Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#14701

Ann Barrett

#91245

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ann Barrett OBE , is Emeritus Professor of Oncology in the University of East Anglia, England, and formerly deputy dean of the School of Medicine and lead clinician for oncology at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust. She was awarded an OBE in 2010 for services to medicine. She is also a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

#14702

Alexander Catlin Twining

Alexander Catlin Twining

1801 - 1884 (83 years)

Alexander Catlin Twining was an American scientist and inventor. Twining, the son of Stephen Twining and Almira Twining, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, July 5, 1801. He graduated from Yale College in 1820. He left College with the intention of entering the ministry, and soon after studied for one year in Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he returned to New Haven as tutor in at Yale, in which office he served for two years.

#14703

Avo Sõmer

#73276

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Avo Sõmer is an American musicologist, music theorist, and composer, of Estonian birth. Sõmer was born in Tartu, Estonia. He emigrated from Estonia with his parents in 1944, when he was ten years old, first to Germany and then to the United States. He had already begun playing the piano as a child in Pärnu. In Germany he took some piano lessons and instruction in theory, and began to compose, but systematic instruction in music came only later. He majored in music education, piano performance, and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, followed by graduate studies at the University of Michigan where, in 1957, he earned an M.

#14704

Frank Scholze

#91499

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Frank Scholze is a German librarian. Since January 2020 he serves as the Director General of the German National Library. Education and career Scholze studied library and information science at the Stuttgart Media University, as well as art history and English literature at the University of Stuttgart. He started his professional career at the University of Stuttgart Library where he worked as project manager in various projects on digital libraries. Later he also worked there as a subject specialist and Head of the Public Services Department. After serving for two years at the Ministry of Sc...

#14705

Saviour Bernard

1724 - 1806 (82 years)

Saviour Bernard was a Maltese medical practitioner, a scientist, and a major philosopher. His areas of specialisation in philosophy were mostly philosophical psychology and physiology. Life Beginnings Bernard was born at Valletta, Malta, on November 29, 1724, from French parents. His family seems to have been well-off, enough, at least, to give Bernard a good initial formation, one which was probably better than that of his peers.

#14706

Robert A. Weiss

#105645

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Robert A. Weiss is an American dermatologist and current president of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery. Education Weiss earned his bachelor's degree from Columbia University, after which he obtained his MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, class of 1978. He did his residency in dermatology at Johns Hopkins, then went on to additional fellowship training in dermatologic research at the National Institutes of Health. Weiss is board certified by the American Board of Dermatology.

#14707

Hugo Wilhelm von Ziemssen

Hugo Wilhelm von Ziemssen

1829 - 1902 (73 years)

Hugo von Ziemssen was a German physician, born in Greifswald. He studied medicine at the universities of Greifswald, Berlin, and Würzburg. In 1863 he was called to the University of Erlangen as a professor of pathology and therapy as well as the director of the medical clinic. In 1874 he relocated to Munich as a professor and director of the general hospital.

#14708

Erica Spatz

#98596

Overall Influence

Erica S. Spatz is an American general cardiologist. She is an associate professor and clinical investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at the Yale University School of Medicine.

#14709

Carl Thomsen

1847 - 1912 (65 years)

Carl Christian Frederik Jacob Thomsen was a Danish painter and illustrator. He specialized in genre painting and also illustrated the works of several Danish authors. Biography Born in Copenhagen, Thomsen was the son of Chamber Councillor Ludvig Frederik Thomsen and the brother of the acclaimed linguist Vilhelm Thomsen . From an early age, Thomsen was interested in drawing but his parents first encouraged him to study philosophy. After he had graduated in 1866, he began studying art with Frederik Vermehren the same year. He then attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Wilhelm Marstrand, graduating in 1871.

