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,
#15001
Federico Riu
1925 - 1985 (60 years)
Federico Riu Farré was a philosopher and university professor. Riu was born in Lleida, Spain where he worked from an early age as a teacher in the small towns of his province. He emigrated to Venezuela in 1947 and became a Venezuelan citizen in 1954. In Caracas, Riu studied philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela and won a scholarship to study in Europe after receiving the highest grades in his class. He went to the University of Freiburg where he attended the lectures of Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink. He taught philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela from 1956 to 1980 a...
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Carlos Brandt
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Carlos Brandt was a Venezuelan author, naturopath, philosopher and vegetarianism activist. Biography He was born in Miranda, Venezuela, the son of a German immigrant Karl Brandt, a coffee planter and exporter, and Zoraida Tortolero, mother to Carlos, Juan Luis, Fernando, Augusto, Asteria and Mary. His younger brother was the composer Augusto Brandt. He studied in Puerto Cabello Elementary School and was sent to Germany to join the Pro Gymnasium in Hamburg, aged 14 to 19. He toured Germany and France, and returned to Venezuela at 19, fluent in German, French and English. At 25, he met Leo Tolstoy, which encouraged his literary ambitions.
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Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
1772 - 1835 (63 years)
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth was a German physician born in Stuttgart. He studied medicine at Karlsschule Stuttgart, and following graduation attended lectures by Antonio Scarpa and Johann Peter Frank at Pavia. Afterwards he accompanied his father to the United States, where he practiced medicine for several months in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1797 he was appointed professor of anatomy, physiology, surgery and obstetrics at the University of Tübingen. In 1805 he founded an in-patient clinic at Tübingen, where in 1822 he was appointed chancellor of the university.
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Dimitar Gyuzelov
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Dimitar Gyuzelov was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary and philosopher. He is the father of Macedonian writer Bogomil Gyuzel and artist Liljana Gyuzelova, who between 1996 and 2006 worked on an art installation titled The Perpetual Return, dedicated to her father, his murder, and the stigma that the children of prominent Bulgarians who had been persecuted by the Yugoslav authorities after 1945 had to endure.
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Karl Julius Perleb
1794 - 1845 (51 years)
Karl Julius Perleb was a German botanist and natural scientist. Life From 1809 to 1811, Karl Julius Perleb studied at the University of Freiburg and earned a doctorate in philosophy and in 1815 a degree in medicine. He lived in Vienna for a brief period of time. In 1818 he returned to the University of Freiburg and began a post-doctoral fellowship. He remained at the university for the remainder of his life. He became an associate professor of natural history in 1821, and in 1823 he became a full professor. From 1828 to 1845 he served as director of the Freiburg Botanical Garden. In 1838 he was appointed prorector at Freiburg University.
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Edwin Lankester
1814 - 1874 (60 years)
Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England. Life Edwin Lankester was born in 1814 in Melton, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, to 'poor but clever parents' according to his son E. Ray Lankester . His father was a builder.
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Johann Hast
1808 - 1852 (44 years)
Johann Hast was a German philosopher born in Ottenstein-Ahaus. He studied philosophy and philology at the Academy of Münster, and afterwards taught classes at a vocational school in Münster. Later in his career, he worked as a bookseller and private journalist in Berlin and Münster, publishing works on philosophy, religion, education, et al. Among his literary works were two books involving Hermesian philosophy:Hauptmomente der Hermesischen Philosophie , Über das Fürwahrhalten der theoretischen und das Fürwahrannehmen der praktischen Vernunft im Hermesischen Systeme .He was the author of a cr...
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Adolf Phalén
1884 - 1931 (47 years)
Adolf Krister Hermansson Phalén, born 19 January 1884 in Tuna, Kalmar County, died 16 October 1931 in Uppsala, was a Swedish philosopher. Biography Phalén entered Uppsala University in 1902 where he intended to study law. However, after passing the preparatory examination for law students in 1903, he switch to philosophy instead. He took a bachelor's degree in 1907 and a licentiate degree in 1910, studying for professor Karl Reinhold Geijer. He became a Ph.D. in 1912, after having written a thesis on Hegelian philosophy. Phalén became acting professor in theoretical philosophy in Uppsala from ...
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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
#15013
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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André Bazin
1918 - 1958 (40 years)
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.
