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,
#9051
F. A. Murphy
#53732
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Frederick A. Murphy is a retired American virologist. He was a member of the team of scientists that discovered the Ebola virus at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , where he served as Chief of Viropathology, near Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1976, and is internationally known for his work on rabies, encephalitis and hemorrhagic fevers, with over 250 peer-reviewed journal articles. Murphy was as an electron microscopy pioneer in the field of virology, best recognized for obtaining the first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle at the CDC in 1976.
Go to Profile#9052
Chen Pei-jer
#120932
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Chen Pei-jer is a Taiwanese hepatologist and an academician of Academia Sinica. Early life and education Chen Pei-jer was raised by his grandparents in Shalu, Taichung, while his parents worked in northern Taiwan. He and his three siblings had a strict routine, awakening at 6:00 am daily to exercise and do chores alongside their grandfather, followed by Chinese calligraphy practice. Chen earned a medical degree from National Taiwan University in 1981, and he completed a doctorate at University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1987.
Go to Profile#9053
Józef Pieter
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Józef Pieter was a Polish psychologist, philosopher, pedagogue, researcher, and lecturer. Pr. Pieter dedicated his life and work to the study of the psychology and mechanisms of teaching and learning, the comparison of pedagogical systems, the process of reasoning and the methodology and organisation of scientific work.
Go to Profile#9054
Louis Sala-Molins
#81248
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Louis Sala-Molins is an essayist and political philosophy professor at Paris-I and Toulouse-II universities. He took part in UNESCO Headquarters to events dedicated to the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery . His field of work have been the works by Ramon Llull.
Go to Profile#9055
John William. Deluca
#127998
Overall Influence
#9056
Robert J. Biggar
#127999
Overall Influence
#9057
Folkert Kuipers
#128005
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#9058
Thomas L. Perry
#128022
Overall Influence
#9059
Richard O. Iii Cannon
#128036
Overall Influence
#9060
Mark Crispin Miller
#25497
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University. He has promoted conspiracy theories about U.S. presidential elections, the September 11 attacks and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as well as misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
Go to Profile#9061
Richard Bradley
#78125
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Richard Bradley is a South African philosopher. He is a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, a project leader at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and the former editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy.
Go to Profile#9062
Yong Poovorawan
#22123
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Yong Poovorawan is a professor of pediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. He is known for research in the fields of pediatric hepatology, viral hepatitis and virology, and avian influenza.
Go to Profile#9063
George R. Buchanan
#9064
Fiona Wood
#9072
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Fiona Melanie Wood is an Australian plastic surgeon and burns specialist working in Perth, Western Australia. She is the director of the Royal Perth Hospital burns unit and the Western Australia Burns Service, and developed spray-on skin in collaboration with Marie Stoner. In addition, Wood is also a clinical professor with the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Western Australia and director of the Fiona Wood Foundation .
Go to Profile#9065
Danuta Gierulanka
#52041
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Danuta Gierulanka was a Polish mathematics educator, psychologist, philosopher, and translator. She was associated with Roman Ingarden and known for her work in phenomenology and the philosophy of mathematics.
Go to Profile#9066
Nagahiro George Saijo
#128140
Overall Influence
#9067
David Ross Camidge
#128145
Overall Influence
#9068
Martin F. Kagnoff
#128147
Overall Influence
#9069
Alexander Stuart Douglas
#115009
Overall Influence
1921 - 1998 (77 years)
Alexander Stuart Douglas FRSE FRCP was a physician and haematologist. He was Regius Professor of Medicine at Aberdeen University from 1970 to 1985. He received international acclaim for his discoveries in relation to blood coagulation, causes of abnormal bleeding, and causes of thrombosis. He played a key role in identifying the role of anticoagulants and antiplatelet agents in preventing heart attacks, setting a modern benchmark for the treatment of heart disease.
Go to Profile#9070
Ze'ev Ronai
#126090
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ze’ev Ronai is an Israeli-American cancer research scientist and Chief Scientific Advisor at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla. Education Ze’ev Ronai was born in Haifa in 1956. He attended Hugim High School in Haifa, and received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#9071
Bruce R. Zetter
#128158
Overall Influence
#9072
Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen
1292 - 1361 (69 years)
Dölpopa Shérap Gyeltsen , known simply as Dölpopa, was a Tibetan Buddhist master. Known as "The Buddha from Dölpo," a region in modern Nepal, he was the principal exponent of the shentong teachings, and an influential member of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Go to Profile#9073
George Scott Boyd
#128176
Overall Influence
#9074
Allan E. Tonelli
#128177
Overall Influence
#9075
Frank H. De Jong
#128178
Overall Influence
#9076
Robert Austrian
#42616
Overall Influence
1916 - 2007 (91 years)
Robert Austrian was an Americann infectious diseases physician and, along with Maxwell Finland, one of the two most important researchers into the biology of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the 20th century.
