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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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#16701

Alice Paul

1885 - 1977 (92 years)

Alice Stokes Paul was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in August 1920.

#16702

John Grote

1813 - 1866 (53 years)

John Grote was an English moral philosopher and Anglican clergyman. Life and career The son of a banker, John Grote was younger brother to the historian, philosopher and reformer George Grote. He was educated at Beckenham School, Kent. He then went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1831, graduating with a first-class degree in the Classics Tripos in 1835, and became a fellow of Trinity in 1837. From 1847 until his death, he was vicar of Trumpington, where he was a neighbour of his close friend Robert Leslie Ellis, the paralysed mathematician and Bacon scholar. In 1855, Grote succeeded Will...

#16703

William Ritchie Sorley

1855 - 1935 (80 years)

William Ritchie Sorley, FBA , usually cited as W. R. Sorley, was a Scottish philosopher. A Gifford Lecturer, he was one of the British Idealist school of thinkers, with interests in ethics. He was opposed to women being admitted as students to the University of Cambridge.

#16704

Boris Hessen

1893 - 1936 (43 years)

Boris Mikhailovich Hessen , also Gessen , was a Soviet physicist, philosopher and historian of science. He is most famous for his paper on Newton's Principia which became foundational in historiography of science.

#16705

Hans Larsson

1862 - 1944 (82 years)

Hans Larsson was a Swedish Professor of Philosophy at Lund University, Sweden and a Member of the Swedish Academy , chair no. 15. He was known in Sweden as Kloke-Hans . Prof. Larsson was a humanist and an author. He was also a mentor for several Swedish authors and a prominent essayist.

#16706

Ioane Petritsi

1050 - 1200 (150 years)

Ioane Petritsi also referred as John Petritsi was a Georgian Neoplatonist philosopher of the 11th-12th century, active in the Byzantine Empire and Kingdom of Georgia, best known for his translations of Proclus, along with an extensive commentary. In later sources, he is also referred to as Ioane Chimchimeli . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Petritsi as "the most significant Georgian medieval philosopher" and the "most widely read Georgian philosopher."

#16707

Thierry of Chartres

Thierry of Chartres

1100 - 1155 (55 years)

Thierry of Chartres or Theodoric the Breton was a twelfth-century philosopher working at Chartres and Paris, France. The cathedral school at Chartres promoted scholarship before the first university was founded in France. Thierry was a major figure in twelfth-century philosophy and learning, and, like many twelfth-century scholars, is notable for his embrace of Plato's Timaeus and his application of philosophy to theological issues. Some modern scholars believed Thierry to have been a brother of Bernard of Chartres who had founded the school of Chartres, but later research has shown that th...

#16708

Richard Gregg

1885 - 1974 (89 years)

Richard Bartlett Gregg was an American social philosopher said to be "the first American to develop a substantial theory of nonviolent resistance" based on the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, and so influenced the thinking of Martin Luther King Jr., Aldous Huxley, civil-rights theorist Bayard Rustin, the pacifist and socialist reformer Jessie Wallace Hughan, and the Peace Pledge Union.

#16709

Johan Jakob Borelius

Johan Jakob Borelius

1823 - 1909 (86 years)

Johan Jakob Borelius was an influential professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Lund, Sweden from 1866 to 1898. He has been called "The Last Swedish Hegelian." Borelius was born in Skinnskatteberg. He obtained his doctorate from Uppsala University in 1848, afterward becoming a teacher in Kalmar, while he continued his studies under Christopher Jacob Boström. His overall philosophy is laid out in his work Metafysik , not published in full until after his death.

#16710

Aleksander Świętochowski

Aleksander Świętochowski

1849 - 1938 (89 years)

Aleksander Świętochowski was a Polish writer, educator, and philosopher of the Positivist period that followed the January 1863 Uprising. He was widely regarded as the prophet of Polish Positivism, spreading in the Warsaw press the gospel of scientific inquiry, education, economic development, and equality of rights for all, without regard to sex, class, ethnic origin or beliefs. His was a nuanced vision, however, that took account of the shortcomings of human nature; like H.G. Wells, he advocated that power in society be wielded by the most enlightened among its members.

#16711

Ruth Nanda Anshen

1900 - 2003 (103 years)

Ruth Nanda Anshen was an American philosopher, author and editor. She was the author of several books including The Anatomy of Evil, Biography of An Idea, Morals Equals Manners and The Mystery of Consciousness: A Prescription for Human Survival.

#16712

Gerhard Dorn

1530 - 1584 (54 years)

Gerhard Dorn was a Belgian philosopher, translator, alchemist, physician and bibliophile. Biography The details of Gerhard Dorn's early life, along with those of many other 16th century personalities, are lost to history. It is known that he was born about 1530 in Mechelen, which is part of modern-day Belgium's Antwerp Province. He studied with Adam von Bodenstein, to whom his first book is dedicated and began publishing books from around 1565. He used John Dee's personal glyph from his 1564 book, the Monas Hieroglyphica, on the title page of his Chymisticum artificium.

#16713

Vicente Ferreira da Silva

Vicente Ferreira da Silva

1916 - 1963 (47 years)

Vicente Ferreira da Silva was a Brazilian logician, mathematician, and philosopher. He was one of first men in Brazil history to write and have published an academic book in logic and Phenomenology.

#16714

Brion Gysin

1916 - 1986 (70 years)

Brion Gysin was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices. He is best known for his use of the cut-up technique, alongside his close friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville he also invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed. It was in painting and drawing, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by cursive Japanese "grass" script and Arabic script. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin ...

#16715

Louise Michel

1830 - 1905 (75 years)

Louise Michel was a teacher and important figure in the Paris Commune. Following her penal transportation to New Caledonia she embraced anarchism. When returning to France she emerged as an important French anarchist and went on speaking tours across Europe. The journalist Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy." Her use of a black flag at a demonstration in Paris in March 1883 was also the earliest known of what would become known as the anarchy black flag.

#16716

Howard Thurman

1899 - 1981 (82 years)

Howard Washington Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.

#16717

Jules de Gaultier

1858 - 1942 (84 years)

Jules de Gaultier , born Jules Achille de Gaultier de Laguionie, was a French philosopher and essayist. He was a contributor to Mercure de France and one of the chief advocates of "nietzscheism" in vogue in the literary circles of the day. He was known especially for his theory of "bovarysme" , by which he meant the continual need of humans to invent themselves, to lie to themselves. His books include De Kant à Nietzsche and Le Bovarysme, essai sur le pouvoir d'imaginer .

#16718

Matthias Bel

1684 - 1749 (65 years)

Matthias Bel or Matthias Bél was a Lutheran pastor and polymath from the Kingdom of Hungary. Bel was active in the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, philology, history, and theoretical theology; he was the founder of Hungarian geographic science and a pioneer of descriptive ethnography and economy. A leading figure in pietism. He is also known as the Great Ornament of Hungary .

#16719

Abraham de Balmes

1440 - 1523 (83 years)

Abraham de Balmes ben Meir was an Italian Jewish physician and translator of the early 16th century. A short time before his death he was physician in ordinary to the cardinal Dominico Grimani at Padua. See Steinschneider, "Hebr. Bibl." xxi. 7 and 67; "Hebr. Uebers." p. 62; Perles, "Beiträge," pp. 193, 197, etc.

#16720

Priscian of Lydia

500 - Present (1526 years)

Priscian of Lydia , was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. Two works of his have survived. Life A contemporary of Simplicius of Cilicia, Priscian was born in Lydia, probably in the late 5th century. He was one of the last Neoplatonists to study at the Academy when Damascius was at its head. When Justinian I closed the school in 529, Priscian, together with Damascius, Simplicius, and four other colleagues were forced to seek asylum in the court of the Persian king Chosroes. By 533 they were allowed back into the Byzantine Empire after Justinian and Chosroes concluded a peace treaty, in whic...

#16721

Guru Tegh Bahadur

Guru Tegh Bahadur

1621 - 1675 (54 years)

Guru Tegh Bahadur was the ninth of ten gurus who founded the Sikh religion and was the leader of Sikhs from 1665 until his beheading in 1675. He was born in Amritsar, Punjab, India in 1621 and was the youngest son of Guru Hargobind, the sixth Sikh guru. Considered a principled and fearless warrior, he was a learned spiritual scholar and a poet whose 115 hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, which is the main text of Sikhism.

