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,
#14801
Apollonius Cronus
350 BC - 350 BC (0 years)
Apollonius Cronus from Cyrene was a philosopher of the Megarian school. Very little is known about him. He was the pupil of Eubulides, and was the teacher of Diodorus Cronus, as Strabo relates: Apollonius Cronus, was from Cyrene, ... being the teacher of Diodorus the Dialectician, who also was given the appellation "Cronus," certain persons having transferred the epithet of the teacher to the pupil.
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Johann Christian Lossius
1743 - 1813 (70 years)
Johann Christian Lossius was a German materialist philosopher who made contributions to philosophical anthropology, the philosophy of mind, and physiognomy. Life Lossius studied philosophy at Jena. Appointed professor of philosophy at Erfurt in 1770, he became professor of theology there in 1772.
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Christoph Meiners
1747 - 1810 (63 years)
Christoph Meiners was a German racialist, philosopher, historian, and writer born in Warstade. He supported the polygenist theory of human origins. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
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Jan Rustem
1762 - 1835 (73 years)
Jan Rustem was a painter of Armenian ethnicity who lived and worked in the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Primarily a portrait painter, he was commissioned to execute portraits of notable personalities of his epoch. For many years he was a professor at Vilnius University.
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Aize Kijlstra
#14806
Thomas Hamilton
1789 - 1842 (53 years)
Thomas Hamilton was a Scottish soldier and author. Life He was born in Pisa, Tuscany, the second son of William Hamilton , professor of anatomy and botany at Glasgow. He was the younger brother of metaphysician Sir William Hamilton . Their father died a few months after Thomas was born.
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Realdo Colombo
1516 - 1559 (43 years)
Matteo Realdo Colombo was an Italian professor of anatomy and a surgeon at the University of Padua between 1544 and 1559. Early life and education Matteo Realdo Colombo or Realdus Columbus, was born in Cremona, Lombardy, the son of an apothecary named Antonio Colombo. Although little is known about his early life, it is known he took his undergraduate education in Milan, where he studied philosophy, and he appears to have pursued his father's profession for a short while afterwards. He left the apothecary's life and apprenticed to the surgeon Giovanni Antonio Lonigo, under whom he studied for 7 years.
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Mir Shamsuddin Adib-Soltani
1310 - Present (716 years)
Mir Shamsuddin Adib-Soltani was an Iranian philosopher, clinical psychiatrist, and translator. He is known for translating some classic philosophical works into Persian. Adib-Soltani was a winner of Farabi International Award. Adib-Soltani died on 12 October 2023, at the age of 92.
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J. C. M. Hanson
1864 - 1943 (79 years)
James Christian Meinich Hanson was a Norwegian born, American librarian. Background Jens Christian Meinich Hanson, now known as J. C. M. Hanson, was born on March 13, 1864, in Oppland, Norway, in the Nordre Aurdal district at Sørheim. He was the sixth child and second son of Gunnerius "Gunnar" and Eleonore Adamine Hansen. His first name was initially Jens, but in America, his playmates called him Jim, which was then turned into James, a change that he subsequently used. The change in the spelling of his name was incremental and inconsistent, but by 1897 he'd adopted the signature "J. C. M. Hanson" that he is known by today.
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John Formosa
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
John Formosa was a Maltese theologian, canonist, minor philosopher, and poet. In philosophy he mostly specialised in metaphysics. Life Formosa was born in Cospicua, Malta, on March 22, 1869. He studied at the University of Malta and at other universities abroad. These studies made him Doctor of Theology and Doctor of Canon Law. He was ordained a priest in 1893. He was also a Canon of the bishop’s Cathedral Chapter at Mdina. He died on March 29, 1941, at 72 years of age.
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Santorio Santorio
1561 - 1636 (75 years)
Santorio Santorio whose real name was Santorio Santori better known in English as Sanctorius of Padua was an Italian physiologist, physician, and professor, who introduced the quantitative approach into the life sciences and is considered the father of modern quantitative experimentation in medicine. He is also known as the inventor of several medical devices. His work De Statica Medicina, written in 1614, saw many publications and influenced generations of physicians.
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John A. Mannick
#14813
Russell W. Chesney
#14814
Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld
1742 - 1792 (50 years)
Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld was a German Enlightenment gardening theorist, academic in philosophy and art history in the service of Denmark and a writer, notable for several books. He advocated for sensitive Romantic gardens in the English landscape style.
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Alice Roosevelt Longworth
1884 - 1980 (96 years)
Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth was an American writer and socialite. She was the eldest child of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt and his only child with his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt. Longworth led an unconventional and controversial life. Her marriage to Representative Nicholas Longworth III, a Republican Party leader and 38th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was shaky, and her only child, Paulina, was from her affair with Senator William Borah.
