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,
#8401
William of Auvergne
1180 - 1249 (69 years)
William of Auvergne was a French theologian and philosopher who served as Bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death. He was one of the first western European philosophers to engage with and comment extensively upon Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy.
Go to Profile#8402
Martin Paul Eccles
#8403
Richard Brian Rothman
#122098
Overall Influence
#8404
Sagar Lonial
#122119
Overall Influence
#8405
Sergio E. Starkstein
#122124
Overall Influence
#8406
Marian Knight
#97765
Overall Influence
Marian Knight is a British physician who is a Professor of Maternal and Child Population Health at the University of Oxford. She is an Honorary Consultant of Public Health for Public Health England. During the COVID-19 pandemic Knight studied the characteristics and outcomes of pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19.
Go to Profile#8407
Kim James Burchiel
#122130
Overall Influence
#8408
Blaise Cronin
#68498
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Blaise Cronin is an Irish-American information scientist and bibliometrician. He is the Rudy Professor Emeritus of Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was Dean of the School of Library and Information Science for seventeen years. From 1985 to 1991 he held the Chair of Information Science and was Head of the Department of Information Science at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, U.K.
Go to Profile#8409
Solomon Steinheim
1789 - 1866 (77 years)
Solomon Ludwig Steinheim was a German physician, poet, and philosopher. Biography Steinheim was born on 6 August 1789 in Altona . He was educated first at the Gymnasium Christianeum, Altona, and pursued his medical studies at the University of Kiel. He had hardly graduated when he found a wide field for his activity in Altona, to where the inhabitants of the sister city of Hamburg, then occupied by the French troops, had fled to escape the Russian blockade, bringing with them typhus fever, which at that time was raging in the Hanseatic town. In 1845 ill health forced him to abandon a medical career and to move to a milder climate.
Go to Profile#8410
Edward A. Sickles
#122163
Overall Influence
#8411
Christian B. Miller
#102642
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Christian B. Miller is an American philosopher specializing in ethics and philosophy of religion. He is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. Education and career Miller earned his B.A. at Princeton University and his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught at Wake Forest University since 2004. Miller has written five books, edited five books, and published over 95 articles, introductions and commentaries.
Go to Profile#8412
Meenhard Herlyn
#122188
Overall Influence
#8413
Robert Anthony Rapp
#122198
Overall Influence
#8414
Ary Scheffer
1795 - 1858 (63 years)
Ary Scheffer was a Dutch-French Romantic painter. He was known mostly for his works based on literature, with paintings based on the works of Dante, Goethe, Lord Byron and Walter Scott, as well as religious subjects. He was also a prolific painter of portraits of famous and influential people in his lifetime. Politically, Scheffer had strong ties to King Louis Philippe I, having been employed as a teacher of the latter's children, which allowed him to live a life of luxury for many years until the French Revolution of 1848.
Go to Profile#8415
Jason P. Sheehan
#122228
Overall Influence
#8416
Shimon Slavin
#122229
Overall Influence
#8417
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#7476
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Siddhartha Mukherjee is an Indian-American physician, biologist, and author. He is best known for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, that won notable literary prizes including the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, and Guardian First Book Award, among others. The book was listed in the "All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books" by Time magazine in 2011. His 2016 book The Gene: An Intimate History made it to #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, and was among The New York Times 100 best books of 2016, and a finalist for the Wellcome Trust Prize and the Roya...
Go to Profile#8418
Khosrow Bagheri
#74684
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast is an Iranian philosopher, educational theorist and the president of Philosophy of Education Society of Iran . Biography Bagheri was born in 1957 in Tehran. He took his Ph.D. degree from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 1994. He is Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Tehran. He has made contributions to a wide range of topics in philosophy of education, Religion and personal construct psychology; topics from different viewpoints, such as constructive realism, neo-Pragmatism, action theory, deconstruction, Hermeneutics, and Islamic philosophy of education.
Go to Profile#8419
Dominique F. Figarella-branger
#122257
Overall Influence
#8420
Oskar Minkowski
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Oskar Minkowski was a German physician and physiologist who held a professorship at the University of Breslau and is most famous for his research on diabetes. He was the brother of the mathematician Hermann Minkowski and father of astrophysicist Rudolph Minkowski.
