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,
#6551
Gerald B. Appel
#36588
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Gerald B. Appel is an American medical doctor and kidney researcher known both for his celebrity patients and for his scholarly work on the renal manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus and other diseases of the glomeruli . He has also published more than three hundred academic papers and book chapters on diseases of the glomeruli, several with his wife, Alice Sue Appel, Ph.D.
Go to Profile#6552
Jean-Baptiste du Hamel
1624 - 1706 (82 years)
Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel, Duhamel or du Hamel was a French cleric and natural philosopher of the late seventeenth century, and the first secretary of the Academie Royale des Sciences. As its first secretary, he influenced the initial work of the Académie, but his legacy and influence on the Académie and the growth of science in France is mixed.
Go to Profile#6553
Olivier Hermine
#103745
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#6554
J. Russell Lindsay
#6555
Dariusz Karłowicz
#73546
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dariusz Karłowicz is a Polish philosopher, university lecturer, columnist, and a book publisher. The president of the St. Nicolas Foundation which is an NGO involved in charitable, educational, and scientific activity. An Editor-in-chief of the Polish philosophical magazine "Political Theology" which analyzes the connections and relationships between philosophy, religion, and politics. Lecturer in political philosophy at the War Studies University in Warsaw. Co-author of a weekly television program "Trzeci Punkt Widzenia" on the channel TVP Kultura . A regular columnist in the weekly Sieci .
Go to Profile#6556
Pietro Ubaldi
1886 - 1972 (86 years)
Pietro Ubaldi was an Italian author, teacher and philosopher. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Biography Ubaldi was graduated in Law and Music, at Rome. Fluent in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, in addition to his native Italian, he also knew Latin and Greek language. A student of various philosophical and religious traditions, he distinguished himself as a Christian thinker. He had two children, Agnese and Franco, who died during the second world war. His Christian belief was not only an intellectual question, but a global dimension, something deeply connected with all his being.
Go to Profile#6557
Reuven Sandyk
#103797
Overall Influence
#6558
Joel J. Kupperman
#65731
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Joel Jay Kupperman was an American professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and author of Six Myths about the Good Life, a popular philosophical volume centering on those values most worth engaging in human life. He was best known to the general public as a young math expert on the radio and television show Quiz Kids. He astounded audiences with his ability to do complex mathematics rapidly and seemingly "in his head." He also had strong general knowledge, and was often the winner of the weekly competitions featured on the show. The 1944 film Chip Off the Old Block, starring ...
Go to Profile#6559
Lester Grinspoon
#6643
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Lester Grinspoon was an American psychiatrist and long-standing associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School best known for his groundbreaking works on the science and social policy of cannabis, psychedelics and other drugs, and for his commitment to changing harmful drug policies. He concurrently served as a senior psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts, for 40 years. Grinspoon was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association. He was founding editor of The American Psychiatric Association Annual Review and Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Go to Profile#6560
Frédéric Lenoir
#49486
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Frédéric Lenoir is a French sociologist, philosopher and writer Biography Lenoir studied philosophy at the University of Fribourg followed by a PhD on Buddhism and the West at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. His first two novels – The Angel's Promise and The Oracle of the Moon – sold more than a million copies in twenty countries.
Go to Profile#6561
Fabrice Hadjadj
#53932
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Fabrice Hadjadj is a French writer and philosopher. Hadjadj was born in Nanterre to Jewish parents of Tunisian heritage. In his teens he was an atheist and anarchist, and he maintained a nihilistic attitude for most of his twenties until, in 1998, he converted to Catholicism.
Go to Profile#6562
Alexandre Marc
#33489
Overall Influence
1904 - 2000 (96 years)
Alexandre Marc, was a French writer and philosopher. He was the founder of personalist, federalist, communitarian thinking. He belonged to the non-conformists of the 1930s. Early life and education Marc was born as Alexandr Markovitch Lipiansky in Odessa, Russian Empire in 1904, in a Jewish family. During the Russian revolution he was expelled from the country, and moved to Paris where he completed his secondary education at the Lycée Saint-Louis in the mid-twenties. He studied philosophy at Jena. When he returned to France, he obtained a law degree and he graduated from Sciences Po in 1927.
Go to Profile#6563
Donald L. Loriaux
#103861
Overall Influence
#6564
Satoru Todo
#103870
Overall Influence
#6565
Graham Roger Serjeant
#103885
Overall Influence
#6566
Friedrich Trendelenburg
1844 - 1924 (80 years)
Friedrich Trendelenburg was a German surgeon. He was son of the philosopher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, father of the pharmacologist Paul Trendelenburg and grandfather of the pharmacologist Ullrich Georg Trendelenburg.
Go to Profile#6567
Lazarus Geiger
1829 - 1870 (41 years)
Lazarus Geiger was a German-Jewish philosopher and philologist. Life He was born at Frankfurt-on-Main, was destined to commerce, but soon gave himself up to scholarship and studied at Marburg, Bonn and Heidelberg. From 1861 till his sudden death in 1870 he was professor in the Jewish high school at Frankfurt. His chief aim was to prove that the evolution of human reason is closely bound up with that of language. He further maintained that the origin of the Indo-Germanic language is to be sought not in Asia but in central . He was a convinced opponent of rationalism in religion.
