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,
#15301
Philip of Opus
400 BC - 400 BC (0 years)
Philip of Opus , was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. He was a member of Plato’s Academy and after the master's death, edited his last work, Laws. He is generally considered the author of the Platonic Epinomis , a follow-on conversation among the same interlocutors.
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Paolo Ruffini
1765 - 1822 (57 years)
Paolo Ruffini was an Italian mathematician and philosopher. Education and career By 1788 he had earned university degrees in philosophy, medicine/surgery and mathematics. His works include developments in algebra:an incomplete proof that quintic equations cannot be solved by radicals . Abel would complete the proof in 1824.Ruffini's rule, which is a quick method for polynomial division.contributions to group theory.He also wrote on probability and the quadrature of the circle.
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Li Zhi
1527 - 1602 (75 years)
Li Zhi , often known by his pseudonym Zhuowu , was a Chinese philosopher, historian and writer of the late Ming dynasty. A critic of the Neo-Confucianist views espoused by Zhu Xi, which was then the orthodoxy of the Ming government, he was persecuted and committed suicide in prison.
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Albrecht von Haller
1708 - 1777 (69 years)
Albrecht von Haller was a Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist, encyclopedist, bibliographer and poet. A pupil of Herman Boerhaave, he is often referred to as "the father of modern physiology."
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Rachelle Yarros
1869 - 1946 (77 years)
Rachelle Slobodinsky Yarros was an American physician who supported the use of birth control and the social hygiene movement. A graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Yarros resided at Hull House for many years and opened the second birth control clinic in the nation there. She was an obstetrician/gynecologist affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Lying-in Hospital.
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Johann Friedrich Gmelin
1748 - 1804 (56 years)
Johann Friedrich Gmelin was a German naturalist, chemist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist. Education Johann Friedrich Gmelin was born as the eldest son of Philipp Friedrich Gmelin in 1748 in Tübingen. He studied medicine under his father at University of Tübingen and graduated with a Master's degree in 1768, with a thesis entitled: , defended under the presidency of Ferdinand Christoph Oetinger, whom he thanks with the words .
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Lucio Fontana
1899 - 1968 (69 years)
Lucio Fontana was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. Early life Born in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina, to Italian immigrant parents, he was the son of the sculptor Luigi Fontana . Fontana spent the first years of his life in Argentina and then was sent to Italy in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor with his father, and then on his own. Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentine artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé.
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Jean Philibert Damiron
1794 - 1862 (68 years)
Jean-Philibert Damiron was a French philosopher. Biography Damiron was born at Belleville. At nineteen he entered the École Normale, where he studied under Eugène Burnouf, Abel-Francois Villemain, and Victor Cousin. After teaching for several years in provincial towns, he came to Paris, where he lectured on philosophy in various institutions, and finally became professor in the normal school, and titular professor at the Sorbonne. In 1824 he joined Paul-François Dubois and Théodore Simon Jouffroy in establishing Le Globe; and he was also a member of the committee of the society which took for its motto Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera.
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Albert Schwegler
1819 - 1857 (38 years)
Albert Schwegler was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian. Biography Schwegler was born at Michelbach in Württemberg, the son of a country pastor. He entered the University of Tübingen in 1836, and was one of the earliest pupils of F. C. Baur, under whose influence he devoted himself to church history. His first work was Der Montanismus und die christliche Kirche des Zweiten Jahrhunderts , in which he pointed out for the first time that Montanism was much more than an isolated outbreak of eccentric fanaticism in the early church, though he himself introduced fresh misconceptions by connecting it with Ebionitism as he conceived the latter.
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Isaac ben Moses Arama
1420 - 1494 (74 years)
Isaac ben Moses Arama was a Spanish rabbi and author. He was at first principal of a rabbinical academy at Zamora ; then he received a call as rabbi and preacher from the community at Tarragona, and later from that of Fraga in Aragon. He officiated finally in Calatayud as rabbi and head of the Talmudical academy. Upon the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Arama settled in Naples, where he died in 1494.
