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,
#16451
Jessie Gray
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
Jessie Catherine Gray was a Canadian cancer surgeon, educator, and researcher. Known as the Canadian "First Lady of Surgery", Gray is described as a trailblazer for women surgeons and an example that women could excel in the male-dominated field of general surgery. During her career, she was considered one of the top four cancer surgeons in North America, and she earned many firsts and fellowships in her field.
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Bernhardus Albinus
1653 - 1721 (68 years)
Bernhardus Friedrich Albinus was a Dutch physician and anatomist. His sons Bernhard Siegfried Albinus and Friedrich Bernhard Albinus were also anatomists of note in Leiden. Albinus was born in Dessau in the principality of Anhalt, where his father, Christoforus Albinus, was the mayor. His ancestral family name, Weiss, had been changed to Albinus in the 16th century, after the fashion of the time, by his ancestor Petrus Weiss, poet and historian. In his youth, a poor physical constitution led to his being schooled at home before being sent to the public school of his city. When the scientist...
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Franz König
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
Franz König was a German surgeon. The son of a physician, he was born in Rotenburg an der Fulda. In 1855 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg, and was later district wound surgeon in Hanau. Afterwards he was a professor of surgery at the universities of Rostock and Göttingen , and eventually at the Charité-Berlin, where in 1895 he succeeded Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben. In 1904 he was succeeded at the Charité by Otto Hildebrand.
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James Hector
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
Sir James Hector was a Scottish-New Zealand geologist, naturalist, and surgeon who accompanied the Palliser Expedition as a surgeon and geologist. He went on to have a lengthy career as a government employed man of science in New Zealand, and during this period he dominated the colony's scientific institutions in a way that no single man has since.
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Pieter Otto van der Chijs
1802 - 1867 (65 years)
Pieter Otto van der Chijs was a Dutch coin expert and one of the early prizewinners of Teylers Tweede Genootschap . He was the son of J. van der Chijs and A.S. Bagelaar who encouraged him to start collecting. At the age of nine became interested in coins when he studied the ones his parents donated to the poor of Delft each week. He began to collect coins from around the world. After following school in Delft, he became a student of letters at the University of Leiden in 1820. He won a few prizes before devoting himself to his hobby. He wrote an essay on the art of collecting old coins in 1829 and in 1831 he became a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy.
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William Mackenzie
1791 - 1868 (77 years)
William Mackenzie was a Scottish ophthalmologist. He wrote Practical Treatise of the Diseases of the Eye, one of the first British textbooks of ophthalmology. Life Mackenzie was born in Queen Street, Glasgow, and studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. From 1840 to 1848 he studied in London and in Europe. He obtained his medical doctorate under Georg Joseph Beer at the University of Vienna, and returned to Britain in 1848. In 1849, Mackenzie settled in Glasgow and began practice as a physician.
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Domenico Gagliardi
1660 - 1745 (85 years)
Domenico Gagliardi was an Italian physician and anatomist. He may have served as a professor of anatomy at Rome and served as chief physician to four Popes. He studied the structure of bones, dissolving the structures, and observing them under a microscope as described in his 1689 book Anatome ossium novis inventis illustrata.
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Xeniades
500 BC - 500 BC (0 years)
Xeniades was a skeptical philosopher from Corinth, probably a follower of the pre-Socratic Xenophanes. There may have been two such persons, as he is referenced by Democritus c. 400 BC, though was also supposedly the purchaser of Diogenes the Cynic c. 350 BC, when he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. Xeniades was supposed to have been the man who persuaded Monimus to become a follower of Diogenes, and was the source of his skeptical doctrines.
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William Jones Nicholson
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
William Jones Nicholson was a career officer in the United States Army. He attained the rank of brigadier general during World War I as commander of the 157th Infantry Brigade, a unit of the 79th Division. He was most notable for leading his brigade to victory during the September 1918 Battle of Montfaucon, part of the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross.
