Search People Result | Academic Influence

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,

#17051

Mansel Aylward

#86767

Overall Influence

Sir Mansel Aylward CB MD DSc FFOM FCRP FLSW is a Welsh public health physician and academic. He was Chief Medical Officer, Medical Director and Chief Scientist at the U.K. Government Department for Work and Pensions.

#17052

Robert Stone

#82394

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Robert S. Stone was an American physician. He served as the Director of The National Institutes of Health from May 29, 1973, to January 31, 1975. Stone also served as the vice president for health services and dean of the school of medicine at the University of New Mexico, dean of the School of Medicine of the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center and vice president of the Health Sciences Center, and dean of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

#17053

Hans Reiss

#16418

Overall Influence

1922 - 2020 (98 years)

Hans Reiss Ph.D. was Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Bristol. Life Reiss was born in Mannheim, Germany. The son of a Jewish printer, Berthold Reiss, and the actress Maria Reiss-Petri , he fled Nazi Germany to Ireland a week before World War II broke out in 1939. He completed his education in Ireland and was awarded a scholarship to study at Trinity College Dublin in 1940. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1943 and Ph.D. in German from TCD in 1945, where he was assistant to the Professor of German, M.F. Liddle, from 1943 to 1946.

#17054

David Liggins

#185738

Overall Influence

David Liggins is a philosopher at the University of Manchester with research interests in metaphysics and philosophy of mathematics. Education and career Liggins received his PhD in 2005 from the University of Sheffield. He then spent a year at University of Cambridge's faculty of philosophy before becoming a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 2006. In 2016, he was appointed joint editor of Analysis with Chris Daly. He served as the sole editor of the journal from 2017 to 2021 when it was announced that he would be joint editor alongside Stacie Friend and Lee Walters.

#17055

Alan Walker

#115916

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Alan Walker, FRSC is an English-Canadian musicologist and university professor best known as a biographer and scholar of composer Franz Liszt. Other topics Walker has engaged in are writings on composers Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, as well as conductor Hans von Bülow. He has held posts at a variety of institutions, including the Guildhall School of Music, the University of London, McMaster University and City, University of London.

#17056

Brian Wecht

#71475

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Brian Alexander Wecht, also known by his character name Ninja Brian, is an American musician, Internet personality and theoretical physicist. He is best known as a member of comedy musical duo Ninja Sex Party and video game-based comedy music trio Starbomb. He has also been a past member of the affiliated Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, all three alongside Dan Avidan.

#17058

Lajos Kemény

#119709

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Lajos Kemény is a Hungarian dermatologist, venereologist, allergologist, medical researcher, full professor and the Head of the Department of Dermatology and Allergology, the director of the Albert Szent-Györgyi Health Center, Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged and the Vice-Rector for Science, Research Development and Innovation. He is a notable and respected scientist both in Hungary and around the world.

#17059

Misch Kohn

#184540

Overall Influence

1916 - 2002 (86 years)

Misch Kohn was an American artist. His works are part of the collections of several major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Kohn was born in Kokomo, Indiana. He studied at the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.

#17060

Johannes Browallius

Johannes Browallius

1707 - 1755 (48 years)

Johannes Browallius , also called John Browall, was a Finnish and Swedish Lutheran theologian, physicist, botanist and at one time friend of Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus. Career He was a Professor of Physics from 1737–46, Professor of Theology 1746–49 and was the Bishop of Turku, then a diocese of the Church of Sweden, and Vice-Chancellor of The Royal Academy of Turku from 1749 until his death in 1755.

#17061

Mark Pochapin

#168683

Overall Influence

Mark Pochapin is a gastroenterologist and educator whose work is focused on the prevention, early detection, and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. Early life Mark Pochapin grew up in Spring Valley, New York, one of two children. He graduated from Spring Valley High School in 1980 and went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in biomedical engineering in 1984.

#17062

Barbara Barlow

#112749

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Barbara Barlow is an American pediatric surgeon who was the first woman to train in pediatric surgery at Babies Hospital, present-day Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. She has also reduced the amount of injuries for inner-city children through her research and efforts to educate the public on prevention of accidents.

#17063

Ludolf von Krehl

Ludolf von Krehl

1861 - 1937 (76 years)

Albrecht Ludolf von Krehl was a German internist and physiologist who was a native of Leipzig. He was the son of Orientalist Christoph Krehl . He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig, and later was an assistant to Ernst Leberecht Wagner and Heinrich Curschmann at the medical clinic in Leipzig. In 1888 he obtained his habilitation, becoming head of the medical clinic at Jena in 1892. In 1899 he became director of the clinic at the University of Marburg, and soon afterwards served as professor of special pathology and therapy of internal diseases in Greifswald .

#17064

Russell Blaylock

#12329

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Russell L. Blaylock is an author and a retired U.S. neurosurgeon. Blaylock was a clinical assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. In 2013 he was a visiting professor in the biology department at Belhaven College.

#17065

Lazarus Buonamici

1479 - 1552 (73 years)

Lazarus Buonamici was an Italian Renaissance humanist. Biography Buonamici was born in Bassano, and studied at the University of Padua. He tutored for the Campeggi family for a time, and later was professor of Belles Lettres at the Sapienza University of Rome. He fled Rome during the sack of 1527, escaping to Padua but losing all his property. He became a professor at Padua, where his lectures acquired for him a great reputation, though he did not commit the results of his scholarship to print, and only a few letters and poems of his survive, published posthumously in 1572.

#17066

William Masters

#43602

Overall Influence

1915 - 2001 (86 years)

William Howell Masters was an American gynecologist and the senior member of the Masters and Johnson human sexuality research team. Along with his partner Virginia E. Johnson, he pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s.

#17067

Sally Tracy

#157935

Overall Influence

Sally Tracy is an Australian midwife, midwifery researcher, author and activist. She has authored numerous research articles. In 2023, she was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2023.

#17068

Nicholas P. Restifo

#86470

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Nicholas P. Restifo is an American immunologist, physician and educator in cancer immunotherapy. Until July 2019, he was a tenured senior investigator in the intramural National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland. Nicholas was an executive vice president of research at Lyell based in San Francisco.

#17069

Candidus

701 - 805 (104 years)

Candidus was the name given to the Anglo-Saxon Wizo or Witto by Alcuin, whose scholar he was and with whom he went in 782 to Gaul. He is author of several philosophical texts wrongly attributed by earlier scholars to the benedictinian monk Brun Candidus of Fulda, the author of the vita of Abott Eigil of Fulda. But recent research into the manuscript tradition furnishing clear evidence attested the authorship of Candidus Wizo, the learned disciple of Alcuin. Based on his deep knowledge of the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo he tried to give proof of god's existence, to demonstrate that the in...

#17070

Mae Murray

1885 - 1965 (80 years)

Mae Murray was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen".

#17071

Basanta Kumar Mallik

1879 - 1958 (79 years)

Basanta Kumar Mallik was a Bengali tutor, author and philosopher. He spent two extended periods in England, and is known for his influence in the 1920s on the poet Robert Graves. Mallik used as his family name derives from an honorific given by the Moghul Empire, and he preferred not to use it.

#17072

Steven A. Rosenberg

#187851

Overall Influence

#17073

Alexander Griboyedov

Alexander Griboyedov

1795 - 1829 (34 years)

Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov , formerly romanized as Alexander Sergueevich Griboyedoff, was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. His one notable work was the 1823 verse comedy Woe from Wit. He was Russia's ambassador to Qajar Persia, where he and all the embassy staff were massacred by an angry mob as a result of the rampant anti-Russian sentiment that existed through Russia's imposing of the Treaty of Gulistan and Treaty of Turkmenchay , which had forcefully ratified for Persia's ceding of its northern territories comprising Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus. G...

#17074

Adelaide Underhill

Adelaide Underhill

1860 - 1936 (76 years)

Adelaide Underhill was an American librarian. She was hired to catalog and update the organization of volumes in the Vassar College library. She used the Dewey Decimal System and, along with help from her lifelong companion, Lucy Maynard Salmon, built Vassar's into one of the most impressive collections for a liberal arts college at the time.

#17075

Dale Fisher

#122326

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Dale Andrew Fisher FRACP is an Australian physician who specialises in Infectious Diseases and is a Senior Consultant in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the National University Hospital, Singapore. He is also a professor of medicine at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore , the chair of the National Infection Prevention and Control Committee through the Ministry of Health, Singapore , and chair of the steering committee of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network hosted by the World Health Organization.

#17076

Frank Harold Cleobury

1892 - 1981 (89 years)

Frank Harold Cleobury was British idealist philosopher and priest. Cleobury was born in London. He joined the British Civil Service in 1908. He studied philosophy and theology and obtained his BA and PhD from University of London. He was a conscientious objector and joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit. In 1950, he retired from public service as a principal in the administrative grade. He became an ordained priest in the Church of England in 1951. He was Rector of Hertingfordbury until his retirement in 1964.

#17077

Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs

1511 - 1579 (68 years)

Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs was an Austrian humanist, astronomer and Hebraist. Life He was born in Merckenstein, near Bad Vöslau in Lower Austria, and studied in Vienna, Ingolstadt and Tübingen. He became a student and friend of Sebastian Münster. Together they translated the Form of the Earth of Abraham bar Hiyya, with work of Elijah ben Abraham Mizrahi.

