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,
#8301
Hanawa Hokiichi
1746 - 1821 (75 years)
Hanawa Hokiichi was a Japanese blind kokugaku scholar of the Edo period. Biography Hanawa was born in Hokino Village, Musashi Province to a farming family. His childhood name was Toranosuke. From an early age he had a weak constitution and at the age of five suffered from a sickness which caused great eye pain and his vision gradually diminished. He was advised that his eyes would not be cured unless he changed both his birth year and his name. Although changed his name to Tatsunosuke and subtracted two years, his vision never returned. A precocious child with a prodigious memory, he was later tonsured and took the Buddhist name of Tamonbo.
Go to Profile#8302
Robert Eyre Johnson
#121036
Overall Influence
#8303
Fred D. Lublin
#57635
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Fred D. Lublin is an American neurologist and an authority on the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Along with colleagues at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, his work redefined the clinical course definitions of MS.
Go to Profile#8304
Ester Cerin
#121044
Overall Influence
#8305
Judd W. Moul
#121062
Overall Influence
#8306
Myron H. Weinberger
#121064
Overall Influence
#8307
Peter Menzies
#105150
Overall Influence
1953 - 2015 (62 years)
Peter Charles Menzies was an Australian philosopher and past president of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, who held teaching positions at Macquarie University, University of Sydney, and Australian National University. He specialized in metaphysics, especially the philosophy of causation. He became a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2007.
Go to Profile#8308
Bjørn Thomassen
#66069
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Bjørn Thomassen is an anthropologist and social scientist. He is associate professor at Roskilde University in the Department of Society and Globalisation. From 2003-2012 he worked at The American University of Rome, where he was chair of the department of International Relations.
Go to Profile#8309
Thomas H. Hostetter
#121092
Overall Influence
#8310
Timothy J. Eberlein
#121106
Overall Influence
#8311
Norman Grassie
#121111
Overall Influence
#8312
Joel Morganroth
#121144
Overall Influence
#8313
Josias Weitbrecht
1702 - 1747 (45 years)
Josias Weitbrecht was a German professor of medicine and anatomy in Russia. Life and career After his studies at the University of Tübingen initially Josias Weitbrecht acquired the academic degree for a magister of philosophy. By the medium of Dr Duvernoy in the year 1721 he came to the University of St. Petersburg, where he studied medicine, physiology and anatomy, his main subject, which he taught students from the academic grammar school, associated with the Russian Academy of Science. This academy accepted him as a member in 1725. Later, on 22 January 1730, he was appointed ordinary profe...
Go to Profile#8314
Hagiwara Hiromichi
1815 - 1863 (48 years)
Hagiwara Hiromichi was a scholar of literature, philology, and nativist studies as well as an author, translator, and poet active in late-Edo period Japan. He is best known for the innovative commentary and literary analysis of The Tale of Genji found in his work titled Genji monogatari hyōshaku published in two installments in 1854 and 1861.
Go to Profile#8315
Robert M. Blizzard
#121196
Overall Influence
#8316
J. Evan Sadler
#81715
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
Jasper Evan Sadler III was an American hematologist. Sadler was born in Huntington, West Virginia, on 9 November 1951 to pathologist Jasper Evan Sadler Jr. and his wife Clara Rose Thompson Sadler. The younger Sadler studied chemistry at Princeton University and completed a medical degree at Duke University School of Medicine. Sadler completed his residency at Duke and a fellowship at the University of Washington and subsequently joined Washington University School of Medicine faculty in 1984. Between 1982 and 2008, Sadler was a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator. In 2014, Sadler was appointed Ira M.
Go to Profile#8317
Steven E. Shoelson
#121199
Overall Influence
#8318
Julius Wagner-Jauregg
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
Julius Wagner-Jauregg was an Austrian physician, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927, and is the first psychiatrist to have done so. His Nobel award was "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica".
