The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#16101
Alexander Anderson
1748 - 1811 (63 years)
Alexander Anderson was a Scottish surgeon, explorer and botanist who worked as Superintendent to the Botanical Garden on the Windward Island of Saint Vincent from 1785 to 1811. Early life and education Born in Aberdeen, Anderson later studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he was tutored by William Cullen and John Hope . Fellow Aberdonian William Forsyth briefly employed him at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, prior to Anderson's emigration to New York in 1774, where he stayed with his brother John, a printer. After a petition was lodged by physicians William Wright and Thomas C...
Go to Profile#16102
Arthur Trebitsch
1880 - 1927 (47 years)
Arthur Trebitsch was an Austrian writer and racial theorist, known for being an antisemite of Jewish origin. He offered his services to help the fledgling Nazis to write their antisemitic literature, and was an influence on the early development of the Austrian branch of the Nazi party.
Go to Profile#16103
Alida Avery
1833 - 1908 (75 years)
Alida Avery was an American physician and Vassar College faculty member. In Colorado, she was thought to be the first woman licensed to practice medicine in the state. She was also the Superintendent of Hygiene for Colorado. Avery was among the first women first admitted to the Denver Medical Society.
Go to Profile#16104
Daniel of Morley
1140 - 1210 (70 years)
Daniel of Morley was an English scholastic philosopher and astronomer. Life He apparently came from Morley, Norfolk, and is said to have been educated at Oxford. Thence he proceeded to the University of Paris, and applied himself especially to the study of mathematics, but dissatisfied with the teaching there he left for Toledo, then famous for its school of Arabian philosophy. At Toledo, he remained for some time.
Go to Profile#16105
André of Neufchâteau
André of Neufchâteau was a scholastic philosopher of the fourteenth century. He was a Franciscan from Lorraine, who wrote a number of works. He earned the name Doctor Ingeniosissimus . In philosophy he opposed Nicholas of Autrecourt, and also the nominalist Augustinian Gregory of Rimini. On the dependence of natural law on divine will he followed Pierre d'Ailly.
Go to Profile#16106
Lionel Newman
1916 - 1989 (73 years)
Lionel Newman was an American conductor, pianist, and film and television composer. He won the Academy Award for Best Score of a Musical Picture for Hello Dolly! with Lennie Hayton in 1969. He is the brother of Alfred Newman and Emil Newman, uncle of composers Randy Newman, David Newman, Thomas Newman, Maria Newman, and grandfather of Joey Newman. His 11 nominations contribute to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
Go to Profile#16107
Giovanni Camillo Maffei
Giovanni Camillo Maffei da Solofra was an Italian doctor, philosopher and musician of the mid-16th century, in the middle Renaissance. Between 1562 and 1573 he lived in Naples, where he served Giovanni di Capua, count of Altavilla and music lover. In his philosophy he was Aristotelian. He wrote a treatise on vocal music, "Lettera sul canto", in which he sets forth rules for the singing of diminutions. The letter is included in the two volumes of his Lettere also cited as Discorso delta voce e del modo d'apparare di cantar di garganta, and Scala naturale, overo Fantasia dolcissima, intorno all...
Go to Profile#16108
Frank Nicholls
1699 - 1778 (79 years)
Frank Nicholls was an English physician. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1728. He was made reader of anatomy at Oxford University when young and moved to London in the 1730s. Life The second son of John Nicholls of Trereife, Cornwall, a barrister, he was born in London. He was educated at Westminster School, and went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he entered 4 March 1714, his tutor being John Haviland. Besides the classics, he studied physics; he graduated B.A. 14 November 1718, M.A. 12 June 1721, M.B. 16 February 1724, M.D. 16 March 1729.
Go to Profile#16109
Thomas Case
1844 - 1925 (81 years)
Thomas Case was an English academic, philosopher, sportsman and author. Case was educated at Rugby and Balliol. He was Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1868 to 1870; Tutor at Balliol from 1870 to 1876; and on the staff of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from then onwards. He was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford from 1889 to 1910; and President of Corpus from 1904 to 1924.
Go to Profile#16110
Hans Adolf Bühler
1877 - 1951 (74 years)
Hans Adolf Bühler was a German painter and National Socialist Kulturpolitiker. Life and work After an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in Schopfheim , he went to Baden-Baden and became a painter's assistant in Stuttgart. He was there for only a short time when he left to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, where he later became a Master Student of Hans Thoma. From 1904 to 1905, he made a study trip through Italy. He graduated in 1908 and returned to Italy; spending almost two years in Rome.
