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,
#10601
Carolyn Chute
#44260
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Carolyn Chute is an American writer and populist political activist who is strongly identified with the culture of poor, rural western Maine. Rod Dreher, writing in The American Conservative, has referred to Chute as "a Maine novelist and gun enthusiast who, along with her husband, lives an aggressively unorthodox life in the Yankee backwoods." She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award.
Go to Profile#10602
Tony Vinson
#46810
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Tony Vinson was an Australian academic, regarded as "one of Australia's leading social scientists and outspoken public intellectuals". His career spanned the disciplines of social work, social policy, psychology, education, public administration and social research.
Go to Profile#10603
James P. Kushner
#174306
Overall Influence
James P. Kushner is an American hematologist, currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Utah.
Go to Profile#10604
Andreas Speer
#168881
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Andreas Speer is a German philosopher and professor. Since 2004 he is the director of the Thomas-Institut at the University of Cologne. Books Written Edited Die Bibliotheca Amploniana: Ihre Bedeutung im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?
Go to Profile#10605
Frank Brennan
#32093
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Frank Tenison Brennan SJ AO is an Australian Jesuit priest, human rights lawyer and academic. He has a longstanding reputation of advocacy in the areas of law, social justice, refugee protection, reconciliation, and human rights activism.
Go to Profile#10606
Nan Bernstein Ratner
#54291
Overall Influence
Nan Bernstein Ratner is a professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ratner is a board-recognized specialist in child language disorders. Her primary areas of research are fluency development and disorder, psycholinguistics, and child language development. She has published numerous research articles, chapters, and edited texts, as well as co-authored textbooks in her areas of research.
Go to Profile#10607
Jostein Gripsrud
#80977
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jostein Gripsrud is a Norwegian media scholar, and is Professor in Media Studies at the University of Bergen. Life and work Gripsrud completed his MA exam at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 1979 and started as lecturer in Norwegian language and literature at Stockholm University in 1980. He obtained his PhD at the University of Bergen in 1988 on two different dissertations on major mass movements in Norway and their relations with the medium of theatre 1890-1940. He started as the first scholar from the humanities in the then new field of media studies in 1984, as Research Associate, and was hired as an Associate Professor of media studies in 1988.
Go to Profile#10608
Dlawer Ala'Aldeen
#44592
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dlawer Ala'Aldeen , is the Founding President of the Middle East Research Institute, a policy-research institute, based in Arbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. He is a former Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the Kurdistan Regional Government and former professor of Medicine at the University of Nottingham in the UK. His current focus is on policy research in the fields of good governance, rule of law, national security, governance reform and promotion of human rights.
Go to Profile#10609
Michael Spitzer
#146083
Overall Influence
Michael Spitzer is a British musicologist and academic. Early life Michael Spitzer was born in 1966 in Nigeria. He was raised in Israel, and in 1973, emigrated to the UK. He was a refugee of the Yom Kippur War.
Go to Profile#10610
Evdokia Anagnostou
#127706
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Evdokia Anagnostou is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and is cross-appointed as pediatric neurologist and a senior clinician scientist at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, Canada. She is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Translational Therapeutics in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Go to Profile#10611
Brian Hainline
#81662
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Brian Hainline is a medical researcher and the chief medical officer of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in the United States. Prior to taking that position in 2013, he was the chief medical officer of the United States Tennis Association. He was born in Santa Monica, California and currently resides in Indiana. He is now the president of the United States Tennis Association.
Go to Profile#10612
Leif Stenberg
#42462
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Leif Stenberg has been the Dean of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London since April 2017. Media Appearances Stenberg provided commentary during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. He also appeared on live television to comment on the roots and developments of the Arab Spring.
Go to Profile#10613
Gullapalli Nageswara Rao
#34136
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Gullapalli Nageswara Rao is an Indian ophthalmologist, the chairman of the Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis and the founder of the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. A former associate professor at the School of Medicine and Dentistry of the University of Rochester, Rao is a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India. He was honored by the Government of India, in 2002, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri. He was elected in 2017 to the Ophthalmology Hall of Fame instituted by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.
Go to Profile#10614
Mark Lachs
#95736
Overall Influence
Mark S. Lachs is an American physician, scientist, and popular author specializing in the field of aging. He is the Irene and Roy Psaty Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, and Director of Geriatric Medicine for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System. An internationally recognized authority on the field of elder abuse, he has authored over 100 articles on the subject and other areas of gerontology, and conducted important research on the topic. He is also a founder of the New York City Elder Abuse Center, and the not for pr...
