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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#17201
Wilhelm von Henke
1834 - 1896 (62 years)
Philipp Jakob Wilhelm von Henke was a German anatomist. Early life On 19 June 1834, Henke was born. Henke's father was Ernst Ludwig Theodor Henke , a historian. Education Henke studied at the universities of Marburg, Göttingen and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1857 at Marburg.
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Gentile da Foligno
1280 - 1348 (68 years)
Gentile Gentili da Foligno was an Italian professor and doctor of medicine, trained at Padua and the University of Bologna, and teaching probably first at Bologna, then at the University of Perugia, Siena , where his annual stipend was 60 gold florins; he was called to Padua by Ubertino I da Carrara, Lord of Padua, then returned to Perugia for the remainder of his career. He was among the first European physicians to perform a dissection on a human being , a practice that had long been taboo in Roman times. Gentile wrote several widely copied and read texts and commentaries, notably his mass...
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John Templeton Bowen
1857 - 1940 (83 years)
John Templeton Bowen was an American dermatologist. He was a professor of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Bowen obtained his doctoral degree in medical sciences from the Harvard University in 1884. From 1884 to 1887, he pursued postgraduate studies in Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. He joined Massachusetts General Hospital in 1889 as an assistant in the skin diseases department.
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Otto Riemer
1902 - 1977 (75 years)
Otto Moritz Martin Riemer was a German music historian and music critic. Life Riemer was born in near Magdeburg, the son of a pastor. After attending the , he studied musicology, education and philosophy at the universities of Marburg, Leipzig and Halle. He listened to Hermann Stephani, Nicolai Hartmann, Heinz Heimsoeth, Hermann Abert, Friedrich Blume, Felix Krueger, Hans Joachim Moser, , Theodor Ziehen and Ottomar Wichmann, among others. From 1924 to 1926, he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, where Carl Adolf Martienssen and Fritz Reuter were among his teachers. In Halle, he took singing lessons with Hans Klemann.
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Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay CIE, popularly known as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar He was the most prominent campaigner for Hindu widow remarriage, petitioning the Legislative Council despite severe opposition, including a counter petition which had nearly four times as many signatures. Even though widow remarriage was considered a flagrant breach of Hindu customs and was staunchly opposed, Lord Dalhousie personally finalised the bill and the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 was passed. Against child marriage, efforts of Vidyasagar led to Age of Consent Act, 1891. In which the minimum age of ...
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Leonardo Garzoni
1543 - 1592 (49 years)
Leonardo Garzoni was a Jesuit natural philosopher. Life The little data we have about Garzoni's life are the brief notices registered on official documents of the Society of Jesus. From these sources we know that Garzoni was born into a patrician family and that he began his philosophical studies before 1565. About 1566 he joined a congregation near to the Jesuits’ College in Brescia and entered the Society of Jesus in 1567 or 1568. In 1568 he lectured in logic in Parma and in 1573 he was a third–year student in theology in Padua. On 9 June 1579 he took his four vows in Brescia and from 1579 he lived, as a confessor, in Venice.
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Julius Dreschfeld
1845 - 1907 (62 years)
Julius Dreschfeld FRCP was a leading British physician and pathologist. Life Julius Dreschfeld was born as the youngest of ten siblings on 13 October 1845 at Niederwerrn, in the Schweinfurt district of Bavaria. His parents, Samuel and Giedel, were well-off, well-respected Orthodox Jewish people who derived their livelihood from merchanting.
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Yamagiwa Katsusaburō
1863 - 1930 (67 years)
was a Japanese pathologist who carried out pioneering work into the causes of cancer. He was the first to prove chemical carcinogenesis. He was the Nobel Prize nominee in 7 nominations. Life Yamagiwa was born in Ueda, Nagano, the third son of the feudal retainer of the Ueda Domain in Shinano Province. He became the adopted son-in-law of Yoshiya Yamagiwa, a physician in Katsuya, Tokyo, and took the surname Yamagiwa. He completed his MD in 1888 from Imperial University of Tokyo. He was appointed as a professor at the Medical School, Imperial University of Tokyo and published his landmark work, ...
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Antonín Jan Jungmann
1775 - 1854 (79 years)
Antonín Jan Jungmann, sometimes referred to as was a Czech obstetrician and educator born in Hudlice, Beroun District. He was a younger brother to linguist Josef Jungmann . In 1811 he was appointed professor of obstetrics to the medical faculty at Prague, and in 1838 he became university rector. He gave lectures in German and Czech, and collaborated with his brother on the latter's linguistic projects. He remained at the University of Prague until his retirement in 1850.
