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,
#16301
Schahan Berberian
1891 - 1956 (65 years)
Schahan R. Berberian was an Armenian philosopher, composer, and psychologist. Biography Early years Berberian was born in Constantinople . Shortly thereafter, along with his parents Retheos and Zaruhi and his elder brother Onnig, Berberian moved to Geneva, Switzerland to escape the atrocities against the Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II from 1894 to 1896.
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E. J. Rapson
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Edward James Rapson FBA was a British numismatist, philologist and professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge. He was a fellow of St. John's College. Rapson died following a sudden collapse at dinner at St. John's.
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Jožef Krajnc
1821 - 1875 (54 years)
Jožef Krajnc, also spelled Josef Krainc, Josef Krainz was an Austro-Hungarian lawyer, philosopher and politician of Slovenian ancestry. Life Krajnc was born in Škale in the Duchy of Styria to a farmer of the same name. From 1832 until 1841 he attended the Gymnasium in Celje, graduating with the Matura. From 1841 until 1845, he studied philosophy and law in Graz, obtaining a doctorate in both disciplines. From 1842 on, he financed his studies as a private tutor to a wealthy landowner's family in Graz and Bad Radkersburg. From 1845 on, Krajnc worked as judicial advisor first to the city council of Radkersburg, then to the council of Graz.
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Gerhardt Katsch
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Gerhardt Katsch was a German internist. Between 1928 and 1957 he served as Professor of Internal medicine at the University of Greifswald. It was on the initiative of Katsch that in 1930 a residential facility providing clinical and socio-medical care for Diabetic patients was established at Garz on the Island of Rügen. It was the first institution of its kind in Germany. Gerhardt Katsch is widely regarded – alongside Oskar Minkowski and Karl Stolte – as one of the three principal pioneers of modern diabetes management in Germany.
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Peter Hansen
1868 - 1928 (60 years)
Peter Marius Hansen was a Danish painter who became one of the Fynboerne or "Funen Painters" group living and working on the island of Funen. Biography Hansen attended the Copenhagen Technical School before studying under Kristian Zahrtmann at the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler . His travels included the Netherlands , and several periods in Italy from 1899 where he was in Civita d'Antino with Zahrtmann and in Pompei with Theodor Philipsen . He also travelled to Belgium and Paris in 1909. His eldest son, David Shane Hansen would become one of the leading organizers of the 1909 general strike in Barcelona, Spain.
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Willis J. Potts
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Willis John Potts was an American pediatric surgeon and one of the earliest physicians to focus on the surgical treatment of heart problems in children. Potts set up one of the country's first pediatric surgery programs at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
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Juan Guiteras
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Juan Guitéras y Gener , was a Cuban physician and pathologist specializing in yellow fever. Guiteras studied medicine at the University of Havana, and moved to the United States in 1873 to attend the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated that same year. He worked at Philadelphia Hospital until 1879, when he went into the U.S. Navy as a physician and began to research yellow fever, working with Stanford Chaillé and George Miller Sternberg in the Havana Yellow Fever Commission. On May 5, 1883 he married Dolores Gener in Cuba. He then taught at the Medical University of South Carolina from 1884 to 1888, and then taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1889 to 1898.
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Sigismondo Polcastro
1384 - 1473 (89 years)
Sigismondo Polcastro was an Italian physician and natural philosopher. He was born to a jurist father, Girolamo, of the ancient de Porcastris family of Vicenza, and Maddalena Volpe of Padua. Perhaps born in Vicenza, he moved to Padua while he was still a boy.
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Pierre de Villiers Pienaar
1904 - 1978 (74 years)
Pierre de Villiers Pienaar was a South African Afrikaans academic and Professor at University of the Witwatersrand and later at University of Pretoria, who pioneered Speech Language Therapy in South Africa and specialising in Audiology and Lexicography as well as being an Afrikaans author. As Lexicographer in 1973, he was part of the group of authors that established the Afrikaans Explanatory Dictionary alongside Prof M.S.B. Kritzinger and Prof F.J. Labuschagne.
