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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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#1551

Bryan W. Van Norden

#23060

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Bryan W. Van Norden is an American translator of Chinese philosophical texts and scholar of Chinese and comparative philosophy. He has taught for twenty five years at Vassar College, United States, where he is currently the James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy. From 2017 to 2020, he was the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.

#1552

Akeel Bilgrami

#15121

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Akeel Bilgrami is an Indian philosopher. He has been in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University since 1985 after spending two years as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

#1553

Arthur Galston

#9704

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Arthur W. Galston was an American plant physiologist and bioethicist. As a plant biologist, Galston studied plant hormones and the effects of light on plant development, particularly phototropism. He identified riboflavin and other flavins as the photoreceptors for phototropism, the bending of plants toward light, challenging the prevailing view that carotenoids were responsible.

#1554

Joan Callahan

#33001

Overall Influence

1946 - 2019 (73 years)

Joan Callahan was a Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, an institution where she taught for more than twenty years and served in a variety of roles, including as director of the Gender and Women's Studies Program. Callahan's research has focused on feminist theory, critical race theory, ethics, social and political philosophy, the philosophy of law, and on the junctions of these topics.

#1555

Shabbir Akhtar

#17490

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Shabbir Akhtar was a British Muslim philosopher, poet, researcher, writer and multilingual scholar. He was on the Faculty of Theology and Religions at the University of Oxford. His interests included political Islam, Quranic exegesis, revival of philosophical discourse in Islam, Islamophobia, extremism, terrorism and Christian-Muslim relations as well as Islamic readings of the New Testament. Shabbir Akhtar was also a Søren Kierkegaard scholar. Akhtar's articles have appeared both in academic journals and in the UK press. Several of his books have been translated into the major Islamic langua...

#1556

Peter Koellner

#20271

Overall Influence

Peter Koellner is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D from MIT in 2003. His main areas of research are mathematical logic, specifically set theory, and philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, analytic philosophy, and philosophy of language.

#1557

Peter S. Fosl

#28788

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Peter Stanley Fosl is Professor of Philosophy at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and the winner of a 2006 Acorn Award for outstanding professor in Kentucky. Education and professional life Fosl graduated from Freedom High School in 1981 and then summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bucknell University in 1985 with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both philosophy and economics; he spent the Lent Term of 1984 at the London School of Economics. In 1986, Fosl became a Woodruff Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, winning Emory's Award for Excellence in Graduate Research in 1989 and taking a Master of Arts in Philosophy the following year.

#1558

Andreas Dorschel

Andreas Dorschel

#16877

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Andreas Dorschel is a German philosopher. Since 2002, he has been professor of aesthetics and head of the Institute for Music Aesthetics at the University of the Arts Graz . Background Andreas Dorschel was born in 1962 in Wiesbaden, West Germany. He is a cousin of the modernist visual artist Gesine Probst-Bösch . From 1983 on, Dorschel studied philosophy, musicology and linguistics at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Vienna . In 2002, the University of Bern awarded him the Habilitation degree . Dorschel has taught at universities in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the UK. At University of East Anglia Norwich , he was a colleague of writer W.G.

#1559

Sheila Jasanoff

Sheila Jasanoff

#7181

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Sheila Sen Jasanoff is an Indian American academic and significant contributor to the field of Science and Technology Studies. In 2021 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Her research has been recognized with many awards, including the 2022 Holberg Prize "for her groundbreaking research in science and technology studies."

#1560

Emilio Lledó

#9515

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

Emilio Lledó Íñigo is a Spanish philosopher. He has been a professor at several universities and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Career He took his bachelor's degree at the Instituto de Bachillerato Cervantes and, in 1952, his degree in philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. He went to Germany to continue his studies in classical philosophy with Hans-Georg Gadamer, who helped him to finish his doctoral thesis by securing him a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 1955, he obtained a position at the Complutense University of Madrid, but returned to ...

#1561

Takaaki Yoshimoto

Takaaki Yoshimoto

#9128

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

, also known as Ryūmei Yoshimoto, was a Japanese poet, philosopher, and literary critic. As a philosopher, he is remembered as a founding figure in the emergence of the New Left in Japan, and as a critic, he was at the forefront of a movement to force writers to confront their responsibility as wartime collaborators.

#1562

Naomi Oreskes

#5269

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

#1563

Stephen Mumford

#40368

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Stephen Dean Mumford is a British philosopher, who is currently Head of Department and Professor of Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. Mumford is best known for his work in metaphysics on dispositions and laws, but has also made contributions in the philosophy of sport.

#1564

Ansgar Beckermann

#41771

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ansgar Beckermann is a German philosopher who deals primarily with philosophy of mind and epistemology. He is professor for philosophy at the University of Bielefeld and was the president of the "Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie" . Beckermann is known for his arguments for physicalism and his discussion of the concept of emergence.

#1565

Stephen Mulhall

#28153

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Stephen Mulhall is a British philosopher and Fellow of New College, Oxford. His main research areas are Ludwig Wittgenstein and post-Kantian philosophy. Education and career Stephen Mulhall received a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford in 1983. He then pursued an MA in Philosophy from The University of Toronto in 1984, during which time he spent several weeks studying under Sir Isaiah Berlin at Harvard. Between 1984 and 1988, he attended Balliol College and All Souls College, Oxford for his DPhil in Philosophy. From 1986 to 1991 he was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College and in 1991 he became a Reader of Philosophy at the University of Essex.

#1566

H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr.

#29218

Overall Influence

1941 - 2018 (77 years)

Hugo Tristram Engelhardt Jr. was an American philosopher, holding doctorates in both philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and medicine from Tulane University. He was a professor of philosophy at Rice University, in Houston, Texas, specializing in the history and philosophy of medicine, particularly from the standpoint of continental philosophy. He was also a professor emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine, and a member of the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

#1567

David H. Sanford

#33672

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

David H. Sanford was a professor of philosophy at Duke University. He specializes in perception and metaphysics. Sanford studied at Cass Technical High School, Oberlin College and at Wayne State University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1966, taught at Dartmouth College from 1963 to 1970, and joined the Duke Faculty in 1970. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon.

#1568

Peter Goadsby

#33344

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Peter Goadsby FRS FRACP FRCP is an Australian neuroscientist who is Director of the National Institute for Health Research - Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research Facility and Professor of Neurology at King's College London. His research has focused particularly on the mechanism and alleviation of migraine and cluster headaches.

#1569

Victor Kanke

#21139

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Victor Andreyevich Kanke is a Russian philosopher born in the village of Nekrasovo, Slavgorod District, Altai Territory to a German family. He taught physics at school and philosophy at the Biysk State Teacher Training Institute and the Obninsk Institute for Nuclear Power Engineering .

#1570

Mark de Bretton Platts

#41887

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mark de Bretton Platts is a philosopher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México . He is well known for criticizing the Humean theory of motivation, especially in his book Ways of Meaning .

#1571

Clancy Martin

#18061

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Clancy Martin is a Canadian philosopher, novelist, and essayist. His interests focus on 19th century philosophy, existentialism, moral psychology, philosophy and literature, ethics & behavioral health, applied and professional ethics and philosophy of mind.

#1572

Prashastapada

#36363

Overall Influence

was an ancient Indian philosopher. He wrote the Padārtha-dharma-saṅgraha and a commentary, titled Praśastapāda Bhāṣya, on the Vaisheshika Sutrass of Kanada ; both texts are comprehensive books in physics. In these texts Prashastapada discusses the properties of motion. Ganganath Jha had translated Praśastapāda Bhāṣya which was published in 1916. Prashasta or Praśasta means praised or praiseworthy, lauded or laudable, commended or commendable or eulogized.

#1573

Elisabeth Camp

#34769

Overall Influence

Elisabeth Camp is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. Camp's work has focused on forms of thought and speech that do not fit standard propositional models. She has written extensively about figurative speech such as sarcasm and metaphor, arguing that these forms of speech force listeners to reconsider their standard methods of delineating the difference between what is meant and what is said.

#1574

Shunpei Ueyama

#45562

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Shunpei Ueyama was a Japanese philosopher associated with the postwar Kyoto School. He graduated in philosophy from Kyoto University in 1943, and trained in a kamikaze human torpedo squad. His main professional interest in philosophy were in the fields of logic, and American pragmatism, especially with its founding fathers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. He was emeritus professor at Kyoto University.

#1575

John Skorupski

#30129

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

John Skorupski is a British philosopher whose main interests are epistemology, ethics and moral philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of 19th and 20th century philosophy. He is best known for his work on John Stuart Mill and his study of normativity, The Domain of Reasons. His most recent publication is Being and Freedom: on Late Modern Ethics in Europe.

#1576

Ewa Ziarek

#36278

Overall Influence

Ewa Ziarek is the Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature at The State University of New York at Buffalo . She has a major interest in engaging with other scholars on their own terms, and believes that a model of dissensus in philosophy, rather than the traditional consensus model, may produce highly valuable results.

#1577

Iain Thomson

#22039

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Iain D. Thomson is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico . He is a well-known expert on Martin Heidegger. Education and career Thomson studied as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Hubert Dreyfus, and then earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. As a visiting graduate student at UC Irvine, he also studied with Jacques Derrida. He is known for his expertise on Heidegger's philosophy, European philosophy since Kant, philosophy of education, philosophy of technology, p...

#1578

Carol P. Christ

#10182

Overall Influence

1945 - 2021 (76 years)

Carol Patrice Christ was a feminist historian, thealogian, author, and foremother of the Goddess movement. She obtained her PhD from Yale University and served as a professor at universities such as Columbia University and Harvard Divinity School. Her best-known publication is "Why Women Need The Goddess". It was initially a keynote presentation at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference" at the University of Santa Cruz in 1978. This essay helped to launch the Goddess movement in the U.S. and other countries. It discusses the importance of religious symbols in general, and the effects of male symbolism of God on women in particular.

#1579

Hermann Brenner

#49963

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#1580

Gerald Sacks

#13452

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Gerald Enoch Sacks was a logician whose most important contributions were in recursion theory. Named after him is Sacks forcing, a forcing notion based on perfect sets and the Sacks Density Theorem, which asserts that the partial order of the recursively enumerable Turing degrees is dense. Sacks had a joint appointment as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard University starting in 1972 and became emeritus at M.I.T. in 2006 and at Harvard in 2012.

#1581

Tim van Gelder

#13892

Overall Influence

Tim van Gelder is the co-founder of Austhink Software, an Australian software development company, and the Managing Director of Austhink Consulting. He was born in Australia, and was educated at the University of Melbourne . He went on to receive his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh . He has held academic positions at Indiana University and the Australian National University before returning to Melbourne as an Australian Research Council QEII Research Fellow. In 1998, he transitioned to part-time academic work allowing him to pursue private training and consulting, and in 2005 began working full-time at Austhink Software.

#1582

Jean-Luc Godard

Jean-Luc Godard

#2931

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Jean-Luc Godard was a Franco-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era. According to AllMovie, his work "revolutionized the motion picture form" through its experimentation with narrative, continuity, sound, and camerawork. His most acclaimed films include Breathless , Vivre sa vie , Contempt , Band of Outsiders , Alphaville , Pierrot l...

#1583

Alicia Puleo

#17031

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Alicia Helda Puleo García is an Argentine-born feminist philosopher based in Spain. She is known for the development of ecofeminist thinking. Among her main publications is Ecofeminismo para otro mundo posible .

#1584

Myroslav Popovych

#25883

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Myroslav Popovych was a Ukrainian philosopher, DA, professor, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Biography Popovych was born on 12 April 1930 in Zhytomyr, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union . In 1953 he graduated from the Taras Shevchenko University, philosophy department. In 2001 he became the director of the Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 2003 he was elected Academician of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

#1585

Max Cresswell

#40000

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Maxwell John Cresswell is a New Zealand philosopher and logician, known for his work in modal logic. Education and career Cresswell received his B.A. in 1960 and M.A. in 1961 from the University of New Zealand and then with the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship attended the Victoria University of Manchester, where he received in 1964 his PhD under the supervision of A. N. Prior. Cresswell's thesis was titled General and Specific Logics of Functions of Propositions. After returning to New Zealand, Cresswell was at the Victoria University of Wellington, from 1963 to 1967 as a lecturer, from...

#1586

Lance Liotta

#44069

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lance A. Liotta is the Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine at George Mason University. His research team was the first to propose the existence of the autocrine motility factor. In 1985, he received the Rhoads Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. In 1987, he received the National Lectureship Award from the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. His other awards include the Warner-Lambert Parke Davis Award and the Surgeon General's Medallion.

#1587

İoanna Kuçuradi

#17773

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ioanna Kuçuradi is a Turkish philosopher from Istanbul. She is currently the president of Philosophical Society of Turkey and a full-time academic of Maltepe University. Biography Kuçuradi was born on October 4, 1936, in Istanbul, Turkey. After finishing Zappeion Greek Gymnasium for Girls in Istanbul in 1954, she studied philosophy at Istanbul University, from where she graduated with a B.A. degree in 1959. She earned a Ph.D. degree at the same university in 1965. Ioanna Kuçuradi worked as an assistant professor at her alma mater and the Atatürk University in Erzurum.

#1588

Branden Fitelson

#34724

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Branden Fitelson is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University. He is known for his expertise on formal epistemology and philosophy of science. Bibliography Edward N. Zalta and Branden Fitelson, "Steps Toward a Computational Metaphysics", Journal of Philosophical Logic 36 : 227–247.

#1589

Thomas S. Hibbs

#19559

Overall Influence

Thomas S. Hibbs is an American philosopher and the 9th President of the University of Dallas, a Catholic liberal arts university. He served as president from July 1, 2019 until March 7, 2021. As of July 1, 2021 he is the J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, where had served as dean of the honors college and distinguished professor of ethics and culture from 2003 until 2019. Hibbs' predecessor in the Rayzor Chair was the Scottish Catholic philosopher, John Haldane.

#1590

Rinaldo Bellomo

#50178

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

#1591

Tsang Lap Chuen

Tsang Lap Chuen

#33156

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Tsang Lap Chuen is a Chinese philosopher in the analytic tradition. He is known for his theory of the sublime in which he presents the notion of limit-situations in life as being central to the human experience.

#1592

William Westmoreland

William Westmoreland

#299

Overall Influence

1914 - 2005 (91 years)

William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army general, most notably commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972.

#1593

Herman Cappelen

#30681

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Herman Wright Cappelen is a Norwegian philosopher. He is currently the Chair Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Biography Cappelen is the son of author and publisher Peder Wright Cappelen and actress Kari Simonsen. Cappelen received a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, Balliol College, in 1989. In 1996, Cappelen received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. The title of his dissertation was "The Metaphysics of Words and the Semantics of Quotation". His advisors were Charles Chihara, Stephen Neale, and John Searle.

#1594

John F. X. Knasas

#38844

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

John Francis Xavier Knasas is an American philosopher. He is a leading existential Thomist in the Neo-Thomist movement, best known for engaging such thinkers as Bernard Lonergan, Alasdair MacIntyre and Jeremy Wilkins in disputes over human cognition to affirm a Thomistic epistemology of direct realism and defending the thought of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson and Fr. Joseph Owens. He holds the Bishop Wendelin J. Nold Endowed Chair as Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and earned his doctorate at the University of Toronto, under the direction of Fr.

#1595

Ferdinand Fellmann

Ferdinand Fellmann

#24277

Overall Influence

1939 - 2019 (80 years)

Ferdinand Fellmann was a German philosopher. After the expulsion of his family in 1946 out of Hirschberg Fellmann grew up in Hameln/Weser . Biography Fellmann studied at the University of Münster and the University of Pavia, promoted by the “Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes” . He graduated from his studies in English and Romance Languages and Literature in 1959. From 1962 to 1965 Fellmann continued his studies in Giessen . He studied there under his most influential professors: Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Hans Robert Jauss, and Professor of Philosophy Hans Blumenberg. ...

#1596

Alena Buyx

#23398

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Alena Michaela Buyx is a German medical ethicist. She has been Chair of the German Ethics Council since 2020. Early life and education Buyx studied medicine, philosophy and sociology at the University of Münster, the University of York and the University College London from 1997, and earned a PhD.

#1597

Eduardo Mendieta

#31864

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Eduardo Mendieta is a Colombian-born Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, and former acting director of the Rock Ethics Institute. Mendieta's research focuses on Ethics, Political Philosophy, Latinx philosophy, Latin American Philosophy, Critical Theory , Philosophy of Race, and Feminist Philosophy.

#1598

Alastair Hannay

#21676

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Robert Alastair Hannay is professor emeritus at the University of Oslo. Educated in Edinburgh and London, where he studied under A. J. Ayer and Bernard Williams and since 1961 resident in Norway. Hannay has written extensively on the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. His book "The Public" as well as examining the roles of the 'public' as audience and political participant, brings several Kierkegaardian insights to bear on contemporary political life. Hannay has written a novella and several pocket books on philosophical themes, as well as a memoir . From 2006 to 2020 he was a member of the te...

#1599

Elizabeth Barnes

#45313

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Barnes is an American philosopher working in feminist philosophy, metaphysics, social philosophy and ethics. Barnes is a professor of philosophy at the Corcoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia.

#1600

Georgia Warnke

#37007

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Georgia Warnke is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Center for Ideas & Society at the University of California, Riverside. She chaired the Department from 2002 to 2004. She also acted as the Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at UCR from 2006 to 2011.

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