Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#10601

Jens Fiehler

#141351

Overall Influence

#10602

Arnold H. Menezes

#141354

Overall Influence

#10603

Bruce Evan Landon

#141357

Overall Influence

#10604

Tõnu Viik

#107394

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Tõnu Viik is an Estonian philosopher. Since 2021 he is the rector of Tallinn University. He was born in Jõhvi. In 2003 he finished his doctoral studies at Emory University, USA. Since 1993 he is teaching at Tallinn University.

#10605

Mirza Mahdi Ashtiani

1888 - 1952 (64 years)

Mirza Mahdi Ashtiani , a man of wisdom, mystic, man of literature, was a Great Master in the philosophical School of Tehran. Birth and family Mirza Mahdi was born in 1889 in Tehran. His father, Mirza Jafar was the relatives of Hajj Mirza Muhammad Hasan Ashtiani, famous as the Little Mirza, one of the most great men of knowledge in Tehran.

#10606

Stephen M. Gardiner

#140895

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Stephen Gardiner is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed Professor of Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington. He is known for his works on environmental philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy.

#10607

Ian Robinson

#82988

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Ian Robinson is president emeritus of the Rationalist Society of Australia and immediate past chairman of the Rationalist Association of Australia. Biography He was educated at Ivanhoe Grammar School and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated with honours in philosophy. Subsequently, he has been a tutor in philosophy at the University of Melbourne, a lecturer in philosophy of education at Coburg Teachers' College, leader of the Curriculum Project Team for the Victoria Ministry of Education and manager of the Music and Writing Department at Chisholm Institute, from which he retired i...

#10608

Caroline Haythornthwaite

Caroline Haythornthwaite

#67061

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Caroline Haythornthwaite is a professor emerita at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. She served as the School's director of the Library Science graduate program from July 2017 to June 2019. She previously served as Director and Professor at the Library, Archival and Information Studies, School of SLAIS, at The iSchool at The University of British Columbia . Her research areas explore the way interaction, via computer media, supports and affects work, learning, and social interaction, primarily from a social-network-analysis perspective. Previously, during 1996–2010, at the Uni...

#10609

Rudolf Gerber

1899 - 1957 (58 years)

Rudolf Gerber was a German musicologist. He was professor and director of the musicology department of the University of Gießen and from 1943 professor of musicology at the University of Göttingen.

#10610

Theodore S. Zimmerman

#141421

Overall Influence

#10611

William F. May

#109507

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

William Francis May is an American ethicist. May was born in Chicago and later moved to Houston, where he graduated from high school, aged sixteen. He was accepted at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and sought to pursue a career in law and politics. After the death of his high school debate coach, May became interested in philosophy. At the age of 20, May spent a year in Oklahoma as an interim pastor, then enrolled at Yale Divinity School. He earned a degree in divinity in 1952, started his teaching career in theology at Smith College, and simultaneously pursued a doctorate in contemporary theology at Yale, which he obtained in 1962.

#10612

Alain Braillon

#141442

Overall Influence

#10613

Peter Oscar Jr Kwiterovich

#141467

Overall Influence

#10614

Otto Smiseth

#135574

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Otto Armin Smiseth is a Norwegian professor of medicine. Hailing from Asker, he took his cand.med. degree at the University of Oslo in 1975 and his dr.med. degree at the University of Tromsø in 1993. His speciality is cardiac physiology. In 1995 he became a professor at the University of Oslo and Rikshospitalet. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#10615

Maya Simionescu

#141494

Overall Influence

#10616

Thor Willy Ruud Hansen

#108924

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Thor Willy Ruud Hansen is a Norwegian pediatrician and neonatologist. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Oslo and a former President of the Norwegian Society of Pediatricians . He is currently chairman of the clinical ethics committee at Oslo University Hospital. His research interests are neonatal medicine, including the neurotoxicology of neonatal jaundice, as well as clinical ethics.

#10617

Youcef M. Rustum

#141500

Overall Influence

#10618

William H. Masters

#10619

John Laurens

1754 - 1782 (28 years)

John Laurens was an American soldier and statesman from South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, best known for his criticism of slavery and his efforts to help recruit slaves to fight for their freedom as U.S. soldiers.

#10620

John Moore

1729 - 1802 (73 years)

John Moore FRSE was a Scottish physician and travel author. He also edited the works of Tobias Smollett. Life He was born on 10 October 1729 in Stirling, the son of Rev Charles Moore of Rowallan and his wife, Marion Anderson. The family moved to Glasgow in his youth and he was educated at Glasgow Grammar School. He was then apprenticed to Dr. John Gordon in Glasgow 1745 to 1747.

#10621

Dean R. Hess

#141527

Overall Influence

#10622

Hans T. Bakker

#33137

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Hans T. Bakker is a cultural historian and Indologist, who has served as the Professor of the History of Hinduism and Jan Gonda Chair at the University of Groningen. He worked in the British Museum as a researcher in the project "Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State".

