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,
#1251
David Novak
#13814
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
David Novak, is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law . He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. His areas of interest are Jewish theology, Jewish ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory , and Jewish-Christian relations.
Go to Profile#1252
Peter Carmeliet
#16327
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Peter, Baron Carmeliet is a Belgian physician and professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . He is also Adjunct Director of the VIB Vesalius Research Center, KU Leuven. Among his research interests are vasculogenesis, angiogenesis, and vascular endothelial growth factor . In 2016, Carmeliet identified neuron-producing stem cells in the brain.
Go to Profile#1253
C. Everett Koop
#728
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Charles Everett Koop was an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator who served as the 13th surgeon general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989. According to the Associated Press, "Koop was the only surgeon general to become a household name" due to his frequent public presence around the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Go to Profile#1254
David Horrobin
#23769
Overall Influence
1939 - 2003 (64 years)
David Frederick Horrobin was a British-Canadian entrepreneur, medical researcher, author and editor. He is best known as the founder of the biotechnology company Scotia Holdings and as a promoter of evening primrose oil as a medical treatment, Horrobin was founder and editor of the journals Medical Hypotheses and Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, the latter journal co-founded with his then graduate student Morris Karmazyn.
Go to Profile#1255
Mogobe Ramose
#24053
Overall Influence
Mogobe Bernard Ramose is a South African philosopher, one of the key thinkers to have popularised African philosophy, and specifically Ubuntu philosophy, internationally. Ramose is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.
Go to Profile#1256
Jeremy Shearmur
#14683
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jeremy Shearmur is a British former reader in philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, who retired at the end of 2013. He is currently an emeritus fellow, lives in Dumfries, Scotland, and is undertaking research and a limited amount of lecturing and Ph.D. supervision. He was educated at the London School of Economics.
Go to Profile#1257
Peter Janich
#19160
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Peter Janich was a professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg. He was born in Munich. Janich studied physics, philosophy and psychology at the Universities of Erlangen and Hamburg. He attained a doctorate in philosophy in 1969 and during 1969/70 was a guest lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. From 1973 to 1980 he was a professor for philosophy of science of the accurate sciences at the University of Konstanz. Since 1980 he has held the chair for systematic philosophy with an emphasis on theoretical philosophy at the Philipps University of Marburg.
Go to Profile#1258
Vincent C. Müller
#11189
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Vincent C. Müller is a German philosopher. He is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for ethics and philosophy of AI at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, president of the European Association for Cognitive Systems, and chair of the euRobotics topics group on 'ethical, legal and socio-economic issues'. Müller studied at the universities of Marburg, Hamburg, London and Oxford. He was Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at Princeton University, James Martin Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and Professor at the TU Eindhoven.
Go to Profile#1259
Peter Wenz
#31852
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Peter S. Wenz is an American philosopher who specializes in environmental ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy and Legal Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Biography Wenz received his B.A. in philosophy in 1967 from Harpur College of the State University of New York at Binghamton and his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point from 1971 to 1976 before moving to Springfield. He has also taught at Polytechnic of the South Bank in London, England ; at Aberdeen University in Scotland ; at Oxford University in England and at The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand .
Go to Profile#1260
Sylviane Agacinski
#12361
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Sylviane Agacinski-Jospin is a French philosopher, feminist, author, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales , and wife of Lionel Jospin, former Prime Minister of France. Her theoretical articulation of parity inspired the French law which requires every political party to fill 50 percent of all candidacies in every seat with women.
Go to Profile#1261
Paul Waldau
#25605
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Paul Francis Waldau is an American ethicist and former professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he headed the graduate program on anthrozoology, which he founded. He has several times served as Barker Lecturer in animal law at Harvard Law School, and is the author of a number of books on animal rights and speciesism.
Go to Profile#1262
Jacques Taminiaux
#26930
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Jacques Taminiaux was a Belgian philosopher and professor at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Biography Born in Seneffe, Taminiaux studied law and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His research interests are on phenomenology, aesthetics, political philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy.
Go to Profile#1263
Richard Velkley
#15296
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Richard L. Velkley is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. Velkley is known for his expertise on Kant, Rousseau, and post-Kantian philosophy. He is a former associate editor of The Review of Metaphysics and a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America .
