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,

#9851

Dina Iordanova

#63031
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dina Iordanova is an educationalist and Professor of Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews. A specialist in world cinema, her special expertise is in the cinema of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Europe in general. Her research approaches cinema on a meta-national level and focuses on the dynamics of transnational film; she has special interest in issues related to cinema at the periphery and in alternative historiography. She has published extensively on international and transnational film art and film industry, and convenes research networks on film festivals and on the Dynamics o...
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#9852

Volkert Seifert

#134923
Overall Influence
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#9853

Ann McKee

Ann McKee
#34954
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ann McKee is a neurologist and neuropathologist and expert in neurodegenerative disease at the VA Boston Veterans Affairs Medical Center and is a Warren Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University School of Medicine. She is director of the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and Boston University CTE Center. She is particularly known for her work studying Alzheimer's disease and the consequences of repetitive traumatic brain injury. In 2017, she was named "Bostonian of the Year" by The Boston Globe for her leading work in this area, and in 2018, T...
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#9854

Mary Dixon-Woods

#106448
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Mary Dixon-Woods is a social scientist who researches quality and safety in healthcare. She is a professor of healthcare improvement studies at the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge, where she is also director of the Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute , and a fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. Dixon-Woods was the co-editor-in-chief of BMJ Quality & Safety from 2011 to 2020.
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#9855

John Ratey

#42303
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John Joseph Ratey is an American physician who is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the coauthor, with Edward Hallowell of the books Driven to Distraction, Answers to Distraction, and Delivered from Distraction. Like Hallowell, Ratey believes that he has ADHD but has never been clinically diagnosed.
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#9856

Tamotsu Takishima

#134972
Overall Influence
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#9857

Mitsuhiro Yokoyama

#134977
Overall Influence
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#9858

Henriette Bie Lorentzen

Henriette Bie Lorentzen
#57486
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Henriette Bie Lorentzen , born Anna Henriette Wegner Haagaas, was a Norwegian journalist, humanist, peace activist, feminist, co-founder of the Nansen Academy, resistance member and concentration camp survivor during World War II, and publisher and editor-in-chief of the women's magazine Kvinnen og Tiden .
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#9859

Curtis J. Donskey

#134986
Overall Influence
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#9860

Visa Koivunen

#134990
Overall Influence
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#9861

Kong Qingdong

#28395
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Kong Qingdong is a controversial Chinese academic, author, talk show host, and social commentator. Kong is a prominent Chinese media figure, known for his vulgar and often brusque critiques on political issues and various individuals and groups. Kong has often been portrayed in the media as a figure of the Chinese New Left, calling for a reversal of Chinese economic reforms and a return to Mao-style policies.
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#9862

Bianca Weinstock-Guttman

#134774
Overall Influence
Bianca Weinstock-Guttman is an American neurologist. She is a SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo. Early life and education Weinstock-Guttman completed her medical degree at the University of Bucharest in 1983 and her internship at Meir Hospital and Tel Aviv University.
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#9863

Joachim Spiess

#134994
Overall Influence
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#9864

Pierre Golstein

#135011
Overall Influence
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#9865

Fredric L. Coe

#135018
Overall Influence
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#9866

John D. Rockefeller Jr.

John D. Rockefeller Jr.
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was ...
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#9867

Daniel W. Foster

#135023
Overall Influence
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#9868

Sidney Zisook

#135028
Overall Influence
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#9869

James A. Corbett

#34718
Overall Influence
1933 - 2001 (68 years)
James A. "Jim" Corbett was an American rancher, writer, Quaker, philosopher, and human rights activist and a co-founder of the Sanctuary movement. He was born in Casper, Wyoming, and died near Benson, Arizona.
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#9870

Emmie te Nijenhuis

#64182
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Emmie te Nijenhuis is a Dutch ethnomusicologist of the music of India. She was an associate professor of Indian musicology at Utrecht University between 1964 and 1988. Life Te Nijenhuis was born in Bussum on 11 November 1931. She studied classical piano at the Utrechts Conservatorium from 1951 to 1955. From 1951 to 1964 she concurrently studied Western musicology, Sanskrit and Indian musicology at Utrecht University. From 1964 to 1988 she was an associate professor of Indian musicology at the same institute. She obtained her PhD at Utrecht University under Jan Gonda in 1970. After retiring in 1988 she founded a private music school in 1991.
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#9871

Gerald Molloy

1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Gerald Molloy was an Irish Roman Catholic priest, theologian and scientist. Life He was educated at Castleknock College, and subsequently went to Maynooth College. Here he applied himself to theology and the physical sciences.
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#9872

Masao Takenaka

#65555
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
Masao Takenaka was a Japanese theologian who taught for over 40 years at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, where he was a Professor of Christian Ethics and Sociology of Religion. Takenaka was born in Beijing, China in 1925, and lived in China for his first ten years; his father worked for the South Manchuria Railway. He began his studies at Kyoto University, but was drafted into the Japanese army during World War II and sent to Hokkaido. After the war, he completed a degree in business and then studied theology at Doshisha. At the Yale Divinity School in Yale University, he was greatly influenced by H.
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#9873

James Dubik

#80751
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Lieutenant General James Michael Dubik is a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. General Dubik has extensive operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, Honduras, and in many NATO countries.
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#9874

Claude Debru

#94364
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Claude Debru is a French philosophy teacher. He is a member of the French Academy of sciences. Biography He has been Director of the Philosophy Department at École Normale Supérieur Ulm since 2002 and is now director emeritus. He has been a member of the French Academy of sciences since 15 March 2011.
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#9875

Pierangelo Geppetti

#135114
Overall Influence
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#9876

Thomas W. Rice

#135127
Overall Influence
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#9877

Sara Josephine Baker

Sara Josephine Baker
1873 - 1945 (72 years)
Sara Josephine Baker was an American physician notable for making contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City. Her fight against the damage that widespread urban poverty and ignorance caused to children, especially newborns, is perhaps her most lasting legacy. In 1917, she noted that babies born in the United States faced a higher mortality rate than soldiers fighting in World War I, drawing a great deal of attention to her cause. She also is known for tracking down Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary.
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#9878

Isabelle Arnulf

#135151
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
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#9879

Claus Cursiefen

#135160
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
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#9880

Hubert Jakob Stein

#135164
Overall Influence
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#9881

Thomas Anthony D’amico

#135165
Overall Influence
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#9882

Gunter Hempelmann

#135168
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
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#9883

William D. Steers

William D. Steers
#64308
Overall Influence
1955 - 2015 (60 years)
William D. Steers was a Paul Mellon professor and chair of the Department of Urology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a president of the American Board of Urology and editor of The Journal of Urology. In 2003, the University of Virginia awarded Steers the Hovey Dabney Professorship. In 2004, Dr. Steers initiated the Charlottesville Men's Four Miler road race to raise funds for men's health. Steers was a viticulturist, and co-owned Well Hung Vineyard in Charlottesville. He developed YOURometer, an iPhone app used to record urological related symptoms.
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#9884

George R. Jr. Blumenschein

#135173
Overall Influence
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#9885

Gillian Hawker

#128144
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Gillian Alexandra Hawker is a Canadian clinician-scientist. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and Sir John and Lady Eaton Professor and Chair of Medicine at Women's College Hospital. Hawker's research focuses on causes and treatments for osteoarthritis.
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#9886

Wolfgang f. Caspary

#135181
Overall Influence
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#9887

Joseph E. Sokal

#135182
Overall Influence
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#9888

Vladimir Demikhov

#6923
Overall Influence
1916 - 1998 (82 years)
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov was a Soviet scientist and organ transplantation pioneer, who performed several transplants in the 1940s and 1950s, including the transplantation of a heart into an animal and a heart–lung replacement in an animal. He is also well known for his dog head transplants, which he conducted during the 1950s, resulting in two-headed dogs. This ultimately led to the head transplants in monkeys by Dr. Robert White, who was inspired by Demikhov's work.
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#9889

Mark W. Muesse

Mark W. Muesse
#54531
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Mark William Muesse is an American philosopher, theologian, and teacher. Education Muesse was born in Waco, Texas and attended University High School. He received a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from the Honors College of Baylor University and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Muesse earned the M.T.S., A.M., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He has also pursued post-doctoral studies at the International Buddhist Meditation Centre, Wat Mahadhatu, Bangkok, Thailand; the Himalayan Yogic Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal; the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey; and the Subodhi...
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#9890

Howard Margolis

#20153
Overall Influence
1932 - 2009 (77 years)
Howard Margolis was an American social scientist. Early life He earned a BA in Government from Harvard University in 1953 and a PhD in Political Science from MIT in 1979. Career From 1990 to 2009, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago and taught as well at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies.
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#9891

Lyco of Troas

Lyco of Troas
299 BC - 225 BC (74 years)
Lyco of Troas , son of Astyanax, was a Peripatetic philosopher and the disciple of Strato, whom he succeeded as the head of the Peripatetic school, c. 269 BC; he held that post for more than forty-four years.
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#9892

Gonçal Mayos Solsona

Gonçal Mayos Solsona
#106273
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Gonçal Mayos Solsona is a Spanish philosopher, essayist and professor at the University of Barcelona. Specialist by Nietzsche, Hegel, Herder, Kant, Descartes, D'Alembert..., has evolved into the study of great modern movements and its influence on contemporary Postmodernism. He chairs the Joan Maragall Liceu of Philosophy of Ateneu Barcelonès and directs the Open Network for Postdisciplinarity and Macrophilosophy and the Grup Internacional de Recerca 'Cultura, Història i Estat' .
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#9893

Gorazd Kocijančič

#107911
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gorazd Kocijančič is a freelance Slovene philosopher, poet and translator. Kocijančič is well known for his translation of the entire corpus of Plato's work into Slovene. Selected publications Kocijančič has published over 360 works, since 1987.
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#9894

Edith Irby Jones

Edith Irby Jones
#33329
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Edith Irby Jones was an American physician who was the first African American to be accepted as a non-segregated student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the first black student to attend racially mixed classes in the American South. She was the first African American to graduate from a southern medical school, first black intern in the state of Arkansas, and later first black intern at Baylor College of Medicine.
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#9895

Herbert Witzenmann

1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Herbert Witzenmann was a German philosopher and anthroposophist. Career Witzenmann received his decisive study and work impulses through personal conversations with Rudolf Steiner. In the 1930s Witzenmann studied with Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg. His thesis On the Concept of Work According to Nietzsche and Hegel could, however, no longer be accepted because of Jaspers' forced exile under the National Socialists. Evidence for Jasper's acceptance of Witzenmann's promotion candidacy has not been presented. According to Witzenmann his dissertation manuscript was destroyed by fire due to phosphor bombings of Pforzheim by U.S.
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#9896

Mark A. Hardy

#79735
Overall Influence
Mark A. Hardy is Auchincloss Professor of Surgery, Director Emeritus of the Transplant Centre, and Vice Chairman and Residency Program Director of the Department of Surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
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#9897

Paddy Whannel

Paddy Whannel
1922 - 1980 (58 years)
Atholl Douglas Whannel was a key figure in the educational work of the British Film Institute throughout the 1960s. He officially joined the faculty at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in 1972 and taught there until his death in 1980.
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#9898

Otto Kinkeldey

Otto Kinkeldey
1878 - 1966 (88 years)
Otto Kinkeldey was an American music librarian and musicologist. He was the first president of the American Musicological Society and held the first chair in musicology at any American university. Biography Kinkeldey was born in Manhattan, New York City on November 27, 1878. He received his B.A. in 1898 from City College of New York and his M.A. from New York University in 1900. In a somewhat unusual step for an American at the time, he studied for his doctorate at a German university, the Royal Academic Institute for Church Music in Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1909. In 1910, Ki...
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#9899

Henri Lauener

#108855
Overall Influence
1933 - 2002 (69 years)
Henri Lauener was a Swiss philosopher interested in both transcendental and analytic currents. He has been the editor of the journal Dialectica. A Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy has been developed, which awards a biennial prize to outstanding life works in this field.
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#9900

Peter of Auvergne

1240 - 1304 (64 years)
Peter of Auvergne was a French philosopher and theologian. Life He was a canon of Paris; some biographers have thought that he was Bishop of Clermont, because a Bull of Boniface VIII of the year 1296 names as canon of Paris a certain Peter of Croc , already canon of Clermont; but it is more likely that they are distinct. Peter of Auvergne was in Paris in 1301, and, according to several accounts, was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In 1279, while the various nations of the University of Paris were quarrelling about the rectorship, Simon de Brion, papal legate, appointed Peter of Auvergne to that of...
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