#10623

Giovanna Tosato

#113691

Overall Influence

Giovanna Tosato is an Italian–American physician-scientist and cancer researcher investigating the endothelium, angiogenesis, and the hematopoietic stem cell niche. She heads the molecular and cell biology section in the laboratory of cellular oncology at the National Cancer Institute in the United States. Tosato was a division director in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research from 1992 to 1999.

#10624

Antti J. I. Kauppila

#141560

Overall Influence

#10625

Ronald Girdwood

#96551

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Ronald Haxton Girdwood was a Scottish physician, Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Edinburgh and a President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He undertook research into megaloblastic anaemia and was awarded a gold medal for his MD thesis. He was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1982 and oversaw the expansion of the medical school. He was a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines. He was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club in 1965. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1978 and awarded a...

#10626

Margaret E. Hodson

#141609

Overall Influence

#10627

E. Paul Lichtenstein

#141622

Overall Influence

#10628

Alija Izetbegović

Alija Izetbegović

#17601

Overall Influence

1925 - 2003 (78 years)

Alija Izetbegović was a Bosnian politician, lawyer, Islamic philosopher and author, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

#10629

Jiří Pechar

#85563

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Jiří Pechar was a Czech philosopher and translator. Life and career Born in Příbram, Pechar studied in history of literature at the Charles University, and worked as an editor for the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, before being dismissed for political reasons in 1958. He then worked as a freelance translator, translating in Czech works by Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean-François Lyotard and Claude Lévi-Strauss among others, and was also an author of essays and collection of poems and a collaborator of magazines and journals.

#10630

Paul Ricœur

#141652

Overall Influence

#10631

Nicholas Thatcher

#91694

Overall Influence

Nicholas Thatcher is Professor of Oncology at the University of Manchester, in the School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences at the Christie Hospital NHS Trust and Wythenshawe Hospital; he was appointed to the position of Professor in 1996. He received his PhD from Manchester University, after prior education at the University of Cambridge and St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College, London.

#10632

Roell A. Coutinho

#141666

Overall Influence

#10633

Erich Schenk

1902 - 1974 (72 years)

Erich Schenk was an Austrian musicologist and music historian. Personal and scientific life Born in Salzburg , Schenk studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum and then at the University of Munich, where he also received his doctorate in 1925. His habilitation followed in 1930 at the University of Rostock, and four years later he founded the Musicological Institute at that institution in 1934. He remained director of Musicological Institute through 1940.

#10634

Miguel Marín‐padilla

#141696

Overall Influence

#10635

Mali M. Mathru

#141705

Overall Influence

#10636

S. Clay Wilson

#78400

Overall Influence

1941 - 2021 (80 years)

Steve Clay Wilson was an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Wilson attracted attention from readers with aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of lowlife denizens, often depicting the wild escapades of pirates and bikers. He was an early contributor to Zap Comix.

#10637

Walter Jekyll

1849 - 1929 (80 years)

Walter Jekyll , was an English clergyman who renounced his religion and became a planter in Jamaica, where he collected and published songs and stories from the local African-Caribbean community. Early life Jekyll lived in his youth with his family at 2 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, the seventh of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Julia Hammersley. His sister was the gardener Gertrude Jekyll. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. Jekyll was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who borrowed the family ...

#10638

Vladimir Nikolaevich Anisimov

#141725

Overall Influence

#10639

Guy Neave

#65391

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Guy Richard Neave is a British social scientist and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente, known for his work on higher education in Europe. Biography Neave obtained his PhD in French political history at the University College London in 1967.

#10640

Carlos Chagas Filho

Carlos Chagas Filho

#11923

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Carlos Chagas Filho was a Brazilian physician, biologist and scientist active in the field of neuroscience. He was internationally renowned for his investigations on the neural mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of electrogenesis by the electroplaques of electric fishes. He was also an important scientific leader, being one of the founders of the Biophysics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and was also a president for 16 years of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences .

#10641

David Bruce Weaver

#141784

Overall Influence

#10642

Robert John Mccarthy

#141799

Overall Influence

#10643

Joe V. M.d. M.p.h. Selby

#141806

Overall Influence

#10644

Mario Sznol

#141816

Overall Influence

#10645

Marcel Paquet

#90717

Overall Influence

1947 - 2014 (67 years)

Marcel Paquet was a Belgian philosopher. The most important influences on his thought were Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Michel Foucault. Paquet rejected all forms of Idealism in favor of the sensory world. Insofar as he considered human beings to be no more than fragments of nature, thought was considered by him to be the result of cerebral processes which operate largely beneath the level of consciousness. He insisted on the pre-eminence of the body and the fact that, for this reasons, consciousness observes the results of thought, but does not bring them into being.

#10646

Carl T. Brighton

#141835

Overall Influence

#10647

Geraldine S. Pinkus

#141836

Overall Influence

#10648

Rowenna Louise Anderson

#141845

Overall Influence

#10649

Kurinchi Selvan Gurusamy

#141848

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#10650

Hiroshi Hosoda

#141885

Overall Influence

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