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.

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#6751

Shabir Madhi

#100384

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Shabir Ahmed Madhi, is a South African physician who is professor of vaccinology and director of the South African Medical Research Council Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, and National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology Research Chair in Vaccine Preventable Diseases. In January 2021, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwateratand.

#6752

Lars Svendsen

#102246

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Lars Fredrik Händler Svendsen is a Norwegian philosopher. Biography He is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author of several books, including A Philosophy of Boredom , Fashion: a Philosophy , A Philosophy of Fear , Work , and A Philosophy of Freedom . His books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

#6753

Richard J”︁ Traystman

#106031

Overall Influence

#6754

Jack Meiland

#86766

Overall Influence

1934 - 1998 (64 years)

Jack W. Meiland was an American philosopher and educator. As a philosopher, Meiland is best known for his analyses of relativism, particularly on cognitive relativism. Meiland is also known for a "salvage operation" from the "paradox of relativism", the claim that relativists are absolutists about relativism.

#6755

D. Graeme Woodfield

#106071

Overall Influence

#6756

Vianney Décarie

Vianney Décarie

#80856

Overall Influence

1917 - 2009 (92 years)

Joseph Fernand Lionel Vianney Décarie, , was a Canadian philosopher. He was born November 28, 1917, in Montreal, Canada and died there on September 6, 2009, of pneumonia. Early life Vianney Décarie was a descendant of an old Quebec family. His grandfather, Barthélémy Thélesphore Décarie, was a major landowner, whose farms stretched through the west end of present-day Montreal and the village of Notre Dame de Grace. The Décarie Expressway bears the family's name.

#6757

Stephen R Marder

#106076

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

#6758

Gazi Yaşargil

#4296

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Mahmut Gazi Yaşargil is a Turkish medical scientist and neurosurgeon. He collaborated with Raymond M. P. Donaghy M.D at the University of Vermont in developing microneurosurgery. Yaşargil treated epilepsy and brain tumours with instruments of his own design. From 1953 until his retirement in 1993 he was first resident, chief resident and then professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Zurich and the Zurich University Hospital. In 1999 he was honored as "Neurosurgery’s Man of the Century 1950–1999" at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting. He is a founding member of Eurasian Academy.

#6759

Joan Moschovakis

#67065

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Joan Rand Moschovakis is a logician and mathematician focusing on intuitionistic logic and mathematics. She is professor emerita at Occidental College and a guest at UCLA. Moschovakis earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965 under the direction of Stephen Kleene, with a dissertation titled Disjunction, Existence and *-Eliminability in Formalized Intuitionistic Analysis.

#6760

Gerrit Moll

1785 - 1838 (53 years)

Gerard "Gerrit" Moll LLD was a Dutch scientist and mathematician. A polymath in his interests, he published in four languages. Life From a family background in Amsterdam of commerce, Moll was drawn towards science. His teacher at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam was Jean Henri van Swinden. He took up astronomy with Jan Frederik Keijser in 1801. In 1809 he was awarded a Candidaat degree by Leiden University; and in 1810 he went to Paris, where he studied under Delambre. Moll is noted for his later animus against "Napoleonic science", the tradition of the revolutionary period in France.

#6761

Herbert W. Virgin

#93976

Overall Influence

Herbert W. "Skip" Virgin was the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology & Immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for establishing murine norovirus as a model system for studying norovirus biology, for identifying host phenotypes associated with persistent viral infections, for defining alterations to the human virome in the context of different diseases, and for elucidating the roles of autophagy and interferon-stimulated genes during viral infection.

#6762

John E. Murdoch

#61183

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

John Emery Murdoch was an American academic. Educated in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Murdoch spent most of his career at Harvard University. At Harvard, he was Professor of History of Science and Chair of the Department from 1966 to 1971 and 1974 to 1975. He specialized in ancient and medieval medicine and philosophy, and published numerous materials on the topic. Murdoch was awarded the George Sarton Medal in 2009 for his scholarship.

#6763

Keith P. Klugman

#106109

Overall Influence

#6764

Joseph de Torre

#61671

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

Joseph de Torre was a social and political philosopher and a Roman Catholic priest. He is the author of books on social ethics, Catholic social teaching, modern philosophy and spirituality. He is a member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. De Torre is the author of twenty books and hundreds of essays. He had been living in the Philippines since 1968. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, Spanish and English.

