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,
#8501
Moshe Mazor
#123164
Overall Influence
#8502
Eleonora Ziemięcka
1819 - 1869 (50 years)
Eleonora Ziemięcka - was a Polish philosopher and publicist. She is often considered to be Poland's first female philosopher. She wrote Thoughts on the Education of Women, and edited the journal Pielgrzym . She has been described as an "anti-Hegelian" and a conservative.
Go to Profile#8503
Jacques Maroger
1884 - 1962 (78 years)
Jacques Maroger was a painter and the technical director of the Louvre Museum's laboratory in Paris. He devoted his life to understanding the oil-based media of the Old Masters. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 and became an influential teacher. His book, The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters, has been criticized by some modern writers on painting who say that the painting medium Maroger promoted is unsound.
Go to Profile#8504
Bernard Lievegoed
#22130
Overall Influence
1905 - 1992 (87 years)
Bernardus Cornelis Johannes Lievegoed was a Dutch medical doctor, psychiatrist and author. He is most famous for establishing a theory of organizational development. He founded the N.P.I., or Netherlands Pedagogical Institute, which works with organizations and individuals to help these realize their economic, social and cultural goals. He also founded the Vrije Hogeschool in Driebergen.
Go to Profile#8505
Benjamin. J. Scherlag
#123182
Overall Influence
#8506
Silas Weir Mitchell
1829 - 1914 (85 years)
Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician, scientist, novelist, and poet. He is considered the father of medical neurology, and he discovered causalgia and erythromelalgia, and pioneered the rest cure.
Go to Profile#8507
Kenneth Wain
#86746
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Kenneth Wain is a major Maltese philosopher and educator. His areas of specialisation in philosophy are chiefly education, ethics, political philosophy. Life Beginnings Wain was born at Sliema, Malta, in 1943. He then pursued his higher studies in philosophy and in education at the University of London, England. He later studied philosophy in Malta.
Go to Profile#8508
Gila Hanna
#43458
Overall Influence
Gila Hanna is a Canadian mathematics educator and philosopher of mathematics whose research interests include the nature and educational role of mathematical proofs, and gender in mathematics education. She is professor emerita in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Toronto, affiliated with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the former director of mathematics education at the Fields Institute, and the founder of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education.
Go to Profile#8509
Philip R. Greipp
#123219
Overall Influence
#8510
Frank Milton Schabel
#123251
Overall Influence
#8511
Joseph A. Bellanti
#123262
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
#8512
Kiyoshi Kurokawa
#123274
Overall Influence
#8513
Robert Bruce Raup
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Robert Bruce Raup , was a Professor in the Philosophy of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. He was a well-known writer in the 1930s, whose writings were influenced by his own teacher and mentor, the American philosopher John Dewey. Like his mentor, Professor Raup is often associated with the pedagogical concept of promoting practical judgment as something appropriate and necessary within the context of a modern democratic society. He was best known for his criticism of the American public education system, which he claimed was inadequate and ineffective in its methods.
Go to Profile#8514
Lloyd P. Aiello
#123305
Overall Influence
#8515
Benjamin F. Ward
#101374
Overall Influence
1954 - 2013 (59 years)
Benjamin F. Ward, Jr. was an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Duke University Department of Philosophy and was the Associate Dean for Faculty Program at Duke. He was an accomplished pianist who began playing at the age of six. He died in 2013 in Durham, NC, after battling a long illness.
Go to Profile#8516
Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi
1270 - 1340 (70 years)
Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi was a Jewish poet, physician, and philosopher; born at Béziers . His Occitan name was En Bonet, which probably corresponds to the Hebrew name Tobiah; and, according to the practices of Hachmei Provence, he occasionally joined to his name that of his father, Abraham Bedersi.
Go to Profile#8517
Keith G. Harding
#120124
Overall Influence
Keith G. Harding CBE FRCGP FRCP FRCS FLSW is a British physician. Harding graduated from Birmingham University with an MBChB degree in Medicine in 1976. Harding is the Director of TIME Institute and Head of the Wound Healing Research Unit in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University. He is Clinical Lead for Wound Healing in the Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust. In September 2013 Harding was appointed Dean of Clinical Innovation at Cardiff University. From 2002 to 2005 he was Head of the Department of Surgery at Cardiff University. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Wound Journal.
Go to Profile#8518
Graeme Catto
#29249
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sir Graeme Robertson Dawson Catto FRSE, Hon FRCSE, FRCP, FRCGP, FFPM, FAoP, FMedSci FKC is a Scottish doctor who was president, later chair, of the General Medical Council until April 2009. He is also currently Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the Universities of London and Aberdeen and was an honorary consultant nephrologist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
Go to Profile#8519
H. Paul Grice
#123355
Overall Influence
#8520
Kong Ing Lie
#123358
Overall Influence
#8521
Osamu Yokosuka
#123363
Overall Influence
#8522
Bruce Perrin Lanphear
#123367
Overall Influence
#8523
Jeremy Chapman
#76562
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jeremy Robert Chapman is a British–Australian nephrologist, renal physician and transplant surgeon. He has been the director of the Division of Medicine and Cancer at Westmead Hospital in Sydney since 2007.
Go to Profile#8524
Steven S. Gallinger
#123374
Overall Influence
#8525
Barbara J. Stoll
#123393
Overall Influence
#8526
Jon Hellesnes
#122203
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Jon Hellesnes is a Norwegian philosopher, novelist and essayist. He was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Tromsø in 1985. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#8527
Lloyd M. Nyhus
#123402
Overall Influence
#8528
Marina Cavazzana
#77472
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Marina Cavazzana is a professor of Paediatric Immunology at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital and the Imagine Institute, as well as an academic at Paris Descartes University. She was awarded the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in 2012 and elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.
