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,
#6301
Don Michael Randel
#13537
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Don Michael Randel is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the chair of the board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation, and a member of the Encyclopædia Britannica editorial board, and has previously served as the fifth president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, twelfth president of the University of Chicago, Provost of Cornell University, and Dean of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. He has served as editor of the third and fourth editions of the Harv...
Go to Profile#6302
Keith D. Lillemoe
#101239
Overall Influence
#6303
Muhammad Sadiq Ardestani
1644 - 1721 (77 years)
Muhammad Sadiq Ardestani is one of the Iranian Shia philosophers during Safavid period. Life Molla Muhammad Sadiq Ardestani, according to Henry Corbin, lived in the catastrophic period namely when Shah Sultan Hossein ruled out. his time coincided with siege of Isfahan by Afghans.
Go to Profile#6304
Ram Samudrala
#36027
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ram Samudrala is a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the University at Buffalo, United States. He researches protein folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution.
Go to Profile#6305
Raymond Duncan
1874 - 1966 (92 years)
Raymond Duncan was an American dancer, artist, poet, craftsman, and philosopher, and brother of dancer Isadora Duncan. Biography Born in San Francisco on November 1, 1874, Duncan was the third of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan and of Mary Isadora Gray . Their other children were Elizabeth, Augustin, and Isadora, a noted dancer. In 1891, at the age of 17, Raymond Duncan developed a theory of movement which he called kinematics, "a remarkable synthesis of the movements of labor and of daily life." He believed that the importance of labor lay in the development of the worker, not i...
Go to Profile#6306
Ama Ata Aidoo
#12546
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Go to Profile#6307
Bartley. P. Griffith
#101260
Overall Influence
#6308
Keith Flaherty
#55975
Overall Influence
Keith Flaherty is Director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was previously a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is known for his research on targeted therapies for cancer, and in particular for his work on the melanoma drug vemurafenib. In 2013, Massachusetts General Hospital partnered with AstraZeneca to partner Flaherty's research into developing a formula to identify vulnerabilities of tumors with AstraZeneca's library of drugs.
Go to Profile#6309
Torsten Haferlach
1900 - Present (126 years)
#6310
Leon of Salamis
401 BC - 400 BC (1 years)
Leon of Salamis was a historical figure, mentioned in Plato's Apology, Xenophon's Hellenica and Andocides' On the Mysteries . This Leon may also be the renowned Athenian general Leon of the Peloponnesian War.
Go to Profile#6311
Daniel A. Haber
#64226
Overall Influence
Daniel A. Haber is the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, a professor of oncology at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . Career Haber earned his B.S. in life sciences and M.S. in toxicology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his M.D. and Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University School of Medicine under the mentorship of Robert T. Schimke. He did his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with David E. Housman.
Go to Profile#6312
Howard E. Gendelman
#93844
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Howard E. Gendelman is an American physician-scientist whose research intersects the disciplines of neuroimmunology, pharmacology, and infectious diseases. Gendelman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His research is focused on harnessing immune responses for therapeutic gain in HIV/AIDS and Neurodegenerative disease. He is the Margaret R. Larson Professor of infectious diseases and internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Go to Profile#6313
Wilhelm Esser
1798 - 1854 (56 years)
Wilhelm Esser was a German academic, logician, and philosopher. His works focused on logic, psychology, and moral philosophy. Esser is also identified as a post-Kantian logician. Biography Esser was born on February 21, 1798, in Düren, Germany. He received his primary education in this North Rhine-Westphalian town, studying science under a Jesuit priest at Ratheim before attending a gymnasium at his hometown. In 1814, he moved to Cologne, where he studied philology, philosophy, and theology. He then moved to Münster to continue his studies.
Go to Profile#6314
Roger Woolhouse
#82640
Overall Influence
1940 - 2011 (71 years)
Roger Stuart Woolhouse was an English philosopher, an expert on empiricism and rationalism and a biographer of John Locke. He was born in Wath-upon-Dearne and educated at Saltburn Primary School, Sir William Turner's Grammar School, London University and then Selwyn College, Cambridge for his Doctorate.
Go to Profile#6315
George Herriman
1880 - 1944 (64 years)
George Joseph Herriman III was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Krazy Kat . More influential than popular, Krazy Kat had an appreciative audience among those in the arts. Gilbert Seldes' article "The Krazy Kat Who Walks by Himself" was the earliest example of a critic from the high arts giving serious attention to a comic strip. The Comics Journal placed the strip first on its list of the greatest comics of the 20th century. Herriman's work has been a primary influence on cartoonists such as Elzie C. Segar, Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bil...
Go to Profile#6316
Tatjana Višak
#88437
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Tatjana Višak , often credited as Tatjana Visak, is a German philosopher specialising in ethics and political philosophy who is currently based in the Department of Philosophy and Business Ethics at the University of Mannheim. She is the author of the monographs Killing Happy Animals and Capacity for Welfare Across Species , and the editor, with the political theorist Robert Garner, of The Ethics of Killing Animals .
