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,
#15351
Pierre-Sylvain Régis
1632 - 1707 (75 years)
Pierre Sylvain Régis was a French Cartesian philosopher and a prominent critic of Spinoza. Known as a philosopher, he was nominated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1699. Life Born at La Salvetat de Blanquefort, near Agen, he had a classical education, and then went to Paris. He attended the lectures of Jacques Rohault, and became a follower of the philosophy of René Descartes. He then taught the principles of Cartesianism at Toulouse , Aigues-Mortes, Montpellier , and Paris . The prohibition issued against the teaching of Cartesianism put an end to his lectures.
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Shao Yong
1011 - 1077 (66 years)
Shao Yong , courtesy name Yaofu , named Shào Kāngjié was a Chinese cosmologist, historian, philosopher, and poet who greatly influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism across China during the Song dynasty.
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Hugo Junkers
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Hugo Junkers was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG , was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. His multi-engined, all-metal passenger- and freight planes helped establish airlines in Germany and around the world.
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Augustus John
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Augustus Edwin John was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John.
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Thomas Beddoes
1760 - 1808 (48 years)
Thomas Beddoes was an English physician and scientific writer. He was born in Shifnal, Shropshire and died in Bristol fifteen years after opening his medical practice there. He was a reforming practitioner and teacher of medicine, and an associate of leading scientific figures. He worked to treat tuberculosis.
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John Wyndham
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids , filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos , which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.
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Karl Rudolf Sohn
1845 - 1908 (63 years)
Karl Friedrich Rudolf Sohn was a German portrait painter in the Academic style. Biography His father was the landscape painter, Karl Ferdinand Sohn. After graduating from the , he was drafted for military service, but was rejected for "physical weaknesses". In 1863, he began studying engineering at the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe. He completed his studies in 1866, but never practiced as an engineer. He returned to Düsseldorf and, shortly before his father's death, he began to study art with him. From 1867 to 1870, he was a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied history painting with Karl Müller and figure painting with Julius Roeting.
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Félicien Challaye
1875 - 1967 (92 years)
Félicien Robert Challaye was a French philosopher, anti-colonialist and human rights activist. Early life Félicien Challaye was born on 1 November 1875 in Lyon, France. He earned the agrégation in Philosophy in 1897.
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James Edwin Creighton
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
James Edwin Creighton was an American idealist philosopher, Cornell academic, founding president of the American Philosophical Association, and president of the American Philosophical Society. Biography Creighton graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Dalhousie College, Halifax, in 1887, and became a student at the foreign universities of Leipzig and Berlin. Later he came to Cornell University as a graduate student, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy there in 1892. From 1889 to 1892, Dean Creighton was an instructor in philosophy at Cornell, being advanced during the three following years to an associate professorship.
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Ralph Tyler Flewelling
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Ralph Tyler Flewelling was an American philosopher. Biography Early life He was born on November 23, 1871, near De Witt, Michigan, and educated at the University of Michigan, Alma College . the Garrett Biblical Institute , and Boston University.
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Georg Ernst Stahl
1659 - 1734 (75 years)
Georg Ernst Stahl was a German chemist, physician and philosopher. He was a supporter of vitalism, and until the late 18th century his works on phlogiston were accepted as an explanation for chemical processes.
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Karl von Prantl
1820 - 1888 (68 years)
Karl von Prantl was a German philosopher and philologist. Biography He was born at Landsberg on the Lech. In 1843 he became doctor of philosophy at Munich Observatory, where he was made professor in 1859. He was also a member of the Academies of Berlin and Munich. Strongly in agreement with the Hegelian tradition, he defended and amplified it in Die gegenwärtige Aufgabe der Philosophie and Verstehen und Beurteilen .
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Kurt J Isselbacher
#15364
Jerzy Żuławski
1874 - 1915 (41 years)
Jerzy Żuławski was a Polish literary figure, philosopher, translator, alpinist and patriot whose best-known work is the science-fiction epic, Trylogia Księżycowa , written between 1901 and 1911.
