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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#17151
Ludwig Richter
1803 - 1884 (81 years)
Adrian Ludwig Richter was a German painter and etcher, who was strongly influenced by Erhard and Chodowiecki. He was a representative of both Romanticism and Biedermeier styles. He was the most popular, and in many ways the most typical German illustrator of the middle of the 19th century. His work is described as typically German and homely as are the fairy-tales of Grimm, for whom he produced several woodcuts.
Go to Profile#17152
James Ormiston Affleck
1840 - 1922 (82 years)
Sir James Ormiston Affleck FRSE was a Scottish physician and medical author. Life Affleck was born in Edinburgh in 1840, but not to a medical family. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1867 with MB ChB. He completed his doctorate in 1869 and began practicing in the Stockbridge area of the city, operating from 12 Claremont Place. He also took on the role of public vaccinator at the New Town Dispensary.
Go to Profile#17153
Curt Schimmelbusch
1860 - 1895 (35 years)
Curt Theodor Schimmelbusch was a German physician and pathologist who invented the Schimmelbusch mask, for the safe delivery of anaesthetics to surgical patients. He was also a key figure in the development of mechanical methods of sterilisation and disinfection for surgical procedures, on which his Anleitung zur aseptischen Wundbehandlung was considered a seminal work.
Go to Profile#17154
Katarina Jovanović
1869 - 1954 (85 years)
Katarina A. Jovanović was a Serbian translator, literary historian, publicist, philosopher, journalist and humanitarian. She translated into German Petar II Petrović Njegoš's masterpiece "Mountain Wreath" .
Go to Profile#17155
Nicolas d'Orbellis
1500 - 1472 (-28 years)
Nicolas d'Orbellis was a French Franciscan theologian and philosopher, of the Scotist school. Biography He was born about 1400. He seems to have entered the monastery of the Observantines, founded in 1407, one of the first in France.
Go to Profile#17156
Sebastián Fox Morcillo
1526 - 1559 (33 years)
Sebastian Fox Morcillo , a Spanish scholar and philosopher, was born in Seville between 1526 and 1528. Around 1548 he studied in Leuven. Following the example of the Spanish Jew Judas Abarbanel, he published commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, in which he endeavoured to reconcile their teachings. In 1559 he was appointed tutor to Don Carlos, son of Philip II, but he was lost at sea on his way to Spain to take up the post.
Go to Profile#17157
Abdallah al-Qutbi
1879 - 1952 (73 years)
Abdallah ibn Mu'allim Yusuf al-Qutbi was a Somali polemicist, theologian and philosopher who lived in Qulunqul , Somalia. Biography Sheikh Al-Qutbi is best known for his Al-Majmu'at al-mubaraka , a five-part compilation of polemics that was published in Cairo ca. 1919–1920 . Sheikh Abdullahi Qutbi, a disciple of Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Shashi and member of Qadiriyyah congregation, an Islamic school of thought or tariqah.
Go to Profile#17158
Marcin Król z Żurawicy
1422 - 1460 (38 years)
Marcin Król , also Martinus Ruthenus, Marcin z Żurawica, Marcin Król z Przemyśla, Martinus Polonus, Martinus Rex de Premislia was a Ruthenian-born Polish mathematician, astronomer, and doctor. Life Marcin Król, son of Stanisław Król, was born around 1422 in Żurawica near Przemyśl.
Go to Profile#17159
Mary Carr Moore
1873 - 1957 (84 years)
Mary Carr Moore was an American composer, conductor, vocalist, and music educator of the twentieth century. She is best remembered today for her association with the musical life of the West Coast.
Go to Profile#17160
Edmund Hansen Grut
1831 - 1907 (76 years)
Edmund Hansen Grut was a Danish ophthalmologist born in Copenhagen. In 1857 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Copenhagen, and afterwards traveled to Berlin, where he studied with Albrecht von Graefe . In 1863 he opened an eye clinic at Nørregade, Copenhagen, and in 1873 founded an ophthalmic clinic at Havnegade , not far from the University Hospital.
Go to Profile#17161
Alfons von Rosthorn
1857 - 1909 (52 years)
Alfons Edler von Rosthorn was a gynecologist in Austria-Hungary who was native of Oed, a village that is located in the district of Wiener Neustadt-Land. In 1885 he earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he studied zoology and medicine, and was a student of surgeon Theodor Billroth . Afterwards, he became an assistant to Rudolf Chrobak at the second university Frauenklinik in Vienna. In 1891 he was habilitated for gynecology and obstetrics, and in 1894 became a full professor of OB/GYN at the University of Prague. Later, he was a professor at the Universities of Graz , Hei...
Go to Profile#17162
Alexander Pope
1763 - 1835 (72 years)
Alexander Pope was an Irish actor and painter. Life He was born in Cork, Ireland. He was educated to follow his father's profession of miniature painting. He continued to paint miniatures and exhibit them at the Royal Academy as late as 1821; but at an early date he took the stage, first appearing in London as Oroonoko in 1785 at Covent Garden. He remained at this theatre almost continuously for nearly twenty years, then at the Haymarket until his retirement, playing leading parts, chiefly tragic. He was well known as Othello and Henry VIII.
Go to Profile#17163
Thomas McCall Anderson
1836 - 1908 (72 years)
Sir Thomas McCall Anderson was a physician and a professor of practice of medicine, at the University of Glasgow. Life He was born in Glasgow on 9 June 1836, was second of three sons of Alexander Dunlop Anderson, M.D. medical practitioner in Glasgow, who in 1852 was president of the faculty of physicians and surgeons of Glasgow, by his wife Sara, daughter of Thomas McCall of Craighead, Lanarkshire. His father's family was descended on the maternal side from William Dunlop, principal of Glasgow University, 1690-1700; and in the male line from John Anderson , the stout defender of presbyteriani...
Go to Profile#17164
Giovanni Bovio
1837 - 1903 (66 years)
Giovanni Bovio was an Italian philosopher and a politician of the Italian Republican Party. Bovio was born in Trani. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy. He wrote a philosophical work in 1864 called Il Verbo Novello.
Go to Profile#17165
Sophia B. Jones
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Sophia Bethena Jones was a British North America-born American medical doctor and the first woman of African descent to graduate from the University of Michigan Medical School. She founded the Nursing Program at Spelman College, where she was the first black faculty member.
Go to Profile#17166
William Thomson
1601 - 1753 (152 years)
William Thomson was a Scottish folk song collector and singer. He is said to have been the son of Daniel Thomson, one of the king's trumpeters for Scotland. As a boy singer, he sang at a concert – The Feast of St. Cecillia – in 1695. Before 1722, he had settled in London, and according to Charles Burney had a benefit concert that year. He appears to have become a fashionable singer, as his volume, dedicated to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales, contains a lengthy list of notable persons as subscribers.
Go to Profile#17167
Vito Fazio-Allmayer
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Vito Fazio-Allmayer was an Italian philosopher, pedagogist and university teacher. Biography He was born in Palermo from Giuseppe Emanuele Fazio, originary from Alcamo and from Felicina Allmayer, of German origins but resident in Italy. Since a boy he was interested in the history of art; when he was 23 he graduated in Jurisprudence, but as he was fond of philosophy, he soon started the philosophical studies and attended the philosophical library of Palermo, where he met Giovanni Gentile.
Go to Profile#17168
William Cumin
1784 - 1854 (70 years)
William Cumin was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow between 1834 and 1840. He was the son of Patrick Cumin , professor of oriental languages at the University of Glasgow, and his wife Rachael Baird. The Scottish philosopher David Hume in a letter to Adam Smith in June 1761 had recommended Cumin's father for his position.
Go to Profile#17169
Ferdinand Laufberger
1829 - 1881 (52 years)
Ferdinand Julius Wilhelm Laufberger was an Austrian painter and etcher. Biography Laufberger trained at both the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He initially painted genre scenes of peasant and village life then, in 1855, on behalf of Österreichischer Lloyd , travelled through the Danube Vilayet to Istanbul, creating a series of drawings that were made into popular engravings. While in Istanbul, Laufberger made several connections with Caucasus Germans that had settled in Istanbul, and the material he drew from them provided inspiration to his later work.
