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,
#12251
Denisa Wagner
#78268
Overall Influence
Denisa D. Wagner is an American scientist currently the Edwin Cohn Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital , Harvard Medical School. Wagner first arrived in the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Czechoslovakia. She received her PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at the University of Rochester and Tufts University before joining the Harvard faculty in 1994.The Wagner Lab contributes in the fields of vascular biology, inflammation, and thrombosis. Her Lab focuses on how blood cells and endothelial cells respond to vascular injury. Also her lab has been studying NETs for more than a decade.
Go to Profile#12252
Cécile Morrisson
#103876
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Cécile Morrisson is a French historian and numismatist. She is Director of Research emeritus at the French National Center for Scientific Research and specializes in the study of the Byzantine Empire.
Go to Profile#12253
Leif Wenar
#187552
Overall Influence
Leif Wenar is an American Philosopher and Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities at Stanford University. He is known for his works on political science. Books Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World
Go to Profile#12254
Keith Jones
#67717
Overall Influence
1911 - 2012 (101 years)
Sir Keith Stephen Jones, MB BS FRCS FRACS FRAGP FACEM was an Australian general practitioner, surgeon and medical executive, who served as the 6th President of the Australian Medical Association, from 1973–1976, during the introduction of universal health care in Australia.
Go to Profile#12255
Richard Smith
#76348
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Richard Smith, CBE was an English painter and printmaker. Smith produced work in a range of styles, and is credited with extending the field of painting through his shaped, sculptural canvases. A key figure in the British development of Pop Art, Smith was chosen to represent Britain in the 1970 Venice Biennale.
Go to Profile#12256
Jacob Plange-Rhule
#132721
Overall Influence
1957 - 2020 (63 years)
Jacob Plange-Rhule, was a Ghanaian physician, academic, and Rector of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons from October 2015 until his death in 2020. At the time of his death, Plange-Rhule was a professor and Head of the Department of Physiology of the School of Medical Sciences in Kumasi, Ghana. He was also a consulting physician at the Department of Medicine of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, where he founded the Hypertension and Renal Clinic and headed it for more than two decades.
Go to Profile#12257
John F. Murray
#70593
Overall Influence
1927 - 2020 (93 years)
John Frederic Murray was an American pulmonologist best known for his work on acute respiratory distress syndrome , which was responsible for his death after he fell ill with COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Go to Profile#12258
Brenda Chawner
#142515
Overall Influence
Brenda Chawner is a Canadian-New Zealand library academic specialising in the intersection between librarianship and information technology. After a BA and MLS at the University of Alberta in Canada, she did a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand on the use of free and open source software in libraries. The thesis was an early example of the release of academic outputs under a Creative Commons license.
Go to Profile#12259
Oscar Gonzalez-Perez
#159529
Overall Influence
Oscar Gonzalez-Perez is professor of neuroscience in the School of Psychology at the University of Colima, Mexico. He has been honorary professor of neuroscience in the Doctorado en Ciencias Biomedicas at the University of Guadalajara and invited professor of neuroscience and cellular medicine in the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory of Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the leader of a scientific network named Neuro-biopsychology Basic and Applied.
Go to Profile#12260
Adil Ahmad Haque
#81954
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Adil Ahmad Haque is a professor of law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar at Rutgers University. His scholarship focuses on the international law of armed conflict and the philosophy of international law. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. He is also an executive editor of Just Security, based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security in NYU Law School. His father was comparative literature scholar Aijaz Ahmad.
Go to Profile#12261
Douglas Mata
#187596
Overall Influence
Douglas Alexander Mata is an American pathologist and epidemiologist currently at Foundation Medicine, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for his contributions to molecular pathological epidemiology and neuropsychiatric epidemiology. His textbook Statistics for Pathologists is a reference text in pathology medical education and his meta-analytical studies on physician mental health have circulated widely in the popular press.
Go to Profile#12262
Catherine D'Ignazio
#131993
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Catherine D'Ignazio is an American professor, artist, and software developer who focuses on feminism and data literacy. She is the director of the Data + Feminism lab at MIT. D'Ignazio is best known for her hackathons, such as "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck", and for her book Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein.
Go to Profile#12263
Christine Mitchell
#179020
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christine I. Mitchell is an American filmmaker and bioethicist and until her retirement in September 2022, the executive director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School . Education Mitchell studied nursing at Boston University, where she earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in the field. She then studied philosophical and religious ethics and the ethics of care at Harvard University and the Harvard Divinity School, where she earned a master's degree.1969 – Narragansett Regional High School, Baldwinville, Massachusetts, diploma1973 – Boston University, School of Nursing,...
Go to Profile#12264
Shahinaz Gadalla
#183624
Overall Influence
Shahinaz Mohamed Aly Gadalla is a physician-scientist and cancer epidemiologist who researches cancer biomarkers and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. She is a senior investigator in the clinical genetics branch at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#12265
Connie Newman
#94053
Overall Influence
Connie Baum Newman is an American endocrinologist and physician-scientist specializing in hypercholesterolemia and lipid disorders, women's rights, and access to reproductive healthcare. She is an adjunct professor of medicine at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Newman was president of the American Medical Women's Association from 2019 to 2020.
Go to Profile#12266
David T. Rubin
#116754
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
David T. Rubin is an American gastroenterologist and educator. He is the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, where he is also the Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. He also serves as the Co-Director of the Digestive Diseases Center.
Go to Profile#12267
Timothy Shanahan
#105001
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Timothy Shanahan is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is known for his research on philosophy of science, philosophy and film, and the morality of terrorism.
Go to Profile#12268
Michael Wittmann
#176115
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael Wittmann is a German musicologist. Life Born in Heilbronn, Wittmann studied musicology from 1975 to 1980 , philosophy and history at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1980 to 1983 and 1987 he was a scholarship holder of the German Historical Institute in Rome. In 1986 he received his doctorate in Freiburg. From 1987 to 1990 he was a scholarship holder of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. A research stay in Italy followed.
Go to Profile#12269
Fernando Alfageme
#175482
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Fernando Alfageme Roldán is a Spanish dermatologist. He introduced the diagnostic technique of cutaneous ultrasound in Spain, is an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, and is responsible for the Dermatological Ultrasound Unit at the Puerta de Hierro University Hospital in Majadahonda. He has authored several essays, manuals and academic articles about dermatology.
Go to Profile#12270
Franco Romano Calaresu
#116327
Overall Influence
1931 - 1996 (65 years)
Franco Romano Calaresu was initially a medical doctor and later became a reputed Canadian scholar and professor of neurophysiology of the Department of Physiology at the University of Western Ontario. He held an M.D. from the University of Milan, and a Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. He was elected in 1995 as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His main area of interest was the nervous system and the integration of its mechanisms. His group pioneered the use of the mainframe analysis of data collected during surgical experiments on laboratory animals. He had mostly carried out...
Go to Profile#12271
Arghavan Salles
#177677
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Arghavan Salles is an Iranian American bariatric surgeon. Salles is a Director of the American Medical Women's Association, a Special Advisor for DEI Programs in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Senior Research Scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Salles' research focuses on gender equity, well-being, and the challenges women face in the workplace. Salles works as an advocate for equity and inclusion and as an activist against sexual harassment. Salles is an international speaker who worked on the front lines and supported health prof...
Go to Profile#12272
Barbara Tillett
#107677
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Barbara Ann Barnett Tillett is a librarian and library scholar known for her work on authority control and bibliographic data modeling. Library of Congress Tillett began working at the Library of Congress in 1994. As director of the Library's Integrated Library System Program from August 1997 through July 2001, Tillett undertook the massive task of leading the selection and implementation of the Library of Congress' first Integrated Library System. A library press release referred to the project as the "largest single information technology project in the Library's history."
Go to Profile#12273
Tarek Ali Hassan
#124679
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Tarek Ali Hassan , is a professor of medicine and chief of endocrinology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He is also a composer, musician, writer, painter, and philosopher. His music, in a modern polyphonic style, has been performed in Egypt and in many countries.
Go to Profile#12274
Anna Donald
#53920
Overall Influence
1966 - 2009 (43 years)
Anastasia Katherine Donald , known as Anna Donald, was an Australian pioneer in the field of evidence-based medicine as well as an epidemiologist and company director. Early life and early education Donald was the child of biologist Tony Courtice and Janet Donald . Her maternal grandmother was reportedly of Chinese descent. When Donald was 2, her parents separated. Following her parents' separation, she and her mother lived with Donald's maternal grandparents for a year. Later, Donald's mother divorced her Courtice and married lawyer Bruce Donald, with whom she would rear Anna, who took her surrogate father's surname .
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James Lawson
#100994
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
James "Jim" Sutherland Lawson is an Australian public health doctor and scientist, known for research on breast cancer and for public health services and prevention programs, currently in use in Australian and international public health services.
Go to Profile#12276
Alexa Canady
#43799
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alexa Irene Canady is a retired American medical doctor specializing in pediatric neurosurgery. She was born in Lansing, Michigan and earned both her bachelors and medical degree from the University of Michigan. After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon. This came after Ruth Kerr Jakoby became the first American woman to be board certified in neurosurgery in 1961.
Go to Profile#12277
Vlado Dimovski
#148641
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Vlado Dimovski, Slovenian economist, philosopher, politician, consultant and university professor, * 21 July 1960, Postojna, Slovenia. Biography After finishing the Bežigrad Grammar School Dimovski graduated in 1984 at the School of Economics and Business at the University of Ljubljana, where he received also an M.S. in economics in 1988. At the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana he graduated in 1989 also in philosophy. He received his PhD degree in management and finance from the Cleveland State University, Ohio, United States in 1994.
Go to Profile#12278
Sue Desmond-Hellmann
#116277
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sue Desmond-Hellmann is an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014–2020. She was previously Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco , the first woman to hold the position, and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and before that president of product development at Genentech, where she played a role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin.
Go to Profile#12279
Ana Catarina Fonseca
#173747
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Ana Catarina Fonseca is a Portuguese neurologist, researcher and university teacher. Training Ana Catarina Gaspar Fonseca was born on 22 April 1981. She obtained a degree in medicine from the NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal between 1998 and 2004, followed by a master's in neurosciences from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon . She also obtained a master's in stroke medicine from Danube University Krems in Austria, between 2008 and 2011. She studied at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, obtaining a master's in Public Health in 2014 and in the same year completed ...
Go to Profile#12280
George Baerveldt
#95373
Overall Influence
George Baerveldt, M.B.Ch.B., was a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. Baerveldt developed and held four patents related to the Baerveldt Glaucoma Implant, a device for the drainage of excess fluid from the eye in complex cases of glaucoma.
Go to Profile#12281
Stephen Rodefer
#56259
Overall Influence
1940 - 2015 (75 years)
Stephen Rodefer was an American poet and painter who lived in Paris and London. Born in Bellaire, Ohio, he knew many of the early beat and Black Mountain poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley. Rodefer was one of the original Language poets and taught widely, including: UNM, SUNY Buffalo, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State, and the American University of Paris. Rodefer was the first American poet to be offered a Fellowship at Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#12282
Julius Youngner
#34516
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Julius S. Youngner was an American Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Medicine and Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at University of Pittsburgh responsible for advances necessary for development of a vaccine for poliomyelitis and the first intranasal equine influenza vaccine.
Go to Profile#12283
Suzanne M. De La Monte
#187739
Overall Influence
#12284
Eduardo Missoni
#21176
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Eduardo Missoni is an Italian medical doctor who has been active in numerous social causes. He was appointed as the Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement from April 1, 2004 through November 30, 2007.
Go to Profile#12285
Graeme N. Smith
#136713
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Graeme Neil Smith is a Canadian obstetrician. He is the former Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen's University and clinician-scientist at Kingston General Hospital Research Institute.
Go to Profile#12286
Nicholas Lamar Soutter
#147460
Overall Influence
Nicholas Lamar Soutter is an American writer and philosopher. His 2012 novel, The Water Thief, is about a future in which "corporations own everything, even the air we breathe." The novel won a Kirkus Star from Kirkus Reviews.
Go to Profile#12287
Christian Martin Schmidt
#126903
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christian Martin Schmidt is a German musicologist and music theorist. Life Born in Dessau, Schmidt studied musicology from 1963 at the University of Hamburg, as well as in Tübingen, Paris, Göttingen and Berlin. In 1970 he received his doctorate at the FU Berlin from Rudolf Stephan.
Go to Profile#12288
Grace Ndeezi
#187767
Overall Influence
Grace Ndeezi is a Ugandan female pediatrician and a Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University of Health Sciences with various publications on Nutrition, HIV, Pneumonia, Malaria, Sickle cell anemia, diarrheal diseases, neonatal health and child heath interventions such as immunization, breast feeding and other common childhood diseases.
Go to Profile#12289
Mansel Aylward
#86767
Overall Influence
Sir Mansel Aylward CB MD DSc FFOM FCRP FLSW is a Welsh public health physician and academic. He was Chief Medical Officer, Medical Director and Chief Scientist at the U.K. Government Department for Work and Pensions.
Go to Profile#12290
Robert Stone
#82394
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Robert S. Stone was an American physician. He served as the Director of The National Institutes of Health from May 29, 1973, to January 31, 1975. Stone also served as the vice president for health services and dean of the school of medicine at the University of New Mexico, dean of the School of Medicine of the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center and vice president of the Health Sciences Center, and dean of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.
Go to Profile#12291
Hans Reiss
#16418
Overall Influence
1922 - 2020 (98 years)
Hans Reiss Ph.D. was Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Bristol. Life Reiss was born in Mannheim, Germany. The son of a Jewish printer, Berthold Reiss, and the actress Maria Reiss-Petri , he fled Nazi Germany to Ireland a week before World War II broke out in 1939. He completed his education in Ireland and was awarded a scholarship to study at Trinity College Dublin in 1940. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1943 and Ph.D. in German from TCD in 1945, where he was assistant to the Professor of German, M.F. Liddle, from 1943 to 1946.
Go to Profile#12292
David Liggins
#185738
Overall Influence
David Liggins is a philosopher at the University of Manchester with research interests in metaphysics and philosophy of mathematics. Education and career Liggins received his PhD in 2005 from the University of Sheffield. He then spent a year at University of Cambridge's faculty of philosophy before becoming a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 2006. In 2016, he was appointed joint editor of Analysis with Chris Daly. He served as the sole editor of the journal from 2017 to 2021 when it was announced that he would be joint editor alongside Stacie Friend and Lee Walters.
Go to Profile#12293
Alan Walker
#115916
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Alan Walker, FRSC is an English-Canadian musicologist and university professor best known as a biographer and scholar of composer Franz Liszt. Other topics Walker has engaged in are writings on composers Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, as well as conductor Hans von Bülow. He has held posts at a variety of institutions, including the Guildhall School of Music, the University of London, McMaster University and City, University of London.
Go to Profile#12294
Brian Wecht
#71475
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Brian Alexander Wecht, also known by his character name Ninja Brian, is an American musician, Internet personality and theoretical physicist. He is best known as a member of comedy musical duo Ninja Sex Party and video game-based comedy music trio Starbomb. He has also been a past member of the affiliated Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, all three alongside Dan Avidan.
Go to Profile#12295
Jane Margolis
#33193
Overall Influence
Jane Margolis is a social scientist and faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies who studies why so few African American, Latino, and female students are learning computer science.
Go to Profile#12296
Lajos Kemény
#119709
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Lajos Kemény is a Hungarian dermatologist, venereologist, allergologist, medical researcher, full professor and the Head of the Department of Dermatology and Allergology, the director of the Albert Szent-Györgyi Health Center, Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged and the Vice-Rector for Science, Research Development and Innovation. He is a notable and respected scientist both in Hungary and around the world.
Go to Profile#12297
Misch Kohn
#184540
Overall Influence
1916 - 2002 (86 years)
Misch Kohn was an American artist. His works are part of the collections of several major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Kohn was born in Kokomo, Indiana. He studied at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.
Go to Profile#12298
Mark Pochapin
#168683
Overall Influence
Mark Pochapin is a gastroenterologist and educator whose work is focused on the prevention, early detection, and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. Early life Mark Pochapin grew up in Spring Valley, New York, one of two children. He graduated from Spring Valley High School in 1980 and went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in biomedical engineering in 1984.
Go to Profile#12299
Barbara Barlow
#112749
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Barbara Barlow is an American pediatric surgeon who was the first woman to train in pediatric surgery at Babies Hospital, present-day Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. She has also reduced the amount of injuries for inner-city children through her research and efforts to educate the public on prevention of accidents.
Go to Profile#12300
Russell Blaylock
#12329
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Russell L. Blaylock is an author and a retired U.S. neurosurgeon. Blaylock was a clinical assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. In 2013 he was a visiting professor in the biology department at Belhaven College.
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