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,
#11251
Ian Mueller
#132219
Overall Influence
1938 - 2010 (72 years)
Ian Bisset Mueller was an American philosopher. He studied ancient Greek philosophy of science and focused on the reception of Plato and Aristotle in late antiquity. Ian Mueller authored Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclid's "Elements" , which is considered standard work in this field; he was also the editor, translator and annotator of 10 volumes in the series Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. Mueller also wrote more than 70 articles on ancient Greek mathematics, cosmology and astronomy.
Go to Profile#11252
Carolyn McLeod
#175827
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Carolyn McLeod is a Canadian bioethicist and feminist philosopher. She is a professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. In 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#11253
Jaan Kaplinski
#98117
Overall Influence
1941 - 2021 (80 years)
Jaan Kaplinski was an Estonian poet, philosopher, politician, and culture critic, known for his focus on global issues and support for left-wing/liberal thinking. He was influenced by Eastern philosophical schools .
Go to Profile#11254
Zerahiah the Greek
#89077
Overall Influence
Rabbi Zerachiah the Greek was a Greek-Jewish ethicist who resided in the Byzantine Empire in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Of his life no details are known, except that he was the author of an ethical work entitled Sefer ha-Yashar ; this work was confused with Jacob Tam's halakhic work of the same name and erroneously attributed to the renowned tosafist. This error was detected by Menahem Lonzano, who, in his poem "Derek Ḥayyim" , expressly states that the ethical work in question belonged to Zerahiah. Lonzano did not succeed, however, in correctly establishing the identity of its author, for a second error immediately arose.
Go to Profile#11255
Michele Nicoletti
#169848
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michele Nicoletti is an Italian politician and philosopher, and served as the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in 2018. He was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in the elections of 24–25 February 2013. He was a member of the Commission of the Twelve, an advisory body for the implementation of the Statute of Trentino-Südtirol, and was also the provincial Secretary of the Democratic Party of Trentino until 16 March 2014. On 22 January 2018, he was elected as the 31st President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a body bringing together parliamentarians from 47 European nations to promote human rights and democracy.
Go to Profile#11256
Barbara J. Stoll
#180215
Overall Influence
#11257
Masatsugu Hori
#180219
Overall Influence
#11258
Sarah Fortune
#135667
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sarah Merritt Fortune is an American Immunologist. She is a Full Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#11259
Hiroshi Okamoto
#180233
Overall Influence
#11260
Michel Foucault
#180236
Overall Influence
#11261
Tan Chorh Chuan
#30932
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Tan Chorh Chuan is a Singaporean college administrator and professor who served as the second president of the National University of Singapore between 2008 and 2017. He is currently a professor at the National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#11262
David Donnison
#55350
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
David Vernon Donnison was a British academic and social scientist, who was Professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics from 1961 to 1969, and Professor of Town and Regional Planning and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#11263
Margaret Schabas
#93893
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Margaret Schabas is a Canadian philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia notable for her work in the history and philosophy of science, particularly the science of economics. Schabas has also published numerous articles and book chapters on the British empiricists, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill.
Go to Profile#11264
Robert E. Michler
#37817
Overall Influence
Robert E. Michler is an American heart surgeon specializing in heart surgery, aortic and mitral valve repair, coronary artery bypass surgery, aneurysm surgery, and management of the failing heart. In 2017, Michler received the Vladimir Borakovsky Prize in Moscow from the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation for “his personal contributions to the development of cardiovascular surgery”.
Go to Profile#11265
Yitshak Kreiss
#50792
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Yitshak Kreiss is an Israeli physician and Director General of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. Kreiss served in the Israel Defense Forces in various capacities for 25 years, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. In 2011, he was appointed Surgeon General of the IDF. Kreiss is an expert in disaster medical relief.
Go to Profile#11266
Roy Amara
#30817
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Roy Charles Amara was an American researcher, scientist, futurist and president of the Institute for the Future best known for coining Amara's law on the effect of technology. He held a BS in Management, an MS in the Arts and Sciences, and a PhD in Systems Engineering, and also worked at the Stanford Research Institute.
