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,
#16701
Géraud de Cordemoy
1626 - 1684 (58 years)
Géraud de Cordemoy was a French philosopher, historian and lawyer. He is mainly known for his works in metaphysics and for his theory of language. Biography Géraud de Cordemoy was born in a family of ancient nobility coming from Auvergne . He was the third of four children. His father was a master in arts at the University of Paris named Géraud de Cordemoy who died when he was nine years old. His mother was named Nicole de Cordemoy. As for Géraud, he was a private tutor and a linguist and practised as a lawyer.
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Pope Alexander II
1010 - 1073 (63 years)
Pope Alexander II , born Anselm of Baggio, was the head of the Roman Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1061 to his death in 1073. Born in Milan, Anselm was deeply involved in the Pataria reform movement. Elected according to the terms of his predecessor's bull, In nomine Domini, Anselm's was the first election by the cardinals without the participation of the people and minor clergy of Rome. He also authorized the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
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Heinrich Racker
1910 - 1960 (50 years)
Heinrich Racker was a Polish-Argentine psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish origin. Escaping Nazism, he fled to Buenos Aires in 1939. Already a doctor in musicology and philosophy, he became a psychoanalyst, first under the direction of Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, and later working with Ángel Garma and Marie Langer in Argentina. His most important work is a study of the psychoanalytic technique known as transference and countertransference, which was published for the first time in 1968.
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John Brown
1735 - 1788 (53 years)
John Brown was a Scottish physician and the creator of the Brunonian system of medicine. Life Brown was born in Berwickshire, the son of a day-labourer. He was able to obtain an early and 'excellent classical education' from Mr. William Cruickshank, "one of the most celebrated teachers Scotland has produced." Brown had a particular ability for Latin, and was an early reader, having read the whole of the Old Testament by age 5. As one of his contemporaries, Thomas Beddoes, a renowned English physician, wrote in 1795: "I conclude that he was endowed with that quickness of sympathy and that sens...
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G. C. Field
1887 - 1955 (68 years)
Guy Cromwell Field FBA was a British philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy, at the University of Bristol 1926–1952 and its Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1944–1945 and 1947–1952. He was the grandson of Jesse Collings.
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Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie
1871 - 1940 (69 years)
Kenneth Sylvan Launfal Guthrie , philosopher and writer, was a grandson of feminist Frances Wright and brother of William Norman Guthrie, a Scottish-born Episcopalian priest who issued a series of translations of ancient philosophical writers, "making available to the public the neglected treasures of Neo-platonism".
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Nikolai Stankevich
1813 - 1840 (27 years)
Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich was a Russian public figure, philosopher, and poet. Biography Nikolay Stankevich was born in Uderevka, Voronezh Governorate, and in 1834 graduated from the Moscow State University, where he was influenced by Professor Mikhail Kachenovsky and followers of the so-called "skeptical school" in historiography. By late 1831, Stankevich had organized a literary and philosophical society called the Circle of Stankevich. He had been under police surveillance since 1833 due to his connections with a group of oppositionary university students led by Ya.I. Kostenetsky. I...
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Nicky Britten
#16709
Adriaan Heereboord
1614 - 1661 (47 years)
Adriaan Heereboord was a Dutch philosopher and logician. Life He was born in Leiden and graduated from the University of Leiden, where he had the chair of philosophy from 1643. Heereboord sympathised with the new thinking of René Descartes, but was also influenced by Petrus Ramus and Francis Bacon. He clashed almost immediately at Leiden with Jacobus Revius and Adam Steuart, standing respectively for traditional metaphysics and theology. A combative drinker, Heereboord became an embattled figure in the university, with his private life the subject of pamphlets, and in the end dropped out of h...
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Takano Iwasaburo
1871 - 1949 (78 years)
was a Japanese social statistician and labor activist. Early life and education Takano was the younger brother of Takano Fusataro. He was born on October 15, 1871, in Nagasaki, Japan. He attended what is now the Kaisei Academy, the , and the Tokyo Imperial University . Takano's university education was partially funded by Fusataro's work in the United States. He studied at Munich University from 1899 to 1903, where he met his wife, Barbara. They had a daughter in 1902. After returning to Japan, he earned a Doctor of Law in 1904.
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Bosley Crowther
1905 - 1981 (76 years)
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews were sometimes regarded as unnecessarily harsh. Crowther was an advocate of foreign-language films in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly those of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini.
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Moritz von Schwind
1804 - 1871 (67 years)
Moritz von Schwind was an Austrian painter, born in Vienna. Schwind's genius was lyrical—he drew inspiration from chivalry, folklore, and the songs of the people. Schwind died in Pöcking in Bavaria, and was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich.
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Edwyn Bevan
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Edwyn Robert Bevan OBE, FBA was a versatile British philosopher and historian of the Hellenistic world. Life Edwyn Robert Bevan was the fourteenth of sixteen children of Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, a partner in Barclays Bank, and his second wife Emma Frances Shuttleworth, daughter of Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, Bishop of Chichester. He was educated at Monkton Combe School and at New College, Oxford.
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Tsunashima Ryōsen
1873 - 1907 (34 years)
Tsunashima Ryōsen was a Japanese author and philosopher. He was a graduate of Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō. He was originally a rationalist and then became a Christian. He is buried in Tokyo's Zōshigaya cemetery.
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Judith K. Ockene
#16716
Robert Paul Myers
#16717
Eduard Caspar Jacob von Siebold
1801 - 1861 (60 years)
Eduard Caspar Jacob von Siebold was a German professor of gynecology. He worked at Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Marburg and University of Göttingen. Life and career Von Siebold was born 19 March 1801, the son of gynecologist Adam Elias von Siebold, in Würzburg, in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg . He became a medical doctor in 1826, docent in obstetrics in 1827 in Berlin, and professor in this field in 1829 in Marburg. From 1833 until his death in 1861, he was director of the clinic for gynecology and obstetrics at University of Göttingen, succeeding Caspar Julius Mende. Von ...
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Baker Brownell
1887 - 1965 (78 years)
Baker Brownell was an American philosopher. Brownell was born in St. Charles, Illinois, the fifth of six children of Eugene A. and Esther Burr Baker Brownell. He grew up in St. Charles, where he graduated from St. Charles High School.
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Martin Foss
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Martin Foss was a German-born American philosopher, professor, and scholar. Life and career Martin Foss was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1889 and studied philosophy and law at German and French universities. He married Hilde Schindler, and they had two children, Oliver Foss, a painter, and the composer Lukas Foss. The Jewish family left Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came into power, and for the next four years Martin Fuchs commuted secretly between Paris and Berlin. With the help of the Quaker community in the United States, the family was able to immigrate to the U.S. in 1937. The Quakers...
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Gustav Emil Mueller
1898 - 1987 (89 years)
Gustav Emil Mueller was a Swiss philosopher and Hegelian scholar. Mueller was born in Bern, Switzerland, and received a doctorate in philosophy in 1923 from the University of Bern. He studied also at the University of Heidelberg. After teaching in European universities and joining the faculty of the University of Oregon in 1925, he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma in 1930 where he remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1968. He then returned to Bern, where he continued to work and write until the end of his life. Here is a quote:
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Franz Xaver Zippe
1791 - 1863 (72 years)
Franz Xaver Maximilian Zippe , was a Bohemian natural philosopher, scientist and mineralogist. Biography After attending secondary school in Dresden, Zippe studied philosophy at the Prague University from 1807 to 1809. While still a student, he attended lectures of the chemist Karl August Neumann and Josef Johann Steinmann , a professor of general chemistry at the Polytechnic Academy in Prague. Zippe developed a close relationship with Dr. Steinmann. Starting in 1819 Zippe taught mineralogy, first as an adjunct, and beginning in 1822 as an assistant professor at the Polytechnic. In 1835 he b...
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Pope Urban II
1035 - 1099 (64 years)
Pope Urban II , otherwise known as Odo of Châtillon or Otho de Lagery, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 March 1088 to his death. He is best known for convening the Council of Clermont which ignited the series of Christian conquests known as the Crusades.
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O. P. Kretzmann
1901 - 1975 (74 years)
Otto Paul Kretzmann was a Lutheran pastor, professor, author, and long-tenured president of Valparaiso University. Early life and education Otto Paul Kretzmann was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1901 and grew up in New York City in a Lutheran family. His father, grandfather, and five brothers were all Lutheran pastors. He was called 'John' by family and close friends, but later went by and published under his initials, 'O. P.'. Kretzmann graduated from Concordia Collegiate Institute in Bronxville, New York in 1920. He attended Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri and graduated in 1924 with a master's degree in sacred theology.
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Michael Georg Conrad
1846 - 1927 (81 years)
Michael Georg Conrad was a German writer and philosopher. He was the founder and editor of Die Gesellschaft. External links
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Tite Margwelaschwili
1891 - 1946 (55 years)
Tite Margwelaschwili was a Georgian philosopher and writer. He studied at the University of Leipzig and did a doctor's degree in history at the University Halle-Wittenberg in 1914. His career in Georgia was interrupted by the Soviet invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in 1921.
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James Roosevelt Bayley
1814 - 1877 (63 years)
James Roosevelt Bayley was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the first Bishop of Newark and the eighth Archbishop of Baltimore . Early life and education Bayley's paternal grandfather, Dr. Richard Bayley, was a professor at Columbia College who created New York's quarantine system. Dr. Bayley had three children by his first wife, among whom was Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was canonized in 1975 as the first American-born Roman Catholic saint. After his first wife's death, Dr. Bayley married Charlotte Amelia Barclay, a member of the Roosevelt family, and the couple had seven children, the sixth of whom was Archbishop Bayley's father, Guy Carleton Bayley, born in 1786.
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Sidney Edward Mezes
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
Sidney Edward Mezes was an American philosopher. Biography He was born in what is now the town of Belmont, California, on September 23, 1863, to a Spanish-born father and Italian-born mother. He graduated in 1884 from the University of California, Berkeley in engineering and was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. After returning to university, he graduated in 1890 from Harvard University, in philosophy, being awarded a doctorate there in 1893. From 1893 to 1894 he taught philosophy at the University of Chicago. From 1894 he was for, 20 years, in positions at the University of Texas, becoming a professor there in 1906.
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Paul Gerson Unna
1850 - 1929 (79 years)
Paul Gerson Unna, was a German physician specialized in dermatology and one of the pioneers in dermatopathology. Biography Paul Unna was born to German Jewish parents Moritz Adolph Unna, a physician from Hamburg. Unna was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums and Ida Gerson, who descended from a long line of physicians. He began to study medicine at the University of Heidelberg, but had to interrupt it in order to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, where he was severely wounded. In 1871, he resumed his studies in Heidelberg and later went to the University of Leipzig, finally attaining a doctorate under Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer in Strasbourg.
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Francis Bonnici
1853 - 1905 (52 years)
Francis Bonnici was a Maltese educationist, philanthropist and a minor philosopher. In philosophy he mostly specialised in pedagogy. Life Bonnici was born in Cospicua, Malta, on July 14, 1853. However, when still very young, his family moved to Mqabba. He graduated as Doctor of Theology from the University of Malta in 1872 and was ordained priest in 1876. He taught languages for many years at the bishop’s major seminary at Mdina, and was Rector at the bishop’s minor seminary at Floriana. He was nominated a canon of the bishop’s cathedral chapter in 1882.
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Pietro d'Abano
1250 - 1315 (65 years)
Pietro d'Abano, also known as Petrus de Apono, Petrus Aponensis or Peter of Abano , was an Italian philosopher, astrologer, and professor of medicine in Padua. He was born in the Italian town from which he takes his name, now Abano Terme. He gained fame by writing Conciliator Differentiarum, quae inter Philosophos et Medicos Versantur. He was eventually accused of heresy and atheism, and came before the Inquisition. He died in prison in 1315 before the end of his trial.
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John Gay
1699 - 1745 (46 years)
John Gay , a cousin of the poet John Gay, was an English philosopher, biblical scholar and Church of England clergyman. The greatest happiness principle, Gay supposed, represented a middle ground between the egoism of Hobbes and Hutcheson's moral sense theory.
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Mason Welch Gross
1911 - 1977 (66 years)
Mason Welch Gross was an American television quiz show personality, philosopher and academic. The namesake of Mason Gross School of the Arts, he served as the sixteenth President of Rutgers University from 1959 to 1971.
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Liu Boming
1887 - 1923 (36 years)
Liu Boming was a Chinese educator and philosopher born in the late Qing Dynasty. Liu Boming is the first Chinese who received a doctor's degree in philosophy. He finished his work The Theory of Chinese Mind Nature in 1913, and The Philosophy of Taoism in 1915 when he was a Doctoral candidate at Northwestern University in the United States. He introduced western philosophy to China when he was a professor of Nanjing University. Under his influence, the scholars of Xueheng School translated a number of books of classic Greek philosophy into Chinese.
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Leonard Leibovici
#16735
Minnie Earl Sears
1873 - 1933 (60 years)
Minnie Earl Sears formulated the Sears List of Subject Headings, a simplification of the Library of Congress Subject Headings. In 1999, American Libraries named her one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century."
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Erik Yudin
1930 - 1976 (46 years)
Erik Grigorevich Yudin was a Russian philosopher and cybernetician. In 1956, Yudin, publicly denounced the Russian invasion of Hungary. His employment was termination, he was expelled from the Communist Party, and then arrested by the KGB and imprisoned. In March 1960, he was released from prison after numerous petitions from his parents. He then started to attended seminars of the Moscow Methodological Group run by Georgy Shchedrovitsky.
