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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#8351
Douglas A. Jabs
#121573
Overall Influence
#8352
J. Lawton Smith
#121575
Overall Influence
#8353
Erling Falk
#121583
Overall Influence
#8354
Alessandro Passerin d'Entrèves
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Alessandro Passerin d'Entrèves was an Italian philosopher and historian of law. He was noted for his scholarship on political thought, particularly in the mediaeval and early modern period, and natural law theory.
Go to Profile#8355
Maurice Stanley Friedman
#70980
Overall Influence
1921 - 2012 (91 years)
Maurice Stanley Friedman was an interdisciplinary, interreligious philosopher of dialogue. His intellectual career - spanning fifty years of study, teaching, writing, translating, traveling, mentoring, and co-founding the Institute for Dialogical Psychotherapy - has prompted a language of genuine dialogue. With illuminating range, he has applied Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue to the human sciences. After receiving his Ph.D. in religion and history from the University of Chicago in 1950, Friedman had a long career of teaching and publishing.
Go to Profile#8356
Gerald T. Keusch
#104773
Overall Influence
Gerald T. Keusch is an American physician-scientist and academic administrator. Keusch is the associate provost for global health at Boston University Medical Campus and a professor of international health and medicine at Boston University School of Public Health. He was the director of John E. Fogarty International Center and the associate director of international research at the National Institutes of Health from 1998 to 2003.
Go to Profile#8357
Marvin E. Ament
#121614
Overall Influence
#8358
John Hawkins
1719 - 1789 (70 years)
Sir John Hawkins was an English author and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. He was part of Johnson's various clubs but later left The Literary Club after a disagreement with some of Johnson's other friends. His friendship with Johnson continued and he was made one of the executors of Johnson's will.
Go to Profile#8359
Karl D. Nolph
#121634
Overall Influence
#8360
Dan Atar
#87711
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Dan Atar is a clinical cardiologist, researcher and professor. He is head of research at Oslo University Hospital, Div. of Medicine, and a full professor at the Institute of Clinical Sciences of the University of Oslo, Norway. He is Editor-in- Chief of the scientific journal Cardiology.
Go to Profile#8361
Nathan A. Berger
#121639
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
#8362
Josef Hromádka
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Josef Lukl Hromádka was a Czech Protestant theologian. He was a founder of the Christian Peace Conference. Born into a Lutheran peasant family in a village in Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hromádka studied theology in Vienna, Basel and Heidelberg, as well as in Aberdeen. He was a supporter of and member from its foundation in 1918 of the unified Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.
Go to Profile#8363
Manny Alvarez
#19400
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Manuel Alvarez is a Cuban-American obstetrician-gynecologist who has appeared on Fox News Channel shows such as America's Newsroom, Fox & Friends, Happening Now, Varney & Co., Money with Melissa, The O'Reilly Factor, The Kelly File, and Fox News Weekend, as well as on the local affiliate, WNYW-Fox 5 News. He currently serves as chairman of the department of obstetrics/gynecology at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, and runs AskDrManny.com out of its headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. Alvarez is an outspoken opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Car...
Go to Profile#8364
Ossama Al‐mefty
#121662
Overall Influence
#8365
Pavel Materna
#97781
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Pavel Materna is a Czech philosopher, logician and key representative of transparent intensional logic. Education and work Materna was introduced to philosophy and logic by his father, Miloš Materna , a member of a group of interwar and postwar Czech logicians propagating and popularizing neopositivism in Czechoslovakia. In 1949, he enrolled at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University to study philosophy and psychology. He graduated in 1953, and in 1957 he completed his postgraduate studies by defending a dissertation called Zu einigen Fragen der modernen Definitionslehre, published in 1959.
Go to Profile#8366
Elaine Zackai
#83900
Overall Influence
Elaine H. Zackai is a Professor of Pediatrics, Director of Clinical Genetics, and the Director of the Clinical Genetics Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia . Biography She was born in Brooklyn in 1943, to a metallurgist and a high school teacher.
