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).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#7501
John Dent,
#113620
Overall Influence
#7502
Sergio Cotta
#47155
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
Sergio Cotta was an Italian philosopher, jurist and university professor. He was considered a specialist on the political thought of the Enlightenment. Cotta, along with André Masson and Robert Shackleton, was considered the most important interpreter of Montesquieu during the 20th century.
Go to Profile#7503
Vinod Harichand Thourani
#113637
Overall Influence
#7504
E. S. Russell
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Edward Stuart Russell OBE FLS was a Scottish biologist and philosopher of biology. Russell was born near Glasgow. He studied at Greenock Academy and later at Glasgow University under Sir Graham Kerr and worked with J. Arthur Thompson after he graduated. He was influenced by his friend Patrick Geddes and in his zoological studies, sought to find holistic principles. He also believed in Lamarckian heritability. He was involved in fishery research, working on research vessels and publishing on the biology of cephalopods and quantitative methods for gathering fishery data. He also worked as Scottish Fisheries expert, Inspector of Fisheries and as an advisor to HM Government.
Go to Profile#7505
Jerry R. Mendell
#113647
Overall Influence
#7506
Louis Raphael Kavoussi
#113656
Overall Influence
#7507
Khoo Boo-chai
#113670
Overall Influence
#7508
Gregory of Rimini
1300 - 1358 (58 years)
Gregory of Rimini , also called Gregorius de Arimino or Ariminensis, was one of the great scholastic philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. He was the first scholastic writer to unite the Oxonian and Parisian traditions in 14th-century philosophy, and his work had a lasting influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation. His scholastic nicknames were Doctor acutus and Doctor authenticus.
Go to Profile#7509
David Rimoin
#34532
Overall Influence
1936 - 2012 (76 years)
David Lawrence Rimoin was a Canadian American geneticist. He was especially noted for his research into the genetics of skeletal dysplasia , inheritable diseases such as Tay–Sachs disease, and diabetes.
Go to Profile#7510
Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani
#86922
Overall Influence
1925 - 2005 (80 years)
Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani was an Iranian professor of philosophy and Islamic mysticism. In addition to Iranian sheikhs, Ashtiani's many students included William Chittick from the US, Christian Bonaud from France, and Matsu Muto from Japan.
Go to Profile#7511
Erik Pevernagie
#37924
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Erik Pevernagie is a Belgian painter and writer, living in Uccle , who has held exhibitions in Paris, New York City, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, London, Brussels and Antwerp. Life Pevernagie has his background in Brussels, a bilingual city where Latin and Germanic cultures mix. He is the son and pupil of the expressionist painter Louis Pevernagie . From the start, he was interested in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic cultural heritage and became a Master in Germanic Philology at the Free University of Brussels . He took a postgraduate degree at Cambridge University and became a Professor at Erasmus University.
Go to Profile#7512
Emil Filla
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Emil Filla was a Czech painter. He was a leader of the avant-garde in Prague between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter. Early life Filla was born in Chropyně, Moravia, and spent his childhood in Brno, but later moved to Prague. Beginning in 1903, he studied at , but he left the school in 1906.
Go to Profile#7513
Krishnan Venkataramanand Lakshman Rajagopalan
#113720
Overall Influence
#7514
Kieron O'Hara
#36010
Overall Influence
Kieron O'Hara is a philosopher, computer scientist and political writer. He is an associate professor and principal research fellow within the department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton where he specialises in the politics, philosophy and epistemology of technology. He is also a research fellow at the Web Science Trust and the conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies.
Go to Profile#7515
Tony E. Hugli
#113729
Overall Influence
#7516
William John Gradishar
#113732
Overall Influence
#7517
Ian G. McKeith
#20338
Overall Influence
Ian G. McKeith is a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North-East of England. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Go to Profile#7518
Insha-Allah Rahmati
#85204
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Insha-Allah Rahmati is an Iranian philosopher, thinker, translator and a full professor of philosophy at Islamic Azad University in Tehran. His main interests are Ethics, Islamic philosophy and Traditionalist School .
Go to Profile#7519
Jeffrey Alan Sosman
#113759
Overall Influence
#7520
Mark Groudine
#113754
Overall Influence
Mark Groudine is an American radiation oncologist currently at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2015.
Go to Profile#7521
David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville
1770 - 1849 (79 years)
David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville was a Dutch artist and art scholar. He was a draughtsman, lithographer, etcher, and portrait painter, and also wrote treatises on art, including the influential work Essai sur les signes inconditionnels dans l'art . His 1815 painting of the jurist and statesman Johan Melchior Kemper is now part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#7522
David Hershel Alpers
#69295
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David Hershel Alpers is a gastroenterologist, researcher, professor, and former president of the American Gastroenterological Association . Early life and education David Hershel Alpers was born 9 May 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1960 and completed training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital . He studied molecular biology at the National Institute of Health under Gordon Tomkins before returning to MGH for gastroenterology fellowship and junior faculty positions .
Go to Profile#7523
Shannon Wheeler
#66811
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Shannon Wheeler is an American cartoonist, best known as a cartoonist for The New Yorker and for creating the satirical superhero Too Much Coffee Man. Early life Shannon Wheeler grew up in Berkeley, California, brought up by his mother. His father left the family to start a commune north of San Francisco. Wheeler also has two half-sisters. Wheeler attended the Walden Center and School. He later attended Berkeley High School, eventually graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in architecture in 1989.
Go to Profile#7524
Louis de La Forge
1632 - 1666 (34 years)
Louis de La Forge was a French philosopher who in his Tractatus de mente humana expounded a doctrine of occasionalism. He was born in La Flèche and died in Saumur. He was a friend of Descartes, and one of the most able interpreters of Cartesianism.
Go to Profile#7525
Miklós Vető
#96295
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Miklós Vető was a Hungarian-born French philosopher. A historian of German Idealism, especially Schelling, he lived in Paris. As an author, many of his works were collected by libraries. Biography Vető was born in Budapest, and studied law at the University of Szeged. Because of his participation in the Revolution of 1956 he had to flee Hungary. As a refugee he was admitted to France in 1957. He studied philosophy first at the Sorbonne and then Oxford. He taught at Marquette and Yale Universities in the United States, the University of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and Rennes and Poitiers Universities in France.
Go to Profile#7526
Auberon Waugh
#14080
Overall Influence
1939 - 2001 (62 years)
Auberon Alexander Waugh was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron". After a traditional classical education at Downside School, he was commissioned in the army during National Service, where he was badly injured in a shooting accident. He went on to study for a year at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#7527
Anthony F. Lever
#113795
Overall Influence
#7528
Kenneth W. Mahaffey
#113800
Overall Influence
#7529
Richard Swineshead
Richard Swineshead was an English mathematician, logician, and natural philosopher. He was perhaps the greatest of the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, where he was a fellow certainly by 1344 and possibly by 1340. His magnum opus was a series of treatises known as the Liber calculationum , written c. 1350, which earned him the nickname of The Calculator.
Go to Profile#7530
Manwel Dimech
1860 - 1921 (61 years)
Manwel Dimech, also known as Manuel Dimech was a Maltese socialist, philosopher, journalist, writer, poet and social revolutionary. Born in Valletta and brought up in extreme poverty and illiteracy, Dimech spent significant portions of his early life in the Maltese prison system, mostly on charges of petty theft. At the age of seventeen, Dimech was arrested for the crime of involuntary murder, and sentenced to seventeen years in jail. After being thrown in jail, Dimech started to educate himself and became a man of letters.
Go to Profile#7531
Howard Atwood Kelly
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
Howard Atwood Kelly was an American gynecologist. He obtained his B.A. degree and M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He, William Osler, William Halsted, and William Welch together are known as the "Big Four", the founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He is credited with establishing gynecology as a specialty by developing new surgical approaches to gynecological diseases and pathological research. He also developed several medical innovations, including the improved cystoscope, Kelly's clamp, Kelly's speculum, and Kelly's forceps. Because Kell...
