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,
#9751
Niccola Andria
1747 - 1814 (67 years)
Niccola Andria was an Italian physician and writer, active in Naples. Biography Andria was born near Massafra in Apulia, to a well to do family. His father was a local physician. He initially studied in his native town, then in Naples, where he practiced law, and wrote Discorso politicu su le servitú. He then proceeded to study medicine, learning anatomy under Domenico Cotugno and chemistry under Giuseppe Vairo, and working at the Ospedale degli Incurabili. In 1777, he was appointed professor of agriculture at the University of Naples. From 1801 to 1808 he became professor of physiology, and theoretical medicine.
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Joanna M. Hill
#134134
Overall Influence
#9753
Kar‐neng Lai
#134156
Overall Influence
#9754
Heda Festini
#121904
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Heda Festini was a Croatian philosopher who specialized in analytic philosophy and the history of Croatian philosophy. Academic career Festini was born in Osijek. She graduated from the University of Zagreb in 1952 and received her Ph.D. in 1965. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Zadar where she taught theoretical philosophy, logic and methodology . She is the author of books on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nicola Abbagnano, Antun Petrić and Juraj Politeo, as well as numerous articles on the philosophy of language, philosophy of science and the history of philosophy. She is also translator of works by Nicola Abbagnano and John Dewey into Croatian.
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Shane Robert Cloude
#134163
Overall Influence
#9756
Steven Flanagan
#50153
Overall Influence
Steven R. Flanagan is a nationally renowned expert in the field of traumatic brain injury and is professor and chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, and the medical director of the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center.
Go to Profile#9757
Charles D. Forbes.
#134173
Overall Influence
#9758
Helen Quincy Woodard
#134175
Overall Influence
#9759
Roger Gordon. Gosden
#134180
Overall Influence
#9760
Ramjee Singh
#52435
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Ramjee Singh is a former Member of Parliament and vice-chancellor of Jain Vishva Bharati University. He is an eminent Gandhian and is the author of a number of books on him. He was also the director of Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, India. In January 2020 he was awarded the fourth highest civilian award in the country: The Padma Shri for Social Work. His life has been a blend of being a Gandhian academician as well as an activist. Singh has declared Mahatma Gandhi as the Bodhisattva of the 20th century.
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Abner of Burgos
1270 - 1347 (77 years)
Abner of Burgos was a Jewish philosopher, a convert to Christianity and a polemical writer against his former religion. Known after his conversion as Alfonso of Valladolid or "Master Alfonso." Life As a student he acquired a certain mastery in Biblical and Talmudical studies, to which he added an intimate acquaintance with Peripatetic philosophy and astrology. What we know of his biography comes primarily from his own comments in his Moreh Zedek/Mostrador de justicia. According to that work, he stated that his religious doubts arose in 1295 when he treated a number of Jews for distress following their involvement in the failed messianic movement in Avila.
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Rosarius Mary Hagius
1673 - 1757 (84 years)
Rosarius Mary Hagius was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Hagius. This is unfortunate because, from his extant works, it can clearly be seen that he possessed a superior mind, and quite dexterous in both philosophy and theology. Hagius was a Dominican friar, and a Master of Theology. He taught philosophy and theology for three decades at most of Malta’s institutions of higher education, especially at the Dominican Collegium of Portus Salutis at Valletta, Malta. His method and style, both of teaching and of writing, were decidedly in the line of Aristotelic-Thomist Scholasticism.
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Euenus
450 BC - 500 BC (-50 years)
Euenus of Paros, , was a 5th-century BC poet who was roughly contemporary with Socrates. Euenus is mentioned several times in Plato's Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Apology of Socrates. According to Maximus Tyre, Evenus was the instructor of Socrates in poetry, a statement which derives some countenance from a passage in Plato from which it may also be inferred that Euenus was alive at the time of Socrates's death, but at such an advanced age that he was likely soon to follow him. Eusebius places him at the 30th Olympiad and onwards. His poetry was gnomic, that is, it formed the vehicle for expressing philosophic maxims and opinions.
