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,
#14051
Edmund Lesser
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Edmund Lesser was a German dermatologist who was a native of Neisse. He studied medicine at the universities of Berlin, Bonn and Strasbourg, earning his medical doctorate in 1876. Later he became an assistant to Oskar Simon at the dermatological clinic in Breslau, and in 1882 received his habilitation at the University of Leipzig. In 1892 he was an associate professor at the University of Bonn, and several years later was appointed chief physician of the syphilitic department at the Berlin-Charité . The following year he became head of the dermatological and syphilitic dispensary at the Univ...
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Dionysius the Renegade
330 BC - 250 BC (80 years)
Dionysius the Renegade , also known as Dionysius of Heraclea, was a Stoic philosopher and pupil of Zeno of Citium who, late in life, abandoned Stoicism when he became afflicted by terrible pain. Life He was the son of Theophantus. In early life he was a disciple of Heraclides, Alexinus, and Menedemus, and afterwards of Zeno, who appears to have induced him to adopt Stoicism. At a later time he was afflicted with terrible eye pain, which caused him to abandon Stoic philosophy, and to join the Cyrenaics, whose doctrine, that hedonism and the absence of pain was the highest good, had more charms for him than the austere ethics of Stoicism.
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Nathanael Gottfried Leske
1751 - 1786 (35 years)
Nathanael Gottfried Leske was a German natural scientist and geologist. After his studies at Bergakademie of Freiberg in Saxony and the Franckeschen Stiftungen in Halle, Leske became a special professor of natural history at the University of Leipzig in 1775.
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Mungo William MacCallum
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
Sir Mungo William MacCallum KCMG was Chancellor of the University of Sydney from 1934 to 1936, and a noted literary critic. Early life Mungo William MacCallum was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Mungo MacCallum, merchant, and his wife Isabella, née Renton. He studied at the University of Glasgow and at Berlin and Leipzig. In Germany MacCallum concentrated on medieval literature, he published several articles in the Cornhill Magazine in 1879-80. In 1884 he published Studies in Low German and High German literature.
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Pan Pingge
1610 - 1677 (67 years)
Pan Pingge , was a notable Chinese philosopher during the late-Ming and early-Qing period. Biography Pan was born in Cixi City, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province in late Ming Dynasty in 1610. His courtesy name was Yongwei .
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Ellen Mitchell
1838 - 1920 (82 years)
Ellen M. Mitchell was an American philosopher, educator and education reformer. She was one of the first women to be appointed lecturer in a university, in addition to writing philosophy, literature and literary criticism.
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Lillias Hamilton
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Lillias Anna Hamilton was a British medical doctor and writer. She was born at Tomabil Station, New South Wales to Hugh Hamilton and his wife Margaret Clunes . After attending school in Ayr and then Cheltenham Ladies' College, she trained first as a nurse, in Liverpool, before going on to study medicine in Scotland, qualifying as a Doctor of Medicine in 1890.
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Claude de Bectoz
1490 - 1547 (57 years)
Claude de Bectoz was a French writer and philosopher of the Renaissance. Life Both her mother, Michelette de Salvaing, and father, Jacques de Bactoz, were from well-known families in the Dauphiné. Denys Fauchier taught her to write Latin and verse. Claude would later write prose and verse in both French and Italian.
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Francesco de Vieri
1524 - 1591 (67 years)
Francesco de' Vieri, also known as Verino the Second , was an Italian philosopher. He was the nephew of "Verino the First" Francesco de' Vieri. Like his homonymous ancestor, he was professor of logic and philosophy at the University of Pisa, and actively involved in the Accademia Fiorentina.
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Hugo Knorr
1834 - 1904 (70 years)
Hugo Knorr was a Prussian and German painter and teacher of art, specializing in landscape and marine art. Life Knorr was born at Königsberg in East Prussia. In 1852, when he was almost eighteen, he entered the Königsberg Academy of Art, where he chiefly studied landscape. Later, his master was the painter August Behrendsen.
