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,
#6651
Michael Grodin
#103433
Overall Influence
1951 - 2023 (72 years)
Michael Alan Grodin is Professor of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, where he has received the distinguished Faculty Career Award for Research and Scholarship, and 20 teaching awards, including the "Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching." He is also Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Grodin is the Director of the Project on Medicine and the Holocaust at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, and a member of the faculty of the Division of Religious and Theological Studies.
Go to Profile#6652
Stephan D. Fihn
#133789
Overall Influence
#6653
Martin van Hees
#95494
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Martin Vinzenz Baldur Paul Maria van Hees is a Dutch philosopher. Van Hees was professor of ethics at the University of Groningen and since April 2013 professor of political theory at the University of Amsterdam. He received a VICI-grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research to further research and develop the program Modelling Freedom: Formal Analysis and Normative Philosophy. Van Hees is a vegetarian.
Go to Profile#6654
Kathleen L. Collins
#133811
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#6655
Edwin Milgrom
#133813
Overall Influence
#6656
William Clarke Little
#133816
Overall Influence
#6657
Jean-paul Gerard Vonsattel
#133817
Overall Influence
#6658
Ellen Rosand
#53047
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ellen Rosand is an American musicologist, historian, and opera critic who specializes in Italian music and poetry of the 16th through 18th centuries. Her work has been particularly focused on the music and culture of Venice and Italian opera of the baroque era. She is an acknowledged expert on the operas of Handel and Vivaldi, and on Venetian opera. Her books include Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre and Monteverdi's last operas: a Venetian trilogy . She has also contributed articles to numerous publications, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians...
Go to Profile#6659
John J. Mcneil
#133860
Overall Influence
#6660
Dolores Corella Piquer
#133870
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#6661
Theodore Friedmann
#133896
Overall Influence
#6662
Donald Acheson
#23434
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Sir Ernest Donald Acheson was a British physician and epidemiologist who served as Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom from 1983 to 1991. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Early life Acheson was born in Belfast on 17 September 1926. His father, Captain Malcolm King Acheson, MC, MD, was a doctor who specialised in public health, and his mother, Dorothy Josephine , was the daughter of a Tyneside ship builder. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School, Brasenose College, Oxford . His elder brother, Roy Acheson , is Emeritus Professor of Community Medicine in the University of ...
Go to Profile#6663
Andreas Straube
#133949
Overall Influence
#6664
Harold L. Kundel
#133954
Overall Influence
#6665
David T. Durack
#133976
Overall Influence
#6666
Victor Alan Levin
#134000
Overall Influence
#6667
Karl Prof Dr Werdan
#134040
Overall Influence
#6668
Pio Colonnello
#117543
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Pio Colonnello is an Italian philosopher and university professor. Biography Pio Colonnello has three degrees with honours in philosophy, in law and in humanities. In the academic year 1973/74 he won a scholarship at the "Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici", founded by Benedetto Croce, in Naples. Already a teacher in the Secondary School, from 1980 he has worked as researcher with tenure at the Department of Philosophy "A. Aliotta" of the University of Naples "Federico II". From 2001, he works as Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of Calabria University.
Go to Profile#6669
N. E. Balaram
#72882
Overall Influence
1919 - 1994 (75 years)
N.E. Balaram was one of the founding leaders of the communist movement in Kerala, India. A Marxist ideologue, scholar in Indian Philosophy and a well known literary critic in Malayalam, he wrote on the history of the communist movement in Kerala, which is considered as the most authentic record of the early period. He also authored several works in history, philosophy, politics, and literature.
Go to Profile#6670
Erkki Huhtamo
#62261
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Erkki Huhtamo is a media archaeologist, exhibition curator, and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Departments of Design Media Arts and Film, Television, and Digital Media.
Go to Profile#6671
Masataka Sata
#134066
Overall Influence
#6672
Emmet B. Keeffe
#134078
Overall Influence
#6673
Wilhelm Bloch
#134090
Overall Influence
#6674
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo
#80630
Overall Influence
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is an American epidemiologist and physician. She is the 17th Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association and the JAMA Network. She is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Lee Goldman, MD Endowed Professor of Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She is a general internist and attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital.
Go to Profile#6675
Joanna M. Hill
#134134
Overall Influence
#6676
Kar‐neng Lai
#134156
Overall Influence
#6677
Heda Festini
#121904
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Heda Festini was a Croatian philosopher who specialized in analytic philosophy and the history of Croatian philosophy. Academic career Festini was born in Osijek. She graduated from the University of Zagreb in 1952 and received her Ph.D. in 1965. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Zadar where she taught theoretical philosophy, logic and methodology . She is the author of books on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nicola Abbagnano, Antun Petrić and Juraj Politeo, as well as numerous articles on the philosophy of language, philosophy of science and the history of philosophy. She is also translator of works by Nicola Abbagnano and John Dewey into Croatian.
Go to Profile#6678
Shane Robert Cloude
#134163
Overall Influence
#6679
Steven Flanagan
#50153
Overall Influence
Steven R. Flanagan is a nationally renowned expert in the field of traumatic brain injury and is professor and chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, and the medical director of the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center.
Go to Profile#6680
Charles D. Forbes.
#134173
Overall Influence
#6681
Helen Quincy Woodard
#134175
Overall Influence
#6682
Roger Gordon. Gosden
#134180
Overall Influence
#6683
Ramjee Singh
#52435
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Ramjee Singh is a former Member of Parliament and vice-chancellor of Jain Vishva Bharati University. He is an eminent Gandhian and is the author of a number of books on him. He was also the director of Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, India. In January 2020 he was awarded the fourth highest civilian award in the country: The Padma Shri for Social Work. His life has been a blend of being a Gandhian academician as well as an activist. Singh has declared Mahatma Gandhi as the Bodhisattva of the 20th century.
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Andrew P. Jr. Evan
#134194
Overall Influence
#6685
Nir Eyal
#98936
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nir Eyal is a bioethicist and Henry Rutgers Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Population–Level Bioethics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was formerly a bioethicist in the Department of Global Health and Population of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School. He has long worked closely with Harvard bioethicist Daniel Wikler. Eyal's current visibility concerns his role in studying the ethics of human challenge trials in HIV, malaria, and coronavirus vaccine development. He ...
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Burt C. Hopkins
#91792
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Burt C. Hopkins is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Member of the University of Lille, Permanent Faculty member of the Summer School of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, former Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Seattle University and Permanent Secretary of the Husserl Circle.
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Catharine Lumby
#69339
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Professor Catharine Lumby is an Australian academic, author and journalist, currently Chair of the Department of Media and Communication at University of Sydney. Career Prior to her move to academia, Lumby was a feature writer and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, a news writer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and a columnist and senior writer at The Bulletin. She holds a BA LLB from the University of Sydney and was awarded a PhD by Macquarie University for her thesis "Life in a tabloid world: an analysis of key shifts in Australian and US print and television media".
Go to Profile#6688
Michael I. D’angelica
#134213
Overall Influence
#6689
Kjell E. Oberg
#134219
Overall Influence
#6690
Mitchell F. Brin
#134227
Overall Influence
#6691
Michael D. Ezekowitz
#134245
Overall Influence
#6692
Christian C. Abnet
#134283
Overall Influence
#6693
Philip Tagg
#39309
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Philip Tagg is a British musicologist, writer and educator. He is co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and author of several influential books on popular music and music semiotics.
Go to Profile#6694
Georg Peters
#101793
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
Georg Peters was a German physician, microbiologist and university professor. From 1992 until his fatal mountain accident he headed the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the University of Münster. He was an internationally recognised expert in the field of staphylococci and the infectious diseases caused by them, to which he had devoted himself since the beginning of his scientific career.
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Li Chenyang
#16642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Li Chenyang is a professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is internationally recognized for his work in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy, probably best known for his work in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, and comparative studies of Confucian ethics and feminist care ethics.
Go to Profile#6696
Paul E. De Jong
#134310
Overall Influence
#6697
Lawrence Douglas
#10033
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lawrence R. Douglas is an American legal scholar, currently holding the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also an author of both fiction and nonfiction.
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David Norris
#7036
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Patrick Bernard Norris is an Irish scholar, independent Senator and civil rights activist. Internationally, Norris is credited with having "managed, almost single-handedly, to overthrow the anti-homosexuality law which brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde", a feat he achieved in 1988 after a fourteen-year campaign. He has also been credited with being "almost single-handedly responsible for rehabilitating James Joyce in once disapproving Irish eyes".
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Daniel Kuritzkes
#104831
Overall Influence
Daniel Robert Kuritzkes is an American physician. Kuritzkes studied molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University and completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He was trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and became a visiting scientist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research prior to joining the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center faculty. Kuritzkes returned to Harvard Medical School in 2002, where he succeeded Elliott D. Kieff as head of the Clinical Infectious Disease Division and the Harriet Ryan...
Go to Profile#6700
P. E. Erne
#134352
Overall Influence
