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,
#9551
Steffie Woolhandler
#55681
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Stephanie Joan "Steffie" Woolhandler is an American primary care physician and medical researcher. An advocate for single-payer health insurance in the United States, she is a co-founder and board member of Physicians for a National Health Program. She is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Health Policy at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and an adjunct clinical professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is also a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she formerly co-directed the general internal medicine internship program.
Go to Profile#9552
Stephen A. Feig
#132471
Overall Influence
#9553
Marwan I. Hariz
#132472
Overall Influence
#9554
Yingbo Hua
#132477
Overall Influence
#9555
Joaquim Mullol
#132480
Overall Influence
#9556
Talmadge E. King
#132491
Overall Influence
#9557
Ann M. Mongoven
#105353
Overall Influence
Ann M. Mongoven is an American philosophy professor and medical ethicist. She earned her Ph.D. in religious studies/ethics from the University of Virginia in 1996 and a M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2006. Mongoven taught courses at Indiana University/Bloomington before going on to teach at Michigan State University where she currently holds a dual appointment with the philosophy department and the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. Mongoven is also a Michigan State University Lilly Teaching Fellow and was an ethics consultant ...
Go to Profile#9558
Jean-paul Ryckaert
#132551
Overall Influence
#9559
John Douglas Swales
#132552
Overall Influence
#9560
Edward H. Soule
#132570
Overall Influence
#9561
Steven M. Podos
#132572
Overall Influence
#9562
Alexander Schnell
#109385
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Alexander Schnell is a German philosopher and professor at the University of Wuppertal. Biography Alexander Schnell grew up in West Berlin and in Heidelberg. After taking his Abitur and Baccalauréat at the French Gymnasium in Berlin in 1989, he studied engineering at the University Paris 6 and philosophy at the University Paris 1 .
Go to Profile#9563
Ludwig Mach
1868 - 1951 (83 years)
Ludwig Mach was an Austrian physician and chemist. Building on the work of Ludwig Zehnder in 1891, Mach added refinements to an instrument which became known as the Mach–Zehnder interferometer. He went on to employ photography for collecting visual data streamlines in the field of Aerodynamics.
Go to Profile#9564
Carl, R. Alving
#132583
Overall Influence
#9565
Lucien Engelen
#29692
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Lucien Engelen is the CEO of Transform.health, Edge Fellow Center for the Edge Deloitte, and a LinkedIn influencer. Biography Lucien Engelen has worked at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre since 2007 as Head of the Regional Emergency Healthcare Network. He is the founder and director of the Radboudumc REshape Innovation Center 2010-2018. He left Radboudumc as of December 2018. and via his company Transform.health he became one of the Edge Fellows at Deloitte Center for the Edge . He is an international speaker on healthcare innovation and as of December 2020 joined Erasmus Universi...
Go to Profile#9566
Igino Petrone
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Igino Petrone was an Italian jurist and philosopher. He was born in the town of Limosano in the province of Campobasso. In 1891 he obtained a baccalaureate in law at the University of Naples. He obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study the philosophy of rights in Munich. He obtained in 1894, a teaching position at the University of Rome. In 1897 he was appointed professor of legal philosophy at the University of Modena. In 1900 he obtained a professorship of moral philosophy at the University of Naples. All the while, he was very active in writing about his field of interest. He was ...
Go to Profile#9567
Alan S. Rosenthal
#132602
Overall Influence
#9568
Waldemar A. Carlo
#132606
Overall Influence
#9569
Allen Vigneron
#42142
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Allen Henry Vigneron is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit in Michigan and Ecclesiastical Superior of the Cayman Islands, serving since 2009. Vigneron previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Oakland in California from 2003 to 2009 and as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Detroit from 1996 to 2003.
Go to Profile#9570
Paolo Vercellini
#132621
Overall Influence
#9571
Graham Nichol
#132623
Overall Influence
#9572
Mark Kermode
#27177
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter and podcaster. He presents a weekly Scala Radio film music show and the BBC Four documentary series Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, and is co-presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Screenshot with Ellen E. Jones, and the film-review podcast Kermode & Mayo's Take alongside long-time collaborator Simon Mayo. He has contributed to the BFI's film magazine Sight & Sound and between September 2013 and September 2023 he served as chief film critic for The Observer. Since January 2016 he has presented a monthly live show, MK3D, at the BFI South Bank.
Go to Profile#9573
D. I. Suchianu
1895 - 1985 (90 years)
Dumitru Ion Suchianu, most often shortened to D. I. Suchianu or D.I.S. , was a Romanian essayist, translator, economist and film theorist, also noted for his participation in politics. The son of a distinguished Armenian teacher-editor and his Romanian socialist wife, he was acquainted with, and inspired by, writer Ion Luca Caragiale, who visited his childhood home. Attending Iași's Boarding High School in the 1910s, he formed a lasting bond with Mihai Ralea. The two young men went on to study together at the University of Paris, where they earned their credentials as social scientists and political thinkers; Ralea also married Suchianu's sister Ioana.
Go to Profile#9574
Thomas Eschenhagen
#132642
Overall Influence
#9575
Bernard C. Portmann
#132656
Overall Influence
#9576
Thomas Pennant
1726 - 1798 (72 years)
Thomas Pennant was a Welsh naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales. As a naturalist he had a great curiosity, observing the geography, geology, plants, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish around him and recording what he saw and heard about. He wrote acclaimed books including British Zoology, the History of Quadrupeds, Arctic Zoology and Indian Zoology although he never travelled further afield than continental Europe. He knew and maintained correspondence with many of the scientific figures of his day.
Go to Profile#9577
Arnold G. Coran
#132675
Overall Influence
#9578
Joseph Varon
#132691
Overall Influence
#9579
Peter Emanuel Sifneos
#132696
Overall Influence
#9580
Philippe Gaulard
#132723
Overall Influence
#9581
Andy Dray
#132734
Overall Influence
#9582
Chang Mei-hwei
#118315
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Chang Mei-hwei is a Taiwanese pediatric hepatologist. Career Chang graduated from the National Taiwan University College of Medicine, completed fellowship training in pediatric gastroenterology at UCLA Health, and later returned to Taiwan, subsequently serving as a distinguished chair professor within NTU's Department of Pediatrics. Chang has researched hepatitis B vaccination, biliary atresia in infants, and led the Children's Liver Foundation. She was featured in the 2016 documentary Taiwan Revealed: Medical Elite.
Go to Profile#9583
Erik Del Bufalo
#80862
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Erik Del Bufalo is a Venezuelan philosopher and university professor at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas. Career Erik graduated with a doctor in philosophy from the Paris Nanterre University. Since 2002, he is a member of the International No-Philosophical Organization, established in Paris by philosopher François Laruelle, and in 2012 he co-founded the Centro de Investigaciones Críticas y Sociculturales , part of the Instituto De Altos Estudios de América Latina in the Universidad Simón Bolívar . Del Búfalo has participated in the Cisneros Foundation seminary in 2014, 2017 and 2018, and has written in several national and international magazines.
Go to Profile#9584
Thomas J. Schall
#132744
Overall Influence
#9585
Christopher J. Baylis
#132757
Overall Influence
#9586
Hoimar von Ditfurth
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Hoimar von Ditfurth was a German physician and scientific journalist. He was the father of Christian von Ditfurth, a historian, and Jutta Ditfurth, a writer and journalist. Ditfurth won many awards during his long career, including the Adolf Grimme Awards in 1968, the Bambi Prize in 1972, and the Kalinga Prize in 1978.
Go to Profile#9587
Thomas D. Brown
#132760
Overall Influence
#9588
James Hepokoski
#69110
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Arnold Hepokoski is an American musicologist. He is best known for his work with Warren Darcy on developing sonata theory, first fully explained in their 2006 book Elements of Sonata Theory. Life and career James Arnold Hepokoski was born on 20 December 1946 in Duluth, Minnesota. He earned his master's degree and PhD in Music History from Harvard University, studying with David G. Hughes, John M. Ward, Oliver Strunk and Christoph Wolff, earning his doctorate in 1979 with a dissertation on Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff. Since 1999 he has been Professor of Music at Yale University; earlier he taught at the University of Minnesota and at Oberlin College.
Go to Profile#9589
Monica C. Lozano
#20602
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Monica Cecilia Lozano is the president of the College Futures Foundation, based in San Francisco. Previously she was an American newspaper editor, the publisher and CEO of La Opinión and CEO of its parent company, ImpreMedia, LLC. Based in Los Angeles, La Opinión is the largest Spanish publication in the United States. She was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She was appointed by the California State Legislature to join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commission on the 21st Century Economy.
Go to Profile#9590
Iain M. Murray‐lyon
#132787
Overall Influence
#9591
Fre D. Ederer
#132788
Overall Influence
#9592
Solko W. Schalm
#132796
Overall Influence
#9593
William Blake Richmond
1842 - 1921 (79 years)
Sir William Blake Richmond was a British painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Go to Profile#9594
Bernard Knight
#12564
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Bernard Henry Knight is a British forensic pathologist and writer. He became a Home Office pathologist in 1965 and was appointed Professor of Forensic Pathology, University of Wales College of Medicine, in 1980.
Go to Profile#9595
Saul A. Rosenberg
#132808
Overall Influence
#9596
Nathan J. Zvaifler
#132809
Overall Influence
#9597
Sally Shaywitz
#63277
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sally Shaywitz is an American physician-scientist who is the Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development at Yale University. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. Her research provides the framework for modern understanding of dyslexia.
Go to Profile#9598
Todd McCarthy
#18358
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Todd McCarthy is an American film critic and author. He wrote for Variety for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined The Hollywood Reporter, where he subsequently served as chief film critic until 2020. McCarthy subsequently began writing regularly for Deadline Hollywood in 2020.
Go to Profile#9599
Britta Siegmund
#132841
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#9600
Martin Ingvar
#132863
Overall Influence
