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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Clear Form

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#10551

E. L. Hebden Taylor

#118524
Overall Influence
1925 - 2006 (81 years)
Revd Eustace Lovatt Hebden Taylor was a Reformational Anglican vicar. He was the son of missionaries and born in Katanga, Belgian Congo. He enlisted in the Royal Navy at the start of the Second World War. After the war he returned to England to study at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After graduation, he worked for the Hudson's Bay Company in Vancouver. There he was married and became an Anglican priest. He subsequently went as a missionary to the Yukon. They returned to England in 1963 where he became vicar at St John's, Greengates, Bradford. He was then offered a place at Dordt College, Iowa, ...
Go to Profile
#10552

Raymond Hoffenberg

Raymond Hoffenberg
#78470
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Sir Raymond Hoffenberg KBE GCOB was an endocrinologist who specialised in the study of the thyroid. Born in South Africa, he was forced to leave in 1968, and settled in the United Kingdom, where he was President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1983 to 1989, and President of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1985 to 1993.
Go to Profile
#10553

Salvatore Novo

#172426
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Salvatore Novo is an Italian author, professor and researcher in the field of cardiovascular disease, epidemiology and risk factors of atherosclerosis. He has authored about 550 papers. He is one of the highly cited authors in the field of cardiovascular diseases.
Go to Profile
#10554

Debby Bogaert

#146673
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Debby Bogaert is a Dutch physician who is Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Edinburgh. Her research considers the physiology and pathophysiology of respiratory infections.
Go to Profile
#10555

Peter Adamson

#111492
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
Peter George Adamson was an English actor, best known for playing Len Fairclough in Coronation Street from January 1961 to May 1983. Early life Peter George Adamson was born on 16 February 1930 at 54 Hannan Road in Kensington, Liverpool, the youngest of six children. His father was a manager of a menswear shop. Adamson was evacuated to Wales with his older brother when World War II broke out. He left school at the age of 14 and took an office job in a solicitor's firm, before trying for a career as a commercial artist.
Go to Profile
#10556

Kathleen Stock

#92918
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Kathleen Mary Linn Stock is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex until 2021. She has published academic work on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, sexual objectification, and sexual orientation.
Go to Profile
#10557

Kamran Ahmed

#167821
Overall Influence
Kamran Ahmed is a Professor and a Urological Surgeon who is affiliated with Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi and King's College London, United Kingdom. Career Kamran has published more than 300 Medline indeed articles and publications of abstracts in medical journals. He is the editor of a number of medical education, simulation, surgical and urological textbooks and has written a number of book chapters. He has served on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Urology International . Kamran has a major interest in education, and has been the le...
Go to Profile
#10558

Robert Wilson

#133220
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Robert Andrew Wilson is an Australian philosopher who has worked in Canada, the United States, and Australia. He has been professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia since November 2019, after teaching previously at La Trobe University , the University of Alberta , the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign , where he was a member of the Cognitive Science Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and at Queen's University .
Go to Profile
#10559

Michelle Haber

#94133
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michelle Haber is an Australian cancer researcher. Haber is an Australian scientist in the field of childhood cancer research. She serves as the Executive Director of Children's Cancer Institute and is a professor at the School of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of New South Wales. She is known for her discoveries in the area of chemotherapy resistance in neuroblastoma and for translating these discoveries into new therapeutics that are currently in clinical trials.
Go to Profile
#10560

Donald Lewis Shaw

Donald Lewis Shaw
#33294
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Donald Lewis Shaw , one of the two founding fathers of empirical research on the agenda-setting function of the press, was a social scientist and a Kenan professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was born to Luther and Lowell Shaw on October 27, 1936, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Go to Profile
#10561

Leiser Madanes

Leiser Madanes
#172173
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Leiser Madanes is a writer, philosopher and Argentine professor. Throughout his career he has published several books, as the main focus the study of modern philosophy as Hobbes and Spinoza, freedom of expression and the state's relationship with the freedoms of men. Its main areas of study are modern philosophy and political philosophy.
Go to Profile
#10562

Mel Krajden

#93713
Overall Influence
Mel Krajden is a physician and professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is the medical director of the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory. Dr. Krajden obtained his BSc, MD, and FRCPC at McGill University, followed by a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Stanford University. He is also the medical director of the Public Health Laboratory at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. His research focuses on the prevention and care of hepatitis, human papillomavirus, and human immunodeficiency virus.
Go to Profile
#10563

