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,
#7751
David Charles
#76512
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
David Charles is an American neurologist, professor and vice-chair of neurology, and the medical director of Telehealth at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Education David Charles attended Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, graduating in 1990. After completing his neurology residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, he joined the faculty of the Department of Neurology at Vanderbilt University in 1994. In 1995, he obtained his fellowship in Movement Disorders and Clinical Neurophysiology. In 1996, he completed the Health Care Management Program from the Owen Graduate School of Management.
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Lydia Maria Child
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
Lydia Maria Child was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism. Her journals, both fiction and domestic manuals, reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. At times she shocked her audience as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and white supremacy in some of her stories.
Go to Profile#7753
Gustavo Perednik
#38444
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Gustavo Daniel Perednik is an Argentinian-born Israeli author and educator. Perednik graduated from the Universities of Buenos Aires and Jerusalem , has a PhD in education and completed doctoral studies in Philosophy in New York. He took courses at the Sorbonne , San Marcos , and Uppsala . He was distinguished as an outstanding lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he ran the four-year, preparatory, and freshman programs. In Jerusalem, he was also Director of the Institute for Jewish Leaders from Abroad and the Sephardic Educational Centre. He ran the Ai Tian Program for Jewish Understanding in China, and the Program for Education on the Jewish Role in Civilization.
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Guarino da Verona
1374 - 1460 (86 years)
Guarino Veronese or Guarino da Verona was an Italian classical scholar, humanist, and translator of ancient Greek texts during the Renaissance. In the republics of Florence and Venice he studied under Manuel Chrysoloras , renowned professor of Greek and ambassador of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, the first scholar to hold such course in medieval Italy.
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Charles Francis O'Connor
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Charles Francis "Frank" O'Connor was an American actor, painter, and rancher and the husband of novelist Ayn Rand. Frank O'Connor performed in several films, typically as an extra, during the silent and early sound eras until about 1934. While working on the set of the 1927 The King of Kings, O'Connor met Rand, and they eventually dated each other steadily. They married in 1929. When O'Connor and Rand moved to California so Rand could work on the movie adaptation of her novel The Fountainhead, O'Connor purchased and managed a ranch in the San Fernando Valley for several years. In addition to ...
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Karol Estreicher
1827 - 1908 (81 years)
Karol Józef Teofil Estreicher was a Polish bibliographer and librarian who was a founder of the Polish Academy of Learning. While he is known as the "father of Polish bibliography", he is also considered the founder of the bibliographical method in literary research. His "monumental work", is called the "most outstanding bibliography of Polish books, and probably one of the most famous bibliographies in the world".
Go to Profile#7757
John Z. Ayanian
#116085
Overall Influence
#7758
Colm A. O’morain
#116089
Overall Influence
#7759
Timothy Cloughesy
#105451
Overall Influence
Timothy Frances Cloughesy is a professor of Clinical Neurology and director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an expert on the treatment of brain cancer.
Go to Profile#7760
Jared J. Grantham
#116124
Overall Influence
#7761
Norman H. Nie
#15142
Overall Influence
1943 - 2015 (72 years)
Norman H. Nie was an American social scientist, university professor, inventor, and pioneering technology entrepreneur, known for being one of the developers of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences . Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1943, Nie was educated at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, where he received a Ph.D. in political science in 1971. He died on April 2, 2015, of lung cancer.
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Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı
1869 - 1949 (80 years)
Rıza Tevfik Bey was an Ottoman and later Turkish philosopher, poet, politician of liberal signature and a community leader of the late-19th-century and early-20th-century. A polyglot, he is most remembered in Turkey for being one of the four Ottoman signatories of the disastrous Treaty of Sèvres, for which reason he was included in 1923 among the 150 of Turkey, and he spent 20 years in exile until he was given amnesty by Turkey in 1943.
