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,
#13951
Gérard Krause
#122109
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Gérard Krause is a German epidemiologist. He is currently based at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig. Career After obtaining a doctoral degree in tropical medicine at the University of Heidelberg and several stints as medical doctor and specialist in tropical medicine, Krause moved in 2000 to the Robert Koch Institute, where he worked as an epidemiologist. In 2005 he obtained his habilitation at the Charité in the fields of epidemiology and hygiene. He participated in the successful containment of the Western African Ebola virus epidemic of 2014/2015. As of 2017, he led the SORMAS project at the HZI.
Go to Profile#13952
Bernd Enders
#87156
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Bernd Enders is a German musicologist and from 1994 until his emeritus in 2015, University Professor for Systematic Musicology at the University of Osnabrück. Life Born in Siegen, Enders studied at the and at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He graduated with a state examination in several subjects. In 1980 Enders received his doctorate in musicology, philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Cologne and began his teaching career as Studienrat. Since 1981 he was a lecturer in the field of music/musicology at the University of Osnabrück where he received his habilitation in 1986. Fr...
Go to Profile#13953
Ernest Cushing Richardson
1860 - 1939 (79 years)
Ernest Cushing Richardson was an American librarian, theologian and scholar. Throughout his life Richardson strived to make advances in cataloging systems and increased access to necessary research materials in U.S. libraries. He was named one of the "100 Most Important Leaders [Librarians] had in the 20th Century" by American Libraries in 1999.
Go to Profile#13954
Asrat Woldeyes
#35790
Overall Influence
1928 - 1999 (71 years)
Asrat Woldeyes was an Ethiopian surgeon, a professor of medicine at Addis Ababa University, and the founder and leader of the All-Amhara People's Organization . He was jailed by the Derg and later by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front . After his death, The Guardian described him as "successively Ethiopia's most distinguished surgeon, physician and university dean, most controversial political party leader and best known political prisoner".
Go to Profile#13955
Shang Fa Yang
#23347
Overall Influence
1932 - 2007 (75 years)
Shang Fa Yang was a Taiwanese-American botanist. He was a professor at the University of California, Davis. He was awarded the 1991 Wolf Prize in Agriculture and was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences the year before.
Go to Profile#13956
Cinzia Casiraghi
#71439
Overall Influence
Cinzia Casiraghi is a Professor of Nanoscience in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester and National Graphene Institute in the UK. Education Casiraghi's undergraduate studies took place at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, where she obtained a BSc and an MSc in Nuclear Engineering. She completed her PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Cambridge in 2006.
Go to Profile#13957
Ruth Macklin
#115200
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ruth Macklin is an American philosopher and retired professor of bioethics. Education Ruth Macklin studied philosophy at Cornell University then received Ph.D. in philosophy from Case Western Reserve University.
Go to Profile#13958
Stuart W. Jamieson
#57283
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Stuart William Jamieson is a British cardiothoracic surgeon, specialising in pulmonary thromboendarterectomy , a surgical procedure performed to remove organized clotted blood from pulmonary arteries in people with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension .
Go to Profile#13959
Gösta Rooth
#99696
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Gösta Rooth was a Swedish physician and a pioneer of perinatal medicine. He graduated as a physician at Lund University in 1945 and obtained his PhD, also at Lund, in 1949. He became reader at Lund University in 1958. In 1973, he became Professor of perinatal medicine at Uppsala University Hospital, as the first person to hold a chair in that discipline in Europe.
Go to Profile#13960
Roger Härtl
#50181
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Roger Härtl is an American neurological surgeon at Weill-Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He is the Director of Spinal Surgery at the Weill Cornell Brain & Spine Center. Härtl has been named by Becker's Spine Review as one of the Top 50 Spine Surgeons in the United States as well as one of the Top 10 Spine and Neurosurgeon Leaders at Non-Profit Hospitals. He was named one of New York's Top Doctors by New York Magazine after he saved the life of New York firefighter Eugene Stolowski.
Go to Profile#13961
Rachel M. Werner
#133109
Overall Influence
Rachel Michele Werner is an American physician-economist. She is the first woman and first physician-economist executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. In 2018, Werner was elected a Member of the National Academy of Medicine for her investigation into the unintended consequences of quality improvement incentives.
Go to Profile#13962
Peter Mansoor
#25804
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Peter R. Mansoor is a retired United States Army officer, military historian, and commentator on national security affairs in the media. He is known primarily as the executive officer to General David Petraeus during the Iraq War, particularly the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. He is a professor at the Ohio State University, where he holds the General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair of Military History.