#6765

Zheng Xuan

127 - 200 (73 years)

Zheng Xuan , courtesy name Kangcheng , was a Chinese philosopher, politician, and writer near the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. He was born in Gaomi, Beihai Commandery , and was a student of Ma Rong, together with Lu Zhi.

#6766

Amos Yadlin

#8954

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Aluf Amos Yadlin is a former general in the Israeli Air Force , Israel Defense Forces military attaché to Washington, D.C., and head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate . Biography Amos Yadlin was born in Kibbutz Hatzerim, the son of Edah and Aharon Yadlin. In 1970, he enlisted in the IAF. Yadlin obtained a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received a master's degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University.

#6767

Alan Frederick Hofmann

#106145

Overall Influence

#6768

Michael H. Alderman

#106146

Overall Influence

#6769

Robert E. Forster

#106149

Overall Influence

#6770

Alan Millar

#92907

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Alan Millar FRSE is the former Head of Philosophy at the University of Stirling, Scotland. He earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge and joined the department at Stirling University in 1971. His primary research interests are philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge. He is a member of the editorial board of The Philosophical Quarterly.

#6771

Raphael Woolf

#94887

Overall Influence

Raphael Woolf is a British philosopher and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London. He is known for his expertise on ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Books Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic, Routledge, 2015Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows, edited by Verity Harte and Raphael Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 2018Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics, edited by Brad Inwood and Raphael Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 2013

#6772

Allison McGeer

#79867

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Allison Joan McGeer is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, and a professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. She also appointed at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a Senior Clinician Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, and is a partner of the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases. McGeer has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SAR...

#6773

Guy Boivin

#106219

Overall Influence

#6774

Julian Tudor Hart

#106246

Overall Influence

#6775

Shlomo ibn Aderet

1235 - 1310 (75 years)

Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet was a medieval rabbi, halakhist, and Talmudist. He is widely known as the Rashba , the Hebrew acronym of his title and name: Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham. Aderet was born in Barcelona, Crown of Aragon, in 1235. He became a successful banker and leader of Spanish Jewry of his time. As a rabbinical authority his fame was such that he was designated as El Rab d'España . He served as rabbi of the Main Synagogue of Barcelona for 50 years. He died in 1310.

#6776

J. A. Perea Egido

#106286

Overall Influence

#6777

Vladimir Odoyevsky

Vladimir Odoyevsky

1803 - 1869 (66 years)

Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky was a prominent Russiann Imperial philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" and even the "Russian Faust" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.

#6778

Paul Williams

#35613

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Paul Williams is Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at the University of Bristol, England. Until his retirement in 2011 he was also director for the University's Centre for Buddhist Studies, and is a former president of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies.

#6779

Thomas Michael Scalea

#106300

Overall Influence

#6780

Tamler Sommers

#92005

Overall Influence

Tamler Sommers is an American philosopher and writer. He is the son of the American philosopher Fred Sommers and the stepson of Christina Hoff Sommers. Sommers specializes in ethics and free will, and has commented on the ethics of the Alex Rodriguez performance-enhancing drugs scandal. His book Why Honor Matters examines the nature of honor in American discourse and defends several aspects of honor cultures. He currently co-hosts the podcast Very Bad Wizards with David A. Pizarro.

#6781

Johann Nepomuk Huber

1830 - 1879 (49 years)

Johann Nepomuk Huber , was a German philosophical and theological writer, and a leader of the "Old Catholic Church". Life He was born at Munich. Originally destined for the priesthood, he studied theology from childhood. The writings of Spinoza and Lorenz Oken attracted him to philosophy, and it was in philosophy that he "habilitated" in the university of his native place, where he ultimately became professor . With Döllinger and others he attracted a large amount of public attention. Firstly in 1869 by the challenge to the Ultramontane promoters of the First Vatican Council in the treatise Der Papst und das Koncil, which appeared under the pseudonym of "Janus,".

#6782

Thomas Rolland Fleming

#106317

Overall Influence

#6783

Heribert Schunkert

#106321

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

#6784

Charlie S. Decarli

#106327

Overall Influence

#6785

Mohamed r. Daha

#106329

Overall Influence

#6786

Umberto Veronesi

#106330

Overall Influence

#6787

Kathleen Akins

#62524

Overall Influence

Kathleen Akins is Professor of Philosophy at Simon Fraser University. She is James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellow in Philosophy of Science and a Burnaby Mountain Endowed Research Professor. Her primary area of research is Neurophilosophy, with her research goal as of 1999 being fostering better exchange between philosophy and neuroscience to see what can be revealed about "the nature of mind and its relation to the world."

