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,
#14301
Warren Warwick
#123605
Overall Influence
Warren J. Warwick was an American pediatrician, notable for co-inventing a chest wall oscillation device called the Vest Airway Clearance System, or "The Vest", a mechanical vest for clearing the lungs of children with cystic fibrosis. He was a professor of pediatric pulmonology at the University of Minnesota, where he was a faculty member for more than 50 years. He served as director of the Cystic Fibrosis Center at the University of Minnesota 1962 to 1999, recognized by peer institutions as among the best in the United States.
Go to Profile#14302
Ullrich Haase
#128620
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ullrich Michael Haase is a British philosopher and Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Managing Editor of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Haase is known for his expertise on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Go to Profile#14303
Julie Leask
#115793
Overall Influence
Julie Leask or Julie-Anne Leask is an Australian social scientist and professor in the Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Leask is a leading researcher on social and behavioural aspects of vaccination and infectious disease prevention. Leask’s research focuses on vaccine uptake, communication, strengthening vaccination programs and policy. Leask’s flagship project is Knowledge About Immunisation - a vaccination communication package designed to improve vaccination conversations between parents and health care workers. Additionall...
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Alastair Campbell
#131115
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Professor Alastair Vincent Campbell MA, BD, Th.D., FRSE is a British theologian and bioethicist. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics and received the Henry K. Beecher award from the Hastings Centre in 1999.
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Johannes Schefferus
1621 - 1679 (58 years)
Johannes Schefferus was one of the most important Swedish humanists of his time. He was also known as Angelus and is remembered for writing hymns. Schefferus was born in Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He came from the patrician family , studied at university there and briefly in Leiden, and was in 1648 made professor Skytteanus of eloquence and government at Uppsala University, a chair he held until his death in 1679.
Go to Profile#14306
Henry Littlejohn
1826 - 1914 (88 years)
Sir Henry Duncan Littlejohn MD LLD FRCSE was a Scottish surgeon, forensic scientist and public health official. He served for 46 years as Edinburgh's first Medical Officer of Health, during which time he brought about significant improvements in the living conditions and the health of the city's inhabitants. He also served as a police surgeon and medical adviser in Scottish criminal cases.
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Carol J. Clover
#14437
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Carol Jeanne Clover is an American professor of Medieval Studies and American Film at the University of California, Berkeley. Clover has been widely published in her areas of expertise, and is the author of three books. Clover's 1992 book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film achieved popularity beyond academe. Clover is credited with developing the "final girl" theory in the horror genre, which has changed both popular and academic conceptions of gender in horror films.
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Isadore Gilbert Mudge
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Isadore Gilbert Mudge was ranked by the magazine American Libraries as one of the top 100 important leaders that libraries have had in the 20th century. Mudge was a defining influence on what a contemporary reference librarian is and was essential for helping organize and promote reference books for use in helping patrons find information and answers to questions.
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Edward Heneage Dering
1827 - 1892 (65 years)
Edward Heneage Dering was an English novelist of the Victorian era. He is largely remembered today as a member of "The Quartet" at Baddesley Clinton, with marriages to two artistic women. Biography He was the younger son of Cholmeley Edward John Dering, rector of Pluckley, Kent, and prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral. He joined the 68th Foot as an ensign in 1844, and in 1848 was a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards. Having caught malaria in Italy, he sold out his commission and left the army in 1851.
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Annalee Yassi
#172803
Overall Influence
Annalee Yassi is a Canadian health scholar, currently a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Capacity Building at University of British Columbia.
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Dionysius of Chalcedon
400 BC - Present (2426 years)
Dionysius of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher and dialectician connected with the Megarian school. He was a native of Chalcedon on the coast of Bithynia. Dionysius was the person who first used the name Dialecticians to describe a splinter group within the Megarian school "because they put their arguments into the form of question and answer". One area of activity for the dialecticians was the framing of definitions, and Aristotle criticises a definition of life by Dionysius in his Topics: Dionysius is also reported to have taught Theodorus the Atheist.
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V. S. Sangwan
#99606
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Virender Singh Sangwan is an Indian ophthalmologist and the Dr. Paul Dubord Chair professor and director of the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. Known for his research on limbal stem cells, Sangwan is the founder secretary and an adviser of the Uveitis Society of India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 2006.
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J. I. P. James
#107157
Overall Influence
1913 - 2001 (88 years)
John Ivor Pulsford James was a British orthopaedic surgeon. He was professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Edinburgh from 1958 to 1979. Most commonly known as "JIP", he was secretary then president of the British Orthopaedic Association which later awarded him its honorary fellowship. James attracted orthopaedic specialists to work in Edinburgh, encouraging them to develop an interest in a specialist area of orthopaedics, and in this way he was able to establish a comprehensive regional orthopaedic service. He made contributions to hand surgery and surgical treatment of scolio...
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Susan McKinney Steward
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Susan Maria McKinney Steward was an American physician and author. She was the third African-American woman to earn a medical degree, and the first in New York state. McKinney-Steward's medical career focused on prenatal care and childhood disease. From 1870 to 1895, she ran her own practice in Brooklyn and co-founded the Brooklyn Women's Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She sat on the board and practiced medicine at the Brooklyn Home for Aged Colored People. From 1906, she worked as college physician at the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1911, she...
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Carleton B. Joeckel
1886 - 1960 (74 years)
Carleton Bruns Joeckel , was an American librarian, advocate, scholar, decorated soldier, and co-writer, with Enoch Pratt Free Library Assistant Director Amy Winslow, A National Plan for Public Library Service that provided the foundation for nationwide public library services.
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Joseph von Führich
1800 - 1876 (76 years)
Joseph von Führich was an Austrian painter, one of the Nazarenes. He painted religious pictures almost exclusively. Führich acquired his greatest fame as a draughtsman. Biography He was born at Kratzau in Bohemia. Deeply impressed as a boy by rustic pictures adorning the wayside chapels of his native country, his first attempt at composition was a sketch of the Nativity for the festival of Christmas in his father's house. He lived to see the day when, becoming celebrated as a composer of scriptural episodes, his sacred subjects were transferred in numberless repetitions to the roadside chu...
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Laurence Houlgate
#145239
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Laurence D. Houlgate is an American philosopher, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and former department chair at California Polytechnic State University. He specializes in the history of Western philosophy, social ethics, philosophy of law and political philosophy. Houlgate was one of the first philosophers in the 20th century to theorize about the moral foundations of children's rights and the ethics of family relationships. After his retirement, Professor Houlgate wrote a popular series of eight study guides on the classical philosophers for beginning philosophy students. Houlgate also ...
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Jane E. Henney
#60038
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jane Ellen Henney is an American physician who was the first woman to serve as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, she served at the FDA from 1999 to 2001.
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Todd Hedrick
#172905
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Todd Hedrick is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. He is known for his works on Hegel's philosophy and critical theory. Books External links Todd Hedrick at MSU
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Felicity Goodyear-Smith
#98365
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Felicity Anne Goodyear-Smith is a medical doctor, academic, and public health advocate from New Zealand. She is Academic Head of Department & Goodfellow Postgraduate Chair of General Practice & Primary Health Care in the Faculty of Medical and Health Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
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Antonio del Pollaiuolo
1429 - 1498 (69 years)
Antonio del Pollaiuolo , also known as Antonio di Jacopo Pollaiuolo or Antonio Pollaiuolo , was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith, who made important works in all these media, as well as designing works in others, for example vestments, metal embroidery being a medium he worked in at the start of his career.
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Michael F. Chiang
#98141
Overall Influence
Michael F. Chiang is an American pediatric ophthalmologist serving as the director of the National Eye Institute. His research focuses on the interface of biomedical informatics and clinical ophthalmology in areas such as retinopathy of prematurity , telehealth, artificial intelligence, electronic health records, data science, and genotype-phenotype correlation.
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Alexander Macalister
1844 - 1919 (75 years)
Prof Alexander Macalister FRS Hon.FRSE FSA FRAI was an Irish anatomist, Professor of Anatomy, Cambridge University, from 1883 until his death. He was a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Life He was born in Dublin, the second son of Robert Macalister, secretary of the Sunday School Society of Ireland, and his wife . Alexander was educated locally then studied medicine at Trinity College, Dublin.
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Deborah Birx
#30642
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Deborah Leah Birx is an American physician and diplomat who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump from 2020 to 2021. Birx specializes in HIV/AIDS immunology, vaccine research, and global health. Starting in 2014, she oversaw the implementation of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program to support HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs in 65 countries. From 2014-2020, Birx was the United States global AIDS coordinator for presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and served as the United States special representative for global health diplomacy between 2015 and 2021.
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Jim Garrison
#172951
Overall Influence
#14326
Christine Jones
#31832
Overall Influence
Christine Jones is an American scenic designer on Broadway. Her best-known designs include Spring Awakening, American Idiot, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. In 2010, she created an experimental, two-week project called Theatre for One in which one actor performs for one audience member. It was repeated in 2015. She is a professor at New York University and a lecturer at Princeton University.