Go to Profile#9077
Seth M. Holmes
#38960
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Seth M. Holmes is Chancellor's Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley. He also serves as founder and co-chair of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, co-director of the MD/Ph.D. Track in Medical Anthropology coordinated between UC Berkeley and UCSF. A cultural anthropologist and physician, Holmes focuses on social inequalities, immigration, ethnic hierarchies, health and health care. His work has provided a particularly strong ethnographic critique of behaviorism in medicine.
Go to Profile#9078
Hans-gu ̈ Nther Beger
#128182
Overall Influence
#9079
Amit‐ Bar‐or
#128188
Overall Influence
#9080
Clement Joseph Mcdonald
#128201
Overall Influence
#9081
Warren G. Guntheroth
#128203
Overall Influence
#9082
Julie Parsonnet
#73088
Overall Influence
Julie Parsonnet is an infectious disease expert. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and American Society for Clinical Investigation. Early life and education Parsonnet grew up in Millburn, New Jersey alongside father Victor Parsonnet and attended Millburn High School. Following high school, she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in history and science. As a sophomore at Harvard, she spent a summer as an intern with Senator Clifford P. Case.
Go to Profile#9083
Hirofumi Yasue†
#128217
Overall Influence
#9084
Pravin M. Shah
#128219
Overall Influence
#9085
John Moriarty
#54724
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
John Moriarty was an Irish writer and philosopher. A native of County Kerry, he was educated in Listowel and at University College Dublin. In 1974, he moved to England from Canada where he had taught English literature at the University of Manitoba, and subsequently became a live-in gardener in the Carmelite monastery at Boars Hill, Oxford.
Go to Profile#9086
Joseph Berger
#106756
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Joseph R. Berger is an American internist and neurologist who is known for his research interests in progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy , the neurological complications of HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other inflammatory disorders of the brain. Particularly, he contributed research on why PML occurs more frequently in AIDS than in other immunosuppressive conditions.
Go to Profile#9087
Gaetano Di Chiara
#128284
Overall Influence
#9088
Jacques Garelli
#98287
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Jacques Garelli was a French-language poet and philosopher, author of more than fifteen works. Biography A former UNESCO expert in Zaire with the historian of Africa Aurelio Pace, the father of the artist Joseph Pace, he taught at Yale University , New York University and Amiens University . Influenced by the thought of Martin Heidegger and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the main object of his philosophical research remains phenomenology and ontology.
Go to Profile#9089
Matthew Raymond Smith
#128287
Overall Influence
#9090
George G. Rowe
#128294
Overall Influence
#9091
Albrecht Riethmüller
#79775
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Albrecht Riethmüller is a German musicologist. Life Born in 1947 in Stuttgart, Riethmüller studied musicology, philosophy and modern German literature at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1974 from Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht with the dissertation Die Musik als Abbild der Realität, and habilitated in 1984 with his study on Ferruccio Busoni's Poetik. He first took a guest professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign , and held substitute professorships at the universities of Heidelberg, and Frankfurt . Riethmüller held additional teach...
Go to Profile#9092
Markolf Hanefeld
#128330
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
#9093
Stephen Colagiuri
#128351
Overall Influence
#9094
James William Larrick
#128369
Overall Influence
#9095
Mary C. Sano
#128376
Overall Influence
#9096
Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was an Iranian philosopher and jurist. Early life Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was born in 1890 in Qazvin Province, Iran. His family were the relatives of Molla Khalil Qazvini. His father Abul Hasan Ibn Khalil Al Hosseini was also a jurist. The family name Rafiee was given to him from his grandfather, Ayatollah Mirza Rafie.
Go to Profile#9097
Giorgio Ciprandi
#128381
Overall Influence
#9098
Joav Merrick,
#128383
Overall Influence
#9099
Gheorghe Marinescu
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
Gheorghe Marinescu was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of Neurology. History After attending the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, Marinescu received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeș, who had already published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness, and dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia.
Go to Profile#9100
Kenneth L. Brigham
#128387
Overall Influence