Go to Profile#8319
Rafael García Bárcena
#44095
Overall Influence
Rafael García Bárcena was a Cuban philosopher who later took a leading role in the Cuban Revolution against President Fulgencio Batista. A Professor of Philosophy, he founded the National Revolutionary Movement . Consisting largely of middle-class members, it contrasted with Fidel Castro's predominantly working class support base, the 26th of July Movement. In March 1953, the MNR had planned to attack and seize control of the barracks at Camp Colombia, but police had been alerted to the plot, with the conspirators being rounded up and tortured. In all, fourteen people were sentenced to impris...
Go to Profile#8320
Cornelia Johanna de Vogel
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Cornelia Johanna de Vogel was a Dutch classicist, philosopher and theologian. She was a “distinguished Dutch Plato scholar”, and a prolific author of ancient philosophy and patristic theology. She was the professor of the history of classical and medieval philosophy at the state university of Utrecht .
Go to Profile#8321
Richard J. Bernstein
#121226
Overall Influence
#8322
Pierre Théroux
#121236
Overall Influence
#8323
Levi Alexander Garraway
#121238
Overall Influence
#8324
David Burrell
#65984
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
David Bakewell Burrell , was a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and an American educator, theologian, writer and translator. He was the Theodore Hesburgh Professor emeritus in Philosophy and Theology at University of Notre Dame, US. He wrote around thirteen books on Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions. He knew several languages; he translated two books of Al-Ghazali from Arabic into English. He also taught comparative theology, ethics and development at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi, Uganda; Tangaza College, Nairobi, Kenya; and Hebrew University, Jerusalem. During 1960s, he was involved in Anti-Vietnam War Movement.
Go to Profile#8325
Diane Havlir
#110928
Overall Influence
Diane Havlir is an American physician who is a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research considers novel therapeutic strategies to improve the lives of people with HIV and to support public health initiatives in East Africa. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.
Go to Profile#8326
Thomas M. Mcintyre
#121251
Overall Influence
#8327
Peter Anthony Ubel
#121253
Overall Influence
#8328
Jon M. Hanifin
#121263
Overall Influence
#8329
Ken Burns
#10100
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
Go to Profile#8330
Helmut Kerl
#121284
Overall Influence
#8331
Joycelyn Elders
#2716
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Minnie Joycelyn Elders is an American pediatrician and public health administrator who served as Surgeon General of the United States from 1993 to 1994. A vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, she was the second woman, second person of color, and first African American to serve as Surgeon General.
Go to Profile#8332
Elmar Holenstein
#80070
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Elmar Holenstein is a Swiss philosopher with research interests in the fields of philosophical psychology, philosophy of language and cultural philosophy. Scholarly career Elmar Holenstein studied philosophy, psychology, and linguistics at the universities of Louvain/Leuven, Heidelberg, and Zurich from 1964 to 1972. His Ph.D. dissertation dealt with the phenomenology of the pre- and non-conceptual human experience as explored by Edmund Husserl , the German founder of the phenomenological movement in philosophy. Holenstein gained professorial status by a book on the phenomenological structura...
Go to Profile#8333
Gary Marchionini
#121295
Overall Influence
#8334
Robert T. Schooley
#65641
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Robert "Chip" T. Schooley is an American infectious disease physician, who is the Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, Senior Director of International Initiatives, and Co-Director at the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics , at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. He is an expert in HIV and hepatitis C infection and treatment, and in 2016, was the first physician to treat a patient in the United States with intravenous bacteriophage therapy for a systemic bacterial infection.
Go to Profile#8335
Eric M. Genden
#10843
Overall Influence
Eric M. Genden, MD, MHCA, FACS is a United States head and neck cancer surgeon at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. where he serves as the Isidore Friesner Professor and Chairman of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and Professor of Neurosurgery and Immunology. According to his biography at Mount Sinai, Genden's professional titles also include Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, He is Executive Vice President of Ambulatory Surgery, and Director of the Head and Neck Institute at the Mount Sinai Health System.
