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).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#9501
Albert Busuttil
1891 - 1956 (65 years)
Albert Busuttil was a Maltese minor philosopher. In philosophy he was mostly interested in politics and labour rights. Life Busuttil was born at Sliema, Malta in 1891. He studied at the Lyceum and at the University of Malta, and later joined the Jesuits. He continued his philosophical studies in Jersey, France, and his theology in Posillipo, Naples, in Italy, both centres of Jesuit teaching. He was ordained a priest in 1922. Afterwards, he taught ethics in Ireland, and history of philosophy in Catania, Sicily. In Malta he taught philosophy, apologetics, mathematics, physics, and sociology. Between 1928 and 1945 Busuttil was Prefect of Studies at St.
Go to Profile#9502
Dr. David B. Sachar
#132100
Overall Influence
#9503
Pyotr Kireevsky
1808 - 1856 (48 years)
Pyotr Vasilievich Kireevsky was a Russian folklorist and philologist many of whose materials remain unpublished to this day. Kireevsky was an ardent Slavophile like his elder and more famous brother Ivan Vasilievich . He spent his entire life collecting folk songs and lyrics. Some of these were contributed by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksey Koltsov, and Vladimir Dahl.
Go to Profile#9504
Konstantin Chkheidze
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Konstantin Alexandrovich Chkheidze was a Czech-Georgian-Russian writer, philosopher, and White émigré. Born to a Georgian father, of the noble family of Chkheidze, and a Russian mother, Chkheidze entered the Imperial Russian military service and fought on the side of White armies during the civil war in the North Caucasus. In 1921, as part of the defeated White Cossack forces, Chkheidze was evacuated to Lemnos whence he moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1923. Chkheidze graduated from the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague and then lectured there. He joined the Eurasianists in the 1920s and emerged as one of their leaders in the 1930s.
Go to Profile#9505
Michael Zank
#107377
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Michael Zank is a German-born American author, specializing in Jewish theology and philosophy. Work and career He studied Christian and Jewish theology in Germany before moving to the United States, after spending a short time in Israel. He received his PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He now works there as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Religion Department and teaches introductory level courses on the Bible, Moses and Jerusalem as well as advanced courses in the philosophy of religion. He is considered to be a leading expert in German Jewish intellectual history.
Go to Profile#9506
F. Stuart Foster Foster
#132135
Overall Influence
#9507
Nicholas Stephen Bodor
#132142
Overall Influence
#9508
Maurice Dongier
#39974
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Maurice Dongier was a Canadian neuropsychiatrist at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre in Montreal, Quebec. He is a Knight of the French Legion of Honour as well as a connoisseur of wine and fine cooking. Dongier is a founding member of the Société française de Psycho-oncologie .
Go to Profile#9509
Heinrich von Zügel
1850 - 1941 (91 years)
Heinrich Johann von Zügel was a German painter who specialized in pictures of farm and domestic animals, often posed with a human in a dramatic or humorous situation. Life Beginning in 1867, Zügel was a student at the art school in Stuttgart under Bernhard von Neher and Heinrich von Rustige, where he studied animal and genre painting. Two years later, he transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, but was not inspired by the teaching methods of Karl von Piloty and decided to work independently. Afterwards, he spent some time in Vienna and finally settled in Munich. Anton Braith became an important mentor for him there.
Go to Profile#9510
Janet G. Travell
#10002
Overall Influence
1901 - 1997 (96 years)
Janet Graham Travell was an American physician and medical researcher. Early life and education She was born in 1901 to John Willard and Janet Eliza Travell. Heavily influenced by her father's profession of physician, Travell made the decision to pursue a career in the medical field. In June 1929, in New York City, Janet married John William Gordon Powell, who was an investment counselor. They had two daughters—Janet and Virginia. At the age of 95, Travell died of heart failure at her home in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#9511
Biykem Bozkurt
#132153
Overall Influence
#9512
Clinton Jencks
#39744
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Clinton Jencks was an American lifelong activist in labor and social justice causes, most famous for union organizing among New Mexico's miners, acting in the 1954 film Salt of the Earth , and enduring years of government prosecution for allegedly falsifying a Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavit.
Go to Profile#9513
John V. Wayland Frangioni
#132159
Overall Influence
#9514
Riccardo Asero
#132172
Overall Influence
#9515
Yvonne Tasker
#31705
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Yvonne Tasker is a British author and professor of media and communication in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Tasker was previously professor of film studies and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University of East Anglia.
Go to Profile#9516
Horst Sievert
#132190
Overall Influence
#9517
Lawrence Kramer
#111688
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lawrence Kramer is an American musicologist and composer. His academic work is closely associated with the humanistic, culturally oriented New Musicology, now more often referred to as cultural or critical musicology. Writing in 2001, Alastair Williams described Kramer as a pioneering figure in the disciplinary change that brought musicology, formerly an outlier, into the broader fold of the humanities.
Go to Profile#9518
Thomas Gordon
1714 - 1797 (83 years)
Prof Thomas Gordon FRSE was a Scottish philosopher, mathematician and antiquarian. He was Professor of Humanity at King's College, Aberdeen. He was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.
Go to Profile#9519
Wade G. Regehr
#132208
Overall Influence
#9520
Wendell F. Rosse
#132209
Overall Influence
#9521
R. Robertson Young
#132227
Overall Influence
#9522
Vicente Iii Valero
#132251
Overall Influence
#9523
Gary, J. Kelloff
#132261
Overall Influence
#9524
Asheesh Bedi
#132269
Overall Influence
#9525
Lawrence Haworth
#100313
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Lawrence Lindley "Larry" Haworth is an American-born, Canadiann philosopher. Haworth is the author of several books of political philosophy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.
Go to Profile#9526
Normann H. Silverman
#132277
Overall Influence
#9527
Jonathon Keats
#56560
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Jonathon Keats is an American conceptual artist and experimental philosopher known for creating large-scale thought experiments. Keats was born in New York City and studied philosophy at Amherst College. He now lives in San Francisco and Italy.
Go to Profile#9528
Stig Frøland
#89808
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Stig Sophus Frøland is a Norwegian professor of medicine. He was born in Sør-Odal as a brother of Dag Frøland. He took the dr.med. degree in 1973 and specialist qualification in internal medicine in 1980, later also in infectious diseases in 1983. He has served as chief physician at Rikshospitalet from 1986 and professor at the University of Oslo from 1993 to his retirement.
Go to Profile#9529
Ingrid Ursula Scott
#132305
Overall Influence
#9530
Richard H. Quarles
#132309
Overall Influence
#9531
Donald W. Paty
#132310
Overall Influence
#9532
Gerson ben Solomon Catalan
1288 - 1344 (56 years)
Gerson ben Solomon Catalan, also known as Gerson ben Solomon of Arles, was a French Jewish author of the thirteenth century. He compiled an encyclopedia entitled Sha'ar ha-Shamayim in Hebrew, which was widely read later in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. He lived in southern France , possibly at Arles. He died, possibly at Perpignan, toward the end of the thirteenth century.
Go to Profile#9533
Michael Gottlieb Agnethler
1719 - 1752 (33 years)
Michael Gottlieb Agnethler was a German botanist and numismatist. Early life Michael Agnethler was born to an aristocratic Transylvanian Saxon family of Hermannstadt . The Agnethlers had been of a long, prestigious history, with many local socialites in the region. The name of the family originated from the Saxon town of Agnetheln.
Go to Profile#9534
Hans-helmut Kornhuber
#132327
Overall Influence
#9535
Susumu Seino
#132337
Overall Influence
#9536
Saul M. Genuth
#132354
Overall Influence
#9537
Vivien Thomas
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Vivien Theodore Thomas was an American laboratory supervisor who developed a procedure used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was the assistant to surgeon Alfred Blalock in Blalock's experimental animal laboratory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas was unique in that he did not have any professional education or experience in a research laboratory; however, he served as supervisor of the surgical laboratories at Johns Hopkins for 35 years. In 1976, Hopkins awarded him an honorary doctorate and named him an instructor of surgery for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#9538
Peter H. Sugden
#132362
Overall Influence
#9539
Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz
#75273
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz is a German Catholic philosopher and author. She studies Catholic religious philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries. Biography Education Gerl-Falkovitz studied philosophy, German Studies, and political science at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg from 1965 to 1971; she earned her doctorate from the University of Munich in 1971. In an interview in 2021, she said of this formative period in her life, "The theology of the 1960s, when I was studying in Munich, was not attractive for me: too much historical criticism, also in methodology, too much existentia...
Go to Profile#9540
Sante Tura
#132367
Overall Influence
#9541
Roberto J. Groszmann
#132381
Overall Influence
#9542
Wolfgang Holzgreve
#132385
Overall Influence
#9543
Daniel G. Coit
#132393
Overall Influence
#9544
Charles W. Stratton
#132408
Overall Influence
#9545
Jeffrey Rosenfeld
#68263
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Victor Rosenfeld is an Australian neurosurgeon and professor of medicine. He is a senior neurosurgeon in the Department of Neurosurgery at The Alfred Hospital, and the Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Monash University, as well as being a major general in the Australian Defence Force, where he has served as a general surgeon since 1984. His research has focussed on traumatic brain injury, bionic vision, and medical engineering. He is best known for devising an operation to remove hypothalamic haematomas from children's brains. Since 2021 he has been the Patron of the Australian Fri...
Go to Profile#9546
Chris Bobonich
#118436
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Christopher Bobonich is an American philosopher and a leading scholar of Ancient Greek philosophy, especially known for his work on Plato's Laws. He is currently Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Classics at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#9547
Stephen D. Wiviott
#132435
Overall Influence
#9548
Margaret Becklake
#47668
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Margaret Rigsby Becklake, was a Canadian academic and epidemiologist. Margaret focused her career on the study of environmental and occupational determinants of childhood and adult airway disease, specifically the lung health of asbestos miners and millers.
Go to Profile#9549
Robert William Teasell
#132446
Overall Influence
#9550
Rona M. M. Mackie
#132448
Overall Influence
