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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#14551
William Thomson
1601 - 1753 (152 years)
William Thomson was a Scottish folk song collector and singer. He is said to have been the son of Daniel Thomson, one of the king's trumpeters for Scotland. As a boy singer, he sang at a concert – The Feast of St. Cecillia – in 1695. Before 1722, he had settled in London, and according to Charles Burney had a benefit concert that year. He appears to have become a fashionable singer, as his volume, dedicated to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, contains a lengthy list of notable persons as subscribers.
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Vito Fazio-Allmayer
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Vito Fazio-Allmayer was an Italian philosopher, pedagogist and university teacher. Biography He was born in Palermo from Giuseppe Emanuele Fazio, originary from Alcamo and from Felicina Allmayer, of German origins but resident in Italy. Since a boy he was interested in the history of art; when he was 23 he graduated in Jurisprudence, but as he was fond of philosophy, he soon started the philosophical studies and attended the philosophical library of Palermo, where he met Giovanni Gentile.
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William Cumin
1784 - 1854 (70 years)
William Cumin was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow between 1834 and 1840. He was the son of Patrick Cumin , professor of oriental languages at the University of Glasgow, and his wife Rachael Baird. The Scottish philosopher David Hume in a letter to Adam Smith in June 1761 had recommended Cumin's father for his position.
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Ferdinand Laufberger
1829 - 1881 (52 years)
Ferdinand Julius Wilhelm Laufberger was an Austrian painter and etcher. Biography Laufberger trained at both the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He initially painted genre scenes of peasant and village life then, in 1855, on behalf of Österreichischer Lloyd , travelled through the Danube Vilayet to Istanbul, creating a series of drawings that were made into popular engravings. While in Istanbul, Laufberger made several connections with Caucasus Germans that had settled in Istanbul, and the material he drew from them provided inspiration to his later work.
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Peter of Capua the Elder
1150 - 1214 (64 years)
Peter of Capua was an Italian scholastic theologian and prelate. He served as cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata from 1193 until 1201 and cardinal-priest of San Marcello al Corso from 1201 until his death. He often worked as a papal legate. He wrote several theological works and was a patron of his hometown of Amalfi.
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María Teresa Ferrari
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
María Teresa Ferrari was an Argentine educator, physician, and women's rights activist. She was the first female university professor in Latin America and one of the first women allowed to teach medicine. She was a pioneering researcher in women's health, studying the use of radiation therapy rather than surgery for uterine tumors and developing a vaginoscope that revolutionized women's health care in Brazil. She established the first maternity ward and gynecological services at the Hospital Militar Central of Buenos Aires in 1925, which provided the first incubation services in the country.
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William Kilpatrick Stewart
1914 - 1967 (53 years)
Air Vice Marshal William Kilpatrick Stewart, was a Scottish researcher in aerospace physiology, senior consultant in physiology to the Royal Air Force, and commanding officer of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine.
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Reuben Ottenberg
1882 - 1959 (77 years)
Reuben Ottenberg was an American physician and haematologist, who served Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City with distinction for 50 years. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1902 and his M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons three years later.
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Aesara
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Aesara of Lucania was a conjectured Pythagorean philosopher who may have written On Human Nature, a fragment of which is preserved by Stobaeus, although the majority of critical scholars follow Holger Thesleff in attributing it to Aresas, a male writer from Lucania who is also mentioned by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras.
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Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty
1825 - 1874 (49 years)
Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty, also spelled Surjo Kumar Chakraborty was the first Indian to pass the examination of the Indian Medical Service in 1855 and subsequently became the Professor of Materia Medica at Calcutta Medical College in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
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Ivan Loveridge Bennett
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
Ivan Loveridge Bennett, Jr. was an American physician who was dean of the NYU School of Medicine and served as president of New York University 1980–1981. Bennett was educated at Emory University where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. Graduated with a B.A. in 1943, and a medical degree in 1946. Bennett was Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Lyndon B. Johnson between 1967 and 1969. Bennett was also director of the department of pathology at Johns Hopkins University and also taught at Yale and New York University.
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Thomas Malcolm Knox
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox was a British philosopher who served as Principal of St Andrews University from 1953 to 1966 and Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1978. Biography Knox was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, on 28 November 1900, the son of Scottish Congregationalist minister James Knox and his wife Isabella Marshall.
