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,
#12901
Sunitha Wickramasinghe
#123592
Overall Influence
1941 - 2009 (68 years)
Sunitha Wickramasinghe, FRCP FRCPath was a Sri Lankan born British academic and haematologist. A Professor of Haematology, he was the former Deputy Dean of the Imperial College School of Medicine and one of the world's leading authorities on congenital dyserythropoietic anaemias
Go to Profile#12902
Franz Födermayr
#178982
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Franz Födermayr was an Austrian musicologist. Life Born in Grieskirchen, Upper Austria, Födermayr studied musicology from 1954 at the University of Vienna with Erich Schenk . From 1964 to 1974 he worked as a university assistant at the musicological institute of the university, and in 1972 he received his habilitation.
Go to Profile#12903
Joan Reede
#115912
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Joan Y. Reede is an American physician. She is Harvard Medical School's inaugural dean for diversity and community partnership in the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Partnership. She is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is known for creating programs that mentor and support minority physicians and female physicians. Alumni of her programs have created a 501 organization called The Reede Scholars in her honor.
Go to Profile#12904
Tatiana Prowell
#163266
Overall Influence
Tatiana Michelle Prowell is an American medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer. She is an Associate Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Breast Cancer Scientific Liaison at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
Go to Profile#12905
Adrienne Evans
#171138
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Adrienne Evans is a British senior lecturer in Media and Communication for the Department of Media at Coventry University, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Gender Studies. Education Adrienne Evans gained her Ph.D. from the University of Bath.
Go to Profile#12906
Susan T. Sommer
#179510
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Susan Thiemann Sommer was a music librarian with a 40-year career at the New York Public Library, teacher, editor, and noted music critic for the magazine High Fidelity. Life and career Thiemann was born in New York City and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After graduating with a magna Cum laude from Smith College in 1956, she attended Columbia University. Assisted by a grant from the Fulbright Program she spent time studying in Florence, receiving her Master's degree in musicology in 1958. Also from Columbia, she later received a Master of Library Science and an MPhil .
Go to Profile#12907
Viking Björk
#71280
Overall Influence
1918 - 2009 (91 years)
Viking Olov Björk was a Swedish cardiac surgeon. Early life and education Björk wrote his dissertation in 1948, titled "Brain perfusion in dogs with artificially oxygenated blood". Björk–Shiley valve In 1968, he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the Björk–Shiley valve, a mechanical prosthetic heart valve. It was the first "tilting disc valve", used to replace the aortic or mitral valve. Many modifications followed, including the convexo-concave valve. The convexo-concave valve had defects in form of strut fractures. Therefore, the monostrut valve was introduced to ...
Go to Profile#12908
Joia Mukherjee
#20836
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and ...
Go to Profile#12909
Neal W. Pollock
#119910
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Neal Pollock is a Canadian academic and diver. Born in Edmonton, Canada he completed a bachelor's degree in zoology; the first three years at University of Alberta and the final year at the University of British Columbia. After completing a master's degree he then served as diving officer at University of British Columbia for almost five years. He then moved to Florida and completed a doctorate in exercise physiology/environmental physiology at Florida State University.
Go to Profile#12910
Jalid Sehouli
#46867
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jalid Sehouli is a German gynaecologist and oncologist who specializes in peritoneal and ovarian cancer. He is a professor at Berlin's Charité hospital and a writer of scientific as well as fiction works.
Go to Profile#12911
Aaron Gerow
#70399
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Aaron Gerow is an American historian of Japanese cinema, and a member of the faculty of Yale University where he holds a joint position between the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Film Studies Programs.
Go to Profile#12912
Lynne M. Thomas
#132518
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Lynne M. Thomas is an American librarian, podcaster and editor. She has won eleven Hugo Awards for editing and podcasting in the science fiction genre. She is perhaps best known as the co-publisher and co-editor-in-chief of the Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine with her husband, Michael Damian Thomas. With her eleven Hugo Award wins , Thomas is tied with Connie Willis for most wins among women, and sixth all time for most wins amongst all Hugo Award winners.
Go to Profile#12913
Winfried Schrammek
#120045
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Winfried Schrammek was a German musicologist and organist. Life Education Born in Breslau, Schrammek, son of a surveying engineer, received his first organ lessons as a pupil of the Herzog-Friedland-Gymnasium in Żagań by his music teacher Gustav Mikeleitis. At the age of 15 he was called up for military service. After the end of the war he and his parents were expelled from the Silesian homeland. In Jena he passed his high school diploma in 1948 and began a two-year study of church music at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar, which he completed with the Mittlere Staatliche Prüfung für Kirchenmusiker.
Go to Profile#12914
Eric Schaefer
#145715
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Eric Schaefer is a professor and film historian. He is an associate professor at Emerson College and interim chair of the visual and media arts department. He has a B.A. from Webster University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin.
Go to Profile#12915
Józef Warszawski
#119859
Overall Influence
1903 - 1997 (94 years)
Józef Warszawski was a Polish philosopher.
Go to Profile#12916
Margaret Pomeranz
#84186
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Margaret Pomeranz is an Australian film critic, writer, producer and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 14 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney in Croydon, the then newly-opened Macquarie University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in German and social psychology, and the Playwright's Studio at the National Institute of Dramatic Art . In her early twenties, she left Sydney to escape the "banality" and travelled around Europe, before returning to Australia and se...
Go to Profile#12917
Paul M. Ellison
#185417
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Paul M. Ellison is a British choral conductor, organist, and Beethoven scholar currently working in the United States. He is a lecturer in musicology at San Francisco State University and San Jose State University His area of specialty is tonal affect and meaning in Classical and Romantic period music.
Go to Profile#12918
Anthony Dawson
#81047
Overall Influence
1928 - 1997 (69 years)
Sir Anthony Michael 'Tony' Dawson was a British gastroenterologist. He was consultant physician at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He studied at King’s College London in the Strand for his pre-clinical training, then for clinical work went to the old Charing Cross Hospital, qualifying in 1951.
Go to Profile#12919
Debra Haffner
#110300
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She has been the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia since August 2016.
Go to Profile#12920
Kirsten Shepherd-Barr
#181505
Overall Influence
Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr is an academic specialising in Victorian and modern English literature, the interaction between science and literature, and theatre studies, especially science in theatre. In 2015, she was appointed a Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#12921
Matshidiso Moeti
#56063
Overall Influence
Matshidiso Rebecca Natalie Moeti is a physician, public health specialist and medical administrator from Botswana who has been serving as Regional Director of the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa , headquartered in Brazzaville, the Republic of the Congo, since 2015.
Go to Profile#12922
Miriam Adhikari
#163568
Overall Influence
Miriam Adhikari is a physician and scientist specializing in paediatrics with a focus on neonatology. She is Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a neonatologist at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine. She also has a focus on paediatric nephrology and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
Go to Profile#12923
Samira Farouk
#135121
Overall Influence
Samira Farouk, MD, MS, FASN is a board-certified transplant nephrologist and Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai . She teaches medical students, residents, and fellows, and also develops and studies innovations in medical education. Her clinical research interests include the pathogenesis of kidney fibrosis in regards to transplant survival and chronic kidney diseases. Farouk is also cofounder of the free mobile-friendly nephrology teaching tool NephSIM, Associate Program Director of the Nephrology Fellowship at ISMMS, and Director o...
Go to Profile#12924
Hannah Arendt
#190808
Overall Influence
#12925
Joel E. Siegel
#178108
Overall Influence
1940 - 2004 (64 years)
Joel E. Siegel was a professor of English and film studies at Georgetown University, a film and music critic, a music producer, and a lyricist. He won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes together with Buck Clayton and Phil Schaap for their work on the notes for the Billie Holiday box set, The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve .
Go to Profile#12926
Habib Davanloo
#65027
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Habib Davanloo is a psychoanalyst and psychiatric researcher and working in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who developed Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. He was Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and founding editor of the International Journal of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy.
Go to Profile#12927
Irina Lozovaya
#186173
Overall Influence
1950 - 2017 (67 years)
Irina Yevgenyevna Lozovaya Soviet and Russian musicologist, teacher, Professor at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Her main sphere of academic research was Early Russian and Byzantine chant.
Go to Profile#12928
Karl-Fredrik Norrback
#185376
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Karl-Fredrik Norrback is a Swedish medical doctor and researcher. He is an associate Professor of Experimental Psychiatry and researcher at the department of Clinical Sciences, Unit of Psychiatry, Umeå University, Sweden.
Go to Profile#12929
Kara Keeling
#133096
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kara Keeling is an American humanities academic. As of 2016 she is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in the Critical Studies of Cinematic Arts and in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.
Go to Profile#12930
Shitaye Alemu
#190821
Overall Influence
Shitaye Alemu Balcha is an Ethiopian physician and academic, "a venerated local internist who pioneered diabetes care in northern Ethiopia". An expert in non-communicable diseases, she has published on diabetes, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS in rural Ethiopia. She is Professor of Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Gondar.
Go to Profile#12931
Keith Black
#26720
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumors and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Go to Profile#12932
Lutgarde Thijs
#190830
Overall Influence
#12933
John Chalmers
#129361
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
John Chalmers is a Scottish orthopaedic surgeon. Biography Chalmers studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After qualifying as MB ChB in 1950 he worked as House officer in different hospitals. In 1952 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England one year later. From 1954 to 1957 he had his orthopaedic education at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He spent an Orthopaedic Fellowship at the University of Illinois and in 1958 was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. In 1961 he graduated M.D. and in 1963 a...
Go to Profile#12934
Nils Brage Nordlander
#170964
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Nils Brage Nordlander was a Swedish speciality doctor attached to the Hospital of Ulleråker. As a politician, he served as the president of the county council of Uppsala, representing the Swedish People's Party, the predecessor of the Liberals.
Go to Profile#12935
James Scott
#160503
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Scott FRCP, FIBiol, FMedSci, FRS is a British cardiologist. Scott undertook training at the London Hospital and in Birmingham, then in 1975 took up a position the Academic Department of Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital.
