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,
#15701
Mikhail Reisner
1868 - 1928 (60 years)
Mikhail Andreevich Reisner was a Russian and Soviet lawyer, jurist, writer, social psychologist and historian of Baltic German extraction. He was the father of writer Larissa Reisner and orientalist Igor Reisner, and adoptive father of naval officer and submariner Lev Reisner.
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Hans Popper
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Hans Popper was an Austrian-born pathologist, hepatologist and teacher. Together with Dame Sheila Sherlock, he is widely regarded as the founding father of hepatology. He is the namesake of the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society, as well as the International Hans Popper Award and the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society.
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Abraham Abigdor
1350 - Present (676 years)
Abraham Abigdor , born 1350, was a Jewish physician, philosopher, kabbalist, and translator. He should not be confused with Maestro Abraham Abigdor, who in 1386 was the proprietor of a house at Arles .
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John David Mabbott
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
John David Mabbott was a British academic who worked as the president of St John's College, Oxford, from 1963 from to 1969. Education Mabbott was educated at Berwickshire High School; the University of Edinburgh; and St John's.
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Conrad of Megenberg
1309 - 1374 (65 years)
Conrad of Megenberg was a German Catholic scholar, and a writer. Biography Conrad was born in either Mainberg or Mebenburg, both in Bavaria. He was born on 2 February 1309. Conrad himself calls his native place Megenberg, hence continued confusion on his birthplace. He studied at Erfurt and the University of Paris; at the latter university he obtained the degree of Master of Arts, and he taught philosophy and theology at the University of Paris for several years.
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Jesús Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve
1916 - 1989 (73 years)
Jesús Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve was a Colombian Roman Catholic prelate who was a professed member of the Xaverian Missionaries of Yarumal and served as the Bishop of Arauca from 1984 until his assassination. Jaramillo was a staunch opponent of the E.L.N. and spoke out against their atrocities in the midst of conflict and a drug war. But this led to him being marked for death and he was killed not long after being kidnapped and tortured.
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John Matthew Rispoli
1582 - 1639 (57 years)
John Matthew Rispoli was a major Maltese philosopher of great erudition. He was held in high esteem by the Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller Order, the Bishops of Malta, the Viceroys of Sicily, cardinals, bishops, inquisitors, and the common people. Perhaps the most eminent Maltese philosopher of the Middle Ages, the various extant writings of his are witness to his philosophical aptitude and dexterity as to his high calibre as a philosopher. These qualities were highly appreciated during his lifetime, in Malta as in France and Italy. He lived a busy life, both as an intellectual and as an administrator.
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James Marsh
1794 - 1842 (48 years)
James Marsh was an American philosopher, Congregational clergyman and president of the University of Vermont from 1826 to 1833. Biography Marsh was born in Hartford, Vermont, and educated at Dartmouth College, graduating in 1817 from the college-in-exile in opposition to Dartmouth University, the state university that was set up in an attempt to destroy the Dartmouth College. He then graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1822, meanwhile serving as tutor at Dartmouth 1818–1820, and spending several months in study at Cambridge, Massachusetts. In October 1824, he was ordained as a Cong...
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Damo
600 BC - 500 BC (100 years)
Damo was a Pythagorean philosopher said by many to have been the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. Early life Tradition relates that she was born in Croton, Magna Graecia, and was the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. According to Iamblichus, Damo married Meno the Crotonian. Some accounts refer to her as an only daughter, while others indicate that she had two sisters, Arignote and Myia . With her brother Telauges, they became members of the Pythagorean sect founded by their father.
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Karl Aschenbrenner
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Karl W. Aschenbrenner was an American philosopher, translator and prominent American specialist in analytic philosophy and aesthetics, author and editor of more than 48 publications including five monographs, 27 articles and 16 book reviews. His principal academic post was at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Philosophy. Aschenbrenner co-edited, with Arnold Isenberg, a collection of essays on the subject of aesthetic theory. As co-translator with William B. Holther, Aschenbrenner published the principal work of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and, with Donald Nichol...