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Maitreyi
1000 BC - 1000 BC (0 years)
Maitreyi was an Indian philosopher who lived during the later Vedic period in ancient India. She is mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as one of two wives of the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya; she is estimated to have lived around the 8th century BCE. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata and the Gṛhyasūtras, however, Maitreyi is described as an Advaita philosopher who never married. In ancient Sanskrit literature, she is known as a brahmavadini .
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Pietro Bembo
1470 - 1547 (77 years)
Pietro Bembo, was an Italian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance , Pietro Bembo greatly influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect as a literary language for poetry and prose, which, by later codification into a standard language, became the modern Italian language. In the 16th century, Bembo's poetry, essays and books proved basic to reviving interest in the literary works of Petrarch. In the field of music, Bembo's literary writing techniques ...
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Leo Kanner
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psy...
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Protap Chunder Mozoomdar
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Protap Chunder Mozoomdar was a leader of the Hindu reform movement, the Brahmo Samaj, in Bengal, India, and a close follower of Keshub Chandra Sen. He was a leading exemplar of the interaction between the philosophies and ethics of Hinduism and Christianity, about which he wrote in his book, The Oriental Christ.
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Andrea Pozzo
1642 - 1709 (67 years)
Andrea Pozzo was an Italian Jesuit brother, Baroque painter, architect, decorator, stage designer, and art theoretician. Pozzo was best known for his grandiose frescoes using the technique of quadratura to create an illusion of three-dimensional space on flat surfaces. His masterpiece is the nave ceiling of the Church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome. Through his techniques, he became one of the most noteworthy figures of the Baroque period. He is also noted for the architectural plans of Ljubljana Cathedral , inspired by the designs of the Jesuit churches Il Gesù and S. Ignazio in Rome.
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Đuro Arnold
1853 - 1941 (88 years)
Đuro Arnold was a Croatian writer and philosopher. Early life and study Arnold was born as the 19th of 24 children of Ivan, a tax gatherer, and Sofija, née Vukanić. His ancestors arrived from Switzerland during the French Revolution. He was born in Ivanec and spent his early childhood in Krapina. He attended primary school in Zagreb, and high school in Varaždin and Zagreb, where he graduated in 1873.
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Mahmoud Mohammed Taha
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, also known as Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was a Sudanese religious thinker, leader, and trained engineer. He developed what he called the "Second Message of Islam", which postulated that the verses of the Qur'an revealed in Medina were appropriate in their time as the basis of Islamic law, , but that the verses revealed in Mecca represented the ideal and universal religion, which would be revived when humanity had reached a stage of development capable of implementing them, ushering in a renewed era of Islam based on the principles of freedom and equality. He was execu...
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Emma Goldman
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Emma Goldman was a Lithuanian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
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Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
1783 - 1853 (70 years)
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was a Danish painter. He was born in Blåkrog in the Duchy of Schleswig . He went on to lay the foundation for the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, and is referred to as the "Father of Danish painting".
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Fernando González
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
Fernando González Ochoa , was a Colombian writer and existentialist philosopher known as "el filósofo de Otraparte" . He wrote about sociology, history, art, morality, economics, epistemology and theology in a humorous, and creative style, in various genres of literature. González is considered one of the most original writers of Colombia during the 20th century. His ideas were controversial and had a great influence in the Colombian society at his time and still today. González work inspired Nadaism, a literary and cultural movement founded by Gonzalo Arango an some other writers, poets and painters that surrounded him.
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Swami Shraddhanand
1856 - 1926 (70 years)
Swami Shraddhanand , also known as Mahatma Munshi Ram Vij, was an Arya Samaj sannyasi and an Indian Independence activist who propagated the teachings of Dayananda Saraswati. This included the establishment of educational institutions, like the Gurukul Kangri University, and played a key role on the Sangathan and the Shuddhi , a Hindu reform movement in the 1920s.
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Francesco Bonatelli
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
Francesco Bonatelli was a 19th-century Italian philosopher of the Roman Catholic spiritualist tradition. Francesco Bonatelli was born in Iseo, Brescia, Italy on 25 April 1830. He first studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and later taught that subject at the universities of Bologna and Padua . He was also one of the principal editors of Filosofia delle scuole italiane, a review founded in 1870 by Terenzio Mamiani which was dedicated to defending a Platonizing position. However, he resigned in 1874 when the Platonist Giovanni Maria Bertini published criticisms of Catholicism that Bonatelli considered too bold.
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Jorge Romero Brest
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Jorge Aníbal Romero Brest was an influential art critic in Argentina, who helped popularize avant-garde art in his country. Life and work Born in Buenos Aires in 1905, Romero Brest enjoyed multiple interests in his youth, and excelled in a variety of sports. His father, Enrique Romero Brest, established the National Institute of Physical Education. Jorge Brest began writing for his father's sports magazine, Revista de Educación Física. His research for these articles familiarized him with André Dunoyer de Segonzac's illustrations on the subject, and he developed an intellectual interest in art.
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Cornelis Willem Opzoomer
1821 - 1892 (71 years)
Cornelis Willem Opzoomer was a Dutch jurist, positivist philosopher and theologian. He was professor of philosophy at Utrecht University from 1846 to 1889. In 1856 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Hammalawa Saddhatissa
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Hammalawa Saddhatissa Maha Thera was an ordained Buddhist monk, missionary and author from Sri Lanka, educated in Varanasi, London, and Edinburgh. He was a contemporary of Walpola Rahula, also of Sri Lanka.
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Arthur Thomson
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Sir John Arthur Thomson was a Scottish naturalist who authored several notable books and was an expert on soft corals. Life He was born at Pilmuir east of East Saltoun, East Lothian, the second son of Isabella Landsborough and the Rev Arthur Thomson , a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, originally from Muckhart.
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Francis Wade
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Francis C. Wade was an American Jesuit and professor of philosophy at Marquette University. Biography Wade was born on November 11, 1907, in Whitesboro, Texas, where he was baptized in St. Thomas Church. He was the son of George H. Wade and Virginia M. Wade. He was educated at Whitesboro Public School and at St. Mary's College High School, St. Marys, Kansas. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1925. He was awarded his B.A. from Xavier University in 1930, his M.A. from Saint Louis University in 1932, and his S.T.L. from Saint Louis University in 1939.
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Giulio Romano
1499 - 1546 (47 years)
Giulio Pippi , known as Giulio Romano , was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-century style known as Mannerism. Giulio's drawings have long been treasured by collectors; contemporary prints of them engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi were a significant contribution to the spread of sixteenth-century Italian style throughout Europe.
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Antonin Sertillanges
1863 - 1948 (85 years)
Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P. , also known as Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer. Biography Born Antonin-Gilbert, he took the name Antonin-Dalmace when he entered the Dominican order. In 1893 he founded the Revue Thomiste and later became professor of moral philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Henri Daniel-Rops wrote that it was rumored that President Raymond Poincaré asked Léon-Adolphe Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, for a reply to Pope Benedict XV's peace proposals, and that Amette passed the request along to Sertillan...
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Julius Ebbinghaus
1885 - 1981 (96 years)
Julius Ebbinghaus was a German philosopher, one of the closest followers of Immanuel Kant active in the twentieth century. He was influenced by the Heidelberg school of neo-Kantianism of Wilhelm Windelband, and wrote on philosophy of law and the categorical imperative. Professor at Marburg University since 1940; 1954 professor emeritus, continuing lectures until 1966. In October 1945, he became installed as Rector Magnificus by order of the American occupation forces. He was the son of famous psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
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Hermann Heller
1891 - 1933 (42 years)
Hermann Heller was a German legal scholar and philosopher of Jewish descent. He was active in the non-Marxist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic. He attempted to formulate the theoretical foundations of the social-democratic relations to the state, and nationalism. He was politically active in the relatively conservative Hofgeismarer Kreis of the SPD and is believed to have authored the group's statement of principles.