Go to Profile#8529
Liu Shipei
1884 - 1919 (35 years)
Liu Shipei was a philologist, Chinese anarchist, and revolutionary activist. While he and his wife, He Zhen were in exile in Japan he became a fervent nationalist. He then saw the doctrines of anarchism as offering a path to social revolution while remaining intent on preserving China's cultural essence, especially Taoism and the records of China's pre-imperial history. In 1909 he unexpectedly returned to China to work for the Manchu Qing government and after 1911 supported Yuan Shikai's attempt to become emperor. After Yuan's death in 1916 he joined the faculty at Peking University. He died ...
Go to Profile#8530
Fatih Mehmet Uckun
#123420
Overall Influence
#8531
Brian M. Mercer
#123433
Overall Influence
#8532
Gunnar Jacks
#123435
Overall Influence
#8533
Kimball Atwood
#11869
Overall Influence
Kimball C. Atwood IV is an American medical doctor and researcher from Newton, Massachusetts. He is retired as an assistant clinical professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and anesthesiologist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
Go to Profile#8534
Petar Alaupovic
#123439
Overall Influence
#8535
Frank Hugh Foster
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Frank Hugh Foster, Ph. D., D.D. was an American clergyman of the Congregational church. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard in 1873. In his activities, he was assistant professor of mathematics in the United States Naval Academy, graduated at Andover Theological Seminary , served as pastor at North Reading, Massachusetts, studied at Göttingen and Leipzig , and from 1882 to 1884 was professor of philosophy in Middlebury College. In 1884 he was appointed professor of Church history in the Oberlin Theological Seminary; from 1892 to 1902, he served at Berkeley, ...
Go to Profile#8536
Nida Vasiliauskaitė
#101350
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Nida Vasiliauskaitė is a Lithuanian philosopher and publicist. As of 2020, Vasiliauskaitė began to receive more widespread attention as a public figure for her views on political matters regarding freedom of choice, rising collectivism as well as the evergrowing influence of political correctness in the country's legal and cultural landscape. She positions herself as a conservative liberal and is the founder of a centre-left minor party Second Lithuania.
Go to Profile#8537
Friedrich Calker
1790 - 1870 (80 years)
Friedrich Calker , German philosopher, was educated in Jena. For a short time, he was a lecturer in Berlin. In 1818, he was called to an extraordinary professorship in the newly founded University of Bonn, becoming an ordinary professor in 1826. He substantially echoed the ideas of his teacher Jakob Fries. His two major works are Urgesetzlehre des Wahren, Guten und Schönen und Denklehre .
Go to Profile#8538
Brian M. Frier
#121666
Overall Influence
Brian M. Frier is a Scottish physician, diabetologist, clinical scientist, and an Honorary Professor of Diabetes at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his many scientific contributions to the pathophysiological understanding of hypoglycemia, a common adverse effect of insulin therapy in diabetic patients whose societal impact has deserved increasing media attention worldwide. His honors include the R.D. Lawrence Lecture of the British Diabetic Association in 1986, the Banting Memorial Lecture at Diabetes UK in 2009, the Camillo Golgi Prize and lecture at the 53rd annual EASD conference in 2017, and the Michael Somogyi Award from the Hungarian Diabetes Association in 2004.
Go to Profile#8539
Mahmut Gazi Yașargil
#123457
Overall Influence
#8540
Heather Zar
#85770
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Heather J Zar is a South African physician and scientist specialising in the care of children with respiratory diseases like asthma, tuberculosis and pneumonia. Career and impact Professor Zar is the Chair of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Cape Town and also serves as the President of the Pan African Thoracic Society.
Go to Profile#8541
Kai Kaarniranta
#123470
Overall Influence
#8542
Charles Morris, Baron Morris of Grasmere
1898 - 1990 (92 years)
Charles Richard Morris, Baron Morris of Grasmere, was an academic philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. Early life and education Morris was born in Sutton Valence, Kent. He was educated at Tonbridge School and at Trinity College, Oxford from which he received a BA, later converted to MA.
Go to Profile#8543
N. J. Weidner
#123482
Overall Influence
#8544
Christopher James Mathias
#123484
Overall Influence
#8545
Colin Strang, 2nd Baron Strang
#106615
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Colin Strang, 2nd Baron Strang was a British professor of philosophy and hereditary peer. Life Strang was the only son of William Strang, 1st Baron Strang, a diplomat who served as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1949 to 1953, and was subsequently the first Convenor of the Crossbench peers in the House of Lords from 1968 to 1974.
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Ernst Hallier
1831 - 1904 (73 years)
Ernst Hallier was a German botanist and mycologist. As a young man he was trained as a gardener, later studying botany at the universities of Berlin, Jena and Göttingen. From 1858 he served as an instructor at the Pharmaceutical Institute in Jena, where in 1860 he obtained his habilitation. In 1865 he became an associate professor, resigning his professorship 19 years later .
Go to Profile#8547
William R. Fair
#123513
Overall Influence
#8548
Osagie Obasogie
#74503
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Osagie Kingsley Obasogie is a law professor and bioethicist at UC Berkeley. He is the Haas Distinguished Chair, Professor of Law at Berkeley Law, and Professor of Bioethics in the UC Berkeley – UCSF Joint Medical Program and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He studies bioethics, sociology, and law, in particular race in law and medicine.
Go to Profile#8549
William Gilbert
1544 - 1603 (59 years)
#8550
Arnaldus de Villa Nova
1240 - 1311 (71 years)
Arnaldus de Villa Nova was a physician and a religious reformer. He is credited with translating a number of medical texts from Arabic, including works by Ibn Sina Avicenna, Abu-l-Salt, and Galen. Biography
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