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,
#1151
Julian Nida-Rümelin
#6221
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Julian Nida-Rümelin is a German philosopher and public intellectual. He served as State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany under Chancellor Schröder. He was professor of philosophy and political theory at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich until 2020. Nida-Rümelin is vice chairman of the German Ethics Council.
Go to Profile#1152
Victor A. McKusick
#8048
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Victor Almon McKusick was an American internist and medical geneticist, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He was a proponent of the mapping of the human genome due to its use for studying congenital diseases. He is well known for his studies of the Amish. He was the original author and, until his death, remained chief editor of Mendelian Inheritance in Man and its online counterpart Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man . He is widely known as the "father of medical genetics".
Go to Profile#1153
Jonathan Wolff
#24102
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Jonathan Wolff is a British philosopher and academic. He was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London in 2012–16. Life and career Wolff was born on 25 June 1959 to Herbert Wolff and Doris Wolff . He earned his Master of Philosophy from UCL under the direction of G.A. Cohen in 1985. Apart from one year as a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, he has taught at UCL ever since. As of 1 September 2016, he holds the Blavatnik Chair in Public Policy in the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.
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Dimitris Liantinis
#8504
Overall Influence
1942 - 1998 (56 years)
Dimitris Liantinis was a Greek philosopher. He was associate professor at the Department of Pedagogy of the Faculty of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology of the University of Athens, teaching the course "Philosophy of Education and Teaching of Greek Language and Literature". He has written nine books. His last and most seminal work Gemma has been translated into several languages.
Go to Profile#1155
Brad Hooker
#21288
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Brad Hooker is a British-American philosopher who specialises in moral philosophy. He is a professor at the University of Reading and is best known for his work defending rule consequentialism . His book Ideal Code, Real World received a number of favourable reviews from high-profile philosophers. Derek Parfit, for example, wrote: "This book seems to me the best statement and defence, so far, of one of the most important moral theories."
Go to Profile#1156
Guy Debord
#11346
Overall Influence
1931 - 1994 (63 years)
Guy-Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International. He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.
Go to Profile#1157
Hassan Hassanzadeh Amoli
#8552
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Ḥasan Ḥasan-zādih Ãmulī was an Iranian Shi'ite theologian known for his mystical tendencies and Islamic philosophy. He was among clerics who overcomed the traditional opposition to teaching philosophy courses at Shi'ite seminaries. He wrote many books in philosophy, mysticism, mathematics, astronomy, Persian and Arabic literature.He interpreted the Islamic philosophical tradition in a similar way to Mulla Sadra, which is a reconciliation of religion, reason and mysticism. His books include Sharh fusus al-hikam, Tashih nahj al-balagha, Insan dar 'urf-i 'irfan, Tashih kalila wa dimna.
Go to Profile#1158
Ivan Soll
#26356
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Ivan Soll is an American philosopher who is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States. He taught at UW from 1965 until his retirement in May 2011. His teaching and research focused on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosophy in general, existentialism, aesthetics, and various figures of continental philosophy.
Go to Profile#1159
Candace Vogler
#20250
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Candace A. Vogler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and a specialist in moral philosophy, philosophy of action, and G. E. M. Anscombe. Education and career Vogler received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1995, and has taught at the University of Chicago since 1994.
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Jacob Needleman
#8490
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Jacob Needleman was an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar. Needleman was Jewish and was educated at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Freiburg, Germany. He was deeply involved in the Gurdjieff Work and the Gurdjieff Foundation of San Francisco. He was a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at San Francisco State University and is said to have "popularized the term 'new religious movements'." He was a former visiting professor at the Duxx Graduate School of Business Leadership in Monterrey, Mexico, and former director of the center for the study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
Go to Profile#1161
Dmitry Galkovsky
#14813
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Dmitry Yevgenyevich Galkovsky is a Russian writer, journalist, philosopher and blogger. Most famous as author of the novel The Infinite Deadlock . Biography Dmitry Galkovsky was born in Moscow in a working-class family, his father being an engineer, and his mother a tailor. Both his parents were originated from the families of Russian Orthodox clerics. He graduated from school No. 51 in Moscow in 1977.
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Pandurang Shastri Athavale
#10303
Overall Influence
1920 - 2003 (83 years)
Rev. Pandurang Shastri Athavale , also known as Dada /Dadaji, which literally translates as "elder brother" in Marathi, was an Indian activist, philosopher, spiritual leader, social revolutionary, and religion reformist, who founded the Swadhyaya Parivar in 1954. Swadhyaya is a self-study process based on the Bhagavad Gita which has spread across nearly 100,000 villages in India, Americas, Europe, Middle East, Oceania and other Asian countries with five million adherents. Noted for his discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas and the Upanishads, Dadaji is also known for his selfless work an...
Go to Profile#1163
Carl Cohen
#31555
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Carl Cohen was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S. Cohen was co-author of The Animal Rights Debate , a point-counterpoint volume with Tom Regan; he is also the author of Democracy ; the author of Four Systems ; the editor of Communism, Fascism, and Democracy ; the co-author of Affirmative Action and Racial Preference , co-author of Introduction to Logic, 13th edition , and author of A Conflict of Principles: The Battle over Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan .
Go to Profile#1164
Harald zur Hausen
#848
Overall Influence
1936 - 2023 (87 years)
Harald zur Hausen NAS EASA APS was a German virologist. He carried out research on cervical cancer and discovered the role of papilloma viruses in cervical cancer, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008. He was chairman of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
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Didier Eribon
#4976
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Didier Eribon is a French author and philosopher, and a historian of French intellectual life. He lives in Paris. Life Didier Eribon was born in Reims into a working-class family. He was the first in his family to finish secondary education. He credits his mother with helping him achieve this; a factory worker, she had to work overtime to be able to pay for his education.
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Alan Lomax
#841
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was a musician, folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone ...
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Gilbert Hottois
#23553
Overall Influence
1946 - 2019 (73 years)
Gilbert Hottois was a Belgian professor of philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles who specialised in Bioethics. Hottois was born in Brussels. His positions included:Vice-Président of the Association des Sociétés de Philosophie de Langue Française ;Member of the Advisory Board of " Utopean studies " ;President of the Société Belge de Philosophie ;Founder member and vice-président of the Société pour la philosophie de la technique ; Président ;Member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique ;He was chair of the programme committee of the 20...
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Andrzej Przyłębski
#32027
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Andrzej Przyłębski is a Polish philosopher, author of six books on neokantianism and on hermeneutics; past Służba Bezpieczeństwa informer codename TW Wolfgang; between 2016 and 2022 serving as an ambassador to Germany.
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André Tosel
#27233
Overall Influence
1941 - 2017 (76 years)
André Tosel was a French Marxist philosopher and academic administrator. He taught Philosophy at the University of Franche-Comté and Pantheon-Sorbonne University until he became a full professor of philosophy at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He served as its vice president from 1992 to 1998, and as the director of its Center for the History of Ideas from 1998 to 2003. He was the author of several books about Marxism and Marxist theorists.
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Herbert McCabe
#18135
Overall Influence
1926 - 2001 (75 years)
Herbert John Ignatius McCabe was a Dominican priest, theologian and philosopher. Biography Herbert McCabe was born in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He studied chemistry at Manchester University, but influenced by Dorothy Emmet switched to philosophy. He contributed a number of pieces to Humanitas, and became friends with Eric John among others.
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Charlotte Witt
#35512
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Charlotte Witt is a professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of New Hampshire. Education and career Witt double majored at Swarthmore College, graduating in 1975 with degrees both classics and philosophy. She went on to receive her master's and doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1978 and 1980, respectively.
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Maurice Natanson
#19105
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Maurice Alexander Natanson was an American philosopher "who helped introduce the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edmund Husserl in the United States". He was a student of Alfred Schutz at the New School for Social Research and helped popularize Schutz' work from the 1960s onward.
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Stephen R. Bloom
#28705
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Sir Stephen Robert Bloom FRS is a British Professor of Medicine at Imperial College London where he leads the Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism division. Education Bloom was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Master of Arts degree in 1968 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1979. He received his Doctor of Science degree from the University of London in 1982. Bloom completed appointments as a house officer, senior house officer and specialist registrar at Middlesex Hospital, University College London, where he also received his Medical Research Council Clinica...
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Randall Dipert
#26289
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Randall Roy Dipert was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia, the United States Military Academy, and the University at Buffalo where he retired as the C. S. Peirce Chair of American Philosophy.
