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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#14101
Yohanan Alemanno
1435 - 1504 (69 years)
Yohanan Alemanno was an Italian Jewish rabbi, noted Kabbalist, humanist philosopher, and exegete, and teacher of the Hebrew language to Italian humanists including Pico della Mirandola. He taught that the Kabbalah was divine magic.
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Jorge Guillermo Borges
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam was an Argentine lawyer, teacher, writer, philosopher and translator. He was also an anarchist and a follower of Herbert Spencer's philosophy of philosophical anarchism. He was Jorge Luis Borges's father.
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Jules Joseph Lefebvre
1834 - 1912 (78 years)
Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French painter, educator and theorist. Early life Lefebvre was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836. He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet.
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Maximus of Ephesus
310 - 372 (62 years)
Maximus of Ephesus was a Neoplatonist philosopher. He is said to have come from a rich family, and exercised great influence over the emperor Julian, who was commended to him by Aedesius. Maximus pandered to the emperor's love of magic and theurgy and won a high position at court, where his overbearing manner made him numerous enemies. He spent an interval in prison after the death of Julian, and eventually was executed by Valens.
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Song Si-yeol
1607 - 1689 (82 years)
Song Si-yeol , also known by his art names Uam and Ujae or by the honorific Master Song , was a Korean philosopher and politician. Born in Okcheon, North Chungcheong, he was known for his concern with the problems of the common people. He served in governmental service for more than fifty years, and his name features over 3,000 times in the Annals of Joseon Dynasty, the greatest frequency that any individual is mentioned. He was executed by the royal court for writing an inflammatory letter to the king. There is a monument to him in his hometown. He is also known as the calligrapher who ins...
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John Duncan
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
John Duncan, LLD FRCSEd FRSE was a Scottish surgeon best known for his surgical teaching at the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. He was a pioneer of the use of electricity in surgery both for surgical cautery and for tumour necrosis. On the death of his father James Duncan in 1866 he became a director of the major drug manufacturer Duncan Flockhart & Co, which had been founded by his grandfather, also John Duncan . He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1889 to 1891.
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Winthrop Pickard Bell
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Winthrop Pickard Bell was a Canadian academic who taught philosophy at the University of Toronto and Harvard. He is however perhaps best known for his work as a historian of Nova Scotia. Biography He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and educated at Mount Allison University, McGill University, Harvard University , the University of Leipzig, and finally at the University of Göttingen .
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Gaozi
401 BC - Present (2427 years)
Gaozi , or Gao Buhai , was a Chinese philosopher during the Warring States period. Gaozi's teachings are no longer extant, but he was a contemporary of Mencius , and most of our knowledge about him comes from the Mencius book titled "Gaozi".
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Ban Zhao
45 - 116 (71 years)
Ban Zhao , courtesy name Huiban , was a Chinese historian, philosopher, and politician. She was the first known female Chinese historian and, along with Pamphile of Epidaurus, one of the first known female historians. She completed her brother Ban Gu's work on the history of the Western Han, the Book of Han. She also wrote Lessons for Women, an influential work on women's conduct. She also had great interest in astronomy and mathematics and wrote poems, commemorative writings, argumentations, commentaries, essays and several longer works, not all of which survive. She became China's most famous female scholar and an instructor of Taoist sexual practices for the imperial family.
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Upendranath Brahmachari
1873 - 1946 (73 years)
Rai Bahadur Sir Upendranath Brahmachari was a leading Indian physician and scientist of his time. He synthesised urea-stibamine in 1922 and determined that it was an effective treatment for kala-azar .
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Karl Oskar Medin
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Karl Oskar Medin was a Swedish pediatrician. He was born at Axberg, Örebro and died in Stockholm. He is most famous for his study of poliomyelitis, a condition sometimes known as the Heine-Medin disease, named after Medin and another physician, Jakob Heine. Medin was the first to describe the epidemic character of infantile paralysis.
