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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,

#14101

Torsten Haferlach

1900 - Present (126 years)

#14102

John Caffey

1895 - 1978 (83 years)

John Patrick Caffey was an American pediatrician and radiologist who is often referred to as one of the founders of pediatric radiology. He was the first to describe shaken baby syndrome, infantile cortical hyperostosis, and Kenny-Caffey syndrome.

#14103

Kurt Gödel

1906 - 1978 (72 years)

Kurt Friedrich Gödel was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege.

#14104

Daniel Berlyne

1924 - 1976 (52 years)

Daniel Ellis Berlyne was a British and Canadian psychologist. Berlyne worked at several universities both in Canada and the United States. His work was in the field of experimental and exploratory psychology. Specifically, his research focused on how objects and experiences are influenced by and have an influence on curiosity and arousal.

#14105

Tinsley R. Harrison

1900 - 1978 (78 years)

Tinsley Randolph Harrison was an American physician and editor of the first five editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine. Harrison specialized in cardiology and the pathophysiology of heart disease.

#14106

John Rock

1890 - 1984 (94 years)

#14107

Arthur David Ritchie

1891 - 1967 (76 years)

Arthur David Ritchie FRSE was a British chemical physiologist and philosopher. Life He was born Oxford on 22 June 1891 the son of Prof David George Ritchie. The family moved to St Andrews in 1894 when his father was given a new professorship there.

#14108

Ernest Nagel

1901 - 1985 (84 years)

Ernest Nagel was an American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement. His 1961 book The Structure of Science is considered a foundational work in the logic of scientific explanation.

#14109

Wallace O. Fenn

1893 - 1971 (78 years)

Wallace Osgood Fenn was a physiologist, chairman of the department of physiology at the University of Rochester from 1925 to 1959. He also headed the University's Space and Science center from 1964 to 1966. He was also the president of the American Physiological Society, the president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the president of the International Union of Physiological Science. His work on heat generated by muscles, oxygen use by the nervous system, and potassium equilibrium in muscle, as well as pressure breathing and nitrogen narcosis, was recognized internationally.

#14110

Robert Edward Gross

1905 - 1988 (83 years)

Robert Edward Gross was an American surgeon and a medical researcher. He performed early work in pediatric heart surgery at Boston Children's Hospital. Gross was president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#14111

Carl J. Wiggers

1883 - 1963 (80 years)

Carl J. Wiggers was a doctor and medical researcher famous for his heart and blood-pressure research. He developed the Wiggers diagram, which is commonly used in teaching of cardiovascular research.

#14112

Rudolf Carnap

1891 - 1970 (79 years)

Rudolf Carnap was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He is considered "one of the giants among twentieth-century philosophers."

#14113

Charles Best

1899 - 1978 (79 years)

Charles Herbert Best , was an American-Canadian medical scientist and one of the co-discoverers of insulin. Personal life Born in West Pembroke, Maine, on February 27, 1899, to Luella Fisher and Herbert Huestis Best, a Canadian-born physician from Nova Scotia. His father, Herbert Best, was a doctor in a small Maine town with a limited economy based mostly on sardine-packing. His mother, Lulu Newcomb, later Lulu Best, who sang soprano, accompanying herself on organ and piano, was in demand as a performer at funerals and weddings. Best grew up in Pembroke before going to Toronto, Ontario, to st...

#14114

Jean Piaget

1896 - 1980 (84 years)

Jean William Fritz Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology".

#14115

Michael Oakeshott

Michael Oakeshott

1901 - 1990 (89 years)

Michael Joseph Oakeshott FBA was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about the philosophies of history, religion, aesthetics, education, and law. Biography Early life and education Oakeshott was the son of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. Though there is no evidence that he knew her, he was related by marriage to the women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, and to the economist and social reformer Gilbert Slater.

#14116

Cornelis de Langen

1887 - 1967 (80 years)

Cornelis Douwe de Langen was a Dutch physician. He spent a substantial part of his career in Java, Indonesia where he did extensive work on tropical medicine and observed an association between dietary cholesterol intake and incidence of gallstones, arteriosclerosis and other "Western diseases".

#14117

Charles W. Morris

1903 - 1979 (76 years)

Charles William Morris was an American philosopher and semiotician. Early life and education A son of Charles William and Laura Morris, Charles William Morris was born on May 23, 1901, in Denver, Colorado.

#14118

Walter Kaufmann

Walter Kaufmann

1921 - 1980 (59 years)

Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University.

#14119

Maurice Mandelbaum

1908 - 1987 (79 years)

Maurice Mandelbaum was an American philosopher and phenomenologist . He was professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University with stints at Dartmouth College and Swarthmore College. He held two degrees from Dartmouth and a PhD from Yale University. He was known for his work in phenomenology, epistemology, philosophy of perception , and the history of ideas.

#14120

Edwin Arthur Burtt

1892 - 1989 (97 years)

Edwin Arthur Burtt , usually cited as E. A. Burtt, was an American philosopher who wrote extensively on the philosophy of religion. His doctoral thesis published as a book under the title The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science has had a significant influence upon the history of science that is not generally recognized, according to H. Floris Cohen.