#17078

Patricia Battin

#161044

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Patricia Meyer Battin was one of the first librarians in the United States to combine the responsibilities of library administrator and technology director. Her focus shifted toward preservation when she became the first president of the Commission on Preservation and Access. She later became a pioneer in the digital library movement and began to work in the area of digital preservation.

#17079

Stephen Tuttle

1907 - 1954 (47 years)

Stephen Davidson Tuttle was a musicologist and chairman of the department of music at the University of Virginia , and an associate professor of music at Harvard University . While at Virginia he directed the Virginia Glee Club, and commissioned Randall Thompson to write The Testament of Freedom for the Glee Club in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.

#17080

Charles Pépin

#134817

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Charles Pépin is a French philosopher and novelist. He was born in Saint Cloud in 1973. He is the author of several bestsellers, such as Les Vertus de l’échec , La Confiance en soi and La Planète des sages .

#17081

Stanley Greaves

#32616

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Stanley Greaves is a Guyanese painter and writer who is one of the Caribbean's most distinguished artists. Writing in 1995 at the time of a retrospective exhibition to celebrate Greaves's 60th birthday, Rupert Roopnarine stated: "It may be that no major Caribbean artist of our time has been more fecund and versatile than Stanley Greaves of Guyana." Greaves himself has said of his own creativity:

#17082

Nathalie Charpak

Nathalie Charpak

#65842

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Nathalie Charpak is a French and Colombian pediatrician. As the founder and director of the Kangaroo Foundation, and associate researcher of the Pontifical Xavierian University, her research focuses on the care of low-birth weight preterm infants and the application of kangaroo mother care. Charpak's work has earned her, and the Kangaroo Foundation, multiple awards, including the Legion of Honour and the Save the Children Healthcare Innovation Award. Her father is Nobel Laureate Georges Charpak.

#17083

Ruth Shaw Wylie

1916 - 1989 (73 years)

Ruth Shaw Wylie was a U.S.-born composer and music educator. She described herself as “a fairly typical Midwestern composer,” pursuing musical and aesthetic excellence but not attracting much national attention: “All good and worthy creative acts do not take place in New York City,” she wrote in 1962, “although most good and worthy rewards for creative acts do emanate from there; and if we can’t all be on hand to reap these enticing rewards we can take solace in the fact that we are performing good deeds elsewhere.” She was among the many twentieth-century American composers whose work contri...

#17084

Tim Smith

#38729

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Tim Smith is an English broadcaster and radio personality in the UK. He is best known as being part of the team for Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2. On 1 July 2022 Wright announced that his afternoon show would end in Autumn 2022, after 23 years. It was also announced that Smith would be leaving BBC Radio 2, together with Janey Lee Grace.

#17085

Aneez Esmail

#53875

Overall Influence

Aneez Esmail is a general practitioner and academic at the University of Manchester. He is a professor of general practice and a GP for three sessions a week. Between 2012 and 2017 he served as the director of the National Institute for Health Research's research centre on patient safety in primary care. He is well known for his work over many years on racism in the British National Health Service. He has chaired a wide-ranging review of all postgraduate medical exams. He was medical adviser to the Shipman Inquiry. He was offered an OBE for his contribution to primary care and race relations...

#17086

Elizabeth Smith Shortt

Elizabeth Smith Shortt

1859 - 1949 (90 years)

Elizabeth Smith Shortt was one of the first three women to earn a medical degree in Canada. She was one of the women medical students expelled from Queen's University, Ontario following a hostile backlash from male staff and students at the presence of women in the medical school. Shortt went on to complete her studies at a newly established women's college and practised medicine in Hamilton, Ontario. She was a long-serving and active member of the National Council of Women of Canada and spearheaded a number of public health and women's welfare initiatives.

#17087

Maximilian de Gaynesford

#181609

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Robert Maximilian de Gaynesford is an English philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Reading. Education and career De Gaynesford was educated at Ampleforth College and Balliol College, Oxford , after which he spent several years studying theology before studying philosophy in 1993. Shortly before receiving his doctorate, he was elected fellow and tutor in philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford . He was subsequently Humboldt Research Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin and a tenured professor at The College of William and Mary in Virginia before becoming professo...

#17088

Henry Robert Frankel

Henry Robert Frankel

#172352

Overall Influence

1944 - 2019 (75 years)

Henry Robert Frankel was an American philosopher and historian of science noted for his historical and philosophical analysis of the continental drift controversy and subsequent discovery of plate tectonics. He was emeritus professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Frankel earned his Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and his PhD from the Ohio State University. == Work ==

#17089

Eliza Atkins Gleason

#60819

Overall Influence

1909 - 2009 (100 years)

Eliza Atkins Gleason was the first African American to receive a doctorate in Library Science. In 1941, she established and became the first Dean of the School of Library Service at Atlanta University and created a library education program that trained 90 percent of all African-American librarians by 1986.

#17090

Aran Safir

#76122

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

Aran Safir was an American ophthalmologist and inventor. He is known for inventing a groundbreaking iris recognition scanner. This technology has been widely adopted in the security sector, ranging from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to Google. The invention was patented on February 3, 1987, and expired in the United States in 2005. Safir and his co-inventor, Leonard Flom, were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013.

#17091

Terry Cook

#83714

Overall Influence

1947 - 2014 (67 years)

Terry Cook was a noted Canadian archivist and scholar in archival studies. Biography Dr. Terry Cook was born in Vancouver in 1947. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1969, his Master of Arts from Carleton University in 1970, and his Ph.D. in Canadian History from Queen's University in 1977. He worked for the National Archives of Canada, specializing in archival appraisal, for a number of years. He was also an associate professor for the Archival Studies Program in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba from 1998 to 2012.

#17092

Diogenes of Tarsus

200 BC - 160 BC (40 years)

Diogenes of Tarsus was an Epicurean philosopher, who is described by Strabo as a person clever in composing improvised tragedies. He was the author of several works, which, however, are lost. Among them are:Select lectures , which was probably a collection of essays and dissertations.Epitome of Epicurus’ ethical doctrines , of which Diogenes Laërtius quotes the 12th book.On poetical problems , poetical problems which he endeavoured to solve, and which seem to have had special reference to the Homeric poems.

#17093

Ludwig Rehn

1849 - 1930 (81 years)

Ludwig Wilhelm Carl Rehn was a German surgeon. Rehn was born in 1849, in the village of Allendorf, the youngest of five children. After the visiting the convent school in Bad Hersfeld, he studied medicine at the University of Marburg from 1869 to 1874, where he became a member of the student corps Hasso-Nassovia.His current ancestors include Bodo Rehn.

#17094

S. Bear Bergman

S. Bear Bergman

#56544

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

S. Bear Bergman is an American author, poet, playwright, and theater artist. He is a trans man, and his gender identity is a main focus of his artwork. Biography Bergman, who was educated at Concord Academy, was one of the founders of the first Gay–straight alliance and a member of the Governor of Massachusetts' Safe Schools Commission for LGBT youth. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Hampshire College in 1996.

#17095

Abdulwahab Hussain

#81767

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Abdulwahab Hussain Ali Ahmed Esmael is a Bahraini political activist, writer, religious figure and philosopher. He was one of the most prominent opposition leaders in the 1990s uprising when he was arrested twice for a total length of five years in which he was allegedly subjected to solitary confinement and torture. After his release in 2001, he supported government reform plans.

#17096

Agnes Binagwaho

Agnes Binagwaho

#94030

Overall Influence

Agnes Binagwaho is a Rwandan Politian, pediatrician and co-founder and the former vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity . In 1996, she returned to Rwanda where she provided clinical care in the public sector as well as held many positions including the position of Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health of Rwanda from October 2008 until May 2011 and Minister of Health from May 2011 until July 2016. She has been a professor of global health delivery practice since 2016 and a professor of pediatrics since 2017 at the University of Global Health Equity. She resides in ...

#17097

Arvid Anseth

#99868

Overall Influence

1925 - 2006 (81 years)

Arvid Anseth was a Norwegian ophthalmologist. Anseth was born in Bærum. He finished his secondary education in 1943, took the Candidate of Medicine degree at Lund University in 1947 and the Doctor Medicinae degree at Lund in 1961, after two years as a research fellow in Boston, Massachusetts. Anseth was a docent at Lund University from 1962 to 1971, a professor at the University of Tromsø from 1971 to 1977, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Trondheim from 1977 to 1980, and a professor at the University of Oslo/Rikshospitalet from 1980 to 1989. Among others, he operated on Olav V o...

#17098

Shimon Rochkind

#52158

Overall Influence

Shimon Rochkind is an Israeli clinician and an operating neurosurgeon. His professional interests include surgery on the peripheral nerves, the lumbar and sacral spine, brachial plexus and cauda equina. Rochkind pioneered the use of the laser therapy for the treatment of injuries in the peripheral nervous system. Currently he dedicates a fair share of his time to the scientific work: developing the matrix for peripheral nerve and spinal cord reconstruction.

#17099

Rudolf Berlin

1833 - 1897 (64 years)

Rudolf August Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Berlin , also known as Rudolph Berlin, was a German ophthalmologist. Life and work Rudolf Berlin was born to August Berlin , a physician, and his wife Amalie in Friedland . His grandfather, George Ludwig Berlin , had been a mayor of that city.

#17100

Ekwueme Michael Thelwell

#66844

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Ekwueme Michael Thelwell is a Jamaican novelist, essayist, professor and civil rights activist. He was in 1970 founding chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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