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,
#16501
Jan Krzysztof Damel
1780 - 1840 (60 years)
Jan Krzysztof Damel, also known as Jonas Damelis and Johann Damehl in other languages was a Polish neoclassicist artist in the age of Partitions, associated with the School of Art at Vilnius University .
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Friedrich Boerner
1723 - 1761 (38 years)
Friedrich Boerner or Börner was a German physician. Boerner was born in Leipzig. His father, Christian Friedrich Boerner, wanted him to study theology and he started to study theology at the University of Wittenberg, but eventually he finish medicine. He was a professor of this university until he had to come back to Leipzig the raising of Seven Years' War . He died in Leipzig in 1761.
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Jeshua ben Judah
Jeshua ben Judah was a Karaite scholar, exegete and philosopher, who lived in eleventh-century Iraq or at Jerusalem. He was pupil of Joseph ben Abraham ha-Ro'eh. Jeshua was considered one of the highest authorities among the Karaites, by whom he is called "the great teacher" .
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Grigory Gurev
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Grigory Abramovich Gurev was a Soviet philosopher, popularizer of anti-religious knowledge, the author of several books on the history of religion and atheism. Major works: "The Great Conflict" , "The Story of a Single Misconception" , "Charles Darwin and Atheism" .
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Maksim Sedej
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Maksim Sedej was a Slovene painter, one of the key figures of the mid-20th-century art scene in Slovenia. Sedej was born in Dobračeva on the northern outskirts of Žiri in 1909. He studied art at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts between 1928 and 1932. His work was exhibited amid the selection of Yugoslav art at the Venice Biennale in 1940 and 1954. He worked as a professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design.
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Arnold Walter
1902 - 1973 (71 years)
Arnold Maria Walter, OC was a Canadian musicologist, educator, composer and writer. He founded the Canadian Opera Company, and was Director of Music at University of Toronto. Early years Arnold Maria Walter was born in Hanušovice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary . He studied law at the University of Prague, then musicology at the University of Berlin. In addition, he had private music lessons in piano and composition with Rudolf Breithaupt, Frederic Lamond, and Franz Schreker.
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Martha H. Mowry
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Martha H. Mowry was an American physician and the first woman physician in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. She was also an advocate for women's suffrage and human welfare reform. Early life and education
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Miles Vandahurst Lynk
1871 - 1956 (85 years)
Miles Vandahurst Lynk was an American physician and author noted for his efforts to create opportunities for African Americans in science, specifically for medical doctors. He was known both as the founder, editor and publisher of Medical and Surgical Observer , as well as founding the University of West Tennessee College of Medicine and Surgery.
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Leó Weiner
1885 - 1960 (75 years)
Leó Weiner was one of the leading Hungarian music educators of the first half of the twentieth century, and a composer. Life Education Weiner was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. His brother gave him his first music and piano lessons. As children, he and Fritz Reiner played piano four hands.
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Archibald Menzies
1754 - 1842 (88 years)
Archibald Menzies was a Scottish surgeon, botanist and naturalist. He spent many years at sea, serving with the Royal Navy, private merchants, and the Vancouver Expedition. He was the first recorded European to reach the summit of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa and introduced the Monkey Puzzle tree to England.
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John Blund
1175 - 1248 (73 years)
John Blund was an English scholastic philosopher, known for his work on the nature of the soul, the Tractatus de anima, one of the first works of western philosophy to make use of the recently translated De Anima by Aristotle and especially the Persian philosopher Avicenna's work on the soul, also called De Anima. He taught at Oxford University along with Edmund of Abingdon. David Knowles said that he was "noteworthy for his knowledge of Avicenna and his rejection of the hylomorphism of Avicebron and the plurality of forms.", although the problem of the plurality of forms as understood by later scholastics was not formulated explicitly in Blund's time.
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Selma Feldbach
1878 - 1924 (46 years)
Selma Feldbach was the first Estonian woman to become a medical doctor. In 1904 she graduated in medicine from the University of Bern.
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Andreas Anagnostakis
1826 - 1897 (71 years)
Andreas Anagnostakis was a Greek ophthalmologist, physician, and educator. He is best known for inventing the ophthalmoscope, a handheld tool used in diagnostics and still relevant today. He is credited as the first ophthalmologist in Greece.
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Henry Cadwalader Chapman
1845 - 1909 (64 years)
Dr. Henry Cadwalader Chapman was an American physician and naturalist. Early life Chapman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Henry was the son of George W. Chapman, lieutenant in the United States Army, and Emily, granddaughter of Abraham Markoe, first captain of the Philadelphia City Troop. His grandfather was Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, the founding president of the American Medical Association.
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Ernst Wertheim
1864 - 1920 (56 years)
Ernst Wertheim was an Austrian gynecologist born in Graz. Ernst Wertheim was the son of Theodor Wertheim, an Austrian chemistry professor at the University of Graz, remembered for his chemical studies of garlic. He received his doctorate from the University of Graz on February 29, 1888, and subsequently became an assistant in the department of general and experimental pathology. In 1889 he worked under Otto Kahler at the second university clinic in Vienna, followed by an assignment at the second Vienna women's clinic under Rudolf Chrobak . He worked there until September 30, 1890, when he relocated to Prague as an assistant to Friedrich Schauta at the university women’s clinic.
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August Weber
1817 - 1873 (56 years)
Johann Baptist Wilhelm August Weber was a German painter; associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. Life and work He began studying landscape painting in his hometown, with Carl Heinrich Rosenkranz , then moved to Darmstadt in 1835, where he continued his studies with the court painter, Johann Heinrich Schilbach. This was followed by a study trip to Switzerland.
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Bence Szabolcsi
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Bence Szabolcsi was a Hungarian music historian. Along with Ervin Major, "he can be considered the founder of scholarly study of the history of Hungarian music, and he was primarily responsible for creating an establishment for musicology in Hungary."
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A.Y.P. Garnett
1820 - 1888 (68 years)
#16519
Hermann Eichhorst
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
Hermann Ludwig Eichhorst was a German-Swiss internist born in Königsberg. He studied medicine in Königsberg and Berlin, and was an assistant to Ernst Viktor von Leyden , Bernhard Naunyn , and Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs . In 1884 became director of the medical clinic in Zurich, where he remained for the rest of his career.
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Alfred William Alcock
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Alfred William Alcock was a British physician, naturalist, and carcinologist. Early life and education Alcock was the son of a sea-captain, John Alcock in Bombay, India who retired to live in Blackheath. His mother was a daughter of Christopher Puddicombe, the only son of a Devon squire.
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Rudolph Bergh
1824 - 1909 (85 years)
Rudolph Bergh , full name Ludvig Sophus Rudolph Bergh, was a Danish physician and malacologist. He worked in Copenhagen. As a doctor his speciality was sexually transmitted diseases. In Copenhagen a hospital and a street are named after him.
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Jan Dullaert
1471 - 1513 (42 years)
Jan Dullaert of Ghent Latinized as Ioannis Dullardi was a Flemish philosopher and logician who lived in France as an Augustinian friar. He elucidated principles of propositional logic in his commentaries on the works of Aristotle published from 1506 to 1509.
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Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī
1052 - 1127 (75 years)
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāḥ ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī , also spelled Ibn Assīd or Abenasid, was an Andalusian grammarian and philosopher. He is the earliest Islamic philosopher from the West whose works have survived.
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Ida Halpern
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Ida Halpern was a Canadian ethnomusicologist. Halpern was born in Vienna, Austria. She arrived in Canada in order to flee Nazism in her native country, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1944. She worked among Native Americans of coastal British Columbia during the mid-20th century, collecting, recording, and transcribing their music and documenting its use in their cultures. Many of these recordings were released as LPss, with extensive liner notes and transcriptions. More recently, her collection has also been released digitally.
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Henry Suter
1841 - 1918 (77 years)
Henry Suter was a Swiss-born New Zealand zoologist, naturalist, palaeontologist, and malacologist. Biography Henry Suter was born on 9 March 1841 in Riesbach, Zurich, Switzerland, and was the son of a prosperous silk-manufacturer of Zurich. He was educated at the local school and university, being trained as an analytical chemist. Suter joined his father's business, and for some years he engaged in various commercial pursuits.
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Otto Andersson
1879 - 1969 (90 years)
Otto Emanuel Andersson was a Finnish musicologist. Andersson studied first at the Helsingfors musikinstitut , becoming a teacher there. He studied folklore and music from 1908 onwards, and gained his Ph.D. in 1923 at the University of Helsinki. From 1926 on, he held the Robert Mattsons chair in musicology and folklore at the Åbo Akademi. In 1906, he formed the Brage Society, dedicated to Finland's Swedish folk music and culture, serving later as the group's chairman and choirmaster.
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Max Wilms
1867 - 1918 (51 years)
Carl Max Wilhelm Wilms was a German pathologist and surgeon who was a native of Hünshoven, which today is part of the town Geilenkirchen. In 1890, he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Bonn, and afterwards was an assistant to pathologist Eugen Bostroem in Giessen and to internist Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern in Cologne. In 1899, he began training as a surgeon at Leipzig. In 1907, he became a professor of surgery at Basel. In 1910, he attained the chair of surgery at the University of Heidelberg.
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Petrus Wesseling
1692 - 1764 (72 years)
Petrus Wesseling was a German philologist and jurist working in the Dutch Republic. He became famous as a philologist. Early life Petrus Wesseling was born to Gerardus Wesseling and Anna Reiners or Creter on 7 January 1692 Old Style. When he was 10 he lost his father. He then went to his uncle Wessel Reiners, a merchant in Emden. Here Wesseling visited the Latin school. Later he went to the Gymnasium Arnoldinum in Steinfurt, where he was educated in classical languages and theology. His main teachers were August Houck , Werner Justin Pagenstecher and Arnold Visch . In 1712 Wesseling ended his studies in Steinfurt with the disputation theologica de petra in Matthaei evang.
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Henry Moore
1831 - 1895 (64 years)
Henry Moore was an English marine and landscape painter. Life Moore was born in York, a brother of both Albert Joseph and John Collingham, and the pupil of their father, William Moore. Henry was educated at York and was taught painting by his father. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1853, and exhibited his first picture, Glen Clunie, Braemar, at the Royal Academy in the same year. He was a constant exhibitor at the Royal Academy from that time onwards. He exhibited at the Portland Gallery from 1855 to 1860, and at the British Institution from 1855 to 1865. It was also in 1855 that he...
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Vida Latham
1866 - 1958 (92 years)
Vida Annette Latham was a British-American dentist, physician, microscopist, and researcher, known for her work in publishing and her research on oral tumors, surgery, and anatomy. Early life and education Vida Latham was born in Lancashire in 1866 to a physician father. Her early education took place in Cambridge and Manchester. She earned her master's degree from the University of London in 1889; she published papers on tooth anatomy and pain in 1888 while working at a London dentist's office. She then moved to the United States because she could not practice in the UK with an American dentistry degree.
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John Charles
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
Sir John Alexander Charles was the tenth Chief Medical Officer of the Home Office of the United Kingdom. Life Charles was the son of John Charles, a physician and JP who practised medicine in Stanley, County Durham. His mother was Margaret Dewar.
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Al-Bahrani
1238 - 1299 (61 years)
Kamal al-Din Maitham bin Ali bin Maitham al-Bahrani , commonly known as Sheikh Maitham al-Bahrani was a leading thirteenth-century Twelver Eastern Arabian theologian, author and philosopher. Al Bahrani wrote on Twelver doctrine, affirmed free will, the infallibility of prophets and imams, the appointed imamate of `Ali, and the occultation of the Twelfth Imam. Along with Kamal al-Din Ibn Sa’adah al Bahrani, Jamal al-Din ‘Ali ibn Sulayman al-Bahrani, Maytham Al Bahrani was part of a thirteenth-century Bahrain school of theology that emphasised rationalism.
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Eduard Sonnenburg
1848 - 1915 (67 years)
Eduard Sonnenburg was a German surgeon. He was a son-in-law to neurologist Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal. After receiving his medical doctorate in 1872, he spent several years as an assistant to Georg Albert Lücke at the surgical clinic in Strassburg. In 1876 he qualified as a lecturer of surgery at the university. In 1880 he relocated to Berlin, where he worked under Bernhard von Langenbeck and Ernst von Bergmann.
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Go Hui-dong
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Go Hui-dong , also known by the pen name Chun-gok, born in Seoul, was the first Korean painter to adopt Western styles. He spent most of his life in Seoul. He studied French there from 1899 to 1903 and briefly took a post with the Korean government. Leaving the post in 1905, he studied Korean painting for several years and then traveled to Japan, where he studied Western-style painting under Kuroda Seiki from 1909 to 1915. He returned to Korea in 1915 and sought to fuse traditional and Korean styles. Currently his house located in Bukchon Village is open to public.
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W. L. Newman
1834 - 1923 (89 years)
William Lambert Newman, FBA was a British ancient historian and philosopher. Early life and education Born on 21 August 1834, Newman was the son of a solicitor from Cheltenham. In 1851, he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as a scholar ; he took first class honours in literae humaniores in 1855 and graduated the following year with a BA.
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John Flett
1869 - 1947 (78 years)
Sir John Smith Flett was a Scottish physician and geologist. Early life Born in Kirkwall, Orkney, the son of James Ferguson Flett, a merchant and baillie, and Mary Ann . He was educated at Kirkwall Burgh School, George Watson's College in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh .
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Heinrich Auspitz
1835 - 1886 (51 years)
Carl Heinrich Auspitz was a Jewish Austrian dermatologist. He was the husband of pianist Auguste Auspitz-Kólar . He was a member of the famous Moravian-Austrian . Heinrich was a son of Jewish surgeon . His younger brother was an Imperial & Royal Generalmajor and writer. In 1840, Moritz was given a job at a Jewish hospital in Vienna, and allowed better education to his sons.
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William Rutherford Sanders
1828 - 1881 (53 years)
William Rutherford Sanders FRSE was a 19th-century Scottish pathologist. He was one of the first to advocate the use of digitalis in heart conditions. He served as President of the Royal Medical Society 1847/8.
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Stephen Smith
1823 - 1922 (99 years)
Stephen Smith was a New York City surgeon and civic leader who made important contributions to medical education, nursing education, public health, housing improvement, mental health reform, charity oversight, and urban environmentalism. Smith maintained an active medical practice, was an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital for thirty-seven years, and authored three surgical texts, but he was best known for his public service. Three mayors, seven governors, and two U.S. presidents appointed Smith to almost fifty years of public responsibilities. Shortly before Smith’s death in 1922, Colu...
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Peter Strasser
1876 - 1918 (42 years)
Peter Strasser was chief commander of German Imperial Navy Zeppelins during World War I, the main force operating bombing campaigns from 1915 to 1917. He was killed when flying the German Empire's last airship raid over the United Kingdom.
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Georg Puppe
1867 - 1925 (58 years)
Georg Puppe was a German social physician and medical examiner. Life Georg Puppe attended the Raths- and Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kostrzyn nad Odrą, where he graduated in 1884. He then studied medicine in Berlin and Göttingen. In 1887, he became a member of the fraternity Burschenschaft Brunsviga. In 1888, Puppe completed his exams in Berlin and received his doctorate in the same year with the subject: "Investigations on the sequelae after Abortus".
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August Wagenmann
1863 - 1955 (92 years)
August Emil Ludwig Wagenmann was a German ophthalmologist. August Wagenmann obtained a degree of medical doctor at the universities of Göttingen and Munich. After graduation, he received a position of assistant doctor in the Eye Clinic at Göttingen University, which was chaired by Theodor Leber. In 1888, August Wagenmann was qualified as a privatdocent in ophthalmology.
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Otto Kahler
1849 - 1893 (44 years)
Otto Kahler was a physician and pathologist born in Prague, Austrian Empire. In 1871 he obtained his medical doctorate in Prague, and following an educational trip to Paris, returned to his hometown as an assistant to Joseph Halla at the internal clinic. In 1882 he became an associate professor at Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, and a few years later , was a "full professor" of pathology and therapy. In 1889 he relocated to the University of Vienna, succeeding Heinrich von Bamberger as professor of special pathology. After a year in Vienna, he developed tongue cancer and his assistant, Friedrich Kraus , subsequently took over his lectures.
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Adolf Abicht
1793 - 1860 (67 years)
Adolf Abicht was a Polish-Lithuanian physician. He was a professor of general pathology, therapy, and medical history at the Vilnius University, and was a president of the Medical Society in Vilnius from 1829–1838.
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Paul von Bruns
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Paul von Bruns was a German surgeon. He was born in Tübingen, and was the son of surgeon Victor von Bruns. His father-in-law was Protestant theologian Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker. Bruns was born July 2, 1846. In 1882, Bruns became director of the surgical clinic at Tübingen, as well as a full professor at the University. He was the author of works on numerous medical subjects — laryngotomy for removal of growths in the larynx, acute osteomyelitis, gunshot wounds, limb operations and the treatment of goiters, to name a few.
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Stephen Whisson
1710 - 1783 (73 years)
Stephen Whisson was a tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and coached 72 students in the 1744–1754 period. Biography Wisson was from St Neots, Huntingdonshire and was the son of a publican. In 1735, he matriculated from Wakefield School, Yorkshire.
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Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben
1806 - 1849 (43 years)
Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben , was an Austrian physician, poet and philosopher. He was a member of the von Feuchtersleben family Life He was born as a son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben . He was of an old Saxon noble family. His older half-brother was Eduard von Feuchtersleben , son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben from his first marriage.
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Franz Josef Ruprecht
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
Franz Josef Ruprecht was an Austrian-born physician and botanist active in the Russian Empire, where he was known as Frants Ivanovič Ruprekht . He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, and grew up in Prague, where he studied, and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1836. After a short stint in medical practice in Prague, he was appointed curator of the herbarium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1839, then assistant director of the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden between 1851 and 1855, and professor of botany in 1855 at the University of Saint Petersburg. He died in Saint...
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Robert Meyer
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Robert Meyer was a German pathologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Strassburg, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1889. From 1890 to 1894 he was a medical practitioner in the community of Dedeleben, and afterwards worked as assistant to gynecologist Johann Veit in Berlin.
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John Smith
1721 - 1797 (76 years)
John Smith was a Scottish physician and academic. Smith was born in Maybole, Scotland, where his father, William, was a merchant. He studied at the University of Glasgow beginning in 1736, entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1744 with the support of the Snell Exhibition, and earned a B.A. in 1748 and an M.A. in 1751 from Balliol. He then studied under Nathan Alcock in St Mary Hall, earning his doctorate in 1757. Alcock left Oxford for Bath in the same year, and Smith took his place. At Oxford, he taught anatomy and chemistry. Despite not being a mathematician, he held the Savilian chair of geo...
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