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Heliodorus of Alexandria
450 - Present (1576 years)
Heliodorus of Alexandria was a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in the 5th century AD. He was the son of Hermias and Aedesia, and the younger brother of Ammonius. His father, Hermias, died when he was young, and his mother, Aedesia, raised him and his brother in their home city of Alexandria until they were old enough to go to philosophy school. Aedesia took them to Athens where they studied under Proclus. Eventually they returned to Alexandria, where they both taught philosophy. Damascius, who was taught by Heliodorus, describes him as less gifted than his elder brother, and more superfici...
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Johannes de Raey
1618 - 1702 (84 years)
Johannes de Raey was a Dutch philosopher and an early Cartesian. Early life and education De Raey was born in 1622 in the Dutch town of Wageningen as son to Jan Jansz van Ray and Hendersken van Lennep. In 1645 he married his cousin Cunera van Lennep. He died in Amsterdam on 30 November 1702. De Raey studied in Utrecht with Henricus Regius and from 1643 at the university of Leiden. He read philosophy with Prof. Adriaan Heereboord and on 16 July 1647 obtained his doctorate in medicine with Adolphus Vorstius. The previous day he had obtained the title of magister artium.
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Karl Joel
1864 - 1934 (70 years)
Karl Joel was a German philosopher and professor. Joel was born in Hirschberg, Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia, and died in Walenstadt, Switzerland. His father was a rabbi who studied under Schelling. Joel was a professor at the University of Basel from 1902. His father R. Herman Joel, had been a pupil of Schelling and apparently had a great influence on his son's attitude toward philosophy. He was born in Hirschberg, studied in Leipzig, and spent some time in Berlin , where he became a friend of Georg Simmel. In 1897 he was appointed to the University of Basle, where he taught until his death.
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Ziauddin Ahmad
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Sir Ziauddin Ahmad was an Indian mathematician, parliamentarian, logician, natural philosopher, politician, political theorist, educationist and a scholar. He was a member of the Aligarh Movement and was a professor, principal of MAO College, first pro vice-chancellor, vice chancellor and rector of Aligarh Muslim University, India.
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Rasmus Bartholin
1625 - 1698 (73 years)
Rasmus Bartholin was a Danish physician and grammarian. Biography Bartholin was born in Roskilde. He was the son of Caspar Bartholin the Elder and Anna Fincke, daughter of the mathematician Thomas Fincke.
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Edward Forbes
1815 - 1854 (39 years)
Edward Forbes FRS, FGS was a Manx naturalist. In 1846, he proposed that the distributions of montane plants and animals had been compressed downslope, and some oceanic islands connected to the mainland, during the recent ice age. This mechanism, which was the first natural explanation to explain the distributions of the same species on now-isolated islands and mountain tops, was discovered independently by Charles Darwin, who credited Forbes with the idea. He also incorrectly deduced the so-called azoic hypothesis, that life under the sea would decline to the point that no life forms could ex...
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Abraham Cohen de Herrera
1570 - 1635 (65 years)
Abraham Cohen de Herrera , also known as Alonso Nunez de Herrera or Abraham Irira , was a religious philosopher and cabbalist . He is supposed by the historian Heinrich Graetz to have been born in 1570. He is widely supposed to have been descended from a Marrano family: place of birth is unknown but may have been Lisbon, Portugal. Other sources link him to Italy, specifically Tuscany, and as the son of the last Chief Rabbi of Córdoba in Spain.
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Friedrich Groos
1768 - 1852 (84 years)
Friedrich Groos was a German physician and philosopher born in Karlsruhe. Initially a student of law in Tübingen and Stuttgart, his interest later turned to medicine. From 1792 studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau and Pavia, and following graduation became city physician in Karlsruhe. From 1805 to 1813 he worked as a doctor in several locations, and in 1814 became a senior physician at the asylum and Siechenanstalt in Pforzheim. With the 1826 relocation of the Pforzheim mental asylum to Heidelberg, he moved to the latter city, where he also gave lectures in psychiatry at the university.
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Józef Pieter
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Józef Pieter was a Polish psychologist, philosopher, pedagogue, researcher, and lecturer. Pr. Pieter dedicated his life and work to the study of the psychology and mechanisms of teaching and learning, the comparison of pedagogical systems, the process of reasoning and the methodology and organisation of scientific work.
