Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#1401

Chungliang Al Huang

#7949

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Chungliang “Al” Huang is a Taiwanese philosopher, dancer, performing artist,taijiquan master and educator. He is the founder-president of the Living Tao Foundation in Oregon, US, and the International Lan Ting Institute, in China.

#1402

Claudine Tiercelin

#16687

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Claudine Tiercelin is a French philosopher, working on metaphysics and philosophy of science. She is professor of philosophy at the Collège de France, after having been professor at the Paris 12 Val de Marne University.

#1403

Danilo Pejović

#35747

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Danilo Pejović was a Croatian philosopher. Pejović was born in Ludbreg. During the World War II, in 1943, Pejović joined the National Liberation Army in its fight against the occupying forces of Yugoslavia. He continued his education after the war, graduating with a degree in philosophy at the University in Zagreb in 1953. He earned his PhD degree at the same university in 1958 with a dissertation about the ontology of Nicolai Hartmann. Until 1966 Pejović was president of the Croatian Philosophy Society.

#1404

Steve Awodey

#16984

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Steven M. Awodey is an American mathematician and logician. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. Biography Awodey studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Marburg and the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. from Chicago under Saunders Mac Lane in 1997. He is an active researcher in the areas of category theory and logic, and has also written on the philosophy of mathematics. He is one of the originators of the field of homotopy type theory. He was a member of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2012–1...

#1405

C. Stephen Evans

#20769

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Charles Stephen Evans is an American philosopher. He is one of the United States' leading experts on Søren Kierkegaard and has also published extensively on subjects including philosophy of religion and the relationship of psychology and Christianity. He is University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University.

#1406

Geoffrey Hellman

#28714

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Geoffrey Hellman is an American professor and philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He obtained his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy from Harvard University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

#1407

Neal D. Barnard

Neal D. Barnard

#12870

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Neal D. Barnard, born 10 July 1953 in Fargo, North Dakota, is an American author, clinical researcher, and founding president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine . Early life and education Barnard grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. He received his medical training at George Washington University School of Medicine in psychiatry, where he began to explore vegan diets. He is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a lifetime member of the American Medical Association.

#1408

Atul Gawande

#1659

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Atul Atmaram Gawande is an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. In public health, he is executive director of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and chairman of Lifebox, a nonprofit that works on reducing deaths in surgery globally. On June 20, 2018, Gawande was n...

#1409

Gerald Dworkin

#22281

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Gerald Dworkin is a professor of moral, political and legal philosophy. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. In 2016–17, he was Brady Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics and Civic Life at Northwestern University. He has written for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

#1410

Scott J. Shapiro

#7784

Overall Influence

Scott Jonathan Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale Law School and the Director of Yale's Center for Law and Philosophy and of the Yale CyberSecurity Lab. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Columbia College, his J.D. from Yale Law School, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University. He also studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel. After law school, Shapiro served as a clerk for Judge Pierre Leval on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. At Yale, he teaches in Jurisprudence, Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, and Cybersec...

#1411

Alev Alatlı

#11684

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Alev Alatlı is a Turkish columnist and bestselling novelist. Early years She was born 1944 in the town of Menemen in western Turkey to an officer's family. She spent her childhood in Japan, where her father was appointed as the Military attaché in the Embassy of Turkey and also as the Liaison officer of the Turkish Brigade in Korea to the United Nations.

#1412

Kwame Gyekye

#30508

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Kwame Gyekye was a Ghanaian philosopher, and an important figure in the development of modern African philosophy. Gyekye was an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Ghana, and a visiting professor of philosophy and African-American studies at Temple University. He is known for theorizing the concept of person-hood on the basis of Akan cultural paradigm in debate with Kwasi Wiredu, which is seen as one of the defining moments of modern African philosophy.

#1413

Yehuda Shoenfeld

Yehuda Shoenfeld

#20499

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Yehuda Shoenfeld is an Israeli physician and autoimmunity researcher. Biography Yehuda Shoenfeld works at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer and the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the incumbent of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases. Shoenfeld is the editor of two journals, Harefuah in Hebrew with English abstracts and Israel Medical Association Journal . He is co-editor-in-chief of Autoimmunity Reviews, and co-editor of the Journal of Autoimmunity, and member of the editorial board of...

#1414

Adam Michnik

#1639

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Adam Michnik is a Polish historian, essayist, former dissident, public intellectual, as well as co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Polish newspaper, . Reared in a family of committed communists, Michnik became an opponent of Poland's communist regime at the time of the party's anti-Jewish purges. He was imprisoned after the 1968 March Events and again after the imposition of martial law in 1981. He has been called "one of Poland's most famous political prisoners".

#1415

Leonard Liggio

#9637

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Leonard P. Liggio was a classical liberal author, research professor of law at George Mason University and executive vice president of the Atlas Network in Fairfax, Virginia. Career In 1965, Liggio gave lectures with Russell Stetler on "Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism: The Ideological Question in Vietnam" for the newly founded Free University of New York. Liggio provided editorial direction for Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, a periodical published by the Cato Institute from 1978 to 1979, then by the Institute for Humane Studies from 1980 to 1982.

#1416

Jean-Godefroy Bidima

#32412

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Jean-Godefroy Bidima is a Cameroonian philosopher, currently living in the United States. Bidima is the former director of the program at the International College of Philosophy in Paris and as of 2015 is a professor in French and Italian and Yvonne Arnoult Chair in Francophone Studies at Tulane University in New Orleans. His fields of interest are cited as " Continental philosophy, literatures and arts of the Francophone world, African philosophies, juridical anthropology and medical ethics". He is the author of numerous books and articles on African philosophy, including Histoire et traver...

#1417

Eero Loone

#33010

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Eero Loone is an Estonian philosopher. He is the son of Nigolas Loone and Leida Loone. Eero Loone graduated from the Moscow State University in 1958 . From 1958 to 1960, Loone worked as junior researcher at the USSR institute of Global Economy and International Relations. Since 1966, he has been lecturer of philosophy at the University of Tartu . He became Doctor of Philosophy in 1984. From 1989 to 1990 Eero Loone worked at Clare Hall, Cambridge . He has been particularly influenced by analytical philosophy. Loone's views on Marxism and historical materialism have found resonance in the West.

#1418

Ding Zilin

#4228

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ding Zilin is a retired professor of philosophy and the leader of the political activist group Tiananmen Mothers. Ding is the mother of Jiang Jielian, one of the first student protestors killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and ensuing crackdown.

#1419

Alfred I. Tauber

#21039

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Alfred I. Tauber is an American philosopher and historian of science, who, from 1993 to 2010, served as director of the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University.

#1420

Paul B. Thompson

Paul B. Thompson

#28912

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Paul B. Thompson is Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University, where he held the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics before retiring in 2022. Thompson was born in 1951 in Springfield, Missouri. He earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He formerly taught at Texas A&M University and Purdue University before joining MSU, where he continues to do research on ethical and philosophical questions dealing with agriculture and food and especially the development of agricultural...

#1421

Gholamreza Aavani

Gholamreza Aavani

#26450

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Gholamreza Aavani is an Iranian philosopher and emeritus professor of philosophy at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. A former head of the Institute for Research in Philosophy, Aavani is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran and a steering committee Member of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies. He has also served as the Kenan Rifai Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at Beijing University, China, and is currently a research fellow at Al-Mahdi Institute.

#1422

Robert McAfee Brown

Robert McAfee Brown

#17764

Overall Influence

1920 - 2001 (81 years)

Robert McAfee Brown was an American Presbyterian minister, theologian, and activist. Life Born on May 28, 1920, in Carthage, Illinois, Brown was the son of a Presbyterian minister and the grandson of theologian and Presbyterian minister Cleland Boyd McAfee. He earned a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1943 and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1944. Brown earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1945, and served as a United States Navy chaplain from 1945 to 1946. The recipient of a Fulbright grant, Brown studied at the University of Oxford before completing a doctorate in the philosophy of religion at Columbia University in 1951.

#1423

Albert Blumberg

#30804

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Albert E. Blumberg was an American philosopher and political activist. He was an official of the Communist Party for several years before joining the Democratic Party as a district leader. Early life Albert was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a middle-class Litvak family. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and then furthered his education by acquiring a master's degree from Yale, studying at the Sorbonne, and receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna. While studying in Vienna he became attracted to the Vienna circle of Logical Positivists, founded by the German philosopher M...

#1424

Mark Bauerlein

#7105

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Mark Weightman Bauerlein is an English professor emeritus at Emory University and a senior editor of First Things. He also serves as a visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college in Savannah.

#1425

Art Spiegelman

#1127

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman , professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker. He is married to designer and editor Françoise Mouly, and is the father of writer Nadja Spiegelman. In September 2022, the National Book Foundation announced that he would receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

#1426

William Herbert Dray

#26664

Overall Influence

1921 - 2009 (88 years)

William Herbert Dray was a Canadian philosopher of history. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Ottawa. He is known for his version of anti-positivist Verstehen in history, in Laws and Explanation in History, and his work on R. G. Collingwood.

#1427

Godehard Link

#37151

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Godehard Link is a professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of Munich. External links Godehard Link at Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

#1428

Raimo Tuomela

#13405

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Raimo Heikki Tuomela Career Tuomela received his first degree of doctor of philosophy in 1968 from the University of Helsinki and the second one in 1969 from Stanford University. Tuomela was full professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki in 1971–2008.

#1429

Emerich Coreth

#29013

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Emerich Coreth was an Austrian Philosopher, Jesuit and Catholic Priest. He is well known for his works on metaphysics and philosophical anthropology. A close associate of Karl Rahner, Coreth is a renowned neo-Thomist of 20th century. He was the Rector of the University of Innsbruck and the Provincial of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus.

#1430

Richard Aquila

#38512

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Richard Aquila is an American philosopher, currently the co-editor of Kantian Review and formerly a Distinguished Humanities Professor at University of Tennessee.

#1431

Stephen Holgate

#32601

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Sir Stephen Townley Holgate, is a British physician who specializes in immunopharmacology, respiratory medicine and allergies, and asthma and air pollution, based at the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

#1432

Jean-Toussaint Desanti

#16663

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Jean-Toussaint Desanti was a French educator and philosopher known for his work on both the philosophy of mathematics and phenomenology. Biography The son of Jean-François Desanti and Marie-Paule Colonna, he was born in Ajaccio and studied the philosophy of mathematics with Jean Cavaillès. During World War II, he was a member of the French Resistance, associating with Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux. He joined the French Communist Party in 1943 with his wife Dominique, remaining a member until 1956.

#1433

Eugene Borowitz

#20316

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Eugene B. Borowitz was an American leader and philosopher in Reform Judaism, known largely for his work on Jewish theology and Jewish ethics. He also edited a Jewish journal, Sh'ma, and taught at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

#1434

Mark Alan Walker

Mark Alan Walker

#30311

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Mark Alan Walker is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at New Mexico State University, where he occupies the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies. Prior to his professorship at NMSU Prof. Walker taught at McMaster University in the department of philosophy and the Arts & Science Programme. He is the author of Happy-People Pills for All and Free Money for All . Walker founded and was president of the former nonprofit organization Permanent End International , which had been devoted to ending hunger, illiteracy and environmental degradation through the dissemination of modular aquaponics systems for farming.

#1435

Kelly Oliver

#16034

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Kelly Oliver is an American philosopher specializing in feminism, political philosophy and ethics. She is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also a founder of the feminist philosophy journal philoSOPHIA.

#1436

James H. Moor

#13409

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

James H. Moor is the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He earned his Ph.D. in 1972 from Indiana University. Moor's 1985 paper entitled "What is Computer Ethics?" established him as one of the pioneering theoreticians in the field of computer ethics. He has also written extensively on the Turing Test. His research includes study in philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and logic.

#1437

Curtis L. Carter

#27143

Overall Influence

Curtis L. Carter is a professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, focusing on aesthetics. He received a PhD from the University of Boston. His greatest accomplishment at Marquette was the creation of the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art. Carter was the founding director from 1984-2007. Haggerty Museum attempts to build a greater appreciation for the arts in the Milwaukee and Marquette Community. He also teaches several classes on the philosophy of art.

#1438

Catherine Elgin

Catherine Elgin

#31881

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Catherine Z. Elgin is a philosopher working in epistemology and the philosophies of art and science. She is currently a professor of philosophy of education at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

#1439

James Earl Baumgartner

James Earl Baumgartner

#21768

Overall Influence

1943 - 2011 (68 years)

James Earl Baumgartner was an American mathematician who worked in set theory, mathematical logic and foundations, and topology. Baumgartner was born in Wichita, Kansas, began his undergraduate study at the California Institute of Technology in 1960, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his PhD in 1970 from for a dissertation titled Results and Independence Proofs in Combinatorial Set Theory. His advisor was Robert Vaught. He became a professor at Dartmouth College in 1969, and spent his entire career there.