Go to Profile#10615
John Lawrence
#40991
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
John Lawrence is an English illustrator and wood engraver. He has twice won the Francis Williams Award for illustration , and twice been runner-up for the Kurt Emil - Maschler Award. He has also published children's books in his own right including This Little Chick which was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year. He was master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1990, and now lives in Cambridge.
Go to Profile#10617
Jaime Levy
#50297
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Jaime Levy is an American author, lecturer, interface designer, and user experience strategist. She first became known for her new media projects in the 1990s. Her best-known projects include the floppy disk distributed with Billy Idol’s album Cyberpunk, WORD, an online magazine, and an online cartoon series, CyberSlacker. She is the author of the business book UX Strategy, which was first published by O’Reilly Media in 2015. It is widely regarded as the definitive work on the practice of user experience strategy and has been translated into nine languages.
Go to Profile#10618
Heather J. Ross
#130797
Overall Influence
Heather Joan Ross is professor of medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. Ross is a scientific lead for the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, the director of the Ted Rogers Centre of Excellence in Heart Function and Director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at Toronto General Hospital. She has been the president of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and the Canadian Society of Transplantation.
Go to Profile#10619
Henryk Skarżyński
#32380
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Henryk Skarzynski is a Polish doctor otolaryngologist, audiologist and phoniatrist, creator and director of Warsaw Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing and World Hearing Center in Kajetany.
Go to Profile#10620
Teresa J. Vietti
#132885
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Teresa J. Vietti was an American physician. She is best known for her pioneering work and research in pediatric cancer. Her research discovered the genetics of leukemia, new chemotherapy agents and tracked the effects of chemotherapy on childhood cancer survivors. Vietti also wrote about her research and was an editor of the Journal of Pediatric Hematology and a co-editor of Clinical Pediatric Oncology. According to Washington University in St. Louis, she was known as "the mother of pediatric cancer therapy."
Go to Profile#10621
Claire Finkelstein
#89107
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the Director of its Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. Biography Finkelstein attended Harvard College , the University of Paris, Sorbonne , Columbia Law School , Yale Law School , and the University of Pittsburgh .
Go to Profile#10622
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
#106567
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Ignatiy Igorevich Vishnevetsky is a Russian-American film critic, essayist, and columnist. He has worked as a staff film critic for The A.V. Club and written for Mubi.com and the Chicago Reader. Vishnevetsky co-hosted Roger Ebert Presents: At the Movies, a nationally syndicated film criticism television show, with Christy Lemire.
Go to Profile#10623
Eberhardt Klemm
#130107
Overall Influence
1929 - 1991 (62 years)
Fritz Eberhardt Klemm was a German musicologist and journalist. He was one of the leading Hanns Eisler experts of the GDR. Life Klemm was born in 1929 in Zwickau as the son of a teacher and attended the secondary school in Leipzig from 1940 to 1948. From 1949, he studied physics, mathematics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig. In 1951, he changed to musicology with Walter Serauky, Hellmuth Christian Wolff and Rudolf Eller and received his diploma in 1954. From 1952, he was an assistant at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Leipzig, from 1954 to 1965 he was research ass...
Go to Profile#10624
Ivan Sviták
#129110
Overall Influence
1925 - 1994 (69 years)
Ivan Sviták was a Czech philosopher, critic, and poet who ranked among Europe's most prominent proponents of Marxist humanism. Career In a vast oeuvre of essays, Sviták addressed questions of democracy and socialism, of art in bureaucratic and consumer societies, and of the "unbearable burden" of political catastrophe in Czech history. In addition, Sviták wrote an extensive body of fiction and poetry, in which he "sought a unity of philosophy, literature, and politics, a unity of engagement, wisdom, and poetry." In this, Sviták consciously followed in the footsteps of the surrealist movement that he admired and critically defended on numerous occasions.
Go to Profile#10625
Walter Salmen
#109490
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Walter Salmen was a German musicologist and university lecturer. Salmen taught from 1958 to 1992 as a professor of musicology at the Saarland University and the University of Kiel. Afterwards, he was for many years the full professor of the Musicological Institute of the University of Innsbruck. As a guest lecturer, he also worked in Switzerland, Israel and the United States. After retirement, he lived in Kirchzarten near Freiburg im Breisgau, and worked as honorary professor at the University of Freiburg.