Go to Profile#1264
Charles Taliaferro
#32091
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Charles Taliaferro is an American philosopher specializing in theology and philosophy of religion. He is an emeritus professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Faithful Research, and a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of twenty books, most recently The Image in Mind; Theism, Naturalism and the Imagination, co-authored with the American artist Jil Evans. He has been a visiting scholar or guest lecturer at a large number of universities, including Brown, Cambridge, Notre Dame, Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#1265
Hans-Georg Backhaus
#15372
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Hans-Georg Backhaus is a German Marxian economist and philosopher. He is considered one of the most important theorists on the field of Marx's theory of value. He began a long-term cooperation with Helmut Reichelt already from his years of university studies.
Go to Profile#1266
Hilde Lindemann
#31186
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Hilde Lindemann is an American philosophy professor and bioethicist and emerita professor at Michigan State University. Lindemann earned her B.A. in German language and literature in 1969 at the University of Georgia. Lindemann also earned her M.A. in theatre history and dramatic literature, in 1972, at the University of Georgia. Lindemann began her career as a copyeditor for several universities. She then moved on to a job at the Hastings Center in New York City, an institute focused on bioethics research, and co-authored book The Patient in the Family, with James Lindemann Nelson, before deciding to earn a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#1267
David Charles
#33283
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
David Owain Maurice Charles FLSW is a professor of philosophy and classics at Yale University. He has previously been Colin Prestige Fellow, and Professor of Philosophy at Oriel College, Oxford, and CUF Lecturer in Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#1268
Jean-Pierre Faye
#10222
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (99 years)
Jean-Pierre Faye is a French philosopher and writer of fiction and prose poetry. Life and career Faye was born in Paris. He was member of the editing committee of the avant-garde literary review Tel Quel, and later of Change. He received the Prix Renaudot for his 1964 novel L'Écluse . He is a regular contributor to Gilles Deleuze's literary journal Chimère. With Jacques Derrida and others, he authored the "Blue Report" , which led to the Collège international de philosophie, an open university, in 1983. He soon turned against deconstructionism and postmodernism, as he reflected in Langages totalitaires 2: la raison narrative .
Go to Profile#1269
Marx W. Wartofsky
#28574
Overall Influence
1928 - 1997 (69 years)
Marx W. Wartofsky was an American philosopher, specialising in historical epistemology. He was a professor of philosophy at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the editor of The Philosophical Forum. With Robert S. Cohen, he co-founded the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science, in 1960.
Go to Profile#1270
Nora Volkow
#5509
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Nora D. Volkow is a Mexican-American psychiatrist. She is currently the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse , which is part of the National Institutes of Health . Early life and education Born in Mexico City, Volkow is a daughter of Esteban Volkov, whose mother Zinaida Volkova was the eldest daughter of the Russian communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Volkow and her three sisters grew up in Coyoacán in the house where Trotsky was killed .
Go to Profile#1271
Leila Haaparanta
#34179
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Leila Tuulikki Haaparanta is a Finnish philosopher who works in analytic philosophy and the philosophy of logic. She is retired from the University of Tampere as a professor emerita. Education and career Haaparanta was born on 20 October 1954 in Kalvola. She studied philosophy at the University of Helsinki, earning a bachelor's degree in 1976, a master's degree in 1978, a licenciate in 1979, and a Ph.D. in 1985; her dissertation was Frege's Doctrine of Being.
Go to Profile#1272
Peter Forrest
#28659
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Peter Richard Haddow Forrest is an Australian philosopher. Early life and education Forrest was born in 1948 in Liverpool, England, and was educated at Ampleforth College. His undergraduate work was at Balliol College, Oxford, in mathematics, and he gained a Doctor of Philosophy degree in mathematics from Harvard University. After moving to Australia he gained a Master of Arts degree in philosophy at the University of Tasmania, then in 1984 a PhD degree at the University of Sydney, where he was influenced by philosophers David Stove and David Armstrong. He was Professor of Philosophy at the...
Go to Profile#1273
David A. Kolb
#3249
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
David Allen Kolb is an American educational theorist whose interests and publications focus on experiential learning, the individual and social change, career development, and executive and professional education. He is the founder and chairman of Experience Based Learning Systems, Inc. , and an Emeritus Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
Go to Profile#1274
Thomas Metzinger
#15476
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Thomas Metzinger is a German philosopher and professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. , he is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, a co-founder of the German Effective Altruism Foundation, president of the Barbara Wengeler Foundation, and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. From 2008 to 2009, he served as a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study; from 2014 to 2019, he was a Fellow at the Gutenberg Research College; from 2019 to 2022, he was awarded a Senior-Forschungsprofessur by the Ministry of Science, Education and Culture.
Go to Profile#1275
François Recanati
#23128
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
François Recanati is a French analytic philosopher and research fellow at the College de France, and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Many of his works focus on the philosophy of language and mind.
Go to Profile#1276
Alain Daniélou
#4978
Overall Influence
1907 - 1994 (87 years)
Alain Daniélou was a French historian, Indologist, intellectual, musicologist, translator, writer, and notable Western convert to and expert on the Shaivite branch of Hinduism. In 1991 he was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour conferred by Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama.
Go to Profile#1277
Ilsetraut Hadot
#28677
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Ilsetraut Hadot in Berlin, is a philosopher and historian of philosophy who specialised in Stoicism, Neoplatonism and more generally in Ancient Philosophy. Biography In 1978, Hadot won the Victor Cousin prize of the Académie française for her work The problem of Alexandrian Neoplatonism. Hierocles and Simplicius. In 2015, she received the François-Millepierres prize by the Académie for her work Seneca. Spiritual Direction and Practice of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#1278
Arran Gare
#21519
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Arran Emrys Gare is an Australian philosopher known mainly for his work in environmental philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of culture and the metaphysics of process philosophy. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
Go to Profile#1279
Tina Fernandes Botts
#32268
Overall Influence
Tina Fernandes Botts is an American legal scholar and philosophy professor currently teaching at the San Joaquin College of Law. She is known for her work in legal hermeneutics, intersectionality, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race . Previous posts include Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College; Visiting Professor of Law at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law; Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno; Visiting Assistant Professor of philosophy at Oberlin College; Fellow in Law and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and A...
Go to Profile#1280
James Tully
#13762
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
James Hamilton Tully is a Canadian philosopher who is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Law, Indigenous Governance and Philosophy at the University of Victoria, Canada. Tully is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Emeritus Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation.
Go to Profile#1281
Mike Sandbothe
#19122
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Mike Sandbothe is a German intellectual, philosopher and professor of culture and media at University of Applied Sciences Jena. He is co-founder of the new branch of media philosophy and one of the main proponents of philosophical pragmatism in Europe. He held professorships for Media Culture Studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena as well as for Media Philosophy at Berlin University of the Arts and at Aalborg University Copenhagen. The certified trainer in Mindfulness-based stress reduction is one of the two founders of the German Network of Mindful Universities "Achtsame Hochschulen".
Go to Profile#1282
Freya Mathews
#25024
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Freya Mathews is an Australian environmental philosopher whose main work has been in the areas of ecological metaphysics and panpsychism. Her current special interests are in ecological civilization; indigenous perspectives on "sustainability" and how these perspectives may be adapted to the context of contemporary global society; panpsychism and critique of the metaphysics of modernity; and wildlife ethics and rewilding in the context of the Anthropocene.
Go to Profile#1283
Iris Murdoch
#13672
Overall Influence
1919 - 1999 (80 years)
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net , was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Go to Profile#1284
Wiebe Bijker
#6604
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Wiebe E. Bijker is a Dutch professor Emeritus, former chair of the Department of Social Science and Technology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Early life Bijker's father was an engineer involved in implementing the Delta Plan after a disastrous dike breach in the Netherlands in 1953 when young Bijker was two years old and later became deputy director of the Delft Hydraulics Laboratory. Presumably, the unique fact of parts of the Netherlands being below sea level, the well-known concerns in innovation surrounding this condition for centuries, and his father's involvement all contr...
Go to Profile#1285
George Molnar
#29141
Overall Influence
1934 - 1999 (65 years)
George Molnar was a Hungarian-born philosopher whose principal area of interest was metaphysics. He worked mainly in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney but resided in England from 1976 to 1982. He published four philosophical papers in two separate spells; the first two in the 1960s and the second two after a return to the profession in the 1990s. His book Powers: A Study in Metaphysics was published posthumously in 2003.
Go to Profile#1286
Ian Buruma
#3269
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Ian Buruma is a Dutch writer and editor who lives and works in the United States. In 2017, he became editor of The New York Review of Books, but left the position in September 2018. Much of his writing has focused on the culture of Asia, particularly that of China and 20th-century Japan. He was the Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College from 2003 to 2017.
Go to Profile#1287
Mario Vegetti
#28117
Overall Influence
1937 - 2018 (81 years)
Mario Vegetti was an Italian historian of philosophy. Education Mario Vegetti was born in Milan in 1937. He graduated with a thesis on Thucydides' historiography at the University of Pavia, as a student at Collegio Ghislieri.
Go to Profile#1288
John Q. Trojanowski
#17231
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
John Quinn Trojanowski was an American academic research neuroscientist specializing in neurodegeneration. He and his partner, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, MBA, Ph.D., are noted for identifying the roles of three proteins in neurodegenerative diseases: tau in Alzheimer's disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease, and TDP-43 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and frontotemporal degeneration.
Go to Profile#1289
Miriam Solomon
#28252
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Miriam Solomon is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department as well as Affiliated Professor of Women's Studies at Temple University. Solomon's work focuses on the philosophy of science, social epistemology, medical epistemology, medical ethics, and gender and science. Besides her academic appointments, she has published two books and a large number of peer reviewed journal articles, and she has served on the editorial boards of a number of major journals.
Go to Profile#1290
Elisa Aaltola
#25785
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Elisa Aaltola is a Finnish philosopher, specialised in animal philosophy, moral psychology and environmental philosophy. Biography She was a visiting PhD student at the Institute for Ethics, Environment, and Public Policy at Lancaster University and submitted her doctoral thesis to the University of Turku on Animal Individuality: Moral and Cultural Categorisations.
Go to Profile#1291
Herrlee G. Creel
#2877
Overall Influence
1905 - 1994 (89 years)
Herrlee Glessner Creel was an American Sinologist and philosopher who specialized in Chinese philosophy and history, and was a professor of Chinese at the University of Chicago for nearly 40 years. On his retirement, Creel was praised by his colleagues as an innovative pioneer on early Chinese civilization and as one who could write both for specialists and for the interested general public with cogency, lucidity, and grace.
Go to Profile#1292
Catherine Larrère
#29650
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Catherine Larrère is a French philosopher and academic. She is a professor of philosophy emeritus . She is a specialist in Montesquieu's philosophy and an advocate for environmental ethics. Biography Catherine Delafoss was born in La Rochelle in 1944. She first became interested in the history of economics, then in the philosopher Montesquieus ideas. In the 1990s, she met and was inspired by John Baird Callicott the American academic concerned with environmental ethics. She became an expert and was an advocate for similar British and American research. She translated works by John Baird Cal...
Go to Profile#1293
Thomas Tymoczko
#19516
Overall Influence
1943 - 1996 (53 years)
A. Thomas Tymoczko was a philosopher specializing in logic and the philosophy of mathematics. He taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts from 1971 until his death from stomach cancer in 1996, aged 52.
Go to Profile#1294
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
#16567
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is a German philosopher and writer specializing in aesthetics and intercultural philosophy. He is professor of philosophy at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait and director of the Global Studie Center.
Go to Profile#1295
Paul Woodruff
#25457
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Paul Bestor Woodruff was an American classicist, professor of philosophy, and was dean at The University of Texas at Austin, where he once chaired the department of philosophy and has more recently held the Hayden Head Regents Chair as director of Plan II Honors program, which he resigned in 2006 after 15 years of service. On September 21, 2006, University President William C. Powers, Jr. named Dr. Woodruff the inaugural dean of undergraduate studies. He is best known for his work on Socrates, Plato, and philosophy of theater. A beloved professor, he taught courses outside his Ancient Greek ...
Go to Profile#1296
Paul R. Patton
#26180
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Paul Robert Patton is Scientia Professor of Philosophy in the School of History and Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, where he has been since 2002. Patton is known for his publications and conference presentations on Australian Continental political philosophy.
Go to Profile#1297
Stephen Gaukroger
#23373
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Stephen Gaukroger was a British historian of philosophy and science who spent the majority of his academic career in Australia. Gaukroger was Emeritus Professor of History of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Sydney.
Go to Profile#1298
Juliet Floyd
#29417
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Juliet Floyd is professor of philosophy at Boston University. Her strongest research interests lie in early analytic philosophy and she has used early analytic philosophy as a lens to examine a diverse array of topics.
Go to Profile#1299
Mary Hesse
#20186
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Mary Brenda Hesse FBA was an English philosopher of science, latterly a professor in the subject at the University of Cambridge. Biography Mary Hesse was born in Reigate, Surrey, to Ethelbert Thomas Hesse and Brenda Hesse .
Go to Profile#1300
Paul Chamberlain
#29135
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Paul Chamberlain is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He teaches in the areas of Christian Apologetics, Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, and is also the Director of TWU's Institute of Christian Apologetics.
Go to Profile