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,
#12651
Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt
1833 - 1902 (69 years)
Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt was a German internist born in Speyer. Biography He studied medicine at the University of Würzburg, earning his doctorate in 1856. Subsequently, he was an assistant to Heinrich von Bamberger and Franz von Rinecker in Würzburg, and worked under Wilhelm Griesinger in Tübingen.
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Asif Saifuddin
#159386
Overall Influence
#12653
Thomas Scammell
#155216
Overall Influence
Thomas E. Scammell is an American neurologist, known for his research in sleep medicine pertaining to neurobiology of sleep and sleep disorders, particularly narcolepsy and cataplexy. Scammell is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, serving the department of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital.
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Ahmad al-Buni
1200 - 1225 (25 years)
Sharaf al-Din or Shihab al-Din or Muḥyi al-Din Abu al-Abbas Aḥmad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qurashi al-Sufi, better known as Ahmad al-Buni , was a mathematician and philosopher and a well known Sufi. Very little is known about him. His writings deal with the esoteric value of letters and topics relating to mathematics, sihr and spirituality. Born in Buna , al-Buni lived in Egypt and learned from many eminent Sufi masters of his time.
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Federico Caligaris‐cappio
#159398
Overall Influence
#12656
Micha Tomkiewicz
#25744
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Micha Tomkiewicz is a Polish scientist, professor and writer. Biography Marcelli Robert Tomkiewicz was born on May 25, 1939, in Warsaw, Poland, and lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before his family was sent off to the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. On Friday, April 13, 1945, Tomkiewicz was among the 2,500 Jewish prisoners rescued from one of what have now come to be known as the Bergen-Belsen Death Trains. As the war drew to a close, the Germans, anticipating the arrival of Allied forces had evacuated these prisoners and loaded them onto trains headed to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp further from the front lines.
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Lucy Chappell
#104800
Overall Influence
Lucy Chappell is a British professor of obstetrics at King’s College London and the Chief Scientific Adviser for the UK Department of Health and Social Care. As part of her CSA role, she oversees the National Institute for Health and Care Research as Chief Executive Officer. Her research areas include medical problems during pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia, and the safety of medicines in pregnancy.
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Tetsuo Arakawa
#159434
Overall Influence
#12659
Wishwa N. Kapoor
#159449
Overall Influence
#12660
Samia Mora
#159451
Overall Influence
#12661
Masahiko Tsujii
#159458
Overall Influence
#12662
L. Henry Jr. Edmunds
#159460
Overall Influence
#12663
Scott A. Mcewen
#159468
Overall Influence
#12664
Yogesh Kumar Chawla
#159487
Overall Influence
#12665
Michael Perry Marks
#159501
Overall Influence
#12666
Jerry M. Rice
#159516
Overall Influence
#12667
Stefano Bianchi
#159535
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#12668
Thomas A. Orszulak
#159538
Overall Influence
#12669
R. J. Johnson
#159540
Overall Influence
#12670
Vivian Lee
#33059
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Vivian S. Lee is an American radiologist and health care/health technology executive. An Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Lee is the author of the book, The Long Fix: Solving America's Health Care Crisis with Strategies That Work for Everyone . Lee is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2019, she was named No. 11 in Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare and is a frequent speaker at national and international meetings...
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Ralph J. Jr. Damiano
#159575
Overall Influence
#12672
Paul Wayne Eggers
#159593
Overall Influence
#12673
Nicholas J. Gross
#159595
Overall Influence
#12674
Gregorio Bressani
1703 - 1771 (68 years)
Gregorio Bressani was an Italian philosopher. Life Bressani was born in Treviso. He graduated from the University of Padua studying literature and philosophy. He was a dear friend of Francesco Algarotti although they had very different opinions. Bressani opposed Galilei and Newton theories in favor of a more scholastic approach. He died in Padua.
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Harold Ellis
#159614
Overall Influence
#12676
Michel B. Vallotton
#159625
Overall Influence
#12677
Karl Bormann
#139674
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Karl Bormann was a German historian of philosophy. His area of research was ancient and medieval philosophy, in particular the work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. Biography Bormann spent his entire scientific career at the University of Cologne. After graduating from the state humanistic high school in Cologne-Mülheim in 1949, he studied classical philology and philosophy with the professors Josef Koch, Günther Jachmann and Josef Kroll and received his doctorate in 1955 with a dissertation on Philon's theory of ideas and logos, in which Bormann explained Philon's concept of the logos in criti...
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Michel Ovize
#159636
Overall Influence
#12679
Michael H. Merson
#159643
Overall Influence
#12680
Jean-Baptiste Oudry
1686 - 1755 (69 years)
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, engraver, and tapestry designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game. His son, Jacques-Charles Oudry, was also a painter.
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Paulo Caramelli
#159654
Overall Influence
#12682
Margit Sutrop
#111326
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Margit Sutrop is an Estonian philosopher, ethicist, academic, and politician. She is a member of XIV Riigikogu. She was born in Tartu. In 1989, she graduated from the University of Tartu , and in 1991 . She is married to Urmas Sutrop.
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Henry C. Metcalf
1867 - 1942 (75 years)
Henry Clayton Metcalf was an early American organizational theorist, Professor of Political Science at Tufts College in Massachusetts, and Chairman of Tufts College. He is best known from his publications on management with Ordway Tead and Lyndall Urwick.
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Peter Vorderer
#52070
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Peter Vorderer, Prof. Dr. phil. is a German professor of media and Communication studies at the University of Mannheim focusing on the area of media psychology, entertainment research, and the social change related to the use of new media. He made major contributions to the field of mass communication, primarily in the area of media effects research. From May 2014 until May 2015, he was president of the International Communication Association .
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Dominicus Gundissalinus
1115 - 1190 (75 years)
Dominicus Gundissalinus, also known as Domingo Gundisalvi or Gundisalvo , was a philosopher and translator of Arabic to Medieval Latin active in Toledo. Among his translations, Gundissalinus worked on Avicenna's Liber de philosophia prima and De anima, Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae, and al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae, in collaboration with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud and Johannes Hispanus. As a philosopher, Gundissalinus crucially contributed to the Latin assimilation of Arabic philosophy, being the first Latin thinker in receiving and developing doctrines, such as Avicenna's...
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Thomas l. Rothstein
#159717
Overall Influence
#12687
Jack S. Mandel
#159732
Overall Influence
#12688
Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly
1691 - 1750 (59 years)
Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly was a French philosopher. A member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, he founded the ESAD de Reims. Lévesque de Pouilly studied philosophy and literature in Paris. He was a friend of Nicolas Fréret and Lord Bolingbroke, met Isaac Newton in England, and is likely to have hosted David Hume in Reims.
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Cees A. Visser
#159736
Overall Influence
#12690
Jacob Valk
#159741
Overall Influence
#12691
Kousuke Shimamoto
#159745
Overall Influence
#12692
Richard J. Zarbo
#159758
Overall Influence
#12693
Reinhardt Kandolf
#159781
Overall Influence
#12694
Emanuele Di Angelantonio
#159786
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#12695
Hannah A. Valantine
#159795
Overall Influence
#12696
Thomas J. Merimee
#159800
Overall Influence
#12697
Günther Rötter
#106127
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Günther Rötter is a German musicologist and music psychologist. Life and career Born in , Rötter studied school music, educational science and philosophy in Detmold and Paderborn as well as musicology, psychology and philosophy at the Technical University Berlin. There, he received his doctorate in 1985 under the direction of Helga de la Motte-Haber on the subject: Die Beeinflussbarkeit emotionalen Erlebens von Musik durch analytisches Hören. From 1989 to 1994, he was a research assistant at the University of Münster. After a professorship at the University of Vechta and the habilitation in 1996, Günther Rötter received a professorship for musicology at the Technische Universität Dortmund.
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Marianne Schroll
#133605
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Marianne Schroll née Bruun is a Danish specialist in geriatric medicine. As head of the Danish Geriatrics Society from 1986 to 1992, she has played a key role in promoting interest in the ailments of elderly people. Until her retirement in 2007, she was Professor of Geriatrics at the University of Copenhagen and principal specialist in geriatrics at Bispebjerg Hospital. An active participant in international cooperation, she was honoured as an interRAI Fellow in 1991.
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J. Å. A. Risberg
#159804
Overall Influence
#12700
Paolo Corradini
#159805
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
