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).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#15901
Johann Jakob Müller
1650 - 1716 (66 years)
Johann Jakob Müller was a German moral philosopher. Life Johann Jakob Müller was born at Jena in 1650. His father, another Johann Müller , was the deputy head of the city school. Johann Jakob Müller attended the school, then under the rectorship of Johann Martin Ringler. Recognising an exceptional talent, his parents also arranged for him to receive private tutoring at home from Anton Mosnern, a churchman from nearby Saalfeld. Aged only 15 Müller started attending lectures at the university. At the Philosophy faculty his teachers included Johann Frischmuth, Erhard Weigel, , , , Joha...
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Clifford Allbutt
1836 - 1925 (89 years)
Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt was an English physician best known for his role as president of the British Medical Association 1920, for inventing the clinical thermometer, and for supporting Sir William Osler in founding the History of Medicine Society.
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John Westbrook
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
John Aubrey Westbrook was an English actor. Born in Teignmouth, Devon, John Westbrook worked mainly in theatre and in radio. He also made occasional film and television appearances. His most famous role was as Christopher Gough in Roger Corman's The Tomb of Ligeia. Noted for his deep, mellifluous voice, he also recorded radio plays and audiobooks, and provided the role of Treebeard in the 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Westbrook also recorded the spoken roles in the choral/orchestral works An Oxford Elegy by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Morning Heroes by Arthur Bliss, as wel...
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Francis Brodie Imlach
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Francis Brodie Imlach FRCSEd was a Scottish pioneer of modern dentistry, and the first person to use chloroform on a dental patient. He helped to raise the profile of dentistry from a back street trade to full professional status.
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Petrus Johann du Toit
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Petrus Johann du Toit was a South African veterinary scientist and the successor of Arnold Theiler as Director of Veterinary Services at Onderstepoort between 1927 and 1948. He was the son of Daniel Francois du Toit , one of the founders of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, and owner of the first Afrikaans newspaper, Die Patriot. His mother was Margaretha Magdalene van Nierop.
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Mohammad Gharib
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Mohammad Gharib was an Iranian physician, clinician, distinguished university professor and a pioneer of pediatrics in Iran. Gharib is known as the father of pediatrics in Iran. He was a graduate of Paris University Medical School.
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Hans-Jørgen Holman
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Hans-Jörgen Holman was a Norwegian-American pianist/ harpsichordist and professor of music at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Holman specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music, and his 1961 Indiana University doctoral dissertation The Responsoria Prolixa of the Codex Worcester F 160 is considered one of the principal authoritative works on the vocal music of the medieval church. One of the first musicologists to pioneer computer aided big-data studies, Holman built a database of 48.000 melodic phrases from European and Scandinavian sources in order to trace melodic migration and development.
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Jacob Micyllus
1503 - 1558 (55 years)
Jacob Micyllus, was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at the University of Heidelberg, during times of great cultural stress in Germany.
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J. Laurie Wallace
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
John Laurie Wallace was an Irish-born American painter. Wallace was born in Garvagh, Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when he was age 4. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He posed for several of Eakins's paintings, including The Crucifixion , Arcadia and The Swimming Hole , and for dozens of photographs. In 1881 he became Eakins's assistant.
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Nicholas Hill
1570 - 1610 (40 years)
Nicholas Hill was an English natural philosopher, considered a disciple of Giordano Bruno. He is known for his 1601 book Philosophia epicurea. Life He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford where he matriculated in 1587, graduated B.A. and became Fellow in 1590. He was removed from his fellowship in 1591.
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İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul
1855 - 1946 (91 years)
İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul was an Ottoman Empire and later Turkish writer and westernist thinker.
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Pietro Tabarrani
1702 - 1780 (78 years)
Pietro Tabarrani was an Italian physician and professor of Anatomy at the University of Siena. Biography He was born in Lombrici in the Republic of Lucca. He found patronage with Cardinal Salviati in Rome, where he studied anatomy. From there he moved to Bologna, where he became friends with the doctors Beccari and Galeazzi. He then moved to Padua to work under the renowned anatomist Morgagni. In 1759, he obtained a professorship in the University of Siena. He would die in Siena in 1779, and his pupil Paolo Mascagni would take his position. His Observatione Anatomiche was published in Lucca ...
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Ernst Gottfried Baldinger
1738 - 1804 (66 years)
Ernst Gottfried Baldinger , German physician, was born in Großvargula near Erfurt. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle and Jena, earning his MD in 1760 under the guidance of Ernst Anton Nicolai and in 1761 was entrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau.
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Yuan Tung-li
1895 - 1965 (70 years)
Yuan Tung-li was a Chinese library administrator and bibliographer. He headed the National Library of China and was later consultant in Chinese literature at the United States Library of Congress. Biography Yuan was born in Beijing in 1895 and graduated from the University of Peking in 1916. He then came to the United States and earned a BA from Columbia College in 1922. He also earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree from New York State Library School at Albany in 1923.
