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,
#8151
Harry Goldschmidt
1910 - 1986 (76 years)
Harry Goldschmidt was a Swiss musicologist. Life 1910–1949: Basel, Weimar Republic, France, West Africa, Switzerland Goldschmidt was born in Basel on 17 June 1910, the second child of Siegfried Goldschmidt, a banker from Frankfurt, and Vally Goldschmidt-Peiser, a teacher from Breslau. The boy was given the first names of Heinrich Heine: Heinrich Leopold. The classically educated parents came from non-practising, fully assimilated German-Jewish families and acquired Swiss citizenship on 8 August 1919 in the city of Basel, where father Siegfried had become the youngest bank director in Switze...
Go to Profile#8152
Saint Lawrence
225 - 258 (33 years)
Saint Lawrence or Laurence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman Emperor Valerian ordered in 258.
Go to Profile#8153
Bruce George Haffty
#119688
Overall Influence
#8154
Margaret Battin
#57612
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Margaret Pabst Battin, also known as Peggy Battin, is an American philosopher, medical ethicist, author, and a current distinguished professor at the University of Utah. She is a supporter of assisted suicide and has worked extensively on ethical aspects of this issue. In 1993, she was named a Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam for her studies on assisted suicide. Battin is a Hastings Center Fellow. In 2008, Battin's husband became quadriplegic after a bicycle accident, which caused her to refine and augment her thinking about assisted suicide; he died in 2013 after he requested to t...
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Alan Chait
#119712
Overall Influence
#8156
Wojciech Gerson
1831 - 1901 (70 years)
Wojciech Gerson was a leading Polish painter of the mid-19th century, and one of the foremost representatives of the Polish school of Realism during the foreign Partitions of Poland. He served as long-time professor of the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and taught future luminaries of Polish neo-romanticism including Józef Chełmoński, Leon Wyczółkowski, Władysław Podkowiński, Józef Pankiewicz and Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa among others. He also wrote art-reviews and published a book of anatomy for the artists. A large number of his paintings were stolen by Nazi Germany in World War II, and ...
Go to Profile#8157
Arthur W. Nienhuis
#119728
Overall Influence
#8158
Steven Weinstein
#97954
Overall Influence
Steven Weinstein is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, noted particularly for his work on quantum gravity, time, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Biography Weinstein studied as an undergraduate student at Princeton University, from where he graduated with honors with an A.B. in philosophy in 1982 after completing a 54-page-long senior thesis titled "Quarks and Qualia." After several years of writing, recording, and performing music, he returned to academic work, obtaining his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Northwestern University in 1998, supervised by Arthur Fine. He is prese...
Go to Profile#8159
Jay S. Kaufman
#117573
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jay Scott Kaufman is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, & Occupational Health at McGill University, where he was a Canada Research Chair in Health Disparities . He also served as the President of the Society for Epidemiological Research.
Go to Profile#8160
John E. Jr. Mayer
#119738
Overall Influence
#8161
Nicholas R. Anthonisen
#119743
Overall Influence
#8162
Thomas C. Spelsberg
#119769
Overall Influence
#8163
Meindert Danhof
#119795
Overall Influence
#8164
Douglas R. Galasko
#119821
Overall Influence
#8165
Peter-anton Miescher
#119834
Overall Influence
#8166
Mitsuhiro Osame
#119845
Overall Influence
#8167
John Millott Ellis
1831 - 1894 (63 years)
John Millott Ellis was a 19th-century abolitionist minister and intellectual who served as acting President of Oberlin College in 1871. He was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin from 1866 to 1896.
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Philippe Lécrivain
#88000
Overall Influence
1941 - 2020 (79 years)
Philippe Lécrivain was a French Jesuit priest and historian. Biography Lécrivain was born in Le Blanc on 1 August 1941. He was ordained in the Diocese of Rennes in 1968, and joined the Society of Jesus in 1978 in Lyon.
