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,
#14051
W. S. Rockstro
1823 - 1895 (72 years)
William Smith Rockstro was an English musicologist, teacher, pianist and composer. He is best remembered for his books, including music textbooks, music history and biographies of famous musicians.
Go to Profile#14052
Shyam Prabhakaran
#165350
Overall Influence
Shyam K. Prabhakaran is an American vascular neurologist. He is the James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Chicago. Early life and education Prabhakaran grew up in New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate degree at Boston University and qualified for the Dean's list in 1996. Prabhakaran then earned his medical degree at New Jersey Medical School and completed his internship and residnecy at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He also earned his Master of Science degree at Columbia University.
Go to Profile#14053
Pearl Louise Weber
1878 - 1975 (97 years)
Pearl Louise Hunter Weber was an American philosopher and educator. Biography Weber was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1878. Her maiden name was Pearl Louise Hunter. She earned a philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1899, where she was the first woman to graduate with Phi Beta Kappa honors. Weber entered Cornell University in 1901 with a Sage Fellowship in philosophy and ethics. She married in 1902, and had four children, but eventually separated from her husband and returned to her career. Weber conducted graduate work under John Dewey and received a masters degree in philosophy fro...
Go to Profile#14054
David S. Guzick
#39998
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David S. Guzick an American reproductive endocrinologist and economist. He served as Senior Vice President of Health Affairs and President of UF Health at the University of Florida from 2009 to 2018, and is Emeritus Dean of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
Go to Profile#14055
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba
1453 - 1515 (62 years)
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba was a Spanish general and statesman who led successful military campaigns during the Conquest of Granada and the Italian Wars. His military victories and widespread popularity earned him the nickname "El Gran Capitán" . He also negotiated the final surrender of Granada and later served as Viceroy of Naples. Fernández de Córdoba was a masterful military strategist and tactician.
Go to Profile#14056
Immanuel Kant
#14057
Pieter De Somer
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
Pieter De Somer was a Belgian physician and biologist. He studied medicine from 1935 up to 1942 at the Catholic University of Leuven . He did research and later became a professor at the Department of medicine, where he specialised in microbiology and immunology. In 1968, he became the first rector of the Flemish Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and he remained rector until his death in 1985.
Go to Profile#14058
Ioannis Pallikaris
#18817
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ioannis G. Pallikaris is a Greek ophthalmologist who in 1989 performed the first LASIK procedure on a human eye. Pallikaris also developed Epi-LASIK. Professor Palikaris was the rector of the University of Crete between 2003 and 2011. He is also the founder and director of the Institute of Vision and Optics in the same university.
Go to Profile#14059
Alice Roberts
#40250
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Alice May Roberts is an English academic, TV presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK between January 2019 and May 2022. She is now a vice president of the organisation.
Go to Profile#14060
Vittore Bocchetta
#62238
Overall Influence
1918 - 2021 (103 years)
Vittore Bocchetta was a Sardinia-born Italian sculptor, painter, and academic. Bocchetta was a member of the anti-fascist Italian resistance movement during World War II. Biography Vittore Bocchetta was born in Sassari, Sardinia to a military engineer. After his childhood in Sardinia, he moved with his family first to Bologna and then to Verona. Even if belonging to a family of artists, his parents did not permit him to paint or draw because they were afraid that he might be distracted from his education.
Go to Profile#14061
W. Boyd Rayward
#41824
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
W. Boyd Rayward is an Australian librarian and scholar, best known as the biographer of Paul Otlet. Life Warden Boyd Rayward was born in Inverell, New South Wales, Australia in 1939 and studied Library Science at the University of New South Wales, graduating in 1964. He then transferred to the U.S. to continue his studies at the University of Illinois. He later earned a master's degree and doctorate in 1973 from the University of Chicago Graduate Library School. His dissertation was on Paul Otlet.
Go to Profile#14062
Takeshi Sakurai
#171133
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#14063
Jane M. Blocker
#123068
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jane M. Blocker is a Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory and the Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she is affiliated with the Moving Image Studies at the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. In a note on the back cover of Blocker's What the Body Cost Lucy R. Lippard writes of her: "Jane Blocker is as good a writer, scholar, and original thinker as feminists could hope for."
Go to Profile#14064
Drew Casper
#16738
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Joseph Andrew "Drew" Casper is a Professor of Critical Studies who previously worked at the School of Cinematic Arts as part of the University of Southern California and is considered by many to be an authority on American film from World War II to the present. While a Ph.D. student at USC, Dr. Casper's mentor, Irwin Blacker, died suddenly and the Cinema department offered Dr. Casper a position. Casper rose to become the third-highest-paid person at USC. In the fall of 1997, the estate of Alfred Hitchcock and USC made Dr. Casper the first Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Professor for the Study of American Film.
