The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#16251
Hwang Jini
1506 - 1544 (38 years)
Hwang Jini or Hwang Jin-yi , also known by her gisaeng name Myeongwol , was one of the most famous gisaeng of the Joseon Dynasty. She lived during the reign of King Jungjong. She was noted for her exceptional beauty, charming quick wit, extraordinary intellect, and her assertive and independent nature. She has become an almost myth-like figure in modern Korea, inspiring novels, operas, films, and television series.
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Moses Amyraut
1596 - 1664 (68 years)
Moïse Amyraut, Latin Moyses Amyraldus , in English texts often Moses Amyraut, was a French Huguenot, Reformed theologian and metaphysician. He was the architect of Amyraldism, a Calvinist doctrine that made modifications to Calvinist theology regarding the nature of Christ's atonement and covenant theology.
Go to Profile#16253
Holmes Iii Rolston
#16254
Muhammad ibn Muhammad Tabrizi
1201 - Present (825 years)
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Muhammad Tabrizi was a thirteenth-century Persian Muslim writer, known for his Arabic commentary on the twenty five propositions at the beginning of Book II of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, on which Maimonides then based his proof of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God. The propositions, derived from Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, were merely summarised by Maimonides; Tabrizi gives a detailed discussion of them, based on the work of Arabic authors. It is the earliest known commentary on a part of the Guid...
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C. erik Hack
#16256
Alexander Monro Secundus
1733 - 1817 (84 years)
Alexander Monro of Craiglockhart and Cockburn was a Scottish anatomist, physician and medical educator. He is typically known as to distinguish him as the second of three generations of physicians of the same name. His students included the naval physician and abolitionist Thomas Trotter. Monro was from the distinguished Monro of Auchenbowie family. His major achievements included, describing the lymphatic system, providing the most detailed elucidation of the musculo-skeletal system to date and introducing clinical medicine into the curriculum. He is known for the Monro–Kellie doctrine on...
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Xu Gan
170 - 217 (47 years)
Xu Gan , courtesy name Weichang , was a Chinese philosopher and poet of the late Eastern Han dynasty. He was also one of the "Seven Scholars of Jian'an". He is best known in the West for his discourse on the relationship between the names and actualities, preserved in his treatise Zhonglun .
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Mir Fendereski
1562 - 1640 (78 years)
Mir Fendereski was a Persian philosopher, poet and mystic of the Safavid era. His full name is given as Mir Abulqasim Mirfendereski , and he is famously known as MirFendereski. He lived for a while in Isfahan at the same time as Mir Damad, spent a great part of his life in India among yogis and Zoroastrians, and learnt from them. He was patronized by both the Safavid and Mughal courts. The famous Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra also studied under him.
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Thomas Annandale
1838 - 1907 (69 years)
Thomas Annandale, FRCS FRSE was a Scottish surgeon who conducted the first repair of the meniscus and the first successful removal of an acoustic neuroma, and introduced the pre-peritoneal approach to inguinal hernia repair. He served as Regius Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Edinburgh. His collection of anatomical specimens was donated to the Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh and is now known as the Thomas Annandale Collection.
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Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan
1870 - 1920 (50 years)
Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan was a Bengali scholar of Sanskrit and Pali Language and principal of Sanskrit College. Early life Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan was born in 1870 in Rajbari District, British India. His father Pitambar Vidyavagish was a Pandit and astronomer. In 1888, Satish Chandra passed entrance from Nabadwip Hindu School and in 1892, passed the B.A. with Sanskrit Honours from Krishnagar Government College with gold medal. He was the first Indian who obtained M.A. degree in Pali from Calcutta University.
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Johann Heinrich Ernesti
1652 - 1729 (77 years)
Johann Heinrich Ernesti was a Saxon philosopher, Lutheran theologian, Latin classicist and poet. He was rector of the Thomasschule, and Professor of Poetry at Leipzig University. He gained fame through his writings on Cicero.
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Nils Wallerius
1706 - 1764 (58 years)
Nils Wallerius was a Swedish physicist, philosopher and theologian. He was one of the first scientists to study and document the characteristics of evaporation through modern scientific methods. He was also among the first and more notable followers of the philosophies of German philosopher Christian Wolff .
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Niccola Andria
1747 - 1814 (67 years)
Niccola Andria was an Italian physician and writer, active in Naples. Biography Andria was born near Massafra in Apulia, to a well to do family. His father was a local physician. He initially studied in his native town, then in Naples, where he practiced law, and wrote Discorso politicu su le servitú. He then proceeded to study medicine, learning anatomy under Domenico Cotugno and chemistry under Giuseppe Vairo, and working at the Ospedale degli Incurabili. In 1777, he was appointed professor of agriculture at the University of Naples. From 1801 to 1808 he became professor of physiology, and theoretical medicine.