Go to Profile#11267
John D. Faris
#77793
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John Denver Faris is an American Chorbishop of the Syriac Maronite Church of Antioch, serving the Maronite Catholic Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. He is a canon lawyer of the Eastern Catholic Church, and an expert called upon for dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Christian Churches.
Go to Profile#11268
Axel Kaiser
#36236
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Axel Phillip Kaiser Barents-Von Hohenhagen is a Chilean writer, lawyer and political scientist. A Mont Pelerin Society member, he has collaborated as a columnist for El Mercurio, El Líbero and Diario Financiero. In 2013 and 2014 he published two articles in Forbes: "Is this the end of the Chilean economic miracle?" and "Michelle Bachelet is destroying Chile's free market institutions". Some critics argued about the latter that Kaiser was overstating the impact of Michelle Bachelet's reforms.
Go to Profile#11269
Günter Bentele
#86249
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Günter Bentele was a professor of Public Relations at the University of Leipzig between 1994 and 2014. Between 1989 and 1994 he taught at the University of Bamberg.
Go to Profile#11270
Ruth Hall
#173278
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Ruth Hall is a professor at PLAAS at the University of the Western Cape, which she joined in 2002. A political scientist by training, she specialises in the politics and the political economy of agrarian reform, land redistribution, and poverty.
Go to Profile#11271
William Weaver Austin
#116888
Overall Influence
1920 - 2000 (80 years)
William Weaver Austin was an American musicologist, organist, and pianist. Austin was born in Lawton, Oklahoma on January 18, 1920, and attended schools in Kansas City, Missouri, Great Falls, Montana, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Aged 15, he accepted admission to Harvard University, where he studied American history and literature. He came to know Walter Piston, and participated in the Harvard Glee Club as an accompanist. Following the completion of his master's degree at Harvard in 1940, Austin went to the Berkshire Music Center to coach opera and study counterpoint under Paul Hindemith. In 1941, Austin spent some time at the MacDowell Colony.
Go to Profile#11272
Patricia Charache
#27300
Overall Influence
1929 - 2015 (86 years)
Patricia Charache was a physician specializing in infectious disease and microbiology. She was a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for more than 50 years, retiring as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Pathology, Medicine, and Oncology.
Go to Profile#11273
Danny Ben-Moshe
#131244
Overall Influence
Danny Ben-Moshe is a documentary film maker and an associate professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He has produced and directed several critically praised documentaries. Career In 2001, Ben-Moshe was presented with the Commonwealth Centenary of Federation medal for leadership against and research into racism in Australia. These include The Buchenwald Ball about Holocaust survivors in Australia celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of their liberation, which screened on SBS Television in Australia.
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Kurt Blaukopf
#44747
Overall Influence
1914 - 1999 (85 years)
Kurt Blaukopf was an Austrian music sociologist. Blaukopf established music sociology as a subject at the Vienna Musikhochschule. He founded the Institute of Music Sociology and the MEDIACULT Institute.
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Jerry Green
#80044
Overall Influence
Jerome Frederic Green was an American sports journalist and author. He was a staff writer for the Associated Press from 1956 to 1963 and for The Detroit News from 1963 to 2004. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2003. He is the only sportswriter to have covered each of the first 56 Super Bowls, from 1967 to 2022.
Go to Profile#11276
Margaret Hayes Grazier
#93357
Overall Influence
1916 - 1999 (83 years)
Margaret Hayes Grazier was an American librarian, educator, and published author in the field of Library and Information science, who specialized in school librarianship. She worked as a school librarian at various high schools and, later in her career, as a professor of library science at Wayne State University. Grazier had developed a model to guide library media specialists to become fully immersed in the entire cycle of the student's learning process, everything from storytelling to planning and evaluating curriculum. She was active in several important library organizations, including th...
