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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#13701
Thomas Stewart Traill
1781 - 1862 (81 years)
Thomas Stewart Traill was a British physician, chemist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omond FRSE .
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Lynn Riggs
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Rollie Lynn Riggs was an American author, poet, playwright and screenwriter. His 1931 play Green Grow The Lilacs was adapted into the landmark 1943 musical Oklahoma!. Early life Riggs was born on a farm near Claremore, Oklahoma, . His mother was 1/8 Cherokee, and when he was two years old, his mother secured his Cherokee allotment for him. He was able to draw on his allotment to help support his writing.
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Pedro Ciruelo
1470 - 1548 (78 years)
Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo was a Spanish philosopher, theologian, mathematician, astrologer, astronomer and writer on topics of natural philosophy. Early life Ciruelo was born somewhere between 1460 and 1470 in Daroca, Spain. Ciruelo was born in the kingdom of Aragon where Daroca held political, military, and administrative significance for the kingdom. He came from a family of Jews and Judaizers according to papers that traced his genealogy during the Spanish Inquisition. Ciruelo claimed to be an orphan, but the validity of this claim is not well-supported as Ciruelo had living relatives and received an education which was costly at the time.
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Honoratus a Sancta Maria
1651 - 1729 (78 years)
Honoratus a Sancta Maria was a French Discalced Carmelite, known as a prolific controversialist. His secular name was Blaise Vauxelles , and he was known also by the French version of his name in religion, Honoré de Sainte-Marie.
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Griffith Powell
1561 - 1620 (59 years)
Griffith Powell was a philosopher and Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, from 1613 to 1620. Life Powell was the third of four sons of John ap Hywel of Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Powell matriculated at Jesus College in 1581, obtaining his BA in 1584, MA in 1589, and BCL in 1593. He was elected Fellow of the college in 1589. He effectively ran the college during the principalships of his two predecessors, Francis Bevans and John Williams. Williams deprived him of his Fellowship, but it was restored on the Chancellor's orders.
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William Petty
1623 - 1687 (64 years)
Sir William Petty FRS was an English economist, physician, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to survey the land that was to be confiscated and given to Cromwell's soldiers. He also remained a significant figure under King Charles II and King James II, as did many others who had served Cromwell.
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Karunai Prakasar
1756 - 1774 (18 years)
Karunai Prakasar was a seventeenth century Saiva spiritual writer. He was born to a Tamil-speaking Desikar family in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. He was a spiritual writer who wrote more than five books. . He worshipped Saiva Siddantha. He got married when he was sixteen. He attained Mukthi Motcha at the age of eighteen. Therefore, he had no children.
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Aksel Jørgensen
1883 - 1957 (74 years)
Aksel Jørgensen was a Danish painter and wood engraver. He is also remembered for his years as the director and professor at the Royal Danish Academy where he instructed many Danish illustrators. Childhood Aksel Jørgensen was born in Copenhagen. His parents were the mechanic Mathias Jørgensen and Maren née Christensen. Aksel later described his parents' home as very modest but harmonious. Like many working-class families of the time, the family lived in a very small space in a two-room apartment without sanitary facilities. At the age of four, Jørgensen became seriously ill with an otitis media, the long-term consequences of which affected his entire life.
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Charles Scarborough
1615 - 1694 (79 years)
Sir Charles Scarborough or Scarburgh MP FRS FRCP was an English physician and mathematician. Upbringing Scarborough was born in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Westminster, in 1615, to Edmund Scarburgh and his wife Hannah , and was educated at St Paul's School, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and Merton College, Oxford . While at Oxford he was a student of William Harvey, and the two would become close friends. Scarborough was also tutor to Christopher Wren, who was his assistant for a time.
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Adam Elias von Siebold
1775 - 1828 (53 years)
Adam Elias von Siebold was a German Gynecologist. Life He was the youngest son of Carl Caspar von Siebold . Siebold was professor of anatomy, surgery und midwifery of the University of Würzburg. Unlike his brothers, he originally wanted to become a Merchant, eventually, however, he began to study medicine.