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Heinrich Glarean
1488 - 1563 (75 years)
Heinrich Glarean also styled Glareanus was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis and died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Biography Glarean was born as Heinrich Loriti in Mollis in Canton Glarus to a politician. As a boy, he took care of cattle and received a good education. After a thorough early training in music, Glarean enrolled in the University of Cologne, where he studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics as well as music. It was in Cologne where he held a poem as a tribute to Emperor Maximilian I. Since 1514 he was a teacher for Greek and Latin in Basel, where he met Erasmus and the two humanists became lifelong friends.
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Gilbert Jack
1578 - 1628 (50 years)
Gilbert Jack was Scottish Ramist philosopher and physician. Life He was born in Aberdeen, and studied at Marischal College under Robert Howie. In 1598 he went to the University of Helmstedt. He was professor, later of physics, at the University of Leiden, from 1605. He was dismissed in 1619, suspected of sympathy with the Remonstrants; he was reinstated in 1623.
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Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani
1882 - 1975 (93 years)
Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani Iranian Shi'a jurist and philosopher. He taught theology in Tehran for about 40 years. Birth Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani was born in Tehran. He was the fourth and youngest son of Mirza Hassan Ashtiani, a prominent jurist under the reign Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. He became a jurist and a Shi'a Imam,
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Walking Stewart
1747 - 1822 (75 years)
John "Walking" Stewart was an English philosopher and traveller. Stewart developed a unique system of materialistic pantheism. Travels Known as 'Walking' Stewart to his contemporaries for having travelled on foot from Madras, India back to Europe between 1765 and the mid-1790s, Stewart is thought to have walked alone across Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Africa before wandering into every European country as far east as Russia.
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Ham Seok-heon
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Ham Seok-heon was a notable figure in the Religious Society of Friends movement in Korea, and was nicknamed the "Gandhi of Korea." Ham was an important Asian voice for human rights and non-violence during the 20th century, despite numerous imprisonments for his convictions. He was a Quaker who concluded that all religions are on common ground in terms of human beings, a view shared by many Quakers.
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Charles Blount
1654 - 1693 (39 years)
Charles Blount was an English deist and philosopher who published several anonymous essays critical of the existing English order. Life Blount was born in Upper Holloway, Islington, Middlesex, the fourth son of Sir Henry Blount. His father educated him at home and exposed him to freethinking philosophy. In 1672 Charles inherited lands in Islington and the estate of Blount's Hall in Staffordshire. He married Eleanor Tyrrell in Westminster Abbey at the end of 1672; they had three sons and a daughter. Throughout his life he remained at Blount's Hall as a leisured gentleman, although he also ...
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Scipione Riva-Rocci
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Scipione Riva Rocci was an Italian internist, pathologist and pediatrician. He is best known for the invention of an easy-to-use cuff-based version of the mercury sphygmomanometer for the measurement of blood pressure.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels
1821 - 1891 (70 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels was a German gynecologist and obstetrician born in Prague, in the Austrian Empire. He studied medicine in Prague, and spent most of his professional career as chair of obstetrics at the University of Würzburg, where he succeeded Franz Kiwisch von Rotterau.
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Francesco Filelfo
1398 - 1481 (83 years)
Francesco Filelfo was an Italian Renaissance humanist and author of the philosophic dialogue On Exile. Biography Filelfo was born at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. He is believed to be a third cousin of Leonardo da Vinci. At the time of his birth, Petrarch and the students of Florence had already begun to exalt the recovery of classic texts and culture. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had rediscovered many important Roman authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the restrictions of earlier periods. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the...
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Saviour Cumbo
1810 - 1877 (67 years)
Saviour Cumbo was a Maltese theologian and minor philosopher. His philosophical writings deal mainly with the relationship between reason and faith. Though his engagement with philosophical reflection was peripheral, his contribution in this field was at least interesting and at most insightful. No portrait of him has been identified up till now.
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Appiano Buonafede
1716 - 1793 (77 years)
Appiano Buonafede was an Italian priest and philosopher who published under the name Agatopisto Cromaziano. Appiano Buonafede was born in Comacchio, a Province of Ferrara, and died in Rome. He became a professor of theology while in Naples in 1740, and entering the religious body of the Celestines, rose to be general of the order in 1777.
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Berechiah ha-Nakdan
1200 - 1300 (100 years)
Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Nakdan was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher. His best-known works are Mishlè Shu'alim and Sefer ha-Ḥibbur . Biography Little is known for certain about Berechiah's life and much discussion has taken place concerning his date and native country. He is thought to have lived sometime in the 12th or 13th century, and is likely to have lived in Normandy and England, with some placing him about 1260 in Provence. It is possible that he was a descendant of Jewish scholars of Babylonia. He also knew foreign languages and...