Go to Profile#8336
Deji Akinwande
#25917
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Deji Akinwande is a Nigerian-American professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy affiliation with Materials Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016 from Barack Obama. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the African Academy of Sciences, the Materials Research Society , and the IEEE.
Go to Profile#8337
João Cruz Costa
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
João da Cruz Costa , was a Brazilian philosopher, "first student" of the Philosophy Faculty at Universidade de São Paulo, later becoming full professor at the same institution. His intellectual work addressed different knowledge areas, especially about the development of philosophy in Brazil, "aiming to establish connections between thinking and the country's social, political and economic reality throughout its history. Essay writer, critic, sociologist, biographer, besides being philosopher, which showed the diversity of his knowledge. He would spread it by teaching and via articles written in simple language and published at the most important newspapers of his time: O Estado de S.
Go to Profile#8338
Jørgen Kjems
#121338
Overall Influence
#8339
Michael S. Dunnill
#121359
Overall Influence
#8340
Jerry Hobbs
#33527
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jerry R. Hobbs is an American researcher in the fields of computational linguistics, discourse analysis, and artificial intelligence. Education Hobbs earned his doctor's degree from New York University in 1974 in computer science and has taught at Yale University and the City University of New York.
Go to Profile#8341
Apollophanes of Antioch
#89765
Overall Influence
Apollophanes of Antioch was a Stoic philosopher. During his life, he left the Seleucid empire for Athens. There he became a pupil and friend of Aristo of Chios. As a student of Aristo, he may have call himself an Aristonian. There is some assertion that he is the same as Apollophanes the physician who lived at the court of Antiochus.
Go to Profile#8342
Johann Sturm
1635 - 1703 (68 years)
Johann Christoph Sturm was a German philosopher, professor at University of Altdorf and founder of a short-lived scientific academy known as the Collegium Curiosum, based on the model of the Florentine Accademia del Cimento. He edited two volumes of the academy's proceedings under the title Collegium Experimentale . In 1670, he translated the works of Archimedes into German.
Go to Profile#8343
Ralph Monroe Eaton
1892 - 1932 (40 years)
Ralph Monroe Eaton was an American philosopher of Harvard University whose career was cut short at the age of 39. He specialized in the theory of knowledge and logic but later became interested in psychoanalysis. He served in the United States Army during the First World War and wrote an unpublished memoir of his experiences.
Go to Profile#8344
Michael W. Steffes
#121451
Overall Influence
#8345
Geoffrey Gaddis Hallock
#121462
Overall Influence
#8346
Milton T. Jr. Edgerton
#121490
Overall Influence
#8347
Guido Adler
1855 - 1941 (86 years)
Guido Adler was a Bohemian-Austrian musicologist and writer. Biography Early life and education Adler was born at Eibenschütz in Moravia in 1855. He moved with his family to Vienna nine years later. His father Joachim, a physician, died of typhoid fever in 1857. Joachim contracted the illness from a patient, and therefore told his wife Franciska to "never allow any of the children to become a doctor".
Go to Profile#8348
Alexandre Mebazaa
#121508
Overall Influence
#8349
Jan Milíč Lochman
#77142
Overall Influence
1922 - 2004 (82 years)
Jan Milíč Lochman was a Czechoslovakian-Swiss Protestant theologian. Life Lochman came from a family with reformed tradition. He graduated from high school in Náchod in 1941. After the Czech part of Charles University was reopened in 1945, he studied theology and philosophy at the Comenius Protestant Theological Faculty and received his doctorate in 1948. Afterwards he was ordained pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. After a short time as a Preacher, he returned to the Comenius Faculty in Prague, where he habilitated and worked as a lecturer. From 1960 he taught there as a professor of philosophy and systematic theology.
Go to Profile#8350
Ledger Wood
1901 - 1970 (69 years)
Ledger Wood was a twentieth-century American philosopher. Life and career Wood received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1926 and was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at Princeton University in 1927. He remained a member of the Princeton Philosophy Department for 43 years, serving as departmental chair from 1952 to 1960. After his retirement in 1970, he was appointed McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus.
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