Go to Profile#11277
Frank Schneider
#167888
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Frank Schneider is a German musicologist. Life Born in Großerkmannsdorf, Saxony, Schneider studied Kapellmeister from 1961 at the Musikhochschule Dresden and from 1964 musicology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Go to Profile#11278
James Underwood
#42925
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sir James Cresseé Elphinstone Underwood FMedSci is a British pathologist who was awarded a knighthood for services to medicine in the 2005 New Year honours list. Early life and education Underwood was born at Walsall in 1942, where his father, John Underwood, was a general practitioner. The family settled in Cheltenham in 1948. He was educated at Downside School, Somerset. From 1960-1965 he was a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, and a house doctor at St Stephen's Hospital, Chelsea.
Go to Profile#11279
Robert Adams
#109460
Overall Influence
1928 - 1997 (69 years)
Robert Adams was an American Advaita teacher. In later life Adams held satsang with a small group of devotees in California, US. He mainly advocated the path of jñāna yoga with an emphasis on the practice of self-enquiry. Adams' teachings were not well known in his lifetime, but have since been widely circulated amongst those investigating the philosophy of Advaita and the Western devotees of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. A book of his teachings, Silence of the Heart: Dialogues with Robert Adams, was published in 1999.
Go to Profile#11280
Steven C. Beering
#24719
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Steven Claus Beering served as president of Purdue University from 1983 to 2000. Previously, he was dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine for nine years. During his leadership, Purdue's main campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, grew by more than 20 buildings. He replaced John W. Hicks and was succeeded by Martin C. Jischke. Beering was well known for his opposition to financial earmarks. In his honor, the former Liberal Arts Education Building , was renamed Beering Hall. He also founded an eponymous scholarship which provides recipients with full tuition and fees, room and board, an...
Go to Profile#11281
Pedro José Greer
#36533
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Pedro José Greer Jr. is an American physician of Cuban descent. He is Founding Dean for the Roseman University Health Sciences College of Medicine. He was awarded a MacArthur "genius grant" in 1993, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the Great Floridian Award in 2013. He has been a board member of the American charity for the homeless, Comic Relief.
Go to Profile#11282
Sigvald Bernhard Refsum
#83175
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Sigvald Bernhard Refsum was a Norwegian neurologist and university teacher. Biography Sigvald Refsum studied medicine at University of Oslo and obtained his doctorate in 1946. He taught in University of Bergen from 1951, then from 1954 until his retirement in 1978 in University of Oslo. Refsum disease is named after him.
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Wolfram Samlowski
#79530
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Wolfram Samlowski is an American medical oncologist with Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada and a member of the Research Developmental Therapeutics and Genitourinary Committees for US Oncology. His research interests include translational research and development of novel cancer immunotherapy agents, translational drug development as well as gene therapy. His clinical interests are in developing more effective treatments for advanced stages of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers , and renal cancer.
Go to Profile#11284
Aneez Esmail
#180416
Overall Influence
#11285
Howard Landy
#73513
Overall Influence
Howard Landy is a professor of neurosurgery in the Department of Neurological Surgery and Radiation Oncology at the University of Miami and serves as the director of quality and patient safety at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Go to Profile#11286
David Nicholls
#79669
Overall Influence
1936 - 1996 (60 years)
David Gwyn Nicholls was an English Anglican priest, theologian, and Caribbean studies scholar who authored more than one hundred publications in the fields of political theology and Caribbean studies.
Go to Profile#11287
Harendra de Silva
#25212
Overall Influence
Harendra de Silva is a pediatrician whose efforts have helped to create awareness of child abuse in Sri Lanka. Education de Silva was educated at Ananda College Colombo, before he entered the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, where he obtained both an undergraduate Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery and later Doctor of Medicine.
Go to Profile#11288
James W. Holsinger
#60075
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
James Wilson Holsinger Jr., is an American physician. A former major general in the U.S. Army Reserve , he has worked primarily in public health for over thirty years. He served as the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health from 1990 to 1993, during the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. From 1994 to 2003, Holsinger was the Chancellor of the University of Kentucky's Chandler Medical Center. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Kentucky's Secretary of Health and Family Services.