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Edgar Meyer
1853 - 1925 (72 years)
Edgar Meyer was an Austrian painter who built himself a castle and engaged in politics. Life Professor Edgar Meyer was born on 5 September 1853 in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. His parents were Martin Meyer , and Theresia Megucher . He studied at the Akademie der Bildenkünste in Munich, and from 1874 to 1877 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the direction of Eugen Dücker. He extended his studies by visiting Rome and Venice. Between 1880 and 1881, he was a member of an association of artists and academics called Malkasten in Düsseldorf. He lived in Weimar and was also Professor at Charlotte...
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Leopold Pfaundler
1839 - 1920 (81 years)
Leopold Pfaundler von Hadermur was an Austrian physicist and chemist born in Innsbruck. He was the father of pediatrician Meinhard von Pfaundler , and the father-in-law of pediatrician Theodor Escherich .
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Carl Reichenbach
1788 - 1869 (81 years)
Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach was a German chemist, geologist, metallurgist, naturalist, industrialist and philosopher, and a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his discoveries of several chemical products of economic importance, extracted from tar, such as eupione, waxy paraffin, pittacal and phenol . He also dedicated himself in his last years to research an unproved field of energy combining electricity, magnetism and heat, emanating from all living things, which he called the Odic force.
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Francis Mitchell Caird
1853 - Present (173 years)
Francis Mitchell Caird FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon who was an early advocate of Listerian antisepsis and then asepsis. He was a pioneer of gastrointestinal surgery. From 1908 to 1919 he was Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh and was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1912 to 1914.
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Manuel Valls
1920 - 1984 (64 years)
Manuel Valls i Gorina was a Spanish composer, pianist, music critic, and music educator. Valls was born in Badalona. He was a first cousin of painter Xavier Valls, himself the father of former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. He studied at the University of Barcelona and the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu. At the Liceu he was mentored by Aita Donostia with whom he studied music theory, music composition, and orchestration. He became a successful composer writing symphonic works, chamber music, choral music, operas, art songs, and songs for solo piano. For many years he taught composition at the University of Barcelona and wrote music reviews for El País..
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Ivan Vyshenskyi
1550 - 1620 (70 years)
Ivan Vyshenskyi was a Ukrainian Orthodox monk and religious philosopher. He is considered to be an important polemicist of the time. Biography Not much is known about the life of Vyshenskyi. It is considered to be likely that he spent part of his youth in Lutsk and was connected with scholars from the Ostroh Academy. Within the years 1576–1580 he traveled to Mount Athos in Greece, which was the center of Orthodox monk culture. He stayed there until his death, with the exception of a short visit to Ukraine between 1604 and 1606 when he quarreled with members of the Lviv brotherhood.
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Robert Shaw
1927 - 1978 (51 years)
Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Beginning his career in theatre, Shaw joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre after the Second World War and appeared in productions of Macbeth, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, and other Shakespeare plays. With the Old Vic company , he continued primarily in Shakespearean roles. In 1959 he starred in a West End production of The Long and the Short and the Tall.
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Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr.
1880 - 1933 (53 years)
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey Jr. was a United States Forest Service employee, forestry researcher, professor at Yale University and author of books and articles related to forestry and forest regulation.
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Petrus Ryff
1552 - 1629 (77 years)
Petrus Ryff was a Swiss mathematician, physician and chronicler from Basel. Life and work Petrus Ryff was born in Basel, Switzerland. He was the son of Daniel Ryff , and Ursula Zimmermann, and the grandnephew of Basler chronicler Fridolin Ryff.
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Gerard Boate
1604 - 1650 (46 years)
Gerard Boate was a Dutch physician, known for his Natural History of Ireland. Life Boate was born Gerrit/Gerard Boot, in Gorinchem, son of the knight Godfried de Boot and of Christine van Loon. He entered the university of Leyden as a medical student and graduated there as doctor of medicine on 3 July 1628. His younger brother Arnold Boate followed him to study medicine in Leiden. Both moved to London around 1630, where their family had settled earlier. Gerard became employed as physician to Charles I of England and Arnold as physician to the Earl of Leicester. In 1631 in London Gerard married Catharina Menning with whom he had three children.
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August Eduard Martin
1847 - 1933 (86 years)
August Eduard Martin was a German obstetrician and gynecologist. His father, Eduard Arnold Martin , was also a specialist in OB/GYN. He studied medicine at the universities of Jena and Berlin, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1870. He worked as an assistant to his father in Berlin, where he obtained his habilitation in 1876. In Berlin he opened a private clinic that became renowned for operative gynecology. From 1899 to 1907 he served as a full professor at the University of Greifswald, where he was also appointed head of the Frauenklinik.
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Jyeṣṭhadeva
1500 - 1575 (75 years)
Jyeṣṭhadeva was an astronomer-mathematician of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama . He is best known as the author of Yuktibhāṣā, a commentary in Malayalam of Tantrasamgraha by Nilakantha Somayaji . In Yuktibhāṣā, Jyeṣṭhadeva had given complete proofs and rationale of the statements in Tantrasamgraha. This was unusual for traditional Indian mathematicians of the time. The Yuktibhāṣā is now believed to contain the essential elements of calculus like Taylor and infinity series. Jyeṣṭhadeva also authored Drk-karana, a treatise on astronomical obser...
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William Temple
1555 - 1627 (72 years)
Sir William Temple was an English Ramist logician and fourth Provost of Trinity College Dublin. Early life William Temple was born the son of the Leicestershire man Anthony Temple, whose family name was said to descend from the Knight Templars, a once powerful monastic order during the Crusades, but which was outlawed by Pope Clement V. The rituals and the secrets of the order survived and many of the Knight Templars families came to prominence in 16th-century England when Protestantism was embraced. He was educated at Eton College and passed with a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1573.
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Louis Théophile Joseph Landouzy
1845 - 1917 (72 years)
Louis Théophile Joseph Landouzy was a French neurologist from Reims, and whose father and grandfather were also physicians. He studied medicine in Reims and Paris, earning his doctorate in 1876. He spent much his career at the University of Paris, becoming a professor of therapy in 1893 and a dean of medicine in 1901.
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Richard Taylor
1805 - 1873 (68 years)
Richard Taylor was a Church Missionary Society missionary in New Zealand. He was born on 21 March 1805 at Letwell, Yorkshire, England, one of four children of Richard Taylor and his wife, Catherine Spencer.
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Ferdinand Dorsch
1875 - 1938 (63 years)
Ferdinand Franz Engelbert Dorsch was a German painter, graphic artist, and art Professor. Life and work While he was still very young, his family moved to Vienna, where he grew up. In 1891, thanks to a scholarship from the Principality of Reuss-Gera, he was able to study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts with Leon Pohle and Ferdinand Pauwels. From 1895 to 1898, he worked with Gotthardt Kuehl, who became a lifelong friend and patron.
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Henry Dalton
1847 - Present (179 years)
Henry Clay Dalton was superintendent of the St. Louis City Hospital, Missouri, United States, from 1886 to 1892, and later a professor of abdominal and clinical surgery at Marion Sims College of Medicine . He is noted for being the first American to perform the suturing of the pericardium on record. Spanish surgeon Francisco Romero was documented with performing two successful surgeries in 1801 and French surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey was documented as successfully performing surgery on a woman's pericardium in 1810.
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Franz Volhard
1872 - 1950 (78 years)
Franz Volhard was a German internist born in Munich. Academic career He studied medicine at the universities of Bonn, Strasbourg, and Halle. As a student his instructors included Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger , Bernhard Naunyn , Oswald Schmiedeberg , and Joseph von Mering . From 1897 to 1905 he worked at the university medical clinic at Giessen under Franz Riegel . In 1905 he became head of the medical department at the city hospital in Dortmund, and in 1908 was named director of the Krankenanstalt in Mannheim, now University Hospital Mannheim. Afterwards, he served as a professor at the u...
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Raffaello Maffei
1451 - 1522 (71 years)
Raffaello Maffei was an Italian humanist, historian and theologian; and member of the Servite Order. He was a native of Volterra, Italy, and therefore is called Raphael Volaterranus or Raphael of Volterra; also Maffeus Volaterranus, or Raffaello Volterrano. Raffaello Maffei wrote the Commentaria Urbana, which was an encyclopedia divided into three parts.
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Johann Peter von Langer
1756 - 1824 (68 years)
Johann Peter Langer, after 1808, von Langer was a German painter, engraver and wallpaper designer. Biography His father, Anton Langer , was the gardener for the Hatzfeld family at their estate surrounding . He began his studies in 1775, under Lambert Krahe at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he won second prize at the Academy exhibition of 1776 and first prize, which came with a scholarship, in 1778.
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Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
1712 - 1774 (62 years)
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was a German painter and art administrator. In his own works, he was adept at imitating many earlier artists, but never developed a style of his own. Early life Dietrich was born at Weimar, where he was brought up early to the profession of art by his father Johann Georg, then painter of miniatures to the court of the duke. Dietrich's sister was painter Maria Dorothea Dietrich.
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Johann Christoph Bohl
1703 - 1785 (82 years)
Johann Christoph Bohl or Bohlius or Bohle was a German physician. Life Born in Königsberg in 1703, Bohl enrolled at the local university on September 25, 1719, in order to study medicine, and continued his studies at the University of Leipzig. On September 20, 1725, he enrolled at the University of Leiden where he became a student of Herman Boerhaave, and a classmate of Albrecht von Haller. He graduated on 26 July 1726 presenting his dissertation titled "De morsu". He spent four years in Amsterdam working with the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch. He returned to Königsberg on August 15, 1730. ...
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Charles Russell Bardeen
1871 - 1935 (64 years)
Charles Russell Bardeen was an American physician and anatomist and the first dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School. Early years Bardeen was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1871, and grew up in Syracuse, New York. His father, Charles William Bardeen, was an educator and publisher. He attended the Teichmann School in Leipzig, Germany, then completed his B.A. at Harvard University in 1893. By virtue of being in the first medical school class at Johns Hopkins University, and having a last name at the beginning of the alphabet, Bardeen was the first person ever to receive an M.D. fro...
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Edouard Zeckendorf
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Edouard Zeckendorf was a Belgian doctor, army officer and amateur mathematician. In mathematics, he is best known for his work on Fibonacci numbers and in particular for proving Zeckendorf's theorem, though he published over 20 papers, mostly in number theory.
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Yu Zhengxie
1775 - 1840 (65 years)
Yu Zhengxie was a Qing dynasty scholar from Yi county in modern-day Anhui province. Along with his philological work, he was a noted critic of foot binding, female infanticide, and the cult of widow chastity.
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Gasparinus de Bergamo
1360 - 1431 (71 years)
#15941
Oenomaus of Gadara
Oenomaus of Gadara , was a Pagan Cynic philosopher. He is known principally for the long extracts of a work attacking oracles, which have been preserved among the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Life Oenomaus was a native of Gadara, which was then a partially Hellenized community in northern Jordan. He is listed in the Chronicle of Jerome as flourishing in the 224th Olympiad : "Plutarch of Chaeronea, Sextus, Agathobulus and Oenomaus are considered notable philosophers." He is also mentioned in The Chronography of George Synkellos associated with events from 109 to 120 AD "The philosopher Sex...
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Andrew Smith
1797 - 1872 (75 years)
Sir Andrew Smith was a British surgeon, explorer, ethnologist and zoologist. He is considered the father of zoology in South Africa having described many species across a wide range of groups in his major work, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa.
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Antoni Jurasz
1847 - 1923 (76 years)
Antoni Stanisław Jurasz was a Polish laryngologist who was a native of Spławie . He spent most of his life living and working in what was then the German Empire. He was the father of surgeon Antoni Tomasz Jurasz .
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Leo Riemens
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Leonardus Antony Marinus Riemens was a Dutch musicologist and cultural journalist. He wrote a book about Maria Callas, and together with Karl-Josef Kutsch began a reference book about opera singers in 1962, which grew to Großes Sängerlexikon, the standard reference in the field.
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Julius Ludwig Ideler
1809 - 1842 (33 years)
Julius Ludwig Ideler was a German philologist and naturalist. He was the son of astronomer Christian Ludwig Ideler. From 1828 he studied medicine, mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Berlin, where in 1834 he obtained his habilitation for language research. He died on 17 July 1842 in Berlin, age 32.
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Hugh of Newcastle
Hugh of Newcastle was a Franciscan theologian and scholastic philosopher, a pupil of Duns Scotus. His origin in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is questioned; he may have been from another place called Neufchâtel.
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Carl Hummel
1821 - 1907 (86 years)
Carl Maria Nicolaus Hummel was a German landscape painter and etcher. Life and work He was the son of Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and the opera singer Elisabeth Röckel. His studies began in 1841 under Friedrich Preller at the Fürstliche freie Zeichenschule Weimar. After graduating, he made several study trips to England, Norway, Rügen and the Tyrol, lingering in Italy and Sicily until 1846.
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John Clark Murray
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
John Clark Murray was a Scottish philosopher and professor. He held the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Queen's University from 1862 to 1872, and at McGill University from 1872 until 1903. During his academic career, Murray became the first professor at Queen's to offer courses to women; however, his equality advocacy caused unrest among the male professors. He was married to Margaret Polson Murray who founded the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire.
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Carl Johann Lasch
1822 - 1888 (66 years)
Carl Johann Lasch was a German artist of historical paintings. He was born in Leipzig. He attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. One of his teachers was Eduard Bendemann. He later attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. There he studied under Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Wilhelm von Kaulbach.
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Stanisław Wigura
1903 - 1932 (29 years)
Stanisław Wigura was a Polish aircraft designer and aviator, co-founder of the RWD aircraft construction team and lecturer at the Warsaw University of Technology. Along with Franciszek Żwirko, he won the international air contest Challenge 1932.
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