Go to Profile#6568
Erminio Costa
#103896
Overall Influence
#6569
Reed M. Nesbit
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Reed Miller Nesbit was an American urologist, surgeon, and professor. He was Head of the Urology Section of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from 1930–1967. Nesbit was a pioneer of transurethral resection of the prostate. He devised the Nesbit operation for treating Peyronie's disease, and he made prominent contributions to pediatric urology, most notably the Cabot-Nesbit style orchiopexy.
Go to Profile#6570
Andreas Bernkop-Schnürch
#83297
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Andreas Bernkop-Schnürch is an Austrian pharmaceutical technologist, scientist, pharmacist, entrepreneur, inventor and professor at the Institute of Pharmacy, University of Innsbruck. His research centers on the areas of pharmaceutical sciences, drug delivery, controlled release, bionanotechnology and polymer engineering. He is the inventor of various technologies such as thiolated polymers for that he coined the name thiomers in 2000 and phosphatase triggered charge converting nanoparticles for mucosal drug delivery. From 2016 to 2018 he served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the...
Go to Profile#6571
Gherardo Gnoli
#43156
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Gherardo Gnoli was a historian of Italian religions and Iran expert. Biography Gherardo Gnoli has been since 1996 the president of the Italian Institute for Africa and the East . He was also the head of the Public Counsel Institute and later the Italian Institute for the Middle and the Far East , which had been founded in 1933 by Giovanni Gentile and Giuseppe Tucci. He headed the Italy-Africa Institute , which had been founded in 1906 under the name of "Italian Colonial Institute" by Italian explorers, academics and diplomats.
Go to Profile#6572
Martin Jan Schalij
#103949
Overall Influence
#6573
Joseph Bickersteth Mayor
1828 - 1916 (88 years)
Rev. Joseph Bickersteth Mayor was an English professor, classical scholar, and Anglican clergyman. Early life and education Mayor was born in Cape Colony while his parents returned from Ceylon. He was the fourth son and eighth child of twelve born to Rev. Robert Mayor and Charlotte Bickersteth . His mother came from the prominent Bickersteth family and was the sister of Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale and Rev. Edward Bickersteth. John E. B. Mayor was his elder brother.
Go to Profile#6574
Paolo Antonio Ascierto
#103950
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#6575
Werner Drewes
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Werner Drewes was a painter, printmaker, and art teacher. Considered to be one of the founding fathers of American abstraction, he was one of the first artists to introduce concepts of the Bauhaus school within the United States. His mature style encompassed both nonobjective and figurative work and the emotional content of this work was consistently more expressive than formal. Drewes was as highly regarded for his printmaking as for his painting. In his role as teacher as well as artist he was largely responsible for bringing the Bauhaus aesthetic to America.
Go to Profile#6576
Nancy E. Davidson
#103964
Overall Influence
#6577
Carissa Véliz
#89362
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Carissa Véliz is a Mexican, Spanish, and British philosopher. She is an associate professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Oxford . Life and career Carissa Véliz studied a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the University of Salamanca. Later she studied a master of arts in Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. She got a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, with the doctoral thesis "On Privacy", which concerns the ethics and political philosophy of privacy.
Go to Profile#6578
Sebastian Brant
1458 - 1521 (63 years)
Sebastian Brant was a German humanist and satirist. He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff . Early life and education Brant was born in either 1457 or 1458 in Strasbourg to innkeeper Diebold Brant and Barbara Brant . He entered the University of Basel in October 1475 and as an assistant to Jacobus Hugonius he did not pay the matriculation. For five years he lived in the dorm of magister Hieronymus Berlin. Initially studying philosophy and then transferring to the school of law. Latin he was taught by Johann Matthias von Gengenbach who also a lectured philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#6579
Frank Chapman Sharp
1866 - 1943 (77 years)
Frank Chapman Sharp was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics, including business ethics and the ethical conduct of war. Career He received his BA from Amherst College in 1887 and his Ph.D. at the Konigliche-Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Berlin in 1892. His thesis, The Aesthetic Element in Morality and Its Place in a Utilitarian Theory of Morals, was published in book form in both English and German in 1893. His entire teaching career was spent on the philosophy faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where he was promoted to full professor in 1905. He served as President of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Society during the 1907-1908 term.
Go to Profile#6580
Joseph Jordania
#13042
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Joseph Jordania is an Australian–Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist and professor. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne and the Head of the Foreign Department of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory. Jordania is known for his model of the origins of human choral singing in the wide context of human evolution and was one of founders of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony in Georgia.
Go to Profile#6581
Donald Redelmeier
#52905
Overall Influence
Donald Redelmeier, M.D., M.S., FRCPC, FACP is a Canadian internist, the Canada Research Chair in Medical Decision Sciences and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is most well known for a seminal New England Journal of Medicine paper in 1997 connecting cellphone use and motor vehicle accidents, which has led to laws banning the use of cellphones while driving across the world. He is also known for his work on the peak–end rule and duration neglect. A recent publication showing an increased rate of motor vehicle accidents in patients who refuse vaccination was featured on m...
Go to Profile#6582
Zhang Gongyao
#69010
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Zhang Gongyao is a Chinese philosopher. He is a professor in Department of Philosophy, Central South University, China. He promoted the abolishment of traditional Chinese medicine. Biography Zhang was born in Chenzhou, Hunan in 1956. He received his M.A degree from Zhejiang University in 1988. In 2006, Zhang initiated a movement to call for abolishment of the traditional Chinese medicine.
Go to Profile#6583
Guy Haarscher
#42022
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Guy Haarscher is a professor of legal and political philosophy at the Free University of Brussels . He taught every other year from 1985 to 2008 at Duke University School of Law as an adjunct professor of law. He also taught at the Central European University in Budapest from 1992 to 2008 as a recurrent visiting professor. Guy Haarscher currently teaches at the ULB, as well as at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Go to Profile#6584
Theodorus Gaza
1398 - 1475 (77 years)
Theodorus Gaza , also called Theodore Gazis or by the epithet Thessalonicensis and Thessalonikeus , was a Greek humanist and translator of Aristotle, one of the Greek scholars who were the leaders of the revival of learning in the 15th century .
Go to Profile#6585
Jacob S. Selhub
#104086
Overall Influence
#6586
Mikael Knip
#104088
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#6587
Alfred Brunswig
1877 - 1927 (50 years)
Alfred Brunswig was a German philosopher. He taught at Westphalian Wilhelms-University in Münster . Life After graduating from high school in Munich in 1896, Brunswig studied at the Universities of Munich and Berlin until he received his doctorate with Theodor Lipps in 1904. During this period, he adopted Lipps' psychologism. After studying with Edmund Husserl in Göttingen and Carl Stumpf in Berlin, he habilitated in Munich in 1910. He criticized Husserl's conception of evidence and intuition of essences.
Go to Profile#6588
Levi Hedge
1766 - 1844 (78 years)
Levi Hedge was an American educator. Biography Levi Hedge was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1792. His independent stand against hazing while still a student was instrumental in ridding Harvard of the injustice associated with its "hat law". He was a Teacher at Westford Academy in Westford, MA from 1792 - 1794
Go to Profile#6589
Jean‐hillaire Saurat
#104187
Overall Influence
#6590
Jay Lynch
#18330
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Jay Patrick Lynch was an American cartoonist who played a key role in the underground comix movement with his Bijou Funnies and other titles. He is best known for his comic strip Nard n' Pat and the running gag Um tut sut. His work is sometimes signed Jayzey Lynch. Lynch was the main writer for Bazooka Joe comics from 1967 to 1990; he contributed to Mad, and in the 2000s expanded into the children's book field.
Go to Profile#6591
David Feldman
#6592
Christopher New
#73549
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher New is an English academic, author and philosopher. In 1969, New became the head of the philosophy department at The University of Hong Kong. He is the author of the historical novel series, The China Coast Trilogy, which deals with the British presence in China during the 20th century. New has also written novels set in India, Egypt and Europe. He currently divides his time between Asia and Europe.
Go to Profile#6593
Jack Cardiff
#8262
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Jack Cardiff, was a British cinematographer, film and television director, and photographer. His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor, to filmmaking more than half a century later.
Go to Profile#6594
Alan D. D’andrea
#104260
Overall Influence
#6595
Mauricio Suarez
#82455
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mauricio Suárez is a Spanish anglophone philosopher who specialises in philosophy and history of the natural sciences. He earned a BSc in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh , and an MSc and a PhD in philosophy of science from the London School of Economics . His doctoral thesis was on "Models of the world, data-models and the practice of science: The semantics of quantum theory". He currently holds a professorship in Logic and Philosophy of Science at Complutense University of Madrid.
Go to Profile#6596
Robert Leiber
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Robert Leiber, S.J. was a close advisor to Pope Pius XII, a Jesuit priest from Germany, and Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960. Leiber was, according to Pius's biographer Susan Zuccotti, "throughout his entire papacy his private secretary and closest advisor".
Go to Profile#6597
Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro
1677 - 1764 (87 years)
Friar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro was a Spanish monk and scholar who led the Age of Enlightenment in Spain. He was an energetic popularizer noted for encouraging scientific and empirical thought in an effort to debunk myths and superstitions.
Go to Profile#6598
William C. Reeves
#104302
Overall Influence
#6599
Ann Ferguson
#34279
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ann Ferguson , is an American philosopher, and Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She served as Amherst's director of women's studies from 1995 to 2001. She is known for her work on feminist theory.
Go to Profile#6600
C. Eric Lincoln
#28472
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Charles Eric Lincoln was an American scholar. He was the author of several books, including sociological works such as The Black Church Since Frazier and Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma , as well as fiction and poetry.
Go to Profile