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,
#14501
Woodbridge Riley
1869 - 1933 (64 years)
Isaac Woodbridge Riley was an American academic scholar who worked in and across the areas of philosophy, religion, and psychology. His published work often combined two of these disciplines in considering the historical development of a social movement or entity , particularly examining the influence of the founders' psychological character. His books concerning the foundation and moral standing of Mormonism and Christian Science made him a focus of controversy. Most of his career was spent as a professor of philosophy at Vassar College.
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Nikephoros Blemmydes
1197 - 1269 (72 years)
Nikephoros Blemmydes was a 13th-century Byzantine author. Biography Blemmydes was born in 1197 in Constantinople as the second child of a physician. After the conquest of Constantinople by the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, he migrated to Asia Minor. There, he received a liberal education in Prusa, Nicaea, Smyrna and Scamander. Blemmydes studied medicine, philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy, logic, and rhetoric. When he finally acquired a career as a cleric, he took an active part in the theological controversies between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, writing treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, advocating the western usage.
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Octave Chanute
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
Octave Chanute was a French-American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He advised and publicized many aviation enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers. At his death, he was hailed as the father of aviation and the initial concepts of the heavier-than-air flying machine.
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Emil von Behring
1854 - 1917 (63 years)
Emil von Behring , born Emil Adolf Behring , was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin. He was widely known as a "saviour of children", as diphtheria used to be a major cause of child death. His work with the disease, as well as tetanus, has come to bring him most of his fame and acknowledgment. He was honoured with Prussian nobility in 1901, henceforth being known by the surname "von Behring."
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Konstantin Yuon
1875 - 1958 (83 years)
Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon or Juon was a noted Russian painter and theatre designer associated with the Mir Iskusstva. Later, he co-founded the Union of Russian Artists and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia.
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Otis Hamilton Lee
1902 - 1948 (46 years)
Otis Hamilton Lee was an American philosopher, noteworthy as a Guggenheim Fellow. Lee attended Fargo College from 1920 to 1922 and then the University of Minnesota, where he graduated with B.A. in 1924. From 1924 to 1927 he was a Rhodes Scholar at St John's College, Oxford, where he graduated with A.B. in 1926. From 1927 to 1929 he was an instructor in philosophy at the University of Michigan. In 1930 he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University, where he was an Austin Fellow from 1929 to 1930. At Harvard University he was an instructor and tutor from 1930 to 1933 and for the academic year 1934–1935.
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Jimmy Ernst
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Hans-Ulrich Ernst , known as Jimmy Ernst, was an American painter born in Germany. Early life Jimmy Ernst was born in 1920 in Cologne, Germany, the son of German Surrealist painter Max Ernst and Luise Straus-Ernst, a well-known art historian and journalist. His parents separated in 1922 and divorced in 1926 and Ernst remained with his mother in Cologne. He visited his father in France in 1930, where he met many artists, including Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Joan Miró, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy, as well as his father's lover Leonora Carrington. In February 1933, a month after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the SS searched Luise Straus' apartment.
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Léontine Zanta
1872 - 1942 (70 years)
Léontine Zanta was a French philosopher, feminist and novelist. One of the first two women to gain a doctorate in France, and the first to do so in philosophy, Zanta "was an intellectual celebrity in her day, active in journalism and in the feminist movement of the 1920s."
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David Teniers the Younger
1610 - 1690 (80 years)
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
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Erich Unger
1887 - 1950 (63 years)
Erich Unger was a Jewish philosopher of standing who published many articles and a number of books, many of them in his native tongue, German. His writings cover a wide range of topics: poetry, Nietzsche, political theory, general philosophy and Jewish philosophy.
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Josip Križan
1841 - 1921 (80 years)
Josip Križan was a Slovenian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer. He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy in Graz and between 1867 and 1869 obtained a doctorate to become a professor.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
#14513
Otto Heubner
1843 - 1926 (83 years)
Johann Otto Leonhard Heubner was a German internist and pediatrician who was a native of Mühltroff. He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, and in 1867 became an assistant to Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich at Leipzig. He later founded a children's hospital and clinic in Leipzig, and in 1891 was appointed to the chair of pediatrics. In 1894 he moved to Berlin, where he became director of the children's clinic and polyclinic at the Charité.
