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.
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.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#14851
Alexander Monro Primus
1697 - 1767 (70 years)
Alexander Monro was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist. His father, the surgeon John Monro, had been a prime mover in the foundation of the Edinburgh Medical School and had arranged Alexander's education in the hope that his son might become the first Professor of Anatomy in the new university medical school.
Go to Profile#14852
William P. C. Barton
1786 - 1856 (70 years)
William Paul Crillon Barton , was a medical botanist, physician, professor, naval surgeon, and botanical illustrator. Biography Barton was born on November 17, 1786, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father William Barton, a lawyer, was the designer of the Great Seal of the United States. His uncle, Benjamin Smith Barton was an eminent medical botanist and vice-president of the American Philosophical Society. In 1813, the younger Barton was also elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Go to Profile#14853
Pranas Čepėnas
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Pranas Čepėnas was a Lithuanian historian, encyclopedist, journalist, and lexicographer. In 1926 Čepėnas earned a diploma in history from University of Lithuania. He worked as professor of history at Vilnius University. During World War II he emigrated to Germany and later to the U.S.
Go to Profile#14854
Bernhard Münz
1856 - 1919 (63 years)
Bernhard Münz was an Austrian writer, philosopher, and librarian. Biography He was born in Leipnik to Jewish parents Johanna and Jakob Münz. His younger brother was journalist . Münz studied classical philology and philosophy at the Universities of Vienna, Innsbruck, and Munich, completing a Ph.D. at the former in 1877 under the supervision of Franz Brentano. After working briefly at the university library in Graz, he became in 1889 amanuensis in the library of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, and succeeded Samuel Hammerschlag as its director in 1900.
Go to Profile#14855
Anne Hazen McFarland
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Anne Hazen McFarland was an American physician and medical journal editor who specialized in the treatment of mental illness in women. She criticized the contemporary idea that gynecological disorders caused insanity and nervousness in women.
Go to Profile#14856
Giovanni Niccolò Muscat
1735 - 1800 (65 years)
Giovanni Niccolò Muscat was a Maltese doctor of law, and a major philosopher. His area of specialisation in philosophy was chiefly jurisprudence. Biography Early life Muscat was born into a very poor family on 8 March 1735. He seems to have lost his parents at a very young age, as he was raised by his aunt. Despite her poverty, this aunt worked hard to pay for the young Muscat's formal education, although it is unknown where he undertook his initial studies. His aunt also paid for his university studies, and it is known that he studied law but it is not certain where, although the Jesuit Col...
Go to Profile#14857
Henry Alexander Miers
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Sir Henry Alexander Miers, FRS was a British mineralogist and crystallographer. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896.
Go to Profile#14858
Eduard Arning
1855 - 1936 (81 years)
Eduard Christian Arning was an English-German dermatologist and microbiologist from Manchester. Biography Arning received his early education from private tutors and at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg. In 1879 he obtained his medical doctorate from Strassburg, and afterwards was a medical assistant in Strassburg under Adolf Kussmaul and Oswald Kohts , and later in Berlin under Oskar Lassar . From 1884 to 1886, he researched leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands. In 1887 he became a specialist of dermatology and venereal disease in Hamburg, where from 1906 he served as physician-in-chief in the department of skin and venereal diseases at the "Allgemeines Krankenhaus St.
Go to Profile#14859
John Sutherland
1808 - 1891 (83 years)
John Sutherland was a physician and promoter of sanitary science. Sutherland was born in Edinburgh, where he completed his high school studies. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1827, and graduated M.D. at the university in 1831.
Go to Profile#14860
Pyotr Nikolsky
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Pyotr Vasilyevich Nikolsky was a Ukrainian ans Russian dermatologist. He was born in Usman in the Russian Empire and earned his medical degree from the Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kyiv in 1884. After graduating, he studied under Mikhail Stukovenkov at the Department of Dermatology and Venerology in Kyiv. In 1896, he defended his doctoral thesis on pemphigus foliaceus, in which he described a dermatological condition involving a weakening relationship among the epidermal layers. The sloughing of skin associated with certain varieties of this condition is now referred to as Nikolsky's sign.
Go to Profile#14861
Mary Harris Thompson
1829 - 1895 (66 years)
Mary Harris Thompson, MD, , was the founder, head physician and surgeon of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, renamed Mary Harris Thompson Hospital after her death in 1895. She was one of the first women to practice medicine in Chicago.
Go to Profile#14862
John Clark Murray
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
John Clark Murray was a Scottish philosopher and professor. He held the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Queen's University from 1862 to 1872, and at McGill University from 1872 until 1903. During his academic career, Murray became the first professor at Queen's to offer courses to women; however, his equality advocacy caused unrest among the male professors. He was married to Margaret Polson Murray who founded the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire.
