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,
#9251
Jennie Brand-Miller
#85180
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Janette Cecile Brand-Miller , also known as Jennie Brand-Miller, Janette Cecile Brand and GI Jennie, is an Australian academic who holds a chair in human nutrition in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney. She is best known for her research and publications on the glycemic index, a term originated by David J. Jenkins of the University of Toronto, and its role in human health.
Go to Profile#9252
Stephen Hugh Caldwell
#129640
Overall Influence
#9253
Jacek Jassem
#129653
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#9254
Lucien B. Guze
#129655
Overall Influence
#9255
Mitchell H. Katz
#129662
Overall Influence
#9256
Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier
#78332
Overall Influence
1918 - 2017 (99 years)
The Rev. Edmond La Beaume Cherbonnier was an American scholar in the field of religious studies. He served as Professor of Religion at Trinity College, Connecticut, and as a deacon in the Episcopal Church. He is known for his work on Christianity, analyzing idolatry and distinctions between mystical and biblical thought, his efforts on developing and advancing religious studies, and for founding the Religion Department at Trinity College in 1955.
Go to Profile#9257
Nikola Biller-Andorno
#120463
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Nikola Biller-Andorno is a German bioethicist. She is Professor and Director of the Institute of Biomedical Ethics of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Biller-Andorno studied medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg as well as philosophy and social sciences at the University of Hagen, Germany . Multiple scholarships and awards allowed her to pursue her research interests at prestigious institutions such as the Hastings Center , Yale University and the Harvard Medical School . After completing her habilitation thesis in ethics and theory of medicine at the University of Göttingen...
Go to Profile#9258
Jeffrey A. Cadeddu
#129689
Overall Influence
#9259
Jürgen Ludwig
#129695
Overall Influence
#9260
Dennis M. Bier
#129714
Overall Influence
#9261
Robert L. Vessella
#129718
Overall Influence
#9262
Ellen R. Wald
#129719
Overall Influence
#9263
Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld
1605 - 1655 (50 years)
Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld was a German philosopher, logician and encyclopedic writer from Siegen. A follower of Ramus and pupil of Johann Heinrich Alsted at the Herborn Academy , Bisterfeld became head of the academy in Weissenburg in Transylvania, where he died.
Go to Profile#9264
Geoffrey Hunter
#95192
Overall Influence
1925 - 2000 (75 years)
Geoffrey Basil Bailey Hunter was a British professor, philosopher, and logician. Hunter was Professor Emeritus of the University College of Wales, Bangor, where he was professor from 1978 until he retired in 1992. He also taught at Queen's University Kingston, Ontario and was a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds , and reader in Logic at the University of St Andrews . Geoffrey was probably most known for his work titled Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First-Order Logic, published in 1971.
Go to Profile#9265
Géza Révész
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Géza Révész was a Hungarian-Dutch psychologist of Jewish heritage, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of European psychology. Life Révész was born in the Siófok, Hungary, a town located at Lake Balaton, where his father owned a famous vineyard. He studied law in Budapest and received his doctorate in 1902, when he finished his dissertation entitled Das Trauerjahr der Witwe.
Go to Profile#9266
Stephan Von Haehling
#129781
Overall Influence
#9267
Roger D. Cone
#90402
Overall Influence
Roger D. Cone is the Mary Sue Coleman Director of the Life Sciences Institute and the Vice Provost for the Biosciences Initiative at the University of Michigan; a member of the editorial board for the journal Cell Metabolism; and a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine. He is a noted researcher in the biological underpinnings of obesity, anorexia, cachexia and other eating and metabolic disorders.
Go to Profile#9268
Nuel D. Jr Belnap
#129796
Overall Influence
#9269
Joseph Mercola
#3438
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Joseph Michael Mercola is an American alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Internet business personality. He markets largely unproven dietary supplements and medical devices. On his website, Mercola and colleagues advocate unproven and pseudoscientific alternative health notions including homeopathy and opposition to vaccination. These positions have received persistent criticism. Mercola is a member of several alternative medicine organizations as well as the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which promotes scientifically discredited views about medicine and disease.
Go to Profile#9270
Stanley S. Siegelman
#129816
Overall Influence
#9271
Richard Ν. Fine,
#129823
Overall Influence
#9272
David Juurlink
#106934
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
David Juurlink is a Canadian pharmacologist and internist. He is head of the Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology division at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario, as well as a medical toxicologist at the Ontario Poison Centre and a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. He is known for researching adverse effects caused by drug interactions, with some of this research funded by a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. He has been very critical of his fellow physicians' regular prescribing of dangerous opioids like Tramadol and fentanyl.
Go to Profile#9273
Mehdi Tavassoli
#129875
Overall Influence
#9274
Charmadas
168 BC - 103 BC (65 years)
Charmadas was a Greek Academic Skeptic philosopher and a disciple of Carneades at the Academy in Athens. He was famous for his elegant style. Charmadas introduced the teaching of rhetoric into the Academy and is said to have had many students. He was a pupil of Carneades for seven years and later he led his own school in the Ptolemaion, a gymnasium in Athens. He was from Alexandria and seems to have lived there, before he went to Athens around 145 BC He was an excellent rhetorician and famous for his outstanding memory and for his ability to memorize whole books and then recite them. Like Philo of Larissa he seems to have pursued a more moderate philosophical scepticism.