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Hubertus Strughold
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
Hubertus Strughold was a German-born physiologist, war criminal, and prominent medical researcher. Beginning in 1935 he served as chief of aeromedical research for Hermann Göring's Ministry of Aviation, holding this position throughout World War II. In 1947 he was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and went on to serve in a number of high-level scientific posts with the US Air Force and NASA.
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Charles Sanford Terry
1864 - 1936 (72 years)
Charles Sanford Terry was an English historian and musicologist who published extensively on Scottish and European history as well as the life and works of J. S. Bach. Career Terry was the eldest son of Charles Terry, a physician, and Ellen Octavia Prichard. After attending St Paul's Cathedral School, King's College School, and Lancing College, he was an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge, where he obtained a B.A. in history in 1886 and an M.A. in 1891. He held lectureships in history at Durham College of Science , the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. In 1901...
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Tomizo Yoshida
1903 - 1973 (70 years)
was a prominent Japanese pathologist, famous for discovering the Yoshida sarcoma. In addition, he is known for demonstrating the chemical-induced hepatocarcinogenesis in rats with his mentor Takaoki Sasaki.
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Jan Mikulicz-Radecki
1850 - 1905 (55 years)
Jan Mikulicz-Radecki was a German-Polish-Austrian surgeon who worked mainly in the German Empire. He was born on 16 May 1850 in Czerniowce in the Austrian Empire and died on 4 June 1905 in Breslau, German Empire. He was professor in Kraków, Breslau, and Königsberg. He was the inventor of new operating techniques and tools, and is one of the pioneers of antiseptics and aseptic techniques. In Poland he is regarded as one of the founders of the Kraków school of surgery.
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Stefan Themerson
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Stefan Themerson was a Polish writer of children's literature, poet and inventor of Semantic Poetry, novelist, script writer filmmaker, composer and philosopher. He wrote in at least three languages. With his wife, Franciszka Themerson, they are regarded as leading husband-and-wife exponents of European Surrealism and publishers.
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Gennosuke Fuse
1880 - 1946 (66 years)
Gennosuke Fuse was a Japanese anatomist of the Meiji period. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University medical school. Then he studied abroad in Switzerland. He was assistant of the University of Zurich from 1907 to 1911 and from 1914 to 1916 and worked with Constantin von Monakow.
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Adolph Henke
1775 - 1843 (68 years)
Adolph Christian Heinrich Henke was a German physician and pharmacologist known for his work in medical forensics. He was father-in-law to anatomist Rudolf Wagner . Following studies at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig, he continued his education at the University of Helmstedt, where one of his instructors was chemist Lorenz von Crell . Afterwards, he studied medicine with surgeon August Gottlieb Richter and obstetrician Friedrich Benjamin Osiander at the University of Göttingen, subsequently receiving his doctorate in 1799 at Helmstedt.
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William Rosenau
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
William Rosenau was a leader of Reform Judaism in the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States. Biography William Rosenau was born in Wolstein, Germany in 1865, the son of Rabbi Nathan and Johanna Rosenau. The family came to the United States and settled in the Philadelphia area when William Rosenau was eleven. In 1876, Rosenau immigrated to the United States.
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Friedrich Schauta
1849 - 1919 (70 years)
Friedrich Schauta was an Austrian surgeon and gynecologist born in Vienna. In 1874 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna, and following graduation remained in Vienna as an assistant at the surgical clinic of Johann von Dumreicher . From 1876 to 1881 Schauta worked under Joseph Späth at the latter's clinic of obstetrics and gynecology. In 1881 he became habilitated for OB/GYN at Vienna, and subsequently relocated to the University of Innsbruck, where in 1884 he became a full professor. Three years later, he succeeded August Breisky in Prague, and in 1891 returned to V...
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Lazar Reznikov
1905 - 1970 (65 years)
Lazar Osipovich Reznikov was a Soviet philosopher and one of the pioneers of semiotics studies in Russia. Professor, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences. Biography Lazar Osipovich Reznikov was born on 8 December 1905 in Kishenev in the Jewish family. His father was an artisan. In 1929 Lazar Reznikov graduated from the Pedagogical Faculty of the Don University in Rostov-on-Don, where he later worked as an assistant professor of the Department of Dialectical Materialism. In 1933—1936 he continued his studies in graduate school at Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, then taught in Odessa.