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William of Auxerre
1145 - 1231 (86 years)
William of Auxerre was a French scholastic theologian and official in the Roman Catholic Church. The teacher by whom William was most influenced was Praepositinus, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. The names of teacher and pupil are mentioned in the same sentence by Thomas Aquinas.
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Ted Hines
1926 - 1983 (57 years)
Theodore Christian "Ted" Hines was a Washington, D.C.-born pioneer in the use of microcomputers and microcomputer programs in libraries. He attended undergraduate school at George Washington University and received his Masters of Library Science in 1958 and a PhD in 1960 both from Rutgers University. He began his career as a children's librarian, and later became a professor of Library Science at Rutgers, followed by Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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Johannes Hartmann
1568 - 1631 (63 years)
Johannes Hartmann was a German chemist. In 1609, he became the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Marburg. His teaching dealt mainly with pharmaceuticals. He was the father-in-law of Heinrich Petraeus.
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Ghyath al-Din Mansur Dashtaki
1462 - 1542 (80 years)
Ghiyāth al-Din Mansur Dashtaki was an Iranian Safavid Islamic philosopher, the son of Sadr ad-Din Dashtaki. He has been called "the foremost philosopher of sixteenth-century Islam". "His works spanned an impressive range, from theological, mystical, and Quranic studies to treatises on medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology." He wrote Akhlaq-i Mansuri on ethics, a commentary on Suhrawardi's Hayākil al-nūr , and glosses on Tusi's Sharh al-isharat. He also wrote a medical treatise, Ma’alem-o-Shafa.
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Robert Gilbert
1899 - 1978 (79 years)
Robert Gilbert was a German composer of light music, lyricist, singer, and actor. His father was Max Winterfeld, a composer and conductor who went by the pen name of Jean Gilbert. His brother was Henry Winterfeld, an author of children's books. Sometimes described as a "divided author", his early depression-era poem "Stempellied" about living on the dole was set to music by Hanns Eisler. But "Am Sonntag will mein Süsser mit mir segeln gehen" and "Das gibt's nur einmal" , became his better known work.
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Fletcher Martin
1904 - 1979 (75 years)
Fletcher Martin was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and educator. He is best known for his images of military life during World War II and his sometimes brutal images of boxing and other sports.
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Wolfgang Klemperer
1893 - 1965 (72 years)
Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of the Austrian nationals Leon and Charlotte Klemperer. He was in his time a prominent aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation.
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Arthur Adams
1820 - 1878 (58 years)
Arthur Adams was an English physician and naturalist. Adams was assistant surgeon Royal Navy on board HMS Samarang during the survey of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, from 1843 to 1846. He edited the Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Samarang . Adam White collaborated with him in the descriptions of the Crustacea from the voyage. In 1857, during the Second China War whilst serving as Surgeon on HMS Actaeon, he was present at the storming of Canton and awarded the China War Medal. He retired as Staff Surgeon aboard flagship HMS Royal Adelaide at Plymouth in 1870.
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Ries Mulder
1909 - 1973 (64 years)
Marinus Mulder was a Dutch painter, lecturer and writer. His painting style was influenced by Cubism, which he taught during his tenure as a leading lecturer of Modern Art in Indonesia. Dutch Period until 1940 Ries grew up in a family of ten children. After three years at the Hogere Burgerschool he studied painting in Utrecht and decided to become a painter. Ries apprenticed to the painter Piet van Wijngaerdt. He also made contact with Otto van Rees , Lambert Simon and Charles Eyck. Between 1933 and 1939, he assisted Charles Eyck in creating several frescoes, including frescoes in the Genaz...
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Samuel James Cameron
1878 - 1959 (81 years)
Samuel James Cameron was Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow from 1934 until 1942. The son of Caesarean Section pioneer Prof Murdoch Cameron, S.J. Cameron was a foundation Fellow of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929, and for many years a member of the Gynaecological Visiting Society. A lifelong champion of the reputation of the founder of professional midwifery in the British isles, William Smellie, Cameron both named a maternity hospital at Lanark, Scotland, after him and saved Smellie's library from permanent loss.