Go to Profile#13963
Margaret Allen
#25244
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Margaret Allen is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and an academic at the Benaroya Research Institute. She was the first woman to perform a heart transplant and is a former president of the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Go to Profile#13964
Johann Joseph von Prechtl
1778 - 1854 (76 years)
Johann Joseph Ritter von Prechtl was a German-born Austrian technologist and educator. He is regarded as a pioneer of technical education in Austria. From 1796 he studied philosophy, theology and legal science in Würzburg, later working as a private instructor outside of Brünn, and afterwards as a teacher of natural sciences, chemistry and physics at a secondary school in Vienna . In 1815 he became founder and first director of the Vienna Polytechnic Institute.
Go to Profile#13965
Gerard Timoner III
#76434
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Gerard Francisco Parco Timoner III is a Filipino Catholic priest who serves as the 88th Master of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans, since 13 July 2019, the first Asian to hold the position.
Go to Profile#13966
John Peter Portelli
#107965
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Peter Portelli is a professor, poet and novelist from Malta who resides in Toronto, Canada. Life John P. Portelli was born in Malta where, after completing a B.A. , he taught history and modern languages at a secondary school and philosophy at a sixth form. In 1977 he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship and commenced his studies at McGill University from where he obtained an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Currently he is a professor in the Department of Social Justice Education, and the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at OISE, University of Toronto. He is a member of the Centre for Leadership and Diversity and a fellow a St.
Go to Profile#13967
Michael Mulholland
1900 - Present (126 years)
Michael W. Mulholland is an American surgeon who is Professor of Surgery and the Chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. Biography Mulholland was educated at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and gained his medical degree from Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. This was followed by postgraduate training in General Surgery at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he also gained his Ph.D. From 1985-1988, Mulholland was an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1988.
Go to Profile#13968
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
#169126
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra is a philosopher. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Oxford, where he has the title of Professor of Metaphysics, and a Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College. Rodriguez-Pereyra has previously been a Research Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Lecturer at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, and Professor at the University of Nottingham and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
Go to Profile#13969
Joy Johnson
#13555
Overall Influence
Joy Louise Johnson is the 10th President and Vice-Chancellor of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. A health scientist and researcher in gender and health, she became the first woman to be appointed Vice-President Research at Simon Fraser in 2014.
Go to Profile#13970
Anthimos Gazis
1764 - 1828 (64 years)
Anthimos Gazis or Gazes was a Greek scholar, revolutionary and politician. He was born in Milies in Ottoman Greece in 1758 into a family of modest means. In 1774 he became an Eastern Orthodox deacon; his career later brought him to Constantinople where he was promoted to archimandrite. He left for Vienna in 1789, where he preached at the Church of Saint George, while simultaneously pursuing his academic interests. His efforts to promote education in Greece through the Filomousos Eteria, translation work and contributions to the first Greek philological periodical, Hermes o Logios, played a s...
Go to Profile#13971
Louis de Beausobre
1730 - 1783 (53 years)
Louis Isaac de Beausobre was a German philosopher and political economist of French Huguenot descent. He was born in Berlin, the son of the French Protestant churchman and ecclesiastical historian Isaac de Beausobre and his second wife, Charlotte Schwarz. He is not to be confused with his elder half-brother, the pastor and theologian Charles Louis de Beausobre .
Go to Profile#13972
Richard Gilbertson
#88508
Overall Influence
Professor Richard James Gilbertson is a paediatric oncology clinician scientist and a Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge. He is the Li Ka Shing Chair of Oncology, and Director of the CRUK Cambridge Major Centre and the Children's Brain Tumour Centre of Excellence.
Go to Profile#13973
Robert Campbell Roberts
#142894
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Robert Campbell Roberts is an American philosopher and distinguished professor emeritus of ethics at Baylor University. Previously he was a professor of philosophy and psychological studies at Wheaton College.
Go to Profile#13974
Howard Koh
#44824
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Howard Kyongju Koh is the former United States Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2009.
Go to Profile#13975
Vineet Chopra
#75189
Overall Influence
Vineet Inder Chopra is an Indian–American hospitalist. Since 2021, Chopra has served as chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Deputy Editor for the Annals of Internal Medicine journal. Prior to this, he was an associate professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Michigan Medicine and the VA Ann Arbor Health System.
Go to Profile#13976
Emil Theodor Kocher
1841 - 1917 (76 years)
Emil Theodor Kocher was a Swiss physician and medical researcher who received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. Among his many accomplishments are the introduction and promotion of aseptic surgery and scientific methods in surgery, specifically reducing the mortality of thyroidectomies below 1% in his operations.