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Hans Olde
1855 - 1917 (62 years)
Johannes Wilhelm Olde was a German painter and art school administrator. Life He originally planned to follow family tradition and become a farmer but, over his father's strong objections, went to study with Ludwig von Löfftz at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1879. He and his friend, the sculptor Adolf Brütt, moved to Italy in 1883. Three years later, however, he decided to attend the Académie Julian in Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon and discovered impressionism. Upon his return to Germany, he was one of the founders of the Munich Secession and, in 1894, helped to create the Schleswig-Holstein Art Appreciation Society.
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Abu al-Hakam al-Kirmani
970 - 1066 (96 years)
Abu al-Hakam al-Kirmani was a prominent philosopher and scholar from the Muslim al-Andalus. A student of Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti, he was a Neoplatonic advocate, and seen as an influence on Ibn 'Arabi, but he also wrote extensively on geometry and logic. His exact date of death is not known as he fled to Morocco in the twelfth century. It is possible that it was he who returned to al-Andalus with the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity.
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Reuben D. Mussey
1780 - 1866 (86 years)
Reuben Dimond Mussey, Sr. was an American physician, surgeon, vegetarian and an early opponent of tobacco. He was the fourth president of the American Medical Association. Biography Mussey was born on June 23, 1780, in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. He was of French Huguenot descent, and his father, John Mussey, was also a medical doctor. Mussey studied at Dartmouth College and then learned medicine under Nathan Smith. He began the practice of medicine in Essex County, Massachusetts. However, he then went to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine where he did further medical studies, graduating M.D.
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Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein
1788 - 1868 (80 years)
Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein , born Vogel, was a German painter. Life Son of the child and portrait painter Christian Leberecht Vogel, Vogel was trained early in life by his father. From 1804 he visited the Kunstakademie in Dresden, where he copied many paintings in the Gemäldegalerie and also produced the first of his own portraits.
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Johannes Magirus
1560 - 1596 (36 years)
Johannes Magirus was a German physician and natural philosopher. He was born at Fritzlar about 1560; his background was Lutheran. He studied at the University of Padua, and took a medical degree at the University of Marburg in 1585.
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Alfred Pribram
1841 - 1912 (71 years)
Alfred Pribram was an internist born in Prague, Austrian Empire. He was a brother of chemist Richard Pribram . His son was the internist Hugo Pribram . Biography He studied medicine at the University of Prague, earning his doctorate as a general practitioner in 1861 and as a surgeon during the following year. From 1867 to 1871 he worked as an assistant to Anton von Jaksch at the second medical clinic in Prague. In 1871 he received his habilitation, and in 1887 was appointed full professor of special pathology and therapy at the University of Prague. Among his better known students was physi...
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Joseph von Lindwurm
1824 - 1874 (50 years)
Joseph von Lindwurm , was a German physician and dermatologist born in Aschaffenburg. He studied medicine in Würzburg and Heidelberg, obtaining his medical doctorate in 1849. Afterwards, he worked as an assistant in the medical clinic at Würzburg, then furthered his education in Vienna and Paris. In Paris, he demonstrated through inoculation experiments that secondary syphilis was as contagious as primary syphilis. In 1853 he became privat-docent at Munich, followed by an associate professorship several years later . In 1863 he was appointed a full professor of dermatology and venereal disease...
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Alberto Sols
1917 - 1989 (72 years)
Alberto Sols García was a researcher specializing in biochemistry, working especially on hexokinases. He effectively created biochemistry as a major discipline in Spain. Life Alberto Sols was born in Sax, Alicante, on 2 February 1917, the son of Pedro Sols Lluch. He died in Denia, Alicante, on 10 August 1989. The house of his birth is now the Centro de Estudios y Archivo Histórico Municipal Alberto Sols.
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Mark Fax
1911 - 1974 (63 years)
Mark Oakland Fax was an American composer and a professor of music. Child prodigy Born on June 15, 1911, in Baltimore, Maryland, Fax was a child prodigy. By age fourteen, Fax was employed as a theater organist playing scores to silent films in Baltimore's Regent Theater on Saturdays, and gospel music at an African American church on Sundays. Fax enrolled at Syracuse University on the advice of his brother, Elton Fax, an artist, who believed Syracuse faculty would take his aspirations as a classical composer seriously.
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Yun Won-hyeong
1509 - 1565 (56 years)
Yun Won-hyeong was a Korean political figure of the Joseon period. He was the younger brother of Queen Munjeong, the 3rd wife of 11th King Jungjong and was the maternal uncle of the 13th King Myeongjong.
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Giorgio Raguseo
1580 - 1622 (42 years)
Giorgio Raguseo was an Italian philosopher, theologist, and orator from the Republic of Venice. Born an illegitimate child in Dubrovnik , Croatia, Raguseo had to beg before being taken to Venice by a gentleman who provided him an education. He became a priest and taught at the University of Padua.
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Louis Tocqué
1696 - 1772 (76 years)
Jean Louis Tocqué was a French painter. He specialized in portrait painting. Biography Jean Louis Tocqué was born on 19 November 1696 in Paris. His father, who was also a painter, died in April 1710, before Louis was even fourteen. He was eventually brought into the care of another artist, Jean-Marc Nattier. Tocqué studied under Nattier, Nicolas Bertin and Hyacinthe Rigaud in the 1720s. He married Jean-Marc Nattier's daughter Marie Nattier in 1747. He died on 10 February 1772 in Paris.
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Jane Clapperton
1832 - 1914 (82 years)
Jane Hume Clapperton was a British philosopher, birth control pioneer, socialist, social reformer and suffragist. Life Her father was Alexander Clapperton and mother Anne Clapperton . She had eleven siblings. Her father ran a company, Clapperton & Co., in Edinburgh and moved from 43 Lauriston Place close to George Heriot's School to 126 George Street in the year Jane was born.
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Claude Beck
1894 - 1971 (77 years)
Claude Schaeffer Beck was a pioneer cardiac surgeon, famous for innovating various cardiac surgery techniques, and performing the first defibrillation in 1947. He was the first American professor of cardiovascular surgery, from 1952 through 1965. He was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1952.
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Johannes Heurnius
1543 - 1601 (58 years)
Johannes Heurnius was a Dutch physician and natural philosopher. Life Heurnius was born in Utrecht, and studied at Leuven and Paris. He went to the University of Padua to study under Hieronymus Fabricius; and graduated M.D. there in 1566, examined by Petrus Ramus and Fabricius.
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Matthew Ferchi
1583 - 1669 (86 years)
Matija Ferkić or Matija Frkić was a Croatian Franciscan Conventual scholastic philosopher from Krk. He was from the island of Krk . He was a Scotist, and wrote a Vita et apologia Scoti, a life of Duns Scotus. He taught at the University of Padua for 35 years, from 1629.
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Valery Chkalov
1904 - 1938 (34 years)
Valery Pavlovich Chkalov was a test pilot awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union . Early life Chkalov was born to a Russian family in 1904 in the upper Volga region, the town of Vasilyevo , which lies near Nizhny Novgorod.
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Thomas Wilton
1270 - 1320 (50 years)
Thomas Wilton was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, a pupil of Duns Scotus, a teacher at the University of Oxford and then the University of Paris, where he taught Walter Burley. He was a Fellow of Merton College from about 1288.
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Evander
201 BC - 101 BC (100 years)
Evander , born in Phocis or Phocaea, was the pupil and successor of Lacydes, and was joint leader of the Academy at Athens together with Telecles. In the final ten years of Lacydes' life , Evander and Telecles had helped run the Academy due to Lacydes being seriously ill. They continued running the Academy after the death of Lacydes, without formally being elected scholarchs. On Telecles' death in 167/6 BC, Evander remained scholarch for a few more years. Evander himself was succeeded by his pupil Hegesinus. Concerning the opinions and writings of this philosopher nothing is known except t...
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Su Xuelin
1897 - 1999 (102 years)
Su Xuelin or Su Hsüeh-lin was a Chinese writer and scholar. Early life Su Xuelin was born to a family of officials native to Anhui province in 1897. Her grandfather, Su Jinxin, served as a magistrate in several counties in Zhejiang province, where Su Xuelin was born. Her mother was surnamed Tu, but had no formal first name, instead going by the nickname To-Ni. Su's father held a minor official position, first under the Qing dynasty and then the Republic of China. Su had three brothers and two sisters.
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John Gorham
1783 - 1829 (46 years)
John Gorham was an American physician and educator. Biography He graduated from Harvard in 1801, with a B.A., and later received two medical degrees there . Between his medical degrees, he studied chemistry privately in London with Friedrich Accum, and then with Thomas Hope at the University of Edinburgh. He opened a medical practice in Boston in 1806, and maintained it throughout his academic career. In 1809 he was appointed adjunct professor of chemistry and materia medica in Harvard, and in 1816 was made professor of chemistry and mineralogy. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy...
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Romolo Spezioli
1642 - 1723 (81 years)
Romolo Spezioli was an Italian doctor and the personal physician of the Ottoboni family, Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinal Decio Azzolino and of Pope Alexander VIII. Life After studies initiated in Fermo, graduating in 1664, he worked for a short period nearby Grottammare, Ripatransone and Jesi.
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Julius Vincenz von Krombholz
1782 - 1843 (61 years)
Julius Vincenz von Krombholz was a physician and mycologist born in Oberpolitz , northern Bohemia. He studied medicine at the University of Prague, receiving his doctorate in 1814. In 1828 he was appointed professor of special pathology and therapy. At Prague, he used his influence to help the penniless August Carl Joseph Corda get admitted to the university. In 1831 he was named rector of the university.
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Emil Carl Wilm
1877 - 1932 (55 years)
Emil Carl Kunibert Wilm was an American philosopher. His published scholarship, often written for a popular audience, was mainly in the history of philosophy and psychology. Early life and education Wilm was born in 1877 in Margonin, then part of Prussia and now in Poland. He moved to the United States in 1890, at age 13. He received a bachelor of arts from Southwestern University in 1902, a master of arts from Vanderbilt University in 1903, and a PhD from Cornell University in 1905.
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Irving Pichel
1891 - 1954 (63 years)
Irving Pichel was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career. Career Pichel was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh. He attended Pittsburgh Central High School with George S. Kaufman. The two collaborated on a play, The Failure. Pichel graduated from Harvard University in 1914 and went immediately into the theater. Pichel's first work in musical theatre was as a technical director for the theater of the San Francisco Bohemian Club; he also helped with the annual summer pageant, held at the elite Bohemian Grove, in which up to 300 of its wealthy, influential members from finance and government participate.
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James McCune Smith
1813 - 1865 (52 years)
James McCune Smith was an American physician, apothecary, abolitionist and author. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree. His M.D. was awarded by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. After his return to the United States, he also became the first African American to run a pharmacy in the nation.
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Carl Joseph Begas
1794 - 1854 (60 years)
Carl Joseph Begas, or Karl Begas, was a German painter who played an important role in the transition from Romanticism to Realism. He was the first in a multi-generational "dynasty" of artists. Life and work His family came from Belgium, in the region near Verviers and Liège. He was the third child of Franz Anton Begasse , a judge, and his wife, Susanne née Hoffstadt. In 1802, they moved to Cologne, where he received his first artistic training from the miniaturist, . Later, he studied at the Lyceum in Bonn with Clemens August Philippart . In 1813, he went to Paris, where he became a student of Antoine-Jean Gros.
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John Alexander Stewart
1882 - 1948 (66 years)
John Alexander Stewart CIE MC was a classical scholar, colonial public servant, and professor of Burmese. Stewart was born in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and educated at the University of Aberdeen where he graduated with first-class honours in classics in 1903. He passed the Indian civil service examination in 1904 and went to Myanmar in 1905. He worked for five years in the Settlement Department where he met J S Furnivall. During the First World War, and the Anglo-Afghan War, Stewart served for years with the Burma Sappers and Miners in Mesopotamia and Persia. He returned to Myanmar and was Commissioner of the Magwe Division in the 1930s.
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Hilda Lloyd
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Dr. Dame Hilda Nora Lloyd, DBE was a British physician and surgeon. She was the first woman to be elected as president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Born in Birmingham, the younger of two daughters, she attended King Edward VI High School, Edgbaston before entering Birmingham University .
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Lucius Aemilius Juncus
100 - Present (1926 years)
Lucius Aemilius Juncus was a senator of the Roman Empire, and a philosopher. He was consul suffect in the last three months of 127 with Sextus Julius Severus as his colleague. Life According to John Oliver, Juncus came of an equestrian background. There is a lead tessera found in Beirut attesting to a procurator of Syria named L. Aemilius Juncus , who has been identified with this suffect consul or the suffect consul of 179 who was exiled in 183. In either case, Juncus is likely not related to the patrician Aemilia gens, although he may be descended from a client or freedman of a member of tha...
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James Martin
1550 - 1584 (34 years)
James Martin was a Scottish philosophical writer and early Ramist. Life He was a native of Dunkeld, Perthshire, and is said to have been educated at the University of Oxford. A James Martin, whose college is not mentioned, commenced M.A. at Oxford on 31 March 1522.
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Sölvi Helgason
1820 - 1895 (75 years)
Sölvi Helgason was an artist, philosopher and drifter in Iceland. If he hadn't been arrested, we might not know anything more about Sölvi than folk tales about his life. He never went to school, but was known to always be painting and writing. It is posited from his writings that he was mentally ill and suffered from paranoia; he was known to accuse people of stealing his work. He often referred to himself by made-up names as well as names of playwrights, artists, musicians and philosophers: Sókrates, Plato, Sólon, Melanchthon, Sölvi Spekingur, Sjúlvi, Húsfriður, Sjúlvi Hinn Vitri, Húmboldt, ...
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Carlo Cignani
1628 - 1719 (91 years)
Carlo Cignani was an Italian painter. His innovative style referred to as his 'new manner' introduced a reflective, intimate mood of painting and presaged the later pictures of Guido Reni and Guercino, as well as those of Simone Cantarini. This gentle manner marked a break with the more energetic style of earlier Bolognese classicism of the Bolognese School of painting.
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Alexander of Lycopolis
300 - Present (1726 years)
Alexander of Lycopolis was the writer of a short treatise, in twenty-six chapters, against the Manicheans . He says in the second chapter of this work that he derived his knowledge of Manes' teaching apo ton gnorimon .
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Arthur McGill
1926 - 1980 (54 years)
Arthur Chute McGill was a Canadian-born American theologian and philosopher. Biography Born in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, on August 7, 1926, McGill moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, later that year where he attended Rivers Country Day School, still extant today. He is mentioned in The Lustre of Our Country The American Experience of Religious Freedom, by prominent Senior Circuit Judge John T. Noonan Jr. The two men prayed and sung Protestant hymns together at the school, and Noonan refers to him as a boyhood rival: "... my River's classmate, Arthur Chute McGill, who later became a professor at Harvard Divinity School.
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Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus
113 - 200 (87 years)
Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus was a senator and philosopher who lived in the Roman Empire. Life Severus was the son of the consul and first Roman Governor of Arabia Petraea, Gaius Claudius Severus, by an unnamed mother. Severus was of Pontian Greek descent. He was born and raised in Pompeiopolis, a city in the Roman province of Galatia.
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David Martin
1737 - 1797 (60 years)
David Martin was a Scottish painter and engraver. Born in Fife, he studied in Italy and England, before gaining a reputation as a portrait painter. Early life Born in Anstruther Easter, he was the first of the five children of John Martin , Anstruther Easter's parish schoolmaster, and his second wife, Mary Boyack .
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Petre P. Negulescu
1872 - 1951 (79 years)
Petre Paul Negulescu was a Romanian philosopher and conservative politician, known as a disciple and continuator of Titu Maiorescu. Affiliated with Maiorescu's Junimea society from his early twenties, he debuted as a positivist and monist, attempting to reconcile art for art's sake with an evolutionist philosophy of culture. He was a lecturer and tenured professor at the University of Iași, where he promoted the Junimist lobby against left-wing competitors, and formalized his links with the Conservative Party in 1901. From 1910, he taught at the University of Bucharest, publishing works on Re...
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Hawley Harvey Crippen
1862 - 1910 (48 years)
Hawley Harvey Crippen , colloquially known as Dr. Crippen, was an American homeopath, ear and eye specialist and medicine dispenser who was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, for the murder of his wife, Cora Henrietta Crippen. He was one of the first criminals to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.
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Bob Fosse
1927 - 1987 (60 years)
Robert Louis Fosse was an American actor, choreographer, dancer, and film and stage director. He directed and choreographed musical works on stage and screen, including the stage musicals The Pajama Game , Damn Yankees , How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying , Sweet Charity , Pippin , and Chicago . He directed the films Sweet Charity , Cabaret , Lenny , All That Jazz , and Star 80 .
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Erwin Bälz
1849 - 1913 (64 years)
Erwin Otto Eduard von Bälz , often simply known as Erwin Bälz without the noble "von" particle, was a German internist, anthropologist, and personal physician to the Japanese Imperial Family and cofounder of modern western medicine in Japan.
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