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,
#12101
Francesco Maria Veronese
#154377
Overall Influence
#12102
Harold Ross Roberts
#154382
Overall Influence
#12103
Kern Wildenthal
#17297
Overall Influence
Kern Wildenthal is an American academic and president of the Children's Medical Center Foundation in Dallas, Texas. He also holds honorary appointments as President Emeritus and Professor of Medicine Emeritus at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he served as president from 1986 to 2008.
Go to Profile#12104
Mony J. De Leon
#154414
Overall Influence
#12105
Anthony P. Adamis
#154415
Overall Influence
#12106
Glenn Flores
#154427
Overall Influence
#12107
Hartmut Schick
#106429
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Hartmut Schick is a German musicologist and since 2001 professor at the Institute for Musicology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Born in Herrenberg, Schick grew up mainly in Schwäbisch Hall, and from 1981 studied 16 semesters musicology, history and philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and from 1983 under Ludwig Finscher in Heidelberg. In 1989, he was awarded a doctorate for a thesis entitled Studien zu Dvoráks Streichquartetten.
Go to Profile#12108
Munier Choudhury
1925 - 1971 (46 years)
Munier Choudhury was a Bangladeshi educationist, playwright, literary critic and political dissident. He was a victim of the mass killing of Bangladeshi intellectuals in 1971. He was awarded Independence Day Award in 1980, by the then president Ziaur Rahman's government, posthumously.
Go to Profile#12109
Guido Germano
#154497
Overall Influence
#12110
Klaus Seppi
#154518
Overall Influence
#12111
Klaus Thurau
#154536
Overall Influence
#12112
Laurence Joseph Wheat
#154547
Overall Influence
#12113
Cyrus E. Rubin
#154562
Overall Influence
#12114
Evan Y. Snyder
#154565
Overall Influence
#12115
Nobuo Aoki
#154574
Overall Influence
#12116
Ahmad Wahib
1942 - 1973 (31 years)
Ahmad Wahib was an Indonesian progressive Islamic intellectual. He is known for his reformist thinking especially from his diary in the publication Pergolakan Pemikiran Islam edited by his fellow progressive Islamic thinkers Djohan Effendi and Ismet Natsir. In his diary, he criticized heavily the perceived rigidity and the absolutism of Islamic traditions and advocated for the radical reapproach on religious norms. He was a part of the Yogyakarta based progressive Islamic intellectual circle Limited Group led by Mukti Ali. In one interview with Douglas E. Ramage, an Indonesian intellectual g...
Go to Profile#12117
Katsuyuki Aozasa
#154587
Overall Influence
#12118
Richard G. Weleber
#154596
Overall Influence
#12119
Lynn McDonald
#99049
Overall Influence
Marilyn R. McDonald is an American academic and social worker. She works as a senior scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, and University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also a consultant for the United Nations.
Go to Profile#12120
Craig D. Logsdon
#154608
Overall Influence
#12121
Lai Zhide
1525 - 1604 (79 years)
was a Ming period Neo-Confucian philosopher. He introduced into Chinese philosophy the well-known "Yin and Yang symbol", the taijitu . Lai Zhide is the author of an I Ching commentary, the Explanation of the Classic of Change Annotated by Mr Lai .
Go to Profile#12122
Arthur Isaac Eidelman
#154619
Overall Influence
#12123
Johann Adam Bergk
1769 - 1834 (65 years)
Johann Adam Bergk was a German philosopher and publicist. Bergk was professor of philosophy and jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig. A Kantian, he defended the French revolution in his Untersuchungen aus dem Natur-, Staats- und Völkerrechte and translated Beccaria into German.
Go to Profile#12124
Cuilin Zhang
#131895
Overall Influence
Cuilin Zhang is a Chinese-American epidemiologist and physician-scientist researching the roles of genetic and environmental factors in the pathogenesis of gestational diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity and health consequences of these complications. Zhang is a senior investigator and acting chief of the epidemiology branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Go to Profile#12125
Sotiris Tsiodras
#28135
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Sotiris Tsiodras is a Greek internal medicine physician, specializing in infectiology , in charge of Greece's management of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 crisis. Early years and education Tsiodras was born on 13 October 1965 in Sydney, Australia, into an immigrant family originating from Neohori, Argolis. After the family moved back to Greece, he enrolled into the Ioannina medical school and then transferred to the University of Athens from which he graduated in March 1991 as a pathologist.
Go to Profile#12126
Bernhard Meyer
1767 - 1836 (69 years)
Bernhard Meyer was a German physician and naturalist. Meyer was the joint author, with Philipp Gottfried Gaertner and Johannes Scherbius of Oekonomisch-technische Flora der Wetterau , which was the source of the scientific name of many plants. He was also the joint author, with Johann Wolf, of Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands
Go to Profile#12127
Mikiko Sodeoka
#154679
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#12128
Konstantinos Nikolaos Syrigos
#154691
Overall Influence
#12129
Hartry H. Field
#154692
Overall Influence
#12130
Johannes Jacob Wecker
1528 - 1586 (58 years)
Johannes Jacob Wecker was a Swiss physician and philosopher. He worked as a doctor from 1566 and wrote a number of works about medicine, some of which were in both French and Latin. Doubtless fleeing accusations of sorcery, Wecker moved to Basel after having published Les Secrets de Wecker. For a number of years, he worked as a professor of logic at the local university.
Go to Profile#12131
Frederick W. L. Kerr
#154693
Overall Influence
#12132
Narinder Rawal
#154700
Overall Influence
#12133
Elizabeth Anne Montgomery
#154704
Overall Influence
#12134
Clifford Scott Deutschman
#12135
Babak J. Mehrara
#154713
Overall Influence
#12136
Michael Pidd
#154717
Overall Influence
#12137
Williams F. Benedict
#154736
Overall Influence
#12138
Bruno Giardina
#154768
Overall Influence
#12139
R. Heiner Schirmer
#112507
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Rolf Heiner Schirmer was a German physician and biochemist. From 1980 to 2007 he was a professor of biochemistry in the medical faculty of Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany, and became a professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#12140
David J. Driscoll
#154776
Overall Influence
#12141
Serena Nik-Zainal
#82123
Overall Influence
Serena Nik-Zainal is a British-Malaysian clinician who is a consultant in clinical genetics and Cancer Research UK advanced clinician scientist at the University of Cambridge. She makes use of genomics for clinical applications. She was awarded the Crick Lecture by the Royal Society in 2021. Serena Nik-Zainal was also recognized as one of the 100 Influential Women in Oncology by OncoDaily.
Go to Profile#12142
William L. Reilly
#106579
Overall Influence
1916 - 2009 (93 years)
William L. Reilly, S.J., was an American Jesuit and academic. He was the longest-serving president of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. His twelve-year term lasted from 1964 to 1976. Biography
Go to Profile#12143
Eni G. Njoku
#154800
Overall Influence
#12144
Gerald Durrell
#33525
Overall Influence
1925 - 1995 (70 years)
Gerald Malcolm Durrell, was a British naturalist, writer, zookeeper, conservationist, and television presenter. He founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoo on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959. He wrote approximately forty books, mainly about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being My Family and Other Animals . Those memoirs of his family's years living in Greece were adapted into two television series and one television film . He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell.
Go to Profile#12145
Edward J. Mascha
#154804
Overall Influence
#12146
Stephen I. Wasserman
#154808
Overall Influence
#12147
Christiaan H. Bangma
#154814
Overall Influence
#12148
Richard F. Harvey
#154817
Overall Influence
#12149
Giorgio Baglivi
1668 - 1707 (39 years)
Giorgio Baglivi , born and sometimes anglicized as was a Croatian-Italian physician and scientist. He made important contributions to clinical education, based on his own medical practice. His De Fibra Motrice advanced the "solidist" theory that the solid parts of organs are more crucial to their good functioning than their fluids, against the traditional belief in four humors. Baglivi, however, advocated against doctors relying on any general theory rather than careful observation. He was "a distinguished physiological researcher fascinated by the nerves, his microscopic studies enabled him...
Go to Profile#12150
Trần Văn Khê
#46763
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Trần Văn Khê was a Vietnamese musicologist, academic, writer, teacher and performer of traditional music. He was father of the musician ethnomusicologist . His La musique viêtnamienne traditionnelle was for many years a standard text of Vietnamese musicology.
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