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Nicholas Wiseman
1802 - 1865 (63 years)
Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church who became the first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850.
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Heinrich Ritter
1791 - 1869 (78 years)
Heinrich August Ritter was a German philosopher and historian of philosophy. He was born in Zerbst, and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Göttingen and Berlin until 1815. In 1824 he became an associate professor of philosophy at Berlin, later transferring to Kiel, where he occupied the chair of philosophy from 1833 to 1837. He then accepted a similar position at the University of Göttingen, where he remained till his death. Friedrich Schleiermacher was a major influence in his thinking.
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Lacydes of Cyrene
300 BC - 205 BC (95 years)
Lacydes of Cyrene , Academic Skeptic philosopher, was head of the Platonic Academy at Athens in succession to Arcesilaus from 241 BC. He was forced to resign c. 215 BC due to ill-health, and he died c. 205 BC. Nothing survives of his works.
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Pope Pius V
1504 - 1572 (68 years)
Pope Pius V, OP , born Antonio Ghislieri , was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 January 1566 to his death, in May 1572. He is venerated as a saint of the Catholic Church. He is chiefly notable for his role in the Council of Trent, the Counter-Reformation, and the standardization of the Roman Rite within the Latin Church, known as Tridentine mass. Pius V declared Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church.
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Christian Gottfried Schütz
1747 - 1832 (85 years)
Christian Gottfried Schütz was a German classical scholar and humanist, known for his contributions in philosophy and philology, and for his work as an academic and literary editor and publisher. Life Christian Gottfried Schütz was the eldest of eight recorded children born to the Protestant minister Gottfried Schütz and his wife, in the village of Dederstädt, a couple of hours walk to the south of Eisleben, in an area administered, under a slightly convoluted arrangement by Saxony. Shortly after his birth his father was appointed to a senior preaching position in nearby Aschersleben, to where the family relocated, and it was here that the boy received his early schooling.
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Johann Joachim Lange
1670 - 1744 (74 years)
Johann Joachim Lange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Lange was born in Gardelegen and educated in Leipzig, Erfurt and Halle. He was influenced by Christian Thomasius and the pietist August Hermann Francke. He became a professor of theology at Halle in 1709, and opposed the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He died in Halle on 7 May 1744.
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Henry Horace Williams
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Henry Horace Williams was a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1890 to 1940. From 1921 to 1935 he was a Kenan Professor of philosophy at UNC, and from 1936-1940 he was a professor emeritus. After being invited to teach at UNC, he became the first chair of the Mental and Moral Sciences Department, which is today better known as the Department of Philosophy.
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Alexander Mitscherlich
1908 - 1982 (74 years)
Alexander Harbord Mitscherlich was a German psychoanalyst. Life Alexander Mitscherlich grew up in Munich and took up studies in history, the history of art, and philosophy at Munich University. When Mitscherlich's Jewish-born dissertation thesis supervisor Paul Joachimsen died, in 1932, his chair was passed to an antisemite, Karl Alexander von Müller, who declined to take over the dissertation projects begun by his predecessor. This is why Mitscherlich left Munich for Berlin in order to open a bookstore there, where he sold writings critical of the current developments in Germany, bringing him to the attention of the SA.
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Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge was a teacher at various American universities. Woodbridge considered himself a naïve realist, deeply impressed with Santayana. He spent much of his career as a dean at Columbia University, where a residence hall and a professorship in philosophy are named in his honor. He was editor of the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods. David and Lillian Swenson, translators of some of the works of Søren Kierkegaard, dedicated Concluding Unscientific Postscript, to Professor Woodbridge.
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Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben
1744 - 1777 (33 years)
Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben was a German naturalist from Quedlinburg. Erxleben was professor of physics and veterinary medicine at the University of Göttingen. He wrote Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre and Systema regni animalis . He was founder of the first and oldest academic veterinary school in Germany, the Institute of Veterinary Medicine, in 1771.