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Jennifer Whiting
#31378
Overall Influence
Jennifer Elaine Whiting is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. She has also taught at Harvard University and Cornell University, and was Chancellor Jackman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#1176
Jiyuan Yu
#26205
Overall Influence
1964 - 2016 (52 years)
Jiyuan Yu was a Chinese moral philosopher noted for his work on virtue ethics. Yu was a long-time and highly admired Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York, starting in 1997. Prior to his professorship, Yu completed a three-year post as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England . He received his education in China at both Shandong University and Renmin University, in Italy at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and in Canada at the University of Guelph. His primary areas of research and teaching included Ancient Greek Philosoph...
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Zygmunt Ziembiński
#12939
Overall Influence
1920 - 1996 (76 years)
Zygmunt Ziembiński OPR , usually cited as Z. Ziembinski, was a Polish legal philosopher, logician, and one of the most prominent theoreticians of law in Poland in the second half of the 20th century.
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Jonardon Ganeri
#16449
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Jonardon Ganeri, FBA, is a philosopher, specialising in philosophy of mind and in South Asian and Buddhist philosophical traditions. He holds the Bimal Matilal Distinguished Professorship in Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He was Global Network Professor in the College of Arts and Science, New York University, previously having taught at several universities in Britain. Ganeri graduated from Churchill College, Cambridge, with his undergraduate degree in mathematics, before completing a DPhil in philosophy at University and Wolfson Collegess, Oxford. He has published eight monographs, and is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy.
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Jeff Malpas
#22358
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Jeff Malpas is an Australian philosopher and emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Known internationally for his work across the analytic and continental traditions, Malpas is also at the forefront of contemporary philosophical research on the concept of "place" , as first and most comprehensively presented in his Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography—now in its second edition—and further developed in numerous subsequent works.
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Kenneth Einar Himma
#14574
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Kenneth Einar Himma is an American philosopher, author, lawyer, academic and lecturer. Born in Seattle, Himma earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1985, his master's from the University of California in 1987, and his doctorate of law from the University of Washington School of Law in 1990, before receiving his PhD in 2001 from the University of Washington for his thesis, "The Status of Legal Principles".
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Elijah Millgram
#22906
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Elijah "Lije" Millgram is an American philosopher. He is E. E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. His research specialties include practical reason and moral philosophy. Elijah Millgram received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991. He taught at Princeton University and Vanderbilt University before moving to Utah. He is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
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Agustín Rayo
#22155
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Agustín Rayo is a Mexican philosopher of logic, metaphysics, and language. He is the dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and a professor of philosophy. Rayo's number is named after him, as he is the creator of it.
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Sara Ruddick
#16506
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Sara Ruddick was a feminist philosopher and the author of Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Education and career Ruddick earned a B.A. at Vassar College in 1957 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964. She taught philosophy and women's studies at the New School of Social Research for forty years. She was awarded the Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the Year Award by the Society for Women in Philosophy in 2002. A panel celebrating her work was held at the American Philosophical Association meeting in San Diego in 2012. She participated in the oral history project, Femini...
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Eugenio Trías Sagnier
#22011
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Eugenio Trías Sagnier was a Spanish philosopher. Critics have likened his work to Ortega y Gasset in the philosophical literature written in Spanish. Biography Trías was born in Barcelona. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Barcelona in 1964, he continued his studies in Pamplona, Madrid, Bonn and Cologne. Since 1965 he was assistant professor and, later, associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona . In 1976 he became assistant professor of aesthetics and composition at the School of Architecture of Barcelona.
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Luis Villoro
#12360
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Luis Villoro Toranzo was a Spanish–Mexican philosopher, researcher, university professor, diplomat, academic and writer. He published more than ten books between 1950 and 2007. Villoro was born in Barcelona on 3 November 1922 to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother. Between 1983 and 1987, he was a delegate for Mexico in UNESCO. He was named an honorary member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua in 2007.
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Rüdiger Safranski
#12373
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author. Life From 1965 to 1972, Safranski studied philosophy , German literature, history and history of art at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and as well at the Free University in Berlin . There, he worked as an assistant lecturer for German literature from 1972 to 1977. He earned a PhD from FU Berlin in 1976 for a dissertation by the title of "Studies on the Development of Working-Class Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany" . In the late 1970s, he worked as the co-publisher and editor of the Berliner Hefte, a journal on literary life.
