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).

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#7401

Anders Bill

#112444

Overall Influence

#7402

Wim Klever

#101144

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Wilhelmus Nicolaas Antonius Klever is a Dutch scholar interested in the philosophy of 17th century Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Klever studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Nijmegen and at the Utrecht University.

#7403

Konstantin Yuon

Konstantin Yuon

1875 - 1958 (83 years)

Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon or Juon was a noted Russian painter and theatre designer associated with the Mir Iskusstva. Later, he co-founded the Union of Russian Artists and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia.

#7404

Otis Hamilton Lee

1902 - 1948 (46 years)

Otis Hamilton Lee was an American philosopher, noteworthy as a Guggenheim Fellow. Lee attended Fargo College from 1920 to 1922 and then the University of Minnesota, where he graduated with B.A. in 1924. From 1924 to 1927 he was a Rhodes Scholar at St John's College, Oxford, where he graduated with A.B. in 1926. From 1927 to 1929 he was an instructor in philosophy at the University of Michigan. In 1930 he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University, where he was an Austin Fellow from 1929 to 1930. At Harvard University he was an instructor and tutor from 1930 to 1933 and for the academic year 1934–1935.

#7405

Jimmy Ernst

1920 - 1984 (64 years)

Hans-Ulrich Ernst , known as Jimmy Ernst, was an American painter born in Germany. Early life Jimmy Ernst was born in 1920 in Cologne, Germany, the son of German Surrealist painter Max Ernst and Luise Straus-Ernst, a well-known art historian and journalist. His parents separated in 1922 and divorced in 1926 and Ernst remained with his mother in Cologne. He visited his father in France in 1930, where he met many artists, including Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy, as well as his father's lover Leonora Carrington. In February 1933, a month after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the SS searched Luise Straus' apartment.

#7406

Zheng Shusen

#86010

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Zheng Shusen is a Chinese engineer and surgeon. He is a liver transplant expert who is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Zhejiang University. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and foreign academician of the Académie Nationale de Médecine. He is internationally known for his studies on organ transplantation and hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery.

#7407

Léontine Zanta

1872 - 1942 (70 years)

Léontine Zanta was a French philosopher, feminist and novelist. One of the first two women to gain a doctorate in France, and the first to do so in philosophy, Zanta "was an intellectual celebrity in her day, active in journalism and in the feminist movement of the 1920s."

#7408

Tad Brennan

#56810

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Tad Brennan is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. He is known for his works on ancient Greek philosophy. Books The Stoic Life : Emotions, Duties, and Fate, Oxford University Press 2005Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empiricus, Garland Publications 1999

#7409

Stephan Patrick Swinnen

#112513

Overall Influence

#7410

Alexander George

#46372

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Alexander George is an American philosopher working as a professor of philosophy at Amherst College. Career Born and raised in Manhattan, George attended Lycée Français de New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1979 from Columbia College and his Master of Arts and PhD from Harvard University in 1981 and 1986, respectively. George was a junior research fellow at New College and Wolfson College, Oxford University. In 2001, he received an honorary A.M. from Amherst College.

#7411

David Teniers the Younger

David Teniers the Younger

1610 - 1690 (80 years)

David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.

#7412

J. Bryan Smith

#112542

Overall Influence

#7413

Maria Grazia Roncarolo

#78654

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Maria Grazia Roncarolo is an Italian pediatrician who is currently George D. Smith Professor in Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. She is also the Director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine along with Irving Weissman and Michael Longaker and the Director for Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine at Stanford.

#7414

José M. Bioucas-dias

#112546

Overall Influence

#7415

Jacques Genest

#33876

Overall Influence

1919 - 2018 (99 years)

Jacques Genest was a Canadian physician and scientist. He founded the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal and was an emeritus professor at Université de Montréal and a professor at McGill University. Genest was best known for founding and leading several organizations related to clinical research in Québec and for his work on arterial hypertension.

#7416

Jaap Goudsmit

#26332

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jaap Goudsmit is Dutch scientist, known for his research in the field of AIDS and influenza. He shifted his research interest to aging and neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's Disease. He is also a prolific writer of non-fiction books: Viral Sex, the Nature of AIDS ; Viral Fitness, the Next SARS and West Nile in the Making ; Serendipity Manual ; The Vaccine Bug, a personal history of the World of Immunity ; Immorbidity Alphabet, Spelling-out a life free of dis-ease ; The Time of your Life, Staying healthy to the End and The Art of Facing Mortality, a scientist's view .

