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,
#17001
Douglas Mata
#187596
Overall Influence
Douglas Alexander Mata is an American pathologist and epidemiologist currently at Foundation Medicine, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for his contributions to molecular pathological epidemiology and neuropsychiatric epidemiology. His textbook Statistics for Pathologists is a reference text in pathology medical education and his meta-analytical studies on physician mental health have circulated widely in the popular press.
Go to Profile#17002
Catherine D'Ignazio
#131993
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Catherine D'Ignazio is an American professor, artist, and software developer who focuses on feminism and data literacy. She is the director of the Data + Feminism lab at MIT. D'Ignazio is best known for her hackathons, such as "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck", and for her book Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein.
Go to Profile#17003
Raffaello Maffei
1451 - 1522 (71 years)
Raffaello Maffei was an Italian humanist, historian and theologian; and member of the Servite Order. He was a native of Volterra, Italy, and therefore is called Raphael Volaterranus or Raphael of Volterra; also Maffeus Volaterranus, or Raffaello Volterrano. Raffaello Maffei wrote the Commentaria Urbana, which was an encyclopedia divided into three parts.
Go to Profile#17004
Johann Peter von Langer
1756 - 1824 (68 years)
Johann Peter Langer, after 1808, von Langer was a German painter, engraver and wallpaper designer. Biography His father, Anton Langer , was the gardener for the Hatzfeld family at their estate surrounding . He began his studies in 1775, under Lambert Krahe at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he won second prize at the Academy exhibition of 1776 and first prize, which came with a scholarship, in 1778.
Go to Profile#17005
Christine Mitchell
#179020
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christine I. Mitchell is an American filmmaker and bioethicist and until her retirement in September 2022, the executive director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School . Education Mitchell studied nursing at Boston University, where she earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in the field. She then studied philosophical and religious ethics and the ethics of care at Harvard University and the Harvard Divinity School, where she earned a master's degree.1969 – Narragansett Regional High School, Baldwinville, Massachusetts, diploma1973 – Boston University, School of Nursing,...
Go to Profile#17006
Shahinaz Gadalla
#183624
Overall Influence
Shahinaz Mohamed Aly Gadalla is a physician-scientist and cancer epidemiologist who researches cancer biomarkers and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. She is a senior investigator in the clinical genetics branch at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#17007
Connie Newman
#94053
Overall Influence
Connie Baum Newman is an American endocrinologist and physician-scientist specializing in hypercholesterolemia and lipid disorders, women's rights, and access to reproductive healthcare. She is an adjunct professor of medicine at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Newman was president of the American Medical Women's Association from 2019 to 2020.
Go to Profile#17008
David T. Rubin
#116754
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
David T. Rubin is an American gastroenterologist and educator. He is the Joseph B. Kirsner Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, where he is also the Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. He also serves as the Co-Director of the Digestive Diseases Center.
Go to Profile#17009
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
1712 - 1774 (62 years)
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was a German painter and art administrator. In his own works, he was adept at imitating many earlier artists, but never developed a style of his own. Early life Dietrich was born at Weimar, where he was brought up early to the profession of art by his father Johann Georg, then painter of miniatures to the court of the duke. Dietrich's sister was painter Maria Dorothea Dietrich.
Go to Profile#17010
Johann Christoph Bohl
1703 - 1785 (82 years)
Johann Christoph Bohl or Bohlius or Bohle was a German physician. Life Born in Königsberg in 1703, Bohl enrolled at the local university on September 25, 1719, in order to study medicine, and continued his studies at the University of Leipzig. On September 20, 1725, he enrolled at the University of Leiden where he became a student of Herman Boerhaave, and a classmate of Albrecht von Haller. He graduated on 26 July 1726 presenting his dissertation titled "De morsu". He spent four years in Amsterdam working with the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch. He returned to Königsberg on August 15, 1730. ...
Go to Profile#17011
Charles Russell Bardeen
1871 - 1935 (64 years)
Charles Russell Bardeen was an American physician and anatomist and the first dean of the University of Wisconsin Medical School. Early years Bardeen was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1871, and grew up in Syracuse, New York. His father, Charles William Bardeen, was an educator and publisher. He attended the Teichmann School in Leipzig, Germany, then completed his B.A. at Harvard University in 1893. By virtue of being in the first medical school class at Johns Hopkins University, and having a last name at the beginning of the alphabet, Bardeen was the first person ever to receive an M.D. fro...
Go to Profile#17012
Timothy Shanahan
#105001
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Timothy Shanahan is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is known for his research on philosophy of science, philosophy and film, and the morality of terrorism.
