The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#14851
Walter Georgi
1871 - 1924 (53 years)
Walter Georgi was a German painter and illustrator; known for his female portraits. Life and work His father, the jurist , was elected Mayor of Leipzig when Walter was five years old. From 1882 to 1888, he attended the . In 1890, he took lessons at the local Academy of Fine Arts, then transferred to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied with Leon Pohle. Finally, in 1893, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. His primary instructor there was Paul Hoecker.
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Alexis Boyer
1757 - 1833 (76 years)
Alexis Boyer was a French surgeon, born in Corrèze. He was the son of a tailor, and he obtained his first medical knowledge in the shop of a barber surgeon. When he moved to Paris, he had the good fortune to attract the attention of renowned surgeons Antoine Louis and Pierre-Joseph Desault . Boyer persevered at his profession, and became notorious for his anatomical knowledge and surgical dexterity. At the age of 37 he was appointed second surgeon to the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris. On the establishment of the École de Sante, he was named chair of operative surgery, but soon exchanged it for the chair of clinical surgery.
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Pehr von Afzelius
1760 - 1843 (83 years)
Pehr von Afzelius was a Swedish medical doctor and professor in Uppsala. Afzelius was the brother of botanist Adam Afzelius, chemist Johan Afzelius, and doctoral advisor of Jacob Berzelius. From 1777 to 1781 he studied at Uppsala University, and in February 1784 began a lengthy study trip, in which he visited several European universities, most notably in Paris and Edinburgh. During the Russo-Swedish War , he served in Finland as a Life Guards regimental doctor. In 1801 he succeeded Johan Gustaf Acrel as professor of medicine at Uppsala, where he twice served as university rector . In 1820 he...
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Maximilian Schwedler
1853 - 1940 (87 years)
Maximilian Schwedler was a German flutist, flute maker and music editor and historian. He was influential as Germany's last major advocate for the conical-bore flute, for which he made many improvements. In 1898 he received a patent for the Reformflöte "System Schwedler-Kruspe" , also known as the Reform flute.
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Alfred Leber
1881 - 1954 (73 years)
Alfred Theodor Leber was a German ophthalmologist born in Antwerp. He was a nephew of renowned ophthalmologist Theodor Leber . Alfred Leber is considered to be the founder of German tropical ophthalmology.
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Ernst Pflüger
1846 - 1903 (57 years)
Ernst Pflüger was a Swiss ophthalmologist. In 1870 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Bern, then furthered his education in ophthalmology at Utrecht University with Franciscus Donders and at the University of Vienna with Carl Ferdinand von Arlt. Afterwards, he worked as an eye doctor in Lucerne, and in 1876 became an associate professor and successor to Henri Dor at the University of Bern. From 1879 up until his death in 1903, he was a full professor of ophthalmology at the university.
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Johann Nikolaus Stupanus
1542 - 1621 (79 years)
Johann Nikolaus Stupanus was an Italian-Swiss physician, known also as a translator. He was the father of Emmanuel Stupanus . Life He was originally from Pontresina, and joined the faculty of medicine at the University of Basel. He taught theoretical medicine there from 1589 to 1620 and developed a systematic medical semiology.
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Józef Czajkowski
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Józef Czajkowski; 21 January 1872, in Warsaw – 27 July 1947, in Warsaw Czajowski's arts in all forms sought to distill and improve upon that which was best about Polish tradition, and his aim was to celebrate the culture of the people his art served. He wrote, in 1928, "Poland has been politically resurrected and it shall be reborn internally as well, and as such it must find its visual mode of expression. [...] It was through art that Poland endured from within during the invasion, and it is through art in these times of freedom that it must win the place it deserves in the world of culture, bringing in its own creative values.
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Karl Wessely
1860 - 1931 (71 years)
Karl Wessely was an Austrian palaeographer and papyrus scholar. He examined manuscripts housed at the Austrian National Library and in other important European libraries . Works auf Papyrus, Wiener Studien 4 , 198-214.Analekten. 1. Neue Evangelien-Fragmente auf Papyrus Wiener Studien 7 .ad papyrorum graecorum novam collectionem edendam zu einigen Publicationen auf dem Gebiete der älteren griechischen Paläographie Papyrus Erzherzog Rainer. Führer durch die Ausstellung, Wien 1894.haben die alten Römer geschrieben? plus anciens monuments du christianisme, Patrologia Orientalis IV, 2, .Ein fayum...