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Marie Laurencin
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Marie Laurencin was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or. Biography Laurencin was born in Paris, where she was raised by her mother and lived much of her life. At 18, she studied porcelain painting in Sèvres. She then returned to Paris and continued her art education at the Académie Humbert, where she changed her focus to oil painting. During the early years of the 20th century, Laurencin was an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde. A member of both the circle of Pablo P...
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Nasreddin
1208 - 1284 (76 years)
Nasreddin or Nasreddin Hodja is a character in the folklore of the Muslim world from the Balkans to China, and a hero of humorous short stories and satirical anecdotes. There are frequent statements about his existence in real life and even archaeological evidence in specific places, for example, a tombstone in the city of Akşehir, Turkey. At the moment, there is no confirmed information or serious grounds to talk about the specific date or place of Nasreddin's birth, so the question of the reality of his existence remains open.
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Karl Friedrich Köppen
1808 - 1863 (55 years)
Karl Friedrich Köppen was a German teacher and political journalist. He was one of the Young Hegelians. Life Köppen was from a born in a pastor's family in Altmark. He studied theology at the University of Berlin from 1827 to 1831, but later turned to religio-critical Hegelianism. After his studies and military service in 1833, he taught at the secondary school Dorotheenstädtischer. In 1837, he met Karl Marx, with whom he developed a close friendship.
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Huang Zongxi
1610 - 1695 (85 years)
Huang Zongxi , courtesy name Taichong , was a Chinese naturalist, political theorist, philosopher, and soldier during the latter part of the Ming dynasty into the early part of the Qing. Biography Huang was a native of Yuyao in Zhejiang province. He was the son of Huang Zunsu, an official of the Ming court and an adherent of the Donglin Movement who died in prison after opposing the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian.
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František Klácel
1808 - 1882 (74 years)
František Matouš Klácel was a Czech author, philosopher, pedagogue, and journalist. Since 1827 he was an Augustinian friar in Brno, co-brother of Gregor Mendel. A Varied Man During his rich and varied life Klácel used several pseudonyms He also called himself Matouš František K.- Matouš had been his monastic name. He was born into a poor family, and his father was a cobbler. After basic school in Třebová and junior school he went to grammar school in Litomyšl and after graduating spent the next two years studying philosophy. In 1827 he went to the Augustinian monastery in Brno where he became a member of the order and spent the years 1829–32 studying at the Brno theological institute.
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Abraham Tucker
1705 - 1774 (69 years)
Abraham Tucker was an English country gentleman, who devoted himself to the study of philosophy. He wrote The Light of Nature Pursued under the name of Edward Search. Biography Tucker was born in London of a Somerset family, the son of a wealthy city merchant. His parents died during his infancy, and he was brought up by his uncle, Sir Isaac Tillard. In 1721, he entered Merton College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, and studied philosophy, mathematics, French, Italian and music. He afterwards studied laws at the Inner Temple, but was never called to the bar.
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Olive Schreiner
1855 - 1920 (65 years)
Olive Schreiner was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel The Story of an African Farm , which has been highly acclaimed. It deals boldly with such contemporary issues as agnosticism, existential independence, individualism, the professional aspirations of women, and the elemental nature of life on the colonial frontier.
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Ioan Zalomit
1823 - 1885 (62 years)
Ioan Zalomit was a Romanian philosopher, professor and rector of the University of Bucharest. Biography Ioan Zalomit was born in Bucharest, in a family of merchants. His parents were probably of Greek origin, but they were born in Wallachia.
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Adam of Bockenfield
1220 - Present (806 years)
Adam of Bockenfield was an English Franciscan philosopher, who taught at the University of Oxford in the early 1240s. He was an early commentator on a number of Aristotle's works, in particular those dealing with natural philosophy.
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Benjamin Paul Blood
1832 - 1919 (87 years)
Benjamin Paul Blood was an American philosopher, mystic and poet. His idiosyncratic work explored his development of his pluralist philosophy, culminating in the posthumously published book Pluriverse.
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Gustav Hartlaub
1814 - 1900 (86 years)
Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub was a German physician and ornithologist. Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and collect exotic birds, which he donated to the Bremen Natural History Museum. He described some of these species for the first time. In 1852, he set up a new journal with Jean Cabanis, the Journal für Ornithologie. He wrote with Otto Finsch, Beitrag zur Fauna Centralpolynesiens: Ornithologie der Viti-, Samoa und Tonga- Inseln. Halle, H. Schmidt. This 1867 work which has handcoloured lithographs was based on bird specimens collected by Eduard Heinrich Graeffe for Museum Godeffroy.
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Alfred Barratt
1844 - 1881 (37 years)
Alfred Barratt was an English barrister and philosopher. He trained in law at the University of Oxford, and published his first book, Physical Ethics, in 1869 while studying there. He died an early death in 1881 from overwork as a barrister, secretary to the Oxford University Commission, and philosopher. His second book, Physical Metempiric, was published posthumously in 1883.
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Petrus Ramus
1515 - 1572 (57 years)
Petrus Ramus was a French humanist, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was a victim of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Early life He was born at the village of Cuts, Picardy; his father was a farmer. He gained admission at age twelve to the Collège de Navarre, working as a servant. A reaction against scholasticism was in full tide, at a transitional time for Aristotelianism. On the occasion of receiving his M.A. degree in 1536, Ramus allegedly took as his thesis Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent, commentitia esse , which Walter J. Ong paraphrases as follows:
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Rajab Ali Tabrizi
1650 - 1670 (20 years)
Rajab Ali Tabrizi was an Iranian and Shiat philosopher and mystic of the 17th century. He was educated in the Sheikh Lotf Allah school. Books 1- Resaleh-ye2- "Al Osul ol Asfiyeh" or "Asl ol Osul".3- "A book in theology".4- "The interpretation of Ayatolkorsi"5- "The divine instructions"6- His book of poetry
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Dada Dharmadhikari
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Shankar Trimbak Dharmadhikari , better known as Dada Dharmadhikari, was an Indian freedom fighter, and a leader of social reform movements in India. He was a strong adherent of Mahatma Gandhi's principles. His eldest daughter was married to Adv. Tamasskar of Bemetara, now in Chattisgarh. His second child, son by name Pradyumna was also a freedom fighter and lived life as a common man. His third child, a son by name Yashwanth Shankar Dharmadhikari served as the Advocate-general of Madhya Pradesh and his youngest son Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari served as judge of Bombay High Court.
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Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx
1796 - 1877 (81 years)
Karl Friedrich Heinrich Marx was a German physician and college lecturer. Despite sharing the same name, he was not related to Karl Marx, the founder of Marxism. Life and works Marx was born on 10 March 1796 in Karlsruhe, the son of a Jewish antiquarian, and attended the Karlsruhe Lyceum, where he was taught by Johann Peter Hebel and Karl Christian Gmelin. In 1813 he began studies in philosophy and medicine in Heidelberg, where, in 1817, he participated in the Old Heidelberg Burschenschaft as a friend of Heinrich Carl Alexander Pagenstecher. He had contacts with Jean Paul and attended inter alia lectures by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, becoming a follower of his.
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John Constance Parnis
1695 - 1735 (40 years)
John Constance Parnis was a major Maltese mediaeval philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics, physics, and logic. Life Parnis was born at Mdina, Malta, in 1695. He began studying philosophy before he joined the Franciscans. His name at that time was John Baptist, and between 1712 and 1715 he followed courses given by Constance Vella at the Franciscans’ College of Philosophy and Literature at Rabat, Malta.
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Gaston Milhaud
1858 - 1918 (60 years)
Gaston Milhaud was a French philosopher and historian of science. Gaston Milhaud studied mathematics with Gaston Darboux at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1881 he took a teaching post at the University of Le Havre. In 1891 he became professor of mathematics at Montpellier University, and in 1895 became professor of philosophy there. In 1909 a chair in the history of philosophy in its relationship to the sciences was created for him at the Sorbonne. Milhaud's successor in the chair was Abel Rey.
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Gregory the Illuminator
252 - 329 (77 years)
Gregory the Illuminator was the founder and first official head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He converted Armenia from Zoroastrianism to Christianity in the early fourth century , making Armenia the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church and in some other churches.
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Hartley Burr Alexander
1873 - 1939 (66 years)
Hartley Burr Alexander, PhD , was an American philosopher, writer, educator, scholar, poet, and iconographer. Family and early years Alexander was born in Syracuse, Nebraska, on April 9, 1873. His father, the Rev. George Sherman Alexander , was a Methodist minister and pioneer newspaper editor in Nebraska. These twin sources were to implant in young Hartley a delight in the written word and a distrust of Christianity. His mother, Abigail Smith Alexander , died when he was three and in 1877 his father remarried Susan Godding . Ms. Godding had been a teacher and chairperson in the Methodist Scho...
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Mazu Daoyi
709 - 788 (79 years)
Mazu Daoyi was an influential abbot of Chan Buddhism during the Tang dynasty. He is known as the founder of the Hongzhou school of Zen. The earliest recorded use of the term "Chan school" is from his Extensive Records.
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Ahmet Arvasi
1932 - 1988 (56 years)
Ahmet Arvasi , commonly known as Seyyid Ahmet Arvasi, was a writer and philosopher of Arabic origin. He is known for expounding upon the ideology of the "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis Doctrine" and its effect on Turkey. He was born in Doğubeyazıt district of Ağrı, Turkey. His family is from Van Province. His father Seyyid Abdulhakim Arvasi was a Sunni Islamic scholar during the late Ottoman and early Republic periods of Turkey.
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Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi
1834 - 1904 (70 years)
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was a French sculptor and painter. He is best known for designing Liberty Enlightening the World, commonly known as the Statue of Liberty. Early life and education Bartholdi was born in Colmar, France, 2 August 1834. He was born to a family of Alsatian Protestant heritage, with his family name adopted from Barthold. His parents were Jean Charles Bartholdi and Augusta Charlotte Bartholdi . Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was the youngest of their four children, and one of only two to survive infancy, along with the oldest brother, Jean-Charles, who became a lawyer and e...
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Andrea del Verrocchio
1435 - 1488 (53 years)
Andrea del Verrocchio , born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was a sculptor, Italian painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence. He apparently became known as Verrocchio after the surname of his master, a goldsmith. Few paintings are attributed to him with certainty, but important painters were trained at his workshop. His pupils included Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi. His greatest importance was as a sculptor and his last work, the Equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, is generally accepted as a masterpiece.
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Andreas Joseph Hofmann
1752 - 1849 (97 years)
Andreas Joseph Hofmann was a German philosopher and revolutionary active in the Republic of Mainz. As Chairman of the Rhenish-German National Convention, the earliest parliament in Germany based on the principle of popular sovereignty, he proclaimed the first republican state in Germany, the Rhenish-German Free State, on 18 March 1793. A strong supporter of the French Revolution, he argued for an accession of all German territory west of the Rhine to France and served in the administration of the department Mont-Tonnerre under the French Directory and the French Consulate.
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Richard Kilvington
1305 - 1361 (56 years)
Richard Kilvington was an English scholastic theologian and philosopher at the University of Oxford. His surviving works are lecture notes from the 1320s and 1330s. He was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He was involved in a controversy over the nature of the infinite, with Richard FitzRalph, of Balliol College.
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