Go to Profile#17170
Peter of Capua the Elder
1150 - 1214 (64 years)
Peter of Capua was an Italian scholastic theologian and prelate. He served as cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata from 1193 until 1201 and cardinal-priest of San Marcello al Corso from 1201 until his death. He often worked as a papal legate. He wrote several theological works and was a patron of his hometown of Amalfi.
Go to Profile#17171
María Teresa Ferrari
1887 - 1956 (69 years)
María Teresa Ferrari was an Argentine educator, physician, and women's rights activist. She was the first female university professor in Latin America and one of the first women allowed to teach medicine. She was a pioneering researcher in women's health, studying the use of radiation therapy rather than surgery for uterine tumors and developing a vaginoscope that revolutionized women's health care in Brazil. She established the first maternity ward and gynecological services at the Hospital Militar Central of Buenos Aires in 1925, which provided the first incubation services in the country.
Go to Profile#17172
William Kilpatrick Stewart
1914 - 1967 (53 years)
Air Vice Marshal William Kilpatrick Stewart, was a Scottish researcher in aerospace physiology, senior consultant in physiology to the Royal Air Force, and commanding officer of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine.
Go to Profile#17173
Reuben Ottenberg
1882 - 1959 (77 years)
Reuben Ottenberg was an American physician and haematologist, who served Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City with distinction for 50 years. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1902 and his M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons three years later.
Go to Profile#17174
Aesara
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Aesara of Lucania was a conjectured Pythagorean philosopher who may have written On Human Nature, a fragment of which is preserved by Stobaeus, although the majority of critical scholars follow Holger Thesleff in attributing it to Aresas, a male writer from Lucania who is also mentioned by Iamblichus in his Life of Pythagoras.
Go to Profile#17175
Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty
1825 - 1874 (49 years)
Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty, also spelled Surjo Kumar Chakraborty was the first Indian to pass the examination of the Indian Medical Service in 1855 and subsequently became the Professor of Materia Medica at Calcutta Medical College in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Go to Profile#17176
Ivan Loveridge Bennett
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
Ivan Loveridge Bennett, Jr. was an American physician who was dean of the NYU School of Medicine and served as president of New York University 1980–1981. Bennett was educated at Emory University where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. Graduated with a B.A. in 1943, and a medical degree in 1946. Bennett was Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy under Lyndon B. Johnson between 1967 and 1969. Bennett was also director of the department of pathology at Johns Hopkins University and also taught at Yale and New York University.
Go to Profile#17177
Thomas Malcolm Knox
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox was a British philosopher who served as Principal of St Andrews University from 1953 to 1966 and Vice-president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1975 to 1978. Biography Knox was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, on 28 November 1900, the son of Scottish Congregationalist minister James Knox and his wife Isabella Marshall.
Go to Profile#17178
Miles of Marseilles
1294 - 1301 (7 years)
Miles of Marseille was a Provençal-Jewish physician and philosopher of the Middle Ages. He was born at Marseille around 1294. In some manuscripts he is designated by the name "Bongodos," the Provençal language equivalent of "ben Judah."
Go to Profile#17179
David Boswell Reid
1805 - 1863 (58 years)
Prof David Boswell Reid MD FRSE FRCPE was a British physician, chemist and inventor. Through reports on public hygiene and ventilation projects in public buildings, he made a reputation in the field of sanitation. He has been called the "grandfather of air-conditioning".
Go to Profile#17180
Richard Russell
1687 - 1759 (72 years)
Richard Russell was an 18th-century British physician who encouraged his patients to use a form of water therapy that involved the submersion or bathing in, and drinking of, seawater. The contemporary equivalent of this is thalassotherapy, although the practice of drinking seawater has largely discontinued.
Go to Profile#17181
Menedemus the Cynic
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Menedemus was a Cynic philosopher, and a pupil of the Epicurean Colotes of Lampsacus. Diogenes Laërtius states that he used to go about garbed as a Fury, proclaiming himself a sort of spy from Hades: He assumed the garb of a Fury, and went about saying that he had come from Hades to take notice of all who did wrong, in order that he might descend there again and make his report to the deities who live in that country. And this was his dress: a tunic of a dark colour reaching to his feet, and a purple girdle round his waist, an Arcadian hat on his head with the twelve signs of the zodiac embro...
Go to Profile#17182
Babowai
450 - 484 (34 years)
Babowai was Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Patriarch of the Church of the East from 457 to 484, during the reign of the Sassanid King Peroz I. Babowai was known for his pro-Byzantine leanings, for which he was often in conflict with other members of the anti-Byzantine Church of the East. He was executed in 484.
Go to Profile#17183
Benno Baginsky
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Benno Baginsky was a German physician specializing in the field of otorhinolaryngology. He was a younger brother to pediatrician Adolf Aron Baginsky . He studied medicine in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1870. Following service as a physician in the Franco-Prussian War, he began practicing medicine and soon found himself specializing in diseases of the ear, nose and larynx. In 1884 he became a privat-docent of otology, rhinology and laryngology at the University of Berlin, and in 1897 received the title of professor. Among his assistants at Berlin was fellow otorhinolaryngologist Jacob K...
Go to Profile#17184
August Wagenmann
1863 - 1955 (92 years)
August Emil Ludwig Wagenmann was a German ophthalmologist. August Wagenmann obtained a degree of medical doctor at the universities of Göttingen and Munich. After graduation, he received a position of assistant doctor in the Eye Clinic at Göttingen University, which was chaired by Theodor Leber. In 1888, August Wagenmann was qualified as a privatdocent in ophthalmology.
Go to Profile#17185
Otto Kahler
1849 - 1893 (44 years)
Otto Kahler was a physician and pathologist born in Prague, Austrian Empire. In 1871 he obtained his medical doctorate in Prague, and following an educational trip to Paris, returned to his hometown as an assistant to Joseph Halla at the internal clinic. In 1882 he became an associate professor at Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, and a few years later , was a "full professor" of pathology and therapy. In 1889 he relocated to the University of Vienna, succeeding Heinrich von Bamberger as professor of special pathology. After a year in Vienna, he developed tongue cancer and his assistant, Friedrich Kraus , subsequently took over his lectures.
Go to Profile#17186
Adolf Abicht
1793 - 1860 (67 years)
Adolf Abicht was a Polish-Lithuanian physician. He was a professor of general pathology, therapy, and medical history at the Vilnius University, and was a president of the Medical Society in Vilnius from 1829–1838.
Go to Profile#17187
Paul von Bruns
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Paul von Bruns was a German surgeon. He was born in Tübingen, and was the son of surgeon Victor von Bruns. His father-in-law was Protestant theologian Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker. Bruns was born July 2, 1846. In 1882, Bruns became director of the surgical clinic at Tübingen, as well as a full professor at the University. He was the author of works on numerous medical subjects — laryngotomy for removal of growths in the larynx, acute osteomyelitis, gunshot wounds, limb operations and the treatment of goiters, to name a few.
Go to Profile#17188
Stephen Whisson
1710 - 1783 (73 years)
Stephen Whisson was a tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and coached 72 students in the 1744–1754 period. Biography Wisson was from St Neots, Huntingdonshire and was the son of a publican. In 1735, he matriculated from Wakefield School, Yorkshire.
Go to Profile#17189
Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben
1806 - 1849 (43 years)
Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben , was an Austrian physician, poet and philosopher. He was a member of the von Feuchtersleben family Life He was born as a son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben . He was of an old Saxon noble family. His older half-brother was Eduard von Feuchtersleben , son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben from his first marriage.
Go to Profile#17190
Franz Josef Ruprecht
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
Franz Josef Ruprecht was an Austrian-born physician and botanist active in the Russian Empire, where he was known as Frants Ivanovič Ruprekht . He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, and grew up in Prague, where he studied, and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1836. After a short stint in medical practice in Prague, he was appointed curator of the herbarium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1839, then assistant director of the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden between 1851 and 1855, and professor of botany in 1855 at the University of Saint Petersburg. He died in Saint...