Go to Profile#14327
Daniel Charles
#110847
Overall Influence
1935 - 2008 (73 years)
Daniel Paul Charles was a French musician, musicologist and philosopher. He was born on 27 November 1935 in Oran and died on 21 August 2008 in Antibes . Biography He was a student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory of Music , he received the aggregation in philosophy in 1959 and a PhD under the direction of Mikel Dufrenne in 1977.
Go to Profile#14328
David Harry Miller
#172977
Overall Influence
#14329
Jan Sokol
#102399
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Jan Sokol was a Czech philosopher, dissident, politician and translator. He briefly served as Minister of Education, Youth and Sports in 1998 under Prime Minister Josef Tošovský. From 1990 to 1992 he was Member of Parliament for Prague. From 2000 to 2007 he served as the first dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University in Prague. Sokol ran for President of the Czech Republic in the 2003 election but lost to Václav Klaus.
Go to Profile#14330
John Dawson
1734 - 1820 (86 years)
John Dawson was both an English mathematician and physician. He was born at Raygill in Garsdale, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where "Dawson's Rock" celebrates the site of his early thinking about conic sections. After learning surgery from Henry Bracken of Lancaster, he worked as a surgeon in Sedbergh for a year, then went to study medicine at Edinburgh, walking 150 miles there with his savings stitched into his coat. Despite a very frugal lifestyle, he was unable to complete his degree, and had to return to Garsdale until he earned enough as a surgeon and as a private tutor in Mat...
Go to Profile#14331
Pavle Stefanović
1901 - 1985 (84 years)
Pavle Stefanović was a Serbian philosopher, esthetician, essayist, music writer, critic and writer. He was the son of physician writer and poet Svetislav Stefanović who translated Shakespeare, and other English writers.
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Ronald D. Guttmann
#106324
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ronald D. Guttmann MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1936 and received his post secondary school education at the University of Minnesota, receiving a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in 1958, and a B.S. and M.D. degree in 1961. He did his Medical Internship at the University of California San Francisco, military service in the USNR at the Tissue Bank , National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Medical Residency on the II & IV Medical Service at Boston City Hospital, and a Research & Clinical Fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1969, he was ap...
Go to Profile#14333
Sam Singer
#97421
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Samuel Singer was an American animator and animation producer. He is best known as executive producer of The Adventures of Pow Wow, a cartoon which also later appeared as a segment in early episodes of Captain Kangaroo. He also directed The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican and produced Bucky and Pepito. Animation historian Jerry Beck has referred to Singer as "the Ed Wood of animation" for his low-budget and generally ill-reviewed cartoons.
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Guido Bonatti
1210 - 1296 (86 years)
Guido Bonatti was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, who was the most celebrated astrologer of the 13th century. Bonatti was advisor of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Ezzelino da Romano III, Guido Novello da Polenta and Guido I da Montefeltro. He also served the communal governments of Florence, Siena and Forlì. His employers were all Ghibellines , who were in conflict with the Guelphs , and all were excommunicated at some time or another. Bonatti's astrological reputation was also criticised in Dante's Divine Comedy, where he is depicted as residing in hell as punishmen...
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David Sherry
#108867
Overall Influence
David M. Sherry is a philosopher and professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. He teaches History of Philosophy, History of Logic, as well as Philosophy of Mathematics. He has published on Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics and Philosophy of Science.
Go to Profile#14336
C. S. Wright
1887 - 1975 (88 years)
Sir Charles Seymour Wright , nicknamed Silas Wright after novelist Silas K. Hocking, was a Canadian member of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1910–1913, the Terra Nova Expedition. Background Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1887, the son of an insurance executive, Wright grew up in the Toronto neighbourhood of Rosedale. He was educated at Upper Canada College where he also became head boy. He wore glasses, excelled in sports, and his spirit of adventure saw him spend some of his youth prospecting and canoeing in Canada's unmapped Far North. He studied physics at the Universit...
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Margaret Peterson
#168852
Overall Influence
1902 - 1997 (95 years)
Margaret Peterson was an American painter of abstract art and known for creating a style that was highly influenced by the art of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Biography Peterson was born in Seattle, Washington. In the 1920s she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1926 with a Bachelor in Arts and soon joined its faculty of Fine Arts in 1928. The years between 1928 and 1950 were productive years for Peterson; this included a funded trip to Europe , several exhibitions, marriage to her husband, the Canadian writer Howard O'Hagan , and a year spent at Gree...