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Martha Kneale
#28681
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Martha Kneale was a British philosopher. Education and career Martha Hurst was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. She obtained her B.A. degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1933. Martha was a tutor and Fellow in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1936 to 1966.
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Giacomo Marramao
#16264
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Giacomo Marramao is an Italian philosopher who teaches theoretical philosophy and political philosophy at the Roma Tre University in Rome. Education Marramao studied at the University of Florence where he graduated in philosophy under Eugenio Garin's guidance in 1969, and he was Fellow Scholar on behalf of the Italian CNR and the Humboldt Foundation at the Goethe University Frankfurt .
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Vasily Nalimov
#12162
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Vasiliy Vasilievich Nalimov was a Russian philosopher and humanist and wrote on Transpersonal Psychology. His main areas of research were the philosophy of probability and its biological, mathematical, and linguistic manifestations. He also studied the roles of gnosticism and mysticism in science. Thompson summarizes Nalimov as: "...philosopher, educator, devoted husband, mathematician, dissident, writer, and visionary".
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William C. Wimsatt
#7635
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
William C. Wimsatt is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science , and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. He is currently a Winton Professor of the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota and Residential Fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. He specializes in the philosophy of biology, where his areas of interest include reductionism, heuristics, emergence, scientific modeling, heredity, and cultural evolution.
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Yeshayahu Leibowitz
#4667
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy. He was known for his outspoken views on ethics, religion, and politics. Leibowitz cautioned that the state of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and controversially went on to describe Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehuma...
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Russell Blackford
#12350
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Russell Blackford is an Australian writer, philosopher, and literary critic. Early life and education Blackford was born in Sydney, and grew up in the city of Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, New South Wales. After graduating with first-class honours degrees in both arts and law from the University of Newcastle and University of Melbourne respectively, Blackford was awarded a PhD in English literature, also from Newcastle, on the return to myth in modern fictional narrative . He completed a Master of Bioethics at Monash University and was awarded a second PhD, in philosophy , for a thesis entitled "The philosophy of human enhancement".
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Sven Ove Hansson
#14442
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Sven Ove Hansson is a Swedish philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy and History of Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He is an author and scientific skeptic, with a special interest in environmental risk assessment, as well as in decision theory and belief revision.
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John Harris
#16819
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John Morley Harris, FMedSci, FRSA, FRSB , is a British bioethicist and philosopher. He is the Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#1195
Jürgen Mittelstraß
#11678
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Jürgen Mittelstraß is a German philosopher especially interested in the philosophy of science. Career Mittelstraß studied philosophy, history and protestant theology at the universities of Bonn, Erlangen, Hamburg and Oxford from 1956 until 1961. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen in 1961, where he afterwards wrote his habilitation, completing in 1968. He was influenced by the Erlanger Konstruktivismus.
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Joseph D. Sneed
#20667
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Joseph D. Sneed was an American physicist, and philosopher at the Colorado School of Mines. Early life He was born in Durant, OK. His father, Dabney W. Sneed, was a civil servant with the Postal Service and later an architect for the Federal Housing Administration. His mother, Sallabelle Atkison Sneed, was a homemaker and elementary school teacher.
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Angie Hobbs
#23975
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Angela Hunter "Angie" Hobbs is a British philosopher and academic, who specialises in Ancient Greek philosophy and ethics. She is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
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Ernest Lepore
#23392
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ernest or Ernie Lepore is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist and a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. Education and career Lepore earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1978, and began teaching at the University of Notre Dame before joining the philosophy department at Rutgers University in 1981, where he has taught ever since.
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Baruch Samuel Blumberg
#5041
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Baruch Samuel Blumberg , known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine , for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH and at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.
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John Woods
#17614
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
John Hayden Woods is a Canadian logician and philosopher. He currently holds the position of Director of the Abductive Systems Group at the University of British Columbia and is The UBC Honorary Professor of Logic. He is also affiliated with the Group on Logic, Information and Computation within the Department of Informatics at King's College London where he has held the Charles S. Peirce Visiting Professorship of Logic position since 2001.
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