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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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,
#15951
Ioannis Doukas
1845 - 1916 (71 years)
Ioannis Doukas or Dukas was a Greek painter and one of the main representatives in 19th century portrait painting in Greece. Life Doukas was born in 1841, in Gjirokastër . He started his studies in art at the School of Fine Arts of Athens, Greece, in 1859. He continued his studies outside Greece: initially in the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , being a student of the German painter Karl von Piloty. He then moved to Paris and became student of Jean-Léon Gérôme.
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Luigi Cornaro
1484 - 1566 (82 years)
Alvise Cornaro, often Italianised Luigi , was a Venetian nobleman and patron of arts, also remembered for his four books of Discorsi about the secrets to living long and well with measure and sobriety.
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Robert Lee
1793 - 1877 (84 years)
Robert Lee FRS was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow in 1834. He held the Chair for the shortest period of any holder to date, resigning from his position immediately after giving his opening address.
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Niko Miljanić
1892 - 1957 (65 years)
Dr. Nikola "Niko" Miljanić was a Montenegrin and Serbian anatomist and surgeon, professor of anatomy at Belgrade Medical School, resistance participant during World War II and the president of Montenegrin wartime Assembly.
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Ludwig Richter
1803 - 1884 (81 years)
Adrian Ludwig Richter was a German painter and etcher, who was strongly influenced by Erhard and Chodowiecki. He was a representative of both Romanticism and Biedermeier styles. He was the most popular, and in many ways the most typical German illustrator of the middle of the 19th century. His work is described as typically German and homely as are the fairy-tales of Grimm, for whom he produced several woodcuts.
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James Ormiston Affleck
1840 - 1922 (82 years)
Sir James Ormiston Affleck FRSE was a Scottish physician and medical author. Life Affleck was born in Edinburgh in 1840, but not to a medical family. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1867 with MB ChB. He completed his doctorate in 1869 and began practicing in the Stockbridge area of the city, operating from 12 Claremont Place. He also took on the role of public vaccinator at the New Town Dispensary.
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Curt Schimmelbusch
1860 - 1895 (35 years)
Curt Theodor Schimmelbusch was a German physician and pathologist who invented the Schimmelbusch mask, for the safe delivery of anaesthetics to surgical patients. He was also a key figure in the development of mechanical methods of sterilisation and disinfection for surgical procedures, on which his Anleitung zur aseptischen Wundbehandlung was considered a seminal work.
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Katarina Jovanović
1869 - 1954 (85 years)
Katarina A. Jovanović was a Serbian translator, literary historian, publicist, philosopher, journalist and humanitarian. She translated into German Petar II Petrović Njegoš's masterpiece "Mountain Wreath" .
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Nicolas d'Orbellis
1500 - 1472 (-28 years)
Nicolas d'Orbellis was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher, of the Scotist school. Biography He was born about 1400. He seems to have entered the monastery of the Observantines, founded in 1407, one of the first in France.
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Sebastián Fox Morcillo
1526 - 1559 (33 years)
Sebastian Fox Morcillo , a Spanish scholar and philosopher, was born in Seville between 1526 and 1528. Around 1548 he studied in Leuven. Following the example of the Spanish Jew Judas Abarbanel, he published commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, in which he endeavoured to reconcile their teachings. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos, son of Philip II, but he was lost at sea on his way to Spain to take up the post.
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Abdallah al-Qutbi
1879 - 1952 (73 years)
Abdallah ibn Mu'allim Yusuf al-Qutbi was a Somali polemicist, theologian and philosopher who lived in Qulunqul , Somalia. Biography Sheikh Al-Qutbi is best known for his Al-Majmu'at al-mubaraka , a five-part compilation of polemics that was published in Cairo ca. 1919–1920 . Sheikh Abdullahi Qutbi, a disciple of Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Shashi and member of Qadiriyyah congregation, an Islamic school of thought or tariqah.
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Marcin Król z Żurawicy
1422 - 1460 (38 years)
Marcin Król , also Martinus Ruthenus, Marcin z Żurawica, Marcin Król z Przemyśla, Martinus Polonus, Martinus Rex de Premislia was a Ruthenian-born Polish mathematician, astronomer, and doctor. Life Marcin Król, son of Stanisław Król, was born around 1422 in Żurawica near Przemyśl.
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Mary Carr Moore
1873 - 1957 (84 years)
Mary Carr Moore was an American composer, conductor, vocalist, and music educator of the twentieth century. She is best remembered today for her association with the musical life of the West Coast.
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Edmund Hansen Grut
1831 - 1907 (76 years)
Edmund Hansen Grut was a Danish ophthalmologist born in Copenhagen. In 1857 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Copenhagen, and afterwards traveled to Berlin, where he studied with Albrecht von Graefe . In 1863 he opened an eye clinic at Nørregade, Copenhagen, and in 1873 founded an ophthalmic clinic at Havnegade , not far from the University Hospital.
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Alfons von Rosthorn
1857 - 1909 (52 years)
Alfons Edler von Rosthorn was a gynecologist in Austria-Hungary who was native of Oed, a village that is located in the district of Wiener Neustadt-Land. In 1885 he earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied zoology and medicine, and was a student of surgeon Theodor Billroth . Afterwards, he became an assistant to Rudolf Chrobak at the second university Frauenklinik in Vienna. In 1891 he was habilitated for gynecology and obstetrics, and in 1894 became a full professor of OB/GYN at the University of Prague. Later, he was a professor at the Universities of Graz , Hei...
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Alexander Pope
1763 - 1835 (72 years)
Alexander Pope was an Irish actor and painter. Life He was born in Cork, Ireland. He was educated to follow his father's profession of miniature painting. He continued to paint miniatures and exhibit them at the Royal Academy as late as 1821; but at an early date he took the stage, first appearing in London as Oroonoko in 1785 at Covent Garden. He remained at this theatre almost continuously for nearly twenty years, then at the Haymarket until his retirement, playing leading parts, chiefly tragic. He was well known as Othello and Henry VIII.
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Thomas McCall Anderson
1836 - 1908 (72 years)
Sir Thomas McCall Anderson was a physician and a professor of practice of medicine, at the University of Glasgow. Life He was born in Glasgow on 9 June 1836, was second of three sons of Alexander Dunlop Anderson, M.D. medical practitioner in Glasgow, who in 1852 was president of the faculty of physicians and surgeons of Glasgow, by his wife Sara, daughter of Thomas McCall of Craighead, Lanarkshire. His father's family was descended on the maternal side from William Dunlop, principal of Glasgow University, 1690-1700; and in the male line from John Anderson , the stout defender of presbyteriani...
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Giovanni Bovio
1837 - 1903 (66 years)
Giovanni Bovio was an Italian philosopher and a politician of the Italian Republican Party. Bovio was born in Trani. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy. He wrote a philosophical work in 1864 called Il Verbo Novello.
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Sophia B. Jones
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Sophia Bethena Jones was a British North America-born American medical doctor and the first woman of African descent to graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School. She founded the Nursing Program at Spelman College, where she was the first black faculty member.
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William Thomson
1601 - 1753 (152 years)
William Thomson was a Scottish folk song collector and singer. He is said to have been the son of Daniel Thomson, one of the king's trumpeters for Scotland. As a boy singer, he sang at a concert – The Feast of St. Cecillia – in 1695. Before 1722, he had settled in London, and according to Charles Burney had a benefit concert that year. He appears to have become a fashionable singer, as his volume, dedicated to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, contains a lengthy list of notable persons as subscribers.
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Vito Fazio-Allmayer
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Vito Fazio-Allmayer was an Italian philosopher, pedagogist and university teacher. Biography He was born in Palermo from Giuseppe Emanuele Fazio, originary from Alcamo and from Felicina Allmayer, of German origins but resident in Italy. Since a boy he was interested in the history of art; when he was 23 he graduated in Jurisprudence, but as he was fond of philosophy, he soon started the philosophical studies and attended the philosophical library of Palermo, where he met Giovanni Gentile.
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William Cumin
1784 - 1854 (70 years)
William Cumin was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow between 1834 and 1840. He was the son of Patrick Cumin , professor of oriental languages at the University of Glasgow, and his wife Rachael Baird. The Scottish philosopher David Hume in a letter to Adam Smith in June 1761 had recommended Cumin's father for his position.
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Ferdinand Laufberger
1829 - 1881 (52 years)
Ferdinand Julius Wilhelm Laufberger was an Austrian painter and etcher. Biography Laufberger trained at both the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He initially painted genre scenes of peasant and village life then, in 1855, on behalf of Österreichischer Lloyd , travelled through the Danube Vilayet to Istanbul, creating a series of drawings that were made into popular engravings. While in Istanbul, Laufberger made several connections with Caucasus Germans that had settled in Istanbul, and the material he drew from them provided inspiration to his later work.
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Peter of Capua the Elder
1150 - 1214 (64 years)
Peter of Capua was an Italian scholastic theologian and prelate. He served as cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata from 1193 until 1201 and cardinal-priest of San Marcello al Corso from 1201 until his death. He often worked as a papal legate. He wrote several theological works and was a patron of his hometown of Amalfi.
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María Teresa Ferrari
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
María Teresa Ferrari was an Argentine educator, physician, and women's rights activist. She was the first female university professor in Latin America and one of the first women allowed to teach medicine. She was a pioneering researcher in women's health, studying the use of radiation therapy rather than surgery for uterine tumors and developing a vaginoscope that revolutionized women's health care in Brazil. She established the first maternity ward and gynecological services at the Hospital Militar Central of Buenos Aires in 1925, which provided the first incubation services in the country.
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William Kilpatrick Stewart
1914 - 1967 (53 years)
Air Vice Marshal William Kilpatrick Stewart, was a Scottish researcher in aerospace physiology, senior consultant in physiology to the Royal Air Force, and commanding officer of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine.
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Reuben Ottenberg
1882 - 1959 (77 years)
Reuben Ottenberg was an American physician and haematologist, who served Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City with distinction for 50 years. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1902 and his M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons three years later.
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Aesara
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Aesara of Lucania was a conjectured Pythagorean philosopher who may have written On Human Nature, a fragment of which is preserved by Stobaeus, although the majority of critical scholars follow Holger Thesleff in attributing it to Aresas, a male writer from Lucania who is also mentioned by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras.
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Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty
1825 - 1874 (49 years)
Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty, also spelled Surjo Kumar Chakraborty was the first Indian to pass the examination of the Indian Medical Service in 1855 and subsequently became the Professor of Materia Medica at Calcutta Medical College in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
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Ivan Loveridge Bennett
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
Ivan Loveridge Bennett, Jr. was an American physician who was dean of the NYU School of Medicine and served as president of New York University 1980–1981. Bennett was educated at Emory University where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. Graduated with a B.A. in 1943, and a medical degree in 1946. Bennett was Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Lyndon B. Johnson between 1967 and 1969. Bennett was also director of the department of pathology at Johns Hopkins University and also taught at Yale and New York University.
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Thomas Malcolm Knox
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox was a British philosopher who served as Principal of St Andrews University from 1953 to 1966 and Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1978. Biography Knox was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, on 28 November 1900, the son of Scottish Congregationalist minister James Knox and his wife Isabella Marshall.
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Miles of Marseilles
1294 - 1301 (7 years)
Miles of Marseille was a Provençal-Jewish physician and philosopher of the Middle Ages. He was born at Marseille around 1294. In some manuscripts he is designated by the name "Bongodos," the Provençal language equivalent of "ben Judah."
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David Boswell Reid
1805 - 1863 (58 years)
Prof David Boswell Reid MD FRSE FRCPE was a British physician, chemist and inventor. Through reports on public hygiene and ventilation projects in public buildings, he made a reputation in the field of sanitation. He has been called the "grandfather of air-conditioning".
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Richard Russell
1687 - 1759 (72 years)
Richard Russell was an 18th-century British physician who encouraged his patients to use a form of water therapy that involved the submersion or bathing in, and drinking of, seawater. The contemporary equivalent of this is thalassotherapy, although the practice of drinking seawater has largely discontinued.
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Menedemus the Cynic
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Menedemus was a Cynic philosopher, and a pupil of the Epicurean Colotes of Lampsacus. Diogenes Laërtius states that he used to go about garbed as a Fury, proclaiming himself a sort of spy from Hades: He assumed the garb of a Fury, and went about saying that he had come from Hades to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend there again and make his report to the deities who live in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark colour reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embro...
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Babowai
450 - 484 (34 years)
Babowai was Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Patriarch of the Church of the East from 457 to 484, during the reign of the Sassanid King Peroz I. Babowai was known for his pro-Byzantine leanings, for which he was often in conflict with other members of the anti-Byzantine Church of the East. He was executed in 484.
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Benno Baginsky
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Benno Baginsky was a German physician specializing in the field of otorhinolaryngology. He was a younger brother to pediatrician Adolf Aron Baginsky . He studied medicine in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1870. Following service as a physician in the Franco-Prussian War, he began practicing medicine and soon found himself specializing in diseases of the ear, nose and larynx. In 1884 he became a privat-docent of otology, rhinology and laryngology at the University of Berlin, and in 1897 received the title of professor. Among his assistants at Berlin was fellow otorhinolaryngologist Jacob K...
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August Wagenmann
1863 - 1955 (92 years)
August Emil Ludwig Wagenmann was a German ophthalmologist. August Wagenmann obtained a degree of medical doctor at the universities of Göttingen and Munich. After graduation, he received a position of assistant doctor in the Eye Clinic at Göttingen University, which was chaired by Theodor Leber. In 1888, August Wagenmann was qualified as a privatdocent in ophthalmology.
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Otto Kahler
1849 - 1893 (44 years)
Otto Kahler was a physician and pathologist born in Prague, Austrian Empire. In 1871 he obtained his medical doctorate in Prague, and following an educational trip to Paris, returned to his hometown as an assistant to Joseph Halla at the internal clinic. In 1882 he became an associate professor at Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, and a few years later , was a "full professor" of pathology and therapy. In 1889 he relocated to the University of Vienna, succeeding Heinrich von Bamberger as professor of special pathology. After a year in Vienna, he developed tongue cancer and his assistant, Friedrich Kraus , subsequently took over his lectures.
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Adolf Abicht
1793 - 1860 (67 years)
Adolf Abicht was a Polish-Lithuanian physician. He was a professor of general pathology, therapy, and medical history at the Vilnius University, and was a president of the Medical Society in Vilnius from 1829–1838.
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Paul von Bruns
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Paul von Bruns was a German surgeon. He was born in Tübingen, and was the son of surgeon Victor von Bruns. His father-in-law was Protestant theologian Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker. Bruns was born July 2, 1846. In 1882, Bruns became director of the surgical clinic at Tübingen, as well as a full professor at the University. He was the author of works on numerous medical subjects — laryngotomy for removal of growths in the larynx, acute osteomyelitis, gunshot wounds, limb operations and the treatment of goiters, to name a few.
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Stephen Whisson
1710 - 1783 (73 years)
Stephen Whisson was a tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and coached 72 students in the 1744–1754 period. Biography Wisson was from St Neots, Huntingdonshire and was the son of a publican. In 1735, he matriculated from Wakefield School, Yorkshire.
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Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben
1806 - 1849 (43 years)
Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben , was an Austrian physician, poet and philosopher. He was a member of the von Feuchtersleben family Life He was born as a son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben . He was of an old Saxon noble family. His older half-brother was Eduard von Feuchtersleben , son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben from his first marriage.
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Franz Josef Ruprecht
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
Franz Josef Ruprecht was an Austrian-born physician and botanist active in the Russian Empire, where he was known as Frants Ivanovič Ruprekht . He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, and grew up in Prague, where he studied, and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1836. After a short stint in medical practice in Prague, he was appointed curator of the herbarium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1839, then assistant director of the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden between 1851 and 1855, and professor of botany in 1855 at the University of Saint Petersburg. He died in Saint...
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Robert Meyer
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Robert Meyer was a German pathologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Strassburg, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1889. From 1890 to 1894 he was a medical practitioner in the community of Dedeleben, and afterwards worked as assistant to gynecologist Johann Veit in Berlin.
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John Smith
1721 - 1797 (76 years)
John Smith was a Scottish physician and academic. Smith was born in Maybole, Scotland, where his father, William, was a merchant. He studied at the University of Glasgow beginning in 1736, entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1744 with the support of the Snell Exhibition, and earned a B.A. in 1748 and an M.A. in 1751 from Balliol. He then studied under Nathan Alcock in St Mary Hall, earning his doctorate in 1757. Alcock left Oxford for Bath in the same year, and Smith took his place. At Oxford, he taught anatomy and chemistry. Despite not being a mathematician, he held the Savilian chair of geo...
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Brian Gilmore Maegraith
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Brian Gilmore Maegraith was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1907 and went to Britain in 1931 to take up the South Australian Rhodes Scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He served in France and Sierra Leone as a pathologist in the Royal Army Medical Corps, led the Malaria Research Unit at Oxford, held the Deanship of Faculty of Medicine at Oxford, and was appointed to the Chair of Tropical Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 1944. He died in England in 1989.
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Johann Georg Hiltensperger
1806 - 1890 (84 years)
Johann Georg Hiltensperger was a German history painter and a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Biography Born in Haldenwang, Oberallgäu, he was trained in drawing by L. Weiß before studying under Johann Peter von Langer at the Royal Art Academy and under Peter von Cornelius at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Returning to Munich in 1825, he there received commissions for frescoes and oil paintings from Ludwig I of Bavaria and Maximilian II Joseph of Bavaria. For example, between 1838 and 1865 he produced the Odyssey Cycle in festal hall of the Munich Residenz to designs by Ludwig Schwanthaler.
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Horace Kallen
1882 - 1974 (92 years)
Horace Meyer Kallen was a German-born American philosopher who supported pluralism and Zionism. Biography Horace Meyer Kallen was born on August 11, 1882, in the town of Bernstadt, Prussian Silesia . His parents were Jacob David Kallen, an Orthodox rabbi, and Esther Rebecca Glazier. In 1887, the family emigrated to the United States. Kallen studied philosophy at Harvard University under George Santayana; in 1903, he received a BA magna cum laude.
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Norwood Russell Hanson
1924 - 1967 (43 years)
Norwood Russell Hanson was an American philosopher of science. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden — that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven — and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven. His single most central intellectual concern was the comprehension and development of a logic of discovery.
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