Go to Profile#13977
Christian Biet
#75745
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Christian Biet was a French professor of theatrical studies. His main work focused on the aesthetics of theatre. Biography Biet was born into a family of teachers. After his secondary studies and khâgne at the Lycée Condorcet, he worked as an auditor at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud. Alongside his close friends, Jean-Luc Rispali and Jean-Paul Brighelli, Biet succeeded with his aggregation in 1975. In 1982, they published a series of historical works for Lagarde et Michard. They collaborated on other works regarding Alexandre Dumas and surrealism.
Go to Profile#13978
Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre
1842 - 1909 (67 years)
Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves, Marquis d’Alveydre was a French occultist who adapted the works of Fabre d'Olivet and, in turn, had his ideas adapted by Gérard Encausse alias Papus. His work on "L'Archéomètre" deeply influenced the young René Guénon. He developed the term Synarchy—the association of everyone with everyone else—into a political philosophy, and his ideas about this type of government proved influential in politics and the occult.
Go to Profile#13979
Albert J. Raboteau
#18574
Overall Influence
1943 - 2021 (78 years)
Albert Jordy "Al" Raboteau II was an American scholar of African and African-American religions. Since 1982, he had been affiliated with Princeton University, where he was Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion.
Go to Profile#13980
Dora Elvira García González
#131888
Overall Influence
Dora Elvira García González is a Mexican professor and researcher with the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies as well as director of the humanities school of the Mexico City Campus. Her research work has been recognized by Level II membership in the Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores.
Go to Profile#13981
Jože Trontelj
#140122
Overall Influence
1939 - 2013 (74 years)
Jože Trontelj was a Slovenian physician, doctor of neurosciences, and bioethicist. From 2008 to 2013, he was the President of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He authored or co-authored over 150 papers in journals, over 30 book chapters and 3 books, mainly on electromyography and physiological basis of neurological disorders, and over 70 publications on bioethical issues.
Go to Profile#13982
Scott McCloud
#42902
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. He is best known for his non-fiction books about comics: Understanding Comics , Reinventing Comics , and Making Comics , all of which also use the medium of comics.
Go to Profile#13983
Laura Bush
#22646
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Laura Lane Bush is the wife of George W. Bush and served as the first lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Bush previously served as the first lady of Texas from 1995 to 2000. She is also the daughter-in-law of former president George H. W. Bush.
Go to Profile#13984
Jaroslav Hašek
1883 - 1923 (40 years)
Jaroslav Hašek was a Czech writer, humorist, satirist, journalist, bohemian, first anarchist and then communist, and commissar of the Red Army against the Czechoslovak Legion. He is best known for his novel The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War, an unfinished collection of farcical incidents about a soldier in World War I and a satire on the ineptitude of authority figures. The novel has been translated into about 60 languages, making it the most translated novel in Czech literature.
Go to Profile#13985
Ralph Mobbs
#90637
Overall Influence
Ralph Mobbs is an Australian neurosurgeon who specialises in spinal surgery. He operates at Prince of Wales Private and Public Hospital. He sees patients at his clinic and at an additional clinic in Bowral.
Go to Profile#13986
David John Farmer
#83882
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
David John Farmer is a professor emeritus of philosophy and public affairs in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is best known for his publications on post-traditional governance theory and practice – especially on macro public administration and public policy. He has also published on the philosophy and foundations of economics, on the metaphysics of time and on criminal justice policy and management. Post-traditional conceptual approaches analyzed in his writings include thinking as play, justice as seeking, practice as art, ...
Go to Profile#13987
Richard Leakey
#23737
Overall Influence
1944 - 2022 (78 years)
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conservation. He was Director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, and was the chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey served in the powerful office of cabinet secretary and head of public service during the tail end of President Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi's government
Go to Profile#13988
Ophelia Deroy
#116177
Overall Influence
Ophelia Deroy is professor of Philosophy of Mind at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a member of the Graduate School in Systemic Neuroscience in Munich. She is the former deputy director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London. She received the Prix de la Chancellerie des Universites de Paris in 2007.
Go to Profile#13989
William Cowper
1666 - 1709 (43 years)
William Cowper was an English surgeon and anatomist, famous for his early description of what is now known as Cowper's gland. Cowper was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, and he was apprenticed to a London surgeon, William Bignall, in March 1682. He was admitted to the Company of Barber-Surgeons in 1691 and began practising in London the same year. In 1694, he published his noted work, Myotomia Reformata, or a New Administration of the Muscles, and he was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1696. In 1698, he published The Anatomy of the Humane Bodies, which gained him great fame and notor...
