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,
#15451
Heinrich Glarean
1488 - 1563 (75 years)
Heinrich Glarean also styled Glareanus was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis and died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Biography Glarean was born as Heinrich Loriti in Mollis in Canton Glarus to a politician. As a boy, he took care of cattle and received a good education. After a thorough early training in music, Glarean enrolled in the University of Cologne, where he studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics as well as music. It was in Cologne where he held a poem as a tribute to Emperor Maximilian I. Since 1514 he was a teacher for Greek and Latin in Basel, where he met Erasmus and the two humanists became lifelong friends.
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Gilbert Jack
1578 - 1628 (50 years)
Gilbert Jack was Scottish Ramist philosopher and physician. Life He was born in Aberdeen, and studied at Marischal College under Robert Howie. In 1598 he went to the University of Helmstedt. He was professor, later of physics, at the University of Leiden, from 1605. He was dismissed in 1619, suspected of sympathy with the Remonstrants; he was reinstated in 1623.
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Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani
1882 - 1975 (93 years)
Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani Iranian Shi'a jurist and philosopher. He taught theology in Tehran for about 40 years. Birth Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani was born in Tehran. He was the fourth and youngest son of Mirza Hassan Ashtiani, a prominent jurist under the reign Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. He became a jurist and a Shi'a Imam,
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Walking Stewart
1747 - 1822 (75 years)
John "Walking" Stewart was an English philosopher and traveller. Stewart developed a unique system of materialistic pantheism. Travels Known as 'Walking' Stewart to his contemporaries for having travelled on foot from Madras, India back to Europe between 1765 and the mid-1790s, Stewart is thought to have walked alone across Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Africa before wandering into every European country as far east as Russia.
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Ham Seok-heon
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Ham Seok-heon was a notable figure in the Religious Society of Friends movement in Korea, and was nicknamed the "Gandhi of Korea." Ham was an important Asian voice for human rights and non-violence during the 20th century, despite numerous imprisonments for his convictions. He was a Quaker who concluded that all religions are on common ground in terms of human beings, a view shared by many Quakers.
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Charles Blount
1654 - 1693 (39 years)
Charles Blount was an English deist and philosopher who published several anonymous essays critical of the existing English order. Life Blount was born in Upper Holloway, Islington, Middlesex, the fourth son of Sir Henry Blount. His father educated him at home and exposed him to freethinking philosophy. In 1672 Charles inherited lands in Islington and the estate of Blount's Hall in Staffordshire. He married Eleanor Tyrrell in Westminster Abbey at the end of 1672; they had three sons and a daughter. Throughout his life he remained at Blount's Hall as a leisured gentleman, although he also ...
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Scipione Riva-Rocci
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Scipione Riva Rocci was an Italian internist, pathologist and pediatrician. He is best known for the invention of an easy-to-use cuff-based version of the mercury sphygmomanometer for the measurement of blood pressure.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels
1821 - 1891 (70 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels was a German gynecologist and obstetrician born in Prague, in the Austrian Empire. He studied medicine in Prague, and spent most of his professional career as chair of obstetrics at the University of Würzburg, where he succeeded Franz Kiwisch von Rotterau.
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Francesco Filelfo
1398 - 1481 (83 years)
Francesco Filelfo was an Italian Renaissance humanist and author of the philosophic dialogue On Exile. Biography Filelfo was born at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. He is believed to be a third cousin of Leonardo da Vinci. At the time of his birth, Petrarch and the students of Florence had already begun to exalt the recovery of classic texts and culture. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had rediscovered many important Roman authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the restrictions of earlier periods. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the...
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Saviour Cumbo
1810 - 1877 (67 years)
Saviour Cumbo was a Maltese theologian and minor philosopher. His philosophical writings deal mainly with the relationship between reason and faith. Though his engagement with philosophical reflection was peripheral, his contribution in this field was at least interesting and at most insightful. No portrait of him has been identified up till now.
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Appiano Buonafede
1716 - 1793 (77 years)
Appiano Buonafede was an Italian priest and philosopher who published under the name Agatopisto Cromaziano. Appiano Buonafede was born in Comacchio, a Province of Ferrara, and died in Rome. He became a professor of theology while in Naples in 1740, and entering the religious body of the Celestines, rose to be general of the order in 1777.
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Berechiah ha-Nakdan
1200 - 1300 (100 years)
Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Nakdan was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher. His best-known works are Mishlè Shu'alim and Sefer ha-Ḥibbur . Biography Little is known for certain about Berechiah's life and much discussion has taken place concerning his date and native country. He is thought to have lived sometime in the 12th or 13th century, and is likely to have lived in Normandy and England, with some placing him about 1260 in Provence. It is possible that he was a descendant of Jewish scholars of Babylonia. He also knew foreign languages and...
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Crates of Athens
400 BC - 260 BC (140 years)
Crates of Athens was a Platonist philosopher and the last scholarch of the Old Academy. Biography Crates was the son of Antigenes of the Thriasian deme, the pupil and eromenos of Polemo, and his successor as scholarch of the Platonic Academy, in 270–69 BC. The intimate friendship of Crates and Polemo was celebrated in antiquity, and Diogenes Laërtius has preserved an epigram of the poet Antagoras, according to which the two friends were united after death in one tomb. The epigram, according to him, reads:
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James Paget
1814 - 1899 (85 years)
Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet FRS HFRSE was an English surgeon and pathologist who is best remembered for naming Paget's disease and who is considered, together with Rudolf Virchow, as one of the founders of scientific medical pathology. His famous works included Lectures on Tumours and Lectures on Surgical Pathology . There are several medical conditions which were described by, and later named after, Paget:Paget's disease of bonePaget's disease of the nipple Extramammary Paget's disease refers to a group of similar, more rare skin lesions discovered by Radcliffe Crocker in 1889 which affec...
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Carl Braun
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Carl Braun , sometimes Carl Rudolf Braun alternative spelling: Karl Braun, or Karl von Braun-Fernwald, name after knighthood Carl Ritter von Fernwald Braun was an Austrian obstetrician. He was born 22 March 1822 in Zistersdorf, Austria, son of the medical doctor Carl August Braun.
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Nils Alwall
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Nils Alwall was a Swedish professor at Lund University, Sweden. He was a pioneer in hemodialysis and the inventor of one of the first practical dialysis machines. Alwall pioneered the technique of ultrafiltration and introduced the principle of hemofiltration. Alwall is referred to as the "father of extracorporeal blood treatment."
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Khalil Kamarah'i
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Ayatollah Haj Mirza Khalil Kamarah'i . He was an author, researcher and philosopher of contemporary theology that sought to unite the Muslim sects supporting his cause. He studied under Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi in Arak and Qom. He continued his studies of various Islamic subjects and philosophy throughout his life. He worked with the administration in the Vatican City on various philosophical questions, which he later released in a separate book. He travelled to Cairo on behalf of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Mahmud Shaltut, the Grand Mufti and dean of Al-Azhar University Sheikh, for fatwa. H...
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Paul Bril
1556 - 1626 (70 years)
Paul Bril was a Flemish painter and printmaker principally known for his landscapes. He spent most of his active career in Rome. His Italianate landscapes had a major influence on landscape painting in Italy and Northern Europe.
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Burton Edward Livingston
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Burton Edward Livingston was an American plant physiologist, born at Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was educated at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago , where he worked as an assistant from 1899 to 1905. He published Róle of Diffusion and Osmotic Pressure in Plants . In 1913, Livingston became the professor of plant physiology at Johns Hopkins University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as the Society for Science and the Public, from 1930 to 1937. He was elected to th...
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John Bulwer
1606 - 1656 (50 years)
John Bulwer was an English physician and early Baconian natural philosopher who wrote five works exploring the Body and human communication, particularly by gesture. He was the first person in England to propose educating deaf people, the plans for an Academy he outlines in Philocophus and The Dumbe mans academie.
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Carsun Chang
1886 - 1969 (83 years)
Carsun Chang Biography A pioneering theorist of human rights in the Chinese context, Chang established his own small "Third Force" democratic party during the Nationalist era. Chang supported German-style social democracy while opposing capitalism, communism, and guild socialism. He supported socialization of major industries such as railroads and mines to be run by a combination of government officials, technicians, and consumers. The development of a mixed economy in China, like that advocated by the Social Democratic Party of Germany under Philipp Scheidemann.
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Karl von Piloty
1826 - 1886 (60 years)
Karl Theodor von Piloty was a German painter, noted for his historical subjects, and recognised as the foremost representative of the realistic school in Germany. Life and work Piloty was born in Munich. His father, Ferdinand Piloty , enjoyed a great reputation as a lithographer. In 1840, Karl was admitted as a student of the Munich Academy, under the artists Karl Schorn and Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld. A year later the acclaimed history paintings , i.e. the Compromise of the nobles and The Abdication of Charles V by the two Belgian artists Edouard de Bièfve and Louis Gallait, were shown i...
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Saint Lawrence
225 - 258 (33 years)
Saint Lawrence or Laurence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman Emperor Valerian ordered in 258.
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Wojciech Gerson
1831 - 1901 (70 years)
Wojciech Gerson was a leading Polish painter of the mid-19th century, and one of the foremost representatives of the Polish school of Realism during the foreign Partitions of Poland. He served as long-time professor of the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and taught future luminaries of Polish neo-romanticism including Józef Chełmoński, Leon Wyczółkowski, Władysław Podkowiński, Józef Pankiewicz and Anna Bilińska-Bohdanowiczowa among others. He also wrote art-reviews and published a book of anatomy for the artists. A large number of his paintings were stolen by Nazi Germany in World War II, and ...
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John Millott Ellis
1831 - 1894 (63 years)
John Millott Ellis was a 19th-century abolitionist minister and intellectual who served as acting President of Oberlin College in 1871. He was a professor of philosophy at Oberlin from 1866 to 1896.
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William Leslie Davidson
1848 - 1929 (81 years)
William Leslie Davidson was a Scottish philosopher. Early life Davidson was born and raised in Old Rayne, a village in the north-east of Scotland, near Aberdeen. He was educated at Aberdeen University before embarking on a career and life dedicated to philosophy.
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T. E. Jessop
1896 - 1980 (84 years)
Thomas Edmund Jessop, was a British academic best known for his work on George Berkeley. Biography Jessop was born, the son of Newton and Georgiana Jessop, in Huddersfield on 10 September 1896. He was educated at the University of Leeds, where he received his B.A. and M.A. . He gained his B.Litt from Oriel College, Oxford. From 1925 to 1928 he was an assistant lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
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Joseph Grasset
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Joseph Grasset , was a French neurologist and parapsychological investigator, born in Montpellier. He received his medical degree in Montpellier, where in 1881 he became a professor of therapy. In 1886, he attained the chair of clinical medicine, and in 1909 was appointed chair of general pathology.
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Friedrich Harms
1819 - 1880 (61 years)
Friedrich Harms was a German realist philosopher, much influenced by Fichte. He studied philosophy at the University of Kiel as a pupil of Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus. In 1842 he obtained his habilitation for philosophy at Kiel, where he later became an associate professor . In 1867 he relocated to the University of Berlin as a professor of philosophy.
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Charles Carroll Everett
1829 - 1900 (71 years)
Charles Carroll Everett was an American divine and philosopher. Early life and education Charles was born on June 19, 1829, in Brunswick, Maine, to Ebenezer Everett and Joanna Batchedler Prince. His father was a prominent citizen of Brunswick, a Harvard educated lawyer, banker, and long-time trustee of Bowdoin College. During the 1840s he was also elected to represent Brunswick in the Maine Legislature. The Everetts were an old, notable, and well connected New England family. Among his father's first cousins were Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett and Ambassador Alexander Hill Everett.
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Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis
1815 - 1886 (71 years)
Friedrich Bernhard Ferdinand Michelis was a German theologian and philosopher born in Münster. Biography He studied philosophy and theology at the Academy of Münster, receiving his ordination in 1838. From 1845 he was a chaplain and school teacher in Duisburg, and later an instructor at the Episcopal Theological Institute in Paderborn. From 1855 to 1864 he served as pastor in Münster-Albachten, and from 1864 to 1872 was a professor of philosophy at the Lyceum in Braunsberg. In 1860 he participated in the Erfurt conference that would lead to Julie von Massow's Ut Omnes Unum movement, which so...
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Thomas Vaughan
1621 - 1666 (45 years)
Thomas Vaughan was a Welsh clergyman, philosopher, and alchemist, who wrote in English. He is now remembered for his work in the field of natural magic. He also published under the pseudonym Eugenius Philalethes.
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Im Yunjidang
1721 - 1793 (72 years)
Im Yunjidang was a Korean writer and neo-Confucian philosopher from the Chosŏn dynasty . She defended the right for a woman to become a Confucian master and argued that men and women did not differ in their human nature by interpretations of Confucianism values in moral self-cultivation and human nature.
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Adam de Wodeham
1298 - 1358 (60 years)
Adam of Wodeham, OFM was a philosopher and theologian. Currently, Wodeham is best known for having been a secretary of William Ockham and for his interpretations of John Duns Scotus. But Wodeham was also an influential thinker in his own right who made valuable philosophical contributions during his life.
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Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling
1671 - 1729 (58 years)
Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling , was a German jurist and eclectic philosopher. He was born in Kirchensittenbach, and died in Magdeburg. He was the brother of Jacob Paul von Gundling, Court Historiographer to King Frederick I of Prussia, who became a figure of ridicule in the "Tobacco Cabinet" of Frederick William I.
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Saint Florian
250 - 304 (54 years)
Florian was a Christian holy man and the patron saint of chimney sweeps; soapmakers, and firefighters. His feast day is 4 May. Florian is also the patron saint of Poland, the city of Linz, Austria, and Upper Austria, jointly with Leopold III, Margrave of Austria.
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Vladimir Becić
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Vladimir Becić was a Croatian painter, best known for his early work in Munich, which had a strong influence on the direction of modern art in Croatia. Becić studied painting in Munich at the prestigious Academy of Arts along with Oskar Herman, Miroslav Kraljević and Josip Račić. This group of Croatian artists are known as the Munich Circle or Munich Four, and are very important figures in Croatian art of the 20th century. After Munich, Becić spent 2 years studying and working in Paris before returning to Zagreb in 1910.
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William Smellie
1740 - 1795 (55 years)
William Smellie was a Scottish printer who edited the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was also a naturalist and antiquary. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, co-founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a friend of Robert Burns.
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Christiaan Eijkman
1858 - 1930 (72 years)
Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic vitamins . Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins.
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Dharmakīrtiśrī
950 - Present (1076 years)
Dharmakīrtiśrī , also known as Kulānta and Suvarṇadvipi Dharmakīrti, was a renowned 10th century Buddhist teacher remembered as a key teacher of Atiśa. His name refers to the region he lived, somewhere in Lower Burma, the Malay Peninsula or Sumatra.
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Robert Christison
1797 - 1882 (85 years)
Sir Robert Christison, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish toxicologist and physician who served as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and as president of the British Medical Association . He was the first person to describe renal anaemia.
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Georg Mehlis
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
Georg Mehlis was a German neo-Kantian philosopher. Initially he was a philosopher of history in the style of Heinrich Rickert. He edited Logos, Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur, from 1910 , with contributions by many leading German intellectual figures; which had an Italian stable-mate from 1914.
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Sheldon Greenfield
#15494
Gaspare Tagliacozzi
1545 - 1599 (54 years)
Gaspare Tagliacozzi was an Italian surgeon, pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery. Biography Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna. Tagliacozzi began his medical studies in 1565. He studied at the University of Bologna under Gerolamo Cardano for medicine, Ulisse Aldrovandi for natural sciences and Julius Caesar Aranzi for anatomy. At the age of twenty-four, he earned his degree in philosophy and medicine.
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T. C. Chao
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Tzu-ch'en Chao , also known as T. C. Chao, was one of the leading Protestant theological thinkers in China in the early twentieth century. Life Chao was born on February 14, 1888, in Xinshi, Deqing County, Zhejiang, China. In 1903, at the age of fifteen, he chose to pursue a Western-style education, and enrolled in a secondary school affiliated with Soochow University. He was admitted to the university a few years later.
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Gessius of Petra
Gessius of Petra was a physician, iatrosophist and pagan philosopher active in Alexandria in the late 5th and early 6th century. Gessius was a native of the region of Petra. According to Damascius, who is the main source for Gessius' biography in the Suda, he was from Petra itself. Stephanus of Byzantium, on the other hand, writes that he came from the agricultural region of el-Ji not far from Petra. His father's name is unknown. He may have been descended from the Gessius who was a student and correspondent of Libanius and was active in Egypt in the 4th century. He studied under Domnus, who was Jewish.
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María Pascuala Caro Sureda
1768 - 1827 (59 years)
María Pascuala Caro Sureda , was the second woman Doctor of Philosophy in Spain. She was born to the marqués de La Romana, Pere Caro Fontes, and Margalida Sureda de Togores. She was given a high education and taught Latin, which was not usual for women, and her mother arranged for all her children to be given a formal education. She was allowed to study at the University of Valencia, which was highly unusual for a woman, and was even allowed to graduate: she became a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Valencia in 1779, as the second of her sex in Spain, and published her work in physic...
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Nakae Tōju
1608 - 1648 (40 years)
Nakae Tōju was a writer and Confucian scholar of early Edo period Japan popularly known as "the Sage of Ōmi". Biography Nakae was the eldest son of a farmer in Ōmi Province. When he was nine years old, he was adopted by his grandfather, Yoshinaga Tokuzaemon, who was a samurai with a stipend of 150 koku serving Yonago Domain in Hoki Province. In 1617, the daimyō of Yonago, Kato Sadayasu was transferred to Ōzu Domain in Iyo Province and Nakae relocated to Shikoku with his grandparents. In 1622, his grandfather died and Nakae inherited a position with a stipend of 100 koku. However, in 1634, at...
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Cosimo Boscaglia
1550 - 1621 (71 years)
Cosimo Boscaglia was a professor of philosophy at the University of Pisa in Italy. He is the first person known to have accused Galileo of possible heresy for defending the heliocentric system of Copernicus, in 1613.
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Judah Messer Leon
1422 - 1498 (76 years)
Judah ben Jehiel, , more usually called Judah Messer Leon , was an Italian rabbi, teacher, physician, and philosopher. Through his works, assimilating and embodying the intellectual approach of the best Italian universities of the time, yet setting it inside the intellectual culture of Jewish tradition, he is seen as a quintessential example of a hakham kolel , a scholar who excelled in both secular and rabbinic studies, the Hebrew equivalent of a Renaissance man. This was the ideal he tried to instil in his students. One of his students was Yohanan Alemanno.
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