Search People Result | Academic Influence

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

Nuri Ja'far

#93066

Overall Influence

1914 - 1991 (77 years)

Nuri Ja'far Ali al-Chalabi , better known as Nuri Ja'far , was an Iraqi psychologist, philosopher of education, and author. He wrote more than fifty works on pedagogy, psychology, history, philosophy, thought and literature. After graduating from the Higher Teachers' House in Baghdad, he went to the United States, and received a master's degree from Ohio University in 1948 and a doctorate in philosophy from the same university in the following year. He was a student of John Dewey and majored in neuropsychology.

#16152

Constantin Regamey

1907 - 1982 (75 years)

Constantin Regamey was a philologist, orientalist, musician, composer, and critic. He was a significant presence among intellectual and artistic circles in Warsaw during the 1930s and later a professor at the Universities of Lausanne and Fribourg.

#16153

Gerald Bruns

#167921

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Gerald Bruns is an American literary scholar and philosopher and William P. & Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. Books Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language, Yale University Press, 1974Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Understanding in Literary History, Yale, 1982Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern, Yale, 1992Tragic Thoughts at the End of Philosophy: Language, Literature, and Ethical Theory, Northwestern University Press, 1999What Are Poets For? An Anthropology of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, University of Iowa Press, 2012On Ceasing to be Human, ...

#16154

Kantilal L. Kalani

#154411

Overall Influence

1930 - 1998 (68 years)

Kantilal L. Kalani was an Indian philosopher and writer in Gujarati literature. He is best known for translating the Tirukkural into Gujarati. Biography Kantilal Kalani worked with the United States Information Service as head of the Department of Gujarati for 25 years. He wrote over 65 books in Gujarati on philosophy and spiritual knowledge. In 1971, he translated the ancient Tamil moral literature of the Tirukkural into Gujarati, which was published in Bombay.

#16155

J. Michael Wilson

#183914

Overall Influence

#16156

Nahid Bhadelia

#66266

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Nahid Bhadelia is an American infectious-diseases physician, founding director of Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research , an associate director at National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University, and an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. She currently serves as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID-19 Response on the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

#16157

Achille Gagliardi

1537 - 1607 (70 years)

Achille Gagliardi was a Jesuit ascetic writer and spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition. Life Gagliardi was born at Padua, Italy. After a brilliant career at the University of Padua he entered the Society of Jesus in 1559 with two brothers younger than himself. He taught philosophy at the Roman College, theology at Padua and Milan, and successfully directed several houses of his order in Northern Italy. He displayed indefatigable zeal in preaching, giving retreats and directing congregations, and was held in great esteem as a theologian and spiritual guide by the Archbishop of Milan, ...

#16158

Archibald Bruce

1777 - 1818 (41 years)

Archibald Bruce was an American physician and mineralogist. Biography Bruce was born in New York City in February 1777 and graduated from Columbia College in 1795 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. His father, William Bruce, head of the medical department of the British army at New York, on being ordered to the West Indies, specially directed that his son should not be brought up to the medical profession. From the medical lectures of Nicholas Romayne, the teachings of Dr. Hosack, and attendance on the courses of medical instruction of Columbia, he attained a knowledge of the science. He went to Europe in 1798, received an M.D.

#16159

Janet Carr

#63110

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Janet Howard Carr was an Australian physiotherapist and academic whose research focused on stroke rehabilitation. She was a professor at the University of Sydney and published numerous textbooks. Childhood Janet Carr was born in 1933 to Howard and Gladys Carr. Carr is one of three children to Howard and Gladys Carr, and grew up on their sheep-grazing property at Kerr's Creek, 25 kilometres from Orange, New South Wales. She walked across paddocks to attend classes in a one-room one-teacher school, Kinross Wolaroi School, before going to board at PLC , in Orange. Being raised in the bush gave J...

#16160

Paul Saka

#127538

Overall Influence

Paul Saka is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is known for his works on philosophy of language. Books How to Think about Meaning, Springer

#16161

Marcantonio Genua

Marcantonio Genua

1491 - 1563 (72 years)

Marcantonio Genua was a Renaissance Aristotelian philosopher who taught at the University of Padua. He was a teacher and uncle of the great Renaissance philosopher Giacomo Zabarella.

#16162

James Calder

#119186

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

James David Forbes Calder is a British orthopaedic surgeon specialising in sporting injuries. He has built a reputation for treating foot and ankle injuries in top international athletes - soccer players from the English Premier League and European clubs including Paris St Germain, AC Milan, Barcelona FC, Real Madrid, Olympique de Marseille FC in addition to rugby players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, GB Olympic teams, England and Indian cricket teams and UK Athletics.

#16163

William McCance

1894 - 1970 (76 years)

William McCance was a Scottish artist, and was second Controller of the Gregynog Press in Powys, mid-Wales. Biography Born on 6 August 1894 in Cambuslang, Scotland, William McCance was the seventh of eight children. After attending Hamilton Academy, McCance entered Glasgow School of Art, studying there 1911–15 and subsequently undertaking a teacher-training course at Glasgow's Kennedy Street school.

#16164

Ravi Kalhan

#81931

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Ravi Kalhan is the director of the Asthma and COPD Program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Education Kalhan received a Bachelor of Arts in history from Brown University. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and his Master of Science in clinical investigation from Northwestern University. He completed his internship and residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Northwestern.

#16165

Nikolai Amosov

#6422

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

Nikolai Mikhailovich Amosov, Doctor of Science, Professor , also known as Mykola Mykhailovych Amosov was a Soviet and Ukrainian doctor, heart surgeon, inventor, best-selling author, and exercise enthusiast, known for his inventions of several surgical procedures for treating heart defects.

#16166

Dion Morton

#117911

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Dion Gregory Morton is a leading colorectal surgeon at the University of Birmingham, where he has been Professor of Surgery since 2006. He was appointed Barling Chair of Surgery at the University of Birmingham in 2015. In addition he has served as Director of Clinical Research at the Royal College of Surgeons of England since 2011. In the latter role he has worked to establish a national infrastructure to support the development and dissemination of clinical trials in surgery. He has championed the role of large-scale multi centre randomised controlled trials in informing best practice in sur...

#16167

Edward S. Ayensu

#120567

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Edward Solomon Ayensu was an African life scientist and Professor. He was an international development advisor on science, technology and economic development. He was a founding Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

#16168

Katrin Rittinger

Katrin Rittinger

#143962

Overall Influence

Katrin Rittinger is a professor in structural biology who has made significant contributions to the ubiquitination field. She is a senior scientist at the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded European Molecular Biology Organization membership in 2019. Rittinger is on the Editorial Board of Biochemical Journal and has written on transparency and openness in science.

#16169

George Tyndall

#57003

Overall Influence

George Tyndall was an American gynecologist. In 2019 he was under investigation in the Los Angeles Police Department's largest investigation of sexual abuse by a single perpetrator. Early life and education Tyndall was born and raised in Plattsburgh, New York, as one of five children. He had some French ancestry on his mother's side. He attended the State University of New York Plattsburgh but discontinued his studies to join the Navy in 1967. While in the Navy, he was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey to study Vietnamese, a language that was in high demand for the American Intelligence efforts during the Viet Nam War.

#16170

Robert Smirke

1753 - 1845 (92 years)

Robert Smirke was an English painter and illustrator, specialising in small paintings showing subjects taken from literature. He was a member of the Royal Academy. Life Smirke was born at Wigton near Carlisle, the son of a travelling artist. When he was twelve he was apprenticed to a heraldic painter in London, and at the age of twenty began to study at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1775 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, with which he began to exhibit by sending five works; he showed works there again in 1777 and 1778. In 1786 he exhibited Narcissus and The Lady and...

#16171

Thomas W. Smith

#183999

Overall Influence

#16172

Bartolomeo Ambrosini

1588 - 1657 (69 years)

Bartolomeo Ambrosini was an Italian botanist, physician and naturalist, for over thirty years prefect of the Botanical Garden of Bologna and editor of many of the posthumous works of Ulisse Aldrovandi.

#16173

Jennifer Herdt

#177014

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Jennifer A. Herdt is an American philosopher and Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Yale Divinity School. She is known for her works on moral philosophy.

#16174

Ingo Brigandt

#128484

Overall Influence

Ingo Brigandt is a German Canadian philosopher and Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Biology at the University of Alberta. He is an executive editor of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy and an associate editor of Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. Brigandt has held various grants and fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and the University of Alberta.

#16175

Irene Cybulsky

#81111

Overall Influence

Irene Cybulsky is a Canadian lawyer and former cardiac surgeon. She was the first woman in Canada to be appointed head of a cardiac surgery division. After being dismissed from this position, she "represent[ed] herself in a human rights tribunal case against her former hospital", which was ultimately successful.

#16176

Benjy F. Brooks

#104121

Overall Influence

1918 - 1998 (80 years)

Benjy Frances Brooks was an American pediatric surgeon affiliated with several hospitals in Houston. She was the first woman in the surgery department at Harvard Medical School and the first woman to become a pediatric surgeon in the state of Texas. She founded the pediatric surgery division at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Brooks actively conducted research throughout her career in addition to working as a pediatric surgeon.