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Critolaus
200 BC - 120 BC (80 years)
Critolaus of Phaselis was a Greek philosopher of the Peripatetic school. He was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC , where their doctrines fascinated the citizens, but frightened the more conservative statesmen. None of his writings survive. He was interested in rhetoric and ethics, and considered pleasure to be an evil. He maintained the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world, and of the human race in general, directing his arguments against the Stoics.
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Dominic Borg
1501 - 1601 (100 years)
Dominic Borg was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised in logic and rhetoric. Life He probably lectured at the Collegium Melitense in Valletta. The extant works of Borg reveal practically nothing in terms of biographical data. What they do attest to is his philosophical prowess and his clarity of thought.
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Robert B. Bourne
#16740
Shishunala Sharif
1819 - 1889 (70 years)
Santha Shishunala Sharifa was an Indian social reformer, philosopher and poet. Birth and early life Santa Shishunala Sharifa was born on 7 March 1819 in Shishuvinahala, a village in Shigganvi taluk , Karnataka. He was the son of Imam Saheb, who was a disciple of Hajaresha Qadri, whose dream was to unite Hinduism and Islam. Hajaresha Qadri used to give "Linga Deeksha", or initiation by tying a linga around the neck of a disciple, as per the Lingayat tradition. His father used to teach him Ramayana, Mahabharata, and even the teachings of Allama Prabhu. Legend has it that Shishunala Sharifa was ...
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Heinrich Anton de Bary
1831 - 1888 (57 years)
Heinrich Anton de Bary was a German surgeon, botanist, microbiologist, and mycologist . He is considered a founding father of plant pathology as well as the founder of modern mycology. His extensive and careful studies of the life history of fungi and contribution to the understanding of algae and higher plants established landmarks in biology.
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Dietrich Georg von Kieser
1779 - 1862 (83 years)
Dietrich Georg von Kieser was a German physician born in Harburg. He studied medicine at the Universities of Würzburg and Göttingen, receiving his doctorate from the latter institution in 1804. For most of his career he was a professor at the University of Jena, where from 1824 to 1862 he served as a "full professor".
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He Yan
195 - 249 (54 years)
He Yan , courtesy name Pingshu, was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the state of Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period of China. He was a grandson of He Jin, a general and regent of the Eastern Han dynasty. His father, He Xian, died early, so his mother, Lady Yin, remarried the warlord Cao Cao. He Yan thus grew up as Cao Cao's stepson. He gained a reputation for intelligence and scholarship at an early age, but he was unpopular and criticised for being arrogant and dissolute. He was rejected for government positions by both emperors Cao Pi and Cao Rui, but became a minister during the rule of Cao Shuang.
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Judah Leon Abravanel
1460 - 1530 (70 years)
Judah Leon Abravanel or Abrabanel , otherwise known by the pen name of Leo the Hebrew , was a Portuguese–Jewish philosopher, physician, and poet. His work Dialogues of Love was one of the most important philosophical works of his time.
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Lady Mary Shepherd
1777 - 1847 (70 years)
Lady Mary Shepherd, née Primrose was a Scottish philosopher who published two philosophical books, one in 1824 and one in 1827. According to Robert Blakey, in her entry in his History of the Philosophy of the Mind, she exercised considerable influence over the Edinburgh philosophy of her day.
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Adolf Bernhard Marx
1795 - 1866 (71 years)
Friedrich Heinrich Adolf Bernhard Marx [A. B. Marx] was a German music theorist, critic, and musicologist. Life Marx was the son of a Jewish doctor in Halle who, though a member of the congregation, was according to his son a convinced atheist. Marx was given the names Samuel Moses at birth, but changed these at his baptism in 1819.
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Yohanan Alemanno
1435 - 1504 (69 years)
Yohanan Alemanno was an Italian Jewish rabbi, noted Kabbalist, humanist philosopher, and exegete, and teacher of the Hebrew language to Italian humanists including Pico della Mirandola. He taught that the Kabbalah was divine magic.
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Jorge Guillermo Borges
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam was an Argentine lawyer, teacher, writer, philosopher and translator. He was also an anarchist and a follower of Herbert Spencer's philosophy of philosophical anarchism. He was Jorge Luis Borges's father.
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Jules Joseph Lefebvre
1834 - 1912 (78 years)
Jules Joseph Lefebvre was a French painter, educator and theorist. Early life Lefebvre was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836. He entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1852 and was a pupil of Léon Cogniet.
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Maximus of Ephesus
310 - 372 (62 years)
Maximus of Ephesus was a Neoplatonist philosopher. He is said to have come from a rich family, and exercised great influence over the emperor Julian, who was commended to him by Aedesius. Maximus pandered to the emperor's love of magic and theurgy and won a high position at court, where his overbearing manner made him numerous enemies. He spent an interval in prison after the death of Julian, and eventually was executed by Valens.
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