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Krystyn Lach-Szyrma
1791 - 1866 (75 years)
Krystyn Lach Szyrma was a professor of philosophy at Warsaw University. He was also a writer, journalist, translator and political activist. Life Szyrma was professor of philosophy at Warsaw University from 1824 to 1831. He left no philosophical writings.
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William Pepper
1843 - 1898 (55 years)
William Pepper Jr. , was an American physician, leader in medical education in the nineteenth century, and a longtime Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1891, he founded the Free Library of Philadelphia.
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Richard Lindner
1901 - 1978 (77 years)
Richard Lindner was a German-American painter. Biography Richard Lindner was born in Hamburg, Germany. His mother Mina Lindner was American and born in New York as the daughter of German parents. In 1905, the family moved to Nuremberg, where Lindner's mother was owner of a custom-fitting corset business and Richard Lindner grew up and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule , now the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. From 1924 to 1927, he lived in Munich and began studies there at the Kunstakademie in 1925. In 1927, Lindner moved to Berlin and stayed there until 1928, when he returned to Munich to become art director of a publishing firm.
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John Webster
1610 - 1682 (72 years)
John Webster , also known as Johannes Hyphastes, was an English cleric, physician and chemist with occult interests, a proponent of astrology and a sceptic about witchcraft. He is known for controversial works.
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Giovanni Battista Scaramelli
1687 - 1752 (65 years)
Giovanni Battista Scaramelli was an Italian Jesuit, ethicist, and ascetical writer. Biography He was born at Rome and died at Macerata in 1752. He entered the Society of Jesus on 21 September 1706. He devoted himself to preaching and the ministry for fifteen years.
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Robert Desgabets
1610 - 1678 (68 years)
Robert Desgabets was a French Cartesian philosopher and Benedictine prior, born in Ancemont. He published two book-length philosophical works in his lifetime, in 1671 and in 1675. In July 1658, Desgabets introduced the concept of blood transfusion or xenotransfusion at a meeting of Henri Louis Habert de Montmor's scientific society, which would later become the French Academy of Sciences. He would later publish in 1668.
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Stefano degli Angeli
1623 - 1697 (74 years)
Stefano degli Angeli was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, and Jesuate. He was member of the Catholic Order of the Jesuats . In 1668 the order was suppressed by Pope Clement IX. Angeli was a student of Bonaventura Cavalieri. From 1662 until his death he taught at the University of Padua.
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Antonio Rocco
1586 - 1652 (66 years)
Antonio Rocco was an Italian priest and philosophy teacher , and a writer. Ever since 1888 when he was identified as its anonymous author, he is best known for his satirical homosexual text, L'Alcibiade, fanciullo a scola, written in 1630 and published in 1652.
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Francis Glisson
1597 - 1677 (80 years)
Francis Glisson was a British physician, anatomist, and writer on medical subjects. He did important work on the anatomy of the liver, and he wrote an early pediatric text on rickets. An experiment he performed helped debunk the balloonist theory of muscle contraction by showing that when a muscle contracted under water, the water level did not rise, and thus no air or fluid could be entering the muscle.
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Niccolò Giani
1909 - 1941 (32 years)
Niccolò Giani was an Italian Fascist philosopher and journalist who was the founder of Fascist mysticism. Biography After attending the "Dante Alighieri" High School in Trieste he moved to Milan, where in 1928 he enrolled in the Faculty of Law, graduating in 1931. While at the University of Milan he also joined the Fascist University Groups . On 4 April 1930 Giani announced the imminent founding of the School of Fascist Mysticism, which he opened in Milan a few weeks later along with Arnaldo Mussolini. In 1931 Giani became director of the school, a post he left at the end of the following yea...
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Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș
1872 - 1952 (80 years)
Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaș was a Romanian art historian, ethnographer, museologist and cultural journalist, also known as local champion of art conservation, Romanian Police leader and pioneer radio broadcaster. Tzigara was a member of the Junimea literary society, holding positions at the National School of Fine Arts, the University of Bucharest and lastly the University of Cernăuți. During his youth, he was secretary to Carol I, the King of Romania. Close to the royal family, he also served as head of the Carol I Academic Foundation, where he set up a large collection of photographic plates.
