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,
#14251
Johannes Lippius
1585 - 1612 (27 years)
Johannes Lippius was an Alsatian theologian and music theorist. He coined the term "harmonic triad" in his Synopsis musicae novae . Life Lippius was born in Strasbourg, the son of the pastor of St. Peter, Johann Lippius , and his wife Susanna Klehmann. In early childhood, he had already received education in languages and the seven liberal arts, which allowed him to be appointed at the University of Strasbourg to the Master of Philosophy at a young age. By his twenty-first birthday he had given private and university lectures, after which he entered the University of Leipzig, 1606, the Univer...
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Lilian Welsh
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Lilian Welsh was an American physician, educator, suffragist, and advocate for women's health. She was on the faculty at Woman's College of Baltimore and an active member of National American Woman Suffrage Association. Welsh was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.
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Moses Schorr
1874 - 1941 (67 years)
Moses Schorr, Polish: Mojżesz Schorr was a rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and modern rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.
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William John Macleay
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Sir William John Macleay was a Scottish-Australian politician, naturalist, zoologist, and herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Caithness, Scotland, second son of Kenneth Macleay of Keiss and his wife Barbara, née Horne. Macleay was educated at the Edinburgh Academy 1834–36 and then to studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh; but when he was 18 years old his widowed mother died, and he decided to go to Australia with his cousin, William Sharp MacLeay. They arrived at Sydney in March 1839 on HMS Royal George. William Macleay took up land at first near Goulburn, and after...
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Grant Liddle
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Grant Winder Liddle was an American endocrinologist whose research focused largely on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. He was a professor at Vanderbilt University and chaired its Department of Medicine from 1968 to 1983.
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Adib Pishavari
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Seyyed Ahmad Adib Pishavari , also known as Sayyed Ahmad B. Sehab al-Din Razawi , was a Sufi scholar who born in or near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, and was descended from Omar Sohravardi. Adib was a master of Persian literature.
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Francesco Buonamici
1533 - 1603 (70 years)
Francesco Buonamici was an Italian philosopher, professor at the University of Pisa and writer who wrote about his ideas on motion in a treatise called De Motu. He was one of the teachers of Galileo.
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Giulio Sirenio
1553 - 1593 (40 years)
Giulio Sirenio was an Italian philosopher from Brescia. He was professor of theology and metaphysics at the University of Bologna. Works
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Henry Augustus Ward
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Henry Augustus Ward was an American naturalist and geologist. Biography Henry Augustus Ward was born in Rochester, New York on March 9, 1834. After attending Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz, he traveled in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, and studied at the Jardin des Plantes, the Sorbonne, and the School of Mines in Paris, and at the universities of Munich and Freiberg. Subsequently, he traveled in West Africa and the West Indies, making natural history collections.
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Arnoldus Arlenius
1510 - 1582 (72 years)
Arnoldus Arlenius Peraxylus, , born Arndt or Arnout van Eyndhouts or van Eynthouts, also known as Arnoud de Lens, was a Dutch humanist philosopher and poet. He was born in Aarle, near Helmond, , North Brabant, in the Netherlands, at that time part of the possessions of the Habsburgs. He studied under Macropedius and later travelled to Paris, and Ferrara and studied at the University of Bologna for five years, becoming a first-rate Greek scholar and supporting himself by bookselling and acting as a scout for the printers of Basel, arranging the publication of books such as Caelius Rhodiginus's ...
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Igor Sikorsky
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was a Russian–American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, won him national recognition as well as F.A.I. license number 64. His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg.
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Ganapati Muni
1878 - 1936 (58 years)
Ayyala Somayajulu Ganapathi Sastry, also known as Ganapati Muni , was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He was also variously known as "Kavyakantha" , and "Nayana" by his disciples. Biography Ganapati Muni was born in Kalavarayai near Bobbili in Andhra Pradesh on 17 November 1878. His parents, Narasimha Sastri and Narasamamba had three sons, Muni being the second. Ganapati, when 18 years old, set out and wandered from one place to another, residing in places like Bhuvaneshwar, where he performed his tapas. When Ganapati was staying in Varanasi he learned of an assembly of Sanskrit scholars in the city of Nabadwip in Bengal.
