturer, author, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine .
Go to Profile#6192
Donald Heath
#100092
Overall Influence
#6193
Jeffrey P. Callen
#100096
Overall Influence
#6194
Graham Oddie
#87393
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Graham Oddie is a New Zealand philosopher who lives and works in the United States. He has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado since 1994. Biography Oddie was educated at the University of Otago, where he received a first class honors degree in philosophy, and at the London School of Economics, where he received a PhD in logic and philosophy of science . His teachers at the University of Otago included Pavel Tichý and Alan Musgrave, and at the LSE, John Watkins , and Colin Howson. Before moving to the United States he held positions at the University of Otago Oddie wrote a PhD on his new idea of truthlikeness which transformed into his book, Likeness to Truth.
Go to Profile#6195
Else M. Barth
#92079
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Else Margarete Barth was a Norwegian philosopher. She was a professor of analytic philosophy at the University of Groningen. She died here in January 2015. She was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#6196
Ann Garry
#79388
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ann Garry is an American feminist philosopher. She is professor of philosophy, emerita, at California State University, Los Angeles . While at CSULA, Garry was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Genders and Sexualities, and also served several terms as the chair of the Department of Philosophy. She has also held several visiting appointments, including serving as the Humphrey Chair of Feminist Philosophy at the University of Waterloo and Fulbright lectureships at the University of Tokyo and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Although Garry no longer teaches full-time, she ...
Go to Profile#6197
Gunnar Fant
#100156
Overall Influence
#6198
Benedict Robert Lucchesi
#100162
Overall Influence
#6199
John F. Wippel
#79071
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
John Francis Wippel was an American Catholic priest of the Diocese of Steubenville. He was a leading authority on the metaphysical thought of Thomas Aquinas. He won the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1981, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, and was named a Professor of the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the time of his death, he was serving as the Theodore Basselin Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Go to Profile#6200
Jude Patrick Dougherty
#77678
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Jude Patrick Dougherty was an American philosopher, Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, and Editor-in-Chief for 44 years of The Review of Metaphysics. Personal life Jude was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Edward Timothy Dougherty and Cecelia Anastasia Loew. His sister was Inez Juanita Bowling. While a student at Catholic University, Jude met Patricia Ann Regan, who was studying nursing. On December 28, 1957, Jude and Patricia were married at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Hoopeston, Illinois, and were married 62 years before Patricia's death on December 8, 2020.
Go to Profile