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Thomas Lawrence
1711 - 1783 (72 years)
Thomas Lawrence was an English physician and biographer, who became President of the Royal College of Physicians in 1767. Life The second son of Captain Thomas Lawrence, R.N., by Elizabeth, daughter of Gabriel Soulden of Kinsale, and widow of a Colonel Piers, Lawrence was born in the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, on 25 May 1711. He was grandson of another Dr. Thomas Lawrence , a royal physician who was nephew of Henry Lawrence. Accompanying his father when appointed to the Irish station about 1715, he was for a time at school in Dublin. His mother died in 1724, and his father then left the navy and settled with his family at Southampton.
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David Ca Mant
#15042
Hans Christian Jacobaeus
1879 - 1937 (58 years)
Hans Christian Jacobaeus was a Swedish internist born in Skarhult. In 1916 he became a professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. From 1925 until his death in 1937, he was a member of the Nobel Prize Committee.
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Benjamin Smith Barton
1766 - 1815 (49 years)
Benjamin Smith Barton was an American botanist, naturalist, and physician. He was one of the first professors of natural history in the United States and built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. He wrote the first American textbook on botany.
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Al-Tabarani
873 - 971 (98 years)
Abū al-Qāsim Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad ibn Ayyūb ibn Muṭayyir al-Lakhmī al-Shāmī al-Ṭabarānī was a Sunni scholar and jurist known for the extensive volumes of hadith that he published. Biography Imam Al Tabarani was born in 260AH in Tabariya, ash-Sham. He narrated hadiths from more than one thousand scholars . He travelled extensively to many regions to quench his thirst of knowledge which includes Syria, Haramayn Tayyibayn, Yemen, Egypt, Baghdad, Kufa, Basra, Isfahan, etc. He wrote many hadith books . Sayyiduna Abul ‘Abbas Ahmad Bin Mansoor states: I have narrated three hundred thousand Ahadees from Imam Tabarani.
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Dimitrie Cuclin
1885 - 1978 (93 years)
Dimitrie Cuclin was a Romanian classical music composer, musicologist, philosopher, translator, and writer. Biography Early life Dimitrie Cuclin was born in the city of Galaţi, a port on the left shore of the Danube. His father was an immigrant from czarist Bessarabia, from the village of Cucleni, near the town of Izmail. He had studied music at the Theological Seminar of Izmail and at the Universities of Iaşi and Bucharest. At the time of Dimitrie's birth he was a music teacher at the Vasile Alecsandri High School in Galați. His mother was of peasant origin, from the village of Pechea, located about 25 miles from Galați; she was a housewife.
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M. F. Cleugh
1913 - 1986 (73 years)
M.F. Cleugh was a philosopher and educationalist. For many years she worked at the University of London in their Education department. On retirement she went to live in Shropshire. She is most known for her 1936 PhD work The problem of time, with special reference to its importance for modern thought also at the University of London, which was published in 1937 by Methuen and which has been reprinted several times. Her later work took a psychological slant on the education of those with particular difficulties... the old, the mature or the "slow" learners. She led a one-year course for teach...
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Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben
1819 - 1895 (76 years)
Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben was a German surgeon born in Frankfurt . He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Giessen, Paris and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1841 with a thesis on the construction of ductless glands. In 1848 he became an associate professor at Giessen followed by an appointment as a full professor of surgery at the University of Greifswald . In 1868 he returned to Berlin, where he worked at the Charité until his death on 24 September 1895. he was rector of the University of Berlin in 1876–1877.
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Richard von Volkmann
1830 - 1889 (59 years)
Richard von Volkmann was a prominent German surgeon and author of poetry and fiction. Some of his works were illustrated by his son, Hans, a well known artist. Biography He was born in Leipzig on 17 August 1830, the son of physiologist A.W. Volkmann. Richard entered medical school in Berlin and graduated in 1854. In 1867 he was appointed Professor of Surgery and Director of the Surgical Clinic at Halle where he remained until retirement. He was one of the most prominent surgeons of his day. He died in Jena.
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Georges de La Tour
1593 - 1652 (59 years)
Georges de La Tour was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight.
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Robert Lewins
1817 - 1895 (78 years)
Robert Lewins was a British army surgeon and philosopher. He is best known for his collaboration with Constance Naden on their philosophical theory called hylo-idealism. Army career Robert Lewins was a Surgeon Lieutenant Colonel who served with the 63rd Regiment in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny among other campaigns. According to his obituary in the British Medical Journal, Lewins was also 'in the expedition to the north of China in 1865 in charge of the hospital ship Mauritius, and was present at the capture of the Taku Forts, receiving the medal'.
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