#7417

Hermes Grillo

#78097

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Hermes C. Grillo was a world-famous thoracic surgeon and professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He was born in Boston in 1923 and died at age 83 in a car accident in Italy on October 14, 2006. He is considered the father of tracheal surgery and wrote what is considered the definitive text on the subject, "Surgery of the Trachea and Bronchi", published in 2004.

#7418

Judy E. Garber

#97275

Overall Influence

Judy Ellen Garber is the director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Garber previously served as president of the American Association for Cancer Research.

#7419

Erich Unger

1887 - 1950 (63 years)

Erich Unger was a Jewish philosopher of standing who published many articles and a number of books, many of them in his native tongue, German. His writings cover a wide range of topics: poetry, Nietzsche, political theory, general philosophy and Jewish philosophy.

#7420

Jerry Beck

#12843

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Jerry Beck is an American animation historian, author, blogger, and video producer. Beck wrote or edited several books on classic American animation and classic characters, including The 50 Greatest Cartoons , The Animated Movie Guide , Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons! , The Flintstones: The Official Guide to the Cartoon Classic , The Hanna-Barbera Treasury: Rare Art Mementos from Your Favorite Cartoon Classics , The SpongeBob SquarePants Experience: A Deep Dive into the World of Bikini Bottom , Pink Panther: The Ultimate Guide , and Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros.

#7421

Josip Križan

1841 - 1921 (80 years)

Josip Križan was a Slovenian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer. He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy in Graz and between 1867 and 1869 obtained a doctorate to become a professor.

#7422

Lester Embree

#56932

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Lester Embree was an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University.

#7423

Stephen Downes

#8955

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Stephen Downes is a Canadian philosopher and commentator in the fields of online learning and new media. He has explored and promoted the educational use of computer and online technologies since 1995. He gave the 2004 Buntine Oration and was a presenter at the February 2007 Online Connectivism Conference. In 2008, Downes and George Siemens designed and taught an online, open course reported as a "landmark in the small but growing push toward 'open teaching - widely considered the first massive open online course .

#7424

John Campbell

#72045

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

John Campbell is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley, California. He works primarily in philosophy of mind. Education and career Campbell earned a BA at the University of Stirling, UK in 1978; an MA at the University of Calgary, Canada in 1979; and a DPhil from Christ Church, Oxford in 1983 with a thesis under the title Spatiotemporal Thinking.

#7425

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

#7426

Antun Maqdisi

#54112

Overall Influence

1914 - 2005 (91 years)

Antun Maqdisi, also written as Antoun/Anton Maqdesi/Muqaddasi/Moqaddasi was a Syrian philosopher, politician and human rights activist. He began his study in Damascus and obtained his degree in Philosophy and French literature at the University of Montpellier in France. When he returned in Syria in 1940, he began his career as a teacher in philosophy, initially in Homs and later in Hama, Damascus and Aleppo. In Beirut he obtained an academic degree in Law.

#7427

Otto Heubner

1843 - 1926 (83 years)

Johann Otto Leonhard Heubner was a German internist and pediatrician who was a native of Mühltroff. He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, and in 1867 became an assistant to Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich at Leipzig. He later founded a children's hospital and clinic in Leipzig, and in 1891 was appointed to the chair of pediatrics. In 1894 he moved to Berlin, where he became director of the children's clinic and polyclinic at the Charité.

#7428

Merle Sande

#80659

Overall Influence

1939 - 2007 (68 years)

Merle Alden Sande was a leading American infectious-diseases expert whose early recognition of the looming public health crisis posed by AIDS led to the development of basic protocols for how to handle infected patients. He graduated from Washington State University and received his MD degree from the University of Washington, School of Medicine in Seattle.

#7429

Vamsee Juluri

#54754

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Vamsee Juluri is a professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco. Career Juluri was born in Hyderabad in 1969. His mother is the Telugu film actress Jamuna, and his father was Juluri Ramana Rao, a professor of zoology. Juluri studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and received a PhD in 1999. He has written for several publications including Times of India, Huffington Post, and The Indian Express. His research interest is in the globalization of media audiences with an emphasis on Indian television and cinema, mythology, religion, violence and Gandhian philosophy....

#7430

Saad Omer

#42577

Overall Influence

Saad B. Omer is an American vaccinologist and infectious disease epidemiologist. He is the Founding Dean of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He is also a Professor in the O’Donnell School of Public Health and holds the Lyda Hill Deanship of the School of Public Health at UT Southwestern.

#7431

Valerius Cordus

Valerius Cordus

1515 - 1544 (29 years)

Valerius Cordus was a German physician, botanist and pharmacologist who authored the first pharmacopoeia North of the Alps and one of the most celebrated herbals in history. He is also widely credited with developing a method for synthesizing ether .