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William Gilham
1818 - 1872 (54 years)
William Henry Gilham was an American soldier, teacher, chemist, and author. A member of the faculty at Virginia Military Institute, in 1860, he wrote a military manual which was still in modern use 145 years later. He served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, and became president of Southern Fertilizing Company in Richmond after the War.
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Brad Hirschfield
#78793
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Brad Hirschfield is a rabbi, author, and president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership . Hirschfield was ranked three years in a row in Newsweek as one of America's "50 Most Influential Rabbis" and recognized as a leading “Preacher & Teacher” by Beliefnet.com.
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Felice Fontana
1730 - 1805 (75 years)
Abbé Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana was an Italian polymath who contributed to experimental studies in physiology, toxicology, and physics. As a physicist he discovered the water gas shift reaction in 1780. He investigated the human eye and has also been credited with discovering the nucleolus of a cell. His work on the venom of vipers was among the earliest experimental toxicological studies. He served as a court physicist for Peter Leopold, Duke of Tuscany and taught at the University of Pisa. He was involved in the establishment of the La Specola museum in Florence.
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Adrian Morris
#76762
Overall Influence
1929 - 2004 (75 years)
Adrian Grant Morris was an English painter. Early life Morris was born in London, England. He spent his childhood in rural Somerset before the family moved to the United States, where he attended the progressive Putney School in Vermont. There his precocious talent for painting, inspired by the surrealists in New York, was given full rein. On his return to the UK in 1947, after completion of National Service in the army and spells at art schools in London and Paris , he finished his art education at the Royal Academy Schools.
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Donald MacAlister
1854 - 1934 (80 years)
Sir Donald MacAlister, 1st Baronet of Tarbet was a Scottish physician who was Principal and Vice-Chancellor and, later, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles intellectual secret society, from 1876. From 1904 to 1931 he was President of the General Medical Council.
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August Christian Niemann
1761 - 1832 (71 years)
August Christian Niemann was a German forestry engineer and political economist. He is known as a composer and collector of student songs. Born in Altona, he studied law in Jena and Kiel. Serving as Hofmeister for a fellow student of noble background, he moved to the University of Göttingen in 1782. He returned to Kiel in 1783, where he received his PhD, and lectured on statistics and political science from 1785.
Go to Profile#14344
Paul Waley
#57839
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul Waley, a great-nephew of the scholar and translator Arthur Waley, is senior lecturer in human geography at the University of Leeds, and the author of books an articles on Tokyo and other topics in urban studies, the history of Japan and related fields.
Go to Profile#14345
Prabhu Dayal Nigam
#68618
Overall Influence
Prabhu Dayal Nigam is an Indian interventional cardiologist, medical academic and the founder of the department of cardiology at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi. Holder of multiple master's degrees in medicine, he was a senior consultant of cardiology at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Delhi.
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Miles Richmond
#60694
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Miles Peter Richmond was a British artist. Born Peter Richmond, in Isleworth, Middlesex, he added the name Miles in the 1980s, and became generally known as such. From 1940 to 1943 he attended Kingston School of Art, and then, as a conscientious objector during World War Two, he worked on the land. This caused a rift with his father, an Admiralty engineer, and was thought by his intimates to account, at least in part, for the palpable emotional depth and passion of his paintings.
Go to Profile#14347
Kenji Tokitsu
#27248
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
is a Japanese author and practitioner of Japanese martial arts. Tokitsu has also written a scholarly work about the legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto. He holds doctorates in sociology and in Japanese language and civilization.
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Yelena Malysheva
#39715
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Yelena Vasilyevna Malysheva is a Russian physician, internist, cardiologist, teacher, and television host. She has been educating Russians on healthy lifestyles for two decades. She hosts the TV programs Zdorovye and Zhit zdorovo! , which air on Channel One. She is currently a professor at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry.
Go to Profile#14349
Elizabeth Bass
1876 - 1956 (80 years)
Mary Elizabeth Bass was an American physician, educator and suffragist. She was the first of two women to become faculty members at the medical school of Tulane University along with Edith Ballard. Bass worked to promote the efforts of women as physicians. She worked at Tulane for thirty years.
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Gabriel Zada
#137417
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Gabriel Zada is Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California. He is known for his expertise in brain tumor and pituitary tumor surgery and as an innovator in minimally invasive cranial surgery. Zada is the director of the USC Brain Tumor Center, USC Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery Program and USC Radiosurgery Center. He is also an NIH-funded principal investigator at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute. He specializes in endoscopic and minimally invasive neurosurgical techniques. During his career, he has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles on various neurosurgical topics, and holds numerous U.S.
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