Go to Profile#8421
Norman Zamcheck
#122262
Overall Influence
#8422
Wafaa El-Sadr
#21418
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wafaa El-Sadr is a Columbia University Professor and the director of ICAP at Columbia University, Columbia World Projects and the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiologic Research at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#8423
Yuji Naito
#122282
Overall Influence
#8424
Mezri Haddad
#63249
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mezri Haddad is a Tunisian journalist, writer, philosopher and diplomat. Haddad was a doctor of moral and political philosophy at the Paris-Sorbonne University, and the first Muslim candidate to be qualified by the National Council of French universities as a lecturer in Catholic theology. He is the author of several essays that focus on politics and religion .
Go to Profile#8425
Henk G. Sol
#24319
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Henk Gerard Sol is a Dutch organizational theorist and Emeritus Professor of Business Engineering and ICT at Groningen University. His research focuses on the development of services enabled by ICT, management information systems, decision enhancement and telematics.
Go to Profile#8426
David P. Faxon
#122294
Overall Influence
#8427
Dan Rebellato
#44268
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Dan Rebellato is an English dramatist and academic born in South London. He is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London and has written extensively for radio and the stage. He has twice been nominated for a Sony Award, and writes regularly for The Guardian Theatre Blog.
Go to Profile#8428
Carl A. Schenck
1868 - 1955 (87 years)
Carl Alwin Schenck was a German forester and pioneering forestry educator. When Schenck came to the United States to work for George W. Vanderbilt at the Biltmore Estate, he became the third formally trained forester in the United States. He established and operated the Biltmore Forest School, the first forestry school in North America, on Vanderbilt's property.
Go to Profile#8429
Archibald Garrod
1857 - 1936 (79 years)
Sir Archibald Edward Garrod was an English physician who pioneered the field of inborn errors of metabolism. He also discovered alkaptonuria, understanding its inheritance. He served as Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford from 1920 to 1927.
Go to Profile#8430
Jordi Pigem
#91796
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jordi Pigem is a Catalan philosopher and writer. Career Pigem holds a Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona . He coordinated the ecology journal Integral between 1989 and 1992. From 1998 to 2003 he was a lecturer and coordinator of the Philosophy module for the Masters in Holistic Science at Schumacher College in Dartington, United Kingdom. In 1999 he won the Philosophy Award of the Institute of Catalan Studies with the dissertation El pensament de Raimon Panikkar: Una filosofia de la interdependència , and in 2006 he was awarded the Resurgence and Scientific and Medical Networ...
Go to Profile#8431
Lindsey Robert Baden
#122358
Overall Influence
#8432
Yew-‐kwang Ng
#122360
Overall Influence
#8433
Stephen Boonen
#122369
Overall Influence
#8434
David Pogue
#4635
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David Welch Pogue is an American technology and science writer and TV presenter, and correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning. He has hosted 18 Nova specials on PBS, including Nova ScienceNow, the Making Stuff series in 2011 and 2013, and Hunting the Elements in 2012. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series, and in 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes more than 100 titles. He also wrote The World According to Twitter and Pogue's Basics , a New York Times bestseller.
Go to Profile#8435
Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater was an American Presbyterian philosopher. Life He was born in Cedar Hill, New Haven, Connecticut. He started going to Yale University at the age of 14 in 1827 and graduated in 1831. He spent some time after graduating as the head of the classical Department of Mount Hope Institute in Baltimore and then entered Yale Divinity School He was then licensed to preach by the Congregational Association of New Haven in May 1834. Then heading on to the First Congregational Church of Fairfield Connecticut. He remained there for 20 years.
Go to Profile#8436
Raymond R. Townsend
#122375
Overall Influence
#8437
Asım Kurjak
#122382
Overall Influence
#8438
Victor Ovcharenko
#50757
Overall Influence
1943 - 2009 (66 years)
Victor Ovcharenko was a Russian philosopher, sociologist, historian and psychologist. He also was a PhD., professor, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences , academician of the Academy for Humanities Research and academician of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences . He co-edited the journals "The Psychoanalytical Bulletin", "The Bulletin of Psychoanalysis", etc. He was a forerunner of the Minsk philosophical school "Humanities Encyclopedia". He is considered one of the founders of modern Belarusian sociology.
Go to Profile#8439
Samuel Gridley Howe
1801 - 1876 (75 years)
Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824 he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon; he also commanded troops. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
Go to Profile#8440
Miles Groth
#88626
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Dr. Miles Groth is a Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Wagner College who has written on philosophy and psychotherapy. Background Groth has described himself as an existential analyst or Daseinsanalyst. Educated at Franklin and Marshall College, Duquesne University and Fordham University, he has taught psychology and philosophy at St. Vincent College and Wagner College , where he is Professor Emeritus .
Go to Profile#8441
Teguest Guerma
#24157
Overall Influence
Teguest Guerma is an Ethiopian medical doctor specializing in public health and HIV/AIDS. Guerma is appointed by the African Medical and Research Foundation Board of Directors as Director General in June 2010. She has been the Associate Director of the HIV/AIDS Department of the World Health Organization between 2004–2010. She has started her career in HIV/AIDS in Burundi and has since extensively worked in Africa and South East Asia, including as country representative for the World Health Organization and Regional Advisor of HIV/AIDS for the Africa Regional Office of the WHO. She also repr...
Go to Profile#8442
Gary Gottlieb
#44862
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gary L. Gottlieb , is a prominent psychiatrist, healthcare executive and healthcare investor who served as CEO of Partners in Health from 2015-2019. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Gottlieb established, chaired, or led various medical centers and departments. From 2010 to 2015, he was president and CEO of Partners HealthCare. He is the only person to appear eight consecutive times in Modern Healthcare magazine's list of the "50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare."
Go to Profile#8443
George Cram Cook
1873 - 1924 (51 years)
George Cram Cook or Jig Cook was an American theatre producer, director, playwright, novelist, poet, and university professor. Believing it was his personal mission to inspire others, Cook led the founding of the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod in 1915; their "creative collective" was considered the first modern American theatre company. During his seven-year tenure with the group, Cook oversaw the production of nearly one-hundred new plays by fifty American playwrights. He is particularly remembered for producing the first plays of Eugene O'Neill, along with those of Cook's wife Susan Glasp...
Go to Profile#8444
John Baconthorpe
1290 - 1347 (57 years)
John Baconthorpe, OCarm was a learned English Carmelite friar and scholastic philosopher. Life John Baconthorpe was born at Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, he seems to have been the grandnephew of Roger Bacon . In youth, he joined the Carmelite Order, becoming a friar at Blakeney, near Walsingham. He studied at Oxford and Paris. He became regent master of the theology faculty at Paris by 1323. He is believed to have taught theology at Cambridge and Oxford. Eventually, he became known as doctor resolutus, though the implication of this is unclear.
Go to Profile#8445
Aruni Bhatnagar
#122487
Overall Influence
#8446
James K. Min
#50050
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
James K. Min is an American physician, a former professor of radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a former director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill-Cornell Medical Center. Prior to this, he held the title of professor of medicine at both Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, and David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California. He is an expert in cardiovascular imaging and has led numerous multi-center international clinical trials. He studied clinical utility and coronary artery diseases for over ten years.
Go to Profile#8447
Christopher Titmuss
#45923
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Christopher Titmuss is a British Dhamma teacher. He offers retreats on ethics, insight meditation , and wisdom. He is the author of 20 books on such themes as mindfulness, spirituality, teachings of the Buddha, and global issues. He has lived in Totnes, Devon, since 1982.
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Kevin Hewison
#51025
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kevin Hewison is an Australian social and political scientist, formerly the Weldon E. Thornton Distinguished Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Carolina Asia Center. He is now Weldon E. Thornton Distinguished Emeritus Professor at UNC.
Go to Profile#8449
Karola Stotz
#84045
Overall Influence
1963 - 2019 (56 years)
Karola Stotz was a German scholar of philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. With Paul E. Griffiths, she pioneered the use of experimental philosophy methods in the field of philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#8450
Arie Belldegrun
#24232
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Arie S. Belldegrun , FACS, is an Israeli-American urologic oncologist, billionaire businessman and investor. Early life and education Belldegrun was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He received his medical degree from the Hadassah Medical Center at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1974, and conducted his post-graduate studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1979. He completed his urologic surgery residency at Harvard Medical School in 1985, and his Surgical Oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in 1988. He is certified by the American Board of Urology, and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons.
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