David M. Brown

#173970
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#10564

Brian Hurwitz

#121185
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Brian Hurwitz BA, MB BS, MA, MSc, MD, FRCP, FRCGP is a British clinician and academic and Professor of Medicine and the Arts at King's College London. He is the director of the Centre of the Humanities and Health at King's College London and is a medical General Practitioner.
Go to Profile
#10565

Richard Burkewood Welbourn

#107790
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Richard Burkewood Welbourn, FRCS was a British scientist and educator, specializing in surgical endocrinology. He was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital.
Go to Profile
#10566

Saveria Campo

#129099
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Maria Saveria Campo FRSE , known as Saveria, is an Italian viral oncologist, known for being the first person to demonstrate an effective papillomavirus vaccine. She developed the vaccine alongside her colleague at the University of Bristol, England, Dr. Richard B.S. Roden. She went on to be recognized for her work and was awarded the position of Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2006. She has worked continuously in the field of Oncology up until her retirement.
Go to Profile
#10567

Eugene Gu

Eugene Gu
#24571
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Eugene Gu is an American physician and social media personality. While he was in medical school, he founded a company called Ganogen to develop methods to use fetal tissue implants in organ transplantation. Work at Ganogen had ceased when he started his residency in 2015, but in 2016 he was subpoenaed as CEO of the company by the United States House Select Investigative Panel on Planned Parenthood following the Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy.
Go to Profile
#10568

Christine Menias

#108793
Overall Influence
Christine O. "Cooky" Menias is an American radiologist, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science professor, and editor designate of RadioGraphics, one of the leading educational journals in radiology.
Go to Profile
#10569

Camilla Stoltenberg

Camilla Stoltenberg
#22879
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Camilla Stoltenberg is a Norwegian physician and researcher. Since 13 August 2012, she has been Director-General of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She is the sister of former Prime Minister of Norway and General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
Go to Profile
#10570

Joseph J. Kockelmans

#155433
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Joseph J. Kockelmans was a Dutch born American philosopher and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University.
Go to Profile
#10571

Michael J. Buckley

#78753
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Michael Joseph Buckley was an American Jesuit priest and philosophical theologian. He was the Bea Professor of Theology at Santa Clara University. He also served as president of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
Go to Profile
#10572

Martin Ruhnke

#110916
Overall Influence
1921 - 2004 (83 years)
Martin Ruhnke was a German musicologist. His main areas of research were the music theory of early baroque music, Italian baroque opera and the life and work of Georg Philipp Telemann. Life Born in Koszalin, Ruhnke was appointed in Kiel where he gained his doctorate in 1954 with a thesis on Joachim Burmeister's music theory. Afterwards he was Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the Free University of Berlin and habilitatetd in 1961. In 1964 he was appointed to the chair of musicology at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, which he held until he became emeritus in 1986.
Go to Profile
#10573

Carlos Aldunate Lyon

Carlos Aldunate Lyon
#91702
Overall Influence
1916 - 2018 (102 years)
Carlos Aldunate Lyon was a Chilean Catholic Jesuit priest, teacher, writer, and promoter of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Chile, as well as one of the teachers of Pope Francis. Biography He was the son of Carlos Aldunate Errázuriz and Adriana Lyon Lynch; He was the grandson of the president of the Chilean Conservative Party, Carlos Aldunate Solar, and brother of the Jesuit priest José Aldunate. He studied in Jesuit schools in England and Chile. He entered the Society of Jesus in the city of Chillán and was ordained a priest in Argentina in 1944. In 1948 he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy...
Go to Profile
#10574

Bojan Accetto

#69712
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Bojan Accetto was a Slovenian physician, the founder of gerontology in Slovenia. He was a professor of internal medicine nd of social gerontology at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. He established the institute for gerontology and geriatry. He explored the solidification of blood and thrombosis. He wrote "Starost in staranje" - 1986. For his efforts, he received the Kidrič prize in 1958. His son, Rok Accetto, is a Slovenian cardiologist.
Go to Profile
#10575

Marc Lamont Hill

Marc Lamont Hill
#66617
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Marc Lamont Hill is an American academic, author, activist, and television personality. He is a professor of urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Hill is the host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English, VH1 Live! on VH1, and Basketball Wives reunion shows. He is also a BET News correspondent. Previously he was the first host of the syndicated television show Our World with Black Enterprise, the host of HuffPost Live, and a political commentator for CNN and Fox News. In November 2018, Hill was fired from his position at CNN after remarks before the United Nations on the Isra...
Go to Profile
#10576

