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,
#7201
Thomas M. Jr. File
#139339
Overall Influence
#7202
Douglas A. Canning
#139346
Overall Influence
#7203
William Egginton
#101851
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
William Egginton is a literary critic and philosopher. He has written extensively on a broad range of subjects, including theatricality, fictionality, literary criticism, psychoanalysis and ethics, religious moderation, and theories of mediation.
Go to Profile#7204
Kim Sawchuk
#31456
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kim Sawchuk is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. A feminist media studies scholar, Sawchuk's research spans the fields of art, gender, and culture, examining the intersection of technology into peoples lives and how that changes as one ages.
Go to Profile#7205
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
#27020
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He conducts research into the network economy. Earlier he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think and author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age , which won the 2010 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and the 2010 Don K. Price Award for Best Book in Science and Technology Politics, and has written over a hundred articles and book chapters.
Go to Profile#7206
Klaus-dieter Prof. Dr. Weltmann
#139387
Overall Influence
#7207
Motsamai Molefe
#136256
Overall Influence
Motsamai Molefe is a South African philosopher, one of the thinkers to have popularised African philosophy, and specifically Applied Ethics in context of Ubuntu philosophy. Molefe is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape.
Go to Profile#7208
Richard J. Rodeheffer
#139407
Overall Influence
#7209
Katharine Ellis
#27671
Overall Influence
Katharine Ellis, is a British musicologist and academic, specialising in music history. Since 2017, she has been the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. She previously taught at the Open University, at Royal Holloway, University of London and at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, before serving as Stanley Hugh Badock Professor of Music at the University of Bristol .
Go to Profile#7210
Sten G. Eriksson
#139455
Overall Influence
#7211
William Paul Glezen
#139458
Overall Influence
#7212
Aad J. Van Der Lugt
#139467
Overall Influence
#7213
Anthony Laurence Zietman
#139470
Overall Influence
#7214
S. L. Bhyrappa
#73402
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa is an Indian novelist, philosopher and screenwriter who writes in Kannada. His work is popular in the state of Karnataka and he is widely regarded as one of modern India's popular novelists. His novels are unique in terms of theme, structure, and characterization. He has been among the top-selling authors in the Kannada language and his books have been translated into Hindi and Marathi which have also been sellers.
Go to Profile#7215
Michael A. Apicella
#139472
Overall Influence
#7216
Anne Tybjærg‐hansen
#139474
Overall Influence
#7217
Maximilian Diehn
#139475
Overall Influence
#7218
William H. Gaasch
#139477
Overall Influence
#7219
Bernard Klein
#139491
Overall Influence
#7220
Maroeska M. Rovers
#139494
Overall Influence
#7221
Gabriel Segal
#80288
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Professor Gabriel Segal is an academic philosopher, cognitive scientist and an author. Background and education Gabriel Mark Aurel Segal was born in the UK in 1959, and is the son of psychoanalyst Hanna Segal and brother of mathematician Dan Segal.
Go to Profile#7222
Gert-jan Ossenkoppele
#139527
Overall Influence
#7223
William Chadwick Wood
#139529
Overall Influence
#7224
Sergio Custodio
#87867
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Sergio Alfredo Custodio Contreras was a professor, writer and Humanist dedicated to Philosophy in Guatemala. Among his best-known works are textbooks on formal, inductive and analytical Logic, in addition to his books on Epistemology. He has abundant publications for the diffusion of Philosophy and the introduction of it to High school and University students. He stands out especially for his works on Metaphysics.
Go to Profile#7225
Roger O. Mcclellan
#139556
Overall Influence
#7226
Richard R. Barakat
#139576
Overall Influence
#7227
Don West
#52116
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
Donald Lee West was an American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer, civil-rights activist and a co-founder of the Highlander Folk School. Early life and career West was born in Devil's Hollow, Gilmer County, Georgia, the child of North Georgia sharecroppers. In high school he led a protest against an on-campus showing of the film The Birth of a Nation and was eventually expelled for other conflicts. He was also expelled from Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate, Tennessee, for leading another protest against the paternalism of the campus, though he eventually returned and graduated in 1929.
Go to Profile#7228
Brett Delahunt
#81157
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Brett Delahunt is a New Zealand professor emeritus of pathology and molecular medicine at the Wellington School of Medicine. He is an expert in urological pathology. Early life and family Born in Wellington on 20 February 1950, Delahunt was educated at Scots College. He studied at Victoria University of Wellington from 1969 to 1972, graduating BSc, and then at the University of Otago from 1973 to 1978, where he completed a BMedSc in 1976 and MB ChB in 1978.
Go to Profile#7229
Larry May
#43401
Overall Influence
Larry May is an American philosopher and author. May is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the author of several books. His theory of international law has been described as "neo-Grotian".
Go to Profile#7230
Todd W. Rice
#139609
Overall Influence
#7231
John Gaventa
#26132
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Gaventa is currently the director of research at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where he has been a Fellow since 1996. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the director of the Coady International Institute and vice-president of International Development at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Go to Profile#7232
Yoram Bresler
#139621
Overall Influence
#7233
James Edward Maynard
#139622
Overall Influence
#7234
Gilbert Habib
#139625
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#7235
Gunter K. Von Noorden
#139631
Overall Influence
#7236
Alexander H. Glassman
#139640
Overall Influence
#7237
Amanda Helen Spink
#139670
Overall Influence
#7238
Claudio E.A. Pizzi
#135118
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Claudio E.A. Pizzi is an Italian logician and epistemologist. Biography Pizzi completed his Master's degree in philosophy from the Universita' degli studi di Milano in 1969. From 1976, he taught logic for three years at the University of Calabria. He then worked as a professor of logic and of philosophy of science at the University of Siena from 1979 to 2014, in which he became a full professor in 1997. Beginning from 1992, he worked for several Brazilian universities and especially for Centro de Logica, Epistemologia e Historia da Ciencia of the University of Campinas. From 2008–2012, he t...
Go to Profile#7239
Edward Weitzberg
#139694
Overall Influence
#7240
Douglas L. Packer
#139701
Overall Influence
#7241
Adit A. Ginde
#139714
Overall Influence
#7242
David Gooding
#87406
Overall Influence
1947 - 2009 (62 years)
David Charles Gooding was a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, and the Director of the Science Studies Centre, at the University of Bath, UK . He was President of the History of Science Section of the BAAS .
Go to Profile#7243
Ma Ding
#21024
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ma Ding is a Chinese obstetrician and gynecologist who is director of Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Tongji Medical College of HUST, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Go to Profile#7244
Jenefer Robinson
#60073
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jenefer Mary Robinson is an American philosopher, author and emerita professor of philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. She writes on aesthetics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and theory of emotions. She has published two monographs, one edited collection, and numerous peer reviewed articles. She is on the editorial Board for the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and was on the editorial board for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. She was president of the American Society of Aesthetics from 2009 until 2013. In 2007 she was a Leverhulme visiting professor of philosop...
Go to Profile#7245
Wei-xing Cao
#139733
Overall Influence
#7246
Marc Goldstein
#91957
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Marc Goldstein, MD, DSc , FACS is an American urologist and the Matthew P. Hardy Distinguished Professor of Reproductive Medicine, and Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University; Surgeon-in-Chief, Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery; and Director of the Center of Male Reproductive Medicine and Microsurgery at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is Adjunct Senior Scientist with the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research, located on the campus of Rockefeller University.
Go to Profile#7247
Marcus D. Flather
#139742
Overall Influence
#7248
Célia Landmann Szwarcwald
#139743
Overall Influence
#7249
Roger A. Hitchings
#139760
Overall Influence
#7250
Osman Bakar
#79549
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Osman Bakar is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Malaya, the Chair Professor and Director of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies , Universiti Brunei Darussalam and an Islamic philosopher. He is a fellow at the Center for Civilisational Dialogue in the University of Malaya and Doshisha University in Japan and a former President of the Islamic Academy of Sciences of Malaysia. He was the recipient of the honorary title "Dato" by the Sultan of Pahang in 1994 and "Datuk" by the King of Malaysia in 2000, and was Included in the list of 500 most influential M...
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