#16177

Sarah-Jane Dawson

#68819

Overall Influence

Sarah-Jane Dawson is an Australian clinician-scientist. She is a consultant medical oncologist and head of the Molecular Biomarkers and Translational Genomics Laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. Her current research interests are focused on the development of noninvasive blood-based biomarkers for clinical application, including early detection, risk stratification and disease monitoring in cancer management.

#16178

Roger Horrocks

#154306

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Roger John Horrocks is a New Zealand writer, film-maker, educator and cultural activist. Biography Horrocks was born in the Auckland suburb of Mount Albert on 4 June 1941, the son of Jack Horrocks and Edith Barbara Horrocks . Majoring in English, he completed a BA , MA First Class Honours , and PhD from the University of Auckland. His doctoral thesis, supervised by C. K. Stead, was titled Mosaic: a study of juxtaposition in literature, as an approach to Pound's Cantos and similar modern poems. He also studied for two years with Allen Tate at the University of Minnesota and one year with Thom Gunn at the University of California, Berkeley .

#16179

John Chiene

1843 - 1923 (80 years)

John Chiene, CB, LLD, MD, FRSE, FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon, who was Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh during some of its most influential years. He was a founder of the Edinburgh Ambulance Service. The Chiene Medal is presented as an annual prize in surgery at the University. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1897 to 1899.

#16180

Ludwig Aschoff

1866 - 1942 (76 years)

Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff was a German physician and pathologist. He is considered to be one of the most influential pathologists of the early 20th century and is regarded as the most important German pathologist after Rudolf Virchow.

#16181

Robert Biscup

#53986

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Robert S. Biscup is an American orthopaedic surgeon. Biscup's work includes developments in major reconstructive spine surgery, failed spine surgery, and minimally invasive spine surgery, including laser microsurgery and micro-decompression laminoplasty. Biscup lectures frequently in Florida and around the world.

#16182

Vera Ignjatovic

#172183

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Vera Ignjatovic is a medical researcher specialising in paediatric thrombosis and haemostasis and in proteomics. Early life and education Ignjatovic was born in Niš, Nišava, Serbia on 15 March 1975. She has a BSc and a PhD, for her thesis titled "The effects of a phytochemical preparation on lipid metabolism in obesity: the study of 'Slimax', a Chinese herbal mixture", from Monash University.

#16183

Rafaël Govaerts

#79714

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Rafaël Herman Anna Govaerts is a Belgian botanist. He is particularly noted for his work on plant taxonomy. He has worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew since the 1990s. He is the principal contributor to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, which was completed in 2023, and will continue to be updated as Plants of the World Online.

#16184

Ambrose McCarthy Patterson

Ambrose McCarthy Patterson

1877 - 1967 (90 years)

Ambrose McCarthy Patterson was a painter and printmaker. Life Patterson was born in Daylesford, Victoria. He studied at the Melbourne Art School under E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St. George Tucker, at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne and continued his studies in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Julian under Lucien Simon, André Lhote and Maxime Maufra. In Paris he became a friend of compatriot Nellie Melba, the famous soprano; Patterson's brother, Tom, was married to Melba's sister, Belle. Through Melba's influence, he was able to continue his studies with John Singer Sargent.

#16185

Jean-Gérard Bursztein

#146997

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Jean-Gerard Bursztein is a French psychoanalyst who has a doctorate in philosophy. He teaches psychoanalysis and practices in Paris. He was a student of Jean-Toussaint Desanti and worked on both philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. He continues to explore this field in studying the intrication of psychoanalysis and mathematics. On the basis of his practice he has written the following publications :

#16186

Stewart Hillis

#102073

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

William Stewart Hillis was a Scottish physician who held a professorship in cardiology and exercise medicine. He was doctor for the Scotland national football team for 228 full international matches, part of his involvement with football that spanned more than 40 year during his medical career. He was vice-chairman of the UEFA medical committee and medical advisor to FIFA.

#16187

Arkady Melua

#79727

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Arkady Ivanovich Melua is the general director and editor-in-chief of the scientific publishing house, Humanistica. Life and work Starting in 1969, Melua served and worked as an engineer at the Ministry of Defense facilities. In 1973, while having served in the military, he received a degree in engineering at the Leningrad Engineering-Construction Institute. He participated in the construction of an educational nuclear reactor in one of the military schools. In 1974, he began conducting scientific research.

#16188

William H. Harris

William H. Harris

#67434

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

William H. Harris, is an American orthopaedic surgeon, Founder and Director Emeritus of the Massachusetts General Hospital Harris Orthopaedics Laboratory, and creator of the Advances in Arthroplasty course held annually since 1970.

#16189

Oriol Mitjà

#70987

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Oriol Mitjà i Villar is a Catalan-born Spanish researcher and consultant physician in internal medicine and infectious diseases with expertise in poverty-related tropical diseases. He has conducted research at the Lihir Medical Centre in Papua New Guinea since 2010 on new diagnostic and therapeutic tools to eradicate yaws. He was awarded the Princess of Girona Award in the scientific research category. Currently at the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute, Mitjà is conducting research on SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease and strategies to control the infection at a community level.

#16190

Volkmar Braunbehrens

#63175

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Volkmar von Braunbehrens is a German musicologist, specialising in research about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Braunbehrens studied history of literature, musicology, and art history in Munich, Heidelberg and Berlin; he received his PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 1974. He is Privatdozent since 1981. In 1976, he co-founded, and until 1981 co-edited, the journal Berliner Hefte – Zeitschrift für Kultur und Politik; for many years, he was director of an art gallery in Berlin.

#16191

Tim Hayward

#145512

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Tim Hayward is Professor of Environmental Political Theory at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and director of the university's Just World Institute, a body set up to "foster interdisciplinary research into the global challenges facing the international order, with particular attention to issues of ethics and justice". Between 1995 and 2017, Hayward published four books on ecological values, human rights and political theory. Hayward has recently received coverage in the mainstream press for his alleged "propaganda" in defense of Putin's Russia and Bashar Assad's Syrian regime.

#16192

Berta Jereb

#121712

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Berta Jereb is a Slovenian oncologist and the first Slovenian radiotherapist. She studied medicine in Vienna, Ljubljana, and Belgrade, and she received her bachelor's degree from the University of Ljubljana in 1950. In 1955, she specialised in radiotherapy and defended her master's thesis at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In 1973, she went to the United States, where she worked at the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center from 1973 to 1975 and from 1977 to 1984. For many years, she also worked at the Ljubljana Oncology Institute. Since 1993, she has been a full professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ljubljana.

#16193

Bunsom Martin

#57726

Overall Influence

1922 - 2008 (86 years)

Bunsom Martin was a Thai medical doctor and university professor who pioneered the establishment of physical education in Thailand. He served as Minister of Education, Minister of Public Health, and President of Chiang Mai University.

#16194

Gustav Giemsa

1867 - 1948 (81 years)

Berthold Carl Gustav Giemsa was a German chemist and bacteriologist who was a native of Medar-Blechhammer . He is best known for creating a dye solution commonly known as "Giemsa stain" which is used in staining for use in the histopathological diagnosis of malaria and parasites such as Plasmodium, Trypanosoma, and Chlamydia.

#16195

Arnold Kegel

1894 - 1972 (78 years)

Arnold Henry Kegel was an American gynecologist who invented the Kegel perineometer and Kegel exercises as non-surgical treatment of urinary incontinence from perineal muscle weakness and/or laxity. Today pelvic floor exercises are widely held as first-line treatment for urinary stress incontinence and any type of female incontinence and female genital prolapse, with evidence supporting its use from systematic reviews of randomized trials in the Cochrane Library amongst others. Kegel first published his ideas in 1948. He was Assistant Professor of Gynecology at the Keck School of Medicine ...

#16196

Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre

1667 - 1723 (56 years)

Susanna Centlivre , born Susanna Freeman, and also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress, and "the most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century". Centlivre's "pieces continued to be acted after the theatre managers had forgotten most of her contemporaries." During a long career at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the second woman of the English stage, after Aphra Behn.

#16197

Stefano Bianchi

#184106

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#16198

Jürgen Habermas

#184110

Overall Influence

#16199

Vasyl Dovhovych

1783 - 1849 (66 years)

Vasyl Dovhovych is a Ukrainian and Rusyn philosopher, linguist, poet, Transcarpathian academic, and Priest of the Greek Catholic Church. Biography He was born in the village of Zolotarovo, Khust district, in March 1783 in the family of peasants.

#16200

T. Brian Callister

T. Brian Callister

#50291

Overall Influence

T. Brian Callister is an American physician who works on care transitions. He is a critic of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Callister was the National Medical Director, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Physician Executive at The LifeCare Family of Hospitals , a system of specialty care hospitals, from 2004 – 2016. He was an academic hospitalist and associate professor of internal medicine in Reno, Nevada. and is the governor-elect of Nevada for the American College of Physicians. Much of his work is focused on healthcare policy, quality improvement, and end-of-life issues.

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