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,
#9401
Andreas Schneeweiss
#131168
Overall Influence
#9402
Fujiwara Seika
1561 - 1619 (58 years)
Fujiwara Seika was a Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher and writer during the Edo period. His most well-known student was Hayashi Razan . Life He was born in Harima Province on February 8, 1561 to the Reizei family. At the age of seven or eight he was sent to the Shōkoku-ji temple to become a Zen Buddhist priest. There, he studied Confucianism alongside his Zen studies. In 1596, Fujiwara attempted to travel to Ming China in order to study under an authentic Confucian master, but inclement weather forced the party to turn back. Fujiwara learned more about Neo-Confucianism from the Korean schol...
Go to Profile#9403
Yue-si Wang
#131179
Overall Influence
#9404
Gunnar Alksnis
#95614
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
Gunnar Alksnis was a Latvian-American philosopher and theologian who was specialized in ethics and history of philosophy. Biography Alksnis was born as Gunārs Alksnis on July 1, 1931, in Riga, the capital of Latvia. His parents were John Edward Alksnis and Elza Alksnis. The Alksnis family came to the United States in 1949. In 1955 Gunnar Alksnis received a Bachelor of divinity degree. One year later he was ordained as a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at Trinity Church in Russell County, Kansas. He married Pauline Elizabeth Krug in 1957. The couple had two children, J...
Go to Profile#9405
Jack B. Penney
#131197
Overall Influence
#9406
Jalid Sehouli
#131209
Overall Influence
#9407
Ewa Orłowska
#61569
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Stella Ewa Orłowska is a Polish logician. Her research centers on the concept that everything in logic and set theory can be expressed in terms of relations, and has used this idea to publish works on deduction systemss and model theory for non-classical logic, and logics of non-deterministic and incomplete information. She is a professor at the in Warsaw, and the former president of the Polish Association for Logic and Philosophy of Science.
Go to Profile#9408
Éva Horváth
#131234
Overall Influence
#9409
Rupert Wegerif
#62140
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Rupert Wegerif is a professor of education at the University of Cambridge in England. Overview Prof. Wegerif is a writer and researcher in the field of dialogic education and dialogic education with technology. He has proposed a dialogic theory of education for the Internet Age, and conducted research on education technology as a support for teaching dialogue in classrooms as well as designing for dialogue with the Internet. He was the founder of the Elsevier journal Thinking Skills and Creativity and lead editor until 2017. He is founder and director of the Digital Education Futures Initiati...
Go to Profile#9410
Kenneth Dale Burman
#131259
Overall Influence
#9411
James Robb
#81960
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
James Harry Robb was a professor of philosophy at Marquette University, and was considered an expert in medieval philosophy and of the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Biography James H. Robb was born on April 25, 1918, in Bena, Minnesota, to James Gilbert Robb and Anna Hauck Robb. He attended St. Cloud State Teachers College, completing his Bachelor of Science degree in English and psychology in 1940. After two years of teaching high school English, Robb entered the Army Signal Corps during the Second World War. He served as an officer in the China, India, and Burma theaters until his discharge in 1946.
Go to Profile#9412
Henrique Barros
#131280
Overall Influence
#9413
Martin R. Bennett
#131286
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#9414
Mark A. Mandelkern
#131289
Overall Influence
#9415
Alan H. Horwich
#131290
Overall Influence
#9416
Nicolai Abildgaard
1743 - 1809 (66 years)
Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard was a Danish neoclassical and royal history painter, sculptor, architect, and professor of painting, mythology, and anatomy at the New Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. Many of his works were in the royal Christiansborg Palace , Fredensborg Palace, and Levetzau Palace at Amalienborg.
Go to Profile#9417
John W. Kebabian
#131315
Overall Influence
#9418
Sekar Kathiresan
#131330
Overall Influence
#9419
Stephanus of Alexandria
600 - 622 (22 years)
Stephanus of Alexandria was a Byzantine philosopher and teacher who, besides philosophy in the Neo-Platonic tradition, also wrote on alchemy, astrology and astronomy. He was one of the last exponents of the Alexandrian academic tradition before the Islamic conquest of Egypt.
Go to Profile#9420
Alfredo Arrigo Sadun
#131345
Overall Influence
#9421
R. Clement Iii Darling
#131351
Overall Influence
#9422
Richard A. Gatti
#131355
Overall Influence
#9423
Margaret Hedstrom
#38931
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Margaret L. Hedstrom is an American archivist who is the Robert M. Warner Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information. She has contributed to the field of digital preservation, archives, and electronic records management and holds a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin.
Go to Profile#9424
Craig S. Niederberger
#131386
Overall Influence
#9425
Urbano González Serrano
1848 - 1904 (56 years)
Urbano González Serrano was a Spanish philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, pedagogue, literary critic, and politician. Juan Antonio Garcia posited González was the principal developer of krausoposivitismo, a mixture of positivism and Krausism. These beliefs were determined by Yvan Lissorgues as an amalgamation of "abstract idealism of the Hegelian type and extrapolations of some philosophers and scientists".
Go to Profile#9426
Morris A. Blajchman
#131416
Overall Influence
#9427
Alain E. Reinberg
#131446
Overall Influence
#9428
Gedong Bagus Oka
#47907
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
Gedong Bagus Oka was a Hindu reformer and philosopher in Indonesia. She was one of the foremost authorities on Agama Hindu Dharma and started the Parisada Hindu Dharma Indonesia movement in the 1980s. She was a recipient of the 1994 Jamnalal Bajaj Award.
