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,
#12701
Ronald William Dworkin
#159811
Overall Influence
#12702
Sotirios A. Raptis
#159818
Overall Influence
#12703
Robert Thomas Dorr
#159823
Overall Influence
#12704
John Ferguson Macdonald
#159825
Overall Influence
#12705
Carl F. Weiner
#159858
Overall Influence
#12706
C. Richard Chapman
#159859
Overall Influence
#12707
Jerry J. Buccafusco
#159862
Overall Influence
#12708
Terence E. Horgan
#159863
Overall Influence
#12709
Joachim Dietrich Brandis
1762 - 1846 (84 years)
Joachim Dietrich Brandis was a German-Danish physician. Family He was a son of the judge Christian Dietrich Brandis , and belonged to a prominent family from Hildesheim. He was the father of the philosopher Christian August Brandis and the grandfather of the forestry academic and administrator in India Sir Dietrich Brandis.
Go to Profile#12710
Cliff Lampe
#70076
Overall Influence
Clifford Lampe is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He is best known for his research in the fields of human-computer interaction, social computing, and computer supported cooperative work. Since 2018 he has been Executive Vice President for ACM SIGCHI. Lampe made foundational contributions in the areas of social networking sites, social capital, and online communities, work that has been cited over 34,000 times according to Google Scholar.
Go to Profile#12711
Santiago Ewig
#159896
Overall Influence
#12712
Bodo Grimbacher
#159897
Overall Influence
#12713
LaSalle D. Leffall Jr.
#44190
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
LaSalle Doheny Leffall Jr. was an American surgeon, oncologist, and medical educator. Recognized as very committed to those he served and his profession, he served as the Charles R. Drew Professor of Surgery at Howard University College of Medicine and in leadership positions for several healthcare organizations. He served as president of the American Cancer Society and the American College of Surgeons.
Go to Profile#12714
Maurice Harold Laughlin
#159911
Overall Influence
#12715
Vincenz Czerny
1842 - 1916 (74 years)
Vincenz Czerny was a German Bohemian surgeon whose main contributions were in the fields of oncological and gynecological surgery. Czerny was born in Trutnov, Bohemia, Austrian Empire. He initially studied at Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, later transferring to the University of Vienna, where he was a student of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke . In 1866 he graduated summa cum laude. Afterwards, he remained in Vienna as an assistant to Johann Ritter von Oppolzer and Theodor Billroth . In 1871 he became a clinical director at the University of Freiburg.
Go to Profile#12716
Eva Marie Lonn
#159942
Overall Influence
#12717
Seshadri Raju
#159947
Overall Influence
#12718
E. Rolland Dickson
#159949
Overall Influence
#12719
Joseph M. R. Furman
#159953
Overall Influence
#12720
Chih‐ping Chen
#159975
Overall Influence
#12721
Robert C. Roberts
#159980
Overall Influence
#12722
Gerhard P. Baumann
#159988
Overall Influence
#12723
Anthony J. Raimondi
#12724
Paul S. Lietman
#160019
Overall Influence
#12725
Susan Guettel Cole
#119532
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Susan Guettel Cole is Professor Emerita at the University at Buffalo in the Department of Classics. She is known for her work on Ancient Greek Religion and gender. Education Cole received her PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1975. Her doctoral thesis was entitled The Samothracian Mysteries and the Samothracian Gods: Initiates, Theoroi, and Worshippers.
Go to Profile#12726
Robert Margolskee
#73906
Overall Influence
Robert F. Margolskee is an American academic. He is the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and adjunct professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Margolskee is also the a co-founder of Redpoint Bio. Margolskee has been a pioneer in the application of molecular biology and transgenic animal models to the study of taste transduction and chemosensation. He has made numerous seminal discoveries in the taste field, including the identification and molecular cloning of taste specific receptors, G proteins, channels and other taste signal transductio...
Go to Profile#12727
Friedrich Eduard Schulz
1799 - 1829 (30 years)
Friedrich Eduard Schulz was a German philosopher and orientalist, who was one of the first to uncover evidence of the Kingdom of Urartu. Research on Urartu In 1827, the French scholar Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin recommended that his government send Schulz, then a young professor at the University of Giessen, to the area around Lake Van in what is now eastern Turkey on behalf of the French Oriental Society. Schulz discovered and copied numerous cuneiform inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulz also re-discovered the Kelishin stele, bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, located on the Kelishin pass on the current Iraqi-Iranian border.
Go to Profile#12728
Hans‐peter Zenner
#160077
Overall Influence
#12729
Vitaliy V. Khutoryanskiy
#160095
Overall Influence
#12730
Frederick. R. Rickles
#160135
Overall Influence
#12731
Robin M. Winter
#160144
Overall Influence
#12732
Philipp Jarnach
1892 - 1982 (90 years)
Philipp Jarnach was a German composer of modern music , pianist, teacher, and conductor. Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec, France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besides composer such as Hindemith, Jarnach is considered one of the leading and formative composer of the late German Romantic and early modern eras. Until 1914 he lived in Paris, where he studied piano under Édouard Risler and harmony under Albert Lavignac at the Conservatoire de Paris. During the First World War he was a student of Ferruccio Busoni in Zürich. He later completed the opera Doktor Faust which B...
Go to Profile#12733
Joanne Rycroft-Malone
#146866
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joanne Rycroft-Malone is a British researcher who is a Distinguished Professor and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medicine at Lancaster University. She is Programme Director and Chair of the Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme.
Go to Profile#12734
Carl Miller
#76635
Overall Influence
Carl Jack Miller is an author, speaker and researcher at Demos, a think tank based in London, where he co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media in 2012. Miller is also a visiting scholar and research fellow at King's College, London.
Go to Profile#12735
Samuel D. Gross
1805 - 1884 (79 years)
Samuel David Gross was an American academic trauma surgeon. Surgeon biographer Isaac Minis Hays called Gross "The Nestor of American Surgery." He is immortalized in Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic , a prominent American painting of the nineteenth century. A bronze statue of him was cast by Alexander Stirling Calder and erected on the National Mall, but moved in 1970 to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
Go to Profile#12736
Nathan N. Clumeck
#160193
Overall Influence
#12737
Lynne Huffer
#114972
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Lynne Huffer is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Philosophy at Emory University and widely known for her work on queer theory and Foucault. In her career at Yale, Rice, and Emory Universities, she has won numerous awards, including four major teaching prizes at Emory and Rice Universities, as well as the Modern Languages Association Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship in English . Huffer is also co-editor, with Shannon Winnubst, of philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism.
Go to Profile#12738
Hiroyuki Arai
#12739
Clifford John Steer
#160220
Overall Influence
#12740
David R. Spriggs
#160221
Overall Influence
#12741
Robert E. Burgeson
#160222
Overall Influence
#12742
Ali Larijani
#39752
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ali Ardeshir Larijani is an Iranian conservative politician, philosopher and former military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who served as the Speaker of the Parliament of Iran from 2008 to 2020. He is currently member of the Expediency Discernment Council.
Go to Profile#12743
Robert A Wilson
#12744
Enio Martino
#160253
Overall Influence
#12745
Thomas G. Wegmann
#160264
Overall Influence
#12746
Bruce M. Camitta
#160276
Overall Influence
#12747
Elisabeth Gantt
#80755
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Elisabeth Gantt is a botanist, known for her work in plant physiology and structure. Born in Yugoslavia, she later immigrated to the United States, where she got her Ph.D. at Northwestern University. Her work mostly focused on photosynthesis, especially that of algae. Today, she is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, where she still studies and teaches botany and cell biology, which is a part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. Her work has garnered her the Darbaker Prize from the Botanical Society of America in 1958 and the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1994.
Go to Profile#12748
Nakai Riken
1732 - 1817 (85 years)
was a leading academic in the Kaitokudo academy tradition of scholarship. He was the younger son of Nakai Shuan , one of the Kaitokudo's two founding leaders, and was influenced by his teacher and mentor Goi Ranju. His intellectualised way of being led to continued engagement with but physical separation from the Kaitokudo. Much is made of his demeanor reflecting his.
Go to Profile#12749
Philip E. Thorpe
#160319
Overall Influence
#12750
Julie Bernhardt
#120285
Overall Influence
Julie Bernhardt is an Australian physiotherapist and clinician scientist, a Principal Research Fellow and an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and Clinical Head of the Stroke Division at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne. Bernhardt is Principal Investigator of the 'A Very Early Rehabilitation Trial' and a leader in the field of stroke recovery.
Go to Profile