Go to Profile#6317
Saint David
512 - 589 (77 years)
David was a Welsh bishop of Mynyw during the 6th century. He is the patron saint of Wales. David was a native of Wales, and tradition has preserved a relatively large amount of detail about his life. His birth date, however, is uncertain: suggestions range from 462 to 512. He is traditionally believed to be the son of Non and the grandson of Ceredig ap Cunedda, king of Ceredigion. The Welsh annals placed his death 569 years after the birth of Christ, but Phillimore's dating revised this to 601.
Go to Profile#6318
George Herbert Palmer
1842 - 1933 (91 years)
George Herbert Palmer was an American scholar and author. He was a graduate, and then professor at Harvard University. He is also known for his published works, like the translation of The Odyssey and others about education and ethics, such as The New Education and The Glory of the Imperfect .
Go to Profile#6319
Albert W. Schömig
#101425
Overall Influence
#6320
Roger I. Glass
#64974
Overall Influence
Roger I. Glass is an American physician-scientist who served as the Director of the John E. Fogarty International Center. Education and early career Glass graduated from Harvard College in 1967, received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Buenos Aires in 1967, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1972. He interned from 1972 to 1973 at Cambridge Hospital. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital from 1974 to 1976. At Sinai, Glass was also an instructor in the department of medicine and an epidemiology fellow with Thomas C.
Go to Profile#6321
Igor Terentiev
1892 - 1937 (45 years)
Igor Gerasimovich Terentiev was a Russian poet, artist, stage director, representative of Russian avant-garde. Biography and creative work Terentiev was born in Pavlograd into the family of lieutenant Gerasim Lvovich Terentiev and Elizabeth von Derfelden, daughter of a resigned cavalry captain. He had a brother and two sisters: Vladimir , Olga and Tatiana .
Go to Profile#6322
Marilyn S. Albert
#101430
Overall Influence
#6323
Pietro da Cortona
1596 - 1669 (73 years)
Pietro da Cortona was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important designer of interior decorations.
Go to Profile#6324
Helgi Pjeturss
1872 - 1949 (77 years)
Helgi Pjeturss was an Icelandic geologist, philosopher, and spiritualist. In 1905 he became the first Icelander to graduate with a PhD in geology. He conducted extensive research on the geology of Iceland from 1898 to 1910. In 1919, Helgi started publishing Nýall, a collection of essays outlining his theories on what he referred to as astrobiology. Having conducted research on psychic phenomena, Helgi disagreed with spiritualism on several points. Most centrally, he held that the spirits contacted in séances and in dreams were not immaterial beings but material beings living on other planets....
Go to Profile#6325
Ahmad Jalali
#32449
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ahmad Jalali is an Iranian scholar and philosopher. He authored a dozen articles in social, cultural, historical, philosophical, political and international fields. Jalali was instrumental in registering five Iranian sites as World Heritage Site in UNESCO.
Go to Profile#6326
Frans Van de Werf
#92465
Overall Influence
Frans Van de Werf is a Belgian cardiologist at the University Hospital Leuven and Professor Emeritus, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He was the chair of the university hospital's cardiovascular medicine department until 2011.
Go to Profile#6327
David Johnson
#85718
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Professor David Wayne Johnson is an Australian nephrologist known for kidney treatments and transplants in Australia. In 2009 he was a Queensland State Finalist for Australian of the Year, for his work in the early recognition and care of people with chronic kidney disease and specifically for his work in detection of chronic kidney disease.
Go to Profile#6328
Paul Diel
1893 - 1972 (79 years)
Paul Diel was a French psychologist of Austrian origin who developed the method of introspective analysis and the psychology of motivation. Life Diel was born in Vienna, Austria, on 11 July 1893, to a teacher of German origin and an unknown man. He was orphaned at the age of 13 after spending 8 years in a religious orphanage, but was able to obtain his baccalauréat with the support of a benefactor. Diel did not pursue formal higher education, but instead became an actor, novelist, and poet before teaching himself philosophy. Inspired by the philosophers Plato, Kant and Spinoza, and also b...
Go to Profile#6329
H. Ralph Jr. Schumacher
#101517
Overall Influence
#6330
Matthew W. McKeon
1900 - Present (126 years)
Matthew W. McKeon is the chair of the philosophy department at Michigan State University and well known philosopher of logic. McKeon earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at The University of Connecticut in 1994. He teaches courses in Logic and Philosophy of Language.
Go to Profile#6331
Lucian Leape
#48186
Overall Influence
Lucian Leape is a physician and professor at Harvard School of Public Health, who has been active in trying to improve the medical system to reduce medical error. In 1994 he had an article, "Error in Medicine," published in JAMA, which called for the application of systems theory to prevent medical errors. In 1997, he testified before a subcommittee of the US Senate with his recommendations for improving medical safety.
Go to Profile#6332
G. Jeannette Thorbecke
#101534
Overall Influence
#6333
Enno Christophers
#100811
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Enno Christophers is emeritus professor of dermatology and venereology at the University of Kiel, Germany. He was appointed editor-in-chief of the Archives of Dermatological Research in 1975. In 1982 he delivered the Kung Sun Oh lecture, on the topic of psoriasis.
Go to Profile#6334
Ouida Ramón-Moliner
#28639
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Ouida Ramón-Moliner was an Irish-born Canadian anaesthetist. She began working at Montreal General Hospital, helping Wilder Penfield perform awake craniotomies and the anaemia cure pioneer Harold Griffith. Ramón-Moliner also worked at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C, Université Laval and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Université de Sherbrooke. She received the Quebec Lieutenant Governor's Seniors Medal in 2012 and a scholarship issued by Champlain Regional College is named after her.
Go to Profile#6335
Achim Freyer
#31571
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Achim Freyer is a German stage director, set designer and painter. A protégé of Bertolt Brecht, Freyer has become one of the world's leading opera directors, working throughout Europe and, since 2002, in the United States, principally with the Los Angeles Opera. Since 1992, Freyer has developed a number of productions featuring his own troupe of performers, known as the Freyer Ensemble.
Go to Profile#6336
Meaghan Morris
#29314
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Meaghan Morris is an Australian scholar of cultural studies. She is currently a Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Life Born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, Morris was raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Morris enrolled in a B.A. program in English and French at the University of Sydney. In Sydney, she met John Flaus, a film theorist and actor famous who would become a significant influence in the development of Australian cultural studies. She also became engaged in the work of British feminist scholar Juliet Mitchell and gave seminars on Mitchell's book...
Go to Profile#6337
Philippe Ravaud
#101570
Overall Influence
#6338
Irwin H. Rosenberg
#101600
Overall Influence
#6339
Susan Bordo
#44667
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Susan Bordo is an American philosopher known for her contributions in the field of contemporary cultural studies, particularly in the area of feminist theory. Bordo specializes in contemporary culture and its relation to the body, focusing on eating disorders which primarily affect females, such as anorexia and bulimia; cosmetic surgery; beauty; and evolutionary theory. She also explores racism and the body, masculinity, and sexual harassment.
Go to Profile#6340
Kenneth Lance Gould
#101615
Overall Influence
#6341
Richard Thomas Nolan
#54204
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Richard Thomas Nolan is a canon of Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut and a former college professor of philosophy and religious studies. He is the editor/coauthor of The Diaconate Now , and coauthor of Living Issues In Philosophy , Living Issues in Ethics , and Soul Mates: More than Partners . Nolan is also the editor of a non-commercial, educational website: philosophy-religion.org. His books have been translated into several languages, including Indonesian and Chinese.
Go to Profile#6342
Valentin Alberti
1635 - 1697 (62 years)
Valentin Alberti was a Lutheran, orthodox philosopher and theologian from Silesia and was the son of a preacher. He is known for defending Lutheran orthodoxy against the natural law views of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Christian Thomasius, and being an active polemicist against Roman Catholicism.
Go to Profile#6343
Leemon McHenry
#45185
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Leemon McHenry is a bioethicist and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Northridge, in the United States. He has taught philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, Old Dominion University, Davidson College, Central Michigan University, Wittenberg University and Loyola Marymount University, and has held visiting research positions at Johns Hopkins University, UCLA and at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in the University of Edinburgh. His research interests center on medical ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#6344
J. S. Dungan
#101667
Overall Influence
#6345
David Resnik
#86700
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
David Benjamin Resnik is an American bioethicist who works at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences . He is known for his work on scientific misconduct. He earned his B.A. in philosophy from Davidson College, his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his J.D. from Concord University School of Law. He taught at the University of Wyoming from 1990 to 1998, and directed the Center for the Advancement of Ethics there from 1995 to 1998. He then joined the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University as associate professor of medical humanities and associate director of the Bioethics Center.
Go to Profile#6346
Jean Soldini
#73900
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jean Soldini is a Swiss and French philosopher, art historian and poet. Biography He studied in Paris, where he earned the Habilitation à diriger des recherches , after he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy and with a preceding Ph.D. in history of architecture.
Go to Profile#6347
John Mendelsohn
#25365
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
John Mendelsohn was a president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was an internationally recognized leader in cancer research. Mendelsohn served as MD Anderson president from 1996 to 2011. When Ronald DePinho became president, he stepped down September 1, 2011. Mendelsohn remained on the faculty as co-director of the new Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy. Also, he was a senior fellow in health and technology at the Baker Institute.
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Michael R. Harrison
#10219
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Michael R. Harrison served as division chief in pediatric surgery at the Children's Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco for over 20 years, where he established the first fetal treatment center in the U.S. He is often referred to as the father of fetal surgery. He is currently a professor of surgery and pediatrics and the director emeritus of the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center.
Go to Profile#6349
Dora Carrington
1893 - 1932 (39 years)
Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was an English painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey. From her time as an art student, she was known simply by her surname as she considered Dora to be "vulgar and sentimental". She was not well known as a painter during her lifetime, as she rarely exhibited and did not sign her work. She worked for a while at the Omega Workshops, and for the Hogarth Press, designing woodcuts.
Go to Profile#6350
David Joel Cohen
#101734
Overall Influence