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L. Emmett Holt Jr.
1895 - 1974 (79 years)
Luther Emmett Holt Jr. was an American pediatrician. As a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and later New York University, he performed extensive research in the field of pediatric nutrition. He received the John Howland Award in 1966.
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Frans Floris
1519 - 1570 (51 years)
Frans Floris, Frans Floris the Elder or Frans Floris de Vriendt was a Flemish painter, draughtsman, print artist and tapestry designer. He is mainly known for his history paintings, allegorical scenes and portraits. He played an important role in the movement in Northern Renaissance painting referred to as Romanism. The Romanists had typically travelled to Italy to study the works of leading Italian High Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and their followers. Their art assimilated these Italian influences into the Northern painting tradition.
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Friedrich Dessauer
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Friedrich Dessauer was a German physicist, a philosopher, a socially engaged entrepreneur and a journalist. Friedrich Dessauer was born in Aschaffenburg, German Empire. As a young man he was fascinated by new discoveries in the natural sciences. He was particularly interested in the X-rays discovered by Röntgen and their medical applications. After attending the humanistic Gymnasium in Aschaffenburg, he studied electrical engineering and physics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and the University of Munich. Due to radiation damage during his research on the use of X-rays, his face was badly damaged and he was repeatedly treated with plastic surgery.
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Robert Bouvier
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Robert Bouvier was a Swiss philosopher noted for popularising the work of Ernst Mach in French. Bouvier spent much his career teaching evening classes and doing translation work before becoming a privatdocent at the University of Geneva.
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Ernst Dieffenbach
1811 - 1855 (44 years)
Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach , also known as Ernest Dieffenbach, was a German physician, geologist and naturalist, the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand, where he travelled widely under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, returning in 1841–42 and publishing in English his Travels in New Zealand in 1843.
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Adriaan van den Spiegel
1578 - 1625 (47 years)
Adriaan van den Spiegel , name sometimes written as Adrianus Spigelius , was a Flemish anatomist born in Brussels. For much of his career he practiced medicine in Padua, and is considered one of the great physicians associated with the city. At Padua he studied anatomy under Girolamo Fabrici.
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Huan Tan
40 BC - 32 (72 years)
Huan Tan was a Chinese philosopher, poet, and politician of the Western Han and its short-lived interregnum between AD9 and 23, known as the Xin Dynasty. Life Huan worked as an official under the administrations of Emperor Ai of Han , Wang Mang , the Gengshi Emperor , and Emperor Guangwu of Han . Huan was a close associate of the court astronomer and mathematician Liu Xin, as well as the author and poet Yang Xiong.
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Andreas Aurifaber
1514 - 1559 (45 years)
Andreas Aurifaber was a German physician of some repute, but through his influence with Albert of Brandenburg, last grand-master of the Teutonic Knights, and first Protestant duke of Prussia, became an outstanding figure in the controversy associated with Andreas Osiander whose daughter he had married.
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George Allman
1812 - 1898 (86 years)
George James Allman FRS FRSE was an Irish ecologist, botanist and zoologist who served as Emeritus Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Life Allman was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of James C. Allman of Bandon, and received his early education at the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast. For some time he studied for the Irish Bar, but ultimately gave up law in favour of natural science. In 1843, he graduated in medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, and in the following year was appointed professor of botany in that university, succeeding the botanist William Al...
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Richard Quain
1800 - 1887 (87 years)
Richard Quain was an English anatomist and surgeon, born at Fermoy, Ireland, a brother of Jones Quain. He studied medicine in London and in Paris. He was appointed demonstrator in 1828 and professor of anatomy in 1832 at the University of London , resigning in 1850, and assistant surgeon in 1834 and surgeon in 1848 to the North London Hospital, from which he resigned in 1866. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1868.