Go to Profile#14863
Carl Johann Lasch
1822 - 1888 (66 years)
Carl Johann Lasch was a German artist of historical paintings. He was born in Leipzig. He attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. One of his teachers was Eduard Bendemann. He later attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. There he studied under Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Wilhelm von Kaulbach.
Go to Profile#14864
Stanisław Wigura
1903 - 1932 (29 years)
Stanisław Wigura was a Polish aircraft designer and aviator, co-founder of the RWD aircraft construction team and lecturer at the Warsaw University of Technology. Along with Franciszek Żwirko, he won the international air contest Challenge 1932.
Go to Profile#14865
Arthur Hollis Edens
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Arthur Hollins Edens served as President of Duke University from 1949 to 1960. Duke's third president after the school's expansion from college to university, Edens was first president hired from outside the university since 1894, when John C. Kilgo was hired away from Wofford College. An executive with the Rockefeller Foundation and a native Southerner, Edens launched a capital gifts program and a national development campaign. The success of these efforts allowed Duke University to strengthen its endowment and experience a period of great growth during his presidency with the Duke Universit...
Go to Profile#14866
Cai Qiao
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Cai Qiao or Chiao Tsai was a Chinese physiologist and physician. Cai is famous for his discovery in 1920s, the ventral tegmental area, which also known as the ventral tegmental area of Tsai. He was elected as a member of Academia Sinica in 1948, also a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955.
Go to Profile#14867
Shemariah of Negropont
1275 - 1352 (77 years)
Shemariah ben Elijah Ikriti of Negropont was a Greek-Jewish philosopher and Biblical exegete, contemporary of Dante and Immanuel the Roman. Life He was born probably at Rome, the descendant of a long line of Roman Jews. His father, in his youth, went as rabbi to Crete, whence his surname, "Ha-Yewani" , or "Ha-Iḳriṭti" . Shemariah had a critical mind, and knew Italian, Latin, and Greek. Up to 1305 he studied the Bible exclusively; then he took up Talmudic aggadah and philosophy. The earliest Tractatus version in Hebrew was translated by Shemariah and presented as his own work, titled Sefer ha...
Go to Profile#14868
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl
1782 - 1849 (67 years)
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl was a German Germanist, pedagogue, musicologist and conductor. Life Griepenkerl was born in Peine the son of a preacher, he first attended the school in Peine and changed in 1796 to the . From 1805 to 1808 he studied theology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he also studied philosophy and pedagogy with Johann Friedrich Herbart and philology with Christian Gottlob Heyne. In addition he studied music theory, piano and organ with Johann Sebastian Bach's devotee Johann Nikolaus Forkel . In 1808, on Herbart's advice, he went to Hofwil in Switzerland, wh...
Go to Profile#14869
George Gilbert Ramsay
1839 - 1921 (82 years)
George Gilbert Ramsay was the Professor of Humanity at the University of Glasgow and the first president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. External links
Go to Profile#14870
Frederic Poole Gorham
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
Frederic Poole Gorham was an American bacteriologist and educator. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of businessman Samuel Gorham and his wife Abby Harding Fish, he was educated in local schools before graduating from Providence High School in 1889 and matriculating to Brown University. After graduating in 1893, he became an instructor of Biology at Brown and was awarded his A.M. in 1894 upon examination, with special studies performed at Harvard. On June 24, 1897, he was married to Emma Mary Lapham in Burrillville, Rhode Island. Thereafter he became an assistant professor in 1899, then associate professor in 1901.
Go to Profile#14871
K. W. Monsarrat
1872 - 1968 (96 years)
Keith Waldegrave Monsarrat was an English physician, surgeon, philosopher and writer. Biography Monsarrat was born in Kendal. He was educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man. In 1890 he joined the University of Edinburgh as a medical student and graduated with an MB ChB in 1894. He worked at Nottingham General Hospital and Great Yarmouth Hospital. He moved to Liverpool and obtained FRCS in 1897. He married the same year and took up medical practice in Liverpool.
Go to Profile#14872
Leopold von Schrötter
1837 - 1908 (71 years)
Leopold Schrötter Ritter von Kristelli, was an Austrian internist and laryngologist born in Graz. He was the son of chemist Anton Schrötter von Kristelli, and father to physician Hermann Schroetter-Kristelli .
Go to Profile#14873
Israel Hwasser
1790 - 1860 (70 years)
Israel Hwasser was a Swedish medical doctor and professor, who became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1854. Hwasser was the son of the vicar in Älvkarleby parish, Lars Adolph Hwasser, and Margareta Catharina Djurman. He grew up in the vicarage, receiving his schooling at home. When he was 14 years old he took the finishing exam, studentexamen, in Uppsala, and went on to study medicine there. In 1813 he finished his studies and defended his dissertation to become a Doctor of Medicine. The subject of his dissertation was the treatment of fevers with cold water.
Go to Profile#14874
Orlando J. Smith
1842 - 1908 (66 years)
Orlando Jay Smith was an early 20th-century American philosopher. Though he was an avowed agnostic, he advocated for the search to a meaning in life which would be commensurate with the possible existence of an ultimate intelligence.
Go to Profile#14875
Abraham Buschke
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Abraham Buschke was a Jewish German dermatologist who was a native of Nakel in the Province of Posen. Life In 1891 he received his doctorate in Berlin, and afterwards was a surgical assistant in Greifswald. Later he worked at dermatological clinics in Breslau under Albert Neisser and in Berlin with Edmund Lesser . In 1906 he became head of dermatology at Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Wedding.
Go to Profile#14876
Robert Smith
1840 - 1885 (45 years)
Robert Smith FRCSE , also known as Bob Smith, was a Sierra Leonean medical doctor who served as an Assistant Colonial Surgeon in Sierra Leone during the late nineteenth century. Smith was the first African to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh after completing his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#14877
John Stuart of Inchbreck
1751 - Present (275 years)
Prof John Stuart of Inchbreck FRSE FSA was an 18th/19th century Scottish scholar. He was one of the joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Life He was born at Castletown in the Mearns in 1751, the second son of Dr John Stuart of Inchbreck and his first wife, Elizabeth Lawson. The family estate was Inchbreck House near Glenbervie. He was educated at Glenbervie then Arbuthnott school. His older brother, Dr David Stuart, initially inherited the Inchbreck estate.
Go to Profile#14878
John Williams
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
John Williams was a Tony Award-winning British stage, film, and television actor. He is remembered for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, as the chauffeur in Billy Wilder's Sabrina , as Mr. Brogan-Moore in Witness for the Prosecution , and as the second "Mr. French" on TV's Family Affair in its first season .
Go to Profile#14879
Daniel Oliver
1787 - 1842 (55 years)
Daniel Oliver was an American physician. Oliver was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 9 September 1787; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 June 1842, was the son of Reverend Thomas Fitch Oliver and the great grandson of Andrew Oliver. He was graduated at Harvard in 1806, and at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1810. He practiced for many years at Salem, Massachusetts, lectured on chemistry at Dartmouth in 1815–16, and in 1820 removed to Hanover, New Hampshire, having been appointed professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and of materia medica and therapeutics.
Go to Profile#14880
Ridgely Hunt
1887 - Present (139 years)
Ridgely Hunt Jr. was a publishing executive and professor. After a 10-year career in the book distribution and publishing industries, Hunt served as librarian of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a grandson of William H. Hunt, the Secretary of the Navy during the Garfield Presidential Administration. Hunt was also a nephew of William Henry Hunt, who served as territorial Governor of Puerto Rico and as a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit.
Go to Profile#14881
Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko was a German librarian and scholar, born in Neustadt, Silesia. Biography From 1859 to 1863 he studied classical philology at the universities of Breslau and Bonn. At Bonn, he was influenced by philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl and worked as an assistant at the university library. In 1863, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the prologues of Plautus and Terence. Following graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher in Opole and then in Lucerne .
Go to Profile#14882
Alexander Russell Simpson
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Sir Alexander Russell Simpson FRCPE FRSE LLD was a Scottish physician and Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. He invented the axis-traction forceps also known as the obstetrics forceps which assisted in childbirth and reducing pain.
Go to Profile
#14884
George Dyson
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
Sir George Dyson was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.
Go to Profile#14885
Samuel Gottlieb Vogel
1750 - 1837 (87 years)
Samuel Gottlieb von Vogel was a German physician. He is seen as the founding father of German seaside resorts. Vogel started studying medical science in Göttingen at the age of 14. In 1771 he attained a doctorate and in 1776 he achieved habilitation. He first started working as a physician in Göttingen, later moving to Ratzeburg. In the meantime he published several medicinal science books.
Go to Profile#14886
Johannes Lippius
1585 - 1612 (27 years)
Johannes Lippius was an Alsatian theologian and music theorist. He coined the term "harmonic triad" in his Synopsis musicae novae . Life Lippius was born in Strasbourg, the son of the pastor of St. Peter, Johann Lippius , and his wife Susanna Klehmann. In early childhood, he had already received education in languages and the seven liberal arts, which allowed him to be appointed at the University of Strasbourg to the Master of Philosophy at a young age. By his twenty-first birthday he had given private and university lectures, after which he entered the University of Leipzig, 1606, the Univer...
Go to Profile#14887
Lilian Welsh
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Lilian Welsh was an American physician, educator, suffragist, and advocate for women's health. She was on the faculty at Woman's College of Baltimore and an active member of National American Woman Suffrage Association. Welsh was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.
Go to Profile#14888
Moses Schorr
1874 - 1941 (67 years)
Moses Schorr, Polish: Mojżesz Schorr was a rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and modern rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.
Go to Profile#14889
William John Macleay
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Sir William John Macleay was a Scottish-Australian politician, naturalist, zoologist, and herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Caithness, Scotland, second son of Kenneth Macleay of Keiss and his wife Barbara, née Horne. Macleay was educated at the Edinburgh Academy 1834–36 and then to studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh; but when he was 18 years old his widowed mother died, and he decided to go to Australia with his cousin, William Sharp MacLeay. They arrived at Sydney in March 1839 on HMS Royal George. William Macleay took up land at first near Goulburn, and after...
Go to Profile#14890
Grant Liddle
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Grant Winder Liddle was an American endocrinologist whose research focused largely on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. He was a professor at Vanderbilt University and chaired its Department of Medicine from 1968 to 1983.
Go to Profile#14891
Adib Pishavari
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Seyyed Ahmad Adib Pishavari , also known as Sayyed Ahmad B. Sehab al-Din Razawi , was a Sufi scholar who born in or near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, and was descended from Omar Sohravardi. Adib was a master of Persian literature.
Go to Profile#14892
Francesco Buonamici
1533 - 1603 (70 years)
Francesco Buonamici was an Italian philosopher, professor at the University of Pisa and writer who wrote about his ideas on motion in a treatise called De Motu. He was one of the teachers of Galileo.
Go to Profile#14893
Giulio Sirenio
1553 - 1593 (40 years)
Giulio Sirenio was an Italian philosopher from Brescia. He was professor of theology and metaphysics at the University of Bologna. Works
Go to Profile#14894
Henry Augustus Ward
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Henry Augustus Ward was an American naturalist and geologist. Biography Henry Augustus Ward was born in Rochester, New York on March 9, 1834. After attending Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz, he traveled in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, and studied at the Jardin des Plantes, the Sorbonne, and the School of Mines in Paris, and at the universities of Munich and Freiberg. Subsequently, he traveled in West Africa and the West Indies, making natural history collections.
Go to Profile#14895
Arnoldus Arlenius
1510 - 1582 (72 years)
Arnoldus Arlenius Peraxylus, , born Arndt or Arnout van Eyndhouts or van Eynthouts, also known as Arnoud de Lens, was a Dutch humanist philosopher and poet. He was born in Aarle, near Helmond, , North Brabant, in the Netherlands, at that time part of the possessions of the Habsburgs. He studied under Macropedius and later travelled to Paris, and Ferrara and studied at the University of Bologna for five years, becoming a first-rate Greek scholar and supporting himself by bookselling and acting as a scout for the printers of Basel, arranging the publication of books such as Caelius Rhodiginus's ...
Go to Profile#14896
Igor Sikorsky
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was a Russian–American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, won him national recognition as well as F.A.I. license number 64. His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg.
Go to Profile#14897
Ganapati Muni
1878 - 1936 (58 years)
Ayyala Somayajulu Ganapathi Sastry, also known as Ganapati Muni , was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He was also variously known as "Kavyakantha" , and "Nayana" by his disciples. Biography Ganapati Muni was born in Kalavarayai near Bobbili in Andhra Pradesh on 17 November 1878. His parents, Narasimha Sastri and Narasamamba had three sons, Muni being the second. Ganapati, when 18 years old, set out and wandered from one place to another, residing in places like Bhuvaneshwar, where he performed his tapas. When Ganapati was staying in Varanasi he learned of an assembly of Sanskrit scholars in the city of Nabadwip in Bengal.
Go to Profile#14898
Louise Reed Stowell
1850 - 1931 (81 years)
Louise Reed Stowell was an American scientist, microscopist, author, and editor. She was the University of Michigan's first woman teacher , and the first woman appointed on District of Columbia Public Schools . She also served on the Board for the Girls' Reform School for District of Columbia. Stowell died in 1932.
Go to Profile#14899
John Glaister
1856 - 1932 (76 years)
Professor John Glaister was a Scottish forensic scientist who worked as a general practitioner, police surgeon, and as a lecturer at Glasgow Royal Infirmary Medical School and the University of Glasgow. Glasgow University's Glaister Prize is named in his honour.
Go to Profile#14900
John McClintock
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
John McClintock was an American Methodist Episcopal theologian and educationalist, born in Philadelphia. Biography McClintock matriculated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Ill health, however, forced him to leave Wesleyan in his freshman year. Unable to return, he graduated subsequently from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835, and was assistant professor of mathematics , professor of mathematics , and professor of Latin and Greek in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He opposed the Mexican–American War, as well as slavery, but did not consider himself an abolitionist.
Go to Profile