Go to Profile#8367
Per Eriksson
#121684
Overall Influence
#8368
Hans‐hilmar Goebel
#121691
Overall Influence
#8369
Carlo Allioni
1728 - 1804 (76 years)
Carlo Allioni was an Italian physician and professor of botany at the University of Turin. His most important work was Flora Pedemontana, sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii 1755, a study of the plant world in Piedmont, in which he listed 2813 species of plants, of which 237 were previously unknown. In 1766, he published the Manipulus Insectorum Tauriniensium.
Go to Profile#8370
Kazutoshi Takahashi
#121739
Overall Influence
#8371
Michael Neil Forster
#101092
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michael Neil Forster is an American philosopher and the Alexander von Humboldt Professor, holder of the Chair in Theoretical Philosophy, and Co-director of the International Center for Philosophy at Bonn University. Previously he was Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy and the College at the University of Chicago. Forster is known for his expertise on hermeneutics.
Go to Profile#8372
Charles-François Daubigny
1817 - 1878 (61 years)
Charles-François Daubigny was a French painter, one of the members of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of impressionism. He was also a prolific printmaker, mostly in etching but also as one of the main artists to use the cliché verre technique.
Go to Profile#8373
Eva Badura-Skoda
#36544
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Eva Badura-Skoda was a German-born Austrian musicologist. Biography Born in Munich, Eva Halfar studied at the Vienna Conservatory and took courses in musicology, philosophy, and art history at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna , and Innsbruck .
Go to Profile#8374
Lisa Herzog
#98278
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Lisa Maria Herzog is a German philosopher and social scientist who works at the intersection of political philosophy and economic thought. On October 1, 2019, she began a professorship in philosophy at the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#8375
Sue Knight
#112881
Overall Influence
Sue Knight is an Australian philosopher, educator and academic whose research focuses on teaching reasoning skills and embedding philosophy within school curricula. She is the author of the Primary Ethics curriculum, which has been offered as an alternative to Scripture in New South Wales public schools for students from Kindergarten to Year 6 since 2010.
Go to Profile#8376
Mark F. Leppert
#121811
Overall Influence
#8377
Rabirius
#87375
Overall Influence
Rabirius was a 1st-century BC Epicurean associated with Amafinius and Catius as one of the early popularizers of the philosophy in Italy. Their works on Epicureanism were the earliest philosophical treatises written in Latin. Other than Lucretius, Amafinius and Rabirius are the only Roman Epicurean writers named by Cicero.
Go to Profile#8378
Harold S. Nelson
#121826
Overall Influence
#8379
Gordon Stewart
#117796
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Gordon Thallon Stewart was a Scottish epidemiologist and public health physician who served as the Henry Mechan Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow from 1972 to 1984. Early life and education Stewart was born on 5 February 1919 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1939 with a BSc degree. He later received an MB, ChB, and MD from the University of Glasgow in 1942, 1942, and 1949, respectively; he also received a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the University of Liverpool in 1948.
Go to Profile#8380
Klaus Lechner
#8381
Heinz R. Reichmann
#121836
Overall Influence
#8382
Rachel Cooper
#98105
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Rachel Cooper is a British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of psychiatry. She is currently a professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. She is the author of Classifying Madness , Psychiatry and the Philosophy of Science and Diagnosing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .
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Virginia Barbour
Virginia M. Barbour is a professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and serves as the Director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group. She is best known for being one of the three founding editors of PLOS Medicine, and her various roles in championing the open access movement.
Go to Profile#8384
Frederic C. Bartter
#121873
Overall Influence
#8385
Paul Dorian
#56188
Overall Influence
Paul Dorian is a Canadian physician. He is a professor of pharmacology and director of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Toronto. His primary research focus is the clinical pharmacology of antiarrhythmic drugs.