Go to Profile#14065
Jean-Pierre LaFouge
#57037
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jean-Pierre LaFouge is an Associate Professor of French at Marquette University. He is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles, dealing with topics of Christian spirituality, religious art, and Traditionalism.
Go to Profile#14066
Anna Kisselgoff
#16850
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Anna Kisselgoff is a dance critic and cultural news reporter for The New York Times. She began at the Times as a dance critic and cultural news reporter in 1968, and became its Chief Dance Critic in 1977, a role she held until 2005. She left the Times as an employee at the end of 2006, but still contributes to the paper.
Go to Profile#14067
Alberto Cavalcanti
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer. He was often credited under the single name "Cavalcanti". Early life Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child and, by the age of 15, was studying law at university, but was expelled following an argument with a professor. His father sent him to Geneva, Switzerland, on condition that he did not study law or politics. Cavalcanti chose to study architecture instead. At 18, he moved to Paris to work for an architect, later switching to working in interior design.
Go to Profile#14068
Erik Gustaf Geijer
1783 - 1847 (64 years)
Erik Gustaf Geijer was a Swedish writer, historian, poet, romantic critic of political economy, philosopher, and composer. His writings served to promote Swedish National Romanticism. He was an influential advocate of conservatism, but switched to liberalism later in life.
Go to Profile#14069
Emeric Pressburger
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Emeric Pressburger was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a collaboration partnership known as the Archers, and produced a series of films, including 49th Parallel , The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp , A Matter of Life and Death , Black Narcissus , The Red Shoes , and The Tales of Hoffmann .
Go to Profile#14070
Julie Ledgerwood
#50599
Overall Influence
Julie E. Ledgerwood is an American allergist and immunologist, who is the chief medical officer and serves as chief of the Clinical Trials Program at the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.
Go to Profile#14071
Heinrich Campendonk
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Heinrich Mathias Ernst Campendonk was a painter and graphic designer born in Germany who became a naturalized Dutch citizen. Life Campendonk was born in Krefeld, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire. He was the son of a textile merchant, and served a textile apprenticeship until 1905. From 1905 to 1909, he received artistic education from Johan Thorn Prikker at the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule, a progressive school for arts and crafts. He became friends with , August Macke, Wilhelm Wieger, Franz Marc and Paul Klee during this time.
Go to Profile#14072
Ute Roessner
#150619
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Professor Ute Roessner is a biochemist who specialises in plant metabolomics. Until 2022, she has been professor and head of the School of Biosciences at the University of Melbourne. In 2022, she joined The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Go to Profile#14073
William Kennedy Smith
#16586
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
William Kennedy Smith is an American physician and a member of the Kennedy family who founded an organization focused on land mines and the rehabilitation of landmine victims. He is known for being charged with rape in a nationally publicized 1991 trial that ended with his acquittal.
Go to Profile#14074
Ronald E. Day
#97665
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ronald E. Day is a librarian and a professor of Information and Library Science at Indiana University in Bloomington where he specializes in research on the culture and history of "information, documentation, knowledge, and communication" in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ronald Day is a significant scholar in the field of library and information science having contributed the first major work on the 20th century French librarian and information scientist Suzanne Briet, known as "Madame Documentation," and publishing more than forty works on the intersection of critical theory and library science.
Go to Profile#14075
Alexander Bolonkin
#34682
Overall Influence
1933 - 2020 (87 years)
Alexander Alexandrovich Bolonkin was a Russian-American scientist and academic who worked in the Soviet aviation, space and rocket industries and lectured in Moscow universities, before being arrested in 1972 by the KGB as a dissident. He served terms of imprisonment and exile for 15 years until 1987, when he emigrated to the US as a political refugee.
Go to Profile#14076
Charles Verlat
1824 - 1890 (66 years)
Charles Verlat or Karel Verlat was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver , art educator and director of the Antwerp Academy. He painted many subjects and was particularly known as an animalier and portrait painter. He also created Orientalist works, genre scenes, including a number of singeries, religious compositions and still lifes.
Go to Profile#14077
Hunter Wessells
#118056
Overall Influence
Hunter Buchanan Wessells is an American urologist. Hunter Buchanan Wessells was born to Henry W. Wessells III and his wife Nancy Hunter Wessells. The family was related to Henry W. Wessells, and lived in Paoli, Pennsylvania. Hunter Buchanan Wessells earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Georgetown University, and at the time of his marriage to Bokgi Choi in 1995, was an assistant professor of urology at the University of Arizona Health Science Center, where Choi also taught.