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Antonio Banfi
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Antonio Banfi was an Italian philosopher and senator. He is also noted for founding the Italian philosophical school called critical rationalism. Although influenced by the Marburg neo-Kantians and Edmund Husserl, whom he knew personally, Banfi moved away from Idealism and instead focused on Marxism, in particular, historical materialism.
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Hermann Stieve
1886 - 1952 (66 years)
Hermann Philipp Rudolf Stieve was a German physician, anatomist and histologist. Following his medical studies, he served in the German Army during First World War and became interested in the effect of stress and other environmental factors on the female reproductive system, the subject of his later research. In 1921, he became the youngest doctor to chair the medical department of a German university. He taught medicine at the University of Berlin, and was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy at the Charité teaching hospital in the later years of his life.
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Stefan Pawlicki
1839 - 1916 (77 years)
Stefan Zachariasz Pawlicki was a Polish Catholic priest, philosopher, historian of philosophy, professor and rector of Kraków's Jagiellonian University. Life Stefan Pawlicki came from a merchant family. He began his education in Danzig ; after his family moved to Greater Poland, he continued it in Pleschen . At age thirteen, he lost his parents during an epidemic. He completed progimnazjum thanks to help from a local parish priest, Father Basiński. He continued his education in 1853–58 at a liceum in Ostrów Wielkopolski, where he was one of the best pupils, thanks to a scholarship from Jan K...
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William A. Earle
1919 - 1988 (69 years)
William A. Earle was a twentieth-century American philosopher. Earle was an important figure within the movements of existentialism and phenomenology. He had particular expertise in the thought of Karl Jaspers and Georg W. F. Hegel and was an authority on surrealism. His interests included cultural criticism, the history of ideas, aesthetics, film, filmmaking, and mysticism. Students and colleagues regarded him as a strikingly independent, richly provocative educator and thinker.
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Rafael Calvo Serer
1916 - 1988 (72 years)
Rafael Calvo Serer was a Professor of History of Spanish Philosophy, a writer, essayist. He was president of the Council of Administration of the newspaper Madrid, in which he published numerous articles on national and international politics. In 1949 he obtained the National Award for Literature for his work España sin problema.
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Gampopa
1079 - 1153 (74 years)
Gampopa Sönam Rinchen was the main student of Milarepa, and a Tibetan Buddhist master who codified his own master's ascetic teachings, which form the foundation of the Kagyu educational tradition. Gampopa was also a doctor and tantric master. He authored the first Lamrim text, Jewel Ornament of Liberation, and founded the Dagpo Kagyu school. He is also known as Dvagpopa, and by the titles Dakpo Lharjé "the physician from Dakpo" and Daö Zhönnu, "Candraprabhakumara" .
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Luigi Ferri
1826 - 1895 (69 years)
Luigi Ferri was an Italian philosopher born in Bologna. His education was obtained mainly at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where his father, a painter and architect, was engaged in the construction of the Théâtre Italien. From his twenty-fifth year he began to lecture in the colleges of Évreux, Dieppe, Blois and Toulouse. Later, he was lecturer at Annecy and Casal-Montferrat, and became head of the education department under Mamiani in 1860.
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Mohsen Fayz Kashani
1598 - 1680 (82 years)
Mul·lā "al-Muḥsin" "al-Fayḍ" al-Kāshānī was an Iranian Twelver Shi'i Muslim, mystic, poet, philosopher, and muhaddith . Life Mohsen Fayz Kashani was born in Kashan to a scholarly family renowned for its learning, Fayz started his education with his father, Shah Morteza. His father owned a rich library which benefited Fayz. When he reached the age of twenty, he travelled to Isfahan for further study. However, after a year in Isfahan, he moved to Shiraz to study Hadith and Fiq under Majid Bahrani, one of the leading Shi'ite scholars of his time. Bahrani died a few months later, and Fayz r...