#1440

Lydia Goehr

#33576

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, at Columbia University. Her research specialties include the philosophy of music, aesthetics, critical theory, the philosophy of history, and 19th- and 20th-century philosophy.

#1441

Donald A. Crosby

Donald A. Crosby

#25634

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Donald Allen Crosby is an American theologian who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Colorado State University, since January 2000. Crosby's interests focus on metaphysics, American pragmatism, philosophy of nature, existentialism, and philosophy of religion. He is a member of the Highlands Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought and has been a leader in the discussions on Religious Naturalism.

#1442

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh

#11009

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh is an Indian-American mathematician, logician, and philosopher who has worked in many areas in traditional logic, including recursion theory and proof theory. He is a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College at the City University of New York .

#1443

Naomi Zack

#22693

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Naomi Zack is a professor of philosophy at Lehman College, City University of New York , having formerly been a professor at the University of Albany and the University of Oregon. She has written thirteen books and three textbooks, and she has edited or co-edited five anthologies, in addition to publishing a large number of papers and book chapters, particularly in areas having to deal with race, feminism, and natural disasters. Zack has taken on a number of professional roles related to the representation of women and other under-represented groups in philosophy. Zack is also a member of the ...

#1444

Maria Baghramian

Maria Baghramian

#29557

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Maria Baghramian is an Irish philosopher who is the Professor of American Philosophy in the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin . She was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010 and a member of the RIA Council from 2015 to 2018. Baghramian has published ten authored and edited books as well as articles and book chapters on topics in epistemology and twentieth century American Philosophy. She was the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies from 2003 to 2013.

#1445

U. G. Krishnamurti

U. G. Krishnamurti

#14146

Overall Influence

1918 - 2007 (89 years)

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti was a philosopher who questioned the state of spiritual enlightenment. Having pursued a religious path in his youth and eventually rejecting it, U.G. claimed to have experienced a devastating biological transformation on his 49th birthday, an event he refers to as "the calamity". He emphasized that this transformation back to "the natural state" is a rare, acausal, biological occurrence with no religious context. Because of this, he discouraged people from pursuing the "natural state" as a spiritual goal.

#1446

Joseph Gabel

#20295

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

Joseph Gabel was a French Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher. His work was always strongly influenced by Marxism; he was against Stalinism and critical of the work of Louis Althusser. He left Hungary because of a Numerus Clausus for Jewish citizens and first studied Psychopathology with Eugène Minkowski, then he turned to Sociology . He taught at the Mohammed-V University of Rabat from 1965 to 1971, and at Amiens University from 1971 to 1980.

#1447

Renaud Barbaras

#24628

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Renaud Barbaras is a French contemporary philosopher. An École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud alumnus, he is Chair of Contemporary Philosophy in the University of Paris 1, Sorbonne. Work A phenomenologist, Barbaras' works have primarily focused on the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. More recently, his readings of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka have influenced him into conceiving a phenomenology of life and accordingly, a cosmology in which man's place is to be thought anew.

#1448

Alvan Feinstein

#13326

Overall Influence

1925 - 2001 (76 years)

Alvan R. Feinstein was an American clinician, researcher and an epidemiologist who made significant impact on clinical investigation, especially on the field of clinical epidemiology that he helped define. He is regarded as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology. He died at the age of 75 in Toronto on 25 October 2001 and is survived by his wife and two children.

#1449

Anne Sheppard

#27612

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Anne Sheppard is professor of ancient philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. She studied "Greats", , at St Anne's College, Oxford before completing her DPhil at Oxford on the literary theory of the Neoplatonist philosopher, Proclus. Sheppard's research interests relate to the interaction between philosophy and literature.

#1450

Kypros Nicolaides

Kypros Nicolaides

#15197

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kyprianos "Kypros" Nicolaides is a Greek Cypriot physician of British citizenship, Professor of Fetal Medicine at King's College Hospital, London. He is one of the pioneers of fetal medicine and his discoveries have revolutionised the field. He was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2020 for 'improving the care of pregnant women worldwide with pioneering rigorous and creative approaches, and making seminal contributions to prenatal diagnosis and every major obstetrical disorder'. This is considered to be one of the highest honours in the fields of health and medicine and recog...

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