Go to Profile#13990
Robert Brisart
#121384
Overall Influence
1953 - 2015 (62 years)
Robert Brisart , was a Belgian philosopher. He was professor at the University of Luxembourg, and at the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis in Brussels. His works mainly focused on Husserl's phenomenology. He also published on the comparison between analytic philosophy and phenomenology.
Go to Profile#13991
Francisco Dória
#97879
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Francisco Antônio de Moraes Accioli Dória is a Brazilian mathematician, philosopher, and genealogist. Francisco Antônio Dória received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro , Brazil, in 1968 and then got his doctorate from the Brazilian Center for Research in Physics , advised by Leopoldo Nachbin in 1977. Dória worked for a while at the Physics Institute of UFRJ, and then left to become a Professor of the Foundations of Communications at the School of Communications, also at UFRJ. Dória held visiting positions at the University of Rochester , Stanford University , and the University of São Paulo .
Go to Profile#13992
Behnam Taebi
#96355
Overall Influence
Behnam Taebi is a Dutch-Iranian ethicist and academician who is known for his research at the interface of Ethics and Nuclear Energy. He is currently an Associate Professor in ethics of technology at Delft University of Technology, and Associate with the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. In 2016, Taebi has been appointed to the Young Academy at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#13993
Johann Nikolaus Forkel
1749 - 1818 (69 years)
Johann Nikolaus Forkel was a German musicologist and music theorist, generally regarded as among the founders of modern musicology. His publications include Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work, the first substantial survey on the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Go to Profile#13994
Badri Nath Tandon
#49298
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Badri Nath Tandon was an Indian gastroenterologist, hepatologist, medical researcher and academic, and the Chairman and Senior Consultant of Gastroenterology, at Metro Hospitals and Heart Institute, Noida. He is a former Professor and Head of Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition Unit at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and a former Director and Senior Consultant of Hepatology and Gastroenterology at Pushpawati Singhania Research Institute for Liver, Renal and Digestive Diseases, New Delhi. He is a recipient of several awards including Sasakawa WHO Health Prize and Jubilee Medal of the RAMS.
Go to Profile#13995
Altheides
1193 - 1262 (69 years)
Altheides was a Cypriot philosopher, primarily known from sayings attributed to him in the works of others. Little is known about the wandering philosopher known as Altheides of Cyprus, and little of his work remains available to modern scholars. His parents were Greek merchants living on the island under the rule of Guy of Lusignan. He was born a year before Guy's death, in 1193. At some point in his late teens he left Cyprus as a seaman on a Moorish trading vessel.
Go to Profile#13996
Melissa Haendel
#112683
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Melissa Anne Haendel is an American bioinformaticist who is the Chief Research Informatics Officer of the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado as well as a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and the Marsico Chair in Data Science. She serves as Director of the Center for Data to Health . Her research makes use of data to improve the discovery and diagnosis of diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Haendel joined with the National Institutes of Health to launch the National COVID Cohort Collaborative , which looks to identify the risk factors that can predict seve...
Go to Profile#13997
Joseph Lane
1851 - 1920 (69 years)
Joseph Lane was an English libertarian socialist campaigner. Biography Lane was born on 2 April 1851 in Benson, Oxfordshire, England, to Thomas Lane, who was a cordwainer, and Mercy Lane . Lane had very little education, beginning farm work at a young age. As a boy he also took a keen interest in politics and attending election meetings. He moved to London and at the age of 15 began work as a carter. In the early 1870s he was involved in the Land Tenure Reform Association and the republican movement.
Go to Profile#13998
Wolfgang Auhagen
#130030
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Wolfgang Auhagen is a German musicologist. Life Born in Hamburg, Auhagen studied musicology, art history and philosophy at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 1973 until 1982. There he was awarded his doctorate with the thesis and in 1992 with a thesis on the subject Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur auditiven Tonalitätsbestimmung in Melodien habilited. He teaches at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Since 2005 Auhagen has been a foreign member of the .
Go to Profile#13999
Caroline Alexander
#42467
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Caroline Alexander is a British author, classicist and filmmaker. She is the author of the best-selling The Endurance, and The Bounty, and other works of literary non-fiction, such as The Way to Xanadu and The War that Killed Achilles. In 2015, she published a new translation of Homer's Iliad.
Go to Profile#14000
Jung-Min Lee
#79492
Overall Influence
Jung-Min Lee is a South Korean-American medical oncologist and physician-scientist focused on the early clinical drug development and translational studies of targeted agents in BRCA mutation-associated breast or ovarian cancer, high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer, and triple-negative breast cancer. She is a NIH Lasker Clinical Research Scholar and principal investigator in the Women's Malignancies Branch at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile