The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#16901
Mary Ellen Avery
#32959
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Mary Ellen Avery , also known as Mel, was an American pediatrician. In the 1950s, Avery's pioneering research efforts helped lead to the discovery of the main cause of respiratory distress syndrome in premature babies: her identification of surfactant led to the development of replacement therapy for premature infants and has been credited with saving over 830,000 lives. Her childhood, mentors, drive, and education inspired Avery to be the visionary that she was. In 1991 President George H.W. Bush conferred the National Medal of Science on Avery for her work on RDS.
Go to Profile#16902
Anne M. Leggett
#102347
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anne Marie Leggett is an American mathematical logician. She is an associate professor emerita of mathematics at Loyola University Chicago. Leggett is the editor-in-chief of the bi-monthly newsletter of the Association for Women in Mathematics , a position she has held continuously since 1977. She has served on the Executive Committee of the AWM since 1977 and the AWM Policy and Advocacy Committee . With Bettye Anne Case, she is the editor of the book Complexities: Women in Mathematics . Leggett received an Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for Complexities in 2006.
Go to Profile#16903
Richard E. Besser
#7636
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Richard E. Besser is an American doctor and executive who has served as president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation since April 2017. Besser served as the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry from January to June 2009. He was ABC News' former chief health and medical editor. Besser is a brother-in-law to Scottish singer Annie Lennox.
Go to Profile#16904
Petrus Johann du Toit
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Petrus Johann du Toit was a South African veterinary scientist and the successor of Arnold Theiler as Director of Veterinary Services at Onderstepoort between 1927 and 1948. He was the son of Daniel Francois du Toit , one of the founders of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, and owner of the first Afrikaans newspaper, Die Patriot. His mother was Margaretha Magdalene van Nierop.
Go to Profile#16905
Tahir Shamsi
#84044
Overall Influence
1962 - 2021 (59 years)
Tahir Sultan Shamsi was a Pakistani professor of medicine, researcher and pioneer of Bone marrow transplant in Pakistan worked as a clinical hematologist and bone marrow transplant physician. He established the National Institute for Blood Diseases . He was the director of the Stem Cell Programme at NIBD as well.
Go to Profile#16906
Worta McCaskill-Stevens
#183411
Overall Influence
Worta J. McCaskill-Stevens was an American physician-scientist and medical oncologist specialized in cancer disparities research, management of comorbidities within clinical trials, and molecular research for cancer prevention interventions. She was chief of the community oncology and prevention trials research group at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#16907
Mohammad Gharib
1909 - 1975 (66 years)
Mohammad Gharib was an Iranian physician, clinician, distinguished university professor and a pioneer of pediatrics in Iran. Gharib is known as the father of pediatrics in Iran. He was a graduate of Paris University Medical School.
Go to Profile#16908
Trinh T. Minh-ha
#171359
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a Vietnamese filmmaker, writer, literary theorist, composer, and professor. She has been making films for over thirty years and may be best known for her films Reassemblage'', made in 1982, and Surname Viet Given Name Nam, made in 1985. She has received several awards and grants, including the American Film Institute's National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, and Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Her films have been the subject of twenty retrospectives.
Go to Profile#16909
George Baker
#80521
Overall Influence
1931 - 2011 (80 years)
George Morris Baker, MBE was an English actor and writer. He was best known for portraying Tiberius in I, Claudius, and Inspector Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Early life Baker was born in Varna, Bulgaria. His father was an English businessman and honorary vice consul and his mother an Irish Red Cross nurse who moved to Bulgaria to help fight cholera.
Go to Profile#16910
Torben Schousboe
#95340
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Torben Schousboe was a Danish music researcher and writer. After completing organ studies in 1960, he graduated from Copenhagen University, where he taught from 1972 to 1996. He is known above all for his work on Carl Nielsen. In 1983 he published, in collaboration with Nielsen's daughter Irmelin Eggert Møller, the composer's diaries and correspondence with his wife Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen.
Go to Profile#16911
Barbara Takenaga
#56368
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Barbara Takenaga is an American artist known for swirling, abstract paintings that have been described as psychedelic and cosmic, as well as scientific, due to their highly detailed, obsessive patterning. She gained wide recognition in the 2000s, as critics such as David Cohen and Kenneth Baker placed her among a leading edge of artists renewing abstraction with paintings that emphasized visual beauty and excess, meticulous technique, and optical effects. Her work suggests possibilities that range from imagined landscapes and aerial maps to astronomical and meteorological phenomena to microscopic views of cells, aquatic creatures or mineral cross-sections.
Go to Profile#16912
Hans-Jørgen Holman
1925 - 1986 (61 years)
Hans-Jörgen Holman was a Norwegian-American pianist/ harpsichordist and professor of music at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. Holman specialized in Medieval and Renaissance music, and his 1961 Indiana University doctoral dissertation The Responsoria Prolixa of the Codex Worcester F 160 is considered one of the principal authoritative works on the vocal music of the medieval church. One of the first musicologists to pioneer computer aided big-data studies, Holman built a database of 48.000 melodic phrases from European and Scandinavian sources in order to trace melodic migration and development.
Go to Profile#16913
Christopher Robe
#130784
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Christopher Robé is a professor in film and media studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has published Left of Hollywood: Cinema, Modernism, and the Emergence of U.S. Radical Film Culture., which resituates such well-known auteurs like Sergei Eisenstein and Jean Renoir in an American political context.,. It also argues that the 1930s proved a vital moment in time regarding the emergence of Left Film Theory,.
Go to Profile#16914
Jacob Micyllus
1503 - 1558 (55 years)
Jacob Micyllus, was a German Renaissance humanist and teacher, who conducted the city's Latin school in Frankfurt and held a chair at the University of Heidelberg, during times of great cultural stress in Germany.
Go to Profile#16915
Iván Erőd
#169282
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Iván Erőd was a Hungarian-Austrian composer and pianist. Educated in Budapest, he emigrated to Austria in 1956, where he studied at the Vienna Music Academy. He was successful as a pianist and composer of operas, chamber music and much more, with elements from serialism, Hungarian folk music and jazz. He first was a professor of music theory and composition at the University of Music in Graz , then a professor of composition at the Vienna Music Academy from 1989.
Go to Profile#16916
Harry Botterell
#74788
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Edmund Harry Botterell, was a Canadian neurosurgeon and academic administrator. From 1936 to 1939, he taught neurophysiology at the University of Toronto, and was an attending surgeon of Neurosurgery at the Toronto General Hospital, becoming Head from 1953 to 1962. From 1962 to 1970, he was the Dean of School of Medicine at Queen's University. He was Vice Principal of Faculty of Health Sciences from 1968 to 1971.
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Rita Steblin
#23263
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Rita Katherine Steblin was a musicologist, specializing in archival work combining music history, iconography and genealogical research. Steblin was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada; she died in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Sergei and Renata Steblin, a co-founder of Richmond Baptist Church.
Go to Profile#16918
Rashida Richardson
#81649
Overall Influence
Rashida Richardson is a visiting scholar at Rutgers Law School and the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and the Law and an attorney advisor to the Federal Trade Commission. She is also an assistant professor of law and political science at the Northeastern University School of Law and the Northeastern University Department of Political Science in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Go to Profile#16919
Dianne Willcocks
#70615
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dianne Marie Willcocks CBE DL was the Vice-Chancellor of York St John University until retirement in April 2010 and is a former Deputy Principal of Sheffield Hallam University. Biography She received a Dip.M from Ealing College of Higher Education in 1966, and a BSc in Human Sciences from the University of Surrey in 1976.
Go to Profile#16920
J. Laurie Wallace
1864 - 1953 (89 years)
John Laurie Wallace was an Irish-born American painter. Wallace was born in Garvagh, Ireland. His family immigrated to the United States when he was age 4. He studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He posed for several of Eakins's paintings, including The Crucifixion , Arcadia and The Swimming Hole , and for dozens of photographs. In 1881 he became Eakins's assistant.
Go to Profile#16921
Simone Heilgendorff
#179266
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Simone Heilgendorff is a German musicologist, violist as well as dramaturge and curator. Life Heilgendorff studied musicology, philosophy and psychology and viola in Freiburg im Breisgau, Zurich, and in Berlin. In June 2019, she was habilitated in musicology at the University of Salzburg. Since 1993, she has held positions at colleges and universities, including a university professorship in applied musicology at the University of Klagenfurt from 2007 to 2013. From 2013 to 2016, she was head of the international research project "New Music Festivals as Agorai – Their Formation and Impact on Warsaw Autumn, , and Wien Modern after 1980", funded by the Austrian Science Fund .
Go to Profile#16922
Jack Kelly
#86761
Overall Influence
1927 - 1992 (65 years)
John Augustus Kelly Jr. , known professionally as Jack Kelly, was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the television series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962.
Go to Profile#16923
Anders Persson
#123661
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anders Persson is an Professor and the Director of the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization at Linköping University, Sweden, and Linköping University Hospital. He was recruited by Linköping University in 2002 to start the center. In 2005 he received his Ph.D. from Linköping University in Medical Imaging. He received the Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific photography from the Karolinska Institute in 2008 "for the development of new imaging technologies and methods, which are extremely useful in health care and medical research".
Go to Profile#16924
Nicholas Hill
1570 - 1610 (40 years)
Nicholas Hill was an English natural philosopher, considered a disciple of Giordano Bruno. He is known for his 1601 book Philosophia epicurea. Life He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford where he matriculated in 1587, graduated B.A. and became Fellow in 1590. He was removed from his fellowship in 1591.
Go to Profile#16925
Horst Klinkmann
#88092
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Horst Klinkmann is a German professor for Internal medicine and Nephrology . A principal focus of his research is in the area of major medical implants. Between 1990 and 1992 he served, in succession to Werner Scheler, as the final president of the German Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#16926
Rosandra N. Kaplan
#40390
Overall Influence
Rosandra N. Kaplan is an American pediatric oncologist and scientist specialized in translational and clinical research on the mechanisms of cancer spread. She is a principal investigator and head of the tumor microenvironment and metastasis branch at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#16927
İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul
1855 - 1946 (91 years)
İsmail Fenni Ertuğrul was an Ottoman Empire and later Turkish writer and westernist thinker.
Go to Profile#16928
Tarek Loubani
#77507
Overall Influence
Tarek Loubani is a Canadian doctor and humanitarian. He runs the Glia Project, which seeks to provide medical supplies to impoverished locations, and developed a low-cost stethoscope in 2015. He serves as Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario and works in emergency rooms.
Go to Profile#16929
Enrique González Rojo Jr.
#152183
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Enrique González Rojo was a Mexican writer, philosopher and teacher. Biography González Rojo was the only son of the writer Enrique González Rojo. After the death of his father, he grew up at his grandfather Enrique González Martínez, and the family decided, that the name of his father should not get lost. In 1959, he obtained the teacher's degree and a doctorate in philosophy. He taught at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, as well as the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and the Un...
Go to Profile#16930
James Dunkerley
#80352
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Sir James Chadwick Dunkerley OBE is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, and the former Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of London. He has written extensively on Bolivia, Central America, and elsewhere in Latin America and was the editor of the Journal of Latin American Studies. Further, he has been on the editorial boards of Government and Opposition and Norteamérica. He has served as Andrés Bello Professor of Latin American Culture and Civilization at New York University and is a Fell...
Go to Profile#16931
Alice Prochaska
#81104
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Alice Prochaska is a former archivist and librarian, who served as Pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, from 2010 to 2017. Career Alice Prochaska studied at Somerville College in the University of Oxford and received BA and DPhil degrees in Modern History.
Go to Profile#16932
Albert Köster
1862 - 1924 (62 years)
Albert Johannes Köster was a German Germanist and theater scholar. Life Born in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg as the son of a wine wholesaler, Köster attended the Johanneum in Hamburg, where he passed the Abitur in 1882. He then studied at the Universities of Tübingen and Leipzig Law and Berlin Philology and History of Literature. In 1887, he received his doctorate in history from Wilhelm Maurenbrecher and Georg Voigt in Leipzig. The subject of his dissertation was: "Die Wormser Annalen. An investigation of the sources".
Go to Profile#16933
Georges Le Rider
#69780
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Georges Charles Le Rider was a French historian, librarian and administrator, a specialist in Greek numismatics, who headed the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. He had a filial relationship with Henri Arnold Seyrig who became and remained his mentor.
Go to Profile#16934
Nicanor Tiongson
#35530
Overall Influence
Nicanor G. Tiongson is a critic, creative writer and academic from the Philippines. He holds a Bachelor of Humanities degree from the Ateneo de Manila University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines. A founding member of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, Tiongson is currently Professor Emeritus of Film and Audio-visual Communication at the College of Mass Communication in U.P. Diliman.
Go to Profile#16935
Mary Mahoney
#91123
Overall Influence
1940 - 2021 (81 years)
Mary Deirdre Mahoney was an Australian medical practitioner and academic. Early life and education Mary Deirdre Hirschfeld was born in Brisbane, Queensland on 14 June 1940. She was the eldest daughter of Irish nurse Brigid and surgeon Konrad Hirschfeld.
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Arild Haaland
#119448
Overall Influence
1919 - 2012 (93 years)
Arild Peter Haaland was a Norwegian philosopher, literary historian, translator and non-fiction writer. He was born in Bergen. His thesis from 1956 was an analysis of the Nazism in Germany. He was decorated Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 1979. He received the Fritt Ord Award in 1992. Haaland was portrayed by sculptor Arnold Haukeland, and by the painters Odd Nerdrum and Karl Erik Harr.
Go to Profile#16937
Anna Elisabeth Ljunggren
#173933
Overall Influence
1943 - 2010 (67 years)
Anna Elisabeth Ljunggren was a Norwegian physiotherapist. She took her physiotherapist training in 1964. She took the dr.philos. degree in 1977, as the first physiotherapist in Norway, at the University of Oslo. In 1991 she became the first assistant professor in physiotherapy in Norway, at the University of Bergen, and she was promoted to professor in 1995. She was decorated as a Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 2009. She died in April 2010.