Go to Profile#11289
Selna Kaplan
#38212
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Selna Lucille Kaplan was an American pediatric endocrinologist and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. She led the first American clinical trials of growth hormone treatment.
Go to Profile#11290
Dan Caspi
#73467
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Dan Caspi was a lecturer at the Communication Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel. Throughout his career, Caspi has combined research with public activity and extensive, lively commentary, publishing hundreds of articles in the printed daily and online press, including regular columns in a Jerusalem local paper, in the Israel Publishers’ Association monthly Otot ' in Haayin Hashviit ' the op-ed section of ynet and a blog for Ha'aretz.
Go to Profile#11291
Tania Bubela
#94891
Overall Influence
Tania Marjorie Bubela is a professor and dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. Education Born and raised in Australia, Bubela earned her bachelor's degree in 1988 from the Australian National University and her PhD from the University of Sydney.
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John E. J. Rasko
#116935
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
John E. J. Rasko AO is an Australian clinical hematologist, pathologist and scientist whose research focuses on gene and stem cell therapy, experimental haematology and molecular biology. He directs the Department of Cell and Molecular Therapies at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, heads the Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Program at the Centenary Institute, Sydney, and is Professor of Medicine, Sydney Medical School, the University of Sydney. He is a science communicator, often interviewed on Australian radio and television, and is a regular contributor to Breakfast, Radio National, ABC. Rasko delivered the ABC's 2018 Boyer Lectures.
Go to Profile#11293
Nathaniel Tkacz
#122239
Overall Influence
Nathaniel Tkacz is a Swedish-Australian scholar of digital media who is currently Reader at the University of Warwick. His research on Wikipedia has been influential in media studies and organisational theory. Tkacz has described his work as investigating "the political, economic and organisational dimensions of technology, with a specific focus on networked and digital forms".
Go to Profile#11294
Christophe Wiart
#118429
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Christophe Wiart is a French scientist. His fields of expertise are Asian ethnopharmacology, chemotaxonomy and ethnobotany. He has collected, identified and classified several hundred species of medicinal plants of India, Southeast Asia and China.
Go to Profile#11295
Wu Mengchao
#8392
Overall Influence
1922 - 2021 (99 years)
Dr. Wu Mengchao , was a Chinese surgeon and a medical scientist who specialized in hepatobiliary surgery. He was also known as the "Father of Chinese Hepatobiliary Surgery". Wu was born in Minqing County, Fuzhou, China. In 1940, he was admitted to 同济附中 , a high school affiliated to Tongji University. In 1949, he graduated from Tongji University School of Medicine in Shanghai. He was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991 and was awarded the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award in 2005, China's highest scientific prize, by President Hu Jintao. He was the founding director o...
Go to Profile#11296
Gerd Wolandt
#174162
Overall Influence
1928 - 1997 (69 years)
Gerd Wolandt was a German philosopher and academic teacher. Life and career Wolangt was born in Heiligenhaus. After his family moved to Karthaus in 1940, Wolandt first attended the St. Johann grammar school in Danzig and later the secondary school in Berent. At the end of the Second World War, he was conscripted into the Reich Labour Service in 1944 and then as a . He then took his Abitur in Velbert, having returned to the Rhineland after the war.
Go to Profile#11297
Darrell Kirch
#40985
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Darrell G. Kirch is an American physician who is president and CEO emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges . He trained as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, before going on to hold senior administrative positions at several medical colleges.
Go to Profile#11298
Egon von Vietinghoff
#80677
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Egon Arnold Alexis Freiherr von Vietinghoff genannt Scheel was a German-Swiss painter, author, philosopher and creator of the Egon von Vietinghoff Foundation. He reconstructed the lost painting techniques of the Old Masters, and created some 2,700 paintings.
Go to Profile#11299
Sandra Collins
#65501
Overall Influence
Sandra Collins is an Irish mathematician and leading academic librarian, who is the university librarian of University College Dublin, Ireland's largest university, since 2022. She was director of the National Library of Ireland from 2015.
Go to Profile#11300
Adrian M. Di Bisceglie
#180563
Overall Influence