#14121

Andreas Speiser

Andreas Speiser

1885 - 1970 (85 years)

Andreas Speiser was a Swiss mathematician and philosopher of science. Life and work Speiser studied in Göttingen, starting in 1904, notably with David Hilbert, Felix Klein, Hermann Minkowski. In 1917 he became full-time professor at the University of Zurich but later relocated in Basel. During 1924/25 he was president of the Swiss Mathematical Association.

#14122

Bernard Lonergan

Bernard Lonergan

1904 - 1984 (80 years)

Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding and Method in Theology , as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. The projected 25-volume Collected Works with the University of Toronto Press is now complete. Lonergan held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome; Regis College, T...

#14123

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.

#14124

G. E. Moore

1873 - 1958 (85 years)

George Edward Moore was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the initiators of analytic philosophy. He and Russell began deemphasizing the idealism which was then prevalent among British philosophers and became known for advocating common-sense concepts and contributing to ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. He was said to have an "exceptional personality and moral character". Ray Monk later dubbed him "the most revered philosopher of his era".

#14125

Marvin Farber

1901 - 1980 (79 years)

Marvin Farber was an American philosopher and educator. Early life and education He was born in Buffalo, New York to Jewish parents Simon and Matilda Farber. He was the second oldest of their 14 children. One of his brothers was pathologist and cancer researcher Sidney Farber.

#14126

Thomas Ferguson

1900 - 1977 (77 years)

Thomas Ferguson FRSE CBE was a Scottish surgeon and Professor of Public Health from 1944 to 1964 at the University of Glasgow. Much of his early writing and philosophy paved the way for the National Health Service in Britain after the Second World War.

#14127

R. B. Braithwaite

R. B. Braithwaite

1900 - 1990 (90 years)

Richard Bevan Braithwaite was an English philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Life Braithwaite was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, son of the historian of early Quaker history, William Charles Braithwaite. He was educated at Sidcot School, Somerset , and Bootham School, York, 1914–18. As a conscientious objector in the First World War, he served in the Friends' Ambulance Unit.

#14128

George Hourani

1913 - 1984 (71 years)

George Fadlo Hourani was a British philosopher, historian, and classicist. He is best known for his work in Islamic philosophy, which focused on classical Islamic rationalism and ethics. Biography George Hourani was born into a prosperous British family of Lebanese Christian extraction in Didsbury, Manchester. He was the fourth of six children, having three older sisters and two younger brothers. His brothers were Albert Hourani and Cecil Hourani.

#14129

John Elof Boodin

1869 - 1950 (81 years)

John Elof Boodin was a Swedish-born American philosopher and educator. He was the author of numerous books proposing a systematic interpretation of nature. Boodin's work preserved the tradition of philosophical idealism within the framework of contemporary science. Boodin also focused on the social nature of human behavior believing an understanding required an appreciation of individual participation in social life and interpersonal relationship.

#14130

Felix Fleischner

1893 - 1969 (76 years)

Felix G. Fleischner was an Austrian-American radiologist from Boston. The Fleischner Society for thoracic imaging and diagnosis is named after him. Biography Felix Fleischner was born in Vienna. He became an expert in the field of radiology, and most of his work centered on the chest x-ray. He served as professor and head of radiology of the Second Medical Clinic of the University of Vienna.

#14131

Boyd Henry Bode

1873 - 1953 (80 years)

Boyd Henry Bode was an American academic and philosopher, notable for his work on philosophy of education. Bode was born in Ridott, Illinois. He grew up in rural areas of Iowa and South Dakota and attended Pennsylvania College in Iowa and later the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1897, and Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1900.

#14132

David Weyhe Smith

1926 - 1981 (55 years)

David Weyhe Smith was an American pediatrician and dysmorphologist, best known for his pioneering book Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation and for describing fetal alcohol syndrome. Early life and education David Weyhe Smith was born in Oakland, California. He gained his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and undertook postdoctoral studies during 1950-51 and 1953-56 in the Department of Pediatrics. He worked with Lawson Wilkins in the field of pediatric endocrinology.

#14133

Raphael Demos

1892 - 1968 (76 years)

Raphael Demos was a Greek-American philosopher. He was Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, emeritus, at Harvard University and an authority on the work of the Greek philosopher Plato. At Harvard, he taught Martin Luther King Jr.

#14134

Broda Otto Barnes

Broda Otto Barnes

1906 - 1988 (82 years)

Broda Otto Barnes was an American physician and professor of medicine who studied endocrine dysfunction, particularly hypothyroidism. In the 1970s, Barnes published several books arguing that hypothyroidism was underdiagnosed in the U.S. and was responsible for a wide range of health problems. Barnes' views on the prevalence of hypothyroidism were never widely accepted by the medical community and run counter to its current understanding of thyroid function, but they have been embraced by some elements of the alternative medicine community.

#14135

Peter Anthony Bertocci

1910 - 1989 (79 years)

Peter Bertocci was an American philosopher and Borden Parker Bowne professor of philosophy, emeritus, at Boston University. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America. Bertocci was an advocate of theistic finitism, proposing that "God is all-good but not all-powerful".