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Louise Reed Stowell
1850 - 1931 (81 years)
Louise Reed Stowell was an American scientist, microscopist, author, and editor. She was the University of Michigan's first woman teacher , and the first woman appointed on District of Columbia Public Schools . She also served on the Board for the Girls' Reform School for District of Columbia. Stowell died in 1932.
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John Glaister
1856 - 1932 (76 years)
Professor John Glaister was a Scottish forensic scientist who worked as a general practitioner, police surgeon, and as a lecturer at Glasgow Royal Infirmary Medical School and the University of Glasgow. Glasgow University's Glaister Prize is named in his honour.
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John McClintock
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
John McClintock was an American Methodist Episcopal theologian and educationalist, born in Philadelphia. Biography McClintock matriculated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Ill health, however, forced him to leave Wesleyan in his freshman year. Unable to return, he graduated subsequently from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835, and was assistant professor of mathematics , professor of mathematics , and professor of Latin and Greek in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He opposed the Mexican–American War, as well as slavery, but did not consider himself an abolitionist.
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Bernhard von Langenbeck
1810 - 1887 (77 years)
Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck was a German surgeon known as the developer of Langenbeck's amputation and founder of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery. Life He was born at Padingbüttel, and received his medical education at Göttingen, where one of his teachers was his uncle Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck. He took his doctorate in 1835 with a thesis on the structure of the retina. After a visit to France and England, he returned to Göttingen as Privatdozent, and in 1842 became Professor of Surgery and Director of the Friedrichs Hospital at Kiel. Six years later he succeeded Johann Fried...
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Caterina Moriggi
1437 - 1478 (41 years)
Caterina Moriggi was an Italian Roman Catholic who became a professed religious and adhered to the teachings and traditions of Augustine of Hippo. She lived in contemplation in the Italian mountains before establishing a new order, dubbed Order of Saint Ambrose ad Nemus which followed the Augustinian rule. Moriggi became known as Catherine of Pallanza when she became a religious and was noted for her austere model of living and for her deep personal holiness.
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Knud Jeppesen
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Knud Jeppesen was a Danish musicologist and composer. He was the leading scholar of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, about whose life and music he wrote numerous studies. Biography Jeppesen demonstrated early musical talent at age 10 when he was first encouraged by Hakon Andersen and Paul Hellmuth, although he was largely self-taught. Completing primary education in 1911, he first worked in Elbing and Liegnitz as an opera coach and conductor. He found employment in Berlin in 1914, but returned to Denmark because of the outbreak of war. In Copenhagen he became a pupil of promine...
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Oluf Gerhard Tychsen
1734 - 1815 (81 years)
Oluf Gerhard Tychsen was a German Orientalist and Hebrew scholar. He is known today as one of the founding fathers of Islamic numismatics. As a Lutheran Christian, he attended the Christianeum grammar school in Altona, then Holstein and the rabbinic school attached to the Altona Ashkenazi synagogue, led by Jonathan Eybeschütz, chief rabbi of the Triple Community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek. From 1756 he studied Oriental languages at the University of Halle.
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Celedonio Calatayud
1880 - 1931 (51 years)
Celedonio Calatayud Costa was a Spanish scientist and radiologist, remembered for his achievements on radiology, radiotherapy, and electrology. He pioneered the use of radiology and electrology in Europe for both diagnostics and therapeutical purposes, introducing radiotherapy in Spain in 1906. He founded the Spanish Medical Electrology and Radiology Society , promoted the doctoral chair of Electro-radiology and was elected as the first professor to chair it at the Universidad Central . He also was the driving force behind and creator of the First National Medical Congress that took place in ...
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Manfred Bukofzer
1910 - 1955 (45 years)
Manfred Fritz Bukofzer was a German-born American musicologist. Life and career He studied at Heidelberg University and the Stern conservatory in Berlin, but left Germany in 1933 for Switzerland, where he obtained a doctorate from the University of Basel in 1936. In 1939 he moved to the United States where he remained, becoming a U.S. citizen. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1941 until his premature death from multiple myeloma.
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Thurston Dart
1921 - 1971 (50 years)
Robert Thurston Dart , was an English musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. Along with Nigel Fortune, Oliver Neighbour and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post-World War II generation. From 1964 until his death he was King Edward Professor of Music at the University of London, based at King's College London.
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Swami Kalyandev
1876 - 2004 (128 years)
Kalyandev ji Maharaj , known as Swami Kalyandev, was an Indian-born ascetic who was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India, for his social work in the villages of India.
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Louis Duret
1527 - 1586 (59 years)
Louis Duret was a French physician to Charles IX of France and his brother Henry III of France as their chief physician. Early life Duret was born in Bâgé-la-Ville in the French province of Bresse in the year 1527. He came from a minor French nobility family. Leaving his father's home as a teenager. he made little money and subsisted at the poverty level. Around age nineteen, Duret decided to go to Paris to seek a good career. At first he was trained in academic disciplines by a private tutor, French magistrate Achilles Harlay, who took him under his wing because he demonstrated talent in ma...
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Vincent Baron
1604 - 1674 (70 years)
Vincent Baron was a French Dominican theologian and preacher. Biography He was born at Martres, in the département of the Haute-Garonne, France, 17 May 1604, and died in Paris on 21 January 1674. At the age of seventeen he passed from the college of the Jesuits in Toulouse to the Dominican convent of St. Thomas in the same city. He made his religious profession there on 16 May 1622, where he also completed his course in philosophy and theology, and taught these subjects.
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Schahan Berberian
1891 - 1956 (65 years)
Schahan R. Berberian was an Armenian philosopher, composer, and psychologist. Biography Early years Berberian was born in Constantinople . Shortly thereafter, along with his parents Retheos and Zaruhi and his elder brother Onnig, Berberian moved to Geneva, Switzerland to escape the atrocities against the Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II from 1894 to 1896.
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E. J. Rapson
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Edward James Rapson FBA was a British numismatist, philologist and professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge. He was a fellow of St. John's College. Rapson died following a sudden collapse at dinner at St. John's.
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Jožef Krajnc
1821 - 1875 (54 years)
Jožef Krajnc, also spelled Josef Krainc, Josef Krainz was an Austro-Hungarian lawyer, philosopher and politician of Slovenian ancestry. Life Krajnc was born in Škale in the Duchy of Styria to a farmer of the same name. From 1832 until 1841 he attended the Gymnasium in Celje, graduating with the Matura. From 1841 until 1845, he studied philosophy and law in Graz, obtaining a doctorate in both disciplines. From 1842 on, he financed his studies as a private tutor to a wealthy landowner's family in Graz and Bad Radkersburg. From 1845 on, Krajnc worked as judicial advisor first to the city council of Radkersburg, then to the council of Graz.
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Gerhardt Katsch
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Gerhardt Katsch was a German internist. Between 1928 and 1957 he served as Professor of Internal medicine at the University of Greifswald. It was on the initiative of Katsch that in 1930 a residential facility providing clinical and socio-medical care for Diabetic patients was established at Garz on the Island of Rügen. It was the first institution of its kind in Germany. Gerhardt Katsch is widely regarded – alongside Oskar Minkowski and Karl Stolte – as one of the three principal pioneers of modern diabetes management in Germany.
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Peter Hansen
1868 - 1928 (60 years)
Peter Marius Hansen was a Danish painter who became one of the Fynboerne or "Funen Painters" group living and working on the island of Funen. Biography Hansen attended the Copenhagen Technical School before studying under Kristian Zahrtmann at the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler . His travels included the Netherlands , and several periods in Italy from 1899 where he was in Civita d'Antino with Zahrtmann and in Pompei with Theodor Philipsen . He also travelled to Belgium and Paris in 1909. His eldest son, David Shane Hansen would become one of the leading organizers of the 1909 general strike in Barcelona, Spain.
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Willis J. Potts
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Willis John Potts was an American pediatric surgeon and one of the earliest physicians to focus on the surgical treatment of heart problems in children. Potts set up one of the country's first pediatric surgery programs at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
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Juan Guiteras
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Juan Guitéras y Gener , was a Cuban physician and pathologist specializing in yellow fever. Guiteras studied medicine at the University of Havana, and moved to the United States in 1873 to attend the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated that same year. He worked at Philadelphia Hospital until 1879, when he went into the U.S. Navy as a physician and began to research yellow fever, working with Stanford Chaillé and George Miller Sternberg in the Havana Yellow Fever Commission. On May 5, 1883 he married Dolores Gener in Cuba. He then taught at the Medical University of South Carolina from 1884 to 1888, and then taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1889 to 1898.
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Sigismondo Polcastro
1384 - 1473 (89 years)
Sigismondo Polcastro was an Italian physician and natural philosopher. He was born to a jurist father, Girolamo, of the ancient de Porcastris family of Vicenza, and Maddalena Volpe of Padua. Perhaps born in Vicenza, he moved to Padua while he was still a boy.
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Pierre de Villiers Pienaar
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Pierre de Villiers Pienaar was a South African Afrikaans academic and Professor at University of the Witwatersrand and later at University of Pretoria, who pioneered Speech Language Therapy in South Africa and specialising in Audiology and Lexicography as well as being an Afrikaans author. As Lexicographer in 1973, he was part of the group of authors that established the Afrikaans Explanatory Dictionary alongside Prof M.S.B. Kritzinger and Prof F.J. Labuschagne.
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William of Auxerre
1145 - 1231 (86 years)
William of Auxerre was a French scholastic theologian and official in the Roman Catholic Church. The teacher by whom William was most influenced was Praepositinus, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. The names of teacher and pupil are mentioned in the same sentence by Thomas Aquinas.
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Ted Hines
1926 - 1983 (57 years)
Theodore Christian "Ted" Hines was a Washington, D.C.-born pioneer in the use of microcomputers and microcomputer programs in libraries. He attended undergraduate school at George Washington University and received his Masters of Library Science in 1958 and a PhD in 1960 both from Rutgers University. He began his career as a children's librarian, and later became a professor of Library Science at Rutgers, followed by Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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Johannes Hartmann
1568 - 1631 (63 years)
Johannes Hartmann was a German chemist. In 1609, he became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marburg. His teaching dealt mainly with pharmaceuticals. He was the father-in-law of Heinrich Petraeus.
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Ghyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki
1462 - 1542 (80 years)
Ghiyāth al-Din Mansur Dashtaki was an Iranian Safavid Islamic philosopher, the son of Sadr ad-Din Dashtaki. He has been called "the foremost philosopher of sixteenth-century Islam". "His works spanned an impressive range, from theological, mystical, and Quranic studies to treatises on medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology." He wrote Akhlaq-i Mansuri on ethics, a commentary on Suhrawardi's Hayākil al-nūr , and glosses on Tusi's Sharh al-isharat. He also wrote a medical treatise, Ma’alem-o-Shafa.
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Robert Gilbert
1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Robert Gilbert was a German composer of light music, lyricist, singer, and actor. His father was Max Winterfeld, a composer and conductor who went by the pen name of Jean Gilbert. His brother was Henry Winterfeld, an author of children's books. Sometimes described as a "divided author", his early depression-era poem "Stempellied" about living on the dole was set to music by Hanns Eisler. But "Am Sonntag will mein Süsser mit mir segeln gehen" and "Das gibt's nur einmal" , became his better known work.
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Fletcher Martin
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
Fletcher Martin was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and educator. He is best known for his images of military life during World War II and his sometimes brutal images of boxing and other sports.
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Wolfgang Klemperer
1893 - 1965 (72 years)
Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of the Austrian nationals Leon and Charlotte Klemperer. He was in his time a prominent aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.
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Arthur Adams
1820 - 1878 (58 years)
Arthur Adams was an English physician and naturalist. Adams was assistant surgeon Royal Navy on board HMS Samarang during the survey of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, from 1843 to 1846. He edited the Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang . Adam White collaborated with him in the descriptions of the Crustacea from the voyage. In 1857, during the Second China War whilst serving as Surgeon on HMS Actaeon, he was present at the storming of Canton and awarded the China War Medal. He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870.
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Ries Mulder
1909 - 1973 (64 years)
Marinus Mulder was a Dutch painter, lecturer and writer. His painting style was influenced by Cubism, which he taught during his tenure as a leading lecturer of Modern Art in Indonesia. Dutch Period until 1940 Ries grew up in a family of ten children. After three years at the Hogere Burgerschool he studied painting in Utrecht and decided to become a painter. Ries apprenticed to the painter Piet van Wijngaerdt. He also made contact with Otto van Rees , Lambert Simon and Charles Eyck. Between 1933 and 1939, he assisted Charles Eyck in creating several frescoes, including frescoes in the Genaz...
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Samuel James Cameron
1878 - 1959 (81 years)
Samuel James Cameron was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1934 until 1942. The son of Caesarean Section pioneer Prof Murdoch Cameron, S.J. Cameron was a foundation Fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, and for many years a member of the Gynaecological Visiting Society. A lifelong champion of the reputation of the founder of professional midwifery in the British isles, William Smellie, Cameron both named a maternity hospital at Lanark, Scotland, after him and saved Smellie's library from permanent loss.
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L. Emmett Holt Jr.
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Luther Emmett Holt Jr. was an American pediatrician. As a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and later New York University, he performed extensive research in the field of pediatric nutrition. He received the John Howland Award in 1966.
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Frans Floris
1519 - 1570 (51 years)
Frans Floris, Frans Floris the Elder or Frans Floris de Vriendt was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print artist and tapestry designer. He is mainly known for his history paintings, allegorical scenes and portraits. He played an important role in the movement in Northern Renaissance painting referred to as Romanism. The Romanists had typically travelled to Italy to study the works of leading Italian High Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and their followers. Their art assimilated these Italian influences into the Northern painting tradition.
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Friedrich Dessauer
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Friedrich Dessauer was a German physicist, a philosopher, a socially engaged entrepreneur and a journalist. Friedrich Dessauer was born in Aschaffenburg, German Empire. As a young man he was fascinated by new discoveries in the natural sciences. He was particularly interested in the X-rays discovered by Röntgen and their medical applications. After attending the humanistic Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg, he studied electrical engineering and physics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and the University of Munich. Due to radiation damage during his research on the use of X-rays, his face was badly damaged and he was repeatedly treated with plastic surgery.
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Robert Bouvier
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Robert Bouvier was a Swiss philosopher noted for popularising the work of Ernst Mach in French. Bouvier spent much his career teaching evening classes and doing translation work before becoming a privatdocent at the University of Geneva.
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Ernst Dieffenbach
1811 - 1855 (44 years)
Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach , also known as Ernest Dieffenbach, was a German physician, geologist and naturalist, the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand, where he travelled widely under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, returning in 1841–42 and publishing in English his Travels in New Zealand in 1843.
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Adriaan van den Spiegel
1578 - 1625 (47 years)
Adriaan van den Spiegel , name sometimes written as Adrianus Spigelius , was a Flemish anatomist born in Brussels. For much of his career he practiced medicine in Padua, and is considered one of the great physicians associated with the city. At Padua he studied anatomy under Girolamo Fabrici.
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