Go to Profile#17191
Robert Meyer
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Robert Meyer was a German pathologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Strassburg, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1889. From 1890 to 1894 he was a medical practitioner in the community of Dedeleben, and afterwards worked as assistant to gynecologist Johann Veit in Berlin.
Go to Profile#17192
John Smith
1721 - 1797 (76 years)
John Smith was a Scottish physician and academic. Smith was born in Maybole, Scotland, where his father, William, was a merchant. He studied at the University of Glasgow beginning in 1736, entered Balliol College, Oxford in 1744 with the support of the Snell Exhibition, and earned a B.A. in 1748 and an M.A. in 1751 from Balliol. He then studied under Nathan Alcock in St Mary Hall, earning his doctorate in 1757. Alcock left Oxford for Bath in the same year, and Smith took his place. At Oxford, he taught anatomy and chemistry. Despite not being a mathematician, he held the Savilian chair of geo...
Go to Profile#17193
Lawrence S. Thompson
1916 - 1986 (70 years)
Lawrence Sidney Thompson worked at the University of Kentucky as the Director of Libraries and as a faculty member in the classics department. He wrote extensively on the processes of printing and publication. Thompson also researched processes for cataloging materials, frequently corresponding with European colleagues.
Go to Profile#17194
Johann Georg Hiltensperger
1806 - 1890 (84 years)
Johann Georg Hiltensperger was a German history painter and a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Biography Born in Haldenwang, Oberallgäu, he was trained in drawing by L. Weiß before studying under Johann Peter von Langer at the Royal Art Academy and under Peter von Cornelius at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Returning to Munich in 1825, he there received commissions for frescoes and oil paintings from Ludwig I of Bavaria and Maximilian II Joseph of Bavaria. For example, between 1838 and 1865 he produced the Odyssey Cycle in festal hall of the Munich Residenz to designs by Ludwig Schwanthaler.
Go to Profile#17195
Chassar Moir
1900 - 1977 (77 years)
Chassar Moir CBE was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at The University of Oxford. "One whose contributions were so outstanding as to make Chassar Moir’s an immortal name in the history of Obstetrics and Gynaecology". Sir Norman Jeffcoate
Go to Profile#17196
Dugald Baird
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Sir Dugald Baird FRCOG was a British medical doctor and a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology. Baird was most notable and influential in calling for the liberalising of abortion. In his delivery of the Sandoz lecture in November 1961, titled the Fifth Freedom, he advocated for freedom from the tyranny of fertility.
Go to Profile#17197
Henry Nelson Wieman
1884 - 1975 (91 years)
Henry Nelson Wieman was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the latter part of the 20th century. His grandson Carl Wieman is a Nobel laureate, and his son-in-law Huston Smith was a prominent scholar in religious studies.
Go to Profile#17198
Michael Oakeshott
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Michael Joseph Oakeshott FBA was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about the philosophies of history, religion, aesthetics, education, and law. Biography Early life and education Oakeshott was the son of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. Though there is no evidence that he knew her, he was related by marriage to the women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, and to the economist and social reformer Gilbert Slater.
Go to Profile#17199
J. C. C. McKinsey
1908 - 1953 (45 years)
John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey , usually cited as J. C. C. McKinsey, was an American mathematician known for his work on game theory and mathematical logic, particularly, modal logic. Biography McKinsey received B.S. and M.S. degrees from New York University and a Ph.D. degree in 1936 from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Blumenthal Research Fellow at New York University from 1936 to 1937 and a Guggenheim Fellow from 1942 to 1943. He also taught at Montana State College, and in Nevada, then Oklahoma, and in 1947 he went "to a research group at Douglas Aircraft Corporation" th...
Go to Profile#17200
Otto Erich Deutsch
1883 - 1967 (84 years)
Otto Erich Deutsch was an Austrian musicologist. He is known for compiling the first comprehensive catalogue of Franz Schubert's compositions, first published in 1951 in English, with a revised edition published in 1978 in German. It is from this catalogue that the D numbers used to identify Schubert's works derive.
Go to Profile