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,

#1501

Kate Manne

#6241

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Kate Alice Manne is an Australian philosopher, associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University, and author. Her work is primarily in feminist philosophy, moral philosophy, and social philosophy.

#1502

Walter Everett

#2968

Overall Influence

Walter Everett is a music theorist specializing in popular music who teaches at the University of Michigan. His books include The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology , which has been called "the most important work to appear on the Beatles thus far", and its follow-up volume, The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul . He also wrote The Foundations of Rock: From 'Blue Suede Shoes' to 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and has contributed to titles in the Cambridge Companions to Music series.

#1503

François Wahl

#9776

Overall Influence

1925 - 2014 (89 years)

François Wahl was a French editor and structuralist. Biography François Wahl was editor at the Éditions du Seuil, a publishing company in Paris. He was the editor of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, among others.

#1504

Thomas De Koninck

#12067

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Thomas De Koninck is a philosopher from Québec. After studying at Oxford , Université Laval , and Freie Universität Berlin, he became professor at University of Notre Dame in the United States and at Université Laval in Québec. A well-known rumor posits that as a child he inspired Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's character The Little Prince when Saint-Exupéry was living in the house of his father, Charles De Koninck, in Québec City, in 1942.

#1505

Grigory Pomerants

Grigory Pomerants

#14482

Overall Influence

1918 - 2013 (95 years)

Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants was a Russian philosopher and cultural theorist. He is the author of numerous philosophical works that circulated in samizdat and made an impact on the liberal intelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s.

#1506

Józef Tischner

#17043

Overall Influence

1931 - 2000 (69 years)

Józef Stanisław Tischner was a Polish priest and philosopher. The first chaplain of the trade union, "Solidarity" . Life Tischner was born in Stary Sącz to a Góral family and grew up in the village Łopuszna in the south east of Poland. He studied at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In the 1970s he became an important writer of the opposition movement against the socialist government of the People's Republic of Poland. In 1980s he was considered the semi-official chaplain of the Solidarity movement, and was praised by Pope John Paul II.

#1507

Benedict Ashley

#28161

Overall Influence

1915 - 2013 (98 years)

Benedict M. Ashley, O.P. , was an American theologian and philosopher who had a major influence on 20th century Catholic theology and ethics in America through his writing, teaching, and consulting with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Author of 19 books, Ashley was a major exponent of the River Forest Thomism. Health Care Ethics, which he co-authored in 1975 and now in its fifth edition, continues to be a fundamental text in the field of Catholic Medical Ethics. Ashley taught at numerous institutions and was an active teacher, consultant, and author. He was a faculty member o...

#1508

Marcia Angell

#6483

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Marcia Angell is an American physician, author, and the first woman to serve as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

#1509

Andrew Lees

#37196

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Andrew John Lees FRCP FRCP FMedSci is Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London and University College London. In 2011 he was named as the world's most highly cited Parkinson's disease researcher.

#1510

Hiroki Azuma

#7885

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Hiroki Azuma is a Japanese cultural critic, novelist, and philosopher. He is the co-founder and former director of Genron, an independent institute in Tokyo, Japan. Biography Azuma was born in Mitaka, Tokyo. Azuma received his PhD in Culture and Representation from the University of Tokyo in 1999 and became a professor at the International University of Japan in 2003. He was an Executive Research Fellow and Professor at the Center for Global Communications and a Research Fellow at Stanford University's Japan Center. Since 2006, he has been working at the Center for Study of World Civilizatio...

#1511

Maarten Boudry

#16656

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Maarten Boudry is a Dutch-speaking Belgian philosopher and skeptic. He has been a researcher and teaching member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University since 2006. To date, he has published over 30 articles in various philosophy of science journals.

#1512

Milan Komar

#24735

Overall Influence

1921 - 2006 (85 years)

Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar was a Slovene Argentine Catholic philosopher and essayist. Life He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, to a Slovene family who had emigrated from the Italian-occupied Julian March. His father, Ludvik was a retired officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army. Milan spent his childhood in Ljubljana and Škofja Loka, and in 1939 he enrolled in the University of Ljubljana where he studied law. He specialized in Canonical law and continued his studies at the University of Turin, where he graduated in 1942. He firs...