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Abner of Burgos
1270 - 1347 (77 years)
Abner of Burgos was a Jewish philosopher, a convert to Christianity and a polemical writer against his former religion. Known after his conversion as Alfonso of Valladolid or "Master Alfonso." Life As a student he acquired a certain mastery in Biblical and Talmudical studies, to which he added an intimate acquaintance with Peripatetic philosophy and astrology. What we know of his biography comes primarily from his own comments in his Moreh Zedek/Mostrador de justicia. According to that work, he stated that his religious doubts arose in 1295 when he treated a number of Jews for distress following their involvement in the failed messianic movement in Avila.
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Rosarius Mary Hagius
1673 - 1757 (84 years)
Rosarius Mary Hagius was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Hagius. This is unfortunate because, from his extant works, it can clearly be seen that he possessed a superior mind, and quite dexterous in both philosophy and theology. Hagius was a Dominican friar, and a Master of Theology. He taught philosophy and theology for three decades at most of Malta’s institutions of higher education, especially at the Dominican Collegium of Portus Salutis at Valletta, Malta. His method and style, both of teaching and of writing, were decidedly in the line of Aristotelic-Thomist Scholasticism.
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Euenus
450 BC - 500 BC (-50 years)
Euenus of Paros, , was a 5th-century BC poet who was roughly contemporary with Socrates. Euenus is mentioned several times in Plato's Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Apology of Socrates. According to Maximus Tyre, Evenus was the instructor of Socrates in poetry, a statement which derives some countenance from a passage in Plato from which it may also be inferred that Euenus was alive at the time of Socrates's death, but at such an advanced age that he was likely soon to follow him. Eusebius places him at the 30th Olympiad and onwards. His poetry was gnomic, that is, it formed the vehicle for expressing philosophic maxims and opinions.
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Abella
1400 - Present (626 years)
Abella, often known as Abella of Salerno or Abella of Castellomata, was a physician in the mid fourteenth century. Abella studied and taught at the Salerno School of Medicine. Abella is believed to have been born around 1380, but the exact time of her birth and death is unclear. Abella lectured on standard medical practices, bile, and women's health and nature at the medical school in Salerno. Abella, along with Rebecca de Guarna, specialized in the area of embryology. She published two treatises: De atrabile and De natura seminis humani , neither of which survive today. In Salvatore De Renzi...
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Evander Bradley McGilvary
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
Evander Bradley McGilvary Ph.D. was an American philosophical scholar, born in Bangkok to American Presbyterian missionaries, the Rev. Daniel McGilvary and Mrs. Sophia McGilvary. He came to the United States to study, graduating from Davidson College in 1884 and from Princeton University in 1888. In 1891, he returned to northern Thailand to join his parents in the Laos Mission of the Presbyterian Church USA. Although assigned to translate the Bible into northern Thai, McGilvary was soon embroiled in a denominational controversy over biblical inerrancy. In the wake of the 1893 heresy trial...
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Johann Jakob Kaup
1803 - 1873 (70 years)
Johann Jakob von Kaup was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup is also known for having coined popular prehistoric taxa like Pterosauria, Machairodus, Deinotherium, Dorcatherium, and Chalicotherium.
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Menyhért Palágyi
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Menyhért Palágyi, in German Melchior or Meinhert Palagyi was a Hungarian philosopher, mathematician, and physicist of Jewish descent . He was the elder brother of the Hungarian poet Ludwig Palágyi.
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Albert Spaier
1883 - 1934 (51 years)
Albert Spaier was a French philosopher, professor of philosophy at the University of Caen. Albert Spaier was born in Iași, Romania. Studying at the Sorbonne, he volunteered to fight for the French at the outset of World War I, and became a French citizen soon afterwards. He became a professor at Caen in 1927.
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Howard L. Minkoff
#16273
Peter W. Jones
#16274
David Low
1891 - 1963 (72 years)
Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was a New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney in 1911, and ultimately to London , where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his satirising of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times.
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Hermann Schwarz
1864 - 1951 (87 years)
See also Silesia-born mathematician Hermann Amandus Schwarz.Hermann Schwarz was a German philosopher. Educated at Halle, where he devoted himself to mathematics and to philosophy, he became professor at Marburg in 1908 and at Greifswald in 1910. His philosophy was not unlike that of Goswin Uphues. He edited the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.
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Emmanuil Enchmen
1891 - 1966 (75 years)
Emmanuil Semenovich Enchmen was a Soviet behaviourist and biologist. He formulated the "Theory of New Biology", often abbreviated TNB, which became popular among the Soviet student youth in the early 1920s. Considered politically, Enchmen's philosophy is an example of ″vulgar materialism″, a term often used by Marxist detractors. It was pejoratively called Enchmenism, especially when coupled and contrasted with the Mininism of Sergey Konstantinovich Minin and Deborinism of Abram Deborin.