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Abella
1400 - Present (626 years)
Abella, often known as Abella of Salerno or Abella of Castellomata, was a physician in the mid fourteenth century. Abella studied and taught at the Salerno School of Medicine. Abella is believed to have been born around 1380, but the exact time of her birth and death is unclear. Abella lectured on standard medical practices, bile, and women's health and nature at the medical school in Salerno. Abella, along with Rebecca de Guarna, specialized in the area of embryology. She published two treatises: De atrabile and De natura seminis humani , neither of which survive today. In Salvatore De Renzi...
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Andrew P. Jr. Evan
#134194
Overall Influence
#9766
Nir Eyal
#98936
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nir Eyal is a bioethicist and Henry Rutgers Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Population–Level Bioethics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was formerly a bioethicist in the Department of Global Health and Population of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine of the Harvard Medical School. He has long worked closely with Harvard bioethicist Daniel Wikler. Eyal's current visibility concerns his role in studying the ethics of human challenge trials in HIV, malaria, and coronavirus vaccine development. He ...
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Burt C. Hopkins
#91792
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Burt C. Hopkins is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Member of the University of Lille, Permanent Faculty member of the Summer School of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, former Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Seattle University and Permanent Secretary of the Husserl Circle.
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Catharine Lumby
#69339
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Professor Catharine Lumby is an Australian academic, author and journalist, currently Chair of the Department of Media and Communication at University of Sydney. Career Prior to her move to academia, Lumby was a feature writer and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, a news writer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and a columnist and senior writer at The Bulletin. She holds a BA LLB from the University of Sydney and was awarded a PhD by Macquarie University for her thesis "Life in a tabloid world: an analysis of key shifts in Australian and US print and television media".
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Michael I. D’angelica
#134213
Overall Influence
#9770
Kjell E. Oberg
#134219
Overall Influence
#9771
Mitchell F. Brin
#134227
Overall Influence
#9772
Evander Bradley McGilvary
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
Evander Bradley McGilvary Ph.D. was an American philosophical scholar, born in Bangkok to American Presbyterian missionaries, the Rev. Daniel McGilvary and Mrs. Sophia McGilvary. He came to the United States to study, graduating from Davidson College in 1884 and from Princeton University in 1888. In 1891, he returned to northern Thailand to join his parents in the Laos Mission of the Presbyterian Church USA. Although assigned to translate the Bible into northern Thai, McGilvary was soon embroiled in a denominational controversy over biblical inerrancy. In the wake of the 1893 heresy trial...
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Michael D. Ezekowitz
#134245
Overall Influence
#9774
Johann Jakob Kaup
1803 - 1873 (70 years)
Johann Jakob von Kaup was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup is also known for having coined popular prehistoric taxa like Pterosauria, Machairodus, Deinotherium, Dorcatherium, and Chalicotherium.
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Christian C. Abnet
#134283
Overall Influence
#9776
Philip Tagg
#39309
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Philip Tagg is a British musicologist, writer and educator. He is co-founder of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and author of several influential books on popular music and music semiotics.
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Georg Peters
#101793
Overall Influence
1951 - 2018 (67 years)
Georg Peters was a German physician, microbiologist and university professor. From 1992 until his fatal mountain accident he headed the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the University of Münster. He was an internationally recognised expert in the field of staphylococci and the infectious diseases caused by them, to which he had devoted himself since the beginning of his scientific career.
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Menyhért Palágyi
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Menyhért Palágyi, in German Melchior or Meinhert Palagyi was a Hungarian philosopher, mathematician, and physicist of Jewish descent . He was the elder brother of the Hungarian poet Ludwig Palágyi.
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Li Chenyang
#16642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Li Chenyang is a professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is internationally recognized for his work in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy, probably best known for his work in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, and comparative studies of Confucian ethics and feminist care ethics.