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Valerius Cordus
1515 - 1544 (29 years)
Valerius Cordus was a German physician, botanist and pharmacologist who authored the first pharmacopoeia North of the Alps and one of the most celebrated herbals in history. He is also widely credited with developing a method for synthesizing ether .
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Belle da Costa Greene
1883 - 1950 (67 years)
Belle da Costa Greene was an American librarian who managed and developed the personal library of J. P. Morgan. After Morgan's death in 1913, Greene continued as librarian for his son, Jack Morgan, and in 1924 was named the first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Despite being born to Black parents, Greene spent her professional career passing for white.
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Laurens Perseus Hickok
1798 - 1888 (90 years)
Laurens Perseus Hickok , American philosopher and divine, was born in Connecticut. Biography He took his degree at Union College in 1820. Until 1836 he was occupied in active pastoral work, and was then appointed professor of theology at the Western Reserve College, Ohio, and later at the Auburn Theological Seminary in Auburn, New York.
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Jean Bourdeau
1848 - 1928 (80 years)
Jean Bourdeau was a French writer, known for his books on aspects of socialism. He was also a translator of Schopenhauer, and an early adopter in France of some of the thought of Nietzsche. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from Johannes Janssen to Maxim Gorky and the rising personality cult of Lenin. He contributed in particular to the Journal des Débats, on contemporary philosophy
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Sophia Jex-Blake
1840 - 1912 (72 years)
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher, and feminist. She led the campaign to secure women access to a university education, when six other women and she, collectively known as the Edinburgh Seven, began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the wider United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; a leading campaigner for medical education for women, she was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were...
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Robert Henry Perry
#14520
Victor F. Tapson
#14521
Andrew D. Blann
#14522
James Allen
1864 - 1912 (48 years)
James Allen was a British philosophical writer known for his inspirational books and poetry and as a pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, As a Man Thinketh, has been mass-produced since its publication in 1902. It has been a source of inspiration to motivational and self-help authors.
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Susan Taubes
1928 - 1969 (41 years)
Susan Taubes was a Hungarian-American writer and intellectual. Taubes was born in Budapest, Hungary, into a Jewish family. Her grandfather Mózes Feldmann was the head of the Conservative or "Status Quo" branch of the divided Hungarian rabbinate in Pest, and her father Sándor Feldmann was a psychoanalyst of Sándor Ferenczi's school, though the two colleagues had a falling out in 1923.
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Kanokogi Kazunobu
1884 - 1949 (65 years)
Kanokogi Kazunobu 鹿子木員信 was a Japanese professor, philosopher, mountaineer, author and war criminal. After training as a naval engineer, he saw combat in the Russo-Japanese War; after converting to Christianity he resigned his commission and travelled to the United States to study theology at Union Theological Seminary and philosophy at Columbia University.
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Frank Lynn Iber
#14526
E. S. Russell
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Edward Stuart Russell OBE FLS was a Scottish biologist and philosopher of biology. Russell was born near Glasgow. He studied at Greenock Academy and later at Glasgow University under Sir Graham Kerr and worked with J. Arthur Thompson after he graduated. He was influenced by his friend Patrick Geddes and in his zoological studies, sought to find holistic principles. He also believed in Lamarckian heritability. He was involved in fishery research, working on research vessels and publishing on the biology of cephalopods and quantitative methods for gathering fishery data. He also worked as Scottish Fisheries expert, Inspector of Fisheries and as an advisor to HM Government.
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Gregory of Rimini
1300 - 1358 (58 years)
Gregory of Rimini , also called Gregorius de Arimino or Ariminensis, was one of the great scholastic philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. He was the first scholastic writer to unite the Oxonian and Parisian traditions in 14th-century philosophy, and his work had a lasting influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation. His scholastic nicknames were Doctor acutus and Doctor authenticus.
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Paul Bril
1556 - 1626 (70 years)
Paul Bril was a Flemish painter and printmaker principally known for his landscapes. He spent most of his active career in Rome. His Italianate landscapes had a major influence on landscape painting in Italy and Northern Europe.
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Burton Edward Livingston
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Burton Edward Livingston was an American plant physiologist, born at Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was educated at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago , where he worked as an assistant from 1899 to 1905. He published Róle of Diffusion and Osmotic Pressure in Plants . In 1913, Livingston became the professor of plant physiology at Johns Hopkins University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as the Society for Science and the Public, from 1930 to 1937. He was elected to th...
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John Bulwer
1606 - 1656 (50 years)
John Bulwer was an English physician and early Baconian natural philosopher who wrote five works exploring the Body and human communication, particularly by gesture. He was the first person in England to propose educating deaf people, the plans for an Academy he outlines in Philocophus and The Dumbe mans academie.
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Carsun Chang
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Carsun Chang Biography A pioneering theorist of human rights in the Chinese context, Chang established his own small "Third Force" democratic party during the Nationalist era. Chang supported German-style social democracy while opposing capitalism, communism, and guild socialism. He supported socialization of major industries such as railroads and mines to be run by a combination of government officials, technicians, and consumers. The development of a mixed economy in China, like that advocated by the Social Democratic Party of Germany under Philipp Scheidemann.
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Karl von Piloty
1826 - 1886 (60 years)
Karl Theodor von Piloty was a German painter, noted for his historical subjects, and recognised as the foremost representative of the realistic school in Germany. Life and work Piloty was born in Munich. His father, Ferdinand Piloty , enjoyed a great reputation as a lithographer. In 1840, Karl was admitted as a student of the Munich Academy, under the artists Karl Schorn and Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld. A year later the acclaimed history paintings , i.e. the Compromise of the nobles and The Abdication of Charles V by the two Belgian artists Edouard de Bièfve and Louis Gallait, were shown i...
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Saint Lawrence
225 - 258 (33 years)
Saint Lawrence or Laurence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman Emperor Valerian ordered in 258.
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Wojciech Gerson
1831 - 1901 (70 years)
Wojciech Gerson was a leading Polish painter of the mid-19th century, and one of the foremost representatives of the Polish school of Realism during the foreign Partitions of Poland. He served as long-time professor of the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and taught future luminaries of Polish neo-romanticism including Józef Chełmoński, Leon Wyczółkowski, Władysław Podkowiński, Józef Pankiewicz and Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa among others. He also wrote art-reviews and published a book of anatomy for the artists. A large number of his paintings were stolen by Nazi Germany in World War II, and ...
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John Millott Ellis
1831 - 1894 (63 years)
John Millott Ellis was a 19th-century abolitionist minister and intellectual who served as acting President of Oberlin College in 1871. He was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin from 1866 to 1896.
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William Leslie Davidson
1848 - 1929 (81 years)
William Leslie Davidson was a Scottish philosopher. Early life Davidson was born and raised in Old Rayne, a village in the north-east of Scotland, near Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen University before embarking on a career and life dedicated to philosophy.
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T. E. Jessop
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Thomas Edmund Jessop, was a British academic best known for his work on George Berkeley. Biography Jessop was born, the son of Newton and Georgiana Jessop, in Huddersfield on 10 September 1896. He was educated at the University of Leeds, where he received his B.A. and M.A. . He gained his B.Litt from Oriel College, Oxford. From 1925 to 1928 he was an assistant lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
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Joseph Grasset
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Joseph Grasset , was a French neurologist and parapsychological investigator, born in Montpellier. He received his medical degree in Montpellier, where in 1881 he became a professor of therapy. In 1886, he attained the chair of clinical medicine, and in 1909 was appointed chair of general pathology.