Go to Profile#9429
Isidró Ferrer
#131487
Overall Influence
#9430
Jerry L. Mclaughlin
#131560
Overall Influence
#9431
Donald Talbot Downing
#131563
Overall Influence
#9432
William Ira Bensinger
#131566
Overall Influence
#9433
Umberto Veronesi
#54355
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Umberto Veronesi was an Italian oncologist, physician, scientist and politician, internationally known for his contributions on prevention and treatment of breast cancer throughout a career spanning over fifty years.
Go to Profile#9434
Thomas Cogswell Upham
1799 - 1872 (73 years)
Thomas Upham was an American philosopher, psychologist, pacifist, poet, author, and educator. He was an important figure in the holiness movement. He became influential within psychology literature and served as the Bowdoin College professor of mental and moral philosophy from 1825-1868. His most popular work, Mental Philosophy received 57 editions over a 73-year period. Additionally, he produced a volume of 16 other books and the first treatise on abnormal psychology, as well as several other works on religious themes and figures. Specific teachings included a conception of mental faculties...
Go to Profile#9435
Herbert Van de Sompel
#94640
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Herbert Van de Sompel is a Belgian librarian, computer scientist, and musician, most known for his role in the development of the Open Archives Initiative and standards such as OpenURL, Object Reuse and Exchange, and the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting.
Go to Profile#9436
Kunihiko Tamaki
#131600
Overall Influence
#9437
Jan Marc Orenstein,
#131602
Overall Influence
#9438
Sandra M. Swain
#36185
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sandra M. Swain is an American oncologist, breast cancer specialist and clinical translational researcher. She is currently a professor of Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine and the Associate Dean for Research Development at Georgetown University Medical Center and MedStar Health as well as an adjunct professor of Medicine at the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. She is also a past President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology , serving from 2012 through 2013.
Go to Profile#9439
Alex Toker
#39651
Overall Influence
Alex Toker is currently a professor at the Department of Pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Signal Transduction and Associate Director of the Cancer Research Institute in the Cancer Center. His research focus on understanding mechanism of cancer including tumor cell survival, invasion and metastasis. He is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Go to Profile#9440
Paul Cobben
#97761
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Paul Gulian Cobben is a Dutch philosopher. His main contribution to philosophy is that he has given an immanent critique of G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy. His research specializes in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit , Science of Logic and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right . He taught at the universities of Amsterdam and Tilburg.
Go to Profile#9441
Patrick Aebischer
#131642
Overall Influence
#9442
Joshua Salomon
#131649
Overall Influence
Joshua A. Salomon is Professor of Health Policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is also director of the Prevention Policy Modeling Lab. He previously served as Professor of Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#9443
Peter B. Berger
#97681
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Peter B. Berger is the Senior Vice President of Clinical Research throughout the North Shore Long Island Jewish Health Care System, the nation's 14th largest health care system, and the one of the largest non-profit systems. He is also a Professor of Cardiology and of Medicine in the Hofstra North Shore - LIJ School of Medicine. Berger practices interventional cardiology at North Shore Hospital.
Go to Profile#9444
Peter N. Thoren
#131661
Overall Influence
#9445
Peter Thaysen Laurberg
#131663
Overall Influence
#9446
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy was a French biophysicist and philosopher. He is probably best remembered by scientists for his work on the surface tension, and other properties, of liquids. Life and work Du Noüy was a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille. His mother wrote many novels, one of which, Amitié Amoureuse, was translated into 16 languages and ran for 600 editions in France. Born and educated in France, du Noüy obtained the degrees of LL.B., Ph.B., Sc.B., Ph.D., and Sc.D.
Go to Profile#9447
Andreas Kjær
#129558
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andreas Kjær is a Danish physician-scientist and European Research Council advanced grantee. He is professor at the University of Copenhagen and chief physician at Rigshospitalet, the National University Hospital of Denmark. He is board certified in Nuclear Medicine and his research is focused on molecular imaging with PET and PET/MRI and targeted radionuclide therapies in cancer. His achievements include development of several new PET tracers that have reached first-in-human clinical use. He has published more than 400 peer-review articles, filed 10 patents, supervised more than 40 PhD students and received numerous prestigious scientific awards over the years.
Go to Profile#9448
Matthias Storme
#34877
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Matthias Edward Storme is a Belgian lawyer, academic and conservative philosopher. Family life Storme was born and raised in a Catholic family in the Belgian city of Ghent. His father Marcel Storme used to be a university law professor, lecturing on the topic of Civil Procedure, and a member of the Belgian Senate for the Flemish Christian Democrats. His grandfather August De Schryver held several ministerships in many Belgian governments, including the Belgian Exile Government in London during World War II. He held his seat in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives until the late 1965. His...
Go to Profile#9449
Manoj Prasad
#67183
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Manoj Prasad is an Indian plant geneticist, molecular biologist and working as a Senior Scientist and JC Bose National Fellow at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research . Known for his research on the stress biology of plants and virology, he is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Virological Society and was a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award f...
Go to Profile#9450
Fred Evans
#110774
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Fred Evans is an American philosopher. He is a Professor of philosophy at Duquesne University and Director of the Center for Interpretative and Qualitative Research. His research and teaching interests are in contemporary continental philosophy , social and political philosophy, and philosophy of language, psychology and technology.
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