Go to Profile#7763
Solange Peters
#116156
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#7764
Mark H. Bernstein
#106878
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mark H. Bernstein is an American philosopher and Joyce & Edward E. Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University. He is known for his research on animal ethics. Biography Bernstein received a B.A. in January 1969 in Mathematics from Queens College, City University of New York, a M.A. in June 1975 in Philosophy from California State University, Northridge and a Ph D. in June 1982 in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Robert L. Barrack†
#116183
Overall Influence
#7766
James Andrew Eastham
#116184
Overall Influence
#7767
Leon MacLaren
#46816
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Leon MacLaren, born Leonardo da Vinci MacLaren , was a British philosopher and the founder of the School of Economic Science . MacLaren was inspired by Henry George, Socrates, Dr Francis Roles, Pyotr Ouspensky, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and finally the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta through the Shankaracharyas of Jyoti Math.
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Johann Bernhard Merian
1723 - 1807 (84 years)
Johann Bernhard Merian or Jean-Bernard Mérian was a Swiss philosopher active in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Merian studied at the University of Basle, gaining his doctorate in 1740. He became a member of the Class for Speculative Philosophy of the Berlin Academy in 1750, and director of the Class for Belles-Lettres in 1771. From 1797 he was permanent Secretary of the Academy.
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Richard Moran
#72573
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Richard Moran is an American philosopher. He is Brian D. Young Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, where he specializes in philosophy of mind, moral psychology and philosophy of art. Education and career Moran received an AB from Dartmouth College in 1977 and a PhD from Cornell University in 1989, the latter under the supervision of Sydney Shoemaker. He joined the faculty at Princeton University as an assistant professor that same year. He accepted a tenured offer to teach in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University in Fall 1995.
Go to Profile#7770
Wolfgang Cramer
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Wolfgang Cramer was a German philosopher and mathematician. Biography Early Years Cramer, the son of a governmental master builder, was born in Hamburg and spent his school time in Breslau . After his Abitur in 1920 he studied three semesters of philosophy directed by Richard Hönigswald and Siegfried Marck at the University of Breslau. A friend from this time was Moritz Löwi. At the University of Heidelberg he studied another semester of philosophy directed by Karl Jaspers. Afterwards he worked as a bank officer. In the winter term 1924/25 he started to study again and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Breslau.
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Rodger P. Mcever
#116270
Overall Influence
#7772
Harry Brod
#17283
Overall Influence
1951 - 2017 (66 years)
Harry Brod was a professor of sociology at University of Northern Iowa. Education He held a PhD in Philosophy, 1981, from the University of California, San Diego. Men's studies Brod was one of the first academics to specialize in men's studies. Brod became interested in the men's movement in the mid-1960s, as he thought about society's expectations of individuals based on their gender.
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Tavia Gordon
#116296
Overall Influence
#7774
Dr. David Heber
#116299
Overall Influence
#7775
Joseph G. Fortner
#116325
Overall Influence
#7776
Gian‐franco Bottazzo
#116328
Overall Influence
#7777
V. Kofi Agawu
#64639
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Victor Kofi Agawu is a Ghanaian musicologist and music theorist. He often publishes as V. Kofi Agawu and specializes in musical semiotics and ethnomusicology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
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Leon Wyczółkowski
1852 - 1936 (84 years)
Leon Jan Wyczółkowski was one of the leading painterss of the Young Poland movement, as well as the principal representative of Polish Realism in art of the Interbellum. From 1895 to 1911 he served as professor of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and from 1934, ASP in Warsaw. He was a founding member of the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka" .
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Léon Denis
1846 - 1927 (81 years)
Léon Denis was a notable French spiritist philosopher, and, with Gabriel Delanne and Camille Flammarion, one of the principal exponents of spiritism after the death of Allan Kardec. Denis lectured throughout Europe at international conferences of spiritism and spiritualism, promoting the idea of survival of the soul after death and the implications of this for human relations. He is known as the apostle of French spiritism.
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Miriam Rothschild
#18134
Overall Influence
1908 - 2005 (97 years)
Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild was a British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany. Early life Miriam Rothschild was born in 1908 in Ashton Wold, near Oundle in Northamptonshire, the daughter of Charles Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of England of Jewish bankers and Rózsika Edle Rothschild , a Hungarian sportswoman, of Austrian-Jewish descent. Her brother was Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild and one of her sisters Pannonica Rothschild would later be a bebop jazz enthusiast and patroness of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.
