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,
#1601
Owen Barfield
1898 - 1997 (99 years)
Arthur Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, critic, and member of the Inklings. Life Barfield was born in London, to Elizabeth and Arthur Edward Barfield . He had three elder siblings: Diana , Barbara , and Harry . He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book Poetic Diction, he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America.
Go to Profile#1602
Alice von Hildebrand
#10394
Overall Influence
1923 - 2022 (99 years)
Alice Marie von Hildebrand, GCSG was a Belgian-born American Catholic philosopher, theologian, author, and professor. She taught philosophy at Hunter College for 37 years. She was also the second wife of Dietrich von Hildebrand.
Go to Profile#1603
Gustave Thibon
#7387
Overall Influence
1903 - 2001 (98 years)
Gustave Thibon was a French philosopher. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times by Édouard Delebecque, in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968. Biography Although essentially self-taught , Thibon was an avid reader – especially of poetry, in French, Provençal and Latin. He was very impressed by the First World War, which led him to hate patriotism and democracy. The young Gustave Thibon travelled extensively, at first to London and Italy, and later to North Africa, where he served in the military, before returning to his native village at the age of 23. Under the influence of writers such as Léon Bloy and Jacques Maritain he converted to Catholicism.
Go to Profile#1604
Theodore Sider
#16297
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Theodore "Ted" Sider is an American philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of language. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Family Sider is the son of theologian Ronald Sider. He is the partner of Jill North, who is also hired by Rutgers' philosophy faculty.
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Clive Hamilton
#4691
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual currently serving as Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government, and is the Founder and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He regularly appears in the Australian media and contributes to public policy debates. Hamilton was granted the award of Member of the Order of Australia on 8 June 2009 for "service ...
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Li Zehou
#9358
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
Li Zehou was a Chinese scholar of philosophy and intellectual history. He resided in the United States. He is considered an important modern scholar of Chinese history and culture whose work was central to the period known as the Chinese Enlightenment in the 1980s.
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John Earman
#8361
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
John Earman is an American philosopher of physics. He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, and was president of the Philosophy of Science Association.
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John Everett Millais
1829 - 1896 (67 years)
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street . Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophel...
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Vinoba Bhave
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
Vinayak Narahari Bhave, also known as Vinoba Bhave , was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. Often called Acharya , he is best known for the Bhoodan Movement. He is considered as National Teacher of India and the spiritual successor of Mahatma Gandhi. He was an eminent philosopher. The Gita has been translated into the Marathi language by him with the title Geetai .
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Heinrich Gomperz
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Heinrich Gomperz was an Austrian philosopher. He was a son of Theodor Gomperz. He was a patient of Sigmund Freud and was married to Ada Stepnitz. Works , 1898., 1907.Die indische Theosophie, 1925., 2 Vols., 1905–1908., 1915.Über Sinn und Sinngebilde, Erklären und Verstehen, 1929., 1953.
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James Frederick Ferrier
1808 - 1864 (56 years)
James Frederick Ferrier was a Scottish metaphysical writer and philosopher. He introduced the word epistemology in philosophical English, as well as coining agnoiology for the study of ignorance. Education and early writings Ferrier was born at 15 Heriot Row in Edinburgh, the son of John Ferrier, writer to the signet. He was educated at the Royal High School, the University of Edinburgh and Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently, his metaphysical tastes having been fostered by his intimate friend, Sir William Hamilton, spent some time at Heidelberg studying German philosophy.
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Euclid of Megara
436 BC - 365 BC (71 years)
Euclid of Megara was a Greek Socratic philosopher who founded the Megarian school of philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BC, and was present at his death. He held the supreme good to be one, eternal and unchangeable, and denied the existence of anything contrary to the good. Editors and translators in the Middle Ages often confused him with Euclid of Alexandria when discussing the latter's Elements.
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Holmes Rolston III
#13654
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (92 years)
Holmes Rolston III is a philosopher who is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science and religion. Among other honors, Rolston won the 2003 Templeton Prize, awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997–1998. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI .
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Louise Antony
#24166
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Louise M. Antony is an American philosopher who is professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She specializes in epistemology and feminist theory. Education and career Antony received a bachelor's in philosophy from Syracuse University in 1975, after which she went to Harvard University for her doctorate, which she received in 1981. Her first academic position was at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1980-81. She taught at Boston University from 1981 to 1983; Bates College from 1983 to 1986; North Carolina State University from 1986 to 1993; the Univers...
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John Charles Cutler
#4146
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
John Charles Cutler was a senior surgeon, and the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service. After his death, his involvement in several controversial and unethical medical studies of syphilis was revealed, including the Guatemala and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.
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Enrico Berti
#25188
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
Enrico Berti was an Italian philosopher. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Padua. Biography Born in Valeggio sul Mincio, Italy, Berti graduated in philosophy in 1957 at the University of Padua, and after a few years teaching at the University of Perugia he was professor in his alma mater for almost forty years. His major interest was Aristotle, to whom he dedicated many works, and of whom he made his own translation of the Metaphysics, published in 2017.
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Dagobert D. Runes
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Dagobert David Runes was an immigrant publisher in the US, a philosopher and author. Biography Runes was born in Zastavna, Bukovina, Austro-Hungary . He received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1924, under the direction of Moritz Schlick, one of the founders of the Vienna Circle of positivist philosophers.
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Edgar Cayce
1877 - 1945 (68 years)
Edgar Cayce was an American attributed clairvoyant who claimed to speak from his higher self while in a trance-like state. His words were recorded by his friend, Al Layne; his wife, Gertrude Evans, and later by his secretary, Gladys Davis Turner. During the sessions, Cayce would answer questions on a variety of subjects such as healing, reincarnation, dreams, the afterlife, past lives, nutrition, Atlantis, and future events. Cayce, a devout Christian and Sunday-school teacher, said that his readings came from his subconscious mind exploring the dream realm, where he said all minds were timelessly connected.
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John Lewis
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
John Lewis was a British Unitarian minister and Marxist philosopher and author of many works on philosophy, anthropology, and religion. Lewis's father, a successful builder and architect, came from a Welsh farming family, and was a very devout Methodist. Young Lewis's social and political views clashed with those of his father. Their quarrels eventually led to his father disinheriting him.
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Timo Airaksinen
#19270
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Timo Airaksinen is Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Discipline of Social and Moral Philosophy at Helsinki University. By longstanding tradition in the University of Helsinki, the philosophy faculty is divided into two major areas, the practical and the theoretical. He graduated from the University of Turku in 1971 and defended his doctoral dissertation The Hegelianism of Bradley and McTaggart in 1975. He specializes in ethics and social philosophy, ethics of technology, the history of philosophy, and education. He has written on a wide range of topics dealing with these issues, from the thinking of Hobbes to Marquis de Sade.
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Abraham Kaplan
#8390
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
Abraham Kaplan was an American philosopher, known best for being the first philosopher to systematically examine the behavioral sciences in his book The Conduct of Inquiry . His thinking was influenced by pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey.
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Francis Ellingwood Abbot
1836 - 1903 (67 years)
Francis Ellingwood Abbot was an American philosopher and theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accord with scientific method. His lifelong romance with his wife Katharine Fearing Loring forms the subject of If Ever Two Were One, a collection of his correspondence and diary entries.
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Alice Ambrose
#14954
Overall Influence
1906 - 2001 (95 years)
Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz was an American philosopher, logician, and author. Early life and education Alice Loman Ambrose was born in Lexington, Illinois and orphaned when she was 13 years old. She studied philosophy and mathematics at Millikin University . After completing her PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1932, she went to Cambridge University to study with G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, where she earned a second PhD in 1938.
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Dietrich von Hildebrand
1889 - 1977 (88 years)
Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer. Hildebrand was called "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church" by Pope Pius XII. He was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, producing works in every major field of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics. Pope John Paul II greatly admired the philosophical work of Hildebrand, remarking once to his widow, Alice von Hildebrand, "Your husband is one of the great ethicist...
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Stéphane Lupasco
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Stéphane Lupasco was a Romanian philosopher who developed non-Aristotelian logic. Early years Stéphane Lupasco was born in Bucharest on 11 August 1900. His family belonged to the old Moldavian aristocracy. His father was a lawyer and politician, but it was his mother, a pianist and student of César Franck, who established the family in Paris in 1916. After high school at the Lycée Buffon, he studied philosophy, biology and physics at the Sorbonne and, briefly, law. He participated fully in the artistic and intellectual life of Paris in the 20s and 30s and defended his State Doctoral Thesis in...
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D. Elton Trueblood
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
David Elton Trueblood , who was usually known as "Elton Trueblood" or "D. Elton Trueblood", was a noted 20th-century American Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanford universities.
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William Bechtel
#8059
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
William Bechtel is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. He was a professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis from 1994 until 2002 . Bechtel was also the chair of the Philosophy Department from 1999 until 2002 and was heavily involved with the Philosophy-Psychology-Neuroscience program, serving at different times as Assistant Director and Director. Before that, he was at Georgia State. Bechtel earned his PhD from the University of Chicago and his BA from Kenyon College.
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Richard David Precht
#8448
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Richard David Precht is a German philosopher and author of successful popular science books about philosophical issues. He hosts the TV show "Precht" on ZDF. He was an honorary professor of philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg from 2011 to October 2023 and is an honorary professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Since the great success with Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele? , Precht's books on philosophical or sociopolitical topics became bestsellers.
Go to Profile#1629
Bernardino Telesio
1509 - 1588 (79 years)
Bernardino Telesio was an Italian philosopher and natural scientist. While his natural theories were later disproven, his emphasis on observation made him the "first of the moderns" who eventually developed the scientific method.
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Émile Meyerson
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Émile Meyerson was a Polish-born French epistemologist, chemist, and philosopher of science. Meyerson was born in Lublin, Poland. He died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 74. Biography Meyerson was educated at the University of Heidelberg and studied chemistry under Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. In 1882 Meyerson settled in Paris. He served as foreign editor of the Havas news agency, and later as the director of the Jewish Colonization Association for Europe and Asia Minor. He became a naturalized French citizen after World War I.
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Carlos Vaz Ferreira
1872 - 1958 (86 years)
Carlos Vaz Ferreira was a Uruguayan philosopher, lawyer, writer, and academic. Influenced by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, he is notable for introducing liberal, pluralistic political values and pragmatic philosophical concepts to South American society.
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Théodore Simon Jouffroy
1796 - 1842 (46 years)
Théodore Simon Jouffroy , aka Simon Joseph Théodore Jouffroy, was a French philosopher. Biography He was born at Les Pontets, Franche-Comté, département of Doubs. In his tenth year, his father, a tax-gatherer, sent him to an uncle at Pontarlier, under whom he began his classical studies. At Dijon his compositions attracted the attention of an inspector, who had him placed in the normal school, Paris. There he came under the influence of Victor Cousin, and in 1817 he was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the normal and Bourbon schools.
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Gustavo Bueno
#11995
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Gustavo Bueno Martínez was a Spanish philosopher, founder of a philosophical doctrine dubbed by himself as "philosophical materialism". Pupil of the national-syndicalist Santiago Montero Díaz, Bueno's ideological path reached a blend of right-wing and left-wing autoritarianism during the years of the late francoism.
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Karel Lambert
#24326
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Karel Lambert is an American philosopher and logician at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Salzburg. He has written extensively on the subject of free logic, a term which he coined.
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John Norman
#13424
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
John Frederick Lange Jr. is an American writer who, as John Norman, has authored the Gor series of science fantasy novels. Norman is also a philosophy professor. Early life and education Lange was born in Chicago, Illinois, to John Frederick Lange and Almyra D. Lange .
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Roberto Torretti
#10575
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Roberto Torretti was a Chilean philosopher, author and academic who was internationally renowned for his contributions to the history of philosophy, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics.
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Aryadeva
200 - 250 (50 years)
Āryadeva , was a Mahayana Buddhist monk, a disciple of Nagarjuna and a Madhyamaka philosopher. Most sources agree that he was from "Siṃhala", which some scholars identify with Sri Lanka. After Nagarjuna, he is considered to be the next most important figure of the Indian Madhyamaka school.
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Lara Denis
#19421
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Lara Denis is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Director of Ethics Program at Agnes Scott College. She is known for her works on Kantian ethics. Denis is a former President of Phi Beta Kappa .
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Jacob Moleschott
1822 - 1893 (71 years)
Jacob Moleschott was a Dutch physiologist and writer on dietetics. He is known for his philosophical views in regard to scientific materialism. He was a member of German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .
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John Playfair
1748 - 1819 (71 years)
John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth , which summarised the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom.
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Amelia Valcárcel
#17094
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Amelia Valcárcel is a Spanish philosopher and feminist. She is considered within the “philosophic feminism” as part of the “equality feminism” approach. In 2015 she is a professor in Moral and Political Philosophy at the National University of Distance Education and since 2006 is member of the Spanish Council of State.
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F. C. S. Schiller
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, FBA , usually cited as F. C. S. Schiller, was a German-British philosopher. Born in Altona, Holstein , Schiller studied at the University of Oxford, later was a professor there, after being invited back after a brief time at Cornell University. Later in his life he taught at the University of Southern California. In his lifetime he was well known as a philosopher; after his death, his work was largely forgotten.
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Louis Lavelle
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Louis Lavelle was a French philosopher, considered one of the greatest French metaphysicians of the twentieth century. His magnum opus, La Dialectique de l'éternel présent , is a systematic metaphysical work. Lavelle's other principal works include De l'Être , De l'Acte , Du Temps et de l'Eternité , and De l'Âme Humaine .
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János Kis
#9948
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
János Kis is a Hungarian philosopher and political scientist, who served as the inaugural leader of the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats from 1990 to 1991. He is considered to be the first Leader Hungarian parliamentary opposition.
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Olaf Stapledon
1886 - 1950 (64 years)
William Olaf Stapledon – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Life Stapledon was born in Seacombe, Wallasey, on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, the only son of William Clibbett Stapledon and Emmeline Miller. The first six years of his life were spent with his parents at Port Said, Egypt. He was educated at Abbotsholme School in Derbyshire and Balliol College, Oxford, where he acquired a BA degree in Modern History in 1909, promoted to an MA degree in 1913. After a brie...
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Rémi Brague
#10551
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Rémi Brague is a French historian of philosophy, specializing in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. He is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Romano Guardini chair of philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
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María Zambrano
#8837
Overall Influence
1904 - 1991 (87 years)
María Zambrano Alarcón was a Spanish essayist and philosopher associated with the Generation of '36 movement. Her extensive work between the civic engagement and the poetic reflection started to be recognised in Spain over the last quarter of the 20th century after living many years in exile. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize .
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Jean Paul Van Bendegem
#11765
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jean Paul Van Bendegem is a mathematician, a philosopher of science, and a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels. Career Van Bendegem received his master's degree in mathematics in 1976. Afterwards, he went to study philosophy. He attended lectures on the philosophy of mathematics from Leo Apostel. He received his master's degree in philosophy in 1979.
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Nicholas Murray Butler
1862 - 1947 (85 years)
Nicholas Murray Butler was an American philosopher, diplomat, and educator. Butler was president of Columbia University, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the deceased James S. Sherman's replacement as William Howard Taft’s running mate in the 1912 United States presidential election. He became so well known and respected that The New York Times printed his Christmas greeting to the nation many years during the 1920s and 1930s.
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Christoph von Sigwart
1830 - 1904 (74 years)
Christoph von Sigwart was a German philosopher and logician. He was the son of philosopher Heinrich Christoph Wilhelm Sigwart . Life After a course of philosophy and theology, Sigwart became professor at Blaubeuren , and eventually at Tübingen, in 1865.
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