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Friedrich Schaarschmidt
1863 - 1902 (39 years)
Friedrich Schaarschmidt was a German landscape painter and figure painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting, conservator and art writer. Life Born in Bonn, Schaarschmidt was born in Bonn as the son of Professor Carl Schaarschmidt , a philosophy historian and head of the Bonn University Library. From 1880 until 1889, he studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, Hugo Crola, Johann Peter Theodor Janssen and Wilhelm Sohn, temporarily also Eduard von Gebhardt and Carl Ernst Forberg, were his teachers. As a practising artist, Schaarschmidt turned to En plein air. He often decorate...
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Shmuel Alexandrov
1865 - 1941 (76 years)
Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov of Bobruisk was a prominent student of the Volozhin Yeshiva, who became close to the tradition of Chabad Hasidism. Alexandrov was a Jewish Orthodox mystical thinker, philosopher and anarchist, whose religious thought, an original blending of Kabbalah, Orthodox Judaism, contemporary philosophy and secular literature, are marked by universalism and some degree of antinomianism. His works include פך השמן , a commentary on Pirkey Avot, and a large collection of essays, מכתבי מחקר וביקורת . Alexandrov was influenced by the anarchistic implications of the work of Rav Kook , from which he sought to derive practical instruction.
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Nicholas of Methone
Nicholas of Methone was a Byzantine theologian and philosopher who served as the bishop of Methone from around 1150. Nicholas wrote hagiography, hymnody, theology, biblical exegesis and panegyric. His most widely read works were his treatises against the practices and doctrines of the Latin Church, but modern scholarship regards his Refutation of the neoplatonist philosopher Proclus as his greatest work. Nicholas was close to the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos and served him as an advisor. He was involved in the major controversies over Bogomilism and the writings of Soterichos Panteugenos .
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Charles H. Stonestreet
1813 - 1885 (72 years)
Charles Henry Stonestreet was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served in prominent religious and academic positions, including as provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland Province and president of Georgetown University. He was born in Maryland and attended Georgetown University, where he co-founded the Philodemic Society. After entering the Society of Jesus and becoming a professor at Georgetown, he led St. John's Literary Institution and St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Maryland. He was appointed president of Georgetown University in 1851, holding the office for two years, during which time he oversaw expansion of the university's library.
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John Buckley Bradbury
1841 - 1930 (89 years)
John Buckley Bradbury was a medical doctor and Downing Professor of Medicine. The chair was discontinued on his death in 1930. Life He was born in Saddleworth in Yorkshire the eldest son of John Bradbury a merchant and manufacturer.
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Hannes Leitgeb
#16466
Alessandro Luzzago
1551 - 1602 (51 years)
Alessandro Luzzago was an Italian nobleman and organizer of Catholic charities. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been declared Venerable in 1899 by Pope Leo XIII. Life Luzzago was the son of Girolamo Luzzago and Paola Peschiera. He was baptised on November 8 in the Church of Santa Maria in Calchera. The Luzzago family was one of the most important noble families of Brescia. His mother was an early collaborator of Saint Angela Merici.
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Diogenes of Seleucia
Diogenes of Seleucia was an Epicurean philosopher, who has sometimes been confused with Diogenes of Babylon, who was also a native of Seleucia on the Tigris. He lived at the court of Syria, and was friends with king Alexander Balas, the supposed son of Antiochus Epiphanes. Athenaeus relates that Diogenes asked the king for a golden crown and a purple robe so that he could represent himself as the priest of Virtue. The king, apparently, agreed, but Diogenes subsequently gave the crown and robe to a female singer he was in love with, and the king hearing of this, summoned the girl to a banquet ...
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Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu
1919 - 1989 (70 years)
Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu was a Romanian philosopher, novelist, essayist and dramatist. Sîrbu was born in Petrila, Hunedoara. A university associate professor and theater critic, he was a victim of the communist regime, spending about 6 years as a political prisoner. He died at Craiova, aged 70. His main novel, Adio, Europa! , was published posthumously.
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Giorgio Politeo
1827 - 1913 (86 years)
Giorgio Politeo was a Dalmatian Italian philosopher and educator. He is said to have elaborated "a form of intuitionism based on Indian mysticism." Biography He was born in Split, Kingdom of Dalmatia on 15 April 1827. He attended the seminary in his city of birth. Said seminary also served as a high school for non-seminarians, under the name of Ginnasio Liceo Imperiale in Spalato; where Ugo Foscolo, who Politeo admired, had also studied. He came from an old and esteemed Split family, but a financial setback forced him to seek employment as a substitute teacher in the same seminary / high sch...
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Thomas Richard Fraser
1841 - 1920 (79 years)
Sir Thomas Richard Fraser was a British physician and pharmacologist. Together with Alexander Crum Brown he discovered the relationship between physiological activity and chemical constitution of the body.
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Ortwin
1475 - 1542 (67 years)
Hardwin von Grätz , better known in English as Ortwin , was a German humanist scholar and theologian. Ortwin was born in Holtwick and died in Cologne, Germany. He was raised by his uncle, Johannes von Grätz, in Deventer. In 1501 he left to pursue philosophical studies at the University of Cologne. After joining Kyuk Burse, Ortwin became licensed in 1505, attained Masters level in 1506, and became an Art Professor in 1507. He supplemented his salary by proofing documents for the Quentell printing house and wrote introductions and poetic dedications in the volumes of classical authors of the Mi...
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Willy Spatz
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Willy Spatz was a German painter and lithographer. Life and work Born in Düsseldorf, Spatz, called Willy, was the fifth child of eight children of Gustav Wilhelm Gerhard Spatz, merchant and lottery collector in Düsseldorf and Johanna Wilhelmina, née Erbach.
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Pär-Erik Back
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Pär-Erik Back was a Swedish social scientist. He was professor at Umeå University 1965–85 in political science, serving also as dean for the social sciences. Publications Herzog und Landschaft ,En klass i uppbrott ,Sammanslutningarnas roll i politiken 1870–1970 ,Det svenska partiväsendet .
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Aoyama Tanemichi
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Aoyama Tanemichi was a medical scientist and doctor specializing in internal medicine. He became a member of the Imperial Japan Academy in 1906, received the first class medal, "Order of the Sacred Treasure", in 1916, and was given the title of Danshaku in 1917.
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Philip Ferdinand
1555 - 1598 (43 years)
Philip Ferdinand was an English Hebraist. Born in Poland to Polish Jewish parents, he converted first to Roman Catholicism and then to Protestantism. He was a poor student at Oxford University, where he taught Hebrew. He matriculated at Cambridge University in 1596. He became professor of Hebrew at Leiden, where he died. He translated Rabbinic works into Latin.
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Heinrich Lauenstein
1835 - 1910 (75 years)
Heinrich Lauenstein was a German painter and art professor; associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. He specialized in portraits, many of them of children, and religious scenes. Life and work His father, Christoph Lauenstein, was a mill owner in Hildesheim. He worked as a decorative painter until 1859 when, thanks to a grant from King George V of Hanover., he was able to enroll at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, he studied with Heinrich Mücke, the brothers Andreas and Karl Müller, Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Rudolf Wiegmann. In 1863, he attended history painting classes taught by Eduard Bendemann then, from 1867, studied with the religious painter, Ernst Deger.
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Ellen Bliss Talbot
1867 - 1968 (101 years)
Ellen Bliss Talbot was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, chairing the department of philosophy and psychology for 32 years. She is considered one of the first professional academic women philosophers.
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Julius Scriba
1848 - 1905 (57 years)
Julius Karl Scriba was a German surgeon serving as a foreign advisor in Meiji period Japan, where he was an important contributor to the development of Western medicine in Japan. Biography Scriba was born in Darmstadt, Germany and studied to become a pharmacist as well as a physician. His studies were interrupted by a year of military service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. He graduated three years after the end of the war from the University of Heidelberg and practiced medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau. He apprenticed under the noted surgeon Vincenz Czerny and from 1879 served as a lecturer at the University of Freiburg.
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Félix Taunay, Baron of Taunay
1795 - 1881 (86 years)
Félix Émile Taunay, Baron of Taunay , was a French Brazilian painter, and drawing and Greek teacher. He was the father of famous writer and politician Alfredo d'Escragnolle Taunay, the Viscount of Taunay.
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N. C. Wyeth
1882 - 1945 (63 years)
Newell Convers Wyeth , known as N. C. Wyeth, was an American painter and illustrator. He was a student of Howard Pyle and became one of America's most well-known illustrators. Wyeth created more than 3,000 paintings and illustrated 112 books — 25 of them for Scribner's, the Scribner Classics, which is the body of work for which he is best known. The first of these, Treasure Island, was one of his masterpieces and the proceeds paid for his studio. Wyeth was a realist painter at a time when the camera and photography began to compete with his craft. Sometimes seen as melodramatic, his illustrations were designed to be understood quickly.
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Heinrich Nauen
1880 - 1940 (60 years)
Heinrich Nauen was a German Expressionist artist. He created oils, watercolors, and prints; as well as murals and mosaics. A large part of his output consists of landscapes and floral still-lifes. Biography He was born to a family of bakers, but expressed an interest in art at an early age. In 1898, he was accepted at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, then attended a private art school in Munich. He completed his studies at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart from 1900 to 1902. Soon after, he joined the circle of artists that formed around the sculptor George Minne in the Flemi...
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Gaius Blossius
150 BC - 130 BC (20 years)
Gaius Blossius was, according to Plutarch, a philosopher and student of the Stoic philosopher Antipater of Tarsus, from the city of Cumae in Campania, Italy, who instigated Roman tribune Tiberius Gracchus to pursue a land reform movement on behalf of the plebs. Tiberius was accused by his political opponents of attempting to provoke a popular uprising, and have himself crowned King. Eventually, he was assassinated, and his body thrown into the river Tiber.
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Joaquín Setantí
1550 - 1617 (67 years)
Joaquín Setantí y Alcina was an important figure in the municipality of Barcelona at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He contributed several monographs to the movement known as tacitism including Frutos de historia . His collection of moral aphorisms, Centellas de varios conceptos , stands out, due to its originality. Setantí was a precursor of Baltasar Gracián and of the other great cultivators of aphorisms during the Spanish Baroque. His 500 dense Centellas are said to "reveal a modern political and personal attitude that marks an important milestone in Spanish sententious litera...
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Soma Weiss
1898 - 1942 (44 years)
Soma Weiss was a Hungarian-born American physician. Early life Soma Weiss was born in 1898 in Bistriţa, Transylvania, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied physiology and biochemistry in Budapest. Immediately after the end of World War I, he immigrated to the United States and qualified in medicine in 1923. He was from Jewish ancestry.
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William Gregory
1803 - 1858 (55 years)
William Gregory FRCPE FRSE FCS was a Scottish physician and chemist. He studied under and translated some of the works of Justus von Liebig, the German chemist. Gregory also had interests in mesmerism and phrenology.
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Roland of Cremona
1178 - 1259 (81 years)
Roland of Cremona was a Dominican theologian and an early scholastic philosopher. He was the first Dominican regent master at Paris, France . He was among the most enthusiastic of those who made use of the newly translated Aristotle in the early 13th century.
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An Hyang
1243 - 1306 (63 years)
Ahn Hyang , also known as Ahn Yu , was a leading Confucian scholar born in Yeongju in present-day South Korea, and was from the Sunheung Ahn clan. He is considered the founder of Neo-Confucianism in Korea, introducing Song Confucianism to the Goryeo kingdom. Ahn Hyang visited China, transcribing the works of Zhu Xi and bringing his copy and portraits of Confucius and Zhu Xi to Korea to use in his revitalization of Confucianism. He strove to replace Buddhism with Confucianism.
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Walery Jaworski
1849 - 1924 (75 years)
Walery Jaworski was a Polish physician and gastroenterologist. He is considered one of the pioneers of gastroenterology in Poland. He is also known for making one of the first observations of Helicobacter pylori in 1899.
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Kuttipuzha Krishna Pillai
1900 - 1971 (71 years)
Kuttipuzha Krishna Pillai , was an Indian scholar, journalist, philosopher, atheist and critic of Malayalam language. Counted among the prominent literary critics of the language, he wrote a number of books covering the genres of literary criticism and philosophy. He presided over the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, chaired the advisory board of the Kerala Bhasha Institute as an ex-officio member and was a recipient of the Soviet Land Nehru Award.
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William M'Intosh
1838 - 1931 (93 years)
William Carmichael M'Intosh LLD was a Scottish physician and marine zoologist. He served as president of the Ray Society, as vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , and was awarded the Neill Prize .
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Ludvig Puusepp
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
Ludvig Puusepp was an Estonian surgeon and researcher and the world's first professor of neurosurgery. Early life Ludvig Puusepp was born on 3 December 1875 in Kyiv to an Estonian father and a Polish-Czech mother. His father Martin Puusepp was a shoemaker who had migrated from Rakvere, Estonia to St. Petersburg where he met and married Victoria-Stephania Goebel. Puusepp learned German at home and Russian in school; it was not until 1920 at age 44 that he learned the Estonian language. He continued to study languages including French, English and Italian.
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Lewis Caleb Beck
1798 - 1853 (55 years)
Lewis Caleb Beck was an American physician, botanist, chemist, and mineralogist. Biography He graduated from Union College in 1815 with a Master of Arts. He then studied medicine, and began his practice in Schenectady in 1818. From 1820 to 1821, he resided in St. Louis, but soon returned and settled in Albany. Beck was successively professor of botany in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , professor of botany and chemistry in the Vermont Academy of Medicine , professor of chemistry and natural history at Rutgers College , and professor of chemistry and pharmacy at Albany Medical College ....
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Chaeremon of Alexandria
10 - 90 (80 years)
Chaeremon of Alexandria was a Stoic philosopher and historian who wrote on Egyptian mythology from a "typically Stoic" perspective. All of Chaeremon's works are lost, though a number of fragments are quoted by later authors. Three titles are preserved: the History of Egypt, Hieroglyphika, and On Comets, with another fragment quoted from an unknown grammatical treatise of his. According to the Suda, he was the head of the Alexandrian school of grammarians, and he may also have been head of the Museion.
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Francesco Vimercato
1512 - 1571 (59 years)
Francesco Vimercato was an Italian Aristotelian scholar. He was a Royal Reader in Philosophy in Paris. He is known for his commentaries on Aristotle’s ethical and zoological works. In 1561 he left France to work for Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. He was employed as a professor, and then a diplomat.
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James Spence
1812 - 1882 (70 years)
James Spence FRSE FRCSEd was a Scottish surgeon. He served as President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 1867/68. Life He was born on 31 March 1812 at 12 South Bridge in Edinburgh, the son of James Spence, a perfumer, and his third wife.
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Thomas Stewart Traill
1781 - 1862 (81 years)
Thomas Stewart Traill was a British physician, chemist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omond FRSE .
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Lynn Riggs
1899 - 1954 (55 years)
Rollie Lynn Riggs was an American author, poet, playwright and screenwriter. His 1931 play Green Grow The Lilacs was adapted into the landmark 1943 musical Oklahoma!. Early life Riggs was born on a farm near Claremore, Oklahoma, . His mother was 1/8 Cherokee, and when he was two years old, his mother secured his Cherokee allotment for him. He was able to draw on his allotment to help support his writing.
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Pedro Ciruelo
1470 - 1548 (78 years)
Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo was a Spanish philosopher, theologian, mathematician, astrologer, astronomer and writer on topics of natural philosophy. Early life Ciruelo was born somewhere between 1460 and 1470 in Daroca, Spain. Ciruelo was born in the kingdom of Aragon where Daroca held political, military, and administrative significance for the kingdom. He came from a family of Jews and Judaizers according to papers that traced his genealogy during the Spanish Inquisition. Ciruelo claimed to be an orphan, but the validity of this claim is not well-supported as Ciruelo had living relatives and received an education which was costly at the time.
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Honoratus a Sancta Maria
1651 - 1729 (78 years)
Honoratus a Sancta Maria was a French Discalced Carmelite, known as a prolific controversialist. His secular name was Blaise Vauxelles , and he was known also by the French version of his name in religion, Honoré de Sainte-Marie.
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Griffith Powell
1561 - 1620 (59 years)
Griffith Powell was a philosopher and Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, from 1613 to 1620. Life Powell was the third of four sons of John ap Hywel of Llansawel, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Powell matriculated at Jesus College in 1581, obtaining his BA in 1584, MA in 1589, and BCL in 1593. He was elected Fellow of the college in 1589. He effectively ran the college during the principalships of his two predecessors, Francis Bevans and John Williams. Williams deprived him of his Fellowship, but it was restored on the Chancellor's orders.
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