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Yoshihiro Nitta
#119880
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
is a Japanese university professor and philosopher. He is reputed as one of the greatest people to have influenced the Japanese philosophy. Career He studied from 1949 to 1957 at the Tohoku University in the field of philosophy. He also received a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study at the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#8170
Richard Paul Spencer
#119887
Overall Influence
#8171
Eduardo D. Rodriguez
#40043
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Eduardo De Jesus Rodriguez MD, DDS is a Cuban American plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and reconstructive transplant surgeon, who is known for his contribution to the field of facial transplantation and vascularized composite allotransplantation. Rodriguez practiced in Baltimore until 2013 when he was appointed the Helen L. Kimmel Professor of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Chair of the Hansjörg Wyss Department of Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone Health, where he serves as the director of the Face Transplant Program. Most recently, he led the team that performed the first simultaneous f...
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William Leslie Davidson
1848 - 1929 (81 years)
William Leslie Davidson was a Scottish philosopher. Early life Davidson was born and raised in Old Rayne, a village in the north-east of Scotland, near Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen University before embarking on a career and life dedicated to philosophy.
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T. E. Jessop
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Thomas Edmund Jessop, was a British academic best known for his work on George Berkeley. Biography Jessop was born, the son of Newton and Georgiana Jessop, in Huddersfield on 10 September 1896. He was educated at the University of Leeds, where he received his B.A. and M.A. . He gained his B.Litt from Oriel College, Oxford. From 1925 to 1928 he was an assistant lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#8174
Gary J. Bennett
#119929
Overall Influence
#8175
Michael Peter Davis
#40212
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Michael Peter Davis is an American philosopher and educator. He is a professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College. Early life and education Davis earned his A.B. in Philosophy and Government at Cornell University, where he studied with Allan Bloom. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, where he wrote a dissertation on Plato under the direction of Richard Kennington.
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Cynthia Freeland
#109639
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Cynthia A. Freeland is an American philosopher of art. She has published three monographs, over two dozen articles, and edited several books. She is Emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. She was the president of the American Society of Aesthetics until 2017. She has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003 for a research project on Fakes and Forgeries. Her book But is it Art? has been translated into fourteen languages and was republished as part of the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. She talked about her book Portraits&Persons with Nigel Warburton on the Philosophy Bites podcast.
Go to Profile#8177
Kenneth Μ. Moser
#119946
Overall Influence
#8178
Sirpa Jalkanen
#117402
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sirpa Jalkanen is a Finnish scientist, working in the field of biomedical and clinical medicine, at the University of Turku in Finland. Career Jalkanen was born in Jyväskylä, Finland. She is one of the world’s leading researchers in the area of lymphocyte migration in the human immune defence system. Jalkanen is an Academy Professor in the Academy of Finland. She has served as Academy Professor on two previous occasions, in 1996–2001 and 2002–2006. During her term as Academy Professor, the focus of Professor Jalkanen’s research is on the mechanisms controlling the movement of cells in and out of lymph nodes.
Go to Profile#8179
Johannes Weigelt
#119969
Overall Influence
#8180
Richard P. Bunge
#119977
Overall Influence
#8181
Robert Alan Figlin
#119987
Overall Influence
#8182
Claudio M. Anasetti
#120001
Overall Influence
#8183
Chris Whitty
#6072
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Sir Christopher John MacRae Whitty is a British epidemiologist, serving as Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government since 2019. Whitty was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care and Head of the National Institute for Health and Care Research from 2016 to 2021. He was also the Acting Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2017 to 2018. He is emeritus Gresham Professor of Physic.
Go to Profile#8184
Joseph Grasset
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Joseph Grasset , was a French neurologist and parapsychological investigator, born in Montpellier. He received his medical degree in Montpellier, where in 1881 he became a professor of therapy. In 1886, he attained the chair of clinical medicine, and in 1909 was appointed chair of general pathology.