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John Simon
1816 - 1904 (88 years)
Sir John Simon was an English pathologist, surgeon and public health officer. He was the first Chief Medical Officer for Her Majesty's Government from 1855–1876. Biography John Simon was born in London to Louis Michael Simon, a stockbroker, and Mathilde . He was the sixth of Louis' fourteen children by two marriages. His medical career began in 1833 when he became an apprentice to surgeon Joseph Henry Green and he was educated at King's College and St Thomas' Hospital in London. In 1838 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1845 he won the Astley Cooper Prize for an essay e...
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Lewellys Franklin Barker
#16279
Niccolò Leoniceno
1428 - 1524 (96 years)
Niccolò Leoniceno was an Italian physician and humanist. Biography Leoniceno was born in Lonigo, Veneto, the son of a doctor. He studied Greek in Vicenza under Ognibene da Lonigo . Around 1453 he graduated at the University of Padua, where he studied medicine and philosophy under Pietro Roccabonella . In 1464, after completing his doctorate, he moved to the University of Ferrara, where he taught mathematics, philosophy and medicine. His students there included Antonio Musa Brassavola.
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John D. Rockefeller Jr.
1874 - 1960 (86 years)
John Davison Rockefeller Jr. was an American financier and philanthropist. Rockefeller was the fifth child and only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was ...
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Gerald Molloy
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Gerald Molloy was an Irish Roman Catholic priest, theologian and scientist. Life He was educated at Castleknock College, and subsequently went to Maynooth College. Here he applied himself to theology and the physical sciences.
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Lyco of Troas
299 BC - 225 BC (74 years)
Lyco of Troas , son of Astyanax, was a Peripatetic philosopher and the disciple of Strato, whom he succeeded as the head of the Peripatetic school, c. 269 BC; he held that post for more than forty-four years.
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Herbert Witzenmann
1905 - 1988 (83 years)
Herbert Witzenmann was a German philosopher and anthroposophist. Career Witzenmann received his decisive study and work impulses through personal conversations with Rudolf Steiner. In the 1930s Witzenmann studied with Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg. His thesis On the Concept of Work According to Nietzsche and Hegel could, however, no longer be accepted because of Jaspers' forced exile under the National Socialists. Evidence for Jasper's acceptance of Witzenmann's promotion candidacy has not been presented. According to Witzenmann his dissertation manuscript was destroyed by fire due to phosphor bombings of Pforzheim by U.S.
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Paddy Whannel
1922 - 1980 (58 years)
Atholl Douglas Whannel was a key figure in the educational work of the British Film Institute throughout the 1960s. He officially joined the faculty at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in 1972 and taught there until his death in 1980.
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Otto Kinkeldey
1878 - 1966 (88 years)
Otto Kinkeldey was an American music librarian and musicologist. He was the first president of the American Musicological Society and held the first chair in musicology at any American university. Biography Kinkeldey was born in Manhattan, New York City on November 27, 1878. He received his B.A. in 1898 from City College of New York and his M.A. from New York University in 1900. In a somewhat unusual step for an American at the time, he studied for his doctorate at a German university, the Royal Academic Institute for Church Music in Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1909. In 1910, Ki...
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Oton Iveković
1869 - 1939 (70 years)
Oton Iveković was a Croatian painter. A graduate of Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Iveković later taught at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. He largely concerned himself with historical topics as well as some religious themes. Many of his paintings remain the chief representations of Croatian history.
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Albin Egger-Lienz
1868 - 1926 (58 years)
Albin Egger-Lienz was an Austrian painter known especially for rustic genre and historical paintings. Career He was born in Dölsach-Stribach near Lienz, in what was the county of Tyrol. He was the natural son of Maria Trojer, a peasant girl, and Georg Egger, a church painter. As an adult he used his father's surname combined with the name of his birthplace. He had his first artistic training under his father, and subsequently studied at the Academy in Munich where he was influenced by Franz Defregger and French painter Jean-François Millet.
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Thomas Boston
1676 - 1732 (56 years)
Thomas Boston was a Scottish Presbyterian church leader, theologian and philosopher. Boston was successively schoolmaster at Glencairn, and minister of Simprin in Berwickshire, and Ettrick in Selkirkshire. In addition to his best-known work, The Fourfold State, one of the religious classics of Scotland, he wrote an original little book, The Crook in the Lot, and a learned treatise on the Hebrew points. He also took a leading part in the Courts of the Church in what was known as the "Marrow Controversy," regarding the merits of an English work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which he defended against the attacks of the "Moderate" party in the Church.
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Jiao Yu
1350 - Present (676 years)
Jiao Yu was a Chinese military general, philosopher, and writer of the Yuan dynasty and early Ming dynasty under Zhu Yuanzhang, who founded the dynasty and became known as the Hongwu Emperor. He was entrusted by Zhu as a leading artillery officer for the rebel army that overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and established the Ming dynasty.
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Jerome Leocata
1664 - 1745 (81 years)
Jerome Leocata was a major Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in metaphysics. His long academic career in philosophy and theology was very hampered by his many administrative commitments. His writings, however, bear witness to his thinking skills and his philosophical prowess. He possessed a clear and systematic mind, consistently endeavouring to give a sound philosophical basis to his speculations. No portrait of him is yet known to exist.
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Richard of Middleton
1249 - 1302 (53 years)
Richard of Middleton was a member of the Franciscan Order, a theologian, and scholastic philosopher. Life Richard's origins are unclear: he was either Norman French or English . As a Bachelor of the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the University of Paris in 1283, he played a part in the Franciscan commission examining Peter Olivi. He was regent master of the Franciscan studium in Paris from 1284 to 1287, and, on 20 September 1295 in Metz, he was elected Franciscan minister provincial of France. He was also subsequently tutor to Louis of Toulouse, son of Charles II of Anjou. He died sometime b...
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Rick Turner
1941 - 1978 (37 years)
Richard Turner , known as Rick Turner, was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist who was murdered, possibly by the South African security forces, in 1978. Nelson Mandela described Turner "as a source of inspiration".
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Franciszek Fiszer
1860 - 1937 (77 years)
Franciszek Fiszer was a Polish metaphysician and alchemist, a friend of the most notable writers and philosophers of contemporary Warsaw and one of Warsaw's semi-legendary people. Described as an erudite bon vivant and gourmand, he is remembered for a large number of anecdotes, jokes and sayings coined by him and about him.
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Harris Franklin Rall
1870 - 1964 (94 years)
Harris Franklin Rall , Ph.D. was the first president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado after it reopened in 1910 till 1915, and he also served as the Henry White Warren professor of Practical Theology. Rall later became president of Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois, and taught theology there. Rall was active in the social gospel movement, seeking to relate Christianity to the ills of society. Garrett named its lecture series after him.
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Choe Han-gi
1803 - 1877 (74 years)
Choe Han-gi was a Korean Confucian scholar and philosopher. He is known for integrating Eastern philosophy with Western science in pre-industrial Korea. His art name was Hyegang , and according to some sources, it is mentioned that he also used Paedong .
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Allen Thomson
1809 - 1884 (75 years)
Allen Thomson FRS FRSE FRCSE was a Scottish physician, known as an anatomist and embryologist. Life The only son of Dr John Thomson by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of John Millar, he was born at Brown Square in Edinburgh on 2 April 1809, and was named after his father's friend, John Allen, secretary and confidential friend of Lord Holland. Margaret Mylne was his sister and William Thomson his half-brother. Allen Thomson was educated at the high school and University of Edinburgh, and then in Paris. He graduated doctor of medicine at the University of Edinburgh in August 1830. At the time of his graduation he was president of the Royal Medical Society in Edinburgh.
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Friedrich August Carus
1770 - 1807 (37 years)
Friedrich August Carus was a German philosopher. He was the father of surgeon Ernst August Carus . From 1788 to 1793 he studied philosophy and theology at the universities of Leipzig and Göttingen. In 1796 he became an associate professor of philosophy at Leipzig, where in 1805 he attained a full professorship. In Leipzig he also served as a preacher at the University Church. As a philosopher he was influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. After his death, his principal philosophical, psychological, theological and historical works were edited and published ...
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Edgar Frederick Carritt
1876 - 1964 (88 years)
Edgar Frederick Carritt, FBA was an English philosopher who wrote on aesthetics, moral philosophy and political philosophy. He was a fellow of University College, Oxford, from 1898 to 1945. He was a member of the famous Oxfordshire based Carritt family, whose members included many Marxist academics and revolutionaries.
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Mustafa 'Abd ar-Raziq
1885 - 1947 (62 years)
Shaykh Mustafa Abd ar-Raziq was an Egyptian Islamic philosopher. Early life He was born in Abu Jirj, Minya Governorate. Career Abd ar-Rizq succeeded Mustafa al-Maraghi as rector of al-Azhar. His appointment encountered resistance, since he was not a member of the Council of Supreme ulama: King Farouk pressured for the law to be altered to allow him to assume office. Historian Fawaz Gerges characterized ar-Rizq as a "rebel member of al-Azhar" during his era.
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Prince George of Greece and Denmark
1869 - 1957 (88 years)
Prince George of Greece and Denmark was the second son and child of George I of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, and is remembered chiefly for having once saved the life of his cousin the future Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II in 1891 during their visit to Japan together. He served as high commissioner of the Cretan State during its transition towards independence from Ottoman rule and union with Greece.
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