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Paul E. De Jong
#134310
Overall Influence
#9781
Lawrence Douglas
#10033
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Lawrence R. Douglas is an American legal scholar, currently holding the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is also an author of both fiction and nonfiction.
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David Norris
#7036
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Patrick Bernard Norris is an Irish scholar, independent Senator and civil rights activist. Internationally, Norris is credited with having "managed, almost single-handedly, to overthrow the anti-homosexuality law which brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde", a feat he achieved in 1988 after a fourteen-year campaign. He has also been credited with being "almost single-handedly responsible for rehabilitating James Joyce in once disapproving Irish eyes".
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Daniel Kuritzkes
#104831
Overall Influence
Daniel Robert Kuritzkes is an American physician. Kuritzkes studied molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University and completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. He was trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and became a visiting scientist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research prior to joining the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center faculty. Kuritzkes returned to Harvard Medical School in 2002, where he succeeded Elliott D. Kieff as head of the Clinical Infectious Disease Division and the Harriet Ryan...
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Albert Spaier
1883 - 1934 (51 years)
Albert Spaier was a French philosopher, professor of philosophy at the University of Caen. Albert Spaier was born in Iași, Romania. Studying at the Sorbonne, he volunteered to fight for the French at the outset of World War I, and became a French citizen soon afterwards. He became a professor at Caen in 1927.
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P. E. Erne
#134352
Overall Influence
#9786
Alberto Zangrillo
#134355
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#9787
Klaus Diedrich
#134366
Overall Influence
#9788
Jan Anders Hedner
#134429
Overall Influence
#9789
Howard L. Minkoff
#9790
Peter W. Jones
#9791
Rita Kothari
#37694
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Rita Kothari is a Gujarati and English language author and translator from Gujarat, India. In an attempt to preserve her memories and her identity as a member of the Sindhi people, Kothari wrote several books on partition and its effects on people. She has translated several Gujarati works into English.
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Gennady Grushevoy
#42752
Overall Influence
1950 - 2014 (64 years)
Gennady Grushevoy was a Belarusian academic, politician, human rights and environmental activist and the founder of one of the first Chernobyl relief foundations. He was awarded the 1999 Rafto Prize for “his many years of courageous work for democracy and human rights in Belarus”.
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Benjamin R. Brenner
#134450
Overall Influence
#9794
Kiyohiro Houkin
#134477
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#9795
Peter Altmeyer P. Altmeyer
#134492
Overall Influence
#9796
Olle Hernell
#134495
Overall Influence
#9797
Jad Hatem
#52840
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jad Hatem is a Lebanese poet and philosopher. He has been a distinguished philosophy, literature and religious sciences Professor at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut since 1976. Hatem has been the Head of Department of Philosophy and the Director of Michel Henry's Study Center within that department. He's also Editor in Chief of Extasis , La Splendeur du Carmel and L'Orient des dieux, and serves on various other academic editorial boards.
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Douglas W. Losordo
#134500
Overall Influence
#9799
Gary Hall
#103774
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Gary Hall is British cultural and media theorist and Professor of Media and Performing Arts in the Coventry University Department of Media, UK. Career Hall is a cultural and media theorist working on continental philosophy, cultural politics, cultural studies, new media technologies, and the digital humanities. In 2008 he authored Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now. Published by the University of Minnesota Press, it was the first book on open access publishing and archiving written specifically from a critical theory perspective.
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Leonid Pitamic
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
Leonid Pitamic was a Slovene Yugoslav lawyer, philosopher of law, diplomat, and academic. Life He was born in the Carniolan town of Postojna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today in Slovenia. After finishing the classical lyceum in Gorizia and the Theresianum in Vienna, he enrolled in the University of Vienna, where he studied law. After graduation in 1908, he worked in the local branches of the state administration in Carniola, and later in the ministerial offices in Vienna. In 1915, he obtained habilitation in Austrian civil law, and in 1917 in philosophy of law. After the dissol...
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