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Christian Eduard Boettcher
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
Christian Eduard Boettcher, or Böttcher , was a German painter whose work comprised portraiture and genre painting. Career Boettcher first attended the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart under Johann Heinrich von Dannecker from 1833 to 1838 and trained as a lithographer, working as such for the Ebner'sche Verlagshaus , in Stuttgart and for the Arnz & Comp. lithographic institute in Düsseldorf.
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Hans Albrecht
1902 - 1961 (59 years)
Joachim Hans Albrecht was a German musicologist and university lecturer. He was professor at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Life Born in Magdeburg, Albrecht was son of Theodor Albrecht and Klara Emmy Brandt in Magdeburg, Province of Saxony. He spent his childhood and youth in Essen, where he already prepared himself for the music teacher examination during his period at the Essener Konservatorium and completed this in 1921 in the main subject piano. In 1921 he began studying musicology. After one semester at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität he moved to the Humboldt-Unive...
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Dino del Garbo
1280 - 1327 (47 years)
Dino di maestro Bono del Garbo da Firenze was an Italian medieval physician and philosopher. He was also known as Dino da Firenze, Aldobrandino and in Latin as Dinus Florentinus. He studied under Taddeo Alderotti in Bologna in 1295.
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Bob Russell
1914 - 1970 (56 years)
Bob Russell was an American songwriter born Sidney Keith Rosenthal in Passaic, New Jersey. Career Russell attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked as an advertising copywriter in New York; for a time, his roommate there was Sidney Sheldon, later a novelist. He turned to writing material for vaudeville acts, and then for film studios, ultimately writing complete scores for two movies: Jack and the Beanstalk and Reach for Glory. The latter film received the Locarno International Film Festival prize in 1962. A number of other movies featured compositions by Russell, incl...
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Carol Davila
1828 - 1884 (56 years)
Carol Davila was a prestigious Romanian physician of Italian ancestry. He is considered to be the father of Romanian medicine. Biography He started from humble beginnings, most probably as an abandoned child, and the surname Davila was bestowed on him by his adoptive family and guardian.
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Paul Leopold Friedrich
1864 - 1916 (52 years)
Paul Leopold Friedrich was a German surgeon and bacteriologist born in the town of Roda, Saxe-Altenburg. In 1888 he received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig, and as a young assistant worked under Robert Koch at the Reich Health Office in Berlin. From 1894 he worked as a privat-docent of surgery in Leipzig, where in 1896 he became an associate professor. Later he served as a professor at the Universities of Greifswald , Marburg and Königsberg . At Greifswald he succeeded August Bier as director of the Surgical University Hospital. Two of Friedrich's well-known assistants were Fer...
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Liu Bowen
1311 - 1375 (64 years)
Liu Ji , courtesy name Bowen, better known as Liu Bowen, was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, and politician who lived in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. He was born in Qingtian County . He served as a key advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty, in the latter's struggle to overthrow the Yuan dynasty and unify China proper under his rule. Liu is also known for his prophecies and has been described as the "Divine Chinese Nostradamus". He and Jiao Yu co-edited the military treatise known as the Huolongjing .
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Max Schede
1844 - 1902 (58 years)
Max Schede was a German surgeon born in Arnsberg. Schede studied medicine at the Universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Zurich, obtaining his medical doctorate in 1866. After serving as a doctor in the Austro-Prussian War, he became an assistant to Richard von Volkmann at Halle. During the Franco-Prussian War, he was in charge of a Feldlazaretts. In 1875, he appointed head of the surgical department at Friedrichshain Hospital in Berlin, and from onward 1880, he practiced surgery at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg.
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Amintore Galli
1845 - 1919 (74 years)
Amyntor Flaminio Claudio Galli was an Italian composer, musicologist, and journalist. Life He was born in Perticara, Italy on 12 October 1845, but began his musical studies with his uncle Pio Galli in Rimini until 1862 when he enrolled in the Milan Conservatory to be a pupil of Alberto Mazzucato. He would there compose the aria Cesare al Rubicone to be performed in the Teatro Vittorio Emanuel II in Rimini in 1864 and 1865 and after serving in the Italian Army under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Battle of Bezzecca, graduated with the canata Espiazione.
