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,
#7401
William F. May
#109507
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
William Francis May is an American ethicist. May was born in Chicago and later moved to Houston, where he graduated from high school, aged sixteen. He was accepted at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and sought to pursue a career in law and politics. After the death of his high school debate coach, May became interested in philosophy. At the age of 20, May spent a year in Oklahoma as an interim pastor, then enrolled at Yale Divinity School. He earned a degree in divinity in 1952, started his teaching career in theology at Smith College, and simultaneously pursued a doctorate in contemporary theology at Yale, which he obtained in 1962.
Go to Profile#7402
Alain Braillon
#141442
Overall Influence
#7403
Peter Oscar Jr Kwiterovich
#141467
Overall Influence
#7404
Otto Smiseth
#135574
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Otto Armin Smiseth is a Norwegian professor of medicine. Hailing from Asker, he took his cand.med. degree at the University of Oslo in 1975 and his dr.med. degree at the University of Tromsø in 1993. His speciality is cardiac physiology. In 1995 he became a professor at the University of Oslo and Rikshospitalet. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#7405
Maya Simionescu
#141494
Overall Influence
#7406
Thor Willy Ruud Hansen
#108924
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Thor Willy Ruud Hansen is a Norwegian pediatrician and neonatologist. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Oslo and a former President of the Norwegian Society of Pediatricians . He is currently chairman of the clinical ethics committee at Oslo University Hospital. His research interests are neonatal medicine, including the neurotoxicology of neonatal jaundice, as well as clinical ethics.
Go to Profile#7407
Youcef M. Rustum
#141500
Overall Influence
#7408
Dean R. Hess
#141527
Overall Influence
#7409
Hans T. Bakker
#33137
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Hans T. Bakker is a cultural historian and Indologist, who has served as the Professor of the History of Hinduism and Jan Gonda Chair at the University of Groningen. He worked in the British Museum as a researcher in the project "Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State".
Go to Profile#7410
Giovanna Tosato
#113691
Overall Influence
Giovanna Tosato is an Italian–American physician-scientist and cancer researcher investigating the endothelium, angiogenesis, and the hematopoietic stem cell niche. She heads the molecular and cell biology section in the laboratory of cellular oncology at the National Cancer Institute in the United States. Tosato was a division director in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research from 1992 to 1999.
Go to Profile#7411
Antti J. I. Kauppila
#141560
Overall Influence
#7412
Ronald Girdwood
#96551
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Ronald Haxton Girdwood was a Scottish physician, Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Edinburgh and a President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He undertook research into megaloblastic anaemia and was awarded a gold medal for his MD thesis. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1982 and oversaw the expansion of the medical school. He was a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines. He was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club in 1965. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978 and awarded a...
Go to Profile#7413
Margaret E. Hodson
#141609
Overall Influence
#7414
E. Paul Lichtenstein
#141622
Overall Influence
#7415
Alija Izetbegović
#17601
Overall Influence
1925 - 2003 (78 years)
Alija Izetbegović was a Bosnian politician, lawyer, Islamic philosopher and author, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Go to Profile#7416
Jiří Pechar
#85563
Overall Influence
1929 - 2022 (93 years)
Jiří Pechar was a Czech philosopher and translator. Life and career Born in Příbram, Pechar studied in history of literature at the Charles University, and worked as an editor for the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, before being dismissed for political reasons in 1958. He then worked as a freelance translator, translating in Czech works by Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean-François Lyotard and Claude Lévi-Strauss among others, and was also an author of essays and collection of poems and a collaborator of magazines and journals.
Go to Profile#7417
Paul Ricœur
#141652
Overall Influence
#7418
Nicholas Thatcher
#91694
Overall Influence
Nicholas Thatcher is Professor of Oncology at the University of Manchester, in the School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences at the Christie Hospital NHS Trust and Wythenshawe Hospital; he was appointed to the position of Professor in 1996. He received his PhD from Manchester University, after prior education at the University of Cambridge and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London.
