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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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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).

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#15401

Alexander Kolisko

Alexander Kolisko

1857 - 1918 (61 years)

Alexander Kolisko was a pathologist who was born in Vienna, Austrian Empire. He was the father of anthroposophist Eugen Kolisko . Biography In 1881 Kolisko earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, subsequently working as an assistant to Hans Kundrat at the pathological anatomy institute at the university. Later, he was a prosector at the Leopoldstädter Kinderspital in Vienna. In 1898 he succeeded Eduard von Hofmann as a professor of forensic medicine, and in 1916 was successor to Anton Weichselbaum as professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Vienna.

#15402

Hans-Peter Zimmer

#103651

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Hans-Peter Zimmer was a German painter and sculptor. He was born in Berlin and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He formed Gruppe SPUR in 1957 with the painters Heimrad Prem, Helmut Sturm and the sculptor Lothar Fischer. After a joint exhibition at the Pavillon im Alten Botanischen Garten in Munich, they met the Danish artist and philosopher Asger Jorn, who linked them up with the Galerie Van de Loo which exhibited them.

#15403

Tofail Ahmed

#30003

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Tofail Ahmed was a well-known Bangladeshi researcher of Folk Art. He was also a collector of Folk artifacts and has authored several books on Bangladeshi Folk arts and Crafts. He was awarded the Shilu Abed Karushilpa Award for his contribution to Folk Arts and Craft in 1998. He was also elected as an honorary fellow of the Bangla Academy in 2001.

#15404

Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa

#88588

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa was a noted Brazilian physician, biologist and geneticist. Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa was born in Rio de Janeiro, where he did all his studies, first in natural history at the Federal District University , graduating in 1938; and subsequently medicine at the National School of Medicine of University of Brazil, graduating in 1941. He got his doctoral degree at the same school, in 1953 and soon afterwards went abroad on a scholarship for post-doctoral studies at Columbia University, in New York City, from 1953 to 1955. His teaching and research professional career began in 1942, ...

#15405

Ron Mallon

#159106

Overall Influence

Ronald Mallon is an American Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Work Mallon's work is in philosophy of psychology, experimental philosophy, moral psychology, and critical race theory. He is an expert on human kinds, especially race, and how small inequalities can lead to big ones.

#15406

Theodor Thjøtta

Theodor Thjøtta

1885 - 1955 (70 years)

Theodor Thjøtta was a Norwegian physician. He specialized in bacteriology and serology, and was a professor at the University of Oslo from 1935 to his death. Personal life He was born in Sandnes as a son of shoemaker Abraham Thjøtta and Rakel Tjølsen . In 1921 he married watchmaker's daughter Alfhild Helene Michelet .

#15407

Emil Mattiesen

1875 - 1939 (64 years)

Emil Karl Gustav Alfred Mattiesen was a Baltic Germans musician, music pedagogue, composer and philosopher. He composed lieder, song cycles, ballads, chamber music and organ music, but is better known for standard works in German on parapsychology. He was a professor of church music at the University of Rostock from 1929.

#15408

Quintus Aelius Tubero

163 BC - Present (2189 years)

Quintus Aelius Tubero was a Stoic philosopher and a pupil of Panaetius of Rhodes. He had a reputation for talent and legal knowledge. He might have been a tribune of the plebs in 130 BC. He also possibly became a suffect consul in 118 BC.

#15409

Orly Shenker

#168052

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Orly Ruth Shenker is an Israeli philosopher of physics and philosopher of mind whose research topics have included Maxwell's demon, entropy and fractal geometry, viewed through a form of physicalism that she calls "flat physicalism". She is a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where she holds the Eleanor Roosevelt Chair in History and Philosophy of Science. Until 2021 she was director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine. She is also founding president of The Pond: Network of Philosophy of Science around th...

#15410

Hubert Schwyzer

#133709

Overall Influence

1935 - 2006 (71 years)

Hubert R. G. Schwyzer was an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was known for his research on Kantian philosophy. Life He was born in Vienna, Austria, on March 16, 1935, to Georg Clemens Schwyzer, a physician, and Elisabeth Schuh Schwyzer. The family was forced to leave Austria nine months after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. Hubert grew up in England and attended a Jesuit boarding school before joining the Royal Air Force, where he served from 1953 to 1955. He received a degree in philosophy from Reading University in 1958.

#15411

Geoff Dench

#67120

Overall Influence

1940 - 2018 (78 years)

Professor Geoff Dench was a British social scientist whose work related particularly to the lives of working class men. He did extensive research using opinion surveys and arrived at conclusions relating to immigration, meritocracy and feminism that were out of keeping with prevailing attitudes in British academia in the later twentieth century.

#15412

Didier Julia

#113374

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Didier Julia is a French politician. He was in 2007 representing the Union for a Popular Movement from Seine-et-Marne in the French National Assembly, a post he has held from 1967. He is mainly known for his interference in liberation operations of French hostages detained in Iraq following the US invasion in 2003.

#15413

Amy Skubitz

#173763

Overall Influence

Amy Patrice Norden Skubitz is an American immunologist. At the University of Minnesota, Skubitz and her research team at the Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Program used new technology to test patients blood, leading to numerous findings.

#15414

Armond White

#54411

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Armond Allen White is an American film and music critic who writes for National Review and Out. He was previously the editor of CityArts , the lead film critic for the alternative weekly New York Press , and the arts editor and critic for The City Sun . Other publications that have carried his work include Film Comment, Variety, The Nation, The New York Times, Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, and First Things.

#15415

Janice Douglas

#109796

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Janice Green Douglas is an American physician, the first woman professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She is a fellow of the American Heart Association and known for her research on cellular control of blood pressure and hypertension.

#15416

Ricardo Dominguez

#47965

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Ricardo Dominguez is an American artist and associate professor of visual arts at UC San Diego. He has been the subject of controversy over a number of acts of electronic civil disobedience on his own and with the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which he co-founded.

#15417

Noureddin Zarrinkelk

Noureddin Zarrinkelk

#42985

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Noureddin Zarrinkelk , also spelled Zarrin-Kelk, also known as Noori or Nouri, is an Iranian animator, concept artist, editor, graphic designer, illustrator, layout artist, photographer, script writer, educator, and sculptor.

#15418

Margaret Fairlie

Margaret Fairlie

1891 - 1963 (72 years)

Margaret Fairlie FRCOG FRCSE was a Scottish academic and gynaecologist. Fairlie spent most of her career working at Dundee Royal Infirmary and teaching at the medical school at University College, Dundee . In 1940 she became the first woman to hold a professorial chair in Scotland.

#15419

Fabian Udekwu

#21231

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Fabian Anene Ositadimma Udekwu born in Enugwu Agidi, Anambra State was a Medical Doctor, Cardiac surgeon. He was a distinguished Professor of Surgery at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, and a pioneer of open heart surgery in Africa.

#15420

Irwin Weil

#39036

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Irwin Weil is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at Northwestern University. He is noted for his work in promoting cultural exchange and mutual understanding between the USA and the USSR/Russia, and for attracting large numbers of students to his courses. He recorded a popular series of lectures of Russian Literature for The Teaching Company in 2005.

#15421

Adolf Eugen Fick

Adolf Eugen Fick

1829 - 1901 (72 years)

Adolf Eugen Fick was a German-born physician and physiologist. Early life and education Fick began his work in the formal study of mathematics and physics before realising an aptitude for medicine. He then earned his doctorate in medicine from the University of Marburg in 1851. As a fresh medical graduate, he began his work as a prosector. He died in Flanders at age 71.

#15422

Sandi Lam

#132738

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sandi Lam is a Canadian pediatric neurosurgeon and is known for her research in minimally invasive endoscopic hemispherectomy for patients with epilepsy. Lam is the Vice Chair for Pediatric Neurological Surgery at Northwestern University and the Division Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Lurie Children's Hospital. She has spent her career advancing pediatric brain surgery capabilities globally through her work in Kenya performing surgeries as well as training and mentoring local residents and fellows.

#15423

Karl Küpfmüller

1897 - 1977 (80 years)

Karl Küpfmüller was a German electrical engineer, who was prolific in the areas of communications technology, measurement and control engineering, acoustics, communication theory, and theoretical electro-technology.

#15424

George Chatterton-Hill

1883 - 1947 (64 years)

George Chatterton-Hill was the Irish writer of several books on evolution and sociology. He wrote at the start of the 20th century, when the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's work, had created turmoil over Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. He was also very influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer regarding evolution and society, and of Benjamin Kidd regarding society and religion.

#15425

Barry Cooper

#40334

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Barry Cooper is an English musicologist, composer, organistist, Beethoven scholar, and editor of the Beethoven Compendium. Life Born in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, Cooper studied piano and composition in his childhood, leading to scholarships to Gordonstoun School and later to University College, Oxford, where he studied organ with John Webster and earned an MA in 1973 and a DPhil in 1974. His musical compositions include an oratorio, The Ascension.

#15426

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen

#96981

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen has been holding the chair for musicology at the University of Zurich since 1999. Career Born in Westerland on Sylt, Hinrichsen studied Germanistic and History at the Free University of Berlin. The completion of the Staatsexamen was followed by a teaching phase at Gymnasium. Subsequently, he studied musicology at the FU Berlin, which he completed with a PhD in 1992.

#15427

Myron Weiner

#23302

Overall Influence

1931 - 1999 (68 years)

Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar of India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.

#15428

Peter Jeffery

#56845

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Peter Jeffery is an American musicologist. Life Jeffery graduated from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and the Performing Arts, in New York City, and from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in Music History in 1980.

#15429

Claudio Canaparo

Claudio Canaparo

#171968

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Claudio Canaparo is currently a visiting professor at Universidad de Quilmes, in Argentina. He has written as a literary critic, epistemologist, sociology of culture analyst and philosopher. Education and career Canaparo was born in the city port of Campana, Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a mother of Hebrew origins and an Italian rooted father; he was a traveller, manual worker and scientific researcher before entering academia. He studied at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Rosario, at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Buenos Aires, at the DAMS at the Università degli Studi di Bologna, and received his Ph.D.

#15430

Edward Cutbush

1772 - 1843 (71 years)

Edward Cutbush was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1794, where he was resident physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital from 1790 to 1794. Cutbush was surgeon general of the Pennsylvania militia during the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.

#15431

F. John Clendinnen

#129310

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

F. John Clendinnen was an Australian philosopher of science interested in induction and empiricism. Early life and education His father, Leslie John Clendinnen and grandfather, Frederick John Clendinnen were radiologists at several hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, where Clendinnen lived. After the Second World War he commenced an undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne.

#15432

Bruce Bennett

#179874

Overall Influence

#15433

Kurd Lasswitz

1848 - 1910 (62 years)

Kurd Lasswitz was a German author, scientist, and philosopher. He has been called "the father of German science fiction". He sometimes used the pseudonym Velatus. Biography Lasswitz studied mathematics and physics at the University of Breslau and the University of Berlin, and earned his doctorate in 1873. He spent most of his career as a teacher at the Ernestine Gymnasium in Gotha .

#15434

Aminata Diaw

#114002

Overall Influence

1959 - 2017 (58 years)

Aminata Diaw Cissé was a Senegalese lecturer and political philosopher who taught at the Cheikh Anta Diop University . Influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and her academia background, she wrote about citizenship, civil society, democracy, development, ethnicity, gender, globalisation, human rights, identity, nationality and the state in an African and Senegalese context by using a political insight. Diaw worked for the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa , Bellagio Study and Conference Center of the Rockfeller Foundation, National UNESCO Sub-Commission on Social S...

#15435

Chris W. Allen

#73734

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Chris Allen is a professor in the College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media at the University of Nebraska at Omaha . A Fulbright scholar, he has lectured on investigative journalism and freedom of the press in Afghanistan and Oman.

#15436

Marino Tartaglia

Marino Tartaglia

1894 - 1984 (90 years)

Marino Tartaglia was a Croatian painter and art teacher, for many years a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. From 1948 he was a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He received the Vladimir Nazor Award for lifetime achievement in the arts in 1964.

#15437

Arnold Bax

1883 - 1953 (70 years)

Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems, he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist.

#15438

Frederick Fox Cartwright

#157674

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

Frederick Fox Cartwright was an English anaesthetist and president of the History of Medicine Society of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1975–77. Life Cartwright was born in Woolland, Dorset, to Anglican priest George Frederick Cartwright and Constance Margaret Clark. He had a special interest in Otolaryngology. Cartwright published on history of medicine, became Head of the Department of History of Medicine at King's College Medical School, London and was active at the Faculty of History of Medicine and Philosophy of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

#15439

Masatada Yamasaki

Masatada Yamasaki

1872 - 1950 (78 years)

was a gynecologist and president of Kumamoto Medical College . He wrote The history of medical education in Higo and Yokoi Shōnan. After retirement, he travelled in Okinawa. Life He was born in Sagawa town, Takaoka gun, Kōchi Prefecture on 11 May 1872. After graduation from Tokyo Imperial University in 1900, he became professor at private Kumamoto Medical School in 1901. In 1909 and 1910, he studied in München and Bonn universities. He was appointed the president of Aichi Medical School in 1916. In 1925, he was appointed the president of Kumamoto Medical College and director of the Hospital.

#15440

Jacob M. Held

#178466

Overall Influence

Jacob M. Held is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Assistant Provost for Academic Assessment and General Education at the University of Central Arkansas. He is known for his work at the intersection of philosophy and popular culture.

#15441

David M. Gunn

#73220

Overall Influence

David Miller Gunn is an academic and religious scholar. He is the A. A. Bradford Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University. Education Gunn studied at the University of Melbourne, the University of Otago, and Newcastle University.

#15442

Rulan S. Parekh

#90587

Overall Influence

Rulan S. Parekh is an American-Canadian clinician-scientist and nephrologist. She is the vice president of research, education and innovation at Women's College Hospital and former senior scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences and Associate Chief of Clinical Research at SickKids.

#15443

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger

#28556

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller. Biography Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1963 in South Haven, Michigan. Then she moved to Evanston, Illinois and has since spent a majority of her life in Chicago. Niffenegger started writing books when she was six years old. Niffenegger completed her undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Chicago where she worked on becoming a visual artist. After completing her undergraduate degree, she got her M.F.A at Northwestern University. Niffenegger is ...

#15444

Catherine Coleman

#179947

Overall Influence

#15445

Nisreen Alwan

#111468

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Nisreen Ala-Din A. S. Alwan MBE is a British–Iraqi public health researcher who is a professor of Public Health at the University of Southampton. Her research considers maternal and child health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alwan used social media to communicate public health messages and to call for long covid to be counted and measured. In 2020, Alwan was selected as one of the BBC's top 100 Women.

#15446

Jane C. Wright

#30514

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Jane Cooke Wright was a pioneering cancer researcher and surgeon noted for her contributions to chemotherapy. In particular, Wright is credited with developing the technique of using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells. She also pioneered the use of the drug methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer .

#15447

Pride Chigwedere

Pride Chigwedere

#66151

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Pride Chigwedere , a Zimbabwean national, is a Harvard trained physician-scientist working in global health. He is most notable for leading a team of Harvard researchers who demonstrated that South African President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS policies led to more than 300 000 deaths. While South Africa's policies were condemned by many, Chigwedere's contribution was in developing and applying methods to quantify the impact of the policies thus demonstrating the calamitous consequences of AIDS denialism. Generalized, he developed an approach for evaluating public health practice and highlighted the need to develop a framework for accountability in public health.

#15448

Rudolf von Ficker

1886 - 1954 (68 years)

Rudolf Ficker was an Austrian musicologist. Life Rudolf von Ficker was the son of the historian Julius von Ficker and brother of author/publisher Ludwig von Ficker and meteorologist/physicist Heinrich von Ficker. In 1905 he began his composition studies with Ludwig Thuille and Walter Courvoisier in Munich. He then continued his music studies with the musicologist Guido Adler in the Department of Music at the University of Vienna, where he received his doctorate in 1913. He habilitated at the University of Innsbruck in 1920, and in 1922/23 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Innsbruck.

#15449

Larry N. Vanderhoef

Larry N. Vanderhoef

#45542

Overall Influence

1941 - 2015 (74 years)

Larry Neil Vanderhoef was an American biochemist and academic. He was the 5th chancellor of University of California, Davis. Biography Vanderhoef was born in Perham, Minnesota to Wilmar James Vanderhoef and Ida Lucille Wothe. He received his B.A. and M.S. in biology from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in plant biochemistry from Purdue University.

#15450

Katharine Sharp

Katharine Sharp

1865 - 1914 (49 years)

Katharine Lucinda Sharp gained prominence as a pioneering librarian for her intense engagement with the library profession that spanned 19 years. Having founded the innovative University of Illinois Library School, she resigned from her position and left the library field as rapidly as she had entered it. She is remembered for ‘professionalizing’ the field of library science and for her considerable contribution to the standards of the discipline. In 1999, Sharp was named in the American Library Association's 100 leaders of the 20th century.

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