#16722

Max Dessoir

1867 - 1947 (80 years)

Maximilian Dessoir was a German philosopher, psychologist and theorist of aesthetics. Career Dessoir was born in Berlin, into a German Jewish family, his parents being Ludwig Dessoir , "Germany's most admired Shakespearean actor", and Ludwig's third wife Auguste Grünemeyer . Max earned doctorates from the universities of Berlin and Würzburg . He was a professor at Berlin from 1897 until 1933, when the Nazis forbade him to teach.

#16723

Peter Coffey

1876 - 1943 (67 years)

Peter Coffey was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and neo-scholastic philosopher. Life Coffey was educated at the Meath Diocesan Seminary in Navan, and St Patrick's College, Maynooth . He studied for his doctorate at the University of Louvain, and attended the University of Strasbourg. He was ordained in 1900.

#16724

Dickinson S. Miller

1868 - 1963 (95 years)

Dickinson Sargeant Miller was an American philosopher best known for his work in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. He worked with other philosophers including William James, George Santayana, John Dewey, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

#16725

Giorgio Colli

1917 - 1979 (62 years)

Giorgio Colli was an Italian philosopher, philologist and historian. A native of Turin, he taught ancient philosophy at Pisa's university for thirty years; he edited and translated Aristotle's Organon and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason for Einaudi, a major publishing house in Italy. Subsequently, he produced the first complete edition of Nietzsche's work together with his friend Mazzino Montinari. His work culminated in La Sapienza greca, an edition and translation of the "Presocratics" . Interrupted by his death in January 1979, it was supposed to be in eleven volumes.

#16726

Jean Charlot

1898 - 1979 (81 years)

Louis Henri Jean Charlot was a French-born American painter and illustrator, active mainly in Mexico and the United States. Life Charlot was born in Paris. His father, Henri, owned an import-export business and was a Russian-born émigré, albeit one who supported the Bolshevik cause. His mother Anna was an artist. His mother's family originated from Mexico City; his grandfather was a French-Indian mestizo. His great-grandfather had immigrated to Mexico in the 1820s shortly after the country's independence from Spain, and married a woman who was half-Aztec. This was likely the source of a myth ...

#16727

Bion of Borysthenes

Bion of Borysthenes

325 BC - Present (2351 years)

Bion of Borysthenes was a Greek philosopher. After being sold into slavery, and then released, he moved to Athens, where he studied in almost every school of philosophy. It is, however, for his Cynic-style diatribes that he is chiefly remembered. He satirized the foolishness of people, attacked religion, and eulogized philosophy.

#16728

Richard Wahle

1857 - 1935 (78 years)

Richard Wahle was professor of philosophy at the Universities of Czernowitz and Vienna. Wahle pronounced in his Tragicomedy of Wisdom on what he acknowledged as only "definite, agnostic, absolute critique of knowledge" and psychology as surviving, or rather maintained that critiques of knowledge, logic and psychology have nothing to do with philosophy. As a consequence of his fundamental attitude, Wahle did not recognize the ego as a nucleus of forces but only as an imprint in the texture of the universe.

#16729

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

1720 - 1778 (58 years)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" . He was the father of Francesco Piranesi, Laura Piranesi and Pietro Piranesi.

#16730

Danko Grlić

1923 - 1984 (61 years)

Danko Grlić was a Marxist humanist, and a member of the Praxis school of SFR Yugoslavia. He was born in Gračanica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He moved to Zagreb with his family in 1931. During the Second World War he joined the anti-fascist struggle. He appreciated freedom above all, so due to his liberal expression, he often came to conflict with the government, which ended very badly for him. Because he opposed the resolution of Cominform, he was sentenced to three months in the prison camp Goli otok in 1948. Grlic did not accept the resolution, but for one part he held that it was correct, - where it says there is not enough democracy in the Yugoslav Communist Party.

#16731

Gareth Evans

1946 - 1980 (34 years)

Michael Gareth Justin Evans was a British philosopher who made substantial contributions to logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. He is best known for his posthumous work The Varieties of Reference , edited by John McDowell. The book considers different kinds of reference to objects, and argues for a number of conditions that must obtain for reference to occur.

#16732

Antonio Maria Valsalva

Antonio Maria Valsalva

1666 - 1723 (57 years)

Antonio Maria Valsalva , was an Italian anatomist born in Imola. His research focused on the anatomy of the ears. He coined the term Eustachian tube and he described the aortic sinuses of Valsalva in his writings, published posthumously in 1740. His name is associated with the Valsalva antrum of the ear and the Valsalva maneuver, which is used as a test of circulatory function. Anatomical structures bearing his name are Valsalva’s muscle and taeniae Valsalvae. He observed that when weakness of one side of the body is caused by a lesion in the brain, the culprit lesion tends to be on the si...

#16733

K. N. Jayatilleke

K. N. Jayatilleke

1920 - 1970 (50 years)

Kulatissa Nanda Jayatilleke was an internationally recognised authority on Buddhist philosophy whose book Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge has been described as "an outstanding philosophical interpretation of the Buddha's teaching" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

#16734

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

1881 - 1955 (74 years)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books.

#16735

Juan Luis Vives

Juan Luis Vives

1492 - 1540 (48 years)

Juan Luis Vives March was a Spanish scholar and Renaissance humanist who spent most of his adult life in the southern Hapsburg Netherlands. His beliefs on the soul, insight into early medical practice, and perspective on emotions, memory and learning earned him the title of the "father" of modern psychology. Vives was the first to shed light on some key ideas that established how psychology is perceived today.

#16736

Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan

1363 - 1430 (67 years)

Christine de Pizan or Pisan , was an Italian-born French poet and court writer for King Charles VI of France and several French dukes. Christine de Pizan served as a court writer in medieval France after the death of her husband. Christine's patrons included dukes Louis I of Orleans, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, and his son John the Fearless. Considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings, her work includes novels, poetry, and biography, and she also penned literary, historical, philosophical, political, and religious reviews and analyses. Her best known works are The Book of the City...

#16737

Anandavardhana

820 - 890 (70 years)

Ānandavardhana was the author of Dhvanyāloka, or A Light on Suggestion , a work articulating the philosophy of "aesthetic suggestion" . The philosopher Abhinavagupta wrote an important commentary on it, the Locana, or The Eye.

#16738

James F. Thomson

1921 - 1984 (63 years)

James F. Thomson was a British philosopher who devised the puzzle of Thomson's lamp, to argue against the possibility of supertasks Academic career Thomson was born in London in 1921 and graduated from the University of London in 1949. He was an assistant in the Department of Philosophy, and John Stuart Mill Scholar at University College, London, from 1949–1950. He was Commonwealth Fund Fellow at Harvard and Princeton from 1950–1951; assistant lecturer at University College from 1951–1953 and University Lecturer in Moral Science at the University of Cambridge from 1953–1956. Thomson was appo...

#16739

Rasmus Nielsen

1809 - 1884 (75 years)

Rasmus Nielsen was a Danish philosopher and professor, as well as a critic of Søren Kierkegaard. Nielsen was the son of a farmer. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen, starting in 1832 and graduating in 1837. He then went on to get a licentiate degree and, after giving some lectures on theological topics, succeeded Poul Martin Møller as professor of moral theology.

#16740

Moses Montefiore

Moses Montefiore

1784 - 1885 (101 years)

Sir Moses Haim Montefiore, 1st Baronet, was a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London. Born to an Italian Sephardic Jewish family based in London, after he achieved success, he donated large sums of money to promote industry, business, economic development, education and health among the Jewish community in the Levant. He founded Mishkenot Sha'ananim in 1860, the first Jewish settlement outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

#16741

Yamazaki Ansai

1619 - 1682 (63 years)

Yamazaki Ansai was a Japanese philosopher and scholar. He began his career as a Buddhist monk, but eventually came to follow the teachings of Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi. He combined Neo-Confucian ideas with Shinto to create Suika Shinto.

#16742

Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann

1775 - 1839 (64 years)

Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann was a German philosopher and anthropologist. Biography Windischmann attended the Gymnasium in Mainz, and in 1772 took the course in philosophy at the university there. He continued this course at Würzburg, where he also studied the natural sciences and medicine until 1796. After a year at Vienna he settled in 1797 as a practising physician at Mainz, where he also gave medical lectures. In 1801 the Elector of Mainz, Friedrich Karl Joseph von Erthal, summoned him to Aschaffenburg as court physician.

#16743

Roger de La Fresnaye

Roger de La Fresnaye

1885 - 1925 (40 years)

Roger de La Fresnaye was a French Cubist painter. Early years and education La Fresnaye was born in Le Mans where his father, an officer in the French army, was temporarily stationed. The La Fresnayes were an aristocratic family whose ancestral home, the Château de La Fresnaye, is in Falaise. His education was classically based, and was followed from 1903 to 1904 by studies at the Académie Julian in Paris, and from 1904 to 1908 at the École des Beaux-Arts. From 1908 he studied at the Académie Ranson under Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier, whose joint influence is evident in early works such as Woman with Chrysanthemums, 1909.

#16744

Anna Willess Williams

Anna Willess Williams

1857 - 1926 (69 years)

Anna Willess Williams was a teacher and philosophical writer best known as the model for George T. Morgan's silver dollar design, popularly known as the Morgan dollar. Morgan dollar In 1876, George T. Morgan began creating a series of new coin designs at the behest of Director of the Mint, Dr. Henry R. Linderman. Morgan opted to use the profile of an American girl to depict the Goddess of Liberty instead of simply creating an imaginary figure for the obverse of his new design. After he rejected several possible candidates, Morgan's friend, artist Thomas Eakins, recommended Anna Williams of Philadelphia.

#16745

Eurytus

500 BC - 400 BC (100 years)

Eurytus was an eminent Pythagorean philosopher from Magna Graecia who Iamblichus in one passage describes as a native of Croton, while in another, he enumerates him among the Tarentine Pythagoreans.

#16746

Jan Sten

1899 - 1937 (38 years)

Jan Ernestovich Sten was a Soviet Communist Party functionary and specialist in Marxist philosophy. Early career Born into a peasant family in modern-day Latvia, Jan Sten joined the Bolsheviks as a teenager, in 1914, shortly before taking up a place at a teachers' seminary in Valmiera. In 1917, when Latvia was overrun by the German army, he was evacuated to Syzran After graduating, in 1919, he fought in the Russian Civil War. In 1921, he was one of the original batch of students enrolled in the Institute of Red Professors, and graduated from its philosophy department in 1924, after which he t...

#16747

Stanisław Staszic

Stanisław Staszic

1755 - 1826 (71 years)

Stanisław Wawrzyniec Staszic was a leading figure in the Polish Enlightenment: a Catholic priest, philosopher, geologist, writer, poet, translator and statesman. A physiocrat, monist, pan-Slavist and laissez-fairist, he supported many reforms in Poland. He is particularly remembered for his political writings during the "Great Sejm" and for his large support towards the Constitution of 3 May 1791, adopted by that Sejm.

#16748

Prodicus

460 BC - 380 BC (80 years)

Prodicus of Ceos was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as a speaker and a teacher. Plato treats him with greater respect than the other sophists, and in several of the Platonic dialogues Socrates appears as the friend of Prodicus. One writer claims Socrates used his method of instruction. Prodicus made linguistics and ethics prominent in his curriculum. The content of one of his speeches is still known, and concerns a fable in which Heracles has to make a choice between Virtue and Vice. He also interp...

#16749

Elme Marie Caro

Elme Marie Caro

1826 - 1887 (61 years)

Elme Marie Caro was a French philosopher. Life His father, a professor of philosophy, gave him an education at the Stanislas College and the École Normale, where he graduated in 1848. After being professor of philosophy at several provincial universities, he received the degree of doctor, and came to Paris in 1858 as master of conferences at the École Normale.

#16750

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1864 - 1901 (37 years)

Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa , known as Toulouse Lautrec , was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the sometimes decadent affairs of those times.

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