Go to Profile#7419
Roell A. Coutinho
#141666
Overall Influence
#7420
Miguel Marín‐padilla
#141696
Overall Influence
#7421
Mali M. Mathru
#141705
Overall Influence
#7422
S. Clay Wilson
#78400
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Steve Clay Wilson was an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Wilson attracted attention from readers with aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of lowlife denizens, often depicting the wild escapades of pirates and bikers. He was an early contributor to Zap Comix.
Go to Profile#7423
Vladimir Nikolaevich Anisimov
#141725
Overall Influence
#7424
Guy Neave
#65391
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Guy Richard Neave is a British social scientist and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente, known for his work on higher education in Europe. Biography Neave obtained his PhD in French political history at the University College London in 1967.
Go to Profile#7425
Carlos Chagas Filho
#11923
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Carlos Chagas Filho was a Brazilian physician, biologist and scientist active in the field of neuroscience. He was internationally renowned for his investigations on the neural mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of electrogenesis by the electroplaques of electric fishes. He was also an important scientific leader, being one of the founders of the Biophysics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and was also a president for 16 years of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#7426
David Bruce Weaver
#141784
Overall Influence
#7427
Robert John Mccarthy
#141799
Overall Influence
#7428
Joe V. M.d. M.p.h. Selby
#141806
Overall Influence
#7429
Mario Sznol
#141816
Overall Influence
#7430
Marcel Paquet
#90717
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Marcel Paquet was a Belgian philosopher. The most important influences on his thought were Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Michel Foucault. Paquet rejected all forms of Idealism in favor of the sensory world. Insofar as he considered human beings to be no more than fragments of nature, thought was considered by him to be the result of cerebral processes which operate largely beneath the level of consciousness. He insisted on the pre-eminence of the body and the fact that, for this reasons, consciousness observes the results of thought, but does not bring them into being.
Go to Profile#7431
Carl T. Brighton
#141835
Overall Influence
#7432
Geraldine S. Pinkus
#141836
Overall Influence
#7433
Rowenna Louise Anderson
#141845
Overall Influence
#7434
Kurinchi Selvan Gurusamy
#141848
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#7435
Hiroshi Hosoda
#141885
Overall Influence
#7436
James Stanford Skinner
#141905
Overall Influence
#7437
Culley C. Iii Carson
#141916
Overall Influence
#7438
Kirk A. Frey
#141918
Overall Influence
#7439
Hendrick Boyer Barner
#141928
Overall Influence
#7440
Paul Edmond O'brien
#141931
Overall Influence
#7441
Mark V. Dahl
#141940
Overall Influence
#7442
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#141945
Overall Influence
#7443
Charles Raymond Lake
#141960
Overall Influence
#7444
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
#93569
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is a French philosopher, historian and historian of science and a professor emeritus at University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. She considers the study of the history of science to be essential for "understanding scientific research as a multi-dimensional endeavor embedded in a cultural context and with societal and cultural impacts."
Go to Profile#7445
Dariush Mehrjui
#38828
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Dariush Mehrjui was an Iranian filmmaker and a member of the Iranian Academy of the Arts. Mehrjui was a founding member of the Iranian New Wave movement of the early 1970s, which also included directors Masoud Kimiai and Nasser Taqvai. His second film, The Cow , is considered to be the first film of this movement. Most of his films are inspired by literature and adapted from Iranian and foreign novels and plays.
Go to Profile#7446
John Edwin Nestler
#141988
Overall Influence
#7447
Winette T. A. Van Der Graaf
#141991
Overall Influence
#7448
Tomislav Šola
#100322
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Tomislav Sladojević Šola is a Croatian museologist. Biography Sladojević Šola was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1948. He gained his diploma in Art History and English language , he then pursued the post-graduate study of Journalism and two-semester-course of contemporary Museology and made his PhD in Museology .
Go to Profile#7449
Naoto Ueno
#142002
Overall Influence
#7450
Alan Coates
#105625
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Alan Stuart Coates is an Australian professor of clinical oncology, medical researcher and administrator. He was the inaugural CEO of the Cancer Council Australia , former president of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia , and co-chair of the St. Gallen International Breast Cancer Conference. He was also the first non-American to be elected to the board of directors of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
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