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Fritz Volbach
1861 - 1940 (79 years)
Fritz Volbach was a German conductor, composer and musicologist. Life Volbach was born in 1861 in Wipperfürth. After he was briefly a pupil of the with Ferdinand Hiller, he resumed his school education in Bruchsal, where he also passed his Abitur. He studied philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. In 1886 he became a pupil of the Royal Institute for Church Music, before continuing his studies with Eduard Grell at the Academy of Arts, Berlin in the composition department; he was probably his last pupil. During his studies in ...
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Daisy Maud Bellis
1887 - 1971 (84 years)
Daisy Maud Bellis was an American painter. Bellis was a native of Waltham, Massachusetts; her birthplace has also been given as Branford, Connecticut, where she later lived. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Vermont, and the Breckenridge School of Painting, and had further lessons at institutions in Montreal and Paris.
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Murdoch Cameron
1847 - 1930 (83 years)
Murdoch Cameron was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow from 1894 to 1926. He was a pioneer of the Caesarean section under modern antiseptic conditions, becoming world famous after the success of his first such operation in 1888, at what was then the Glasgow Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary, now the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital, an institution he was deeply involved with. He was honorary President of the first international Congress on Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in 1892. His son Samuel James Cameron followed in his footsteps, becoming Reguis Profe...
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Henry Pelham
1749 - 1806 (57 years)
Henry Pelham was an American painter, engraver, and cartographer active during the late 18th century. Pelham's many illuminating letters, especially to his half-brother John Singleton Copley, provide an important contemporary perspective of the events of the American Revolution.
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Carl Ferdinand Becker
1804 - 1877 (73 years)
Karl Ferdinand Becker , was a German writer on music, composer and an organist. Biography Becker was the son of physician and writer Gottfried Wilhelm Becker. He attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig in his early years, where his teachers Johann Gottfried Schicht and Friedrich Schneider trained him in music. He made his debut as a pianist at 14. From 1820 to 1833, he was a violinist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1825, he became an organist in the Peterskirche and then in 1837 at the St. Nicholas Church. In 1846, he became an instructor of organ and music history at the University of Music and Theatre at Leipzig.
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Harrison Allen
1841 - 1897 (56 years)
Harrison Allen was an American physician and anatomist, born in Philadelphia. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1861, and in 1862 became a surgeon in the United States Army and served until the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.
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Earl Carroll
1893 - 1948 (55 years)
Earl Carroll was an American theatrical producer, director, writer, songwriter and composer. Early life Carroll was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1893. He lived as an infant in the Nunnery Hill section of the North Side. Carroll later said he left the area "because there were too many tin cans and goats up there then."
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Belsazar Hacquet
1739 - 1815 (76 years)
Belsazar de la Motte Hacquet was a Carniolan physician of French descent in the Enlightenment Era. He was a war surgeon, a surgeon in the mining town of Idrija, and a professor of anatomy and surgery in Laibach . He researched the geology and botany of Carniola, Istria, and nearby places, and was the first explorer of the Julian Alps. He also did ethnographical work among the South Slavic peoples, particularly among the Slovene-speaking population. He self-identified primarily as a chemist and introduced the methods of chemical analysis to Carniola.
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Johann Jakob Müller
1650 - 1716 (66 years)
Johann Jakob Müller was a German moral philosopher. Life Johann Jakob Müller was born at Jena in 1650. His father, another Johann Müller , was the deputy head of the city school. Johann Jakob Müller attended the school, then under the rectorship of Johann Martin Ringler. Recognising an exceptional talent, his parents also arranged for him to receive private tutoring at home from Anton Mosnern, a churchman from nearby Saalfeld. Aged only 15 Müller started attending lectures at the university. At the Philosophy faculty his teachers included Johann Frischmuth, Erhard Weigel, , , , Joha...
