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,
#9901
Catherine Wilson
#131426
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Catherine Warren Wilson is a British/American/Canadian philosopher. She was formerly Anniversary Professor at the University of York and from 2009 to 2012 the Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. She is known for her interdisciplinary studies of visuality, moral psychology and aesthetics, and especially early microscopy and Epicurean atomism and materialism.
Go to Profile#9902
Ruth Ann Marrie
#135409
Overall Influence
#9903
Charles Michael Court-brown
#135443
Overall Influence
#9904
Reginald Hall
#135448
Overall Influence
#9905
Richard A. Berger
#135450
Overall Influence
#9906
Lucienne Chatenoud
#135466
Overall Influence
#9907
Mark E. Feldman
#135467
Overall Influence
#9908
M. Steven Piver
#135480
Overall Influence
#9909
William F. Keane
#135488
Overall Influence
#9910
Leonard D. Kohn
#135493
Overall Influence
#9911
Alfred E. Chang
#135499
Overall Influence
#9912
J. Bryan Dixon
#135518
Overall Influence
#9913
Alexander M. Levine
#135521
Overall Influence
#9914
Cheung Kam Ching
#89766
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Professor "Leo" Cheung Kam Ching is a philosopher in Hong Kong. He is a Professor of the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong since Jan 2011. He was a Professor of the Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University from 2008–2011, Assistant Professor , Associate Professor and the Head of Department .
Go to Profile#9915
Stefano Cascinu
#135525
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#9916
Barbara Casadei
#75323
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Barbara Casadei is British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, based in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine. Education Casadei was awarded an academic scholarship to study medicine at the Collegio Nuovo of the University of Pavia, Italy. She graduated cum Laude in 1984 and then went on to a tenure-track training post in the University Department of Medicine in Varese, Italy. She moved to Oxford in 1989 to further her clinical and research training. She was awarded the Joan and Richard Doll Fellowship at Green College, Oxford in 1991, a Doctor ...
Go to Profile#9917
E. Dward Taub
#135529
Overall Influence
#9918
Richard T. Silver
#135539
Overall Influence
#9919
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was a German professor, journalist, novelist, and folklorist. Academic career Riehl was born in Biebrich in the Duchy of Nassau and died in Munich. Riehl was born into a settled middle-class background, was a professor at the University of Munich, and later in life a curator of Bavarian antiquities.
Go to Profile#9920
David H. Adams
#135551
Overall Influence
#9921
Hilton c. Whittle
#135564
Overall Influence
#9922
Roberto Leydi
#54884
Overall Influence
1928 - 2003 (75 years)
Roberto Leydi was an Italian ethnomusicologist. He started his career in the field of contemporary music and jazz, and in the 1950s started his research into the social significance of folk and popular music. He published widely, including L'altra musica and I canti popolari italiani, He was known as sponsor and coordinator of numerous projects and festivals to display and preserve Italian music, both traditional and recent. Shortly before his death, he donated his entire private collection to the Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia in Bellinzona, Switzerland.
Go to Profile#9923
Chaim M. Hershko
#135578
Overall Influence
#9924
Eugene P. Dimagno
#135584
Overall Influence
#9925
Antoine Frédéric Spring
1814 - 1872 (58 years)
Antoine Frédéric Spring was a German-born, Belgian physician and botanist. He studied botany and medicine at the University of Munich, obtaining his PhD in 1835 and his medical doctorate during the following year. From 1839 to 1872 he was a professor at the University of Liège, initially in the fields of physiology and anatomy, later teaching classes in pathology and internal medicine.
Go to Profile#9926
Gertie F. Marx
#135605
Overall Influence
#9927
Werner G. Reutter
#135616
Overall Influence
#9928
Victor W. Sidel
#28910
Overall Influence
1931 - 2018 (87 years)
Victor W. Sidel was an American physician and a president of the American Public Health Association. He was a founder and president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and later was co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.
Go to Profile#9929
Oliver Eickelberg
#135623
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#9930
David Beaver
#44602
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
David Ian Beaver is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also directs the cognitive science program and serves as Graduate Studies Advisor of the Human Dimensions of Organizations Master's program. His work concerns the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, including, in particular, research on presupposition, anaphora, topic and focus.
Go to Profile#9931
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#135642
Overall Influence
#9932
Barry Lewis Zaret
#9933
Benjamin G. Druss
#135646
Overall Influence
#9934
Fu‐sheng Wang
#135651
Overall Influence
#9935
Benoît Lacroix
#32136
Overall Influence
1915 - 2016 (101 years)
Benoît Lacroix was a Quebec theologian, philosopher, Dominican priest, professor in medieval studies and historian of the Medieval period, and author of almost 50 works and a great number of articles.
Go to Profile#9936
Michael Israel Shevell
#135671
Overall Influence
#9937
Bhalchandra Pandharinath Bahirat
#110891
Overall Influence
1904 - 1998 (94 years)
Bhalchandra Pandharinath Bahirat was a philosopher and educationist who studied the Marathi literature of Jñāneśvar and other santss of Maharashtra. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Pune University in 1991.
Go to Profile#9938
Juan M. Taveras
#135673
Overall Influence
#9939
Felicity Colman
#41171
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Felicity Colman is a Creative Media Arts theorist. She is Professor of Film and Media Arts. She is the Dean of Research and Knowledge Exchange for the London College of Fashion at University of the Arts London
Go to Profile#9940
Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer
1858 - 1945 (87 years)
Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer FRS was a German physician and bacteriologist. Pfeiffer was born to Otto Pfeiffer, a German pastor of the local Evangelical parish, and Natalia née Jüttner, in Treustädt, Province of Posen , and died in Bad Landeck .
Go to Profile#9941
Michio Sata
#135684
Overall Influence
#9942
Merton R. Bernfield
#135695
Overall Influence
#9943
Shimon Glick
#31100
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Shimon M. Glick is an American-born Israeli physician. Personal life Glick was born in New Jersey. He and his wife Brenda have six children including Yehuda Glick who is a rabbi and former Knesset member.
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David Enoch
#84312
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
David Enoch is an ethicist and philosopher of law with research interests in moral, political and legal philosophy within the analytic tradition. He is the co-director of the Center for Moral and Political Philosophy and has been the Rodney Blackman Chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2005. He received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and Bachelor of Laws degrees from Tel Aviv University in 1993. He then completed his PhD in philosophy at New York University in 2003.
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Stephen M. Tenney
#135708
Overall Influence
#9946
Mitchell W. Krucoff
#135709
Overall Influence
#9947
Stephen Erickson
#114082
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Stephen A. Erickson was an American philosopher. He was an emeritus professor of philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he held the E. Wilson Lyon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy title. He was known for his lectures in The Great Courses titled "Philosophy as a Guide to Living". He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. Erickson died of Parkinson's disease on September 20, 2023, at the age of 83.
Go to Profile#9948
Nea L. F. Kassell
#135714
Overall Influence
#9949
Karl, Freiherr von Prel
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Karl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred, Freiherr von Prel, or, in French, Carl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred, Baron du Prel , was a German philosopher and writer on mysticism and the occult. In the literature it has become customary to refer to him under various abbreviated French forms of his name, usually "Carl Du Prel," "Baron Carl Du Prel," or simply "Baron Du Prel."
Go to Profile#9950
Kristen Knutson
#76315
Overall Influence
Kristen Knutson is an associate professor of neurology, working at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. With researchers from the University of Surrey, she studied the mortality rate of half a million people over 6.5 years and concluded that people who self identify as "definite evening type" had a 10 percent higher mortality rate than those who identified as "definite morning type". It was the first study of its type to look into the mortality rate of night owls.
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