Go to Profile#14078
Hector Boece
1465 - 1536 (71 years)
Hector Boece , known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and the first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen.
Go to Profile#14079
Arturo Ripstein
#60967
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Arturo Ripstein y Rosen is a Mexican film director and screenwriter. Considered the "Godfather of independent Mexican cinema", Ripstein's work is generally characterized by "somber, slow-paced, macabre melodramas tackling existential loneliness", often with a grotesque-like edge.
Go to Profile#14080
Ibrahim Al-Buleihi
#54096
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Ibrahim Al-Buleihi is a Saudi liberal writer and philosopher, who is currently a member of the Saudi Shura Council. Biography Albleahy has held a range of positions in government and business throughout his life. Aside from his position on the Shura Council, he is involved in a variety of organizations in Saudi civil society. While he is a devout Muslim, he is highly critical of the way Islam is publicly practised and the degree to which modern Muslim societies are governed by it.
Go to Profile#14081
Francis Xavier Dercum
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
Francis Xavier Dercum was an American physician who first described the disease Adiposis dolorosa . He was a noted neurologist and specialised in treating nervous and mental disorders. He treated President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Ima Hogg for three years, beginning in 1918.
Go to Profile#14082
Derek Bell
#69421
Overall Influence
Derek Bell was Professor of Acute Medicine at Imperial College London and continues to be an emeritus Professor. He has been a Consultant Physician at Central Middles Hospital, The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and most recently at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Appointed as the joint chair of two NHS Trusts in 2021. His initial leadership saw him and others receive parliamentary criticism. Professor Bell was the director of the National Institute for Health Research CLAHRC for Northwest London. He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, elected in November 2013 he took office on 1 March 2014 succeeding Neil Dewhurst.
Go to Profile#14083
Tony Robert-Fleury
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Tony Robert-Fleury was a French painter, known primarily for historical scenes. He was also a prominent art teacher, with many famous artists among his students. Biography He was born just outside Paris, and studied under his father Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury and under Paul Delaroche and Léon Cogniet at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Go to Profile#14084
George Sagnani
1667 - 1732 (65 years)
George Sagnani was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialized mainly in ethics and morals. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Sagnani. He spent his entire adult life in Valletta at the Collegium Melitense, the old University of Malta. Since he was a Jesuit priest, and the college was attached to a Jesuit convent, Sagnani lived and lectured there all his life, and even died there. He had joined the Jesuit congregation in 1686 at nineteen years of age. At the Collegium, Sagnani taught philosophy and, during the latter part of his academic career, moral theology.
Go to Profile#14085
Robert Frenay
#91204
Overall Influence
1946 - 2007 (61 years)
Robert Frenay was an American author and lecturer who described and advocated a green or ecologically conscious approach to technological development and development of human civilization. Frenay lived in the state of New York dividing his time between New York City and Bridgeport in upstate New York.
Go to Profile#14086
Koichi Hirata
#171289
Overall Influence
#14087
Peter Zimmermann
#67929
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Peter Zimmermann is a German painter, sculptor, object artist and university professor. Life and education Peter Zimmermann studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart from 1978 to 1983. Since then he has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums both within Germany and abroad. He works as a painter, sculptor and object artist. He was a professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne between 2002 and 2007.
Go to Profile#14088
Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker
1828 - 1890 (62 years)
Otto Heinrich Enoch Becker was a German ophthalmologist born near Ratzeburg. Education and career In 1859 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied under Carl Ferdinand von Arlt . Beginning in 1867 he was a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#14089
Martha Lucía Ospina Martínez
#39080
Overall Influence
Martha Lucía Ospina Martínez is a Colombian epidemiologist and doctor who specializes in public health management who was the director of the National Institute of Health until Her last day on October 31, 2022 when she went to work for the Omic Sconces Laboratory. a native of Cali, she had previously served as the Ministry of Health’s National Director of Epidemiology and Demography and director of the High Cost Diseases Account.
Go to Profile#14090
Girolamo Manfredi
1430 - 1493 (63 years)
Girolamo Manfredi or Hieronimus de Manfredis was an Italian philosopher, physician and astronomer. He lived and worked in Bologna, becoming a notable citizen. Life Born in Bologna in a family of lawyers, he led his studies in his hometown, in Ferrara where he graduated in 1455, and in Parma where he completed his Ph.D. He taught Logic and other disciplines in Bologna for the rest of his life.