Go to Profile#16111
Hermann Sahli
1856 - 1933 (77 years)
Hermann Sahli was a Swiss internist who was a native of Bern. In 1878 he earned his doctorate from the University of Bern, and subsequently became an assistant to Ludwig Lichtheim in Bern. Afterwards, he traveled to Leipzig, where he worked under Julius Friedrich Cohnheim and Carl Weigert . He returned to Bern as an assistant at Lichtheim's policlinic, and in 1888 became a professor of internal medicine. At Bern, he also served as director of the Inselspital . Sahli was involved in almost all aspects of internal medicine, and made contributions in the fields of neurology, physiology and hematology, being especially known for his work in hemodynamics.
Go to Profile#16112
Gerda Matejka-Felden
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Gerda Matejka-Felden was an Austrian painter and art teacher. Life and works Provenance and early years Gerda Felden was born at Dehlingen, a small village on the northern edge of Elsaß , which between 1871 and 1919 was a semi-detached province of Germany. Emil Felden , her father, was a Protestant pastor-theologian who had been at school with Albert Schweitzer. Commentators suspect that it may have been on account of Schweitzer's friendship and influence that after his daughter grew to adulthood, and in the immediate aftermath of the war, Emil Felden entered mainstream politics committed to social democracy and pacifism.
Go to Profile#16113
Woldemar Bargiel
1828 - 1897 (69 years)
Woldemar Bargiel was a German composer and conductor of the Romantic period. Life Bargiel was born in Berlin, and was the younger maternal half-brother of Clara Schumann. Bargiel’s father Adolph was a well-known piano and voice teacher while his mother Mariane Tromlitz, a granddaughter of the famous flautist Johann Georg Tromlitz, had previously been unhappily married to Clara’s father, Friedrich Wieck. Clara was nine years older than Woldemar. Throughout their lives, they enjoyed a warm relationship. The initial opportunities which led to the success and recognition he enjoyed were due to Clara, who introduced him to both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn.
Go to Profile#16114
Robert Fulford Ruttan
1856 - 1930 (74 years)
Robert Fulford Ruttan, was a Canadian chemist and university professor. Biography Born in Newburgh, Canada West, the son of Dr. Allan Ruttan, a physician, and Caroline Smith, Ruttan's family moved to Napanee around 1863. He received a Bachelor of Arts in natural science degree in 1881 from the University of Toronto. He received his M.D. in 1884 from McGill University, where he also participated in the establishment of the zeta psi fraternity. He never practiced medicine, but rather did postgraduate studies in organic chemistry with August Wilhelm von Hofmann at the University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#16115
Henry Bate of Mechelen
1246 - 1310 (64 years)
Henry Bate or Hendrik Baten a.k.a. Henricus Batenus was a Flemish philosopher, theologian, astronomer, astrologer, poet, and musician. He was Master of Arts of the University of Paris before 1274. He was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, he became a canon and cantor of the Cathedral of Saint-Lambert, Liège before 1289.
Go to Profile#16116
Abu Jafar ibn Harun al-Turjali
1180 - Present (846 years)
Abu Jafar ibn Harun al-Turjali was born and raised in Trujillo to a noted Muwallad Muslim family. He received his education in Cordoba and later entered Almoravid service as a physician in Seville in Al-Andalus, he was a talented reader regarding the works of philosophy, he was thoroughly familiar with the Principles and the Branches of medical science, he was an excellent practitioner and his cures were frequently successful. He was the renowned educator of Ibn Bajjah and the young Ibn Rushd in his late years.
Go to Profile#16117
Zdzisław Jachimecki
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Zdzisław Jachimecki was a Polish historian of music, composer, professor at the Jagiellonian University and the Kraków Music Academy, and member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Life Born in Lwów in 1882, in 1904–5 he studied counterpoint with Arnold Schönberg in Vienna.
Go to Profile#16118
Leonard Parsons
1879 - 1950 (71 years)
Sir Leonard Gregory Parsons MRCS FRCP FRCOG FRS was a British Paediatrician. Parsons studied at Mason College and the University of Birmingham from 1896 to 1903. He graduated with a University of London external degree in medicine in 1903.
Go to Profile#16119
Robert Tigerstedt
1853 - 1923 (70 years)
Robert Adolph Armand Tigerstedt was a Finnish-born medical scientist and physiologist who, with his student Per Bergman, discovered renin at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm in 1898. Renin is a component of the renin–angiotensin system which regulates blood pressure, salt and water homeostasis and is an important therapeutic target. Tigerstedt is also recognised as an educator, author and social campaigner.
Go to Profile#16120
Eduard Zeis
1807 - 1868 (61 years)
Eduard Zeis was a German surgeon and ophthalmologist born in Dresden. He studied medicine at the Universities of Leipzig, Bonn and Munich, receiving his doctorate at Leipzig in 1832. Afterwards he opened a general practice in his hometown of Dresden, later becoming a professor of surgery at the University of Marburg . In 1850 he returned to Dresden and was senior medical officer at the newly founded city hospital in Dresden-Friedrichstadt.
Go to Profile#16121
Henrik Sjögren
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Henrik Samuel Conrad Sjögren was a Swedish ophthalmologist best known for describing the eponymous condition Sjögren syndrome. Sjögren received his medical degree in Stockholm 1927. His first experience with the syndrome was an encounter with a 49-year-old woman with arthritis and extreme dryness of the eyes and the mouth. He worked with his wife, Maria, to describe a total of 19 cases and presented these cases for his doctoral theses in 1933, which was published at the Karolinska Institute and titled "On knowledge of keratoconjunctivitis" that eventually served as the basis of identifying and naming of Sjögren's syndrome.
Go to Profile#16122
Valentine Mott
1785 - 1865 (80 years)
Valentine Mott was an American surgeon. Life Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, New York. He graduated at Columbia College, studied under Sir Astley Cooper in London, and also spent a winter in Edinburgh. After acting as demonstrator of anatomy he was appointed professor of surgery in Columbia College in 1809. From 1811 to 1834 he was in very extensive practice as a surgeon, and most successful as a teacher and operator. He tied the innominate artery in 1818; the patient lived twenty-six days. He performed a similar operation on the carotid for the first time in the USA on 20 Sept 1829 b...
Go to Profile#16123
Francesc Xavier Butinyà i Hospital
1834 - 1899 (65 years)
Francesc Xavier Butinyà i Hospital was a Spanish missionary Jesuit from Catalonia, teacher and writer and the founder of two religious congregations of Sisters. He was the son of a prosperous factory owner. Nevertheless, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in Spain, he was an early proponent of the natural connection of the Christian faith with the working class, who were suffering in miserable working and living conditions.
Go to Profile#16124
Louis François de Pourtalès
1823 - 1880 (57 years)
Louis François de Pourtalès was a Franco-American naturalist, born at Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Early life and education Pourtales was born on 4 March 1824 and regarded as a Swiss representative of an old family with linage in France, Prussia, and Bohemia. After the death of his father, he succeeded to the title of Count and inherited a fortune that enabled his scientific pursuits.
Go to Profile#16125
John Claymond
1468 - 1537 (69 years)
John Claymond was the first President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Claymond was admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of 16 in 1484, where he remained until his appointment as president in 1507. He remained in this post until 1516, during which time he befriended Desiderius Erasmus.
Go to Profile#16126
Wilhelm Siegmund Frei
1885 - 1943 (58 years)
Wilhelm Siegmund Frei was a German dermatologist best known for his contributions to Durand-Nicolas-Favre disease, a sexually transmitted disease found mainly in tropical and subtropical climates. He is also known for the Frei Test, which was developed in 1925 for the detection of lymphogranuloma venereum .
Go to Profile#16127
Thomas Markaunt
1382 - 1439 (57 years)
Thomas Markaunt was a Fellow and benefactor of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University. He is best known for his sizeable bequest of seventy-five books to Corpus Christi library, which were lent out to the student body in a formal academic system of electio. However he is also of note for his extensive compilation of early University records, known as "Markaunt's book", which gained him a historical reputation as an antiquarian. While the majority of his original bequest has not survived the centuries, the extensive electio records and surviving books have been the subject of much study...
Go to Profile#16128
Wilhelm von Kobell
1766 - 1853 (87 years)
Wilhelm von Kobell was a German painter, printmaker and teacher. Biography Kobell was born in Mannheim, the son of Ferdinand Kobell, a landscape painter who cited Claude Lorrain as his influence. Wilhelm's initial lessons were supplied by his father and his uncle, Franz Kobell. He received further training under Franz Anton von Leydendorf and Egid Verhelst in the art of engraving at the Zeichnungsakademie in Mannheim. He studied the works in the galleries of Mannheim and Düsseldorf, especially those of Wouvermann, which he copied. During this time he practiced various styles, including 17th-c...
Go to Profile#16129
John Carson
1752 - 1794 (42 years)
John Carson was an early American physician as well as one of the first trustees for the rechartered University of Pennsylvania. He later was appointed chair of the university's Chemistry Department.
Go to Profile#16130
Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal
1820 - 1914 (94 years)
Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal , known as Sir Donald A. Smith between May 1886 and August 1897, was a Scottish-born Canadian businessman who became one of the British Empire's foremost builders and philanthropists. He became commissioner, governor and principal shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was president of the Bank of Montreal and with his first cousin, George Stephen , co-founded the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and afterwards represented Montreal in the House of Commons of Canada. He was Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1896 to 1914.
Go to Profile#16131
Eta Harich-Schneider
1894 - 1986 (92 years)
Eta Harich-Schneider was a German harpsichordist, musicologist, Japanologist and writer. Life Born in Oranienburg, Harich-Schneider later gave her year of birth as 1897, whereas her gravestone in Vienna-Hietzing reads "1894".
Go to Profile#16132
John Wall
1708 - 1776 (68 years)
John Wall , was an English physician, one of the founders of the Worcester Royal Infirmary and the Royal Worcester porcelain works. He was also involved in the development of Malvern as a spa town. Early life Wall was born at Powick, Worcestershire, in 1708, was the son of John Wall, a tradesman of Worcester city. He was educated at the King's School, Worcester, matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford on 23 June 1726, graduated B.A. in 1730, and migrated to Merton College, where he was elected fellow in 1735, and whence he took the degrees of M.A. and M.B. in 1736, and of M.D. in 1759.
Go to Profile#16133
Jane Anne Russell
1911 - 1967 (56 years)
Jane Anne Russell was an endocrinologist. She researched pituitary extract. Education Russell graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, California, in 1928, as the second best student in her class. At age 17, she entered the University of California Berkeley, and graduated in 1932 as first in her class. She was awarded the California Fellowship in Biochemistry in 1934 and the Rosenburg Fellowship in 1935.
Go to Profile#16134
Friedrich Ludwig
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Friedrich Ludwig was a German historian, musicologist, and college instructor. His name is closely associated with the exploration and rediscovery of medieval music in the 20th century, particularly the compositional techniques of the Ars Nova and the isorhythmic motet.
Go to Profile#16135
William Baldwin
1779 - 1819 (40 years)
William Baldwin was an American physician and botanist who is today remembered for his significant contributions to botanical studies, especially Cyperaceae. He lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, and served as a ship's surgeon on two voyages overseas. He published only two scientific papers, but his major contributions were in the knowledge that he imparted to other botanists in his letters to them and in the thousands of specimens that he provided for their herbaria. He wrote letters to Henry Muhlenberg, Stephen Elliott, William Darlington, Zaccheus Collins, and others. His most important collections were from Georgia, Florida, and eastern South America.
Go to Profile#16136
Thomas Rymer Jones
1810 - 1880 (70 years)
Thomas Rymer Jones, FRS was an English surgeon, academic and zoologist. Life Jones was the son of a captain in the Royal Navy and he studied at Guy's Hospital in Paris. He became M.R.C.S. in 1833, but found himself unable to practice because of his hearing impairment.
Go to Profile#16137
Zygmunt Vogel
1764 - 1826 (62 years)
Zygmunt Vogel was a Polish illustrator, educator, and painter in the classical style. He was sometimes called Ptaszek : a reference to his name and to the many years that he traveled almost continuously.
Go to Profile#16138
Richard Heuberger
1850 - 1914 (64 years)
Richard Franz Joseph Heuberger was an Austrian composer of operas and operettas, a music critic, and teacher. Heuberger was born in Graz, the son of a bandage manufacturer. He initially studied engineering, but gave it up in 1876, and turned to music. He studied at the Graz Conservatory , and later transferred to Vienna, where he eventually became the chorus master of the Wiener Akademischer Gesangverein, conductor of the Wiener Singakademie, director of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein , and a teacher at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien.
Go to Profile#16139
Uddharan Dutta Thakura
1481 - 1541 (60 years)
Uddharan Dutta Takur was an Indian philosopher and saint from the Gaudiya Vaishnava school of Vedanta tradition, producing a great number of philosophical works on the theology and practice of Bhakti yoga, Vaishnava Vedanta and associated disciplines. He is known as one of the Dwadasha gopas, .
Go to Profile#16140
Enrique Suñer Ordóñez
1878 - 1941 (63 years)
Enrique Suñer Ordóñez was a Spanish professor of pediatric medicine at the University of Madrid and administrator in the Franco government. He was vice president of the Education and culture committee of Franco's first government. He was subsequently appointed president of the Comisión Liquidadora de Responsabilidades Políticas where he oversaw an anti-intellectual purging of schoolteachers and denouncing of leading intellectuals such as Ramón Menéndez Pidal, María Goyri, and many others. The enormous backlog of cases he sent to the Commission led to dysfunction, and his eventual replacement...
Go to Profile#16141
Lucien-Marie Pautrier
1876 - 1959 (83 years)
Lucien-Marie Pautrier was a French dermatologist. Biography He studied medicine in Marseille and Paris, where he was steered towards dermatology by Émile Leredde, and subsequently worked with dermatologist Louis-Anne-Jean Brocq at the Hôpital Saint-Louis. He served as a medical officer to a field artillery regiment in World War I, during which, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery and became a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur .
Go to Profile#16142
Rudolf Leubuscher
1822 - 1861 (39 years)
Rudolf Leubuscher was a German physician and psychiatrist who was a native of Breslau. He obtained his medical doctorate in 1844 with the dissertation, De indole hallucinationum in mania religiosa, afterwards serving as an assistant to Heinrich Philipp August Damerow at the newly constructed provincial mental institution in Halle. In 1848 he became habilitated at Humboldt University of Berlin, and in 1855 was a director at the medical clinic in Jena. He later returned to Berlin as a physician and associate professor at the university. He died in Berlin in 1861 at the age of 39.
Go to Profile#16143
Hermann Senator
1834 - 1911 (77 years)
Hermann Senator was a German internist who was a native of Gnesen in the Prussian Province of Posen . Of Jewish descent, he studied medicine in Berlin, where he received his medical doctorate in 1857. Among his instructors in Berlin were Johannes Peter Müller , Johann Lukas Schönlein and Ludwig Traube . In 1875, he became chief physician in the internal medicine department at the Augusta-Hospital, and in 1881 became head physician at the Berlin Charité.
Go to Profile#16144
Jacqueline Cochran
1906 - 1980 (74 years)
Jacqueline Cochran was an American pilot and business executive. She pioneered women's aviation as one of the most prominent racing pilots of her generation. She set numerous records and was the first woman to break the sound barrier on 18 May 1953. Cochran was the wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots , which employed about 1000 civilian American women in a non-combat role to ferry planes from factories to port cities. Cochran was later a sponsor of the Mercury 13 women astronaut program.
Go to Profile#16145
Ida Mann
1893 - 1983 (90 years)
Professor Dame Ida Caroline Mann, Mrs Gye, DBE, FRCS was "a distinguished ophthalmologist ... equally well known for her pioneering research work on embryology and development of the eye, and on the influences of genetic and social factors on the incidence and severity of eye disease throughout the world". Only six other women were Fellows at this time.
Go to Profile#16146
John Henderson
1747 - 1785 (38 years)
John Henderson was an English actor who played many Shakespearean and other roles. He first acted in Bath, where he was known as "The Bath Roscius", and then in London. Had he not died young he would have been remembered as a worthy successor to David Garrick.
Go to Profile#16147
Alfred Daniell
1853 - 1937 (84 years)
Alfred Daniell FRSE was a Welsh-born British advocate, remembered for his contributions to Physics. His textbooks have been translated into most European languages, and other languages from Afrikaans to Japanese.
Go to Profile#16148
Fritz Lange
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Fritz Lange was a German orthopedic surgeon. He studied medicine at the universities of Jena, Leipzig and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1892. He furthered his education in Rostock and Strasbourg, where he was pupil of Otto Wilhelm Madelung. In 1895 he studied orthopedics under Adolf Lorenz in Vienna, and during the following year, obtained his habilitation for orthopedic surgery. In 1908 he became a full professor of orthopedics at the University of Munich.
Go to Profile#16149
Henning Rønne
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Henning Rønne was a Danish ophthalmologist. He studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen, where he graduated with an M.B. in 1903. Later he became an assistant to Jannik Petersen Bjerrum , with whom he performed important studies in campimetry. In 1910 he earned his medical doctorate, and in 1931 became a professor of ophthalmology at the university.
Go to Profile#16150
Georges Hayem
1841 - 1933 (92 years)
Georges Hayem was a physician and hematologist born in Paris. He studied medicine in Paris, and later became a professor of therapy and materia medica. Beginning in 1878 he practiced medicine at the Hôpital Tenon; later on, he was associated with the Hôpital St. Antoine. From 1893 until 1911 he held the chair of clinical medicine.
Go to Profile