#1513

Glenn Reynolds

#3738

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and is known for his American politics blog, Instapundit. Instapundit blog Reynolds' blog got started as a class project in August 2001, when he was teaching a class on Internet law. Much of Instapundit's content consists of links to other sites, often with brief comments.

#1514

Shinya Yamanaka

Shinya Yamanaka

#1157

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Shinya Yamanaka is the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (iPS – induced Pluripotent Stem Cell), senior investigator for the J. David Gladstone Institutes, a professor for Kyoto University’s Institute for Frontier Medical Services, and a professor of anatomy for the University of California at San Francisco. He studied at Osaka Kyoiku University before earning his M.D. at Kobe University and his Ph.D. from Osaka City University Graduate School. He completed a residency in orthopedic surgery at National Osaka Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship for the J. David Gladstone Institutes of Cardiovascular Disease.

#1515

Robert Cummings Neville

#24061

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Robert Cummings Neville is an American systematic philosopher and theologian, author of numerous books and papers, and ex-Dean of the Boston University School of Theology. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University.

#1516

Nicole C. Karafyllis

#20012

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Nicole C. Karafyllis is a German philosopher and biologist. As of 2010, she has been a Professor of Philosophy at the TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig/Brunswick Institute of Technology . Biography Nicole Christine Karafyllis was born in Germany to a German mother and a Greek father. From 1989 to 1994, she studied biology at the Universities of Erlangen and Tübingen. She was awarded her doctorate in biology from the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tübingen in 1999. Her Habilitation in philosophy was completed at the University of Stuttgart in 2006, dealing with the topic Phenomenology of Growth.

#1517

Hitoshi Nagai

#40056

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

is one of the most influential Japanese philosophers, who taught philosophy at Chiba University and later at Nihon University. His main research fields are metaphysics and metaethics. His books include "Philosophy for Kids!" and "A Transfer Student and Black Jack: A Seminar on Solipsity," which interpret solipsism from a unique metaphysical point of view. Nagai's philosophy has been heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, however, his philosophy successfully elucidates an important aspect of solipsism which Wittgenstein could not fully express in his philosophical works. Nagai stresses that the so...

#1518

Stephen Darwall

#41025

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Stephen Darwall is a contemporary moral philosopher, best known for his work developing Kantian and deontological themes. He was named Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University in 2008.

#1519

Mihai Șora

#10069

Overall Influence

1916 - 2023 (107 years)

Mihai Șora was a Romanian philosopher and essayist. Career After travelling back to Romania in 1948, Șora became a member of the Romanian Communist Party and was employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the time led by communist leader Ana Pauker. In interviews published after the fall of Communist Party rule in 1989, Șora said that he was unofficially "arrested". He was barred from holding a teaching appointment in Communist Romania, but nevertheless became an influential editor for one of the main Romanian publishers, ESPLA. Șora's family emigrated to the West in the 1970s, and he was allowed to visit them in the 1980s.

#1520

António Castanheira Neves

#12311

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

António Castanheira Neves is a Portuguese legal philosopher and a professor emeritus at the law faculty of the University of Coimbra. According to Castanheira Neves, law can only be understood through legal problems , which have to be solved within the legal system . Law, he claims, is not something given or previous, but the solution to legal problems. Legal problems are the decisive starting point. His opposition to positivism, to natural law and to the several theories of legal syllogism would make him one of the first and most accomplished advocates of interpretivism.

#1521

Steven Kuhn

#31486

Overall Influence

Steven Kuhn is a philosophy professor at Georgetown University whose research focuses on logic, ethics and the philosophy of language. Early life, family and education Kuhn earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

#1522

Paul J. Griffiths

#20278

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Paul J. Griffiths is an English-born American theologian. He was the Warren Professor of Catholic Thought at Duke Divinity School. Life and career Griffiths was born in London, England, on 12 November 1955. Griffiths has held appointments at the University of Notre Dame, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Chicago. A scholar of Augustine of Hippo, Griffiths' main interests and pursuits are philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion – particularly Christianity and Buddhism. He received a doctorate in Buddhist studies in 1983 from the University of Wisconsin–Madi...

#1523

Kirill Martynov

#15188

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Kirill Konstantinovich Martynov is a Russian journalist, political scientist, philosopher and writer. He is the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe and former associate professor at the Higher School of Economics .

#1524

Ronda Chervin

#30324

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Ronda Chervin is a Catholic author, international speaker and Professor of Philosophy. She is the author of over 80 books concerning the matters of Catholic thought, practice and spirituality, including Taming the Lion Within: 5 Steps From Anger to Peace, Last Call: Fourteen Men Who Dared Answer, and her autobiography, En Route to Eternity. A widow, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she is originally from New York.

#1525

Thomas Nail

#32410

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Thomas Nail is a Professor of Philosophy at The University of Denver. Biography Nail received a B.A in philosophy from the University of North Texas, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. His dissertation was on the theme of political revolution in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. This research was the foundation of his first book, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari, and Zapatismo, published in 2012.

#1526

Richard Knisely Winkelmann

#48200

Overall Influence

#1527

Wilfrid Desan

#24379

Overall Influence

1908 - 2001 (93 years)

Wilfrid Desan was a professor in philosophy best known for introducing French existentialism and especially the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre to the United States. He was a native of Belgium who emigrated to the United States in 1948, where he gained a doctorate from Harvard University in 1951 and met his wife Elisabeth. In 1952, he gained a lectureship at the philosophy department of Kenyon College. In 1957, he joined Georgetown University where he remained for the rest of his academic career and where he enjoyed a good reputation as teacher and a clear writer. He also had appointments as dist...

#1528

David Carrier

#31878

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

David Carrier is an American philosopher of art and cultural critic. Education Carrier received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, where he was a student of Arthur Danto, in 1972. He was a Getty Scholar , a Clark Fellow , a Senior Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2006–2007 and holder of the Fulbright-Luce Lectureship, Spring 2009.

#1529

Tine Hribar

#18885

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Tine Hribar is a Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual, notable for his interpretations of Heidegger and his role in the democratization of Slovenia between 1988 and 1990, known as the Slovenian Spring. He is the husband of author, essayist and political commentator Spomenka Hribar.

#1530

Christiane Woopen

Christiane Woopen

#27051

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Christiane Woopen is a German medical ethicist. She was appointed Professor for Ethics and Theory of Medicine at the University of Cologne in 2009. There she is Executive Director of ceres , an interdepartmental institution created by the Rector and five of the six Faculties of Cologne University. Furthermore, she is Head of the Research Unit Ethics at the Faculty of Medicine and was from 2011 to 2019 Vice-Dean for Academic Development and Gender of that Faculty. From 2012 to 2016 she was Chair of the German Ethics Council and from 2014 to 2016 President of the Global Summit of National Ethics/Bioethics Committees.

#1531

Severo Ochoa

#751

Overall Influence

1905 - 1993 (88 years)

Severo Ochoa de Albornoz was a Spanish physician and biochemist, and winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Arthur Kornberg for their discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid ".

#1532

François Ewald

#15235

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

François Ewald is a French philosopher. An assistant to Michel Foucault in the 1970s, he has overseen the publication of much of Foucault's literary estate. Ewald's own work has applied Foucault's notion of governmentality to a history of the welfare state.

#1533

Bengt Bertil Samuelsson

#48358

Overall Influence

#1534

Jean-Pierre Dupuy

#26057

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a French engineer and philosopher. Biography Dupuy attended the Ecole polytechnique, where he graduated in 1965 and attended the Ecole des Mines. He was a professor of French and a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information of Stanford University, California. He also taught social and political philosophy and the ethics of science and technology until 2006 at the École Polytechnique.

#1535

Alejandro Rossi

#15756

Overall Influence

1932 - 2009 (77 years)

Alejandro Rossi was born in Florence, Italy of Venezuelan mother and Italian father Alejandro Rossi wrote philosophical essays, short stories and the following books: Lenguaje y significado ; Manual del Distraído Manual of the Absent-minded ; Sueños de Occam ; La fábula de Las Regiones , Edén: Vida imaginada . Ortega y Gasset in collaboration ; he edited José Gaos' Anthology: Filosofía de la Filosofía . Rossi won the Premio Nacional de Lingüística y Literatura in 1999.

#1536

Margaret Somerville

#17221

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Margaret Anne Ganley Somerville is a Catholic philosopher and professor of bioethics at University of Notre Dame Australia. She was previously Samuel Gale Professor of Law at McGill University. Early life and career Somerville was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and educated at Mercedes College . She received a A.u.A. from the University of Adelaide in 1963, a Bachelor of Law degree and the University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1973, and a D.C.L. from McGill University in 1978.