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George R. Buchanan
#14122
Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen
1292 - 1361 (69 years)
Dölpopa Shérap Gyeltsen , known simply as Dölpopa, was a Tibetan Buddhist master. Known as "The Buddha from Dölpo," a region in modern Nepal, he was the principal exponent of the shentong teachings, and an influential member of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
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Allameh Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was an Iranian philosopher and jurist. Early life Sayyed Abul Hasan Rafiee Qazvini was born in 1890 in Qazvin Province, Iran. His family were the relatives of Molla Khalil Qazvini. His father Abul Hasan Ibn Khalil Al Hosseini was also a jurist. The family name Rafiee was given to him from his grandfather, Ayatollah Mirza Rafie.
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Gheorghe Marinescu
1863 - 1938 (75 years)
Gheorghe Marinescu was a Romanian neurologist, founder of the Romanian School of Neurology. History After attending the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bucharest, Marinescu received most of his medical education as preparator at the laboratory of histology at the Brâncoveanu Hospital and as assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Victor Babeș, who had already published several works on myelitis transversa, hysterical muteness, and dilatation of the pupil in pneumonia.
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Robert Macnish
1802 - 1837 (35 years)
Robert Macnish was a Scottish surgeon physician, philosopher and writer. Early life and education Robert Macnish was born at Henderson’s Court, Jamaica Street, Glasgow. His father and grandfather were doctors and after private education in Glasgow and at the long-established Old Grammar School of Hamilton , Robert Macnish undertook his medical studies at the University of Glasgow obtaining a C.M. degree in 1820 and an M.D. in 1825. In 1827 he became a Member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow .
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Alic Halford Smith
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
Alic Halford Smith was a British philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Alic Smith was educated at Dulwich College in south London and New College, Oxford. He began his career at the Scottish Office . Subsequently, he was a Fellow at New College, where he was tutor in philosophy , and then Warden of the College . Smith was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1954 to 1957. He was also a Fellow of Winchester College and Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.
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James Mylne
1757 - 1839 (82 years)
James Mylne was a Scottish philosopher and academic who was born in Perthshire in 1757 and educated at the University of St Andrews. He served as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1797 to 1837. His father-in-law was the philosopher John Millar and the philosopher James McCosh was among his students. He was a member of the Glasgow Literary Society.
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Wiley Post
1898 - 1935 (37 years)
Wiley Hardeman Post was a famed American aviator during the interwar period and the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in the Territory of Alaska.
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Nausiphanes
400 BC - 400 BC (0 years)
Nausiphanes was an ancient Greek atomist philosopher from Teos. Nausiphanes reportedly had a large number of pupils, and was particularly famous as a rhetorician. He argued that the study of natural philosophy was the best foundation for studying rhetoric or politics, which is attacked in a surviving work of Philodemus, On Rhetoric. Furthermore, Nausiphanes was an adherent of Democritus's sceptical side and deemed human judgment as being no more than a realignment of atoms in the mind. Nausiphanes substituted the term akataplêxia for Democritus’ athambiê, “fearlessness,” as crucial for eudaimonia.
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Federico Riu
1925 - 1985 (60 years)
Federico Riu Farré was a philosopher and university professor. Riu was born in Lleida, Spain where he worked from an early age as a teacher in the small towns of his province. He emigrated to Venezuela in 1947 and became a Venezuelan citizen in 1954. In Caracas, Riu studied philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela and won a scholarship to study in Europe after receiving the highest grades in his class. He went to the University of Freiburg where he attended the lectures of Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink. He taught philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela from 1956 to 1980 a...
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Carlos Brandt
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Carlos Brandt was a Venezuelan author, naturopath, philosopher and vegetarianism activist. Biography He was born in Miranda, Venezuela, the son of a German immigrant Karl Brandt, a coffee planter and exporter, and Zoraida Tortolero, mother to Carlos, Juan Luis, Fernando, Augusto, Asteria and Mary. His younger brother was the composer Augusto Brandt. He studied in Puerto Cabello Elementary School and was sent to Germany to join the Pro Gymnasium in Hamburg, aged 14 to 19. He toured Germany and France, and returned to Venezuela at 19, fluent in German, French and English. At 25, he met Leo Tolstoy, which encouraged his literary ambitions.
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Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
1772 - 1835 (63 years)
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth was a German physician born in Stuttgart. He studied medicine at Karlsschule Stuttgart, and following graduation attended lectures by Antonio Scarpa and Johann Peter Frank at Pavia. Afterwards he accompanied his father to the United States, where he practiced medicine for several months in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1797 he was appointed professor of anatomy, physiology, surgery and obstetrics at the University of Tübingen. In 1805 he founded an in-patient clinic at Tübingen, where in 1822 he was appointed chancellor of the university.
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Dimitar Gyuzelov
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Dimitar Gyuzelov was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary and philosopher. He is the father of Macedonian writer Bogomil Gyuzel and artist Liljana Gyuzelova, who between 1996 and 2006 worked on an art installation titled The Perpetual Return, dedicated to her father, his murder, and the stigma that the children of prominent Bulgarians who had been persecuted by the Yugoslav authorities after 1945 had to endure.
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Karl Julius Perleb
1794 - 1845 (51 years)
Karl Julius Perleb was a German botanist and natural scientist. Life From 1809 to 1811, Karl Julius Perleb studied at the University of Freiburg and earned a doctorate in philosophy and in 1815 a degree in medicine. He lived in Vienna for a brief period of time. In 1818 he returned to the University of Freiburg and began a post-doctoral fellowship. He remained at the university for the remainder of his life. He became an associate professor of natural history in 1821, and in 1823 he became a full professor. From 1828 to 1845 he served as director of the Freiburg Botanical Garden. In 1838 he was appointed prorector at Freiburg University.
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Edwin Lankester
1814 - 1874 (60 years)
Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England. Life Edwin Lankester was born in 1814 in Melton, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, to 'poor but clever parents' according to his son E. Ray Lankester . His father was a builder.
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Johann Hast
1808 - 1852 (44 years)
Johann Hast was a German philosopher born in Ottenstein-Ahaus. He studied philosophy and philology at the Academy of Münster, and afterwards taught classes at a vocational school in Münster. Later in his career, he worked as a bookseller and private journalist in Berlin and Münster, publishing works on philosophy, religion, education, et al. Among his literary works were two books involving Hermesian philosophy:Hauptmomente der Hermesischen Philosophie , Über das Fürwahrhalten der theoretischen und das Fürwahrannehmen der praktischen Vernunft im Hermesischen Systeme .He was the author of a cr...
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Adolf Phalén
1884 - 1931 (47 years)
Adolf Krister Hermansson Phalén, born 19 January 1884 in Tuna, Kalmar County, died 16 October 1931 in Uppsala, was a Swedish philosopher. Biography Phalén entered Uppsala University in 1902 where he intended to study law. However, after passing the preparatory examination for law students in 1903, he switch to philosophy instead. He took a bachelor's degree in 1907 and a licentiate degree in 1910, studying for professor Karl Reinhold Geijer. He became a Ph.D. in 1912, after having written a thesis on Hegelian philosophy. Phalén became acting professor in theoretical philosophy in Uppsala from ...
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Oton Iveković
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Oton Iveković was a Croatian painter. A graduate of Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Iveković later taught at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. He largely concerned himself with historical topics as well as some religious themes. Many of his paintings remain the chief representations of Croatian history.
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Albin Egger-Lienz
1868 - 1926 (58 years)
Albin Egger-Lienz was an Austrian painter known especially for rustic genre and historical paintings. Career He was born in Dölsach-Stribach near Lienz, in what was the county of Tyrol. He was the natural son of Maria Trojer, a peasant girl, and Georg Egger, a church painter. As an adult he used his father's surname combined with the name of his birthplace. He had his first artistic training under his father, and subsequently studied at the Academy in Munich where he was influenced by Franz Defregger and French painter Jean-François Millet.
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Thomas Boston
1676 - 1732 (56 years)
Thomas Boston was a Scottish Presbyterian church leader, theologian and philosopher. Boston was successively schoolmaster at Glencairn, and minister of Simprin in Berwickshire, and Ettrick in Selkirkshire. In addition to his best-known work, The Fourfold State, one of the religious classics of Scotland, he wrote an original little book, The Crook in the Lot, and a learned treatise on the Hebrew points. He also took a leading part in the Courts of the Church in what was known as the "Marrow Controversy," regarding the merits of an English work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which he defended against the attacks of the "Moderate" party in the Church.
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Jiao Yu
1350 - Present (676 years)
Jiao Yu was a Chinese military general, philosopher, and writer of the Yuan dynasty and early Ming dynasty under Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the dynasty and became known as the Hongwu Emperor. He was entrusted by Zhu as a leading artillery officer for the rebel army that overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and established the Ming dynasty.
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Jerome Leocata
1664 - 1745 (81 years)
Jerome Leocata was a major Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics. His long academic career in philosophy and theology was very hampered by his many administrative commitments. His writings, however, bear witness to his thinking skills and his philosophical prowess. He possessed a clear and systematic mind, consistently endeavouring to give a sound philosophical basis to his speculations. No portrait of him is yet known to exist.
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Richard of Middleton
1249 - 1302 (53 years)
Richard of Middleton was a member of the Franciscan Order, a theologian, and scholastic philosopher. Life Richard's origins are unclear: he was either Norman French or English . As a Bachelor of the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the University of Paris in 1283, he played a part in the Franciscan commission examining Peter Olivi. He was regent master of the Franciscan studium in Paris from 1284 to 1287, and, on 20 September 1295 in Metz, he was elected Franciscan minister provincial of France. He was also subsequently tutor to Louis of Toulouse, son of Charles II of Anjou. He died sometime b...
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Rick Turner
1941 - 1978 (37 years)
Richard Turner , known as Rick Turner, was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist who was murdered, possibly by the South African security forces, in 1978. Nelson Mandela described Turner "as a source of inspiration".
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Franciszek Fiszer
1860 - 1937 (77 years)
Franciszek Fiszer was a Polish metaphysician and alchemist, a friend of the most notable writers and philosophers of contemporary Warsaw and one of Warsaw's semi-legendary people. Described as an erudite bon vivant and gourmand, he is remembered for a large number of anecdotes, jokes and sayings coined by him and about him.
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Harris Franklin Rall
1870 - 1964 (94 years)
Harris Franklin Rall , Ph.D. was the first president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado after it reopened in 1910 till 1915, and he also served as the Henry White Warren professor of Practical Theology. Rall later became president of Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois, and taught theology there. Rall was active in the social gospel movement, seeking to relate Christianity to the ills of society. Garrett named its lecture series after him.
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Choe Han-gi
1803 - 1877 (74 years)
Choe Han-gi was a Korean Confucian scholar and philosopher. He is known for integrating Eastern philosophy with Western science in pre-industrial Korea. His art name was Hyegang , and according to some sources, it is mentioned that he also used Paedong .
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Allen Thomson
1809 - 1884 (75 years)
Allen Thomson FRS FRSE FRCSE was a Scottish physician, known as an anatomist and embryologist. Life The only son of Dr John Thomson by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of John Millar, he was born at Brown Square in Edinburgh on 2 April 1809, and was named after his father's friend, John Allen, secretary and confidential friend of Lord Holland. Margaret Mylne was his sister and William Thomson his half-brother. Allen Thomson was educated at the high school and University of Edinburgh, and then in Paris. He graduated doctor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh in August 1830. At the time of his graduation he was president of the Royal Medical Society in Edinburgh.
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Friedrich August Carus
1770 - 1807 (37 years)
Friedrich August Carus was a German philosopher. He was the father of surgeon Ernst August Carus . From 1788 to 1793 he studied philosophy and theology at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen. In 1796 he became an associate professor of philosophy at Leipzig, where in 1805 he attained a full professorship. In Leipzig he also served as a preacher at the University Church. As a philosopher he was influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. After his death, his principal philosophical, psychological, theological and historical works were edited and published ...
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Edgar Frederick Carritt
1876 - 1964 (88 years)
Edgar Frederick Carritt, FBA was an English philosopher who wrote on aesthetics, moral philosophy and political philosophy. He was a fellow of University College, Oxford, from 1898 to 1945. He was a member of the famous Oxfordshire based Carritt family, whose members included many Marxist academics and revolutionaries.
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