Go to Profile#9275
Wilhelm von Kaulbach
1805 - 1874 (69 years)
Wilhelm von Kaulbach was a German painter, noted mainly as a muralist, but also as a book illustrator. His murals decorate buildings in Munich. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
Go to Profile#9276
Kenneth J. Leveno
#129909
Overall Influence
#9277
Paolo Giovio
1483 - 1552 (69 years)
Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian, biographer, and prelate. Early life Little is known about Giovio's youth. He was a native of Como; his family was from the Isola Comacina of Lake Como. His father, a notary, died around 1500. He was educated under the direction of his elder brother Benedetto, a humanist and historian. Although interested in literature, he was sent to Padua to study medicine. He graduated in 1511.
Go to Profile#9278
Emanuele Zucca
#129914
Overall Influence
#9279
Jeffrey S. Ginsberg
#129922
Overall Influence
#9280
Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno
1470 - 1550 (80 years)
Ovadia ben Jacob Sforno was an Italian rabbi, Biblical commentator, philosopher and physician. A member of the Sforno family, he was born in Cesena about 1475 and died in Bologna in 1549. Biography After acquiring in his native town a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, rabbinic literature, mathematics, and philosophy, he went to Rome to study medicine. There his learning won for him a prominent place among scholars; and when Reuchlin was at Rome and desired to perfect his knowledge of Hebrew literature, Cardinal Domenico Grimani advised him to apply to Obadiah.
Go to Profile#9281
Julia R. Greer
#88970
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Julia Rosolovsky Greer is a materials scientist and is the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology . As of 2019, Greer is also the director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech.
Go to Profile#9282
Viking Olov Björk
#129969
Overall Influence
#9283
Darrel Parthipan Francis
#130006
Overall Influence
#9284
Hamid Naficy
#22103
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Hamid Naficy is an Iranian-born American filmmaker, writer, scholar, and educator. He is the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication at Northwestern University in the department of Radio/Film/Television, an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Art History, and a core member of the Middle East and North African Studies Program.
Go to Profile#9285
Jack R. Radford
#130032
Overall Influence
#9286
Dorothy B. Porter
#44388
Overall Influence
1905 - 1995 (90 years)
Dorothy Louise Porter Wesley was a librarian, bibliographer and curator, who built the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University into a world-class research collection. She was the first African American to receive a library science degree from Columbia University. Porter published numerous bibliographies on African American history. When she realized that the Dewey Decimal System had only two classification numbers for African Americans, one for slavery and one for colonization, she created a new classification system that ordered books by genre and author.
Go to Profile#9287
Richard L. Anderson
#130040
Overall Influence
#9288
Bertrand Stern
#20821
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bertrand Stern is a German author and philosopher living in Siegburg. He describes himself as a freischaffender Philosoph . He focuses on issues critical to civilization with regard to human dignity, in particular the outbreak from the school ideology and aspects of free education, as well as questions about medicine and health, money and work, and transport and mobility.
Go to Profile#9289
Cirilo Rozman
#130046
Overall Influence
#9290
John Timothy Greenamyre
#130053
Overall Influence
#9291
Peter J. Roughley
#130055
Overall Influence
#9292
Joseph Vialatoux
1880 - 1970 (90 years)
Joseph Vialatoux was a French Catholic philosopher based in Lyon, a leading member of the Catholic social activist Chronique sociale. He had liberal Christian democratic views. He was a prolific author, and an early critic of the right-wing Action Française.
Go to Profile#9293
Muro Kyūsō
1658 - 1734 (76 years)
or Muro Naokiyo , was a Neo-Confucian scholar and an official of the Tokugawa shogunate during the rule of Tokugawa Yoshimune. Muro was responsible for the reintroduction of orthodox neo-Confucianist thought into government and societal life, attempting to reverse the growth of unorthodox views that were becoming popular during this time. He was also an author of Neo-Confucianist works, such as the Shundai Zatsuwa and Rikuyu engi taigi, although much of his work would only be known posthumously. Muro was a proponent of the Chu Hsi school of thought.
Go to Profile#9294
Johan Degenaar
#59257
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Johannes Jacobus Degenaar OIS was a South African philosopher, and Emertitus Professor at the Stellenbosch University, who is considered "one of the most respected and influential philosophers in South Africa."
Go to Profile#9295
Charalabos H. Pothoulakis
#130076
Overall Influence
#9296
John C. Mcgiff
#130095
Overall Influence
#9297
Martin I. Resnick
#130096
Overall Influence
#9298
Ben Carson
#21275
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. is an American retired neurosurgeon, academic, author, and politician who served as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021. A pioneer in the field of neurosurgery, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries. Carson is one of the most prominent Black conservatives in America.
Go to Profile#9299
Dean Rickles
#69502
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Dean Rickles is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics at the University of Sydney and a Director of the Sydney Centre for Time. Life Dean Rickles was born in Hull, Yorkshire. He briefly trained as a concert pianist at the London College of Music, before switching to philosophy. He received an MA from the University of Sheffield and PhD from the University of Leeds . During a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary in 2005, he worked on the application of complex systems theory to population health. He took up a lectureship at the University of Sydney in ...
Go to Profile#9300
Seigou Kitano
#130124
Overall Influence
