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,
#11801
Jan Bondeson
#31754
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jan Bondeson is a Swedish-British rheumatologist, scientist and author, working as a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at the Cardiff University School of Medicine. He has also written non-fiction on topics such as medical anomalies and unsolved murders. In 2003 he told an interviewer, "I've always had a profound interest in history, especially the history of medicine, and a bit of a fancy for the macabre and odd." Bondeson is the biographer of a predecessor of Jack the Ripper, the London Monster, who stabbed 50 women in the buttocks, of Edward "the Boy" Jones, who stalked Queen V...
Go to Profile#11802
Freddie Fu
#43545
Overall Influence
1950 - 2021 (71 years)
Freddie H. Fu Career Fu was born in Hong Kong, his ancestral hometown is Nanhai district, Foshan city, Guangdong province. He attended Dartmouth College, where he was a member of the Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity. Dr. Fu was president of the Pennsylvania Orthopaedic Society and, in 2008, assumed the presidency of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and was the first foreign-born president in AOSSM's 40-year history. In 2009, he was named president of the International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine. In 2011, he received the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' Diversity Award.
Go to Profile#11803
Barbara Galland
#72318
Overall Influence
Barbara Carolyn Galland is a New Zealand academic in the field of paediatric sleep health. She is a professor in the department of women's and children's health at the University of Otago. Academic career Galland completed her PhD thesis in the department of pharmacology at the University of Otago Medical School in 1989. The thesis was titled Bronchial Hyperreactivity in the Guinea-pig.
Go to Profile#11804
Mark Anthony Neal
#184678
Overall Influence
#11805
Rafael Celestino Benítez
#49020
Overall Influence
1917 - 1999 (82 years)
Rear Admiral Rafael Celestino Benítez was a highly decorated American submarine commander who led the rescue effort of the crew members of the during the Cold War. After retiring from the navy, he was Pan American World Airways' vice president for Latin America. He taught international law for 16 years at the University of Miami School of Law, and served as associate dean, interim dean and director and founder of the foreign graduate law program. While there, he founded the comparative law LL.M. program, the inter-American law LL.M. program, and the Inter-American Law Review. After his dea...
Go to Profile#11806
Peter Mugyenyi
#105533
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Ndimbirwe Mugyenyi, MBChB, DCH, FRCPI, FRCPE, ScD is a Ugandan physician, HIV/AIDS researcher, medical administrator and author. He is executive director and co-founder of the Joint Clinical Research Centre, and a leading authority on treatment of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Go to Profile#11807
Bob Deacon
#124148
Overall Influence
1944 - 2017 (73 years)
Bob Deacon was a prominent social policy academic and policy advisor credited by Kaasch and Stubbs with responsibility for the introduction of the term global social policy. Career He was Emeritus Professor of International Social Policy at the University of Sheffield. He was the founding editor of the journal Global Social Policy: An international journal of social development and public policy and an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Go to Profile#11808
Carla Pugh
#139125
Overall Influence
Carla Marie Pugh is an American surgeon. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for "pioneering sensor technology research that helped to define, characterize and inspire new and innovative performance metrics and data analysis strategies for the emerging field of digital health care."
Go to Profile#11809
Vijay Prashad
#184696
Overall Influence
#11810
Emma Rush
#178144
Overall Influence
Emma Rush is a lecturer in philosophy and ethics at Charles Sturt University Faculty of Arts, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, notable for her work on sexualisation of children. In 2006, Rush worked on a series of reports for The Australia Institute. Two of the reports which she co-authored led to a senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children.
Go to Profile#11811
Cynthia Carter
#125292
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Cynthia Carter is a Reader in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, and co-founding editor of the journal Feminist Media Studies. She has been the guest editor of a special "Gendered News" issue of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, and, along with Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, she was co-guest editor of a special "Children, Media and Conflict" issue of the Journal of Children and Media.
Go to Profile#11812
Giles Brindley
#9528
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Giles Skey Brindley, FRS is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer, known for his contributions to the physiology of the retina and colour vision, and treatment of erectile dysfunction. Medical career Brindley is perhaps best known for an unusual scientific presentation at the 1983 Las Vegas meeting of the American Urological Association, where he removed his pants to show the audience his chemically induced erection and invited them to inspect it closely. He had injected phenoxybenzamine into his penis in his hotel room before the presentation.