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Kenneth Kaushansky
#43296
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D., Master of the American College of Physicians is an American medical doctor, hematologist, former editor of the medical journal Blood, and served as the dean of the Stony Brook University School of Medicine from 2010 to 2021. Prior to moving to Stony Brook, he was the Helen M. Ranney Professor, and chair of the department of medicine at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#8186
William F. Enneking
#120051
Overall Influence
#8187
Grace Slick
#23552
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Grace Slick is an American painter and retired musician whose musical career spanned four decades. Slick was a prominent figure in San Francisco's psychedelic music scene during the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
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Friedrich Harms
1819 - 1880 (61 years)
Friedrich Harms was a German realist philosopher, much influenced by Fichte. He studied philosophy at the University of Kiel as a pupil of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus. In 1842 he obtained his habilitation for philosophy at Kiel, where he later became an associate professor . In 1867 he relocated to the University of Berlin as a professor of philosophy.
Go to Profile#8189
James E. Montie
#120056
Overall Influence
#8190
Charles Carroll Everett
1829 - 1900 (71 years)
Charles Carroll Everett was an American divine and philosopher. Early life and education Charles was born on June 19, 1829, in Brunswick, Maine, to Ebenezer Everett and Joanna Batchedler Prince. His father was a prominent citizen of Brunswick, a Harvard educated lawyer, banker, and long-time trustee of Bowdoin College. During the 1840s he was also elected to represent Brunswick in the Maine Legislature. The Everetts were an old, notable, and well connected New England family. Among his father's first cousins were Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett and Ambassador Alexander Hill Everett.
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Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis
1815 - 1886 (71 years)
Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis was a German theologian and philosopher born in Münster. Biography He studied philosophy and theology at the Academy of Münster, receiving his ordination in 1838. From 1845 he was a chaplain and school teacher in Duisburg, and later an instructor at the Episcopal Theological Institute in Paderborn. From 1855 to 1864 he served as pastor in Münster-Albachten, and from 1864 to 1872 was a professor of philosophy at the Lyceum in Braunsberg. In 1860 he participated in the Erfurt conference that would lead to Julie von Massow's Ut Omnes Unum movement, which so...
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Thomas Vaughan
1621 - 1666 (45 years)
Thomas Vaughan was a Welsh clergyman, philosopher, and alchemist, who wrote in English. He is now remembered for his work in the field of natural magic. He also published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes.
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Im Yunjidang
1721 - 1793 (72 years)
Im Yunjidang was a Korean writer and neo-Confucian philosopher from the Chosŏn dynasty . She defended the right for a woman to become a Confucian master and argued that men and women did not differ in their human nature by interpretations of Confucianism values in moral self-cultivation and human nature.
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Roland Mertelsmann
#74859
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Roland Mertelsmann is a German hematologist and oncologist. He was a professor at the Freiburg University Medical Center, Department of Internal Medicine I . Mertelsmann is known for his scientific works in the fields of hematology, oncology, gene therapy and stem cell transplantation.
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Leonard B. Kaban
#54115
Overall Influence
Leonard B. Kaban, D.M.D., M.D., F.A.C.S. is the Walter C. Guralnick Professor and Chair of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University. Biography
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Timothy S. Healy
#40030
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Timothy Stafford Healy was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who straddled the religious and secular life, serving as the vice chancellor of the City University of New York, the president of Georgetown University, and the president of the New York Public Library.
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Mary J. Roman
#120135
Overall Influence
#8198
Adam de Wodeham
1298 - 1358 (60 years)
Adam of Wodeham, OFM was a philosopher and theologian. Currently, Wodeham is best known for having been a secretary of William Ockham and for his interpretations of John Duns Scotus. But Wodeham was also an influential thinker in his own right who made valuable philosophical contributions during his life.
Go to Profile#8199
Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling
1671 - 1729 (58 years)
Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling , was a German jurist and eclectic philosopher. He was born in Kirchensittenbach, and died in Magdeburg. He was the brother of Jacob Paul von Gundling, Court Historiographer to King Frederick I of Prussia, who became a figure of ridicule in the "Tobacco Cabinet" of Frederick William I.
Go to Profile#8200
Saint Florian
250 - 304 (54 years)
Florian was a Christian holy man and the patron saint of chimney sweeps; soapmakers, and firefighters. His feast day is 4 May. Florian is also the patron saint of Poland, the city of Linz, Austria, and Upper Austria, jointly with Leopold III, Margrave of Austria.
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