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).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#13651
Alexander Peloplaton
#85961
Overall Influence
Alexander , nicknamed Pēloplátōn , also known as Alexander of Seleucia and Alexander the Platonic, was a Greek rhetorician and Platonist philosopher of the age of the Antonines and the Second Sophistic.
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Sandon
#142150
Overall Influence
Sandon is an Orphic philosopher mentioned in the Suda. He is described briefly as a son of Hellanikos. He has been identified with the Sandon of Tarsus mentioned by Pseudo-Lucian in the essay Macrobii , who was the father of Athenodorus . His father Hellanicus may have been the Orphic philosopher of the late 2nd century mentioned by Damascius.
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Paconius Agrippinus
#154928
Overall Influence
Paconius Agrippinus was a Stoic philosopher of the 1st century. His father was put to death by the Roman emperor Tiberius on a charge of treason. Agrippinus himself was accused at the same time as Thrasea, around 67 AD, and was banished from Italy. As a philosopher he was spoken of with praise by Epictetus.
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Ellopion of Peparethus
#192440
Overall Influence
Ellopion of Peparethus was a Socratic philosopher and contemporary of Plato,who is mentioned only by Plutarch. He accompanied Plato and Simmias in philosophical discussions with an Ancient Egyptian priest named Chonuphis of Memphis: Simmias at once recollected: "Of your tablet, Pheidolaüs, I know nothing. But Agetoridas the Spartan came to Memphis with a long document from Agesilaus for the spokesman of the god, Chonuphis, with whom Plato, Ellopion of Peparethos and I had many philosophical discussions in those days. He brought orders from the king that Chonuphis should translate the writing, if he could make anything of it, and send the translation to him at once.
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Raymond Polin
#67478
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Raymond Polin was a French philosopher. He taught at the Paris University . He was the president of the University of Paris from 1976 to 1981. Literary works La création des valeurs, 1944La compréhension des valeurs, 1945Du laid, du mal, du faux, 1948
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R. De Staningtona
#192441
Overall Influence
R. De Staningtona was a friar, likely of the Dominican Order, who was at Oxford University in the mid-1250s. He composed a noteworthy summary of libri naturales by Aristotle. His summary was entitled Compilacio quedam liborum naturalium. The manuscript has never been edited although selections from it have appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy. The final work he summarized was De anima.
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Rafe Champion
#95140
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
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Yves Brunsvick
#176308
Overall Influence
1921 - 1999 (78 years)
Yves Brunsvick was a famous humanist and philosopher of education. Initially a French teacher, in 1948 he joined the French National Commission , initially as assistant to the Secretary-General, Louis François. In 1958 he became head of the commission. Throughout his life, he had great connections in the cultural aspects of UNESCO and had many interest in the International Bureau of Education . Subsequently, he held the presidency of the IBE council from 1986 to 1989.
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Rod L. Evans
#107417
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Rod L. Evans is an American philosopher, author, and lecturer who writes and speaks on ethics, religion, political philosophy, and English usage. Evans graduated from Old Dominion University and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He is currently Lecturer of Philosophy at Old Dominion University.
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Judah ben Solomon Canpanton
#192449
Overall Influence
Judah ben Solomon Canpanton was a Jewish ethical writer and philosopher. He was a student of Yom Tov b. Abraham Ishbili. He authored the work Arba'ah Kinyanim, which has been published, while other books remain in manuscript.
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Martin H:son Holmdahl
#141777
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Svante Martin Henriksson Holmdahl was a Swedish professor of anesthesiology, who was rector magnificus of Uppsala university between 1978 and 1989. Holmdahl began his medical studies in Uppsala in 1942. In 1953 he became responsible for the anesthesiology department at the Academic Hospital in Uppsala.
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Jerome Roche
#94630
Overall Influence
1942 - 1994 (52 years)
Jerome Lawrence Alexander Roche was a British musicologist, with a particular interest in Italian church music of the baroque era. Early life and education Roche was born in 1942 in Cairo, Egypt, the son of an army doctor. He was educated at Downside School, a Catholic independent school in Somerset, England, before studying music at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1962. He went on to study for a PhD, under the supervision of Denis Arnold. His dissertation focussed on the development of vocal duets in Italian baroque church music.
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Jason Herbison
#26634
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Jason Herbison is an Australian television producer, screenwriter and novelist, most recently serving as the executive producer of the soap opera Neighbours. He has written scripts for numerous television serials, and has published several novels.
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Michael Gottlieb Birckner
1756 - 1798 (42 years)
Michael Gottlieb Birckner was a Danish priest and philosopher. Birckner especially explored the subject of Freedom of Speech. The American historian H. Arnold Barton has characterised Birckner, along with Niels Ditlev Riegels, as being "one of the most original thinkers" of the radical group of authors in Denmark in this period. The Danish jurist Peter Germer in his book The Nature of Freedom of Speech shows that Birckners ideas was akin to ideas that Scottish-American philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn proposed in his Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government .
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John Hadley
1731 - 1764 (33 years)
John Hadley was an English chemist and physician. Born in London to Henry Hadley, he was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1753. In 1756 he was appointed the fourth Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University, the oldest continuously occupied chair of Chemistry in the UK. During his time there he co-operated in 1758 with Benjamin Franklin on a series of experiments to investigate latent heat. They found that a mercury thermometer sprayed with ether which was then evaporated by blowing could fall to −7 degrees Celsius in a warm room.
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Alexander Graham Bell
1847 - 1922 (75 years)
Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885.
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Astley Cooper
1768 - 1841 (73 years)
Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1st Baronet was a British surgeon and anatomist, who made contributions to otology, vascular surgery, the anatomy and pathology of the mammary glands and testicles, and the pathology and surgery of hernia.
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František Lorenz
1872 - 1957 (85 years)
František Vladimír Lorenc , known in Portuguese as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, was a Czech-born polyglot and philosopher born in Zbyslav . He was one of the first Esperantists in the world, and was able to communicate in over 100 different languages. Lorenz was persecuted by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy due to his involvement with Esperanto, which was associated with socialist revolutionary movements in the region, and he subsequently moved to Brazil as a political refugee in 1891. In Brazil, he lived in Rio de Janeiro at first, and then in Rio Grande do Sul . Lorenz published over 36 books in 40 languages and was one of the most prominent promoters of Esperanto movement ever in Brazil.
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W. S. Rockstro
1823 - 1895 (72 years)
William Smith Rockstro was an English musicologist, teacher, pianist and composer. He is best remembered for his books, including music textbooks, music history and biographies of famous musicians.
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Pearl Louise Weber
1878 - 1975 (97 years)
Pearl Louise Hunter Weber was an American philosopher and educator. Biography Weber was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1878. Her maiden name was Pearl Louise Hunter. She earned a philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1899, where she was the first woman to graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Weber entered Cornell University in 1901 with a Sage Fellowship in philosophy and ethics. She married in 1902, and had four children, but eventually separated from her husband and returned to her career. Weber conducted graduate work under John Dewey and received a masters degree in philosophy fro...
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Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba
1453 - 1515 (62 years)
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba was a Spanish general and statesman who led successful military campaigns during the Conquest of Granada and the Italian Wars. His military victories and widespread popularity earned him the nickname "El Gran Capitán" . He also negotiated the final surrender of Granada and later served as Viceroy of Naples. Fernández de Córdoba was a masterful military strategist and tactician.
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Immanuel Kant
#13673
Pieter De Somer
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
Pieter De Somer was a Belgian physician and biologist. He studied medicine from 1935 up to 1942 at the Catholic University of Leuven . He did research and later became a professor at the Department of medicine, where he specialised in microbiology and immunology. In 1968, he became the first rector of the Flemish Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and he remained rector until his death in 1985.
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Alberto Cavalcanti
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti". Early life Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child and, by the age of 15, was studying law at university, but was expelled following an argument with a professor. His father sent him to Geneva, Switzerland, on condition that he did not study law or politics. Cavalcanti chose to study architecture instead. At 18, he moved to Paris to work for an architect, later switching to working in interior design.
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Erik Gustaf Geijer
1783 - 1847 (64 years)
Erik Gustaf Geijer was a Swedish writer, historian, poet, romantic critic of political economy, philosopher, and composer. His writings served to promote Swedish National Romanticism. He was an influential advocate of conservatism, but switched to liberalism later in life.
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Emeric Pressburger
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaboration partnership known as the Archers, and produced a series of films, including 49th Parallel , The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp , A Matter of Life and Death , Black Narcissus , The Red Shoes , and The Tales of Hoffmann .
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Heinrich Campendonk
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Heinrich Mathias Ernst Campendonk was a painter and graphic designer born in Germany who became a naturalized Dutch citizen. Life Campendonk was born in Krefeld, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire. He was the son of a textile merchant, and served a textile apprenticeship until 1905. From 1905 to 1909, he received artistic education from Johan Thorn Prikker at the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule, a progressive school for arts and crafts. He became friends with , August Macke, Wilhelm Wieger, Franz Marc and Paul Klee during this time.
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Charles Verlat
1824 - 1890 (66 years)
Charles Verlat or Karel Verlat was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver , art educator and director of the Antwerp Academy. He painted many subjects and was particularly known as an animalier and portrait painter. He also created Orientalist works, genre scenes, including a number of singeries, religious compositions and still lifes.
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Hector Boece
1465 - 1536 (71 years)
Hector Boece , known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and the first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen.
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Francis Xavier Dercum
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
Francis Xavier Dercum was an American physician who first described the disease Adiposis dolorosa . He was a noted neurologist and specialised in treating nervous and mental disorders. He treated President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Ima Hogg for three years, beginning in 1918.
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Tony Robert-Fleury
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Tony Robert-Fleury was a French painter, known primarily for historical scenes. He was also a prominent art teacher, with many famous artists among his students. Biography He was born just outside Paris, and studied under his father Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury and under Paul Delaroche and Léon Cogniet at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
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George Sagnani
1667 - 1732 (65 years)
George Sagnani was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialized mainly in ethics and morals. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Sagnani. He spent his entire adult life in Valletta at the Collegium Melitense, the old University of Malta. Since he was a Jesuit priest, and the college was attached to a Jesuit convent, Sagnani lived and lectured there all his life, and even died there. He had joined the Jesuit congregation in 1686 at nineteen years of age. At the Collegium, Sagnani taught philosophy and, during the latter part of his academic career, moral theology.
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Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker
1828 - 1890 (62 years)
Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker was a German ophthalmologist born near Ratzeburg. Education and career In 1859 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt . Beginning in 1867 he was a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg.
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Girolamo Manfredi
1430 - 1493 (63 years)
Girolamo Manfredi or Hieronimus de Manfredis was an Italian philosopher, physician and astronomer. He lived and worked in Bologna, becoming a notable citizen. Life Born in Bologna in a family of lawyers, he led his studies in his hometown, in Ferrara where he graduated in 1455, and in Parma where he completed his Ph.D. He taught Logic and other disciplines in Bologna for the rest of his life.
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André de Gouveia
1497 - 1548 (51 years)
André de Gouveia was a Portuguese humanist and pedagogue during the Renaissance. Biography André de Gouveia became one of the first Portuguese to study in the Collège Sainte-Barbe, in Paris, which was then directed by his uncle Diogo de Gouveia. After attending six years in Maîtrise des Arts he earned a degree as doctor in theology, and simultaneously, began teaching at the college.
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Eli Ives
1779 - 1861 (82 years)
Eli Ives was an American physician. He was son of Dr Levi and Lydia Ives, and was born in New Haven, Connecticut, February 7, 1779. He graduated from Yale University in 1799. The two years after his graduation he spent as Rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, at the same time studying medicine partly with his father and partly with Dr. Aeneas Munson. At a subsequent period he attended in Philadelphia the lectures of Drs Benjamin Rush and Caspar Wistar. In 1801 he began to practice his profession in New Haven, and was continuously engaged in a widely extended field, during a per...
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César Chesneau Dumarsais
1676 - 1756 (80 years)
César Chesneau, sieur Dumarsais or Du Marsais was a French philosophe, grammarian and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. He was a prominent figure in what became known as the Enlightenment, and contributed to Diderot's Encyclopédie. After his death, Jacques-Philippe-Augustin Douchet and Nicolas Beauzée, who were both teachers at the École royale militaire, took over his work.
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Joseph Gerhard Liebes
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Joseph Gerhard Liebes was an Israeli translator and scholar of Ancient Greek classical literature and Latin literature into Hebrew. He translated Plato's writings into Hebrew. Biography Liebes was born in 1910 in San Salvador to a German-Jewish businessman. He was reared and educated in Hamburg, where he studied at a Latin and ancient Greek gymnasium. He was active in the Zionist youth movement Blau-Weis .
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Joseph Hume
1777 - 1855 (78 years)
Joseph Hume FRS was a Scottish surgeon and Radical MP. Early life He was born the son of a shipmaster James Hume in Montrose, Angus, who died shortly. He attended Montrose Academy, where he knew the older James Mill; and from 1790 was apprenticed to a local surgeon-apothecary, John Bale.