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Clifford Allbutt
1836 - 1925 (89 years)
Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt was an English physician best known for his role as president of the British Medical Association 1920, for inventing the clinical thermometer, and for supporting Sir William Osler in founding the History of Medicine Society.
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John Westbrook
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
John Aubrey Westbrook was an English actor. Born in Teignmouth, Devon, John Westbrook worked mainly in theatre and in radio. He also made occasional film and television appearances. His most famous role was as Christopher Gough in Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia. Noted for his deep, mellifluous voice, he also recorded radio plays and audiobooks, and provided the role of Treebeard in the 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Westbrook also recorded the spoken roles in the choral/orchestral works An Oxford Elegy by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Morning Heroes by Arthur Bliss, as wel...
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Francis Brodie Imlach
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Francis Brodie Imlach FRCSEd was a Scottish pioneer of modern dentistry, and the first person to use chloroform on a dental patient. He helped to raise the profile of dentistry from a back street trade to full professional status.
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Petrus Johann du Toit
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Petrus Johann du Toit was a South African veterinary scientist and the successor of Arnold Theiler as Director of Veterinary Services at Onderstepoort between 1927 and 1948. He was the son of Daniel Francois du Toit , one of the founders of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, and owner of the first Afrikaans newspaper, Die Patriot. His mother was Margaretha Magdalene van Nierop.
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Mohammad Gharib
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Mohammad Gharib was an Iranian physician, clinician, distinguished university professor and a pioneer of pediatrics in Iran. Gharib is known as the father of pediatrics in Iran. He was a graduate of Paris University Medical School.
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Hans-Jørgen Holman
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Hans-Jörgen Holman was a Norwegian-American pianist/ harpsichordist and professor of music at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Holman specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music, and his 1961 Indiana University doctoral dissertation The Responsoria Prolixa of the Codex Worcester F 160 is considered one of the principal authoritative works on the vocal music of the medieval church. One of the first musicologists to pioneer computer aided big-data studies, Holman built a database of 48.000 melodic phrases from European and Scandinavian sources in order to trace melodic migration and development.
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Jacob Micyllus
1503 - 1558 (55 years)
Jacob Micyllus, was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at the University of Heidelberg, during times of great cultural stress in Germany.
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J. Laurie Wallace
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
John Laurie Wallace was an Irish-born American painter. Wallace was born in Garvagh, Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when he was age 4. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He posed for several of Eakins's paintings, including The Crucifixion , Arcadia and The Swimming Hole , and for dozens of photographs. In 1881 he became Eakins's assistant.
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Nicholas Hill
1570 - 1610 (40 years)
Nicholas Hill was an English natural philosopher, considered a disciple of Giordano Bruno. He is known for his 1601 book Philosophia epicurea. Life He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford where he matriculated in 1587, graduated B.A. and became Fellow in 1590. He was removed from his fellowship in 1591.
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İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul
1855 - 1946 (91 years)
İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul was an Ottoman Empire and later Turkish writer and westernist thinker.
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Pietro Tabarrani
1702 - 1780 (78 years)
Pietro Tabarrani was an Italian physician and professor of Anatomy at the University of Siena. Biography He was born in Lombrici in the Republic of Lucca. He found patronage with Cardinal Salviati in Rome, where he studied anatomy. From there he moved to Bologna, where he became friends with the doctors Beccari and Galeazzi. He then moved to Padua to work under the renowned anatomist Morgagni. In 1759, he obtained a professorship in the University of Siena. He would die in Siena in 1779, and his pupil Paolo Mascagni would take his position. His Observatione Anatomiche was published in Lucca ...
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Ernst Gottfried Baldinger
1738 - 1804 (66 years)
Ernst Gottfried Baldinger , German physician, was born in Großvargula near Erfurt. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle and Jena, earning his MD in 1760 under the guidance of Ernst Anton Nicolai and in 1761 was entrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau.
