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.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#11301
Robyn Guymer
#114622
Overall Influence
Professor Robyn Guymer was awarded an Elizabeth Blackburn Fellowship from the NHMRC, and works in ophthalmology at Melbourne University. Guymer is a senior retinal specialist within the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, and is the deputy director, Centre for Eye Research Australia. She works in age-related macular degeneration as a clinician, academic, and researcher, and has used nano-lasers to treat Age-related Macular Degeneration.
Go to Profile#11302
Michael Ristow
#53579
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Michael Ristow is a German medical researcher who has published influential articles on biochemical aspects of mitochondrial metabolism and particularly the possibly health-promoting role of reactive oxygen species in diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer, as well as general aging due to a process called mitohormesis.
Go to Profile#11303
Prof. Peter Schwandt
#147569
Overall Influence
#11304
Stephen H. Miller
#147571
Overall Influence
#11305
Sven Schinner
#147578
Overall Influence
#11306
J. Avila Marrero
#147592
Overall Influence
#11307
Erskine Childers
1870 - 1922 (52 years)
Robert Erskine Childers , usually known as Erskine Childers , was an English-born Irish nationalist who established himself as a writer with accounts of the Second Boer War, the novel The Riddle of the Sands about German preparations for a sea-borne invasion of England, and proposals for achieving Irish independence.
Go to Profile#11308
Sigvard T. Hansen
#147602
Overall Influence
#11309
A. Mcgehee Harvey
#147607
Overall Influence
#11310
Shkëlzen Maliqi
#71535
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Shkëlzen Maliqi is a Kosovar philosopher, art critic, political analyst and intellectual. During the early 1990s, Shkelzen was also directly involved in politics. He was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Kosovo and served as its first president from 1991 to 1993. He also held leading positions in civil society organisations such as the Kosovo Civil Society Foundation and the Kosovo Helsinki Committee .
Go to Profile#11311
Jean‐claude Bystryn
#147633
Overall Influence
#11312
Roger Henriksson,
#147634
Overall Influence
#11313
John G. Hunter
#147636
Overall Influence
#11314
Robert Michael Kacmarek
#147646
Overall Influence
#11315
Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti
1713 - 1757 (44 years)
Giuseppe Maria Buondelmonti was an Italian poet, orator and philosopher. Biography Buondelmonti was born into a noble family, and was raised highly educated. He attended the University of Pisa, but was unable to graduate due to health issues. During this time he did write poetry, literary critiques, entries for an encyclopedia that was being put together, and a number of funeral orations. While in his 20s he joined the Freemasons, a decision which would have exposed him to serious danger, but he had the protection of his noble family's political connections to protect him. He was also involved in the church, where he was granted the rank Knight Commander of the Order of Malta.
Go to Profile#11316
Carl‐gerhard Gottfries
#147648
Overall Influence
#11317
Jerzy W. Kupiec‐weglinski
#147659
Overall Influence
#11318
Alphonse Le Roy
1822 - 1896 (74 years)
Alphonse Le Roy was a professor at the University of Liège, in Belgium, who contributed over 150 entries to the Biographie Nationale de Belgique. Life Le Roy was born in Liège on 28 July 1822, the only son of Louis-Nicolas Le Roy and Henriette Streel. He studied philosophy at Liège University, graduating at the age of 19, and after abandoning a law degree went on to qualify as a teacher. He taught at a secondary school in Tienen for a number of years from 1844, helping set up the Journal de l'Instruction publique in 1845. On 12 September 1848 he married Marie-Françoise Elisa Delvaux . In 1850 he was appointed lecturer on logic and metaphysics at the University of Liège.
Go to Profile#11319
Daniel Heller-Roazen
#80740
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Daniel Heller-Roazen is the Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is one of the translators into English of work by Giorgio Agamben. He was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018. His father was the historian of psychoanalysis, Paul Roazen.
Go to Profile#11320
Theoklis E. Zaoutis
#147695
Overall Influence
#11321
Jay R. Lieberman
#147712
Overall Influence
#11322
Bent Weeke
#147726
Overall Influence
#11323
Haly Abenragel
901 - 1040 (139 years)
Abū l-Ḥasan 'Alī ibn Abī l-Rijāl al-Shaybani was an Arab astrologer of the 10th to 11th century CE / 4th to 5th century AH best known for his Kitāb al-bāri' fī aḥkām an-nujūm. Life He was a court astrologer to the Tunisian prince al-Mu'izz ibn Bâdis in the first half of the 11th century CE / 5th century AH. Haly died after 1037/428 in Kairouan in what is now Tunisia.
Go to Profile#11324
Michelle Murphy
#63269
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michelle Murphy is a Canadian academic. She is a professor of history and women and gender studies at the University of Toronto and director of the Technoscience Research Unit. Murphy is well known for her work on regimes of imperceptibility, the ways in which different forms of knowledge become visible or invisible in the scientific community and broader society. Murphy has published several books, including Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers which won the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of S...
Go to Profile#11325
Henry Bugbee
#134351
Overall Influence
1915 - 1999 (84 years)
Henry Bugbee was an American philosopher and professor. In his writing he explored a strain of existentialist thought with a distinctive emphasis on wilderness. In his best known work, The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form, Bugbee addresses the nature of consciousness and the meaning of place through reflections on his encounters with the natural world and his readings of past philosophers. Through these personal meditations, Bugbee presents a moving and urgent account of the way toward the integrated moral life.
Go to Profile#11326
Iris F. Litt
#97276
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Dr. Iris F Litt is a doctor, professor, and medical director that specializes in pediatrics and adolescent health. She has achieved multiple honors through her teaching and research in different areas of adolescent and pediatric health.
Go to Profile#11327
Paul D. Stolley
#147804
Overall Influence
#11328
Joseph Späth
1823 - 1896 (73 years)
Joseph Späth was professor of obstetrics in Vienna, and from 1873 to 1886 he was director of the second obstetrical clinic at the Vienna General Hospital. Following graduation at the University of Vienna in 1849, he became an assistant to Johann Baptist Chiari . Afterwards he worked at the maternity clinic for midwives until 1853. In 1861, he was appointed professor of obstetrics in Vienna, and in 1873, he became director of the second obstetrical-gynecological clinic. In 1872/73, he served as university rector.
Go to Profile#11329
Luis Felipe Fajardo
#147820
Overall Influence
#11330
Andrei Marga
#93438
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Andrei Marga is a Romanian philosopher, political scientist, and politician. Rector – for the second time – of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, he was a member of the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party , serving as Minister of Education in the Democratic Convention coalition governments of Victor Ciorbea, Radu Vasile, and Mugur Isărescu . In January 2001, he replaced Ion Diaconescu as PNŢCD president, but resigned from this position in July 2001, amid political tensions within the party. He subsequently formed a new political party, more specifically the Popular Christian Party later during the same year.
Go to Profile#11331
Fritz Stein
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Stein was a German theologian, conductor, musicologist and church musician. He found in an archive in Jena the score of the so-called Jena Symphony, which he published as possibly a work by the young Ludwig van Beethoven. After a long period in Kiel from 1919 to 1933, teaching at the Kiel University and as Generalmusikdirektor, he had a leading position in the Reichsmusikkammer of the Nazis in Berlin.
Go to Profile#11332
Rafael Rubio
#147832
Overall Influence
#11333
Abdu Al Rahim Damavandi
#122018
Overall Influence
Molla Abdul Rahim Damavandi was an Iranian shia philosopher and one of the leading of Zahabiyyah Tarighah. Life He was the son of Muhammad Yunes Isfahani. He is believed to have come from the city of Damavand, and also resided in Karbala. His ancestors were from Damavand, Iran but his father went to Isfahan. Molla Abdul Al Rahim's education occurred in Isfahan, where he was a pupil of Muhammad Sadiq Ardestani. He mentioned the name of his teacher many times in the Hosseinian mysteries.
Go to Profile#11334
Gösta Gahrton
#147842
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
#11335
Nancy L. R. Bucher
#94597
Overall Influence
1913 - 2017 (104 years)
Nancy Leslie Rutherford Bucher was an American physician who was a pioneering scholar in the fields of liver cell regeneration and hepatocyte cultures. Bucher attended Bryn Mawr School and Bryn Mawr College, and was one of the first women to receive an MD degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#11336
Rudolph Krejci
#49929
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Rudolph Krejci was a Czechoslovak-American philosopher and professor, who was the founder of the Philosophy and Humanities Programs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and founder and first dean of the university's College of Arts and Sciences in 1975. In 1997, after 37 years at the university, Krejci became Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Humanities.
Go to Profile#11337
David Morritz De Kretser
#147861
Overall Influence
#11338
Dan G. Mcnamara
#147867
Overall Influence
#11339
Christopher John Gostout
#147874
Overall Influence
#11340
Louis Round Wilson
1876 - 1979 (103 years)
Louis Round Wilson was an important figure to the field of library science, and is listed in "100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century," an article in the December 1999 issue of American Libraries. The article lists what he did for the field of library science including dean at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, directing the library at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and as one of the “internationally oriented library leaders in the U.S. who contributed much of the early history of the International Federation of Library Associations and Inst...
Go to Profile#11341
Józef Życiński
#38276
Overall Influence
1948 - 2011 (63 years)
Józef Mirosław Życiński was a Polish philosopher, publicist, the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Lublin and a Professor of the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Rome, Pontifical University of John Paul II in Cracow and Catholic University of Lublin.
Go to Profile#11342
Daniel Dhumeaux
#147887
Overall Influence
#11343
Cathie Martin
#52229
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Catherine Rosemary Martin is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and how crops can be fortified to improve diets and address escalating chronic disease globally.
Go to Profile#11344
Reza Ramezani Gilani
#75613
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Reza Ramezani is a Twelver Shia Muslim cleric with the religious Rank Ayatollah. He has been a member of the Expert Council in the Islamic Republic of Iran since 2006. From 2009 to August 2018, he was head and director of the Islamic Center Hamburg, the center of Shiite Islam in Germany. Before working in Hamburg, he headed the Islamic Center Imam Ali Vienna. He is the Secretary-General of the Ahl Al-Bayt World Assembly and the representative of Gilan in the Assembly of Experts. Between 2001 and 2005, he represented the Supreme Leader and the Friday Imams in Karaj.
Go to Profile#11345
Dick van Bekkum
#127362
Overall Influence
1925 - 2015 (90 years)
Dirk Willem "Dick" van Bekkum was a Dutch medical-radiobiologist. Van Bekkum was founder and head of the Radiobiological Institute of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research for thirty years. At Leiden University he was professor of experimental transplantation biology and at the Erasmus University Rotterdam he was professor of radiobiology. In the late 1960s he was one of the first to perform bone marrow transplants.
Go to Profile#11346
Pekka A. Saikku
#147914
Overall Influence
#11347
Sidney L. Goldfischer
#147944
Overall Influence
#11348
Kyung Soo Lee
#147949
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#11349
Anis Ahmad
#50405
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Anis Ahmad is a Pakistani social scientist, an educationist, and professor of Islam. He is recipient of award, by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, awarded fellowship by the University Science Malaysia, also earned meritorious professorship at the International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. As first Vice-President of International Islamic University, Islamabad, he visualised and founded the Da’wah Academy of the I.I.U.I. He was the first Dean of the Faculty of Usul al-din and Faculty of Social Sciences of the IIU at Islamabad. He was first Dean of the Faculty of Islamic R...
Go to Profile#11350
James A. Doonan
1841 - 1911 (70 years)
James Aloysius Doonan was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit, who was the president of Georgetown University from 1882 to 1888. During that time he oversaw the naming of Gaston Hall and the construction of a new building for the School of Medicine. Doonan also acquired two historic cannons that were placed in front of Healy Hall. His presidency was financially successful, with a reduction in the university's burdensome debt that had accrued during the construction of Healy Hall.
Go to Profile