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,
#8901
Emma Guttman-Yassky
#126580
Overall Influence
Emma Guttman-Yassky is the System Chair of the Department of Dermatology and Waldman professor of dermatology and immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She is also director of its center for excellence in eczema, its occupational dermatitis clinic, and its inflammatory skin disease laboratory.
Go to Profile#8902
Ghulam J. Mufti
#126583
Overall Influence
#8903
Dietrich Georg von Kieser
1779 - 1862 (83 years)
Dietrich Georg von Kieser was a German physician born in Harburg. He studied medicine at the Universities of Würzburg and Göttingen, receiving his doctorate from the latter institution in 1804. For most of his career he was a professor at the University of Jena, where from 1824 to 1862 he served as a "full professor".
Go to Profile#8904
He Yan
195 - 249 (54 years)
He Yan , courtesy name Pingshu, was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the state of Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period of China. He was a grandson of He Jin, a general and regent of the Eastern Han dynasty. His father, He Xian, died early, so his mother, Lady Yin, remarried the warlord Cao Cao. He Yan thus grew up as Cao Cao's stepson. He gained a reputation for intelligence and scholarship at an early age, but he was unpopular and criticised for being arrogant and dissolute. He was rejected for government positions by both emperors Cao Pi and Cao Rui, but became a minister during the rule of Cao Shuang.
Go to Profile#8905
Judah Leon Abravanel
1460 - 1530 (70 years)
Judah Leon Abravanel or Abrabanel , otherwise known by the pen name of Leo the Hebrew , was a Portuguese–Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet. His work Dialogues of Love was one of the most important philosophical works of his time.
Go to Profile#8906
Lady Mary Shepherd
1777 - 1847 (70 years)
Lady Mary Shepherd, née Primrose was a Scottish philosopher who published two philosophical books, one in 1824 and one in 1827. According to Robert Blakey, in her entry in his History of the Philosophy of the Mind, she exercised considerable influence over the Edinburgh philosophy of her day.
Go to Profile#8907
Steven Shafer
#34414
Overall Influence
Steven Shafer is a professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University. In 2011, the International Society of Anaesthetic Pharmacology gave him their lifetime achievement award. Education Shafer graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. He received his M.D. from Stanford and completed his anesthesia residency at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#8908
Adolf Bernhard Marx
1795 - 1866 (71 years)
Friedrich Heinrich Adolf Bernhard Marx [A. B. Marx] was a German music theorist, critic, and musicologist. Life Marx was the son of a Jewish doctor in Halle who, though a member of the congregation, was according to his son a convinced atheist. Marx was given the names Samuel Moses at birth, but changed these at his baptism in 1819.
Go to Profile#8909
Oleksiy Onyschenko
#56740
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Oleksiy Semenovych Onyschenko is a philosopher and culture theorist, Honoured Worker of Science and Technology of Ukraine, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine , Recipient of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology , Professor and Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor Honoris Causa, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He is the Head of the Division of History, Philosophy and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the General Director of V.I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.
Go to Profile#8910
Kyra Gaunt
#81522
Overall Influence
Kyra Danielle Gaunt is an African American ethnomusicologist, Black girlhood studies advocate, social media researcher, feminist performance artist, and professor at the University at Albany in New York State. Gaunt's research focuses on the hidden musicianship of black girls' musical play at the intersections of race, racism, gender, heterosexism, misogynoir, age, and the kinetic-orality of the female body in the age of hip-hop. Her current research focuses on "the unintended consequences of gender, race, and technology from YouTube to Wikipedia."
Go to Profile#8911
Floyd D. Loop
#126653
Overall Influence
#8912
Helmut Wachter
#126661
Overall Influence
#8913
Nils-Åke Hillarp
1916 - 1965 (49 years)
Nils-Åke Hillarp was a Swedish scientist and a prominent force in research on the brain's monoamines. Biography Hillarp was the son of merchant Nils Bengtsson and Hulda, former Johansson, and the brother of Rut Hillarp, a novelist. He became Doctor of Medical Science in 1946. He was appointed assistant and later associate professor of Histology at the University of Lund . The Swedish Medical Research Council enabled him to spend 1960 to 1962 in research at the Department of Pharmacology, University of Gothenburg, then in 1962 he became full professor of histology at the Karolinska Institute ...
Go to Profile#8914
Victor Parsonnet
#126670
Overall Influence
#8915
Roger Dadoun
#84660
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Roger Dadoun was a French philosopher, psychoanalyst, translator, and art critic. He was a professor of comparative literature at Paris Diderot University. Biography Born in Oran, Dadoun was a student at the École Saint-André and subsequently the Lycée Lamoricière. He enrolled in the University of Algiers in 1946, where he studied philosophy, literature, and psychotechnics. He was a journalist for Alger Soir and Fraternité before studying psychology, philosophy, esthetics, and ethnology at the University of Paris. He studied under the likes of Pierre Francastel, Roland Barthes, Gaston Bachela...
Go to Profile#8916
Erik Jorpes
1894 - 1973 (79 years)
Johan Erik Jorpes was a Finnish-born Swedish physician and biochemist. He identified the chemical structure of heparin and developed its clinical applications. Jorpes was the professor of medical chemistry in the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1946–1963.
Go to Profile#8917
Yohanan Alemanno
1435 - 1504 (69 years)
Yohanan Alemanno was an Italian Jewish rabbi, noted Kabbalist, humanist philosopher, and exegete, and teacher of the Hebrew language to Italian humanists including Pico della Mirandola. He taught that the Kabbalah was divine magic.
Go to Profile#8918
James W. Vardiman
#126712
Overall Influence
#8919
Walter Klepetko
#126717
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#8920
Makoto Nagoya-shi Matsuoka
#126729
Overall Influence
#8921
Ronald A. Malt
#126747
Overall Influence
#8922
Richard McLean
#74845
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Richard McLean was a leading artist in the Photorealist movement. Biography Born in Hoquiam, Washington, McLean graduated with a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, where he had studied under Richard Diebenkorn, and received an MFA from Mills College in 1962.
Go to Profile#8923
Philip Baker
#111397
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Philip Newton Baker DM, FRCOG, FMedSci, is a British obstetrician, currently head of the College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology at the University of Leicester. He gained academic degrees from the universities of Nottingham, Cambridge, and Pittsburgh and then held top academic positions at the University of Nottingham and the University of Manchester. Baker has over 450 scientific publications primarily in the field of pre-eclampsia and other obstetric topics.
Go to Profile#8924
P. Aspenberg†
#126803
Overall Influence
#8925
Yemima Ben-Menahem
#81706
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Yemima Ben-Menahem is a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main area of expertise is philosophy of science, in particular philosophy of modern physics. Biography Yemima Goldschmidt earned a BSc in physics and mathematics in 1969 and an MSc in philosophy of science in 1972, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She earned her PhD at the Hebrew University in 1983 with a dissertation entitled "Paradoxes and Intuitions", under the direction of Mark Steiner.
Go to Profile#8926
David J. Moliterno,
#126852
Overall Influence
#8927
Jay Michaelson
#35071
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jay Michaelson is an American writer, journalist, professor, and rabbi. He is a commentator on CNN, and a columnist for Rolling Stone, and other publications, having been the legal affairs columnist at The Daily Beast for eight years. He is the author of ten books, and won the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship and the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists Award for Opinion Writing.
Go to Profile#8928
Kenneth S. Polonsky
#126900
Overall Influence
#8929
Charles A. Baylis
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Charles Augustus Baylis was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Brown University , University of Maryland , Duke University . He was the managing editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic.
Go to Profile#8930
Shinobu Ishihara
1879 - 1963 (84 years)
Shinobu Ishihara was a Japanese ophthalmologist who created the Ishihara color test to detect colour blindness. He was an army surgeon. Early life and career Ishihara graduated from medicine in 1905 on a military scholarship and immediately joined the Imperial Japanese Army as a doctor, serving mainly as a surgeon. He later changed specialties to ophthalmology. In 1908 he returned to the University of Tokyo where he dedicated himself to ophthalmic research. In 1910 he became an instructor at the Army Medical College. There, in addition to seeing patients, he conducted research on "battlefield ophthalmology" and how to select superior soldiers.
Go to Profile#8931
Gaston-Armand Amaudruz
#25292
Overall Influence
1920 - 2018 (98 years)
Gaston-Armand "Guy" Amaudruz was a Swiss neo-fascist political philosopher and Holocaust denier. Biography Initially a supporter of the Swiss fascist movement of Arthur Fonjallaz, he came to wider attention in 1949 when he published Ubu Justicier au Premier Procès de Nuremberg, one of the first works to question the veracity of the Holocaust. Increasingly active in neo-fascism, he organized conferences in Malmö in 1951 which led to the formation of a pan-European nationalist group known as the European Social Movement and then led the more radical splinter group known as the New European Order later that year.
Go to Profile#8932
Marcus M. Reidenberg
#126923
Overall Influence
#8933
David Feldshuh
#42669
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Mark Feldshuh is an American physician, playwright, and author. His 1992 play Miss Evers' Boys, based on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The 1997 adaptation of Miss Evers' Boys was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards .
Go to Profile#8934
Lewis Landsberg
#126924
Overall Influence
#8935
Ingo Zechner
#68835
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ingo Zechner is a philosopher and historian. He is the Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History in Vienna. Research topics: time and memory, aesthetics , film, digital media and Holocaust Studies. Further research on the concept of modernity in the fields of Cultural Studies and Post-structuralism .
Go to Profile#8936
Thomas Hans Newton
#126927
Overall Influence
#8937
Jorge Guillermo Borges
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam was an Argentine lawyer, teacher, writer, philosopher and translator. He was also an anarchist and a follower of Herbert Spencer's philosophy of philosophical anarchism. He was Jorge Luis Borges's father.
Go to Profile#8938
Jules Joseph Lefebvre
1834 - 1912 (78 years)
Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French painter, educator and theorist. Early life Lefebvre was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836. He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet.
Go to Profile#8939
Darrell R. Schroeder
#126964
Overall Influence
#8940
Alfred Prettyman
#71338
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Alfred E. Prettyman is an American publisher. Life Alfred E. Prettyman, was born in February 1935, in Baltimore, Maryland. He is one of five children of Edward Prettyman, the conductor of the Colored Park Band #1 of Baltimore, and Helen Prettyman, teacher. Prettyman attended Douglass High School from which he graduated at age 16. While in high school he also made several appearances on WAAM, now known as WJZ-TV, as a singer on the High Times Program, with host Tommy Dukehart and the afternoon sports and news shows. His appearances on WAAM lead to appearances on the radio and television shows of Paul Whiteman.
Go to Profile#8941
Igor Pribac
#78759
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Igor Pribac is a Slovenian philosopher and political commentator. Life Born in Koper in the Slovenian Littoral, then part of Yugoslavia, where he attended high school. He studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Ljubljana. He obtained a MA with a thesis on Spinoza's criticism of Descartes under the supervision of the philosopher Božidar Debenjak. In 1998, he obtained a PhD with a thesis on natural law in Hobbes and Spinoza. From 1985 to 2021, he was a professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana.
Go to Profile#8942
Maximus of Ephesus
310 - 372 (62 years)
Maximus of Ephesus was a Neoplatonist philosopher. He is said to have come from a rich family, and exercised great influence over the emperor Julian, who was commended to him by Aedesius. Maximus pandered to the emperor's love of magic and theurgy and won a high position at court, where his overbearing manner made him numerous enemies. He spent an interval in prison after the death of Julian, and eventually was executed by Valens.
Go to Profile#8943
Nándor Wagner
#53204
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Nándor Wagner was a Hungarian artist and sculptor. He was the son of a dentist, and was born in Oradea , Romania. Wagner studied at the Budapest Art Academy before and after World War II. He had three art periods as living in Hungary , Sweden and Japan respectively. He became well known for his novel cast stainless steel sculptures made in Sweden and Japan.
Go to Profile#8944
Alessandro Repici
#127028
Overall Influence
#8945
Rudolf Burger
#47672
Overall Influence
1938 - 2021 (83 years)
Rudolf Burger was an Austrian philosopher. Life and career Burger was born in Vienna in the year of the occupation and the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, called Anschluss. His parents were active communists. He concluded his studies of physics at the Technical University in Vienna and thereafter served as an assistant at the Institute of Applied Physics, where he concluded his doctorate in 1965.
Go to Profile#8946
B. Van Den Berg
#127042
Overall Influence
#8947
Song Si-yeol
1607 - 1689 (82 years)
Song Si-yeol , also known by his art names Uam and Ujae or by the honorific Master Song , was a Korean philosopher and politician. Born in Okcheon, North Chungcheong, he was known for his concern with the problems of the common people. He served in governmental service for more than fifty years, and his name features over 3,000 times in the Annals of Joseon Dynasty, the greatest frequency that any individual is mentioned. He was executed by the royal court for writing an inflammatory letter to the king. There is a monument to him in his hometown. He is also known as the calligrapher who ins...
Go to Profile#8948
Jian-kang Zhu
#127056
Overall Influence
#8949
Hadi Alwai
#53169
Overall Influence
1933 - 1998 (65 years)
Hadi Alwai was an Iraqi Marxist intellectual, Islamic historian, and Arab linguist. He was born in Baghdad and grew up in a poor family of Hashemite descent. He studied at Baghdad University and graduated from the college of Economics in 1956. He left Iraq and travelled to China and then Syria. He lived in exile until he died in Damascus and he was buried there. He is interested in topics of Islam and Chinese philosophy. He has researches and books on Islam, Chinese history, and language.
Go to Profile#8950
James David Richardson
#127076
Overall Influence