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Sherine E. Gabriel
#116378
Overall Influence
#7782
Helen Heslop
#103274
Overall Influence
Helen Elisabeth Heslop is a physician-scientist from New Zealand whose clinical interests are in hematopoietic stem cell transplants. Heslop’s research focuses on immunotherapy to treat viral infections, post transplant and hematologic malignancies. She is a professor in the Department of Medicine and Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and the director of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Methodist Hospital. She is also the Dan L. Duncan Chair and the associate director of clinical research at the Dan L. Duncan Cance...
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Sheldon H. Preskorn
#7784
Ludwig Emil Feinendegen
#116422
Overall Influence
#7785
Theodore Schatzki
#57017
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Theodore Schatzki is a professor of philosophy and geography at the University of Kentucky, professor of sociology at Lancaster University. He has written extensively on practice theory. His work has developed an alternative theory of practice, influenced by Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, that people do what makes sense for them to do.
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Robert R. Redfield
#5371
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Robert Ray Redfield Jr. is an American virologist who served as the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry from 2018 to 2021.
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David M. Rasmussen
#82125
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
David M. Rasmussen is an American philosopher and professor at Boston College. He is the founder and editor in chief of Philosophy and Social Criticism and is a noted political and social philosopher.
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Elward David Crawford
#116436
Overall Influence
#7789
Leonard J. Cerullo
#35884
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Leonard J. Cerullo is a board-certified neurosurgeon and founder/medical director. Early life and education Cerullo was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in June 1944. He was the middle child of the large family of Leornard Frank Cerullo, an electrical contractor, and Marion , a nurse; his parents met at Hazleton General Hospital.
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Allen D. Seftel
#116437
Overall Influence
#7791
Amico Bignami
#7792
Noushafarin Ansari
#43564
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Noushafarin Ansari is an Iranian librarian, educator, and manager. Life Her parents were diplomats; therefore she was exposed to many languages and cultures in Asia and Europe. In 1958-1960 she studied librarianship in Geneva, a discipline she continued at McGill University and at the University of Toronto. She worked as a librarian at the Delhi Public Library, and Tehran University Central library, and was Library Director at the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at Tehran University. In 1962 she married Mehdi Mohaghegh, a renowned Iranian university professor and scholar.
Go to Profile#7793
Roland Eils
#116441
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#7794
Bernard Scatton
#116443
Overall Influence
#7795
Michael Allen Fox
#89869
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael Allen Fox is an American/Canadian/Australian philosopher who was based at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario from 1966 until his retirement in 2005. He is the author of a number of books, including The Case for Animal Experimentation: An Evolutionary and Ethical Perspective —the arguments and conclusion of which he later rejected—Deep Vegetarianism , The Accessible Hegel , The Remarkable Existentialists , Understanding Peace and Home: A Very Short Introduction .
Go to Profile#7796
Luis Horacio Toledo-pereyra
#116461
Overall Influence
#7797
Teruo Hideshima
#116464
Overall Influence
#7798
Warren Shibles
#74858
Overall Influence
Warren A. Shibles was an American philosopher, historian and professor. His B.A. is from the University of Connecticut and his M.A. from the University of Colorado. He was head of the department of philosophy of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is the author of numerous articles in history and philosophy and of many books, including children's books in philosophy and ethics. A number of his books have been translated into German, Finnish and Spanish languages.
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Karl Lennert
#57137
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Karl Lennert, M.D. was a German physician and pathologist. Early life and education Lennert was born in Fürth, which is now contiguous with Nuremberg, in Bavaria. After graduating from high school there, Karl attended medical school from 1939 to 1945 at the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat of Erlangen . After World War II, Lennert remained in Erlangen until 1950 as a resident physician in the Institute of Pathology. After another year of postgraduate study at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, he joined the department of pathology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt-am-Main.
Go to Profile#7800
Mark Kuczewski
#85215
Overall Influence
Mark Kuczewski is an American philosopher and bioethicist who has been a key contributor to the New Professionalism movement in medicine and medical education. In general, interest in professionalism has been widespread in medicine probably owing to the increasing regulatory and economic pressures on the practice of medicine. Many physicians have sought to identify the focal meaning of what it is to be a doctor in an effort to revitalize the profession. Kuczewski has been among a group that includes Richard and Sylvia Creuss, John Coulehan, and Matthew Wynia who see medical professionalism as including a commitment to social justice.
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