Go to Profile#10626
Negar Mottahedeh
#66847
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and film theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. Early life She is known for her work on Iranian Cinema, but has also published on the history of reform and revolution, on `Abdu'l-Baha's vision of human solidarity and peace in the 20th Century, on Bábism, Qajar history, performance traditions in Iran, the history of technology, visual theory, Majid Tavakoli and the Men in Scarves Movement , and the role of social media in the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests. With th...
Go to Profile#10627
Michael Bull
#50436
Overall Influence
Michael Bull is a professor in Sound Studies in the Department of Media and Film at the University of Sussex, England. Background Bull is one of the founders of the academic discipline of "sound studies". He has published research on mobile communications, music and sound in urban culture and is often quoted by journalists penning articles about mobile technology devices and was dubbed "Professor iPod" by Wired Magazine. Bull published the books: Sounding Out the City and Sound Moves, iPod Culture and Urban Experience. Bull is Editor of the journal Senses and Society and the book Sound Studies...
Go to Profile#10628
Salome Maswime
#38591
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Salome Maswime is a South African clinician and global health expert. She is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and the Head of Global Surgery at the University of Cape Town. She advocates for women's health rights, equity in surgical and maternal care, and providing adequate health services to remote and underserved populations. She advises and consults for many institutions, including the World Health Organization. In 2017, she was honored with the Trailblazer and Young Achiever Award. She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
Go to Profile#10629
Matthias Theodor Vogt
#111125
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Matthias Theodor Vogt is a German academic with a focus on cultural policy and an author of studies on cultural conditions that might serve to strengthen the democratic potential in diverse European countries. Between 1992 and 1995, Vogt developed the overall blueprint for the Free State of Saxony’s law on cultural areas, and contributed to its acceptance and implementation. Since 1994 he has acted as the founding director of the Saxonian Institute for Cultural Infrastructure and since 1997 has been Professor for Cultural Policy and Cultural History at the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences .
Go to Profile#10630
Willy Rozenbaum
#21560
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Willy Rozenbaum is a Polish-born French physician. A co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus with Jean-Claude Chermann of Luc Montagnier's team, he has since 19 November 2003 held the chair of France's "conseil national du SIDA" and before that had since 1989 practiced in the infectious and tropical diseases service at l'Hôpital Tenonfr and been professor of infectious and tropical diseases at l'Hôpital Saint-Antoine in Paris.
Go to Profile#10631
Martha A.Q. Curley
#138331
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Martha A.Q. Curley is an American nurse. She is the Ruth M. Colket Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Early life and education Curley was born on November 14, 1952 in Springfield, Massachusetts, US to an Italian father. She completed her Diploma in Nursing from the Springfield Hospital School of Nursing in 1973 and her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1985. Following this, she completed her Master's degree in nursing from Yale University and her PhD from Boston College.
Go to Profile#10632
Denis A. Evans
#174707
Overall Influence
#10633
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
#94723
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Raphael Cohen-Almagor is an Israeli/British academic. Cohen-Almagor received his D.Phil. in political theory from Oxford University in 1991, and his B.A. and M.A. from Tel Aviv University . In 1992–1995 he lectured at the Hebrew University Law Faculty. In 1995–2007 he taught at the University of Haifa Law School, Department of Communication, and Library and Information Studies University of Haifa. In 2019, he was distinguished visiting professor to the Faculty of Laws, University College London . In 2023, he is the Olof Palme Visiting Professor at Lund University, Sweden.
Go to Profile#10634
Nino Pirrotta
#68794
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Nino Pirrotta was an Italian musicologist, pianist, music critic, and academic. As a musicologist, he achieved international renown for his scholarship of Italian music from the late medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque eras.
Go to Profile#10635
Peter Nye
#56988
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Peter Hague Nye FRS was a British soil scientist. Early life Peter Nye was born on 16 September 1921 in Hove, Sussex where his father, Haydn Percival Nye, was a chartered surveyor. John Nye, the glaciologist, was his younger brother. Their mother, Jessie Hague, was a daughter of Anderson Hague, the landscape painter, hence Esmé Kirby, the Snowdonia conservationist, was a first cousin.
Go to Profile#10636
Barbara Schellhammer
#124403
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Barbara Schellhammer is a German cultural philosopher and social scientist. She lived, worked and researched in Canada for several years. Since 2019 she holds the chair for Intercultural Social Transformation and is head of the Center for Social and Development Studies at the Munich School of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#10637
Kjell Elgjo
#174672
Overall Influence
1930 - 2011 (81 years)
Kjell Elgjo was a Norwegian pathologist. He took the Candidate of Medicine degree at the University of Oslo in 1956 and the Doctor Medicinae degree in 1966. He was a prosector at the University of Oslo from 1965, docent from 1969 and professor from 1978 to his retirement in 1996. Since 1985 he was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Go to Profile#10638
Shanta Persaud
#106281
Overall Influence
Shanta Jean Persaud is a diabetes researcher and academic. She is professor of diabetes and endocrinology at King's College London, England. Career Persaud obtained a BSc degree in physiology and pharmacology and a PhD in the area of islets of langerhans. She started working at King's College London in 1989. Her current research focuses in the area of islet β-cells, receptors in islet function, and insulin secretagogues. According to Scopus, she has published over 198 scientific research documents with 5677 citations, and has an h-index of 45.
Go to Profile#10639
Günter Breithardt
#97939
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Günter Breithardt is a German physician, cardiologist and emeritus university professor. He is known for his research in the field of rhythmology, especially the diagnosis and pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapy of cardiac arrhythmias and acute cardiac death, in particular the identification of arrhythmia-triggering gene mutations. For 21 years he headed the Medical Clinic and Polyclinic C at Münster University Hospital. A number of his academic students hold university management and chief physician positions.
Go to Profile#10640
Serge Gut
#81956
Overall Influence
1927 - 2014 (87 years)
Serge Gut was a French musicologist of Swiss origin. Biography A pupil of Simone Plé-Caussade, Tony Aubin and Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris, of Solange Corbin and Jacques Chailley at the Sorbonne, emeritus professor at the Paris-Sorbonne a composer, Serge Gut was a specialist of Franz Liszt. He was also a great specialist in German and French music of the 19th and early 20th century, the theory of musical language and its evolution.
Go to Profile#10641
Richard Creath
#174655
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Richard Creath is an American philosopher and President's Professor of Life Sciences and of Philosophy at Arizona State University. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#10642
Eduardo Fermé
#133277
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Eduardo Fermé is an Argentinian computer scientist and philosopher known for his work in belief revision and non monotonic reasoning. He is Full Professor at the University of Madeira. Career Fermé studied Computer Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, graduating in 1991. After that, he obtained a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Universidad de Buenos Aires under supervision of Carlos Alchourrón and Sven Ove Hansson in 1999. In 2011 he obtained a doctoral degree in philosophy from the Kungliga Tekniska högskolan under supervision of John Cantwell. He has more than 70 publicat...
Go to Profile#10643
Philip R. Lee
#35280
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Philip Randolph Lee was an American physician who served as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969 and President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1998.
Go to Profile#10644
Tina Lavender
#148771
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Professor Dame Tina Lavender is a British midwife and Professor of Maternal and Newborn Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine . She is the director of the Centre for Childbirth, Women's, and Newborn Health which is a collaboration between WHO and LSTM. She is also Chief Investigator at the NIHR Global Health Unit on the Prevention and Management of Stillbirths and Neonatal Deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Go to Profile#10645
Stephanie Zacharek
#50585
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Stephanie Zacharek is an American film critic at Time, based in New York City. From 2013 to 2015, she was the principal film critic for The Village Voice. She was a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist in criticism.
Go to Profile#10646
Lois Jovanovic
#131996
Overall Influence
Lois Jovanovic was the chief executive officer of the Diabetes Research Institute at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara, California. She pioneered in medical practice that helped many diabetic women give birth to healthier babies.
Go to Profile#10647
Nagarur Gopinath
#35718
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Go to Profile#10648
Gemma Figtree
#171605
Overall Influence
Gemma Alexandra Figtree is an Interventional Cardiologist at Royal North Shore Hospital, Professor in Medicine at the University of Sydney, chair of the Federal Government's 10-year Mission for Cardiovascular Health, and co-leader of the Cardiovascular Theme for Sydney Health Partners.
Go to Profile#10649
Viviane Tabar
#72164
Overall Influence
Viviane Tabar is an American neurosurgeon, the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since 2017. Biography Tabar took her medical degree from the American University of Beirut. It was followed by a neurosurgical residency at the University of Massachusetts. She did postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Go to Profile#10650
Mark Brill
#64476
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Mark Brill is an American musicologist, particularly known for his work on Latin American Music. He is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Life and career Brill was born in Houston, Texas on January 19, 1964. He grew up in Mexico City, Mexico, where he attended the Lycée Franco Mexicain, receiving the French Baccalauréat in 1983. He then attended Oberlin College , the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law , Tulane University , and the University of California, Davis . His doctoral dissertation was a study of colonial music at the cathedral in Oaxaca, M...
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