Go to Profile#16938
H. Gilbert Welch
#187327
Overall Influence
#16939
Will Brooker
#117625
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Will Brooker is a writer and academic, professor of film and cultural studies at Kingston University and an author of several books of cultural studies dealing with elements of modern pop culture and fandom, specifically Batman, Star Wars and Alice in Wonderland.
Go to Profile#16940
Elena Conis
#131319
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Elena Conis is an American writer and historian of medicine. Her work focuses on the history of medicine, public health, and the environment, with particular focuses on the history of vaccination, infectious diseases, and pesticides. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#16941
Pietro Tabarrani
1702 - 1780 (78 years)
Pietro Tabarrani was an Italian physician and professor of Anatomy at the University of Siena. Biography He was born in Lombrici in the Republic of Lucca. He found patronage with Cardinal Salviati in Rome, where he studied anatomy. From there he moved to Bologna, where he became friends with the doctors Beccari and Galeazzi. He then moved to Padua to work under the renowned anatomist Morgagni. In 1759, he obtained a professorship in the University of Siena. He would die in Siena in 1779, and his pupil Paolo Mascagni would take his position. His Observatione Anatomiche was published in Lucca ...
Go to Profile#16942
Edward Brandt Jr.
#51379
Overall Influence
1933 - 2007 (74 years)
Edward Newman Brandt Jr. MD was an American physician, mathematician, and public health administrator. He was appointed acting Surgeon General of the United States from 1981 to 1982, and served as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health from 1981 to 1984.
Go to Profile#16943
Ulrich Mahlknecht
#69071
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Ulrich Rudolph Mahlknecht is an internationally renowned German/Italian physician scientist. Scientific achievements Mahlknecht grew up in in South Tyrol, Italy. He studied medicine at the University of Bochum, the University of Birmingham, the Paris-Sud 11 University and the University of Tübingen, where he received his medical doctorate in 1995. He received his postgraduate medical training in internal medicine at the University of Freiburg in Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1996 until 1999 Ulrich Mahlknecht was a graduate student at the Picower Graduate School Of Molecular Medicine , where he was then employed as a postdoc and later as the Senior Scientist.
Go to Profile#16944
Ernst Gottfried Baldinger
1738 - 1804 (66 years)
Ernst Gottfried Baldinger , German physician, was born in Großvargula near Erfurt. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle and Jena, earning his MD in 1760 under the guidance of Ernst Anton Nicolai and in 1761 was entrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau.
Go to Profile#16945
Dietmar Heidemann
#71961
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Dietmar Hermann Heidemann is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Luxembourg. He is best known for his research on Kant and German idealism. Heidemann is the editor-in-chief of Kant Yearbook.
Go to Profile#16946
Yuan Tung-li
1895 - 1965 (70 years)
Yuan Tung-li was a Chinese library administrator and bibliographer. He headed the National Library of China and was later consultant in Chinese literature at the United States Library of Congress. Biography Yuan was born in Beijing in 1895 and graduated from the University of Peking in 1916. He then came to the United States and earned a BA from Columbia College in 1922. He also earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree from New York State Library School at Albany in 1923.
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Alexander Calandra
#15510
Overall Influence
1911 - 2006 (95 years)
Alexander Calandra was a scientist, educator, and author, perhaps best remembered for his short story, "Angels on a Pin ." Early life and education Calandra was born in Brooklyn, New York to Rosina Calandra and Lucio Calandra, immigrants from Sicily. Calandra received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College in 1935. He taught there while pursuing his PhD at NYU, where he received an MA in 1938. and a PhD in chemistry in 1940.
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Matire Harwood
#158561
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Matire Louise Ngarongoa Harwood is a New Zealand clinical researcher and trainee general practitioner. She is an associate professor at the University of Auckland. Harwood was the 2017 New Zealand L'Oréal UNESCO For Women in Science Fellow. Her expertise is in Māori health, focussed on reducing health inequity by improving indigenous health and well-being.
Go to Profile#16949
Jonathan Riley
#171252
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Jonathan Riley is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. He is known for his expertise on utilitarianism. Books Mill's On Liberty, Routledge, 1998, 2015Liberal Utilitarianism: Social Choice Theory and J.S. Mill's Philosophy, Cambridge, 1988
Go to Profile#16950
Lou Burnard
#50353
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Lou Burnard is an internationally recognised expert in digital humanities, particularly in the area of text encoding and digital libraries. He was assistant director of Oxford University Computing Services from 2001 to September 2010, when he officially retired from OUCS. Before that, he was manager of the Humanities Computing Unit at OUCS for five years. He has worked in ICT support for research in the humanities since the 1990s. He was one of the founding editors of the Text Encoding Initiative and continues to play an active part in its maintenance and development, as a consultant to the TEI Technical Council and as an elected TEI board member.
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