Go to Profile#12936
Susan Youens
#175937
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Susan Youens is the author of many books on German lieder. A musicologist, her work on Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf is considered some of the most scholarly and useful material on these composers. Both musicologists and performers have often cited her work.
Go to Profile#12937
John MacVicar
#171332
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
John MacVicar was a British physician who was most notable for pioneering the diagnostic use of ultrasound in obstetrics as well as later, being a clinical educator. MacVicar was part of a team along with physician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown, who developed the worlds first obstetric ultrasound machine in 1963. Using the new technique of ultrasound, MacVicar's research transformed the treatment of gynaecological conditions in pregnant women, through the use of clinical trials.
Go to Profile#12938
Jan Thomas
#44852
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jan Thomas is a veterinary scientist and career academic. Thomas is currently the sixth vice-chancellor of Massey University, New Zealand and the second woman to hold the position. Thomas is the first female veterinarian and only the second veterinarian to become a Vice-Chancellor in either Australia or New Zealand.
Go to Profile#12939
Bernard Boxill
#189947
Overall Influence
Bernard Boxill is an American philosopher and distinguished professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is known for his works on ethics and political philosophy.
Go to Profile#12940
Michael Kremer
#189946
Overall Influence
Michael Kremer is a philosopher who is known for his work in logic, philosophy of language and early analytic philosophy. He has published work on Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Ryle. He is currently the Mary R. Morton Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#12941
Nemat Sadat
#110564
Overall Influence
Nemat Sadat is an Afghan-American journalist, novelist, human rights activist, and former professor of political science at the American University of Afghanistan. Known for his debut novel The Carpet Weaver and his campaigning for LGBTQIA+ rights, particularly in the context of societal and cultural Islamic attitudes towards homosexuality in the Muslim world. Sadat is one of the first Afghans to have openly come out as gay and to campaign for LGBTQIA+ rights, gender freedom, and sexual liberty in Afghanistan.
Go to Profile#12942
Heather MacNeil
#178716
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Heather MacNeil is a professor at the Faculty of Information of the University of Toronto, Canada. She teaches archives and record keeping related topics. She is a former General Editor of Archivaria and helped develop the concept of the Archival bond.
Go to Profile#12943
Jean-Michel Frodon
#122921
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jean-Michel Frodon is a journalist, critic and historian of cinema. Biography Born Jean-Michel Billard, he writes with a pseudonym borrowed from Frodo of The Lord of the Rings. He has a master's degree and a DEA in history. He worked as an educator from 1971 to 1981. Next, he was a photographer from 1981 to 1985. In 1983, he became a journalist and film critic for the weekly periodical Le Point, of which his father, Pierre Billard, also a journalist and a film critic, was one of the founders and chief editors. He held this post until 1990.
Go to Profile#12944
John Simon Gabriel Simmons
#79486
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
John Simon Gabriel Simmons was a British scholar of Slavonics. Early years John Simmons was born in Birmingham, England, in 1915. He joined the library at Birmingham University as a "library boy" in 1932, and in 1934 began to study Russian under Professor Konovalov. He graduated in 1937 with a BA in Spanish and Russian, but chose to stay on at the university as an assistant librarian, beginning a DPhil on the history of Russian printing. This was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. On his first trip to Russia, he met his wife, Fanny, whom he married in 1944.
Go to Profile#12945
Philippe Régnier
#81702
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Philippe Régnier is Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. He was formerly Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and Director of its Centre for Contemporary Asian Studies for 12 years. His publications focus on the socio-economic development of emerging economies.
Go to Profile#12946
Javed Iqbal Kazi
#55255
Overall Influence
1955 - 2014 (59 years)
Javed Iqbal Kazi was a Pakistani pathologist specialized in renal pathology, professor and chairman of Histopathology at Karachi Medical and Dental College, Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation, Dr. Ziauddin Hospitals & National Institute of Blood Diseases, and served as Dean of medicine of University of Karachi. He was also the board member of Journal of Pakistan Medical Association since 2005. He established the department of Histopathology at Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation, Karachi, in 1995 and is the pioneer of Renal and Transplant Pathology in Pakistan.
Go to Profile#12947
Ralph Abraham
#141408
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ralph Lee Abraham Jr. is an American veterinarian, physician, and politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2015 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he is a native and resident of Alto, Louisiana.
Go to Profile#12948
Davide Tarizzo
#190322
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Davide Tarizzo is an Italian philosopher and professor, notable for his academic research and works on political theory and Post-Kantian European philosophy, with particular attention to biopolitics, psychoanalysis, and French theory. He currently serves as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Salerno.
Go to Profile#12949
Danielle Peers
#186834
Overall Influence
Danielle Peers is a Canadian former wheelchair basketball player. They are an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures.
Go to Profile#12950
Gordon Woods
#73898
Overall Influence
1952 - 2009 (57 years)
Gordon Woods was an American veterinary scientist who co-created Idaho Gem, the world's first cloned mule. Idaho Gem was the first clone born in the horse family. Early life Woods was raised in northern Idaho. He obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho. Woods received a doctorate of veterinary medicine from Colorado State University. He later obtained a second doctorate in reproductive biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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