Go to Profile#17013
Michael Wittmann
#176115
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael Wittmann is a German musicologist. Life Born in Heilbronn, Wittmann studied musicology from 1975 to 1980 , philosophy and history at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1980 to 1983 and 1987 he was a scholarship holder of the German Historical Institute in Rome. In 1986 he received his doctorate in Freiburg. From 1987 to 1990 he was a scholarship holder of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. A research stay in Italy followed.
Go to Profile#17014
Edouard Zeckendorf
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Edouard Zeckendorf was a Belgian doctor, army officer and amateur mathematician. In mathematics, he is best known for his work on Fibonacci numbers and in particular for proving Zeckendorf's theorem, though he published over 20 papers, mostly in number theory.
Go to Profile#17015
Fernando Alfageme
#175482
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Fernando Alfageme Roldán is a Spanish dermatologist. He introduced the diagnostic technique of cutaneous ultrasound in Spain, is an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, and is responsible for the Dermatological Ultrasound Unit at the Puerta de Hierro University Hospital in Majadahonda. He has authored several essays, manuals and academic articles about dermatology.
Go to Profile#17016
Yu Zhengxie
1775 - 1840 (65 years)
Yu Zhengxie was a Qing dynasty scholar from Yi county in modern-day Anhui province. Along with his philological work, he was a noted critic of foot binding, female infanticide, and the cult of widow chastity.
Go to Profile#17017
Franco Romano Calaresu
#116327
Overall Influence
1931 - 1996 (65 years)
Franco Romano Calaresu was initially a medical doctor and later became a reputed Canadian scholar and professor of neurophysiology of the Department of Physiology at the University of Western Ontario. He held an M.D. from the University of Milan, and a Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. He was elected in 1995 as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His main area of interest was the nervous system and the integration of its mechanisms. His group pioneered the use of the mainframe analysis of data collected during surgical experiments on laboratory animals. He had mostly carried out...
Go to Profile#17018
Gasparinus de Bergamo
1360 - 1431 (71 years)
#17019
Arghavan Salles
#177677
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Arghavan Salles is an Iranian American bariatric surgeon. Salles is a Director of the American Medical Women's Association, a Special Advisor for DEI Programs in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Senior Research Scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Salles' research focuses on gender equity, well-being, and the challenges women face in the workplace. Salles works as an advocate for equity and inclusion and as an activist against sexual harassment. Salles is an international speaker who worked on the front lines and supported health prof...
Go to Profile#17020
Barbara Tillett
#107677
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Barbara Ann Barnett Tillett is a librarian and library scholar known for her work on authority control and bibliographic data modeling. Library of Congress Tillett began working at the Library of Congress in 1994. As director of the Library's Integrated Library System Program from August 1997 through July 2001, Tillett undertook the massive task of leading the selection and implementation of the Library of Congress' first Integrated Library System. A library press release referred to the project as the "largest single information technology project in the Library's history."
Go to Profile#17021
Oenomaus of Gadara
Oenomaus of Gadara , was a Pagan Cynic philosopher. He is known principally for the long extracts of a work attacking oracles, which have been preserved among the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea. Life Oenomaus was a native of Gadara, which was then a partially Hellenized community in northern Jordan. He is listed in the Chronicle of Jerome as flourishing in the 224th Olympiad : "Plutarch of Chaeronea, Sextus, Agathobulus and Oenomaus are considered notable philosophers." He is also mentioned in The Chronography of George Synkellos associated with events from 109 to 120 AD "The philosopher Sex...
Go to Profile#17022
Tarek Ali Hassan
#124679
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Tarek Ali Hassan , is a professor of medicine and chief of endocrinology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He is also a composer, musician, writer, painter, and philosopher. His music, in a modern polyphonic style, has been performed in Egypt and in many countries.
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Max Pfannenstiel
1902 - 1976 (74 years)
Max Joseph Jakob Pfannenstiel was a German geologist, palaeontologist and librarian who spent some years in Turkey due to being classified as a 2nd-degree mixed-Jew during the early part of the Nazi regime.
Go to Profile#17024
Andrew Smith
1797 - 1872 (75 years)
Sir Andrew Smith was a British surgeon, explorer, ethnologist and zoologist. He is considered the father of zoology in South Africa having described many species across a wide range of groups in his major work, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa.