Go to Profile#14091
Bharat Gupt
#104171
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Bharat Gupt is an Indian classicist, theatre theorist, sitar and surbahar player, musicologist, and newspaper columnist. He is also a retired Professor in English, who taught at the College of Vocational Studies of the University of Delhi. In February 2023 he received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award by the President of India for his contribution to musicology.
Go to Profile#14092
Werner Janssen
#107669
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Werner Heinrich Janssen is a Dutch/German philosopher, Germanist, author and poet under the pseudonym Heinz Hof. Career Werner Janssen grew up both in Germany and in the Netherlands . He studied at the Universities of Nijmegen, Heidelberg, Amsterdam and Aachen German language and literature, philosophy, sociology, pedagogy, ethnology, political science, psychology and dialect knowledge.
Go to Profile#14093
Mary Ellen O'Connell
#56747
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mary Ellen O'Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and a research professor of international dispute resolution at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace in Studies. Since joining the Notre Dame Law School in 2005, she has taught the courses International Law, International Law and the Use of Force, International Dispute Resolution, International Environmental Law, International Art Law, and Contracts. Prior to joining Notre Dame's faculty, she taught at Ohio State University , as the William B. Saxbe Designated Profes...
Go to Profile#14094
André de Gouveia
1497 - 1548 (51 years)
André de Gouveia was a Portuguese humanist and pedagogue during the Renaissance. Biography André de Gouveia became one of the first Portuguese to study in the Collège Sainte-Barbe, in Paris, which was then directed by his uncle Diogo de Gouveia. After attending six years in Maîtrise des Arts he earned a degree as doctor in theology, and simultaneously, began teaching at the college.
Go to Profile#14095
Pedram Hamrah
#75191
Overall Influence
Pedram Hamrah is a German-American ophthalmologist and immunologist. He obtained his M.D. from the University of Cologne, Germany. Career In 2002, together with Reza Dana and Ying Liu, he was the first to discover the presence of and characterize resident antigen-presenting cells in the central cornea. Hamrah is currently Professor and Vice Chair of Research and Academic Programs, co-director of Cornea Service, Director of the Center for Translational Ocular Immunology, Tufts Medical Center, Departments of Ophthalmology, Tufts University. He was a faculty member in the laboratory of Ulrich vo...
Go to Profile#14096
Eli Ives
1779 - 1861 (82 years)
Eli Ives was an American physician. He was son of Dr Levi and Lydia Ives, and was born in New Haven, Connecticut, February 7, 1779. He graduated from Yale University in 1799. The two years after his graduation he spent as Rector of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, at the same time studying medicine partly with his father and partly with Dr. Aeneas Munson. At a subsequent period he attended in Philadelphia the lectures of Drs Benjamin Rush and Caspar Wistar. In 1801 he began to practice his profession in New Haven, and was continuously engaged in a widely extended field, during a per...
Go to Profile#14097
Wolfgang Rathert
#123509
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Wolfgang Rathert is a German musicologist born in Minden. Life and career Born in Minden, Rathert passed the C-examination as church musician during his school time and acquired the Abitur at the Herder-Gymnasium Minden. After his community service he studied historical musicology, philosophy and Modern history at the Free University of Berlin from 1980 to 1987. In 1987 he was awarded a PhD in musicology by Rudolf Stephan with a thesis on the US-American composer Charles Ives.
Go to Profile#14098
César Chesneau Dumarsais
1676 - 1756 (80 years)
César Chesneau, sieur Dumarsais or Du Marsais was a French philosophe, grammarian and contributor to the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. He was a prominent figure in what became known as the Enlightenment, and contributed to Diderot's Encyclopédie. After his death, Jacques-Philippe-Augustin Douchet and Nicolas Beauzée, who were both teachers at the École royale militaire, took over his work.
Go to Profile#14099
Marek Haltof
#116344
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Marek Haltof is a professor of film studies. specializing in the cultural histories of Polish and Australian film. He studied at the University of Silesia in Poland and at Flinders University of South Australia in Adelaide. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1995 from the University of Alberta with a Ph.D. dissertation When Cultures Collide: The Cinema of Peter Weir. He received his habilitation in 2001 for Autor i kino artystyczne. Przypadek Paula Coxa from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
Go to Profile#14100
Stephen Kresovich
#138101
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Stephen Kresovich is a plant geneticist and the Coker Endowed Chair of Genetics in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Clemson University and professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Since 2019 he has served as director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.
Go to Profile