Go to Profile#11813
Donald Laub
#19339
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Donald R. Laub Sr. is an American retired plastic surgeon and founder of Interplast, which led multidisciplinary teams on reconstructive surgery missions to developing countries. Education Laub completed his undergraduate studies at Marquette University and earned an MD from the Marquette University School of Medicine in 1960. After completing his internship at the Yale School of Medicine, he moved westward to Stanford University, where he assumed an assistant professorship and co-founded a 6-year integrated surgical residency program as well as the Stanford Primary Care Associate Program. H...
Go to Profile#11814
Christoph Reuter
#95475
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Christoph Reuter is a German University professor for systematic musicology at the University of Vienna. life Born in Duisburg, Reuter studied musicology at the University of Cologne, received his doctorate summa cum laude in 1996 and his habilitation in 2002. He has held guest professorships or teaching positions at several universities , and has also been a managing partner of a Cologne-based internet agency since 2000. Since 2008, Reuter has been university professor for systematic musicology at the University of Vienna.
Go to Profile#11815
Ann J. Johanson
#117967
Overall Influence
1934 - 2020 (86 years)
Ann J. Johanson was an American pediatric endocrinologist. She was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. At UVA, she was the founding director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology. In 1971, she and her colleague Robert M. Blizzard first described Johanson-Blizzard Syndrome.
Go to Profile#11816
Lynn Garafola
#63025
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lynn Theresa Garafola is an American dance historian, linguist, critic, curator, lecturer, and educator. A prominent researcher and writer with broad interests in the field of dance history, she is acknowledged as the leading expert on the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev , the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance.
Go to Profile#11817
Reginald Fraser Amonoo
#90755
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Reginald Fraser Amonoo is a Ghanaian academic. He is a retired professor of modern languages at the University of Ghana and the University of Zimbabwe. He is a former president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#11818
Aleksander Skotnicki
#174250
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Aleksander Bartłomiej Skotnicki is a Polish hematologist and transplantologist, specialist in internal medicine, professor of medical sciences, Head of the Hematology Clinic of the Jagiellonian University Medical College between 1993 and 2018, academic lecturer, social activist, member of the Polish Academy of Learning.
Go to Profile#11819
Hannah Joyce
#102002
Overall Influence
Hannah J. Joyce is an Australian scientist and engineer, and a professor at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her research specialises in the development of new nanomaterials for applications in optoelectronics and energy harvesting. She has received several awards for her work in nanowire engineering and terahertz photonics.
Go to Profile#11820
Diana Lennon
#179329
Overall Influence
1949 - 2018 (69 years)
Diana Rosemary Lennon was a New Zealand academic and pediatrician, specialising in infectious diseases, and was a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career Lennon graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Otago in 1972. She was awarded FRACP in Pediatrics in 1978.
Go to Profile#11821
R. Kanagasuntheram
#101700
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Professor Ragunathar Kanagasuntheram was a Sri Lankan Tamil physician, zoologist, academic and dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Jaffna. Early life and family Kanagasuntheram was born on 13 October 1919 in Karainagar in northern Ceylon. He was the son of Ragunathar, a teacher from Karainagar. He was educated at Karainagar Hindu College and Jaffna Hindu College. After school he joined Ceylon Medical College in 1938. He graduated from the University of Ceylon in 1944 with a first class honours MBBS degree and was awarded the Rockwood Gold Medal. He passed the part 1 of the Fe...
Go to Profile#11822
Geert Lovink
#184784
Overall Influence
#11823
Hilary Blumberg
#17042
Overall Influence
Hilary Patricia Blumberg is a medical doctor and the inaugural John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. She is also a professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, and works in the Child Study Center at Yale where she has been a faculty member since 1998. She attended Harvard University as an undergraduate, and completed medical school at Cornell University Medical College . She completed her medical internship and psychiatry residency at Cornell University Medical College/New York Hospital, and her neuroimaging fellowship training at Cornell University, Weill Medical College.
Go to Profile#11824
John Fitzgerald
#131146
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Fr John FitzGerald was a Carmelite friar, priest, poet and philosopher. Life John FitzGerald was a Carmelite friar and priest of Irish parentage, brought up in England, who learned Welsh and made it the language of his religious, intellectual and social life. He was born Michael FitzGerald in Ludlow, Shropshire in 1927 to parents from County Kerry and spent his childhood in Chesterfield and Sheffield.
Go to Profile#11825
John T. Sinnott
#152396
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
John T. Sinnott is a physician, scientist, and business executive who is the Chairman of Internal Medicine at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. Dr. Sinnott serves as chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida, the medical school's largest department. Sinnott is also the James P. Cullison Professor of Medicine as well. Sinnott has served as the director of the Florida Infectious Disease Institute since 2004 and is the former Associate Dean of USF Medicine International, which he founded with Dr.
Go to Profile#11826
Cornelis de Waal
#184819
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Cornelis de Waal is a Dutch Professor of American Philosophy at Indiana University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transactions . Books Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Translated into Korean as Peoseu Chualhakeui Eehae, Seoul: Hankuk University Press, 2016.On Pragmatism. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2005. Translated into Portuguese as Sobre pragmatism. São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 2007.On Mead. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002.On Peirce. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2001. Translated into Chinese as Pi Er Shi. Beijing: Zhong Hua Book Co., 2003; and in Bulgarian as За Пърс. Sofia: New Bulgarian Univ...
Go to Profile#11827
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
#40175
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on the transmissibility of kuru, implying the existence of an infectious agent, which he named an 'unconventional virus'.
Go to Profile#11828
Sapna Kudchadkar
#146362
Overall Influence
Sapna Ravi Kudchadkar is an American critical care physician and anesthesiologist. She is an Associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, pediatrics and physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 2022, she was appointed Vice Chair of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins as well as Anesthesiologist-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children's Center.
Go to Profile#11829
Rita Moreno
#90661
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican actress, dancer, and singer. She is noted for her work on stage and screen in a career spanning over eight decades. Moreno is one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Among her numerous accolades, she is one of a few performers to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony and the Triple Crown of Acting, with individual competitive Academy, Emmy, and Tony awards. Additional accolades include the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, the National Medal of Arts in 2009, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2013...
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Kenneth Seeskin
#170805
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Kenneth Seeskin is an American philosopher and Philip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor Emeritus of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. He is known for his works on Jewish philosophy. Seeskin won the Koret Jewish Book Award for his book Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides in 2001.
Go to Profile#11831
Janine Austin Clayton
#128455
Overall Influence
Janine Austin Clayton is an American ophthalmologist. She is the NIH associate director for research on women's health and director of the Office of Women's Health. Clayton was previously the deputy clinical director of the National Eye Institute.
Go to Profile#11832
Michael James Aitken
#90183
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Michael James Aitken is a New Zealand author who specializes in the area of security market microstructure and design. He is listed among the top 1000 authors publishing in the finance literature over the last 50 years. His research has contributed to the understanding of market microstructure and its impact on market efficiency and, in particular, on market integrity.This results in great part from his role in the design of information systems for real-time fraud detection in securities markets .
Go to Profile#11833
Claire Kelly Schultz
#96713
Overall Influence
1924 - 2015 (91 years)
Claire Kelly Schultz was an American computer consultant and academic. She was a leading figure in the early development of automated information retrieval systems and information science. A "documentalist", she was particularly known for her work in thesaurus construction and machine-aided indexing, innovating techniques for punch card information retrieval.
Go to Profile#11834
Derek Malcolm
#74899
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Derek Elliston Michael Malcolm was an English film critic and historian. Early life Derek Elliston Michael Malcolm was born on 12 May 1932. He was the son of Douglas Malcolm and Dorothy Vera , Malcolm was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford. As a child, he expressed an interest in film, often going to the newsreel cinema on Victoria station.
Go to Profile#11835
Nita Patel
#105214
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Nita K. Patel is an Indian-American vaccinologist who leads vaccine development at Novavax. She oversaw the development of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. Early life and education Patel was born in Sojitra, a farming village in Gujarat. When she was four years old her father contracted tuberculosis, and came close to death. This experience motivated Patel to become a physician and attempt to find a cure for tuberculosis. She went on to earn a master's degree in microbiology at Sardar Patel University and a master's degree in biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#11836
Syed Aqeel-ul-Gharavi
#113294
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Syed Aqeel-ul-Gharavi also known as Ayatullah Aqeel-ul-Gharavi is a leading Indian Twelver Shia scholar, philosopher, thinker, writer, poet, educationist, community activist, critic and a mujtahid. Presently, Aqeel-ul-Gharavi is acknowledged as one of the famous and senior Shia scholars from the Indian Subcontinent. He was the principal of Hawza-e-Ilmia Jamia-tus-Saqalain, Delhi and is the current chairman of Safinatul Hidaya Trust, India. He is the vice-President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat and member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Syed Aqeel is also a member of the Majma Jahani Ahlulbayt, Iran.
Go to Profile#11837
Kathleen M. Foley
#184904
Overall Influence
#11838
Michael Brady
#175495
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Michael Sean Brady is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He is best known for his works on philosophy of emotions. Books Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience, Oxford University Press, 2013, Emotion: The Basics, Routledge, 2018, Suffering and Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2018,
Go to Profile#11839
Anne Comi
#183334
Overall Influence
Anne Marie Spalding Comi is an American pediatric neurologist specialized in the treatment of Sturge–Weber syndrome. She is a professor of neurology and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of the Hunter Nelson Sturge-Weber Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.
Go to Profile#11840
Rustam Singh
#93811
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Rustam Singh is an Indian poet, philosopher, translator and editor. He writes poetry in Hindi and theoretical and philosophical papers and essays in English. He is regarded as an important Hindi poet of this period. His poems have been translated into many Indian and foreign languages including English, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Panjabi, Swedish, Norwegian and Estonian. Apart from his books, his poems have appeared in many important literary journals and magazines, such as Sakshatkaar, Poorvagrah, Bahuvachan, Jansatta, Pratilipi, Indian Literature, International Quarterly, Aufgabe, LyrikVannen etc.
Go to Profile#11841
Yoko Kato
#82192
Overall Influence
Yoko Kato is a Japanese neurosurgeon. She is professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Fujita Health University. She was the first woman in Japan to be promoted to full professor of neurosurgery.
Go to Profile#11842
Jackie Dawson
#175352
Overall Influence
Jackie Dawson is a Canadian academic who holds the Canada Research Chair in Environment, Society and Policy. Dawson is also co-Scientific Director of ArcticNet, where she is currently a member of the Board of Directors.
Go to Profile#11843
Geoffrey Midgley
#182734
Overall Influence
1921 - 1997 (76 years)
Geoffrey Charles John Midgley was a British philosopher. Life, education & career Midgley had won a classical scholarship to Oxford, but served four years as a radar engineer in the RAF during the Second World War. After the war he completed the PPE course at New College, Oxford and studied under Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle. Since 1949 he worked at the Department of Philosophy, Newcastle University, as lecturer and senior lecturer , and as head of department . In 1950 he married a fellow philosopher, Mary Scrutton, with whom he raised three sons .
Go to Profile#11844
Christian A. Sander
#184926
Overall Influence
#11845
Rebecca Hains
#34549
Overall Influence
Rebecca Hains is an American communication and media studies scholar and author. She is a professor in the Media and Communication Department at Salem State University and is a frequently quoted expert on the subject of children's media culture and marketing, which she studies from a feminist media studies and critical/cultural studies perspective.
Go to Profile#11846
Utah Phillips
#162652
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips was an American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller and poet. He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist. He often promoted the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words.
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Stephen D. John
#176926
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Stephen David John , is a British philosopher . He is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the University Hatton Professor in the Philosophy of Public Health. John is a member of the academic staff and lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science , his research focuses on the philosophy of science, political philosophy and the philosophy of public health.
Go to Profile#11848
John Armstrong
#159579
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Armstrong is a British writer and philosopher living in Hobart, Australia. He was born in Glasgow and educated at Oxford and London, later directing the philosophy program at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. Armstrong was philosopher in residence at the Melbourne Business School and senior adviser to the vice-chancellor of Melbourne University until 2014. In 2014 he became a professorial fellow at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of several books on philosophical themes.
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Amphicrates of Athens
#111124
Overall Influence
Amphicrates of Athens was a sophist and rhetorician . Biographical information Amphicrates was forced to leave Athens in 86 B.C, living henceforward in Seleucia on the Tigris. When responding to a plea for the creation of a rhetoric school in Seleucia he replied that he could not for
Go to Profile#11850
Debara L. Tucci
#132835
Overall Influence
Debara Lyn Tucci is an American otolaryngologist, studying ear, nose, and throat conditions. She co-founded the Duke Hearing Center and currently serves as a professor of Surgery and Director of the Cochlear Implant Program at Duke University. In September 2019 she became Director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health's 27 Institutes and Centers.
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