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Robert von Welz
1814 - 1878 (64 years)
Robert von Welz was a German physician and ophthalmologist. From 1832 he studied sciences and medicine at the University of Würzburg, receiving his medical doctorate in 1838. For several years he worked as an assistant physician at the Juliusspital in Würzburg, then in 1849 traveled to Paris, where he conducted research of syphilis. In Paris he became engaged in a dispute with Philippe Ricord in regard to the transferability of syphilis. His interests later turned to ophthalmology, and in 1854/55 he studied the subject with Albrecht von Graefe in Berlin. In 1857 he opened an eye clinic in Würzburg, and in 1866 he was named a professor of ophthalmology at the university.
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Paul de Sorbait
1624 - 1691 (67 years)
Paul de Sorbait was an Austrian physician and sanitary engineer. He went to school in Paderborn, then attended the University of Padua, where apparently he obtained his degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine. He practiced as a physician in Rome, Cologne, and Arnhem, and in August, 1652, was made a member of the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. In 1655 he became professor of theoretical medicine at the same university, and in 1666 professor of practical medicine. In 1658 he was appointed court-physician to the Empress-Dowager Eleonora. In 1676 he rebuilt at his own expense the students' hall "Goldberg" and added a chapel to it.
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Ibn Sab'in
1217 - 1270 (53 years)
Ibn Sab'īn was an Arab Sufi philosopher, the last philosopher of the Andalus in the west land of Islamic world. He was born in 1217 in Spain and lived in Ceuta. It has been suggested that he was a Neoplatonic philosopher, a Peripatetic philosopher, a Pythagorean philosopher, a Hermeticist, a Kabbalist, an alchemist, a heterodox Sufi, a crypto-Shīʿī, a plagiarizer, a pantheist, and an arrogant seeker of fame, though none of these adequately characterise Ibn Sab'in.
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Vitangelo Bisceglia
1749 - 1817 (68 years)
Vitangelo Bisceglia was an Italian botanist, agronomist and professor. He taught inside the University of Altamura. Because of his being a polymath, he's been described as "an encyclopedic spirit, the honor of the Muses".
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Pittacus of Mytilene
650 BC - 570 BC (80 years)
Pittacus was an ancient Mytilenean military general and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Biography Pittacus was a native of Mytilene and son of Hyrradius. He became a Mytilenaean general who, with his army, was victorious in the battle against the Athenians and their commander Phrynon. In consequence of this victory, the Mytilenaeans held Pittacus in the greatest honour and presented the supreme power into his hands. After ten years of reign, he resigned his position and the city and constitution were brought into good order.
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Viktor Schauberger
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Viktor Schauberger was an Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and pseudoscientist. Early life Schauberger was born in Holzschlag, Upper Austria on 30 June 1885. His parents were Leopold Schauberger and Josefa, née Klimitsch. From 1891 to 1897 he attended the elementary school in Aigen, then until 1900 the state grammar school in Linz. Until 1904 he went to the forestry school in Aggsbach in the Kartause Aggsbach, where he passed the exam as a forester. From 1904 to 1906 he was forest clerk in Groß-Schweinbarth in Lower Austria.
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François Vatable
1495 - 1547 (52 years)
François Vatable was a French humanist scholar, a hellenist and hebraist. Life Born in Gamaches, Picardy, he was for a time rector of Bramet in Valois. In 1530 Francis I of France appointed him as one of his Royal Lecturers in what afterwards became known as the Collège de France. Vatable got the chair of Hebrew. At a later date a royal grant conferred upon Vatable the title of Abbot of Bellozane, with the benefices attached thereto. Vatable is regarded as the restorer of Hebrew scholarship in France, and his lectures in Paris attracted a large audience including Jews. He was known by his im...
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Clinomachus
400 BC - 400 BC (0 years)
Clinomachus , was a Megarian philosopher from Thurii, Magna Graecia. He is said by Diogenes Laërtius to have been the first who composed treatises on the fundamental principles of dialectics, and is described as the founder of the Dialectical school. According to the Suda, he was the disciple of Euclid of Megara, and he taught Bryson, the teacher of Pyrrho. He thus lived towards the earlier half of the 4th century BC.
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Hayim Greenberg
1889 - 1953 (64 years)
Hayim Greenberg was a Jewish-American thinker and Labor Zionist thinker. He was the head of Poalei Zion and he was the editor along with Marie Syrkin of the important American Zionist journal Jewish Frontier. Its writers included David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Shertok, Sholom Asch and Maurice Samuel. He edited a literary journal, Kadima, in Kiev in 1920 with Koigen and Fischel Schneerson.
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Aleksandr Filippov
1891 - Present (135 years)
Aleksandr Pavlovich Filippov was a Russian philosopher. Filippov completed his training for the law at the University of Kharkiv in 1913. He then devoted four years to the study of natural sciences at that university. He held a research fellowship in European culture at the university and worked as a scientific fellow of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
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Karl Ernst Ranke
1870 - 1926 (56 years)
Karl Ernst Ranke was a German internist, pediatrician and pulmonologist known for his research of tuberculosis. He was the son of anthropologist Johannes Ranke . In 1896 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Munich, then spent the following year as an assistant to his uncle, Heinrich von Ranke , at the pediatric clinic in Munich. Afterwards, he was in charge of an anthropological research expedition to Brazil. Following his return to Germany, he spent two additional years as an assistant in the pediatric clinic, then relocated to Arosa, Switzerland, where he worked as a doc...
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Demetrios Chalkokondyles
1423 - 1511 (88 years)
Demetrios Chalkokondyles , Latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles was one of the most eminent Greek scholars in the West. He taught in Italy for over forty years; his colleagues included Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano, and Theodorus Gaza in the revival of letters in the Western world, and Chalkokondyles was the last of the Greek humanists who taught Greek literature at the great universities of the Italian Renaissance . One of his pupils at Florence was the famous Johann Reuchlin. Chalkokondyles published the first printed pu...
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John of Głogów
1445 - 1507 (62 years)
John of Głogów was a notable Polish polyhistor at the turn of the Middle Ages and Renaissance—a philosopher, geographer and astronomer at the University of Krakow. Life John was born into the Schelling family in Głogów in the Lower Silesian Duchy of Głogów, which from 1331 had belonged to Bohemia and thus, during his lifetime, to the Holy Roman Empire. He variously styled himself Johannes Glogoviensis, Glogerus, de Glogovia and Glogowita; but while he may have been of German extraction, he never used the name "Schelling." He began his education in a local school at the Collegiate Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
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Joseph Cogswell
1786 - 1871 (85 years)
Joseph Green Cogswell was an American librarian, bibliographer and an innovative educator. Education Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Cogswell received a grammar school education in Ipswich, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He graduated from Harvard in 1806, and studied law from 1807 to 1809. After making a voyage to India as supercargo of the vessel in which he sailed, Cogswell studied law with Fisher Ames in Dedham, and practised for a few years in Belfast, Maine. In 1812 he married Mary, the daughter of Gov. John Taylor Gilman. She died in 1813. Her death, and a distaste for the profession, led him to abandon the practice of law.
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Alexander Wood
1817 - 1884 (67 years)
Alexander Wood was a Scottish physician. He invented the first true hypodermic syringe. He served as President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1858 to 1861. Life The son of Dr James Wood and his wife Mary Wood , Alexander was born on 10 December 1817 in Cupar, Fife. The family moved to Edinburgh around 1825, where they lived at 19 Royal Circus in the Second New Town. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy from 1825 to 1832, and then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh .
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Miguel Ángel Virasoro
1900 - 1966 (66 years)
Miguel Ángel Virasoro was an Argentine philosopher. Life Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, in 1900, Virasoro graduated with a law degree from the University of La Plata. In 1947 he took over the direction of the magazine Logos | Report which resulted in the same year which still remains the best version of Being and Nothingness Sartre into Castilian. In 1949, Virasoro participated in the first National Congress of Philosophy held in Mendoza with a presentation dialectical existentialism. In 1952 he was appointed vice dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and also takes over the leadership of the Department of Philosophy.
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Nicholas Russo
1845 - 1902 (57 years)
Nicholas Russo was an Italian Catholic priest, Jesuit, philosopher, and missionary. Born in Italy, he ran away from his family and joined the Society of Jesus in France in 1862, where he was educated and began teaching. In 1875, Russo was sent to the United States to study at Woodstock College. For ten years, he was a professor and the chair of philosophy at Boston College and became its first faculty member to publish a book. Specializing in Thomism, he was regarded as a successful professor. He served as president of the college from 1887 to 1888.