Go to Profile#8386
Denis Lerrer Rosenfield
#92679
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Denis Lerrer Rosenfield is a Brazilian writer and columnist. Along with Patrícia Carlos de Andrade, Rosenfield has co-founded the Millennium Institute in 2005. Academic life Rosenfield has a degree in philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and in 1982 he earned a doctorate in philosophy from Université Paris 1 . In 1999, he obtained a post-doctorate at the École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines .
Go to Profile#8387
A. C. Dornhorst
#121947
Overall Influence
#8388
Neil S. Cherniack
#121949
Overall Influence
#8389
Emanuela Taioli
#121975
Overall Influence
#8390
Michael J. Brody
#121979
Overall Influence
#8391
Alexander Mavrokordatos
1641 - 1709 (68 years)
Alexander Mavrocordatos was a member of the Greek Mavrocordatos family, the ruler of the island of Mykonos, a doctor of philosophy and medicine of the University of Bologna, and Dragoman of the Porte to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1673 — notably employed in negotiations with the Habsburg monarchy during the Great Turkish War.
Go to Profile#8392
Mogens Stig Norn
#121999
Overall Influence
#8393
Leon Petrażycki
1867 - 1931 (64 years)
Leon Petrażycki was a Polish philosopher, legal scholar, and sociologist. He is considered an important forerunner of the sociology of law. Life Leon Petrażycki was born into the Polish gentry of the Mogilev Governorate in the Russian Empire. In 1890 he graduated from Kiev University, then spent two years on a scholarship in Berlin, and in 1896 received a doctorate from the University of St. Petersburg. At the latter university, he served from 1897 to 1917 as a professor of the philosophy of law.
Go to Profile#8394
Jean-François Mattéi
#19975
Overall Influence
1941 - 2014 (73 years)
Jean-François Mattéi was a French philosopher and professor of Greek philosophy and political philosophy at the University of Nice.
Go to Profile#8395
Kuno Gonschior
#59612
Overall Influence
1935 - 2010 (75 years)
Kuno Gonschior was a German painter. From 1957 to 1961, Gonschior studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1959, he was one of the first students of Karl Otto Götz, his classmates being Gotthard Graubner and HA Schult. From 1961 to 1963 he studied at the University of Cologne. In 1972, he became lecturer at the Pädagogische Hochschule Münster. From 1982 to 2000, he was a professor of painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin.
Go to Profile#8396
Hans Konrad Biesalski
#45694
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Hans Konrad Biesalski is a German physician and professor of biological chemistry and nutritional medicine at the University of Hohenheim. Life Biesalski enrolled first in physics at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz before he switched to medicine at Bonn and Mainz where he graduated in 1979. He received his PhD in 1981 for a work about progressive loss of hearing during childhood at Mainz. While working at the Department of Physiology in Mainz, he received his habilitation for a work about vitamin A and the inner ear. In 1993, Biesalski was appointed full professor at the Institute of Biological Chemistry and Nutrition Science at University of Hohenheim.
Go to Profile#8397
Paul C. Gillette
#122040
Overall Influence
#8398
Neal S. Kleiman
#122055
Overall Influence
#8399
Michael Hissmann
1752 - 1784 (32 years)
Michael Hissmann was a German philosopher, an advocate of French sensualism, and a radical materialist who translated Condillac, Charles de Brosses, and Joseph Priestley into German. Hissmann studied philosophy at Erlangen and Göttingen. From 1778 to 1783 he edited the Magazin für die Philosophie und ihre Geschichte. He became an extraordinary professor at Göttingen in 1782, and a full professor in 1784.
Go to Profile#8400
Sherita Hill Golden
#51893
Overall Influence
Sherita Hill Golden is an American physician who is the Hugh P. McCormick Family Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at Johns Hopkins University. She also serves as vice president and chief diversity officer. Her research considers biological and systems influences on diabetes and its outcomes. She was elected Fellow of National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
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