Go to Profile#7532
David L. Garbers
#113822
Overall Influence
#7533
William Z. Potter
#113824
Overall Influence
#7534
Mark S. Myerson
#113844
Overall Influence
#7535
Olle Johansson
#113845
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#7536
Sergio R. Ojeda
#113847
Overall Influence
#7537
Kenneth P. Offord
#113856
Overall Influence
#7538
Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck
1776 - 1858 (82 years)
Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck was a prolific German botanist, physician, zoologist, and natural philosopher. He was a contemporary of Goethe and was born within the lifetime of Linnaeus. He described approximately 7,000 plant species . His last official act as president of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina was to admit Charles Darwin as a member. He was the author of numerous monographs on botany and zoology. His best-known works deal with fungi.
Go to Profile#7539
Thomas Bartholin
1616 - 1680 (64 years)
Thomas Bartholin was a Danish physician, mathematician, and theologian. He discovered the lymphatic system in humans and advanced the theory of refrigeration anesthesia, being the first to describe it scientifically.
Go to Profile#7540
Jay L. Grosfeld
#113883
Overall Influence
#7541
Werner Callebaut
#54997
Overall Influence
1952 - 2014 (62 years)
Werner Callebaut was a professor at the University of Hasselt, scientific director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, editor and chief of Biological Theory, and president of The International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Go to Profile#7542
Kenneth F. Schaffner
#89856
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Kenneth Francis Schaffner is an emeritus Distinguished University Professor, University Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He specializes in the history and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#7543
Sue Golding
#85830
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Johnny Golding is Professor of Philosophy & Fine Art, and senior tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Golding's work deals with the onto-epistemological nuances of radical matter: artificial and distributed intelligence, embodiment, and the ethical-political. Golding is Philosopher-in-Residence at the Royal Academy, London . Golding also leads the PHD Research Lab: Entanglement, which includes 25 PHD researchers; co-led with artist Meg Rahaim. Most recently the lab-produced: 'Entanglement: Just Gaming' - a mixed-media approach to consciousness, poetics, warfare, and risk set across several social platforms .
Go to Profile#7544
Alice Shalvi
#16405
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Alice Shalvi was an Israeli professor and educator. She played a leading role in progressive Jewish education for girls and advancing the status of women. Biography Alice Hildegard Margulies was born in Essen, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her parents, Benzion and Perl Margulies, were religious Zionists. Alice was the younger of two children. The family had a wholesale linen and housewares business.
Go to Profile#7545
Horst Zincke
#113975
Overall Influence
#7546
Thomas Edward Adrian
#113984
Overall Influence
#7547
Henry Regnand
#106420
Overall Influence
Henry Regnand was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in logic and metaphysics. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Regnand. He probably was a Dominican friar, but this is still unconfirmed sufficiently by documentary evidence. As an academic, he flourished during the first decade of the 18th century. At that time, he was active teaching philosophy at the Dominican Studium Generale of Portus Salutis at Valletta, Malta. No portrait of Regnand seems to have survived.
Go to Profile#7548
Juan Nuño
#76698
Overall Influence
1927 - 1995 (68 years)
Juan Antonio Nuño Montes was a philosopher, writer and university professor. Career After leaving Spain in 1947, Nuño settled in Venezuela where he studied philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela. In 1951 he studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of Paris. In 1962 he finished his doctoral degree under Juan David García Bacca at the Central University of Venezuela and spent a year in Switzerland studying with Józef Maria Bocheński. He was the chair of the Instituto de Filosofía de la UCV from 1975 to 1979. In 1976 he became a member of the International Institute of Philosophy of Unesco .
Go to Profile#7549
Wilbur Kitchener Jordan
1902 - 1980 (78 years)
Wilbur Kitchener Jordan , was an American historian, specializing in sixteenth and seventeenth century Britain. Raised in Lynnville, Indiana, Jordan received a bachelor's degree from Oakland City College in 1923, before earning a master's and doctoral degree from Harvard University. Jordan went on to become a leading historian of sixteenth and seventeenth century England, accruing many honors, and producing books, including Men of Substance: Revolutionary Thinkers of 1640 , Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660 , and a two-volume study of the reign of Edward VI .
Go to Profile#7550
Éric Hachulla
#114011
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