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Charles de Villers
1765 - 1815 (50 years)
Charles François Dominique de Villers was a French philosopher. He was mainly responsible for translating the philosophy of Immanuel Kant into the French language. Life Villers was born in Boulay-Moselle, France. He studied at the Benedictine College in Metz, and then became a student of the School of Applied Artillery of Metz. He attained the rank of captain. Like other officers of that era, such as the artillery colonel Armand Marie Jacques de Chastenet of Puysegur, he became interested in animal magnetism.
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Anton Raphael Mengs
1728 - 1779 (51 years)
Anton Raphael Mengs was a German painter, active in Dresden, Rome, and Madrid, who while painting in the Rococo period of the mid-18th century became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting, which replaced Rococo as the dominant painting style in Europe.
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Gopinath Kaviraj
1887 - 1976 (89 years)
Gopinath Kaviraj was an Indian Sanskrit scholar, Indologist and philosopher. First appointed in 1914 a librarian, he was the Principal of Government Sanskrit College, Varanasi from 1923 to 1937. He was also the editor of the Sarasvati Bhavana Granthamala during that period.
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Eugene Lindsay Opie
1873 - 1971 (98 years)
Eugene Lindsay Opie was an American physician and pathologist who conducted research on the causes, transmission, and diagnosis of tuberculosis and on immunization against the disease. He served as professor of pathology at several U.S. medical schools and as Dean of the Washington University School of Medicine .
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Luis Buñuel
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the great and more influential filmmakers of all time. Buñuel’s works were known for their avant-garde surrealism which were also infused with political commentary.
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John Watson
1847 - 1939 (92 years)
John Watson was a Canadian philosopher and academic. Life He was born in Gorbals parish, Glasgow, Scotland, on 25 February 1847, the son of John Watson, a printer from Lanarkshire, and his wife Elizabeth Robertson from Northumberland. He attended the Free Church School in Kilmarnock. He then worked as a clerk to 1866.
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Dietrich Mahnke
1884 - 1939 (55 years)
Dietrich Mahnke was a German philosopher and historian of mathematics. From 1902–1906, Mahnke studied at Göttingen under Edmund Husserl and David Hilbert. After serving in the First World War , he graduated from the University of Freiburg in 1925 with a thesis on Leibniz. The thesis was later published in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung as Leibnizens Synthese von Universalmathematik und Individualmetaphysik. In 1926 he habilitated at Greifswald with a thesis entitled Neue Einblicke in die Entdeckungsgeschichte der höheren Analysis. In 1927 he became a professor of...
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Manuel Chrysoloras
1355 - 1415 (60 years)
Manuel Chrysoloras was a Byzantine Greek classical scholar, humanist, philosopher, professor, and translator of ancient Greek texts during the Renaissance. Serving as the ambassador for the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in medieval Italy, he became a renowned teacher of Greek literature and history in the republics of Florence and Venice, and today he's widely regarded as a pioneer in the introduction of ancient Greek literature to Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages.
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M. M. Sharif
1893 - 1965 (72 years)
Mian Mohammad Sharif TI was a Pakistani philosopher, Islamic scholar, and college professor. He is noted for his work in analytical philosophy and pioneered the idea of Muslim philosophy. His work was published in international philosophical journals.
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August Batsch
1761 - 1802 (41 years)
August Johann Georg Karl Batsch was a German naturalist. He was a recognised authority on mushrooms, and also described new species of ferns, bryophytes, and seed plants. Life and career Batsch was born in Jena, Saxe-Weimar to George Lorenz Bratsch and Ernestine Bratsch. He studied at the Jena City School, and then had private tuition. He showed an aptitude for natural sciences and drawing, and so subsequently studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Jena , entering in 1772 and obtaining his doctorate in philosophy in 1781 and in medicine in 1786, his supervisor being Justus Christian Loder.
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Domingo de Soto
1494 - 1560 (66 years)
Domingo de Soto, O.P. was a Spanish Dominican priest and Scholastic theologian born in Segovia , and died in Salamanca , at the age of 66. He is best known as one of the founders of international law and of the Spanish Thomistic philosophical and theological movement known as the School of Salamanca.
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