#14710

Alan Emond

#169689

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Alan M. Emond is a British paediatrician and professor emeritus in Child Health at Bristol Medical School at the University of Bristol. Emond is most notable for research into child and adolescent injury, epidemiology and health service evaluation as well as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

#14711

Andrew Kambugu

#74881

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Andrew Ddungu Kambugu is a Ugandan physician who serves as The Sande-McKinnell Executive Director at Uganda Infectious Disease Institute and a Honorary Senior lecturer at Makerere University College of Sciences. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota. In July 2020, he was appointed to the United Nations 2021 Food System Scientific Group.

#14712

William Walker

1871 - 1918 (47 years)

William Walker was a prominent Irish trade unionist and a leading figure within the Belfast labour movement. He served as President of the Irish Trades Union Congress and Vice-Chair of the British Labour Party.

#14713

Gunnar Christie Wasberg

#102089

Overall Influence

1923 - 2015 (92 years)

Gunnar Christie Wasberg was a Norwegian historian, philosopher and first librarian at the University of Oslo Library. Biography Wasberg was born in the parish of Brunlanes at Larvik in Vestfold, Norway. He took the doctorate at Uppsala University in 1963 with the thesis Forsvarstanke og suverenitetsprinsipp. From 1967 to 1989 he was the prime librarian at the University Library of Oslo. Wasberg held a guest professorship at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also had other research engagement, and he was a guest lecturer, at a number of universities in Europe and in the United States.

#14714

Renaud Piarroux

#110305

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Renaud Piarroux is a French pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and tropical medicine. From 2008 to 2017, he has been a full professor of parasitology and mycology at the University of Aix-Marseille in Marseille, France, and head of parasitology and mycology at Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille. Since 2017, he has been a full professor of parasitology and mycology at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, and Head of Parasitology and Mycology at Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris. Over the years, Piarroux has taken part in several missions and research projects i...

#14715

Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam

Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam

#72261

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Mohsen Vaziri Moghaddam , was an Iranian-born painter, sculptor, and a professor of art. He was most notable for his style of abstract expressionism, and was once referred to as the "pioneer of modern Iranian abstraction."

#14716

Hiroshi Nakajima

#175587

Overall Influence

#14717

Richard Hooker

#23426

Overall Influence

1924 - 1997 (73 years)

Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's best-known work is his novel MASH , based on his experiences as a wartime United States Army surgeon doctor during the Korean War and written in collaboration with W.C. Heinz. It was used as the basis for an award-winning, critically and commercially successful movie – M*A*S*H — and two years later in an acclaimed long running television series of the same title.

#14718

Rachel Zuckert

#171242

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Rachel Elizabeth Zuckert is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the Northwestern University. She is known for her expertise on Kantian philosophy. Zuckert is a former president of North American Kant Society.

#14719

Emil von Dungern

1867 - 1961 (94 years)

Baron Emil von Dungern was a German internist. He was born in Würzburg and died in Bodman-Ludwigshafen. Von Dungern worked at the Heidelberg Institute for Experimental Cancer Research where he was the director of the scientific section. Ludwik Hirszfeld, the co-discoverer of the heritability of ABO blood groups, was his research assistant from 1907 to 1911. Hirszfeld, in his work Historia , described von Dungern as "a spiritual poet who had to fall in love with a problem in order to be able to work on it ... He was a flame burning from within."

#14720

Mark Wilson

#121704

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mark Lowell Wilson is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh. Wilson has authored several books on the philosophy of mathematics. Education and early life Wilson was raised in Oregon, and enrolled at Reed College between 1965 and 1967, before earning his bachelor's degree in 1969 from the University of Washington. He completed a doctorate at Harvard University in 1976, where his thesis was supervised by Hilary Putnam.

#14721

Asen Kozharov

1911 - 1988 (77 years)

Asen Todorov Kojarov was a Bulgarian philosopher, politician, yogi. He was a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Bulgarian Communist Party. Biography He was born in 1911 as Asen Charakchiev in the town of Nevrokop, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, now the town of Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria. In 1935 as a student of philosophy he was expelled from University of Sofia for communist activities and was sentenced to 12 1/2 years of imprisonment. In the prison, he illegally studied the classicists of Marxism-Leninism and guided circles in philosophy. Freed in 1940, he again joined the illegal communist movement.

#14722

Timothy M. Pawlik

#122891

Overall Influence

Timothy Michael Pawlik is an American surgical oncologist. He is Chair of the Department of Surgery and the Urban Meyer III and Shelley Meyer Chair for Cancer Research at The Ohio State University and Surgeon-in-Chief at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

#14723

William Smith

1653 - 1735 (82 years)

Reverend William Smith was an English antiquary responsible for the cataloguing of the archives of University College, Oxford, and composing an original and controversial history of the college, The Annals of University College. Smith was a Fellow of Oxford University, from 1675 to 1704, and then the rector of Melsonby, from 1704 to 1735.

#14724

J. Donald R. de Raadt

#58571

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

J. Donald R. de Raadt is a Swedish organizational theorist and Professor Emeritus in Informatics and System Science at Luleå University of Technology. Biography J. Donald R. de Raadt studied Economics and Politics at the University of Queensland, where he received a Bachelor of Arts, and later studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where he first obtained his post-graduate Fellowship Diploma in Management and then his Masters in Business. He obtained a Ph.D. in Sociology from La Trobe University, Melbourne.

#14725

Dagfinn Aarskog

Dagfinn Aarskog

#10278

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Dagfinn Aarskog was a Norwegian physician. Life He was born in Ålesund, Norway. He received his MD at the University of Bergen in 1956, and received a PhD in medicine in 1965. Aarskog was a specialist in pediatrics from 1964 and in medical genetics from 1974. In the period 1964 to 1965, he worked as a research assistant at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

#14726

Publius Volumnius

#127785

Overall Influence

Publius Volumnius was a 1st-century BC Roman philosopher, and a friend and companion of Marcus Junius Brutus who led the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. Volumnius and Brutus had been students of philosophy together.

#14727

Rudolph H. Weingartner

#90944

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Rudolph Herbert Weingartner was an American philosopher and academic administrator. He served as provost of the University of Pittsburgh and dean of Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

#14728

Hugh Binning

1627 - 1653 (26 years)

Hugh Binning was a Scottish philosopher and theologian. He was born in Scotland during the reign of Charles I and was ordained in the Church of Scotland. He died in 1653, during the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth of England.

#14729

Li Kui

500 BC - 400 BC (100 years)

Li Kui was a Chinese hydraulic engineer, philosopher, and politician. He served as government minister and court advisor to Marquis Wen in the state of Wei. In 407 BC, he wrote the Book of Law . Said to have been main a been a main influence on Shang Yang, it served the basis for the codified laws of the Qin and Han dynasties.

#14730

Nasim Amrohvi

1908 - 1987 (79 years)

Nasim Amrohvi or Syed Qaim Raza Taqvi He belonged to the Taqvi Syed family. His father was Syed Barjees Hussain Taqvi and his mother was Syeda Khatoon. His grand father was Shamim Amrohvi who was bestowed the title of Farazdaq-e-Hind.

#14731

Fritz Eisel

#29034

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Fritz Eisel was a German painter and graphic artist. Life Eisel was born into a Communist working-class family in Lauterbach, a small town roughly 100 km north-east of Frankfurt am Main. He was the eldest of his parents' five children. At the start of 1945 he was ordered to go to nearby Battenberg to join one of the flak units set up to try to reduce the impact of enemy bombing raids on the important railway line there. He did not obey the order, and very shortly afterwards the US army occupied Lauterbach. In May 1945 the end of the war marked a return to multi-party government and Eisel, by then 16 years old, immediately took the opportunity to join the local Communist Party.

#14732

Friedrich Kasimir Medikus

Friedrich Kasimir Medikus

1736 - 1808 (72 years)

Friedrich Kasimir Medikus was a German physician and botanist. He was born at Grumbach and became director of the University of Mannheim and curator of the botanical garden at Mannheim. He encouraged the cultivation of locust trees in Europe.

#14733

Hannah Arendt

#175693

Overall Influence

#14734

Catriona M. Steele

#170597

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Catriona Margaret Steele is a Canadian clinician-scientist. She is a Full professor in the department of speech-language pathology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute in the University Health Network.

#14735

Matthew Nielsen

#174661

Overall Influence

Matthew E. Nielsen is an American urologist oncologist and health services researcher. He is a Full professor and Chair of Urology at the UNC School of Medicine. Nielsen joined the faculty at UNC in 2009 as a urologic oncologist and health services researcher after completing medical school and residency training at Johns Hopkins.

#14736

Kamal Badr

#90650

Overall Influence

Dr. Kamal Badr is a Lebanese-American physician and scientist who has been Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the American University of Beirut from July 2000 to late 2006. He then was named Founding Dean of the Lebanese American University’s new medical school, a position he held until September 1, 2010. He returned to the American University of Beirut in October 2010, where he is Associate Dean for Medical Education.

#14737

Lewis Milestone

Lewis Milestone

1895 - 1980 (85 years)

Lewis Milestone was an American film director. Milestone directed Two Arabian Knights and All Quiet on the Western Front , both of which received the Academy Award for Best Director. He also directed The Front Page , The General Died at Dawn , Of Mice and Men , Ocean's 11 , and received the directing credit for Mutiny on the Bounty , though Marlon Brando largely appropriated his responsibilities during its production.

#14738

Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger

Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger

1830 - 1905 (75 years)

Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger was a German ophthalmologist who was a native of Halle an der Saale. He was the son of scientist Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger , inventor of an early galvanometer.

#14739

H. Nida Sen

Hatice Nida Sen is an ophthalmologist researching mechanisms involved in different forms of human uveitis. She is a clinical investigator at the National Eye Institute. Education Hatice Nida Sen obtained a M.D. degree from Hacettepe University Medical School and a Master of Health Sciences from Duke University School of Medicine. She completed an ophthalmology residency at George Washington University and her uveitis and ocular immunology fellowship at the National Eye Institute .

#14740

James William McClendon Jr.

#151350

Overall Influence

1924 - 2000 (76 years)

James William McClendon Jr. was a Christian theologian and ethicist in the Anabaptist tradition, though he preferred the term 'baptist' with a lower-case 'b'. He was married to philosopher Nancey Murphy, who is a senior faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary.

#14741

Israel Meir Freimann

1830 - 1884 (54 years)

Israel Meir Freimann was a Polish-born German rabbi, philosopher, and orientalist. Biography Born as the younger son of Eliakum Freimann and Esther Breiter, Freimann received his education from his father and in various Talmudical schools in Hungary. After attending a Gymnasium in 1850 in Leipzig, Saxony, where he stayed with his elder brother Isak , in 1852 he moved to Breslau, then Prussia. There he attended the Catholic Royal where he took his A-levels . Between 1856 and 1860 he studied philosophy and Oriental languages at the local Silesian Frederick William University . In 1860 Landes...

#14742

Mahmood Fotoohi Rudmajani

#81287

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mahmood Fotoohi Rudmajani is Professor of Persian Language and Literature at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. Since 2008 he has served as the editor in chief of Literary Criticism Quarterly, an academic Journal of Tarbiat Modarres university. He was the editor in chief of Journal of Faculty of Letters and Humanities, at Tehran Tarbiyat Moallem University, Iran from 2001 to 2008 and has served as a Member of editorial staff in Monthly philosophy and literature in Tehran . In 2009 he was selected as the chair of Iranian Literary Criticism Association , an academic NGO in Iran, for two years.

#14743

Dimitrie Gerota

Dimitrie Gerota

1867 - 1939 (72 years)

Dimitrie D. Gerota was a Romanian anatomist, physician, radiologist, urologist, and corresponding member of the Romanian Academy from 1916. Biography He was born in Craiova, the son of a priest, Dimitrie Constantin Gerota , and Maria Gerota, née Surpăteanu . He studied at the Carol I High School in Craiova. In 1886, he entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bucharest, graduating with an M.D. degree in 1892. For four years, he pursued his studies in Paris in Berlin. After returning to Bucharest, he started practicing medicine and teaching at various institutions.

#14744

Wolfgang Boetticher

#132578

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Wolfgang Boetticher was a German musicologist and longtime lecturer at the University of Göttingen. Born in Bad Ems, Boetticher was arranger and editor of numerous works by the composer Robert Schumann, especially for the publishing house G. Henle in Munich.

#14745

Terje Lømo

#12473

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Terje Lømo is a Norwegian physiologist who specialized in neuroscience. He was born in Ålesund to dentist Leif Lømo and Ingeborg Rebekka Helseth. Lømo in 1966, while beginning his PhD, worked in Per Oskar Andersen's lab in the Department of Physiology in Oslo. This was part of an apprenticeship dealing with hippocampal studies. By 1968, Timothy Bliss had joined Læmo in Andersen's laboratory for studies in memory mechanisms within the hippocampus. Lømo is known for his studies on synapses, in particular the synaptic plasticity. His discovery of the long-term potentiation, along with fellow researcher Tim Bliss, is regarded as a fundamental work in neurophysiology.

#14746

Zoilus

400 BC - 320 BC (80 years)

Zoilus was a Greek grammarian and literary critic from Amphipolis in Eastern Macedonia, then known as Thrace. He took the name Homeromastix later in life. Biography According to Vitruvius , Zoilus lived during the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus, by whom he was crucified as the punishment of his criticisms on the king; but this account should probably be rejected as a fiction based on Zoilus' reputation. Vitruvius goes on to state that Zoilus also may have been stoned at Chios or thrown alive upon a funeral pyre at Smyrna. Either way Vitruvius felt it was just as well since he deserved to be dead for slandering an author who could not defend himself.

#14747

Maria Deloria Knoll

#94498

Overall Influence

Maria Deloria Knoll is an expert in the fields of epidemiology, disease surveillance, vaccine trial conduct, and bio-statistics. She currently serves as associate director of Science at the International Vaccine Access Center , an organization dedicated to accelerating global access to life-saving vaccines, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

#14748

Emil Godlewski

1875 - 1944 (69 years)

Emil Godlewski was a Polish embryologist, professor of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. After early research on the development and histogenesis of muscles, professor Godlewski's scientific interests focused on regeneration and mechanisms regulating the process of fertilization, as well as early embryo development, blastulation and gastrulation. He was also interested in the origin of the primary differentiating cells in regenerates. He postulated the importance of epithelial tissue in this process and was the first to point out the change in the function, organization and role of the cells under the influence of external stimuli.

#14749

Samuel Crellius

1660 - 1747 (87 years)

Samuel Crell-Spinowski was an Arian philosopher and theologian, pastor of the church of the Polish Brethren. Son of Christopher Crellius and grandson of Johannes Crellius. Samuel's mother died when he was 6, and his father then took his older brother, Christopher, and one of his sisters to England. Samuel remained with his father in Poland, who later remarried and became father of Paul . It is recorded that Samuel studied in England, but when Christopher Crell Sr. died in 1680 Samuel's elder brother Christopher Crell Jr. appears to have been not in England, but studying medicine in Leiden, an...

#14750

Enchin

814 - 891 (77 years)

Enchin was a Japanese Buddhist monk who founded of the Jimon school of Tendai Buddhism and Chief Abbot of Mii-dera at the foot of Mount Hiei. After succeeding to the post of Tendai zasu, in 873, a strong rivalry developed between his followers and those of Ennin's at Enryaku-ji .

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions