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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#15651
Pantaleo Carabellese
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Pantaleo Carabellese was an Italian philosopher. Biography Graduated from the University of Naples with a "laurea" in history and again from the University of Rome in philosophy , Carabellese taught philosophy in Palermo, Sicily and in Rome , marrying in 1936. Having carried out a rigorous critique of Cartesianism , Carabellese completed critical studies of authors including Immanuel Kant and Antonio Rosmini . Carabellese is further known for his "critical ontology" , where Being is not the mere abstract object but the inherent and irreducible foundation of consciousness, and thus the "bei...
Go to Profile#15652
Feliks Koneczny
1862 - 1949 (87 years)
Feliks Karol Koneczny was a Polish historian, theatrical critic, librarian, journalist and social philosopher. He founded the original system of the comparative science of civilizations. Biography Koneczny was born in Kraków on 1 November 1862. His father was of Moravian origin. Koneczny's mother abandoned him at a young age while his father studied, although he had to work at a train station due to being expelled from the Jagiellonian University for partaking in the Kraków uprising.
Go to Profile#15653
Antoni Lange
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
Antoni Lange was a Polish poet, philosopher, polyglot , writer, novelist, science-writer, reporter and translator. A representative of Polish Parnassianism and symbolism, he is also regarded as belonging to the Decadent movement. He was an expert on Romanticism, French literature and a popularizer of Eastern cultures. His most popular novel is Miranda.
Go to Profile#15654
Ernst Bergmann
1881 - 1945 (64 years)
Ernst Bergmann was a German philosopher. In the early 1930s, he was known as the most famous German opponent of patriarchy, and after 1933, Bergmann became a leading proponent of a new pagan German religion .
Go to Profile#15655
Hendrik G. Stoker
1899 - 1993 (94 years)
Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker , born in Johannesburg, South Africa, was a leading Calvinist philosopher who taught at Potchefstroom. He studied there and the University of Cologne, and he completed his doctoral dissertation on "Nature and the forms of conscience" under Max Scheler.
Go to Profile#15656
Célestin Bouglé
1870 - 1940 (70 years)
Célestin Charles Alfred Bouglé was a French philosopher known for his role as one of Émile Durkheim's collaborators and a member of the L'Année Sociologique. Life Bouglé was born in Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-du-Nord. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1890 and aggregated in philosophy in 1893. He was, along with Xavier Léon, Élie Halévy, Léon Brunschvicg and Dominique Parodi, one of the founding members of the journal Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. In 1896 he joined with Durkheim and became one of the first editors of the Année Sociologique. He received his doctorate in 1899.
Go to Profile#15657
Hans Scholl
1918 - 1943 (25 years)
Hans Fritz Scholl was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's literature, he was found guilty of high treason for distributing anti-Nazi material and was executed by the Nazi regime in 1943 during World War II.
Go to Profile#15658
Elli Lambridi
1896 - 1970 (74 years)
Elli Lambridi , also spelled Helle Lampride or Helle Lambridis, was a Greek philosopher who wrote extensively in the fields of ancient and modern philosophy. She also wrote on archaeology, wrote fiction and produced translations. She was also an educator and was active in Greek left-wing politics and feminism from an early age. It has been claimed that her prominence in twentieth-century Greek philosophy has "only recently become widely known". Her life and work was celebrated on 8 March 2017 at a talks event in the old Senate chamber of the Parliament of Greece in Athens.
Go to Profile#15659
Edward Jenner
1749 - 1823 (74 years)
Edward Jenner was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae , the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox.
Go to Profile#15660
William S. Sahakian
1922 - 1986 (64 years)
William S. Sahakian was an Armenian-American philosopher. Receiving his BS at Northeastern University with a major in psychology and sociology in 1944, Sahakian later completed his graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard University and at Boston University. In 1951, Sahakian received his Ph.D. degree from Boston University. Sahakian's dissertation was entitled, The emotive ethic in contemporary British and American philosophy. Sahakian also received a Master of Divinity degree at Boston University in 1947.
Go to Profile#15661
Harriet Taylor Mill
1807 - 1858 (51 years)
Harriet Taylor Mill was an English philosopher and women's rights advocate. Her extant corpus of writing can be found in The Complete Works of Harriet Taylor Mill. Several pieces can also be found in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, especially volume XXI.
Go to Profile#15662
John Addison Porter
1822 - 1866 (44 years)
John Addison Porter was an American professor of chemistry and physician. He is the namesake of the John Addison Porter Prize and was a founder of the Scroll and Key senior society of Yale University.
Go to Profile#15663
Moderatus of Gades
50 - 100 (50 years)
Moderatus of Gades was a Greek philosopher of the Neopythagorean school, who lived in the 1st century AD. He was a contemporary of Apollonius of Tyana. He wrote a great work on the doctrines of the Pythagoreans, and tried to show that the successors of Pythagoras had made no additions to the views of their founder, but had merely borrowed and altered the phraseology.
Go to Profile#15664
Dicaearchus
350 BC - 280 BC (70 years)
Dicaearchus of Messana , also written Dikaiarchos , was a Greek philosopher, geographer and author. Dicaearchus was a student of Aristotle in the Lyceum. Very little of his work remains extant. He wrote on geography and the history of Greece, of which his most important work was his Life of Greece. Although modern scholars often consider him a pioneer in the field of cartography, this is based on a misinterpretation of a reference in Cicero to Dicaearchus' tabulae, which does not refer to any maps made by Dicaearchus but is a pun on account books and refers to Dicaearchus' Descent into the Sanctuary of Trophonius.
Go to Profile#15665
Dionysodorus
450 BC - Present (2476 years)
Dionysodorus was an ancient Greek sophistic philosopher and teacher of martial arts, generalship, and oration. Closely associated with his brother and fellow sophist Euthydemus, he is depicted in the writing of Plato and Xenophon.
Go to Profile#15666
Francis Bowen
1811 - 1890 (79 years)
Francis Bowen was an American philosopher, writer, and educationalist. Biography He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was educated at Mayhew School, Boston, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard University, graduating from the latter in 1833. While attending Harvard, he taught school at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, and Concord, Lexington and Northborough, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard, he taught for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy, returning to Harvard from 1835 to 1839 to tutor in Greek and teach intellectual philosophy and political economy. In 1839 he went to Europe, and, while living in Paris, met Sismondi, de Gerando, and other scholars.
Go to Profile#15667
Gongsun Long
325 BC - 250 BC (75 years)
Gongsun Long , courtesy name Zibing , was a Chinese philosopher and writer who was a member of the School of Names of ancient Chinese philosophy. He also ran a school and enjoyed the support of rulers, and advocated peaceful means of resolving disputes in contrast to the wars which were common in the Warring States period. However, little is known about the particulars of his life, and furthermore many of his writings have been lost. All of his essays—fourteen originally but only six extant—are included in the anthology the Gongsun Longzi .
Go to Profile#15668
Demonax
200 - 170 (-30 years)
Demonax was a Greek Cynic philosopher. Born in Cyprus, he moved to Athens, where his wisdom, and his skill in solving disputes, earned him the admiration of the citizens. He taught Lucian, who wrote a Life of Demonax in praise of his teacher. When he died he received a magnificent public funeral.
Go to Profile#15669
Karl Ewald Hasse
1810 - 1902 (92 years)
Karl Ewald Hasse was a German physician and professor of special pathology, born in Dresden. He was the son of historian Friedrich Christian August Hasse . Biography Hasse studied medicine at the medical-surgical academy in Dresden and at University of Leipzig, earning his doctorate in 1833. Later, he continued his education in Paris and Vienna, and subsequently returned to Leipzig, where in 1836 he received his habilitation. In 1839 he became an associate professor of pathological anatomy in Leipzig, and in 1844 relocated to Zürich, where he was appointed medical director of the cantonal hos...
Go to Profile#15670
Rodrigo de Arriaga
1592 - 1667 (75 years)
Rodrigo de Arriaga was a Spanish philosopher, theologian and Jesuit. He is known as one of the foremost Spanish Jesuits of his day and as a leading representative of post-Suárezian baroque Jesuit nominalism. Accordig to Richard Popkin, Arriaga was “the last of the great Spanish Scholastics”.
Go to Profile#15671
Walter Johannes Stein
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Walter Johannes Stein was an Austrian philosopher, Waldorf school teacher, Grail researcher, and one of the pioneers of anthroposophy. Biography Of Jewish descent, Stein studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy at Vienna University, before completing a doctorate in philosophy at the end of the First World War, having continued work on it throughout his service in an artillery unit in the war. He became a personal student of Rudolf Steiner from about the age of 21, and enjoyed the unofficial supervision of Steiner while writing his dissertation. Broadly speaking, the dissertation was an at...
Go to Profile#15672
Adolf Dygasiński
1839 - 1902 (63 years)
Adolf Dygasiński was a Polish novelist, publicist and educator. In Polish literature, he was one of the leading representatives of Naturalism. Life During his literary career, Dygasiński wrote forty-two short stories and novels. Since 1884 his works were being published in book-form and enjoyed considerable success. They were translated into Russian and German. In 1891, Dygasiński went on a trip to Brazil on a trail of Polish emigrants from Partitioned Poland. He produced a series of letters describing the tragic fate of Polish émigrés in South America. In the following years Dygasiński maintained a position of a tutor and coach for numerous wealthy landowning families.
Go to Profile#15673
Anne Conway
1631 - 1679 (48 years)
Anne Conway was an English philosopher of the Enlightenment, whose work, in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists, was an influence on Gottfried Leibniz. Conway's thought is a deeply original form of rationalist philosophy, with hallmarks of gynocentric concerns and patterns that lead some to think of it as unique among seventeenth-century systems. Hugh Trevor-Roper called her "England's greatest female philosopher."
Go to Profile#15674
Johannes Rehmke
1848 - 1930 (82 years)
Johannes Rehmke was a German philosopher and since 1885 professor at Greifswald University, later also provost of this university. He offered sharp criticisms of Immanuel Kant's approach to epistemology. In his article "The Conquest of Subjectivism," Paul Ferdinand Linke pointed out that it was Rehmke who first made a courageous break from subjectivism, which was the pervasive philosophical paradigm in late modern German philosophy.
Go to Profile#15675
Ernest Radlov
1854 - 1928 (74 years)
Ernest Leopoldovich Radlov or Ernst Radlow was a Russian neo-Kantian philosopher and historian of philosophy of German origin. Co-founder of the St. Petersburg Philosophical Society, director of the Public Library in Petrograd .
Go to Profile#15676
Roderick Firth
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
Roderick Firth was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1953 until his death. Education Firth earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1943. His thesis was entitled Sense-Data and the Principle of Reduction.
Go to Profile#15677
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
1880 - 1938 (58 years)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a breakdown and was discharged. His work was branded as "degenerate" by the Nazis in 1933, and in 1937 more than 600 of his works were sold or destroyed.
Go to Profile#15678
Heraclides Ponticus
385 BC - 322 BC (63 years)
Heraclides Ponticus was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who was born in Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey, and migrated to Athens. He is best remembered for proposing that the Earth rotates on its axis, from west to east, once every 24 hours. He is also hailed as the originator of the heliocentric theory; although this is disputed.
Go to Profile#15679
Carl Wernicke
1848 - 1905 (57 years)
Carl Wernicke was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively. His research, along with that of Paul Broca, led to groundbreaking realizations of the localization of brain function, specifically in speech. As such, Wernicke's area has been named after the scientist.
Go to Profile#15680
Kasper Niesiecki
1682 - 1744 (62 years)
Kasper Niesiecki , also known as Kacper Niesiecki, was a Polish heraldist, Jesuit, lexicographer, writer, theologian and preacher. Biography Niesiecki was born in Greater Poland to a burgher family. In 1699 he began training as a Jesuit in Kraków. From 1701 to 1704 he studied philosophy in Lublin, earning a master's degree. In 1707 Niesiecki started his studies in theology at the Jagiellonian University, graduating in 1711. He undertook further study in Lutsk, Krosno, Bydgoszcz, Chojnice and Kalisz.
Go to Profile#15681
Michael Servetus
1511 - 1553 (42 years)
Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio . He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.
Go to Profile#15682
Arkady Timiryasev
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Arkady Klimentievich Timiryazev was a Russian Marxist physicist and philosopher. Biography Arkady was the son of the prominent agronomist and biologist Kliment Timiryazev. He was closely associated with Maxim Gorky. Although he was deemed a professor of physics at Moscow State University, he was derided as the "monument's son" by people who questioned his competence. He was an ardent defender of the classical physics propounded by Isaac Newton and was particularly noted for his vitriolic denunciations of Albert Einstein. He used his Bolshevik ideology to attack other Soviet physicists such as Abram Ioffe and Sergei Vavilov.
Go to Profile#15683
Adalbert Stifter
1805 - 1868 (63 years)
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing and has long been popular in the German-speaking world, while remaining almost entirely unknown to English readers.
Go to Profile#15684
Karl Friedrich Schinkel
1781 - 1841 (60 years)
Karl Friedrich Schinkel was a Prussian architect, city planner and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the most prominent architects of Germany and designed both Neoclassical and neo-Gothic buildings. His most famous buildings are found in and around Berlin.
Go to Profile#15685
Nicolaus of Damascus
64 BC - 4 (68 years)
Nicolaus of Damascus was a Greek historian and philosopher who lived during the Augustan age of the Roman Empire. His name is derived from that of his birthplace, Damascus. His output was vast, but is nearly all lost. His chief work was a universal history in 144 books. There exist considerable remains of two works of his old age; a life of Augustus, and an autobiography. He also wrote a life of Herod, some philosophical works, and some tragedies and comedies.
Go to Profile#15686
Pierre Laffitte
1823 - 1903 (80 years)
Pierre Laffitte was a French positivist philosopher. Laffitte was born at Béguey, Gironde. Residing at Paris as a teacher of mathematics, he became a disciple of Auguste Comte, who appointed him his literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed Comte's death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhered to Émile Littré, who rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the philosophy of science of Comte's earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le Prince.
Go to Profile#15687
Sebastiano Serlio
1475 - 1554 (79 years)
Sebastiano Serlio was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise variously known as I sette libri dell'architettura or Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva .
Go to Profile#15688
Maulana Azad
1888 - 1958 (70 years)
Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad was an Indian independence activist, writer and a senior leader of the Indian National Congress. Following India's independence, he became the First Minister of Education in the Indian government. He is commonly remembered as Maulana Azad; the word Maulana is an honorific meaning 'Our Master' and he had adopted Azad as his pen name. His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is recognised by celebrating his birthday as National Education Day across India.
Go to Profile#15689
Irwin Edman
1896 - 1954 (58 years)
Irwin Edman was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy. Biography Irwin Edman was born in New York City to Jewish parents. He grew up in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, adjacent to Columbia University, with which he was to be affiliated his entire adult life. Edman spent his high-school years at Townsend Harris Hall, a New York high school for superior pupils. He then attended Columbia University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and earned his bachelor's degree in 1917 and his Ph.D. in 1920. During his student years at Columbia he was a member of the Boar's Head Society.
Go to Profile#15690
Maurice de Vlaminck
1876 - 1958 (82 years)
Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse, he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense colour. Vlaminck was one of the Fauves at the controversial Salon d'Automne exhibition of 1905.
Go to Profile#15691
Haribhadra
800 - 850 (50 years)
Haribhadra, also known as Shizi Xian or Sengge Zangpo was an 8th-century CE Buddhist philosopher, and a disciple of Śāntarakṣita, an early Indian Buddhist missionary to Tibet. He was one of the founding monks of the Vikramashila monastery. Haribhadra's commentary on the Abhisamayalankara was one of the most influential of the twenty-one Indian commentaries on that text, perhaps because of its author's status as Shantarakshita's student. Like his master, Haribhadra is retrospectively considered by Tibetan doxographical tradition to represent the Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamaka school.
Go to Profile#15692
Valerie Solanas
1936 - 1988 (52 years)
Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist known for the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968. Solanas had a turbulent childhood, suffering sexual abuse from both her father and grandfather, and experiencing a volatile relationship with her mother and stepfather. She came out as a lesbian in the 1950s. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, Solanas relocated to Berkeley. There she began writing the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government,...
Go to Profile#15693
Matthew Tindal
1657 - 1733 (76 years)
Matthew Tindal was an eminent English deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time. Life Tindal was baptised on 12 May 1657 at Bere Ferrers in Devon, son of the Reverend John Tindal, who was rector of the parish, and his wife Anne Halse. Through his mother, he was a first cousin of Thomas Clifford, 1st Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, and therefore descended from the Clifford and Fortescue families.
Go to Profile#15694
David Kaufmann
1852 - 1899 (47 years)
David Kaufmann was a Jewish-Austrian scholar born at Kojetín, Moravia . From 1861 to 1867 he attended the gymnasium at Kroměříž, Moravia, where he studied the Bible and Talmud with Jacob Brüll, rabbi of Kojetín, and with the latter's son Nehemiah.
Go to Profile#15695
Ernst Kapp
1808 - 1896 (88 years)
Ernst Christian Kapp was a German-American philosopher of technology and geographer, and a follower of Carl Ritter. He was prosecuted for sedition in the late 1840s for publishing a small article entitled 'Der konstituierte Despotismus und die konstitutionelle Freiheit' and was subsequently forced to leave Germany. He then emigrated to the German pioneer settlements of central Texas where he worked as a farmer, geographer and inventor.
Go to Profile#15696
A. W. Benn
1843 - 1915 (72 years)
Alfred William Benn was an agnostic and an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. His book A History of Modern Philosophy was republished in the Thinker's Library series in 1930.
Go to Profile#15697
Eric Hoffer
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Eric Hoffer was an American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer , was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. The Eric Hoffer Book Award is an international literary prize established in his honor. The University of California, Berkeley awards an annual literary prize named jointly for Hoffer.
Go to Profile#15698
Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck
1776 - 1851 (75 years)
Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck was a German surgeon, ophthalmologist and anatomist who was a native of Horneburg. Biography Langenbeck studied medicine at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and in 1802 received his habilitation under August Gottlieb Richter at University of Göttingen. In 1804 he became an associate professor, and three years later established his own institute for surgery and ophthalmology. In 1814 he was appointed full professor at Göttingen and general surgeon of the Hannoverian Army.
Go to Profile#15699
Pyotr Chaadayev
1794 - 1856 (62 years)
Pyotr or Petr Yakovlevich Chaadayev was a Russian philosopher. He was one of the Russian Schellingians. Chaadayev wrote eight "Philosophical Letters" about Russia in French between 1826 and 1831, which circulated among intellectuals in Russia in manuscript form for many years. They comprise an indictment of Russian culture for its laggard role far behind the leaders of Western civilization. He cast doubt on the greatness of the Russian past, and ridiculed Orthodoxy for failing to provide a sound spiritual basis for the Russian mind. He extolled the achievements of Europe, especially in ratio...
Go to Profile#15700
Ladislav Klíma
1878 - 1928 (50 years)
Ladislav Klíma , was a Czech philosopher and novelist influenced by George Berkeley, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. His philosophy is referred to varyingly as existentialism and subjective idealism. Life Ladislav Klíma was born in the town of Domažlice in western Bohemia. He came from a moderately wealthy family. After expulsion from the school system in 1895 for allegedly insulting the State, the Church, and — out of what he described as “historical analphabetism” — the Habsburgs, he lived alternately in Tyrol, Zurich, and Prague. As part of his philosophy he only ever took on short term work. F...
Go to Profile