Jose Acacio de Barros

#75124
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
José Acacio de Barros is a Brazilian-American physicist and philosopher with contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology, and quantum cognition. Dr. de Barros received his PhD in Physics from the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas in 1991 under the supervision of Francisco Antonio Doria and Antonio Fernandes da Fonseca Teixeira . Since 2007 he has been in the Liberal Studies faculty of San Francisco State University. Before going to San Francisco, he was an associate professor of physics at the Federal University at Juiz de Fora, Brazil, and he was a visiting...
Go to Profile
#10577

Joscelyn Godwin

#82287
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Joscelyn Godwin is a composer, musicologist, and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism, and music in the occult. Biography He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College , and Magdalene College, Cambridge .
Go to Profile
#10578

Jean-Paul Audet

#127476
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
Jean-Paul Audet, was a French Canadian academic and philosopher. He was a professor and former head of the Université de Montréal's Department of Philosophy. In 1988, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for his "contribution to the field of theology". In 1969, he was awarded the Molson Prize. In 1970, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile
#10579

James C. Risser

#150326
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Conrad Risser is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He was Pigott-McCone Endowed Chair of Humanities between 1991 and 1994 and the president of the North American Society of Philosophical Hermeneutics .
Go to Profile
#10580

Jörn Peter Hiekel

#120672
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jörn Peter Hiekel is a German musicologist. Life Born in Göttingen, Hiekel first studied musicology, art history and history at the universities of Cologne and Bonn before he completed his double bass studies at the Musikhochschule Köln. Afterwards he received his doctorate at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.
Go to Profile
#10581

Bjarne Bogen

#120609
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bjarne Bogen is a Norwegian immunologist, inventor and physician. He is widely known for his research on DNA vaccines, autoimmune disorders and cancer immunology. Career Bogen graduated with a medical degree from the University of Oslo in 1977. In the following two years, he completed his internship at Sandnessjøen hospital and in the municipalities of Lurøy and Træna at the coastline of northern Norway. In 1984, at the University of Tromsø he defended his PhD thesis entitled "Murine Th and B Lymphocyte Recognition of Isologous Immunoglobulin".
Go to Profile
#10582

Gary Wand

#155803
Overall Influence
Gary S. Wand is an American physician and an Alfredo Rivière and Norma Rodriguez de Rivière professor who specializes in endocrinology and metabolism. He is a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine laboratory director, focusing on neuropsychoendocrinology. He is also Director of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Fellowship Program.
Go to Profile
#10583

Frank H. Wadsworth

#74527
Overall Influence
1915 - 2022 (107 years)
Frank Howard Wadsworth was an American forester, conservationist and researcher. He made important scientific contributions to forestry, through his work in Puerto Rico where he lived from 1942 until his death.
Go to Profile
#10584

Vincent Watts

#35730
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Vincent Challacombe Watts OBE is a British academic and businessman. He was educated at Sidcot School, Peterhouse, Cambridge , and at the University of Birmingham . He served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia from 1997 to 2002, leaving to focus full-time on his role as Chairman of the East of England Development Agency. Prior to joining the University of East Anglia he was at Andersen Consulting.
Go to Profile
#10585

John O'Shea

#51335
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John O'Shea is founder and former CEO of GOAL, an Irish non-governmental organization devoted to assisting the poorest of the poor. His first career was as a sports journalist and GOAL retains links to the sporting community, especially in Ireland.
Go to Profile
#10586

Gail G. Shapiro

#74350
Overall Influence
1947 - 2006 (59 years)
Gail Ina Greenberg Shapiro was an American pediatric allergist based in Seattle. She was a faculty member at the University of Washington School of Medicine. In 2001, she became the first democratically elected president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology .
Go to Profile
#10587

Richard Steadman

#4808
Overall Influence
1937 - 2023 (86 years)
J. Richard Steadman was an American orthopedic surgeon and founder of The Steadman Clinic and Steadman Philippon Research Institute located in Vail, Colorado. Steadman revolutionized orthopedic surgery. For a time, he was a clinical professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, but was known for his work in the area of microfracture surgery, and for treating injured sports stars from around the world. In January 2014, he announced his retirement from his surgical practice.
Go to Profile
#10588

Geoffrey C. Bowker

#58207
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. He moved to UCI at the start of 2012, having held the positions of Professor and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information. Prior to that, Bowker was Executive Director and Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor at the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. Previously, Bowker was chair of the Department of Communication at the University of California - San Diego and has held appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champa...
Go to Profile
#10589

Rosalind Raine

#54800
Overall Influence
Rosalind Raine is a British applied health research scientist, public medicine doctor, professor of health care evaluation and the founding head of the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London .
Go to Profile
#10590

Christoph Hoerl

#166269
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Christoph Hoerl is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick where he is also Deputy Head of Department of Philosophy. He is known for his works on philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology.
Go to Profile
#10591

Mukesh Jain

#135347
Overall Influence
Mukesh K. Jain is an American physician-scientist specializing in cardiovascular medicine. Since March 2022 he has served as Dean of Biological Sciences at Brown University and Dean of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School. Jain previously served as Chief Scientific Officer at University Hospitals Health System and Vice-Dean for Medical Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.
Go to Profile
#10592

Louis Mackey

#136246
Overall Influence
1926 - 2004 (78 years)
Louis Henry Mackey was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Early life Louis Henry Mackey was born in Sidney, Ohio in 1926. After earning a B.A. at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio he pursued graduate studies in philosophy, first at Duke University, and then Yale University, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1954. His dissertation was titled The Nature and the End of the Ethical Life according to Kierkegaard.
Go to Profile
#10593

John Unsworth

#50415
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Unsworth is the university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Virginia, a position he has held since June 25, 2016. Biography John Unsworth was born in 1958, in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Northampton High School in 1975, and attended Princeton University and Amherst College as an undergraduate, graduating from Amherst in 1981. He received a master's degree in English from Boston University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1988. His first faculty appointment was in English, at North Carolina State University, from 1989 to 1993.
Go to Profile
#10594

Carl W. Walter

Carl W. Walter
#99971
Overall Influence
1906 - 1992 (86 years)
Carl Waldemar Walter was a surgeon, inventor, and professor at Harvard Medical School. Walter has been called "a pioneer in the transfusion and storage of blood," credited with founding one of the world's first blood banks and invention of the first blood collection bag. He was also known for his prolific work in the advocacy, application, and study of asepsis.
Go to Profile
#10595

Olimpia Lombardi

#108226
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Olimpia Iris Lombardi is an Argentine philosopher of science whose research involves ontology in chemistry and in quantum mechanics, including the use of ontological pluralism to argue for treating chemistry as autonomous from, rather than subsidiary to, physics.
Go to Profile
#10596

Ron Burnett

#63961
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ron Burnett is an author, professor and the President Emeritus and Research Director for the new Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Education Burnett was born 24 May 1947 in London, England.
Go to Profile
#10597

Juliana Sokolová

#170177
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Juliana Sokolová is a Slovak writer, poet and philosopher. Early life Juliana Sokolová grew up in Košice and Misrata. She studied Philosophy at the University of York graduating in 2009. During her studies, she lived partly in the UK, partly in Kosovo and Sarajevo. Since 2010, she has taught Aesthetics at the Technical University of Košice.
Go to Profile
#10598

Werner Bernreuther

Werner Bernreuther
#172798
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Werner Bernreuther is a German actor, singer-songwriter, writer, poet, translator and painter. Biography Bernreuther trained as an electrician, studied 1965–1969 at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Leipzig and was then committed to the stages Freiberg and Gera. Bernreuther received Chanson lessons from Heinrich Pohle and Fania Fénelon. At the 4th Chanson days of the GDR, he was awarded the prize of the Writers' Union of the German Democratic Republic. Bernreuther sings partly in his native Itzgründisch dialect and mixed "folk song-like structure with intellectual thinking." In the 1980s, he mad...
Go to Profile
#10599

Stanisław Parzymies

#60441
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Stanisław Edward Parzymies is a Polish international relations scholar, an expert on French-German relations. He is a former Chairman of the Scientific Board at the Institute of International Relations and the Head of the European Integration Section of the Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw.
Go to Profile
#10600

Samuel O. Thier

#24608
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Samuel Osiah Thier was professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard University. He earned his medical degree at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in 1960. He previously served as the president of Brandeis University from 1991–1994 and the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital from 1994-96.
Go to Profile