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Friedrich Harms
1819 - 1880 (61 years)
Friedrich Harms was a German realist philosopher, much influenced by Fichte. He studied philosophy at the University of Kiel as a pupil of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus. In 1842 he obtained his habilitation for philosophy at Kiel, where he later became an associate professor . In 1867 he relocated to the University of Berlin as a professor of philosophy.
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Charles Carroll Everett
1829 - 1900 (71 years)
Charles Carroll Everett was an American divine and philosopher. Early life and education Charles was born on June 19, 1829, in Brunswick, Maine, to Ebenezer Everett and Joanna Batchedler Prince. His father was a prominent citizen of Brunswick, a Harvard educated lawyer, banker, and long-time trustee of Bowdoin College. During the 1840s he was also elected to represent Brunswick in the Maine Legislature. The Everetts were an old, notable, and well connected New England family. Among his father's first cousins were Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett and Ambassador Alexander Hill Everett.
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Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis
1815 - 1886 (71 years)
Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis was a German theologian and philosopher born in Münster. Biography He studied philosophy and theology at the Academy of Münster, receiving his ordination in 1838. From 1845 he was a chaplain and school teacher in Duisburg, and later an instructor at the Episcopal Theological Institute in Paderborn. From 1855 to 1864 he served as pastor in Münster-Albachten, and from 1864 to 1872 was a professor of philosophy at the Lyceum in Braunsberg. In 1860 he participated in the Erfurt conference that would lead to Julie von Massow's Ut Omnes Unum movement, which so...
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Thomas Vaughan
1621 - 1666 (45 years)
Thomas Vaughan was a Welsh clergyman, philosopher, and alchemist, who wrote in English. He is now remembered for his work in the field of natural magic. He also published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes.
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Im Yunjidang
1721 - 1793 (72 years)
Im Yunjidang was a Korean writer and neo-Confucian philosopher from the Chosŏn dynasty . She defended the right for a woman to become a Confucian master and argued that men and women did not differ in their human nature by interpretations of Confucianism values in moral self-cultivation and human nature.
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Adam de Wodeham
1298 - 1358 (60 years)
Adam of Wodeham, OFM was a philosopher and theologian. Currently, Wodeham is best known for having been a secretary of William Ockham and for his interpretations of John Duns Scotus. But Wodeham was also an influential thinker in his own right who made valuable philosophical contributions during his life.
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Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling
1671 - 1729 (58 years)
Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling , was a German jurist and eclectic philosopher. He was born in Kirchensittenbach, and died in Magdeburg. He was the brother of Jacob Paul von Gundling, Court Historiographer to King Frederick I of Prussia, who became a figure of ridicule in the "Tobacco Cabinet" of Frederick William I.
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Saint Florian
250 - 304 (54 years)
Florian was a Christian holy man and the patron saint of chimney sweeps; soapmakers, and firefighters. His feast day is 4 May. Florian is also the patron saint of Poland, the city of Linz, Austria, and Upper Austria, jointly with Leopold III, Margrave of Austria.
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Vladimir Becić
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Vladimir Becić was a Croatian painter, best known for his early work in Munich, which had a strong influence on the direction of modern art in Croatia. Becić studied painting in Munich at the prestigious Academy of Arts along with Oskar Herman, Miroslav Kraljević and Josip Račić. This group of Croatian artists are known as the Munich Circle or Munich Four, and are very important figures in Croatian art of the 20th century. After Munich, Becić spent 2 years studying and working in Paris before returning to Zagreb in 1910.
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William Smellie
1740 - 1795 (55 years)
William Smellie was a Scottish printer who edited the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was also a naturalist and antiquary. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, co-founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a friend of Robert Burns.
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Christiaan Eijkman
1858 - 1930 (72 years)
Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic vitamins . Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins.
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Dharmakīrtiśrī
950 - Present (1076 years)
Dharmakīrtiśrī , also known as Kulānta and Suvarṇadvipi Dharmakīrti, was a renowned 10th century Buddhist teacher remembered as a key teacher of Atiśa. His name refers to the region he lived, somewhere in Lower Burma, the Malay Peninsula or Sumatra.
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