#7432

Jay Blumler

#12861

Overall Influence

1924 - 2021 (97 years)

Jay G Blumler was an American-British theorist of communication and media. He was Professor of Public Communication at the University of Leeds. Early life and education Blumler was born in New York, New York on 18 February 1924. Blumler's father was a Marxist and his mother a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal. He described himself as a "red diaper baby".

#7433

Marc-Alain Ouaknin

#57767

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Marc-Alain Ouaknin both a rabbi and a philosopher. He is the son of Rabbi Jacques Ouaknin and Eliane Erlich Ouaknin His father is the Grand Rabbi of the French cities of Reims, Lille, Metz, and Marseille. Ouaknin dedicated his best-known work, The Burnt Book, to "my father, my master, Grand Rabbi Jacques Ouaknin."

#7434

Ernesto Priani

#107784

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Ernesto Priani is a philosopher, professor, digital humanist, and digital editor. Priani is currently a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, vice president of Digital Humanists Network, and founder of Club Wikipedia.

#7435

Jean‐pierre Benhamou

#112829

Overall Influence

#7436

Richard L. Jove

#112843

Overall Influence

#7437

Belle da Costa Greene

Belle da Costa Greene

1883 - 1950 (67 years)

Belle da Costa Greene was an American librarian who managed and developed the personal library of J. P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian for his son, Jack Morgan, and in 1924 was named the first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Despite being born to Black parents, Greene spent her professional career passing for white.

#7438

Robert J. Henle

#73420

Overall Influence

1909 - 2000 (91 years)

Robert John Henle was an American Catholic priest, Jesuit, and philosopher who was the president of Georgetown University from 1969 to 1976. Born in Iowa, Henle entered the Society of Jesus in 1927. He taught high school classics and published a series of instructional books on Latin, one of which became widely used. He then became a professor at Saint Louis University and was known as one of the leaders of the revival of Thomistic philosophy and theology. He also served as a dean and vice president for nearly 20 years. In this latter capacity, he oversaw Saint Louis University's growing ind...

#7439

Laurens Perseus Hickok

1798 - 1888 (90 years)

Laurens Perseus Hickok , American philosopher and divine, was born in Connecticut. Biography He took his degree at Union College in 1820. Until 1836 he was occupied in active pastoral work, and was then appointed professor of theology at the Western Reserve College, Ohio, and later at the Auburn Theological Seminary in Auburn, New York.

#7440

Jean Bourdeau

1848 - 1928 (80 years)

Jean Bourdeau was a French writer, known for his books on aspects of socialism. He was also a translator of Schopenhauer, and an early adopter in France of some of the thought of Nietzsche. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from Johannes Janssen to Maxim Gorky and the rising personality cult of Lenin. He contributed in particular to the Journal des Débats, on contemporary philosophy

#7441

Guenther H. Boden

#112916

Overall Influence

#7442

Max A. Listgarten

#112926

Overall Influence

#7443

Alastair Buchan

#56889

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Alastair Buchan is a British neurologist and researcher in stroke medicine. His main research interest is how to make neuroprotection a reality in the clinic. From October 2008 until January 2017, he served as the Dean of Medicine and the Head of the Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. He currently holds the Chair of Stroke Research and is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of Brexit Strategy at the University of Oxford.

#7444

Shigeru Kohno

#112936

Overall Influence

#7445

Fred Prof. Dr. Lembeck

#112950

Overall Influence

#7446

John H. Growdon

#112968

Overall Influence

#7447

Paolo Zamboni

#29818

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Paolo Zamboni is an Italian doctor and scientist. He is full Professor and Director of the School of Vascular Surgery at the University of Ferrara in Italy. He is known for his description and proposed cure of the vascular disease chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency strongly related with multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Ménière and Parkinson's, but the existence of this disease is very controversial, with significantly more detractors than supporters, and there is no good evidence that the surgery helps MS patients.

#7448

Eldad Melamed

#112981

Overall Influence

#7449

Ronald J. Falk

#112985

Overall Influence

#7450

Ernest William Goodpasture

Ernest William Goodpasture

1886 - 1960 (74 years)

Ernest William Goodpasture was an American pathologist and physician. Goodpasture advanced the scientific understanding of the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, parasitism, and a variety of rickettsial and viral infections. Together with colleagues at Vanderbilt University, he invented methods for growing viruses and rickettsiae in chicken embryos and fertilized chicken eggs. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever, and other diseases. He also described Goodpasture syndrome.

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