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Charles Rosen
1878 - 1950 (72 years)
Charles Rosen was an American painter who lived for many years in Woodstock, New York. In the 1910s he was acclaimed for his Impressionist winter landscapes. He became dissatisfied with this style and around 1920 he changed to a radically different cubist-realist style. He became recognized as one of the leaders of the Woodstock artists colony.
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William de Burgh
1866 - 1943 (77 years)
William George de Burgh was an English philosopher who was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. Career Born on 24 October 1866 in Wandsworth, de Burgh was educated at Winchester and Merton College, Oxford. He was a founding member of the University of Reading, where he became Professor of Philosophy in 1907. His works include Towards a Religious Philosophy , From Morality to Religion , and The Legacy of the Ancient World .
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Linda Eastman
1867 - 1963 (96 years)
Linda Anne Eastman was an American librarian. She was selected by the American Library Association as one of the 100 most important librarians of the 20th century. Eastman served as the head Librarian of the Cleveland Public Library from 1918 to 1938 and president of the ALA from 1928 to 1929. At the time of her appointment in Cleveland, she was the first woman to head a library system the size of Cleveland's. She was also a founding member and later president of the Ohio Library Association, and a professor of Library Science at Case Western Reserve University.
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Alva Belmont
1853 - 1933 (80 years)
Alva Erskine Belmont , known as Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896, was an American multi-millionaire socialite and women's suffrage activist. She was noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention.
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Alexander Sutherland
1852 - 1902 (50 years)
Alexander Sutherland was a Scottish-Australian educator, writer and philosopher. Early life and education Sutherland was born at Glasgow, both parents were Scottish, his father, George Sutherland, a carver of ship's figureheads, married Jane Smith, a woman of character and education. The family came to Australia in 1864 on account of the father's health, and Alexander at 14 years of age became a pupil-teacher with the education department at Sydney.
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Quintus Lucilius Balbus
1 BC - 100 (101 years)
Quintus Lucilius Balbus was a Stoic philosopher and a pupil of Panaetius. Balbus appeared to Cicero as comparable to the best Greek philosophers. He is introduced by Cicero in his dialogue On the Nature of the Gods as the expositor of the opinions of the Stoics on that subject, and his arguments are represented as of considerable weight. His name appears in the extant fragments of Cicero's Hortensius, but it is no longer thought that Balbus was a speaker in the dialogue.
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Karl Thiersch
1822 - 1895 (73 years)
Karl Thiersch, also spelled Carl Thiersch , was a German surgeon born in Munich. His father was educationist Friedrich Thiersch, his father-in-law was renowned chemist Justus von Liebig. One brother, Ludwig, was an influential painter, while another, Heinrich Wilhelm Josias, was a theologian.
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Jacob ben Nissim
950 - 1006 (56 years)
Jacob ben Nissim ibn Shahin was a Jewish philosopher and mathematician who lived at Kairouan, Tunisia in the 10th century; he was a younger contemporary of Saadia. At Jacob's request Sherira Gaon wrote a treatise entitled Iggeret, on the redaction of the Mishnah. Jacob is credited with the authorship of an Arabic commentary on the Sefer Yeẓirah .
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Monaldo Leopardi
1776 - 1847 (71 years)
Count Monaldo Leopardi was an Italian philosopher, nobleman, politician and writer, notable as one of the main Italian intellectuals of the counter-revolution. His son Giacomo Leopardi was a poet and thinker with completely opposite views, which were probably the root cause of their discord.
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Benedictus Aretius
1522 - 1574 (52 years)
Benedictus Aretius was a Swiss Protestant theologian, Protestant reformer and natural philosopher. Life He was born at Bätterkinden, in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. He studied at Strasbourg and at Marburg, where he became professor of logic. He was called to Bern as a school-teacher, 1548, and became professor of theology, 1564.
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Robert Plot
1640 - 1696 (56 years)
Robert Plot was an English naturalist, first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. Early life and education Born in Borden, Kent to parents Robert Plot and Elisabeth Patenden, and baptised on 13 December 1640, Plot was educated at the Wye Free School in Kent. He entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1658 where he graduated with a BA in 1661 and an MA in 1664. Plot subsequently taught and served as dean and vice principal at Magdalen Hall while preparing for his BCL and DCL, which he received in 1671 before moving to University College in ...
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