#14136

Saul Hertz

1905 - 1950 (45 years)

Saul Hertz, M.D. was an American physician who devised the medical uses of radioactive iodine. Hertz pioneered the first targeted cancer therapies. Hertz is called the father of the field of theranostics, combining diagnostic imaging with therapy in a single or paired chemical substance.

#14137

Frederick Banting

Frederick Banting

1891 - 1941 (50 years)

Sir Frederick Grant Banting was a Canadian medical scientist, physician, painter, and Nobel laureate noted as the co-discoverer of insulin and its therapeutic potential. In 1923, Banting and John Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Banting shared the honours and award money with his colleague, Charles Best. That same year, the government of Canada granted Banting a lifetime annuity to continue his work. To this day, Frederick Banting, who received the Nobel Prize at age 32, remains the youngest Nobel laureate for Physiology/Medicine.

#14138

H. Nida Sen

Hatice Nida Sen is an ophthalmologist researching mechanisms involved in different forms of human uveitis. She is a clinical investigator at the National Eye Institute. Education Hatice Nida Sen obtained a M.D. degree from Hacettepe University Medical School and a Master of Health Sciences from Duke University School of Medicine. She completed an ophthalmology residency at George Washington University and her uveitis and ocular immunology fellowship at the National Eye Institute .

#14139

John Plamenatz

1912 - 1975 (63 years)

John Petrov Plamenatz was a Montenegrin political philosopher, who spent most of his academic life at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his analysis of political obligation and his theory of democracy.

#14140

Ben Shahn

1898 - 1969 (71 years)

Ben Shahn was an American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content. Biography Shahn was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents Joshua Hessel and Gittel Shan. His father was exiled to Siberia for possible revolutionary activities in 1902, at which point Shahn, his mother, and two younger siblings moved to Vilkomir . In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel, a carpenter, who had fled Siberia and emigrated to the US by way of South Africa.

#14141

Zechariah Chafee

Zechariah Chafee

1885 - 1957 (72 years)

Zechariah Chafee Jr. was an American judicial philosopher and civil rights advocate, described as "possibly the most important First Amendment scholar of the first half of the twentieth century" by Richard Primus. Chafee's avid defense of freedom of speech led to Senator Joseph McCarthy calling him "dangerous" to America.

#14142

Alfred Bielschowsky

Alfred Bielschowsky

1871 - 1940 (69 years)

Alfred Bielschowsky was a German ophthalmologist. His specialty was physiology and pathology of the eye, particularly in regards to research of eye movement, space perception and diagnosis of oculomotor anomalies.

#14143

Leon Carnovsky

1903 - 1975 (72 years)

Leon Carnovsky was an American librarian and educator who focused much of his time to the survey of libraries in the United States and around the globe. Carnovsky was recognized by American Libraries as being one of the 100 most influential figures in Library and Information Sciences.

#14144

Paul Anton Cibis

1911 - 1965 (54 years)

Paul Anton Cibis was a clinical ophthalmologist, surgeon and pioneer of modern vitreoretinal surgery. As part of Operation Paperclip Cibis came to the United States and performed research for the U.S. Air Force and studied the effects of atomic weapons testing on the eye. He was an internationally recognized expert in retinal detachment surgery and pioneered the use of liquid silicon for this procedure.

#14145

José Gaos

1900 - 1969 (69 years)

José Gaos was a Spanish philosopher who obtained political asylum in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War and became one of the most important Mexican philosophers of the 20th century. He was a member of the Madrid School.

#14146

Philipp Frank

1884 - 1966 (82 years)

Philipp Frank was a physicist, mathematician and philosopher of the early-to-mid 20th century. He was a logical positivist, and a member of the Vienna Circle. He was influenced by Mach and was one of the Machists criticised by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-criticism.

#14147

Louis Round Wilson

Louis Round Wilson

1876 - 1979 (103 years)

Louis Round Wilson was an important figure to the field of library science, and is listed in "100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century," an article in the December 1999 issue of American Libraries. The article lists what he did for the field of library science including dean at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, directing the library at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and as one of the “internationally oriented library leaders in the U.S. who contributed much of the early history of the International Federation of Library Associations and Inst...

#14148

Una Ellis-Fermor

1894 - 1958 (64 years)

Una Mary Ellis-Fermor , who also used the pseudonym Christopher Turnley, was an English literary critic, author and Hildred Carlile Professor of English at Bedford College, London . In recognition of her services to London University, there is now an award in her name to provide assistance for research students in the publication of scholarly work, in the fields of English, Irish or Scandinavian drama to which Fermor-Ellis herself had been a notable contributor.

#14149

Alexander Burns Wallace

Alexander Burns Wallace

1906 - 1974 (68 years)

Alexander Burns Wallace was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. In authorship he appears as A. B. Wallace.

#14150

John Leofric Stocks

1882 - 1937 (55 years)

John Leofric Stocks DSO was a British philosopher and was briefly Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 1937. Biography Stocks was born the sixth of twelve children to John Edward Stocks, the vicar of Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

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