#6788

Maitripada

1007 - 1085 (78 years)

Maitrīpāda , was a prominent Indian Buddhist Mahasiddha associated with the Mahāmudrā transmission of tantric Buddhism. His teachers were Shavaripa and Naropa. His students include Atisha, Marpa, Vajrapani, Karopa, Natekara , Devākaracandra , and Rāmapāla. His hermitage was in the Mithila region , somewhere in northern Bihar and neighboring parts of southern Nepal.

#6789

José María Valverde

José María Valverde

#40737

Overall Influence

1926 - 1996 (70 years)

José María Valverde Pacheco was a Spanish poet, essayist, literary critic, philosophy historian, and Spanish translator. Biography Valverde was born in Extremadura, but spent his childhood and teenage years in Madrid. While still a student at the Instituto Ramiro de Maeztu he published his first book, Man of God: Psalms, elegies and prayers, which was funded by the Institute. Although Damaso Alonso tempted him to study philology, Valverde pursued Philosophy; his doctorate included a thesis on Wilhelm von Humboldt's philosophy of language. That same year he married Pilar Gefaell, with whom he ...

#6790

Yehuda Elkana

#33000

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Yehuda Elkana was a historian and philosopher of science, and a former president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Life and career Born as László Fröhlich to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents in Yugoslavia, Elkana moved with his family to Szeged in 1944. That same year, Elkana and his parents were dispatched to Auschwitz. His family escaped the gas chambers when the Nazis transferred them to Austria as corvée labourers for the reconstruction of war-torn cities. In 1948, at the age of 14, he immigrated to Israel. He took up residence in Kibbutz HaZore'a, but health problems impeded Elkana from performing physical tasks.

#6791

Ruy Fausto

#69047

Overall Influence

1935 - 2020 (85 years)

Ruy Fausto was a Brazilian philosopher who taught at the University of São Paulo. Fausto was born in São Paulo, and received his Ph.D. from University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne in 1981. He was given the title of emeritus professor in 1998, by the University of São Paulo. With his thesis Marx: Lógica e Política , he was considered one of the main Brazilian marxist theorists. He was the brother of historian Boris Fausto and pathologist Nelson Fausto. He died on May 1, 2020, in Paris, France, after having a heart attack.

#6792

Grant R. Wilkinson

#106369

Overall Influence

#6793

Timothy E. Quill

#70365

Overall Influence

Timothy E. Quill is an American physician specialising in palliative care at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York. He is also a board member of the Death with Dignity National Center in Portland, Oregon. Quill was the lead plaintiff in a case that eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States in 1997, Vacco v. Quill, in which the Court decided that a state law against physician-assisted suicide was constitutional.

#6794

Loreta Anilionytė

#80738

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Loreta Anilionytė is a Lithuanian philosopher, writer and translator. She is an associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of the Lithuanian University of Educology and a Ph.D. of Lithuanian Culture Research Institute . She graduated from Vilnius University, Lithuanian language and literature. In 1991 she received her Ph.D. in history of German philosophy and ethics . There are many published works including scientific articles and books, a novel, and essays, in her bibliography.

#6795

Marcus Raskin

#7994

Overall Influence

1934 - 2017 (83 years)

Marcus Goodman Raskin was an American progressive social critic, political activist, author, and philosopher. He was the co-founder, with Richard Barnet, of the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. He was also a professor of public policy at The George Washington University’s School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

#6796

John Francis Burke

#106390

Overall Influence

#6797

Omri Boehm

#97223

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Omri Boehm is an Israeli philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is known for his interpretation of the Binding of Isaac , work on Kant, and writing on Israel and Zionism.

#6798

James. D. Cherry

#106440

Overall Influence

#6799

Gerhardt Hindricks

#106454

Overall Influence

#6800

Richard Norman

#73585

Overall Influence

Richard J. Norman, BA , PhD , is a British academic, philosopher and humanist. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent, and a patron of Humanists UK. Life Norman formerly taught philosophy at the University of Kent, where his areas of interest were mainly moral and political philosophy, including both theoretical and practical ethics.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions