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,
#16151
Nicolaus Taurellus
1547 - 1606 (59 years)
Nicolaus Taurellus was a German philosopher and medical academic. Life He was born in the County of Mömpelgard, then part of the Duchy of Württemberg. With support from Duke Georg I. of Württemberg-Mömpelgard, he read theology at University of Tübingen and medicine at the University of Basel, where he lectured on physical science. He subsequently became professor of medicine at the University of Altdorf. There he died in 1606 from the plague, despite treatment by Ernst Soner.
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Valerie J. Lund
#16153
Lydia Maria Child
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
Lydia Maria Child was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism. Her journals, both fiction and domestic manuals, reached wide audiences from the 1820s through the 1850s. At times she shocked her audience as she tried to take on issues of both male dominance and white supremacy in some of her stories.
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Guarino da Verona
1374 - 1460 (86 years)
Guarino Veronese or Guarino da Verona was an Italian classical scholar, humanist, and translator of ancient Greek texts during the Renaissance. In the republics of Florence and Venice he studied under Manuel Chrysoloras , renowned professor of Greek and ambassador of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, the first scholar to hold such course in medieval Italy.
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Charles Francis O'Connor
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Charles Francis "Frank" O'Connor was an American actor, painter, and rancher and the husband of novelist Ayn Rand. Frank O'Connor performed in several films, typically as an extra, during the silent and early sound eras until about 1934. While working on the set of the 1927 The King of Kings, O'Connor met Rand, and they eventually dated each other steadily. They married in 1929. When O'Connor and Rand moved to California so Rand could work on the movie adaptation of her novel The Fountainhead, O'Connor purchased and managed a ranch in the San Fernando Valley for several years. In addition to ...
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Karol Estreicher
1827 - 1908 (81 years)
Karol Józef Teofil Estreicher was a Polish bibliographer and librarian who was a founder of the Polish Academy of Learning. While he is known as the "father of Polish bibliography", he is also considered the founder of the bibliographical method in literary research. His "monumental work", is called the "most outstanding bibliography of Polish books, and probably one of the most famous bibliographies in the world".
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Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı
1869 - 1949 (80 years)
Rıza Tevfik Bey was an Ottoman and later Turkish philosopher, poet, politician of liberal signature and a community leader of the late-19th-century and early-20th-century. A polyglot, he is most remembered in Turkey for being one of the four Ottoman signatories of the disastrous Treaty of Sèvres, for which reason he was included in 1923 among the 150 of Turkey, and he spent 20 years in exile until he was given amnesty by Turkey in 1943.
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Johann Bernhard Merian
1723 - 1807 (84 years)
Johann Bernhard Merian or Jean-Bernard Mérian was a Swiss philosopher active in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Merian studied at the University of Basle, gaining his doctorate in 1740. He became a member of the Class for Speculative Philosophy of the Berlin Academy in 1750, and director of the Class for Belles-Lettres in 1771. From 1797 he was permanent Secretary of the Academy.
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Wolfgang Cramer
1901 - 1974 (73 years)
Wolfgang Cramer was a German philosopher and mathematician. Biography Early Years Cramer, the son of a governmental master builder, was born in Hamburg and spent his school time in Breslau . After his Abitur in 1920 he studied three semesters of philosophy directed by Richard Hönigswald and Siegfried Marck at the University of Breslau. A friend from this time was Moritz Löwi. At the University of Heidelberg he studied another semester of philosophy directed by Karl Jaspers. Afterwards he worked as a bank officer. In the winter term 1924/25 he started to study again and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Breslau.
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Leon Wyczółkowski
1852 - 1936 (84 years)
Leon Jan Wyczółkowski was one of the leading painterss of the Young Poland movement, as well as the principal representative of Polish Realism in art of the Interbellum. From 1895 to 1911 he served as professor of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, and from 1934, ASP in Warsaw. He was a founding member of the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka" .
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Léon Denis
1846 - 1927 (81 years)
Léon Denis was a notable French spiritist philosopher, and, with Gabriel Delanne and Camille Flammarion, one of the principal exponents of spiritism after the death of Allan Kardec. Denis lectured throughout Europe at international conferences of spiritism and spiritualism, promoting the idea of survival of the soul after death and the implications of this for human relations. He is known as the apostle of French spiritism.
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Sheldon H. Preskorn
#16163
Amico Bignami
#16164
Carlo Amoretti
1741 - 1816 (75 years)
Carlo Amoretti was an ecclesiastic, scholar, writer, and scientist. He entered the Augustinian order in 1757. To further his studies, he went to Pavia and Parma where he also taught ecclesiastical law.
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Franciscus Sylvius
1614 - 1672 (58 years)
Franciscus Sylvius , born Franz de le Boë, was a Dutch physician and scientist who was an early champion of Descartes', Van Helmont's and William Harvey's work and theories. He was one of the earliest defenders of the theory of circulation of the blood in the Netherlands, and commonly falsely cited as the inventor of gin – others pinpoint the origin of gin to Italy.
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John Nichols
1745 - 1826 (81 years)
John Nichols was an English printer, author and antiquary. He is remembered as an influential editor of the Gentleman's Magazine for nearly 40 years; author of a monumental county history of Leicestershire; author of two compendia of biographical material relating to his literary contemporaries; and as one of the agents behind the first complete publication of Domesday Book in 1783.
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Julije Makanec
1904 - 1945 (41 years)
Julije Makanec was a Croatian politician, teacher, philosopher and writer. During the World War II in Yugoslavia, he was the Minister of Education of the Independent State of Croatia and a high-ranking member of the Ustashas.
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Catharine Macaulay
1731 - 1791 (60 years)
Catharine Macaulay , was an English Whig republican historian. Early life Catharine Macaulay was a daughter of John Sawbridge and his wife Elizabeth Wanley of Olantigh. Sawbridge was a landed proprietor from Wye, Kent, whose ancestors were Warwickshire yeomanry.
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Adam Ignacy Zabellewicz
1784 - 1831 (47 years)
Adam Ignacy Zabellewicz was a professor of philosophy at Warsaw University. Life Zabellewicz was professor of philosophy at Warsaw University from 1818 to 1823. Zabellewicz was one of nearly all the university professors of philosophy in Poland before the November 1830–31 Uprising who held a position that shunned both Positivism and metaphysical speculation, affined to the Scottish philosophers but linked in certain respects to Kantianian critique.
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Leonid Sher
#16171
Constantijn Huygens
1596 - 1687 (91 years)
Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem , was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens.
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George Jardine
1742 - 1827 (85 years)
Rev George Jardine FRSE was a Scottish minister of religion, philosopher, academic and educator. He was Professor at the University of Glasgow, of Greek from 1774, and then Professor of Logic and Rhetoric 1787 to 1824. He was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and co-founder of Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1792.
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Michail Papageorgiou
1727 - 1796 (69 years)
Michail Papageorgiou was a Greek philosopher. He was born in Siatista in 1727. He studied philosophy in the Maroutsaia School of Ioannina under Eugenios Voulgaris. Later he visited Germany where he studied philosophy and medicine. He taught in his birthplace Siatista, and also in Selitsa, Meleniko, Vienna and Budapest. He died in Vienna on 1796.
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Swami Satprakashananda
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Swami Satprakashananda was an Indian philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and religious teacher. Biography Swami Satprakashananda was born in Dhaka in April 1888 in what has been described as a "pious Hindu family". His premonastic name was Harish, and his father died when he was young. Harish joined the Ramakrishna Order in 1924 in Dhaka after postgraduate work at the University of Calcutta. He had been initiated by Swami Brahmananda in 1908, later receiving monastic orders from Swami Shivananda in 1927. Satprakashananda served for a time as an associate editor of Prabuddha Bharata...
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Kenneth L. Melmon
#16176
Joseé E. Leysen
#16177
Antonin Poncet
1849 - 1913 (64 years)
Antonin Poncet was a French surgeon. Son of Jean Joseph Poncet and Catherine Jeanne Chabalier, he was inspired by his grandfather Jean-Pierre Antoine Chabalier, surgeon in the Imperial Army. He studied medicine in Lyon, where he served as interne des hôpitaux. He was a member of the Lyon ambulance corps during the Franco-Prussian War, and in 1878 became a member of the surgical section of the Lyon faculty of medicine. In 1883 he attained the chair of operative medicine in Lyon.
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Alexander Galich
1783 - 1848 (65 years)
Alexander Ivanovich Galich was a Russian teacher, philosopher, and writer. Galich was a teacher of Latin and Russian literature at the German Saint Peter's School in St. Petersburg, a professor at St. Petersburg University, a teacher of Alexander Pushkin, and a writer and philosopher who was one of the first followers of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling in Russia.
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Germain Sée
1818 - 1896 (78 years)
Germain Sée was a French clinician who was a native of Ribeauvillé, Haut-Rhin. He studied medicine in Paris, obtaining his doctorate in 1846 with a dissertation on ergotism . In 1852 he became a physician of hospitals in Paris, and subsequently worked at La Rochefoucauld , Beaujon , Pitié and Charité hospitals. In 1866 he succeeded Armand Trousseau as chair of therapeutics at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and in 1876 attained the chair of clinical medicine at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris.
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Jacopo Stellini
1699 - 1770 (71 years)
Jacopo Stellini was an Italian abbot, polymath writer and philosopher. Born in Cividale del Friuli to a family of modest means; his father was a tailor. Stellini was first educated by the Somaschi order, and he joined the order in 1718. He moved to Venice where he studied in the seminary in Murano, and was made a priest in 1722. In Venice, he served as a tutor to the prominent Emo family, and the patronage in 1739 helped him land a professor position teaching "moral philosophy" at the University of Padua.
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Apollonius Cronus
350 BC - 350 BC (0 years)
Apollonius Cronus from Cyrene was a philosopher of the Megarian school. Very little is known about him. He was the pupil of Eubulides, and was the teacher of Diodorus Cronus, as Strabo relates: Apollonius Cronus, was from Cyrene, ... being the teacher of Diodorus the Dialectician, who also was given the appellation "Cronus," certain persons having transferred the epithet of the teacher to the pupil.
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Johann Christian Lossius
1743 - 1813 (70 years)
Johann Christian Lossius was a German materialist philosopher who made contributions to philosophical anthropology, the philosophy of mind, and physiognomy. Life Lossius studied philosophy at Jena. Appointed professor of philosophy at Erfurt in 1770, he became professor of theology there in 1772.
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Christoph Meiners
1747 - 1810 (63 years)
Christoph Meiners was a German racialist, philosopher, historian, and writer born in Warstade. He supported the polygenist theory of human origins. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.
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Jan Rustem
1762 - 1835 (73 years)
Jan Rustem was a painter of Armenian ethnicity who lived and worked in the territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Primarily a portrait painter, he was commissioned to execute portraits of notable personalities of his epoch. For many years he was a professor at Vilnius University.
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Aize Kijlstra
#16186
Thomas Hamilton
1789 - 1842 (53 years)
Thomas Hamilton was a Scottish soldier and author. Life He was born in Pisa, Tuscany, the second son of William Hamilton , professor of anatomy and botany at Glasgow. He was the younger brother of metaphysician Sir William Hamilton . Their father died a few months after Thomas was born.
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Realdo Colombo
1516 - 1559 (43 years)
Matteo Realdo Colombo was an Italian professor of anatomy and a surgeon at the University of Padua between 1544 and 1559. Early life and education Matteo Realdo Colombo or Realdus Columbus, was born in Cremona, Lombardy, the son of an apothecary named Antonio Colombo. Although little is known about his early life, it is known he took his undergraduate education in Milan, where he studied philosophy, and he appears to have pursued his father's profession for a short while afterwards. He left the apothecary's life and apprenticed to the surgeon Giovanni Antonio Lonigo, under whom he studied for 7 years.
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Mir Shamsuddin Adib-Soltani
1310 - Present (716 years)
Mir Shamsuddin Adib-Soltani was an Iranian philosopher, clinical psychiatrist, and translator. He is known for translating some classic philosophical works into Persian. Adib-Soltani was a winner of Farabi International Award. Adib-Soltani died on 12 October 2023, at the age of 92.
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J. C. M. Hanson
1864 - 1943 (79 years)
James Christian Meinich Hanson was a Norwegian born, American librarian. Background Jens Christian Meinich Hanson, now known as J. C. M. Hanson, was born on March 13, 1864, in Oppland, Norway, in the Nordre Aurdal district at Sørheim. He was the sixth child and second son of Gunnerius "Gunnar" and Eleonore Adamine Hansen. His first name was initially Jens, but in America, his playmates called him Jim, which was then turned into James, a change that he subsequently used. The change in the spelling of his name was incremental and inconsistent, but by 1897 he'd adopted the signature "J. C. M. Hanson" that he is known by today.
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John Formosa
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
John Formosa was a Maltese theologian, canonist, minor philosopher, and poet. In philosophy he mostly specialised in metaphysics. Life Formosa was born in Cospicua, Malta, on March 22, 1869. He studied at the University of Malta and at other universities abroad. These studies made him Doctor of Theology and Doctor of Canon Law. He was ordained a priest in 1893. He was also a Canon of the bishop’s Cathedral Chapter at Mdina. He died on March 29, 1941, at 72 years of age.
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Santorio Santorio
1561 - 1636 (75 years)
Santorio Santorio whose real name was Santorio Santori better known in English as Sanctorius of Padua was an Italian physiologist, physician, and professor, who introduced the quantitative approach into the life sciences and is considered the father of modern quantitative experimentation in medicine. He is also known as the inventor of several medical devices. His work De Statica Medicina, written in 1614, saw many publications and influenced generations of physicians.
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John A. Mannick
#16193
Russell W. Chesney
#16194
Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld
1742 - 1792 (50 years)
Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld was a German Enlightenment gardening theorist, academic in philosophy and art history in the service of Denmark and a writer, notable for several books. He advocated for sensitive Romantic gardens in the English landscape style.
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Alice Roosevelt Longworth
1884 - 1980 (96 years)
Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth was an American writer and socialite. She was the eldest child of U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt and his only child with his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt. Longworth led an unconventional and controversial life. Her marriage to Representative Nicholas Longworth III, a Republican Party leader and 38th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was shaky, and her only child, Paulina, was from her affair with Senator William Borah.
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Heinrich Glarean
1488 - 1563 (75 years)
Heinrich Glarean also styled Glareanus was a Swiss music theorist, poet and humanist. He was born in Mollis and died in Freiburg im Breisgau. Biography Glarean was born as Heinrich Loriti in Mollis in Canton Glarus to a politician. As a boy, he took care of cattle and received a good education. After a thorough early training in music, Glarean enrolled in the University of Cologne, where he studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics as well as music. It was in Cologne where he held a poem as a tribute to Emperor Maximilian I. Since 1514 he was a teacher for Greek and Latin in Basel, where he met Erasmus and the two humanists became lifelong friends.
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Gilbert Jack
1578 - 1628 (50 years)
Gilbert Jack was Scottish Ramist philosopher and physician. Life He was born in Aberdeen, and studied at Marischal College under Robert Howie. In 1598 he went to the University of Helmstedt. He was professor, later of physics, at the University of Leiden, from 1605. He was dismissed in 1619, suspected of sympathy with the Remonstrants; he was reinstated in 1623.
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Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani
1882 - 1975 (93 years)
Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani Iranian Shi'a jurist and philosopher. He taught theology in Tehran for about 40 years. Birth Mirza Ahmad Ashtiani was born in Tehran. He was the fourth and youngest son of Mirza Hassan Ashtiani, a prominent jurist under the reign Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. He became a jurist and a Shi'a Imam,
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Walking Stewart
1747 - 1822 (75 years)
John "Walking" Stewart was an English philosopher and traveller. Stewart developed a unique system of materialistic pantheism. Travels Known as 'Walking' Stewart to his contemporaries for having travelled on foot from Madras, India back to Europe between 1765 and the mid-1790s, Stewart is thought to have walked alone across Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Africa before wandering into every European country as far east as Russia.
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Ham Seok-heon
1901 - 1989 (88 years)
Ham Seok-heon was a notable figure in the Religious Society of Friends movement in Korea, and was nicknamed the "Gandhi of Korea." Ham was an important Asian voice for human rights and non-violence during the 20th century, despite numerous imprisonments for his convictions. He was a Quaker who concluded that all religions are on common ground in terms of human beings, a view shared by many Quakers.
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