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Heinrich Neumann von Héthárs
1873 - 1939 (66 years)
Heinrich Neumann Ritter von Héthárs was the foremost ear-nose-and-throat doctor in Vienna before World War II. In 1938 he transmitted to the Evian Conference the infamous offer by the German government to sell the Austrian Jews at a price of $250 per capita to any foreign country that would accept them and pay. This offer - and the Conference delegates' refusal to accept it - is the focal point of Hans Habe's novel The Mission .
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Daniel Drake
1785 - 1852 (67 years)
Daniel Drake was a pioneering American physician and prolific writer. Early life Drake was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Isaac Drake and Elizabeth Shotwell. He was the elder brother of Benjamin Drake, author of Life of Tecumseh. Daniel Drake "was predestined for the medical profession by his father. The latter, we are told by those who knew him, was a gentleman by nature and a Christian from convictions produced by a simple and unaffected study of the Word of God. His poverty he regretted, his ignorance he deplored."
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Wang Fu
78 - 163 (85 years)
Wang Fu , courtesy name Jiexin was a Chinese essayist, historian, philosopher, and poet during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Born in Gansu Province, Wang Fu was a studious and knowledgeable man of humble birth. Once he was discriminated by fellow villagers in youth and was later not recommended to the Court as a government official. There is little information left about him, but his only masterpiece, Qianfu Lun, is a most valuable source. Nowadays, scholars have begun to attach importance to him, but the study is confined by the lack of historical records.
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Harold C. Case
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Harold Claude Case was an American academic administrator and Methodist preacher. He served as president of Boston University from 1951 to 1967 and was later named acting president of Whittier College.
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Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland
1762 - 1836 (74 years)
Christoph Wilhelm Friedrich Hufeland was a German physician, naturopath and writer. He is famous as the most eminent practical physician of his time in Germany and as the author of numerous works displaying extensive reading and a cultivated critical faculty.
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Raymond Jonson
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Raymond Jonson , was an American-born Modernist painter known for his paintings of the American Southwest. Born Carl Raymond Johnson, he originally signed his paintings C. Raymond Johnson, but later used Raymond Jonson, dropping the first initial and reverting to a more traditional spelling of his last name.
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Caspar Creuziger
1504 - 1548 (44 years)
Caspar Creuziger, also known as Caspar Cruciger the Elder , was a German Renaissance humanist and Protestant reformer. He was professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg, preacher at the Castle Church , secretary to and worked with Martin Luther to revise Luther's German Bible translation.
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Frank Sargent Hoffman
1852 - 1928 (76 years)
Frank Sargent Hoffman was an American philosopher who wrote on psychology and religion. Hoffman was born in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. In 1876 he graduated from Amherst College and obtained his PhD in 1896. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale University. He was Professor of Philosophy at Union College. He contributed to The North American Review and was a member of the American Philosophical Association, American Psychology Society and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
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Park Rehyun
1920 - 1976 (56 years)
Park Rehyun was a Korean painter. She is regarded as a pioneer of modern Korean art during the late Japanese Colonial period and the following decades. Biography Park was born in the city of Jinnampo in South Korea's South Pyongan Province. Graduating from Gyeongseong high school in 1937, she entered the Tokyo Women's School of Fine Arts in 1941 during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
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Pope Celestine V
1215 - 1296 (81 years)
Pope Celestine V , born Pietro Angelerio , also known as Pietro da Morrone, Peter of Morrone, and Peter Celestine, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States for five months from 5 July to 13 December 1294, when he resigned. He was also a monk and hermit who founded the order of the Celestines as a branch of the Benedictine order.
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William Crathorn
1301 - Present (725 years)
William Crathorn was an English Dominican philosopher, from Oxford. He was a philosopher who immediately followed in the intellectual tradition of William of Ockham and worked to strengthen his philosophical works. Crathorn created unique theories in the philosophy of language and psychology, as well as in epistemology by focusing on the claims of skeptics. Other areas of Crathorn's philosophy, which have not been extensively studied, show promise is revealing more about his life and his work.
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Ulrik Huber
1636 - 1694 (58 years)
Ulrik Huber , also known as Ulrich Huber or Ulricus Huber, was a professor of law at the University of Franeker and a political philosopher. Huber studied in Franeker, Utrecht and Heidelberg. He started in 1657 – at a very young age – as professor of Eloquence and History at the University of Franeker and as of 1665 he became professor of law. From 1679 to 1682 he was a judge at the Court of Appeal of Friesland and thereafter returned his position as professor of law until his death in 1694.
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Alan Freed
1921 - 1965 (44 years)
Albert James "Alan" Freed was an American disc jockey. He also produced and promoted large traveling concerts with various acts, helping to spread the importance of rock and roll music throughout North America.
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Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe
1787 - 1840 (53 years)
Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe, He was the father of ophthalmologist Albrecht von Graefe and grandfather of politician Albrecht von Graefe . Biography Gräfe studied medicine at Halle and Leipzig, and after obtaining his licence from Leipzig, he was in 1807 appointed a private physician to Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg. In 1811, he became a professor of surgery and director of the ophthalmological institute at the University of Berlin. His lectures at the University of Berlin attracted students from all parts of Europe. During the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon, he was a superintendent of milit...
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Ariston of Athens
#15743
Urso of Calabria
1200 - 1225 (25 years)
Urso of Calabria, also Urso of Salerno, Ursus Salernitanus, Urso di Calabria was an Italian scholastic philosopher and significant author of medical works in the school of Salerno. He has been thought the leading figure of the school and its most important theoretician and Aristotelian. He had a European reputation.
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Taddeo Alderotti
1215 - 1295 (80 years)
Taddeo Alderotti , born in Florence between 1206 and 1215, died in 1295, was an Italian doctor and professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, who made important contributions to the renaissance of learned medicine in Europe during the High Middle Ages. He was among the first to organize a medical lecture at the university.
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John Caruana
1866 - 1923 (57 years)
Giovanni Caruana was a Maltese lawyer and minor philosopher. He was mostly interested in the philosophy of law and in political economy. At least two portraits of Caruana exist, both by the renowned early 20th century Maltese artist Edward Caruana Dingli. Both were displayed at an exhibition on Caruana Dingli at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, Malta, in 2010.
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Lionel Smith Beale
1828 - 1906 (78 years)
Lionel Smith Beale was a British physician, microscopist, and professor at King's College London. He graduated in medicine from King's College in 1851. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857.
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Timocrates of Lampsacus
301 BC - 201 BC (100 years)
Timocrates of Lampsacus was a renegade Epicurean who made it his life's mission to spread slander about Epicurus' philosophy and way of life. He was the elder brother of Metrodorus, Epicurus' best friend and most loyal follower, who was born in Lampsacus in the late 4th century BC. He studied with his brother in the school of Epicurus, but some time c. 290 BC, he broke with the school, apparently because he refused to accept that pleasure was the supreme good of life. The dispute became quite bitter; Philodemus quotes Timocrates saying "that he both loved his brother as no one else did and ha...
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John Fearn
1768 - 1837 (69 years)
John Fearn was a British philosopher. Note: He has frequently been confused with John Fearn, the English whaling captain who was the first European to discover Nauru in 1798. Little is known about Fearn's early life. He was probably born in May 1768 in Chatham, Kent He spent some years as an officer in the Royal Navy, and after retirement devoted himself to philosophical writings.
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Austin Flint I
1812 - 1886 (74 years)
Austin Flint I was an American physician. He was a founder of Buffalo Medical College, precursor to The State University of New York at Buffalo. He served as president of the American Medical Association.
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Uno Willers
1911 - 1980 (69 years)
Uno Erik Wilhelm Willers was a Swedish historian and librarian. He served as National Librarian of Sweden from 1952 to 1977. Early life Willers was born on 20 October 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of Einar Willers, a police judge, and his wife Malin . He passed studentexamen in 1931 and worked at the Karolinska Institute's library from 1931 to 1936. Willers attended the University of Marburg in 1933 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1936 and studied history and library science in Geneva in 1937 and 1938 and in Berlin from 1938 to 1939 when he earned a Licentiate degree.
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