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Miles of Marseilles
1294 - 1301 (7 years)
Miles of Marseille was a Provençal-Jewish physician and philosopher of the Middle Ages. He was born at Marseille around 1294. In some manuscripts he is designated by the name "Bongodos," the Provençal language equivalent of "ben Judah."
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David Boswell Reid
1805 - 1863 (58 years)
Prof David Boswell Reid MD FRSE FRCPE was a British physician, chemist and inventor. Through reports on public hygiene and ventilation projects in public buildings, he made a reputation in the field of sanitation. He has been called the "grandfather of air-conditioning".
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Richard Russell
1687 - 1759 (72 years)
Richard Russell was an 18th-century British physician who encouraged his patients to use a form of water therapy that involved the submersion or bathing in, and drinking of, seawater. The contemporary equivalent of this is thalassotherapy, although the practice of drinking seawater has largely discontinued.
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Menedemus the Cynic
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Menedemus was a Cynic philosopher, and a pupil of the Epicurean Colotes of Lampsacus. Diogenes Laërtius states that he used to go about garbed as a Fury, proclaiming himself a sort of spy from Hades: He assumed the garb of a Fury, and went about saying that he had come from Hades to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend there again and make his report to the deities who live in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark colour reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embro...
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Babowai
450 - 484 (34 years)
Babowai was Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Patriarch of the Church of the East from 457 to 484, during the reign of the Sassanid King Peroz I. Babowai was known for his pro-Byzantine leanings, for which he was often in conflict with other members of the anti-Byzantine Church of the East. He was executed in 484.
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Benno Baginsky
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Benno Baginsky was a German physician specializing in the field of otorhinolaryngology. He was a younger brother to pediatrician Adolf Aron Baginsky . He studied medicine in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1870. Following service as a physician in the Franco-Prussian War, he began practicing medicine and soon found himself specializing in diseases of the ear, nose and larynx. In 1884 he became a privat-docent of otology, rhinology and laryngology at the University of Berlin, and in 1897 received the title of professor. Among his assistants at Berlin was fellow otorhinolaryngologist Jacob K...
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Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib al-Sarakhsi
833 - 899 (66 years)
Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib al-Sarakhsi was a Persian traveler, historian and philosopher from the city of Sarakhs. He was a pupil of al-Kindi. Al-Sarakhsi was killed by Caliph al-Mu'tadid because, according to an anecdote preserved in Yaqut al-Hamawi's Mu'jam al-Udaba, he had urged the caliph towards apostasy. Al-Biruni reports in his Chronology that al-Sarakhsi had written books in which he denounced prophecy and ridiculed the prophets, whom he styled charlatans. However, Rosenthal has disputed the historicity of the stories that claim al-Sarakhsi was executed for heretical beliefs.
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Josephine Adams Rathbone
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
Josephine Adams Rathbone was a librarian, library educator, author, and president of the American Library Association in 1931–32. She was born in Jamestown, New York. She began her studies at the University of Michigan from 1887 to 1891, then moved to New York where she graduated from the New York State Library School in 1893 earning a B.L.S. After working for two years as an assistant cataloger at the Pratt Institute Free Library she was appointed "chief instructor" at the Pratt Institute Library School in 1895 under Mary Wright Plummer. When Plummer went to the New York Public Library to e...
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John Black Cowan
1829 - 1896 (67 years)
John Black Cowan was Regius Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Glasgow. External links
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Karl Stoerk
1832 - 1899 (67 years)
Karl Stoerk was an Austrian laryngologist who was a native of Ofen. He studied medicine at the Universities of Prague and Vienna, and received his doctorate in 1858. Afterwards he was an assistant to Ludwig Türck in Vienna, where he practiced medicine for the remainder of his career. In 1891 Stoerk was appointed head of the laryngological clinic.
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Carl Breus
1852 - 1914 (62 years)
Carl Breus was an Austrian obstetrician born in Vienna. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, earning his doctorate in 1876. Afterwards he was an assistant at the Vienna Maternity Clinic, and in 1883 received his habilitation.
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Harry Williams
1879 - 1922 (43 years)
Harry Hiram Williams was an American composer, lyricist, and publisher of popular music from 1903 until his death in 1922. One of his early hits, written in 1905 with Egbert Van Alstyne, is "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree". He also produced story ideas and directed silent movies with Mack Sennett for Keystone Studios, according to Sennett's biography The King of Comedy. Williams joined The Lambs Club in 1908.
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Ernst Adolf Coccius
1825 - 1890 (65 years)
Ernst Adolf Coccius was a German ophthalmologist who was a native of Knauthain, which today is part of the city of Leipzig. He studied medicine in Leipzig, Prague and Paris, and earned his degree in 1848 with the thesis "De morbis typhum sequentibus". From 1849 to 1857 he served as an assistant to Friedrich Philipp Ritterich at the Leipzig Eye Clinic, becoming its director and a full professor in 1867, positions he held up until his death in 1890. After his death, he was succeeded by Hubert Sattler at the University of Leipzig.
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Hippolito Salviani
1514 - 1572 (58 years)
Hippolito Salviani was an Italian physician, scholar and naturalist, noted for his Renaissance book Aquatilium animalium historiae, depicting about hundred Mediterranean fish species, some from Illyria, and a few mollusks. He also wrote works on medicine, such as that dealing with Galen's theory of crises, and a topical play. Salviani taught at the University of Rome until 1568. From 1550 until 1555 he was chief physician to the House of Farnese and three successive popes, Pope Julius III, Pope Marcellus II and Pope Paul IV.
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Uhwudong
1430 - 1480 (50 years)
Eowudong or Uhwudong , also known as Eoeuludong , née Park , was a Korean dancer, writer, artist, and poet from a noble family in the Joseon Dynasty of the 15th century. Most of her work has not been preserved. She is described to be one of the evil women from the Joseon Dynasty along with Queen Munjeong, Jang Nok-su, and Royal Noble Consort Hui.
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Otto Hildebrand
1858 - 1927 (69 years)
Otto Hildebrand was a German pathologist and surgeon. He was the son of economist Bruno Hildebrand and the brother of sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand . He studied anatomy and surgery at the University of Jena, and from 1886 served as assistant to Franz König at the University of Göttingen. In 1888 he obtained his habilitation for surgery, and in 1896 was named head of the surgical polyclinic at the Berlin-Charité. In 1899 he succeeded August Socin as a professor of surgery at the University of Basel, then in 1904 returned to Berlin as successor to his former mentor, Franz König, at the Charité...
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David Forman
1745 - 1797 (52 years)
David Forman was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey of parents Joseph Forman and Elizabeth Lee. His father was a wealthy shipowner and he was educated at Princeton. At the start of the American Revolutionary War he rallied to the patriot cause and was appointed lieutenant colonel of a New Jersey state regiment. When his commander assumed command of the brigade, he was promoted colonel of the regiment during the New York and New Jersey Campaign in 1776. At the time of the battles of Trenton and Princeton Forman's regiment waged a merciless war against the American Loyalists of Monmouth County.
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Edmund von Neusser
1852 - 1912 (60 years)
Edmund von Neusser was an Austrian internist of Polish origin. He studied medicine in Kraków and Vienna, earning his medical doctorate in 1877. At the University of Vienna, he was a student of epidemiologist Anton Drasche. Beginning in 1880, he spent several years as an assistant to Heinrich von Bamberger in Vienna, afterwards being named primary physician at the Rudolfspital . In 1893 he became a full professor and director of the second medical clinic in Vienna.
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Hermann Fehling
1847 - 1925 (78 years)
Hermann Johannes Karl Fehling was a German obstetrician and gynecologist who was a native of Stuttgart. He was the son of the chemist Hermann von Fehling . In 1872 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig, and following graduation remained in Leipzig as an assistant to obstetrician Carl Siegmund Franz Credé . In 1877 he became director of the Württemberg state midwifery school in Stuttgart, and later accepted a teaching job at the University of Tübingen .
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Rudolf Blasius
1842 - 1907 (65 years)
Rudolf Heinrich Paul Blasius was a German physician, bacteriologist, naturalist and ornithologist.Blasius was the son of Johann Heinrich Blasius, professor of natural history at the Collegium Carolinum and director of the Ducal Museum and Luise . The family came from Sophiental and Rudolf became interested in natural history of the region while visiting his grandparents. His brother Wilhelm Blasius became an ornithologist. He later went on field trips with Adolph Nehrkorn and they published a list of the birds of the Braunschweig region. Rudolf studied at the Collegium Carolinum and then stu...
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Wilhelm Alexander Freund
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
Wilhelm Alexander Freund was a German gynecologist who was a native of Krappitz, Silesia. Born into a Jewish family, in 1855 he earned his medical degree at the University of Breslau, afterwards practicing gynecology in the same city. In 1874 he became an associate professor at Breslau. In 1879 he relocated to Strasbourg, where he served as a professor of gynecology and obstetrics. He died in Berlin.
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Apollonides
50 BC - Present (2076 years)
Apollonides was a Stoic philosopher. He was a friend and companion of Cato the Younger. The sole record of Apollonides is within Plutarch's account of Cato the Younger in Parallel Lives. From this account, there is evidence that after the Battle of Thapsus, Apollonides was present with Cato at Utica. During this time, Cato ordered a young man named Statyllius to leave Utica. When Statyllius refused, Cato appointed Apollonides and Demetrius the Peripatetic to "reduce this man's swollen pride and restore him to conformity with his best interests." When Cato later inquired if Statyllius was sen...
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Nymphidianus of Smyrna
350 - Present (1676 years)
Nymphidianus of Smyrna, was a Neoplatonist and sophist who lived in the time of the emperor Julian . He was the brother of Maximus. Julian, who was greatly attached to Maximus, made Nymphidianus his interpreter and Greek secretary, though he was more fit to write declamations and disputations than letters. Eunapius thought that Nymphidianus was a worthy sophist even though he had not been educated at Athens . Nymphidianus survived his brother Maximus, and died at an advanced age.
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Elias Tillandz
1640 - 1693 (53 years)
Elias Tillandz was a Swedish-born doctor and botanist who worked in Finland. He was the professor of medicine at the Academy of Turku. He wrote the country's first botanical work, the Catalogus Plantarum, which was first published in 1673. As a doctor he also prepared medicines for his patients by using his extensive knowledge of plants.
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Xun Xu
201 - 289 (88 years)
Xun Xu , courtesy name Gongzeng, was a Chinese musician, painter, politician, and writer who lived during the late Three Kingdoms period and early Jin dynasty of China. Born in the influential Xun family, he was a great-grandson of Xun Shuang and a distant maternal relative of Zhong Yao's family . He served as an official in the state of Cao Wei in the late Three Kingdoms era before serving under the Jin dynasty.
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Apollodorus the Epicurean
150 BC - 150 BC (0 years)
Apollodorus was an Epicurean philosopher, and head of the Epicurean school in Athens. According to Diogenes Laërtius, he was surnamed Tyrant of the Garden from his exercising a kind of tyranny or supremacy in the garden or school of Epicurus. He was the teacher of Zeno of Sidon, who succeeded him as the head of the school, about 100 BC. He is said to have written upwards of 400 books, but they have all perished.
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Jan Šindel
1375 - 1456 (81 years)
Jan Šindel , also known as Jan Ondřejův , was a Czech medieval scientist and Catholic priest. He was a professor at Charles University in Prague and became the rector of the university in 1410. He lectured on mathematics and astronomy and was also a personal astrologer and physician of kings Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia and his brother Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund.
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Cronius the Pythagorean
200 - 200 (0 years)
Cronius was a celebrated Neopythagorean philosopher. He was probably a contemporary of Numenius of Apamea, who lived in the 2nd century, and he is often spoken of along with him. Nemesius mentions a work of his On Reincarnation, , and Origen is said to have diligently studied the works of Cronius. Porphyry also states that he endeavoured to explain the fables of the Homeric poems in a philosophical manner. This is all we know about Cronius, although he appears to have been very distinguished among the Neopythagoreans.
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Helvidius Priscus
50 - 75 (25 years)
Helvidius Priscus, Stoic philosopher and statesman, lived during the reigns of Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian. Biography Helvidius came from town of Cluviae, and his father had been the senior centurion of a legion. According to Tacitus, from early youth he devoted his brilliant intellect to academic studies, not in order to disguise ease and idleness under a pretentious name, but to arm himself more stoutly against the unpredictable fluctuations of fortune of a public career. As citizen, senator, husband, son-in-law and friend, he met the varied obligations of life in a consiste...
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Batis of Lampsacus
350 BC - 210 BC (140 years)
Batis of Lampsacus, was a student of Epicurus at Lampsacus in the early 3rd century BC. According to Diogenes Laertius, she was the sister of Metrodorus and wife of Idomeneus. Seneca the Younger recounts that when Batis' son died, Metrodorus wrote a letter to his sister offering comfort, telling her that "all the Good of mortals is mortal," and "that there is a certain pleasure akin to sadness, and that one should give chase thereto at such times as these." Fragments of a letter from Epicurus to Batis on the death of Metrodorus in 277 BC have also been discovered among the papyri at Herculaneum.
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Aristus of Ascalon
50 BC - 50 BC (0 years)
Aristus was a philosopher of ancient Greece from Ashkelon, aligned with the "Academic" school of philosophy, also known as Platonism. He was the pupil of and later successor to his brother, the more famous and renowned Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, and was generally considered to be the inferior philosopher.
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Polystratus the Epicurean
Polystratus ; died 219/18 BCEscholarch Fragments of two of his works survive among the scrolls found at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. The first is On Irrational Contempt, which is a polemic directed "against those who irrationally despise popular beliefs." His opponents in the work may be the Cynics or the Skeptics. The second preserved work is entitled On Philosophy, of which only broken fragments can be deciphered.
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Philonides of Laodicea
200 BC - 130 BC (70 years)
Philonides of Laodicea in Syria, was an Epicurean philosopher and mathematician who lived in the Seleucid court during the reigns of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Demetrius I Soter. He is known principally from a Life of Philonides, which was discovered among the charred papyrus scrolls at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Philonides was born into a family with good connections with the Seleucid court. He is said to have been taught by Eudemus and Dionysodorus the mathematician. Philonides attempted to convert Antiochus IV Epiphanes to Epicureanism, and later instructed his nephew, Demetrius I Soter, in philosophy.
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Asclepiodotus
100 BC - Present (2126 years)
Asclepiodotus Tacticus , also known as Asclepiodotus, was a Greek writer and philosopher known for his treatise on military tactics. Life Little is known about the life of Asclepiodiotus. The Greek manuscripts read “ Asclepiodotus the Philosopher” and he has been identified with the Asclepiodotus mentioned by Seneca in his Naturales quaestiones. Seneca quotes Asclepiodotus on matters of natural history and also reports that he was a student of Posidonius, who, as mentioned by Aelianus Tacticus, also wrote a treatise on military tactics. If Asclepiodotus was indeed the student of Posidonius, h...
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Phaenias of Eresus
400 BC - 360 BC (40 years)
Phaenias of Eresus was a Greek philosopher from Lesbos, important as an immediate follower of and commentator on Aristotle. He came to Athens about 332 BCE, and joined his compatriot, Theophrastus, in the Peripatetic school. His writings on logic and science appear to have been commentaries or supplements to the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. He also wrote extensively on history. His works have only survived in fragments quoted by other authors.
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Antipater of Cyrene
400 BC - 360 BC (40 years)
Antipater of Cyrene was one of the disciples of the philosopher Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy. He had a pupil called Epitimedes of Cyrene. According to Cicero, he was blind, and when some women bewailed the fact, he replied, "What do you mean? Do you think the night can furnish no pleasure?"
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Philiscus of Aegina
350 BC - 400 BC (-50 years)
Philiscus of Aegina was a Cynic philosopher from Aegina, who lived in the latter half of the 4th century BC. He was the son of Onesicritus who sent Philiscus and his younger brother, Androsthenes, to Athens where they were so charmed by the philosophy of Diogenes of Sinope that Onesicritus also came to Athens and became his disciple. According to Hermippus of Smyrna, Philiscus was the pupil of Stilpo. He is also described as an associate of Phocion. The Suda claims that he was a teacher of Alexander the Great, but no other ancient writer mentions this. Aelian, though, has preserved a short ex...
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