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Crates of Athens
400 BC - 260 BC (140 years)
Crates of Athens was a Platonist philosopher and the last scholarch of the Old Academy. Biography Crates was the son of Antigenes of the Thriasian deme, the pupil and eromenos of Polemo, and his successor as scholarch of the Platonic Academy, in 270–69 BC. The intimate friendship of Crates and Polemo was celebrated in antiquity, and Diogenes Laërtius has preserved an epigram of the poet Antagoras, according to which the two friends were united after death in one tomb. The epigram, according to him, reads:
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James Paget
1814 - 1899 (85 years)
Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet FRS HFRSE was an English surgeon and pathologist who is best remembered for naming Paget's disease and who is considered, together with Rudolf Virchow, as one of the founders of scientific medical pathology. His famous works included Lectures on Tumours and Lectures on Surgical Pathology . There are several medical conditions which were described by, and later named after, Paget:Paget's disease of bonePaget's disease of the nipple Extramammary Paget's disease refers to a group of similar, more rare skin lesions discovered by Radcliffe Crocker in 1889 which affec...
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Carl Braun
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Carl Braun , sometimes Carl Rudolf Braun alternative spelling: Karl Braun, or Karl von Braun-Fernwald, name after knighthood Carl Ritter von Fernwald Braun was an Austrian obstetrician. He was born 22 March 1822 in Zistersdorf, Austria, son of the medical doctor Carl August Braun.
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Nils Alwall
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Nils Alwall was a Swedish professor at Lund University, Sweden. He was a pioneer in hemodialysis and the inventor of one of the first practical dialysis machines. Alwall pioneered the technique of ultrafiltration and introduced the principle of hemofiltration. Alwall is referred to as the "father of extracorporeal blood treatment."
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Khalil Kamarah'i
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Ayatollah Haj Mirza Khalil Kamarah'i . He was an author, researcher and philosopher of contemporary theology that sought to unite the Muslim sects supporting his cause. He studied under Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi in Arak and Qom. He continued his studies of various Islamic subjects and philosophy throughout his life. He worked with the administration in the Vatican City on various philosophical questions, which he later released in a separate book. He travelled to Cairo on behalf of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Mahmud Shaltut, the Grand Mufti and dean of Al-Azhar University Sheikh, for fatwa. H...
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Peter of Auvergne
1240 - 1304 (64 years)
Peter of Auvergne was a French philosopher and theologian. Life He was a canon of Paris; some biographers have thought that he was Bishop of Clermont, because a Bull of Boniface VIII of the year 1296 names as canon of Paris a certain Peter of Croc , already canon of Clermont; but it is more likely that they are distinct. Peter of Auvergne was in Paris in 1301, and, according to several accounts, was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas. In 1279, while the various nations of the University of Paris were quarrelling about the rectorship, Simon de Brion, papal legate, appointed Peter of Auvergne to that of...
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Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl
1823 - 1897 (74 years)
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was a German professor, journalist, novelist, and folklorist. Academic career Riehl was born in Biebrich in the Duchy of Nassau and died in Munich. Riehl was born into a settled middle-class background, was a professor at the University of Munich, and later in life a curator of Bavarian antiquities.
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Antoine Frédéric Spring
1814 - 1872 (58 years)
Antoine Frédéric Spring was a German-born, Belgian physician and botanist. He studied botany and medicine at the University of Munich, obtaining his PhD in 1835 and his medical doctorate during the following year. From 1839 to 1872 he was a professor at the University of Liège, initially in the fields of physiology and anatomy, later teaching classes in pathology and internal medicine.
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Barry Lewis Zaret
#14837
Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer
1858 - 1945 (87 years)
Richard Friedrich Johannes Pfeiffer FRS was a German physician and bacteriologist. Pfeiffer was born to Otto Pfeiffer, a German pastor of the local Evangelical parish, and Natalia née Jüttner, in Treustädt, Province of Posen , and died in Bad Landeck .
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Karl, Freiherr von Prel
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Karl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred, Freiherr von Prel, or, in French, Carl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred, Baron du Prel , was a German philosopher and writer on mysticism and the occult. In the literature it has become customary to refer to him under various abbreviated French forms of his name, usually "Carl Du Prel," "Baron Carl Du Prel," or simply "Baron Du Prel."
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Johann Nepomuk Oischinger
1817 - 1876 (59 years)
Johann Nepomuk Paul Oischinger was a German Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher who was a native of Witzmannsberg, Bavaria. Oischinger studied theology and philosophy at the University of Munich, where he had as instructors Franz Xaver von Baader , Joseph Görres , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , Ignaz von Döllinger , Heinrich Klee , Johann Adam Möhler and Franz Xaver Reithmayr . In 1841 he received his ordination in Regensburg, and shortly afterwards returned to Munich, where he worked as a private scholar and journalist for the remainder of his career.