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Robert Bárány
1876 - 1936 (60 years)
Robert Bárány was an Austrian-born otologist. He received the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiology and pathology of the vestibular apparatus. Life and career Bárány was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He was the eldest of six children of Maria , the daughter of a scientist, and Ignác Bárány, born 1842 in Várpalota, Kingdom of Hungary, who was a bank official and estate manager. His father was a Hungarian Jew whose father also was named Ignác Bárány .
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Odoardo Beccari
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
Odoardo Beccari was an Italian botanist famous for his discoveries in Indonesia, New Guinea, and Australia. He has been called the greatest botanist to ever study Malesia. His author abbreviation is Becc. when citing a botanical name.
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Eduard Rüppell
1794 - 1884 (90 years)
Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell, also spelled Rueppell was a German naturalist and explorer, best known for his collections and descriptions of plants and animals from Africa and Arabia. Biography Rüppell was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a prosperous banker, who was a partner in 'Rüppell und Harnier’s Bank'. He was originally destined to be a merchant, but after a visit to Sinai in 1817, where he met Henry Salt and the Swiss-German traveller Ludwig Burckhardt. He explored Giza and the Pyramids with Salt. In 1818, he developed an interest in natural history, and became elected member of the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft.
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Heinrich Braun
1862 - 1934 (72 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Braun was a German surgeon remembered for his work in the field of anaesthesiology. He was a native of Rawitsch, Province of Posen . Braun attended the Kreuzschule and the Vitzhumsches Gymnasium in Dresden, completing his Abitur in 1881. He studied medicine at the Universities of Strasbourg, Greifswald and Leipzig, earning his doctorate in 1887. From 1891 to 1905 he worked at various hospitals in Leipzig, becoming an associate professor at the University of Leipzig in 1905. The following year he was appointed chief surgeon and medical director of the Royal Saxonian Hospital in Zwickau, a position he maintained until his retirement in 1923.
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Jean Casimir Félix Guyon
1831 - 1920 (89 years)
Jean Casimir Félix Guyon was a French surgeon and urologist born in Saint-Denis, Ile-Bourbon . He studied medicine in Paris, receiving his doctorate in 1858. He was appointed médecin des hôpitaux in 1864, and was later a professor of surgical pathology and genitourinary surgery at the University of Paris. In 1878 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine. At Hôpital Necker he held clinics that were attended by students worldwide
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Denmark Vesey
1767 - 1822 (55 years)
Denmark Vesey was an 18th-century and early 19th century free Black and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina, who was accused and convicted of planning a major slave revolt in 1822. Although the alleged plot was discovered before it could be realized, its potential scale stoked the fears of the antebellum planter class that led to increased restrictions on both slaves and free blacks.
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Thomas-Étienne Hamel
1830 - 1913 (83 years)
Thomas-Étienne Hamel was a French-Canadian priest and academic. He was the son of Victor Hamel, a merchant and Therèse DeFoy. In 1852, as a student of the Séminaire de Québec, he traveled with Louis-Jacques Casault to London where they arranged for the royal charter of what would become Laval University. After his ordination in 1854, he was sent to Paris' École des Carmes and eventually graduated from the Sorbonne with a license in science, before returning to Quebec to teach at the Séminaire, also acquiring the office of general secretary of the new university. He became rector of the Sémina...
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Jerome of Prague
1380 - 1416 (36 years)
Jerome of Prague was a Czech scholastic philosopher, theologian, reformer, and professor. Jerome was one of the chief followers of Jan Hus and was burned for heresy at the Council of Constance. Early life Jerome was born in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia , in 1379 and graduated from the Charles University of Prague in 1398. He later studied at Oxford University where he first became familiar with the reformist teachings of John Wycliffe. He was a philosopher, theologian, university professor, and church reformer who dedicated his life to eradicate those church doctrines and dogmas he found to be corrupt.
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Matthias Qualle
1470 - 1518 (48 years)
Matthias Qualle , was a Slovene philosopher. Between 1502 and 1514 he taught philosophy at the University of Vienna's Faculty of Arts, and in 1510 he served as the faculty's dean. Life and work Qualle was born in Vače, in present-day Slovenia. He started studying at Vienna in 1491, where he became a teacher. He was a mentor to, and later a colleague of, the Swiss humanist and reformer Joachim Vadian.
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Sadasiva Brahmendra
1700 - Present (326 years)
Sadasiva Brahmendra was a saint, composer of Carnatic music and Advaita philosopher and sishya of the 57th Shankaracharya of Moolamnaya Sarvajna Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, Shri Paramasivendra Sarasvati , who lived near Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, during the 18th century. Only a few of his compositions have survived, but they are recognised as great compositions of Carnatic music.
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Rihard Jakopič
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Rihard Jakopič was a Slovene painter. He was the leading Slovene Impressionist painter, patron of arts and theoretician. Together with Matej Sternen, Matija Jama and Ivan Grohar, he is considered the pioneer of Slovene Impressionist painting.
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Wei Liaoweng
1178 - 1237 (59 years)
Wei Liaoweng was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Southern Song Dynasty. He and his colleague Zhen Dexiu were instrumental in establishing Neo-Confucianism as the dominant political philosophy of the court at the time.
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Theodor Rehbenitz
1791 - 1861 (70 years)
Theodor Markus Rehbenitz was a German painter and draftsman, associated with the Nazarene movement. Life and work He was born on an estate where his father served as the Superintendent. After receiving instruction from the local Rector, he attended the Katharineum in Lübeck. When his father died in 1810 the Bürgermeister of Bad Oldesloe became his guardian. The following year, he became a law student at the University of Kiel, then moved to the University of Heidelberg. While there, he was able to see the collection of paintings amassed by Sulpiz Boisserée and his brother Melchior, which had recently been put on display.
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Sebald Heyden
1499 - 1561 (62 years)
Sebald Heyden was a German musicologist, cantor, theologian, hymn-writer and religious poet. He is perhaps best known for his De arte canendi which is considered to have had a major impact on scholarship and the teaching of singing to young boys. He wrote hymns such as "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß". It has been speculated that Heyden was the world's first true musicologist.
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Augustyn Wróblewski
1866 - 1913 (47 years)
Augustyn Wróblewski was a Polish biochemist and anarchist.
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Melchiorre Zoppio
1544 - 1634 (90 years)
Melchiorre or Melchior Zoppio was an Italian doctor and scholar. Life Born in Bologna, a son of Girolamo Zoppio, Melchiorre Zoppio followed his father's dual career in medicine and education. He taught philosophy in Macerata then Bologna, where in 1588 he was one of the founders of the Accademia dei Gelati. He was one of that society's keenest members, adopting the name Caliginoso within it and leaving it a room for its meetings in his will. Over the fifty years he served as a professor in Bologna Melchiorre acquired such a reputation that his colleagues honoured him with a public inscription during his lifetime.
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Thomas Campion
1567 - 1620 (53 years)
Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet, and physician. He was born in London, educated at Cambridge, studied law in Gray's inn. He wrote over a hundred lute songs, masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.
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Charles Baker Adams
1814 - 1853 (39 years)
Charles Baker Adams was an American educator and naturalist. Biography He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1814, the son of Charles J. Adams and Hannah Baker. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1830 and Amherst College in 1834 with high honors , and became an assistant to Edward Hitchcock in the Geological Survey of New York in 1836. In 1837, he became a tutor and a lecturer in geology at Amherst College. He left to become professor of chemistry and natural history at Middlebury College in 1838, remaining in that position through 1847.
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August Reinsdorf
1849 - 1885 (36 years)
August Reinsdorf was a German anarchist known for his attempted assassination of Kaiser Wilhelm I. Further reading
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Jacques Pelletier du Mans
1517 - 1583 (66 years)
Jacques Pelletier du Mans, also spelled Peletier was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance. Life Born in Le Mans into a bourgeois family, he studied at the Collège de Navarre in Paris, where his brother Jean was a professor of mathematics and philosophy. He subsequently studied law and medicine, frequented the literary circle around Marguerite de Navarre and from 1541 to 1543 he was secretary to René du Bellay. In 1541 he published the first French translation of Horace's Ars Poetica and during this period he also published numerous scientific and mathematical treatis...
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Louis Adolphus Duhring
1845 - 1913 (68 years)
Louis Adolphus Duhring was an American physician and professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is best remembered for having delineated dermatitis herpetiformis ; but he also described pruritus hiemalis , and seborrheic dermatitis.
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Abraham Solomon ben Isaac ben Samuel Catalan
1401 - 1492 (91 years)
Abraham Solomon ben Isaac ben Samuel Catalan was the author of a work treating the eternity of the world, providence, prophecy, immortality, and the resurrection, and also dealing with mathematical, physical, and cabalistic subjects. It appeared under the title Neweh Shalom , Constantinople, 1538; Venice, 1574, with a preface by Moses Almosnino, who cites it several times in his work, Me'ammetz Koach.
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John Hennig
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
John Hennig was a German theologian, businessman and scholar of Irish and German Literature. Origins Hennig was born in Leipzig on 3 March 1911, the son of a teacher, Max Hennig, and his wife Johanna Clemen. Like his brother Karl , later to be a theologian and pastor, Hans, as he was known, frequented the Thomasschule in Leipzig. The family was Lutheran. Hennig's mother was a deaconess at her marriage and his father had a doctorate in the psychology of religious perception and was an ordained minister, though he had chosen to become a high-school religion teacher rather than a pastor. A brot...
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Henry Layton
1622 - 1705 (83 years)
Henry Layton was a minor British philosopher, theological writer, and contemporary of John Locke. Life He was the eldest son of Francis Layton of Rawdon, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was one of the masters of the jewel-house to Charles I and Charles II. In accordance with his father's will, Layton built the chapel at Rawdon, a chapelry in the parish of Guiseley. He died at Rawdon on 18 October 1705, aged 83. By his wife Elizabeth , daughter of Sir Nicholas Yarborough, he left no issue.
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Josef Servas d'Outrepont
1775 - 1845 (70 years)
Josef Servas d'Outrepont; name also given as Joseph Servatius von d'Outrepont was a German obstetrician born in Malmedy. He studied medicine at the universities of Mainz, Würzburg and Halle, earning his doctorate at the latter institution in 1798. Afterwards, he continued his education in Vienna under Johann Lucas Boër , and in 1799 settled in Salzburg, where in 1804 he became an associate professor of obstetrics.
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Ye Shi
1150 - 1223 (73 years)
Ye Shi , courtesy name Zhengze , pseudonym Mr. Shuixin , was a Chinese neo-Confucian of the Song dynasty. A native of Wenzhou, Zhejiang, he was the most famous figure of the Yongjia School, a neo-Confucianism School composed mostly of philosophers from Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang province. In contrast to other scholars in the same period like Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan, he stressed practical learning and applying Confucian doctrine to real world problems. This school had important influence on later thinkers from Zhejiang province, including Wang Shouren and Huang Zongxi, who were the most imp...
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Erik Adolf von Willebrand
1870 - 1949 (79 years)
Erik Adolf von Willebrand was a Finnish physician who made major contributions to hematology. Von Willebrand disease and von Willebrand factor are named after him. He also researched metabolism, obesity and gout, and was one of the first Finnish physicians to use insulin to treat a diabetic coma.
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Alexander Ogston
1844 - 1929 (85 years)
Sir Alexander Ogston MD CM LLD was a British surgeon, famous for his discovery of Staphylococcus. Life Ogston was the eldest son of Amelia Cadenhead and her husband Prof. Francis Ogston , Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Aberdeen. He had a brother who was also a professor.
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Stafford L. Warren
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Stafford Leak Warren was an American physician and radiologist who was a pioneer in the field of nuclear medicine and best known for his invention of the mammogram. Warren developed the technique of producing stereoscopic images of the breast with X-rays while working in the Department of Radiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Fink
1783 - 1846 (63 years)
Gottfried Wilhelm Fink was a German composer, music theorist, poet, and a Protestant clergyman. Life From 1804 until 1808 Fink studied theology at the University of Leipzig where he joined the Corps Lusatia. There he made his first attempts at composition and poetry. Most of his song compositions are attributed to this period. From 1811 he held the office of vicar in Leipzig for some years, where he also founded an educational institution which he led until 1829. Since the beginning of the 19th century he worked for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitschrift . In 1827 he became the magazine's...
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