Go to Profile#17025
Anna Donald
#53920
Overall Influence
1966 - 2009 (43 years)
Anastasia Katherine Donald , known as Anna Donald, was an Australian pioneer in the field of evidence-based medicine as well as an epidemiologist and company director. Early life and early education Donald was the child of biologist Tony Courtice and Janet Donald . Her maternal grandmother was reportedly of Chinese descent. When Donald was 2, her parents separated. Following her parents' separation, she and her mother lived with Donald's maternal grandparents for a year. Later, Donald's mother divorced her Courtice and married lawyer Bruce Donald, with whom she would rear Anna, who took her surrogate father's surname .
Go to Profile#17026
Antoni Jurasz
1847 - 1923 (76 years)
Antoni Stanisław Jurasz was a Polish laryngologist who was a native of Spławie . He spent most of his life living and working in what was then the German Empire. He was the father of surgeon Antoni Tomasz Jurasz .
Go to Profile#17027
James Lawson
#100994
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
James "Jim" Sutherland Lawson is an Australian public health doctor and scientist, known for research on breast cancer and for public health services and prevention programs, currently in use in Australian and international public health services.
Go to Profile#17028
Alexa Canady
#43799
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alexa Irene Canady is a retired American medical doctor specializing in pediatric neurosurgery. She was born in Lansing, Michigan and earned both her bachelors and medical degree from the University of Michigan. After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon. This came after Ruth Kerr Jakoby became the first American woman to be board certified in neurosurgery in 1961.
Go to Profile#17029
Vlado Dimovski
#148641
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Vlado Dimovski, Slovenian economist, philosopher, politician, consultant and university professor, * 21 July 1960, Postojna, Slovenia. Biography After finishing the Bežigrad Grammar School Dimovski graduated in 1984 at the School of Economics and Business at the University of Ljubljana, where he received also an M.S. in economics in 1988. At the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana he graduated in 1989 also in philosophy. He received his PhD degree in management and finance from the Cleveland State University, Ohio, United States in 1994.
Go to Profile#17030
Sue Desmond-Hellmann
#116277
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Sue Desmond-Hellmann is an American oncologist and biotechnology leader who served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014–2020. She was previously Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco , the first woman to hold the position, and Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor, and before that president of product development at Genentech, where she played a role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs, Avastin and Herceptin.
Go to Profile#17031
Leo Riemens
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Leonardus Antony Marinus Riemens was a Dutch musicologist and cultural journalist. He wrote a book about Maria Callas, and together with Karl-Josef Kutsch began a reference book about opera singers in 1962, which grew to Großes Sängerlexikon, the standard reference in the field.
Go to Profile#17032
Ana Catarina Fonseca
#173747
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Ana Catarina Fonseca is a Portuguese neurologist, researcher and university teacher. Training Ana Catarina Gaspar Fonseca was born on 22 April 1981. She obtained a degree in medicine from the NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal between 1998 and 2004, followed by a master's in neurosciences from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon . She also obtained a master's in stroke medicine from Danube University Krems in Austria, between 2008 and 2011. She studied at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, obtaining a master's in Public Health in 2014 and in the same year completed ...
Go to Profile#17033
George Baerveldt
#95373
Overall Influence
George Baerveldt, M.B.Ch.B., was a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. Baerveldt developed and held four patents related to the Baerveldt Glaucoma Implant, a device for the drainage of excess fluid from the eye in complex cases of glaucoma.
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Julius Ludwig Ideler
1809 - 1842 (33 years)
Julius Ludwig Ideler was a German philologist and naturalist. He was the son of astronomer Christian Ludwig Ideler. From 1828 he studied medicine, mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Berlin, where in 1834 he obtained his habilitation for language research. He died on 17 July 1842 in Berlin, age 32.
Go to Profile#17035
Hugh of Newcastle
Hugh of Newcastle was a Franciscan theologian and scholastic philosopher, a pupil of Duns Scotus. His origin in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is questioned; he may have been from another place called Neufchâtel.
Go to Profile#17036
Stephen Rodefer
#56259
Overall Influence
1940 - 2015 (75 years)
Stephen Rodefer was an American poet and painter who lived in Paris and London. Born in Bellaire, Ohio, he knew many of the early beat and Black Mountain poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley. Rodefer was one of the original Language poets and taught widely, including: UNM, SUNY Buffalo, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State, and the American University of Paris. Rodefer was the first American poet to be offered a Fellowship at Cambridge University.
Go to Profile#17037
Julius Youngner
#34516
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Julius S. Youngner was an American Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Medicine and Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at University of Pittsburgh responsible for advances necessary for development of a vaccine for poliomyelitis and the first intranasal equine influenza vaccine.
Go to Profile#17038
Carl Hummel
1821 - 1907 (86 years)
Carl Maria Nicolaus Hummel was a German landscape painter and etcher. Life and work He was the son of Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and the opera singer Elisabeth Röckel. His studies began in 1841 under Friedrich Preller at the Fürstliche freie Zeichenschule Weimar. After graduating, he made several study trips to England, Norway, Rügen and the Tyrol, lingering in Italy and Sicily until 1846.
Go to Profile#17039
Suzanne M. De La Monte
#187739
Overall Influence
#17040
Paul Allen
1775 - 1826 (51 years)
Paul Allen was an American poet, historian, and editor. Biography Born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 15, 1775, Allen studied at Brown University, graduating in 1793. He later relocated to Philadelphia, where he served as editor of The Port Folio, the Gazette of the United States, and the Federal Republican.
Go to Profile#17041
David Cranston
1480 - 1512 (32 years)
David Cranston or Cranstoun was a Scottish scholastic philosopher and theologian among the circle of John Mair. Biography Cranston was certainly born in Scotland, possibly in the diocese of Glasgow, ; nothing else is known of his early life. The first record of him comes when he matriculated from the University of Paris in 1495, attending the Collège de Montaigu. He had access to a healthy supply of money during his time at the university, though he indicates in his will he was a "poor student". At the college, Cranston was a student of Scottish philosopher John Mair.
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Menzan Zuihō
1683 - 1769 (86 years)
Menzan Zuihō was a Japanese Sōtō Zen scholar and abbot of the Zenjo-ji and Kuin-ji temples active during the Tokugawa period. Born in Ueki, Kyushu, Menzan was the most influential Sōtō Zen writer of his time and his work continue to influence Sōtō Zen scholarship and practice today. Menzan's scholarship was part of the Tokugawa movement of returning to original historical sources to revitalize Zen , especially the works of Dōgen Zenji. Before Menzan the works of Dōgen were not widely studied or put into practice, he helped revitalize the Sōtō school by analyzing and building on Dogen's writings.
Go to Profile#17043
Eduardo Missoni
#21176
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Eduardo Missoni is an Italian medical doctor who has been active in numerous social causes. He was appointed as the Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement from April 1, 2004 through November 30, 2007.
Go to Profile#17044
Graeme N. Smith
#136713
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Graeme Neil Smith is a Canadian obstetrician. He is the former Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen's University and clinician-scientist at Kingston General Hospital Research Institute.
Go to Profile#17045
Nicholas Lamar Soutter
#147460
Overall Influence
Nicholas Lamar Soutter is an American writer and philosopher. His 2012 novel, The Water Thief, is about a future in which "corporations own everything, even the air we breathe." The novel won a Kirkus Star from Kirkus Reviews.
Go to Profile#17046
Christian Martin Schmidt
#126903
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christian Martin Schmidt is a German musicologist and music theorist. Life Born in Dessau, Schmidt studied musicology from 1963 at the University of Hamburg, as well as in Tübingen, Paris, Göttingen and Berlin. In 1970 he received his doctorate at the FU Berlin from Rudolf Stephan.
Go to Profile#17047
Grace Ndeezi
#187767
Overall Influence
Grace Ndeezi is a Ugandan female pediatrician and a Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at Makerere University of Health Sciences with various publications on Nutrition, HIV, Pneumonia, Malaria, Sickle cell anemia, diarrheal diseases, neonatal health and child heath interventions such as immunization, breast feeding and other common childhood diseases.
Go to Profile#17048
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad
648 - 686 (38 years)
Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad was the Umayyad governor of Basra, Kufa and Khurasan during the reigns of caliphs Mu'awiya I and Yazid I , and the leading general of the Umayyad army under caliphs Marwan I and Abd al-Malik .
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Theodor Schuster
1808 - 1872 (64 years)
Carl Wilhelm Theodor Schuster was a German jurist and physician. As a revolutionary, he was one of the prominent figures of the League of Outlaws, a utopian socialist organization of German émigrés in Paris.
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Ion Filotti Cantacuzino
1908 - 1975 (67 years)
Ion Filotti Cantacuzino or Ion I. Cantacuzino was a Romanian film producer, writer and psychiatrist. Biographic data Ion Filotti Cantacuzino, born in Bucharest on November 7, 1908, was the son of prince Ion Cantacuzino and of actress Maria Filotti. He studied medicine at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy and philosophy at the University of Bucharesthe graduated from the University of Paris' Faculty of Sciences and Faculty of Medicine,
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