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Constance Naden
1858 - 1889 (31 years)
Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden was an English writer, poet and philosopher. She studied, wrote and lectured on philosophy and science, alongside publishing two volumes of poetry. Several collected works were published following her death at the young age of 31. In her honour, Robert Lewins established the Constance Naden Medal and had a bust of her installed at Mason Science College . William Ewart Gladstone considered her one of the nineteenth century's foremost female poets.
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Austin Duncan-Jones
1908 - 1967 (59 years)
Austin Ernest Duncan-Jones was a British philosopher, with a primary focus on meta-ethics. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham from 1951 until his death. He was president of the Aristotelian Society for 1960-61.
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Wang Gen
1483 - 1541 (58 years)
Wang Gen , was a Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher who popularized the teachings of Wang Yangming. Wang gen was the founder of the Taizhou School .
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Antoninus
400 - 400 (0 years)
Antoninus was a Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in the 4th century. He was a son of Eustathius and Sosipatra, and had a school at Canopus, Egypt. He was an older contemporary of Hypatia who lived and worked nearby in Alexandria. He devoted himself wholly to his pupils, but he never expressed any opinion upon divine matters, and although Eunapius attributes this to Antoninus' piety, he also points out that Antoninus refrained from theurgic rites "perhaps because he kept a wary eye on the imperial views and policy which were opposed to these practices." His moral conduct is described as exemplary.
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Eustathius of Cappadocia
300 - 362 (62 years)
Eustathius of Cappadocia , was a Neoplatonist and Sophist, and a pupil of Iamblichus and Aedesius, who lived at the beginning of the 4th century CE. When Aedesius was obliged to quit Cappadocia, Eustathius was left behind in his place. Eunapius, to whom alone we are indebted for our knowledge of Eustathius, declares that he was the best man and a great orator, whose speech in sweetness equalled the songs of the Sirenss. His reputation was so great, that when the Persians besieged Antioch, and the empire was threatened with a war, the emperor Constantius II was prevailed upon to send Eustathius...
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János Vaszary
1867 - 1939 (72 years)
János Miklós Vaszary was a Hungarian painter and graphic artist. Biography He was born into a prominent Catholic family in Kaposvár. His uncle was Kolos Ferenc Vaszary, the Archbishop of Esztergom. His art studies began at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts under János Greguss. In 1887, he went to Munich, where he studied with Gabriel von Hackl and Ludwig von Löfftz. After seeing an exhibition of paintings by Jules Bastien-Lepage, he moved to Paris in 1899 and enrolled at the Académie Julian. Although he later became involved with Simon Hollósy and the artists' colony in Nagybánya and deve...
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Herbert Charles Sanborn
1873 - 1967 (94 years)
Herbert Charles Sanborn was an American philosopher, academic and one-time political candidate. He was the chair of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1921 to 1942, and he served as the president of the Nashville German-American Society. He founded and coached the Vanderbilt fencing team. He ran for the Tennessee State Senate unsuccessfully in 1955. He was opposed to the Civil Rights Movement, and he published antisemitic pamphlets.
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Gaetano da Thiene
1387 - 1465 (78 years)
Gaetano da Thiene was an Italian Renaissance philosopher and physician who was born and lived in Padua. Biography A student of Paul of Venice, Gaetano, like his teacher, held an Averroist interpretation of Aristotle's teachings. He worked towards a compromise between that position and Christian doctrines on the personal immortality of the soul, and in later life he abandoned Averroism entirely.
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Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm von Bischoff
1807 - 1882 (75 years)
Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm von Bischoff was a German physician and biologist. Biography He lectured on pathological anatomy at Heidelberg and held professorships in anatomy and physiology at Giessen and Munich, where he was appointed to the chair of anatomy and physiology in 1854. In 1843, Theodor von Bischoff was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences.
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Eugenio Rignano
1870 - 1930 (60 years)
Eugenio Vittorio Rignano was a Jewish Italian philosopher. Biography He was born in Livorno to Giacomo Rignano and Fortunata Tedesco, into a Jewish family. Rignano edited the journal Rivista di scienza, later known as Scientia . His book The Psychology of Reasoning influenced the social anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard. His book Man Not a Machine was replied to by Joseph Needham's Man A Machine . In 1897 he married Costanza "Nina" Sullam, also from a Jewish family.
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George Washburn
1833 - 1915 (82 years)
George Washburn was an American educator, Christian missionary, and second president of Robert College. Biography George Washburn was born on March, 1, 1833 in Middleboro, Massachusetts. His father Philander Washburn was a manufacturer and his mother Elizabeth Homes was a housewife. He attended Pierce Academy in his hometown of Middleboro and Phillips Academy in Andover, and graduated from Amherst College in 1855. Spending a year traveling Europe and the Middle East, he then attended Andover Theological Seminary in 1859 for one year.
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