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Francesco Puccinotti
1794 - 1872 (78 years)
Francesco Puccinotti was an Italian pathologist. Puccinotti was born in Urbino and started his career as the main doctor in Recanati but moved on to Macerata where he became the director of the civil hospital. He went on to teach the history of medicine at the universities of Pisa and Florence. He was briefly named to the Italian Senate after the Risorgimento.
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Euricius Cordus
1486 - 1535 (49 years)
Euricius Cordus born Heinrich Ritze was a German humanist poet, physician, botanist and naturalist. He is considered one of the founders of botany in Germany. Cordus was born in Simtshausen near Marburg the youngest of thirteen children born to a miller. He was educated at Frankenberg / Eder as well as at Marburg. He became a teacher in Kassel from 1509 to 1511 and then as a rent clerk in Felsberg. He later went to Erfurt where he met Conrad Mutian. He received a master's degree in 1516 and became rector at the Saint Marien college. He moved to study medicine in 1519 and became a doctor in 1521 and practiced in Braunschweig.
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Patrick Manson
1844 - 1922 (78 years)
Sir Patrick Manson was a Scottish physician who made important discoveries in parasitology, and was a founder of the field of tropical medicine. He graduated from University of Aberdeen with degrees in Master of Surgery, Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Law. His medical career spanned mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and London. He discovered that filariasis in humans is transmitted by mosquitoes. This is the foundation of modern tropical medicine, and he is recognized with an epithet "Father of Tropical Medicine". This also made him the first person to show pathogen transmission by a blood-feeding arthropod.
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Robert Harris
1849 - 1919 (70 years)
Robert Harris was a Welsh-born Canadian painter, most noted for his portrait of the Fathers of Confederation. Early life Born in Caerhun, Conwy, Wales, Robert Harris grew up on his father’s farm before moving to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in 1856. Encouraged by his mother, he developed an interest in art, and to practice drawing, he often sketched images from magazines. In 1867, he travelled to Liverpool, where he independently studied and sketched from the plaster casts in the local museum, learning human anatomy and proportion. Already skilled in portraiture, and receiving commiss...
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Robert Stewart MacDougall
1862 - 1947 (85 years)
Robert Stewart MacDougall FRSE LLD was a Scottish entomologist, agriculturalist and zoologist. In authorship he appears as R. S. MacDougall. Life MacDougall was born in Edinburgh on 5 June 1862. He was educated at George Heriot's School then studied sciences at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA. He then began lecturing in Agricultural and Forest Zoology at the University of Edinburgh, before taking on the post of Professor of Biology at the Royal Dick Veterinary College in south Edinburgh.
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Erycius Puteanus
1574 - 1646 (72 years)
Erycius Puteanus was a humanist and philologist from the Low Countries. Name Erycius Puteanus is a latinization of his name, which was rendered in various ways, including Hendrick van den Putte , Errijck de Put or Eric van der Putte. This was also Latinized as Ericus Puteanus. He was also known as Henry du Puy.
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Burchard Mauchart
1696 - 1751 (55 years)
Burchard David Mauchart was professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and a pioneer in the field of ophthalmology. In 1748 he became one of the first to document the eye disorder now known as keratoconus. His surviving works are now to be found in the form of theses by his students.
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Gerolamo Accoramboni
1469 - 1537 (68 years)
Gerolamo Accoramboni is an Italian physician born in Gubbio in Umbria on February 1469 and died in Rome on 21 February 1537. Personal life Fourth son of Giovanni Filippo Accoramboni, he married Agnese Ubaldini with whom he had several children including:Fabio, jurist at the University of Padua.Claudio who married Tarquinia Paluzzi Albertoni in 1549: they had eleven children including Vittoria Accoramboni whose life will inspire Stendhal and John Webster .
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Kilian Stobæus
1690 - 1742 (52 years)
Kilian Stobæus was a Swedish physician, natural scientist, and historian. He offered a young Carl Linnaeus tutoring and lodging, as well as the use of his library, which included many books about botany. He also gave the student free admission to his lectures. In his spare time, Linnaeus explored the flora of Scania together with students sharing the same interests.
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Leopold Ritter von Dittel
1815 - 1898 (83 years)
Leopold Ritter von Dittel was an Austrian urologist born in Fulnek, a community now located in the Czech Republic. Dittel received his medical doctorate in 1840 from the University of Vienna, and as a young man worked as a physician in Trentschin-Teplitz. From 1853 to 1857, he was an assistant to Johann von Dumreicher and a surgical assistant at the university hospital in Vienna. Later, he became surgeon-in-chief of the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, and in 1865 attained the title of associate professor.
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Georg Joseph Beer
1763 - 1821 (58 years)
Georg Joseph Beer was an Austrian ophthalmologist. He is credited with introducing a flap operation for treatment of cataracts , as well as popularizing the instrument used to perform the surgery . Career Initially a theology student, in 1786 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna. Under the guidance of Joseph Barth , his primary focus turned to the field of ophthalmology. However, his professional relationship with Barth was never close, and he later referred to his years with Barth as his "years of torture" . The final break in their relationship was caused by Barth's...
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Virginia Lacy Jones
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.
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Morrill Wyman
1812 - 1903 (91 years)
Morrill Wyman was an American physician and social reformer. Best known today for his work on hay fever, he was one of the most respected doctors of his time, a social reformer, Harvard overseer, hospital president, and author in his long lifetime.
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#16344
Heraclides of Aenus
350 BC - 400 BC (-50 years)
Heraclides of Aenus was one of Plato's students. Around 360 BC, he and his brother Python assassinated Cotys I, the ruler of Thrace.
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Alfred Hoernlé
1880 - 1943 (63 years)
Reinhold Friedrich Alfred Hoernlé , usually referred to as Alfred Hoernlé, was a South African philosopher and social reformer. Early life Hoernlé was born in Bonn, Germany, and was the son of the Indologist A.F.R. Rudolf Hoernlé . His father was a missionary-scholar associated with the London Missionary Society and, therefore, Alfred was a British subject by birth.
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Elli Alexiou
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Elli Alexiou was a Greek author, playwright and journalist. The daughter of a printer and publisher, Alexiou was born in Heraklion, Crete. She taught French in a high school, and was politically active, joining the Communist Party in 1928 and working with the National Liberation Front resistance during World War II. After the war, she received a scholarship from the French government and studied in Paris. She was stripped of Greek citizenship in 1950, living as an exile until it was restored in 1965.
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Johann Hasler
1548 - 1593 (45 years)
Johann Hasler , also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
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Hosmer Allen Johnson
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Hosmer Allen Johnson, M.D., L.L.D. was an American physician, academic, and Mason from New York. Badly injured on the family farm, Johnson turned to teaching to support himself. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, to attend Rush Medical College. There, he became an understudy of William B. Herrick and joined his medical practice. Receiving a Doctor of Medicine in 1852, Johnson was named Lecturer on Physiology at Rush, eventually chairing a department there. In 1859, he co-founded the Chicago Medical College at Lind University, which later became the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.
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Wilhelm Uhthoff
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Wilhelm Uhthoff was a German ophthalmologist born in Klein-Warin. In 1877 earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, and later became a professor of ophthalmology at the Universities of Marburg and Breslau , where he succeeded Carl Friedrich Richard Förster .
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Carl Steffeck
1818 - 1890 (72 years)
Carl Constantin Heinrich Steffeck was a German painter and graphic artist. He was especially well known for his paintings of horses and dogs. Life He was the son of a "gentleman of independent means" who was interested in art. While he was still in the Gymnasium he sat in on classes at the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1837, he entered the master class of horse painter Franz Krüger and later worked in the studios of Carl Joseph Begas. He went to Paris in 1839, where he spent two months studying with Paul Delaroche and was influenced by the work of Horace Vernet. From 1840 to 1842, he lived in ...
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