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Johannes Andreas Schmitz
1621 - 1652 (31 years)
Johannes Andreas Schmitz was a German physician and the third rector of the University of Harderwijk. Life Schmitz studied medicine in Groningen , Leiden , and Angers. He served as personal physician to Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg, and as city physician in Harderwijk . He became Professor of Medicine and rector of the University of Harderwijk. He married Gertrud Kumpsthoff and had a son Johann Dietrich Schmitz , who became mayor of Cleves, and a daughter Sophia .
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Viktor von Hacker
1852 - 1933 (81 years)
Viktor von Hacker was an Austrian surgeon born in Vienna. In 1878 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna, and after graduation remained in Vienna as an assistant to Theodor Billroth . Later he was a professor of surgery at the Universities of Innsbruck and Graz .
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Otto Martin Torell
1828 - 1900 (72 years)
Prof Otto Martin Torell HFRSE was a Swedish naturalist and geologist. Life He was born in Varberg, Sweden on 5 June 1828 the son of Johan Petter Torell and his wife, Susanna Charlotta Varenius. He was educated at Lund University for the medical profession, but became interested in zoological and geological studies, and being of independent means he devoted himself to science.
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Meer Akselrod
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Meer Moiseevich Akselrod, also Meyer Axelrod was a Belarusian painter best known for his watercolor paintings of Jewish life in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Life Akselrod was born in Maladzyechna, Russian Empire. As a child, he survived a pogrom and moved to Russia during World War I. In the 1920s, he studied and then taught at the VKhUTEMAS School of Art. His work was barely known outside the former Soviet Union until his daughter, Elena Akselrod, published her father's biography and a representative collection of his works in Israel in 1993.
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Kenji Takagi
1888 - 1963 (75 years)
Professor Kenji Takagi was a Japanese orthopedic surgeon, noted for being one of the first people to carry out a successful arthroscopy of the knee. Takagi was attached to Tokyo University in 1918 when he carried out the ground-breaking operation on a cadaver. He had been influenced by the work of Danish surgeon Severin Nordentoft. In 1922, he went to Germany to study the use of x-ray technology there. Following World War II, Takagi's pupil Masaki Watanabe, carried on his work.
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René Le Fort
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
René Le Fort was a French surgeon from Lille known for creating a classification for fractures of the face. Early life René Le Fort was born in 1869, in Lille. His father was a physician and his uncle a renowned surgeon, Léon Clément Le Fort.
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Gustav Veit
1824 - 1903 (79 years)
Aloys Constantin Conrad Gustav Veit was a German gynecologist and obstetrician who was a native of Leobschütz. He was the father of gynecologist Johann Veit . In 1848 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Halle, and following graduation remained in Halle as an assistant to Anton Friedrich Hohl at the institute of maternity. In 1854 he attained the chair of obstetrics at the University of Rostock, and in 1864 moved to the University of Bonn as professor and director of the department of obstetrics. He died in Deyelsdorf.
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Hanuš Schwaiger
1854 - 1912 (58 years)
Hanuš Johann Peter Paul Schwaiger was a Czech painter, designer, graphic artist and professor, best known for his fairy-tale illustrations. Biography He was the only son of six children born to a German-speaking ironmonger, but was baptized as a Catholic. In 1865, he was enrolled at the local gymnasium, but failed his courses and transferred to the Realschule in České Budějovice, where he met a teacher who encouraged his artistic interests. In 1873, despite this, he followed his father's wishes and entered the Vienna Business School. He soon ignored his studies and spent more time at the local art schools, prompting his parents to bring him home to work in the family business.
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Berndt Lindholm
1841 - 1914 (73 years)
Berndt Adolf Lindholm was a Finnish landscape painter . He is usually associated with the Düsseldorf School, but his work also displays early Impressionist elements. He specialized in coastal scenes.
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Johann Friedrich Cartheuser
1704 - 1777 (73 years)
Johann Friedrich Cartheuser was a German physician and naturalist. Biography Cartheuser was born at Hayn. He studied medicine first at Jena and afterward at Halle, where he took the degree of doctor in 1731. He was appointed in 1740 professor of chemistry, pharmacy, and materia medica at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder, and shortly afterward to the chair of anatomy and botany. Still later he was named professor of pathology and therapeutics. He was also appointed rector of the university, and continued to hold his appointments till his death. He was made a member of the academy of sciences, Berlin, in 1758.
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Emanuel Kayser
1845 - 1927 (82 years)
Friedrich Heinrich Emanuel Kayser was a German geologist and palaeontologist, born in Königsberg. He was educated at the universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Berlin, where in 1871 he qualified as a lecturer in geology. From 1873 he worked as a state geologist for the Preußischen Geologischen Landesanstalt , and in 1881 became a professor at the Berlin Mining Academy. In 1885 he succeeded Wilhelm Dunker as professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Marburg.
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Walter Hermann von Heineke
1834 - 1901 (67 years)
Walter Hermann von Heineke was a German surgeon. He was the son of physician Karl Friedrich Heineke . He studied at the Universities of Göttingen, Berlin, Leipzig and Greifswald, where he was a student and assistant to Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben . At Greifswald he obtained his doctorate in 1858 and his habilitation for surgery in 1863. From 1867 to 1901 he was a professor of surgery at the University of Erlangen.
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Frederik Holst
1791 - 1871 (80 years)
Frederik Holst was a Norwegian medical doctor. He is regarded as an important pioneer in medicine in Norway. Biography Holst was born at Holmestrand in Vestfold, Norway. He was the son of merchant Hans Holst and Inger Christine Backer .
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Arthur Ramos
1903 - 1949 (46 years)
Arthur Ramos de Araujo Pereira was a psychiatrist, professor, and psychologist who was a critical voice in the adoption of psychoanalysis in Brazil. Ramos challenged the White supremacist and eugenic ideologies that Brazilian psychiatrists were adopting in the first half of the 20th century and instead suggested the use of Freudian psychoanalysis to bridge the tensions between Whiteness and Blackness in Brazil.
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Julius Hirschberg
1843 - 1925 (82 years)
Julius Hirschberg was a German ophthalmologist and medical historian. He was of Jewish ancestry. In 1875, Hirschberg coined the term "campimetry" for the measurement of the visual field on a flat surface and in 1879 he became the first to use an electromagnet to remove metallic foreign bodies from the eye. In 1886, he developed the Hirschberg test for measuring strabismus. His series Geschichte der Augenheilkunde , nine volumes written from 1899 to 1917, is considered by some to be one of his greatest achievements.
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Arthur Kaufmann
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Arthur Kaufmann was an avant-garde German painter, who was a key figure in the Post-Expressionist and New Objectivity art movements. About He was a founding member in 1919 of Das Jungle Rheinland , a stylistically diverse group co-led by Herbert Eulenberg, Gert Wollheim, and Adolf Uzarski, which was united only by their rejection of academic art. Other members included Otto Dix, Theo Champion, Karl Schwesig, Walter Ophey, and Adalbert Trillhaase. During this era, he created such works as Contemporaries: Düsseldorf's Intellectual Scene and his Portrait of Betty Kohlhaas and Jankel Adler .
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Joseph Waltl
1805 - 1888 (83 years)
Dr. Joseph Waltl was a German physician and naturalist. Waltl was born in Wasserburg am Bodensee and studied at Landshut and Munich, graduating in medicine in 1819. He then travelled in Austria, France and Spain. In 1833 he became a teacher in Passau, and in 1835 a professor of natural history at the university.
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Heinrich Fritsch
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Heinrich Fritsch was a German gynecologist and obstetrician who was a native of Halle an der Saale. He studied medicine at the Universities of Tübingen, Würzburg and Halle. He became a member of Suevia Tübingen and the Corps Guestphalia Halle . At the University of Halle he earned his medical doctorate in 1869. Afterwards he remained at Halle as an assistant at the clinic of obstetrics under Robert Michaelis von Olshausen . In 1877 he became an associate professor, and in 1882 was a professor and director of the obstetrical clinic at Breslau. From 1893 to 1910 he was a professor at the ...
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Eduard Schleich the Elder
1812 - 1874 (62 years)
Eduard Schleich was a German painter. He is generally referred to as The Elder to distinguish him from his son Eduard, who was also a painter. Biography Schleich was the illegitimate son of the judicial administrator at Schloss Haarbach. In 1833, after the death of his father left him destitute, he went to Munich with the intention of enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts, but was told he had no artistic talent and was rejected. As a result, he began to paint landscapes on his own, modelling them on the works of Christian Etzdorf, Christian Morgenstern and Carl Rottmann.
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Otto Schirmer
1864 - 1917 (53 years)
Otto Schirmer was a German ophthalmologist from Greifswald. He studied medicine at several universities including the University of Greifswald. In 1896 he attained the chair of ophthalmology at Greifswald, a position earlier held by his father, Rudolf Schirmer . Later he was a professor of ophthalmology at the Universities of Kiel and Strasbourg, and in 1909 emigrated to New York, where he worked at several locations including the Herman Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital.
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Gustav Becking
1894 - 1945 (51 years)
Gustav Wilhelm Becking was a German musicologist who studied with Wolf and Hugo Riemann. Becking did his doctorate in 1920. He worked as a professor at Utrecht from 1929, in Prague from 1930 according to The New Grove.
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Henryk Fryderyk Hoyer
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
Henryk Fryderyk Hoyer was a Polish physician and professor at the University of Warsaw who is considered the founder of histology in Poland. He wrote the first textbook on histology in Polish in 1862. He is sometimes referred to as Henryk Hoyer to differentiate him from his son, the anatomist Henryk Ferdynand Hoyer. Hoyer's medium and Hoyer's solution are named after him.
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Michael Skjelderup
1769 - 1852 (83 years)
Michael Skjelderup was a Norwegian physician and educator. Skjelderup was born in the parish of Hof in Vestfold, Norway. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Surgery and first held a position as a professor at the University of Copenhagen . He subsequently became a professor at the University of Oslo . He was the father of Norwegian Government minister Jacob Worm Skjelderup.
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Hans Kundrat
1845 - 1893 (48 years)
Hans Kundrat was a pathologist born in Vienna, Austrian Empire. He studied medicine in Vienna, and as a student he was a demonstrator under Josef Hyrtl and Karl von Rokitansky. In 1868 he received his medical doctorate, and remained in Vienna as an assistant to Rokitansky. In 1873 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1877 attained the chair of pathology at the University of Graz. Five years later he returned to the University of Vienna as chair of pathology, a position he kept until his death. One of his better known students was Richard Paltauf .
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Justus Hecker
1795 - 1850 (55 years)
Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was a German physician and medical writer, whose works appear in medical encyclopaedias and journals of the time. He particularly studied disease in relation to human history, including plague, smallpox, infant mortality, dancing mania and the sweating sickness, and is often said to have founded the study of the history of disease.
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Johann Gottfried Zinn
1727 - 1759 (32 years)
Johann Gottfried Zinn was a German anatomist and botanist and was a member of the Berlin Academy. Biography Johann Gottfried Zinn was born in Schwabach. Considering his short life span, Zinn made a great contribution to the study of anatomy. In his book Descriptio anatomica oculi humani, he provided the first detailed and comprehensive anatomy of the human eye.
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Jaques-Louis Reverdin
1842 - 1929 (87 years)
Jaques-Louis Reverdin was a Swiss surgeon who was a native of Cologny. He studied at the University of Paris, becoming an interne of hospitals in 1865. In 1869 he became an assistant to Jean Casimir Félix Guyon in the surgical department at the Hôpital Necker in Paris. Afterwards he moved to Geneva, where he eventually became chief surgeon at the Hôpital Cantonal de Geneve, and a professor at the University of Geneva.
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Pauline Alderman
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Edith Pauline Alderman was an American musicologist and composer. She was the founder and the first Chairwoman of the Department of Music History and Literature at the University of Southern California, between 1952 and 1960.
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Caspar Scheuren
1810 - 1887 (77 years)
Caspar Johann Nepomuk Scheuren was a German painter and illustrator. Biography His father, was also an artist. After receiving his initial training at home, he studied landscape painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, from 1829 to 1835. His Romantic tendencies were encouraged by his admiration for the works of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Carl Friedrich Lessing. He was also inspired by the writings of Sir Walter Scott.
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Ferdinand Sauerbruch
1875 - 1951 (76 years)
Ernst Ferdinand Sauerbruch was a German surgeon. His major work was on the use of negative-pressure chambers for surgery. Biography Sauerbruch was born in Barmen , Germany. He studied medicine at the Philipps University of Marburg, the University of Greifswald, the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, and the University of Leipzig, from the last of which he graduated in 1902. He went to Breslau in 1903, where he developed the Sauerbruch chamber, a pressure chamber for operating on the open thorax, which he demonstrated in 1904. This invention was a breakthrough in thorax medicine and allowed heart and lung operations to take place at greatly reduced risk.
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Robert Aim Lennie
1889 - 1961 (72 years)
Robert Aim Lennie was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1946 to 1955. Lennie was born at Cambuslang, Glasgow in 1889 the son of Ritchie Lennie , an oil and colour manufacturer, from Kincardine, Perthshire, and his wife Isabella Crawford Smith, daughter of Brodie Smith, a drapery merchant, from Leslie, Fife. R.A. Lennie graduated MB from the University of Glasgow in 1912, and was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1936.
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Johannes Nobel
1887 - 1960 (73 years)
Johannes Nobel was a German indologist and Buddhist scholar. Early life and education Johannes Nobel was born on 25 June 1887 in Forst . He studied Indo-European languages, Arabic, Turkish and Sanskrit at the University of Greifswald from 1907, then from 1908 at the Friedrich Wilhelms University Berlin. In 1911 he completed his PhD thesis on the history of the Alamkãraśāstra, and decided to work as a librarian. In 1915 he passed the library examinations and found employment at the Old Royal Library in Berlin. In the First World War, Nobel joined the Landsturm and was temporarily employed by t...
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Katharine Lloyd-Williams
1896 - 1973 (77 years)
Katharine Georgina Lloyd-Williams CBE was a British anaesthetist, general practitioner and medical educator. She was a consultant anaesthetist at the Royal Free Hospital from 1934 and dean of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine from 1945, retiring from both posts in 1962.
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Eric D'Ath
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Eric Frederick D'Ath was a New Zealand pathologist, and was professor of pathology and medical jurisprudence at the University of Otago from 1929 until 1962. In the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours, D'Ath was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services as professor of pathology and medical jurisprudence at the University of Otago. In 1975, he was conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Otago.
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Ernesto Buonaiuti
1881 - 1946 (65 years)
Ernesto Buonaiuti was an Italian historian, philosopher of religion, Catholic priest and anti-fascist. He lost his chair at the University of Rome owing to his opposition to the Fascists. As a scholar in History of Christianity and religious philosophy he was one of the most important exponents of the modernist current.
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Charles Leonard Hamblin
1922 - 1985 (63 years)
Charles Leonard Hamblin was an Australian philosopher, logician, and computer pioneer, as well as a professor of philosophy at the New South Wales University of Technology in Sydney. Among his most well-known achievements in the area of computer science was the introduction of Reverse Polish Notation and the use in 1957 of a push-down pop-up stack. This preceded the work of Friedrich Ludwig Bauer and Klaus Samelson on use of a push-pop stack. The stack had been invented by Alan Turing in 1946 when he introduced such a stack in his design of the ACE computer. In philosophy, Hamblin is known for his book Fallacies, a standard work in the area of the false conclusions in logic.
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Louisa Aldrich-Blake
1865 - 1925 (60 years)
Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich-Blake was a pioneering surgeon and one of the first British women to enter the world of modern medicine. Born in Chingford, Essex, she was the eldest daughter of a curate. Louisa Aldrich-Blake graduated in medicine from the Royal Free Hospital in 1893. She obtained her Master of Surgery degree and was a lead surgeon by 1910. Louisa volunteered for military medical service during the First World War. She was one of the first people to perform surgery on rectal and cervical cancers. In recognition of her commitment and achievements, a statue of her was erected in Tavistock Square, London.
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Elizabeth H. West
1873 - 1948 (75 years)
Elizabeth H. West , was a librarian and archivist active in the United States during the early 20th century. West was appointed the Texas State Librarian in 1918, was two time President of the Texas Library Association, co-founder and first President of the Southwestern Library Association, and was the first Head Librarian of Texas Technological College .
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Albert Brachet
1869 - 1930 (61 years)
Albert Auguste Toussaint Brachet was a Belgian physician and professor of anatomy and embryology at the Free University of Brussels . Brachet was a founder of the field of "causal embryology", the study of embryology and development using experiments.
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Nikolay Lossky
1870 - 1965 (95 years)
Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky , also known as N. O. Lossky, was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionist epistemology, personalism, libertarianism, ethics and axiology . He gave his philosophical system the name intuitive-personalism. Born in Latvia, he spent his working life in St. Petersburg, New York, and Paris. He was the father of the influential Christian theologian Vladimir Lossky.
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Theodor Kroyer
1873 - 1945 (72 years)
Theodor Kroyer was a German musicologist. Life Kroyer was born in Munich. After he won his Abitur in 1893 at the Wilhelmsgymnasium he studied at the University of Munich and the Akademie für Tonkunst in Munich. He received his doctorate in 1897 and habilitated in 1902 at the University of Munich, where he taught from 1907 as a non-permanent associate professor.
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