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Yuan Tung-li
1895 - 1965 (70 years)
Yuan Tung-li was a Chinese library administrator and bibliographer. He headed the National Library of China and was later consultant in Chinese literature at the United States Library of Congress. Biography Yuan was born in Beijing in 1895 and graduated from the University of Peking in 1916. He then came to the United States and earned a BA from Columbia College in 1922. He also earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree from New York State Library School at Albany in 1923.
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Edgar Meyer
1853 - 1925 (72 years)
Edgar Meyer was an Austrian painter who built himself a castle and engaged in politics. Life Professor Edgar Meyer was born on 5 September 1853 in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. His parents were Martin Meyer , and Theresia Megucher . He studied at the Akademie der Bildenkünste in Munich, and from 1874 to 1877 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the direction of Eugen Dücker. He extended his studies by visiting Rome and Venice. Between 1880 and 1881, he was a member of an association of artists and academics called Malkasten in Düsseldorf. He lived in Weimar and was also Professor at Charlotte...
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Leopold Pfaundler
1839 - 1920 (81 years)
Leopold Pfaundler von Hadermur was an Austrian physicist and chemist born in Innsbruck. He was the father of pediatrician Meinhard von Pfaundler , and the father-in-law of pediatrician Theodor Escherich .
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Carl Reichenbach
1788 - 1869 (81 years)
Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach was a German chemist, geologist, metallurgist, naturalist, industrialist and philosopher, and a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his discoveries of several chemical products of economic importance, extracted from tar, such as eupione, waxy paraffin, pittacal and phenol . He also dedicated himself in his last years to research an unproved field of energy combining electricity, magnetism and heat, emanating from all living things, which he called the Odic force.
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Francis Mitchell Caird
1853 - Present (173 years)
Francis Mitchell Caird FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon who was an early advocate of Listerian antisepsis and then asepsis. He was a pioneer of gastrointestinal surgery. From 1908 to 1919 he was Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh and was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1912 to 1914.
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Manuel Valls
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Manuel Valls i Gorina was a Spanish composer, pianist, music critic, and music educator. Valls was born in Badalona. He was a first cousin of painter Xavier Valls, himself the father of former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. He studied at the University of Barcelona and the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu. At the Liceu he was mentored by Aita Donostia with whom he studied music theory, music composition, and orchestration. He became a successful composer writing symphonic works, chamber music, choral music, operas, art songs, and songs for solo piano. For many years he taught composition at the University of Barcelona and wrote music reviews for El País..
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Ivan Vyshenskyi
1550 - 1620 (70 years)
Ivan Vyshenskyi was a Ukrainian Orthodox monk and religious philosopher. He is considered to be an important polemicist of the time. Biography Not much is known about the life of Vyshenskyi. It is considered to be likely that he spent part of his youth in Lutsk and was connected with scholars from the Ostroh Academy. Within the years 1576–1580 he traveled to Mount Athos in Greece, which was the center of Orthodox monk culture. He stayed there until his death, with the exception of a short visit to Ukraine between 1604 and 1606 when he quarreled with members of the Lviv brotherhood.
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Robert Shaw
1927 - 1978 (51 years)
Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Beginning his career in theatre, Shaw joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre after the Second World War and appeared in productions of Macbeth, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, and other Shakespeare plays. With the Old Vic company , he continued primarily in Shakespearean roles. In 1959 he starred in a West End production of The Long and the Short and the Tall.
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Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr.
1880 - 1933 (53 years)
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr. was a United States Forest Service employee, forestry researcher, professor at Yale University and author of books and articles related to forestry and forest regulation.
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Petrus Ryff
1552 - 1629 (77 years)
Petrus Ryff was a Swiss mathematician, physician and chronicler from Basel. Life and work Petrus Ryff was born in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of Daniel Ryff , and Ursula Zimmermann, and the grandnephew of Basler chronicler Fridolin Ryff.
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