#1537

Giuseppe Remuzzi

#48461

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

#1538

William Craig

#30019

Overall Influence

1918 - 2016 (98 years)

William Craig was an American academic and philosopher, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California. His research interests included mathematical logic, and the philosophy of science, and he is best known for the Craig interpolation theorem.

#1539

Robert Lanza

#10171

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Robert Lanza is an American medical doctor and scientist, currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He is an Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

#1540

Thomas Uebel

#31477

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Thomas Ernst Uebel is a philosopher of science, and professor of philosophy at the University of Manchester. Uebel has held academic posts at Northwestern University, University of Pittsburgh, Technical University of Berlin, University of Vienna and London School of Economics.

#1541

Lynne Rudder Baker

#28087

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

Lynne Rudder Baker was an American philosopher and author. At the time of her death she was a Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1944 to Virginia Bennett and James Rudder, she earned her Ph.D. in 1972 from Vanderbilt University after beginning her graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in 1967. She was a fellow of the National Humanities Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars .

#1542

Alberto Buela

#37808

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Alberto Buela Lamas is an Argentine philosopher. Buela is professor at the National Technological University and the University of Barcelona and works as a researcher in the University of Barcelona. He is best known for his philosophical works on metapolitics, Aristotle and Peronism.

#1543

Daniel O. Dahlstrom

#38589

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Daniel Oscar Dahlstrom is an American philosopher and John R. Silber Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. Books Identity, Authenticity, and Humility. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2017.The Heidegger Dictionary. New York: Bloomsbury Academics, 2013.Philosophical legacies: Essays on the Thought of Kant, Hegel, and their Contemporaries. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press CUA, 2008.Heidegger’s Concept of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Das logische Vorurteil: Untersuchungen zur Wahrheitstheorie des frühen Heidegger. Vienna: Passagen, 1994.

#1544

Gilles-Gaston Granger

Gilles-Gaston Granger

#14132

Overall Influence

1920 - 2016 (96 years)

Gilles-Gaston Granger was a French philosopher. Work His works discuss the philosophy of logic, mathematics, human and social sciences, Aristotle, Jean Cavaillès, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He produced the most authoritative French translation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and published more than 150 scientific articles.

#1545

Jeffrey A. Barrett

#16696

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Jeffrey A. Barrett is Chancellor's Professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he specializes in philosophy of physics. Education and career He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University.

#1546

Lambros Couloubaritsis

Lambros Couloubaritsis

#41114

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Lambros Couloubaritsis is a Greek-born Belgian philosopher. Life Lambros Couloubaritsis received his PhD in philosophy from the Free University of Brussels after studying chemistry at the University of Liège. He teaches philosophy at the Free University of Brussels, where he is also the director of Ancient Philosophy Center. He is internationally recognized as a specialist of Aristotle. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Oradea, Crete, Athens, Liège and Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III.

#1547

Joseph Heath

#11479

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Joseph Heath is a Canadian philosopher. He is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, where he was formerly the director of the Centre for Ethics. He also teaches at the School of Public Policy and Governance. Heath's webpage at the University of Toronto declares his work "is all related, in one way or another, to critical social theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School." He has published both academic and popular writings, including the bestselling The Rebel Sell. His philosophical work includes papers and books in political philosophy, business ethics, rational choice...

#1548

Robert Rynasiewicz

#28259

Overall Influence

Robert Rynasiewicz is a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and an adjunct professor in philosophy and the Committee on History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Maryland.

#1549

Anselm Jappe

#21574

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Anselm Jappe is a German professor of philosophy. Jappe currently resides in France. Jappe has authored several works in German, French, and Italian. Jappe has lectured at several institutions in within higher education.

#1550

Annemarie Mol

#12127

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Annemarie Mol is a Dutch ethnographer and philosopher. She is the Professor of Anthropology of the Body at the University of Amsterdam. Winner of the Constantijn & Christiaan Huijgens Grant from the NWO in 1990 to study 'Differences in Medicine', she was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant in 2010 to study 'The Eating Body in Western Practice and Theory'. She has helped to develop post-ANT/feminist understandings of science, technology and medicine. In her earlier work she explored the performativity of health care practices, argued that realities are generated within those practices, and noted that since practices differ, so too do realities.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions