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
Pierius
201 - Present (1825 years)
Pierius was a Christian priest and probably head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, conjointly with Achillas. He flourished while Theonas was bishop of Alexandria, and died at Rome after 309. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 4 November.
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Olga Plümacher
1839 - 1895 (56 years)
Olga Marie Pauline Plümacher was a Russian-born Swiss-American philosopher and scholar. She engaged with the philosophies of the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann, and published three books which contributed to the pessimism controversy in Germany. Her book on the history of philosophical pessimism, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart was influential on Friedrich Nietzsche and Samuel Beckett.
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Heinrich Christoph Kolbe
1771 - 1836 (65 years)
Heinrich Christoph Kolbe was a German painter. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Life Kolbe was born and died in Düsseldorf. After his education at the 'old' Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and then went to Paris for ten years to study. He was part of the circle of Friedrich Schlegel and worked on the review "Europa". He later worked in the studio of François Gérard. In 1811 he returned to Düsseldorf, becoming the favorite portraitist of the Rhineland, painting 60 portraits in Barmen and Elberfeld alone. His subjects in Weimar included Goethe, Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and two of Charles Augustus's mistress Karoline Jagemann.
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Jean Reynaud
1806 - 1863 (57 years)
Jean Ernest Reynaud was a French mining engineer and socialist philosopher. He was a member of the Saint-Simonianian community. He was a co-founder of the Encyclopédie nouvelle. Life He was born in Lyon on 4 February 1806. He graduated from the Polytechnic School in Lyon in 1827 and joined the School of Mines. In May 1829 he began a four month study tour of Germany including the Harz Mountains, Black Forest, Saxony, Hanover, Oldenbourg and Westphalia. He then spent a further two months studying mines in Belgium and the Netherlands. He graduated from the mining school in 1830.
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Edward Lhuyd
1660 - 1709 (49 years)
Edward Lhuyd was a Welsh naturalist, botanist, herbalist, alchemist, scientist, linguist, geographer and antiquary. He is also named in a Latinate form as Eduardus Luidius. Life Lhuyd was born in 1660, in Loppington, Shropshire, England, the illegitimate son of Edward Lloyd of Llanforda, Oswestry, and Bridget Pryse of Llansantffraid, near Talybont, Cardiganshire in 1660. His family belonged to the gentry of south-west Wales. Though well-established, the family was not wealthy. His father experimented with agriculture and industry in a manner that impinged on the new science of the day. The ...
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Zhi Dun
314 - 366 (52 years)
Zhi Dun was a Chinese Buddhist monk and philosopher. A Chinese author, scholar and confidant of Chinese government officials in 350, he claimed that all who followed Buddhism would, at the end of their life, enter Nirvana.
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Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens
1704 - 1771 (67 years)
Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens was a French rationalist, author and critic of the Catholic Church, who was a close friend of Voltaire and spent much of his life in exile at the court of Frederick the Great.
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Livingston Farrand
1867 - 1939 (72 years)
Livingston Farrand was an American physician, anthropologist, psychologist, public health advocate and academic administrator. Early life and education Born in Newark, New Jersey, to Dr. Samuel Ashbel Farrand, headmaster of the historic Newark Academy, and Rachel Louise Farrand, Farrand received an undergraduate degree from Princeton in 1888, and went on to the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he earned his M.D. in 1891.
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Thomas Chubb
1679 - 1747 (68 years)
Thomas Chubb was a lay English Deist writer born near Salisbury. He saw Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign over religion. He questioned the morality of religions, while defending Christianity on rational grounds. Despite little schooling, Chubb was well up on the religious controversies. His The True Gospel of Jesus Christ, Asserted sets out to distinguish the teaching of Jesus from that of the Evangelists. Chubb's views on free will and determinism, expressed in A Collection of Tracts on Various Subjects , were extensively criticised by Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of...
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Jinul
1158 - 1210 (52 years)
Jinul Puril Bojo Daesa , often called Jinul or Chinul for short, was a Korean monk of the Goryeo period, who is considered to be the most influential figure in the formation of Korean Seon Buddhism. He is credited as the founder of the Jogye Order, by working to unify the disparate sects in Korean Buddhism into a cohesive organization.
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Alessandro Achillini
1463 - 1512 (49 years)
Alessandro Achillini was an Italian philosopher and physician. He is known for the anatomic studies that he was able to publish, made possible by a 13th-century edict putatively by Emperor Frederick II allowing for dissection of human cadavers, and which previously had stimulated the anatomist Mondino de Luzzi at Bologna.
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Evarts Ambrose Graham
1883 - 1957 (74 years)
Evarts Ambrose Graham was an American academic, physician, and surgeon. Early years and military service Born in Chicago, Illinois to a surgeon, David Wilson Graham, and Ida Ansbach Barned Graham, Evarts attended college at Princeton University and received his M.D. degree from Rush Medical College in 1907. Graham then trained as a surgery resident at Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, and subsequently as a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Chicago. There, he met his wife, Helen Tredway, Ph.D. , a biochemist and pharmacologist. Evarts served as a Major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1917 to 1919, and was initially posted to Camp Lee .
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Phintys
400 BC - 300 BC (100 years)
Phintys was a Pythagorean philosopher, probably from the third century BC. She wrote a work on the correct behaviour of women, two extracts of which are preserved by Stobaeus. According to Stobaeus, Phintys was the daughter of Callicrates, who is otherwise unknown. Holger Thesleff suggests that this Callicrates might be identified with Callicratidas, a Spartan general who died at the Battle of Arginusae. If so, this would make Phintys a Spartan, and date her birth to the late fifth century BC, and her floruit to the fourth century. I. M. Plant considers this emendation "fanciful". Iamblich...
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John Smith
1580 - 1631 (51 years)
John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, admiral of New England, and author. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. He was knighted for his services...
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Afdal al-Din Kashani
Afzal ad-Din Maragi Kashani also known as Baba Afzal was a Persian poet and philosopher. Several dates have been suggested for his death, with the best estimate being around 1213/1214. Life The information on his life is scanty and few. His writing portray a disdain for officials of his time and he is said to have once been imprisoned by the local governor on trumped-up charges of practicing sorcery. His tomb located in the village Maraq, forty-two km northwest of Kashan, is still a place of pilgrimage. The best summary of Persian of what is known about Baba Afza's life and work, is written...
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Hans Henrik D. Parving
#17217
Shankar Vaman Dandekar
1896 - 1969 (73 years)
Shankar Vaman Dandekar , also known as Sonopant Dandekar, was a philosopher and educationist from Maharashtra, India. Dandekar was an important interpreter of Warkari Bhakti Sampraday in Maharashtra. He served as a professor of philosophy and the principal of Sir Parashurambhau College in Pune for many years.
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William Wallace
1844 - 1897 (53 years)
William Wallace was a Scottish philosopher and academic who became fellow of Merton College and White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University. He was best known for his studies of German philosophers, most notably Hegel, some of whose works he translated into highly regarded English editions. While reputedly forbidding in manner, he was known as an able and effective teacher and writer who succeeded in greatly improving the understanding of German philosophy in the English-speaking world. He died at the age of 52 after a bicycle accident near Oxford.
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Antipater of Tyre
50 BC - 40 BC (10 years)
Antipater of Tyre was a Greek Stoic philosopher and a friend of Cato the Younger and Cicero. Life Antipater lived after, or was at least younger than, Panaetius. Cicero, in speaking of him, says, that he died "recently at Athens", which must mean shortly before 45 BC. He is mentioned by Strabo as a "famous philosopher" from Tyre. Antipater is said to have befriended Cato when Cato was a young man, and introduced him to Stoic philosophy:
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Valentin Asmus
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus was a Soviet philosopher. He was one of the small group who continued the classical European philosophical tradition through the early Soviet times. He was an independent thinker and unorthodox Marxist, with interests in the history of philosophy and aesthetics.
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Sopater of Apamea
242 - 325 (83 years)
Sopater of Apamea was a distinguished sophist and Neoplatonist philosopher. Biography Sopater was a disciple of Iamblichus, after whose death , he went to Constantinople, where he enjoyed the favour and personal friendship of Constantine I.
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H. Wildon Carr
1857 - 1931 (74 years)
Herbert Wildon Carr was a British philosopher. Life He was Professor of Philosophy, King's College, London from 1918 to 1925, and Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California from 1925 until his death on 8 July 1931 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
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Bryan Higgins
1741 - 1818 (77 years)
Bryan Higgins was an Irish natural philosopher in chemistry. He was born in Collooney, County Sligo, Ireland. His father was also called Dr. Bryan Higgins. Higgins entered the University of Leiden in 1765, whence he qualified as a doctor of physics. He subsequently ran a School of Practical Chemistry at 13 Greek Street, Soho, London during the 1770s, which was patronised by the then Duke of Northumberland amongst others. He was more of a speculator than an experimenter, and published many works on chemistry and related disciplines. Joseph Priestley was an attendee of Higgins's lectures, but ...
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Pierre Poiret
1646 - 1719 (73 years)
Pierre Poiret Naudé was a prominent French mystic and Christian philosopher. He was born in Metz and died in Rijnsburg. Life and accomplishments After the early death of his parents, he supported himself by the engraver's trade and the teaching of French, at the same time studying theology, in Basel, Hanau, and, after 1668, Heidelberg. At Basel he was captivated by Descartes' philosophy, which never quite lost its hold on him. He read also Thomas à Kempis and Tauler, but was especially influenced by the writings of the Dutch Mennonite mystic Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt , whose works were pu...
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Joseph Estlin Carpenter
1844 - 1927 (83 years)
Joseph Estlin Carpenter was an English Unitarian minister, the principal of Manchester College, Oxford. He was an expert in Sanskrit and a pioneer in the study of comparative religion. Biography Carpenter was born in Ripley, Surrey. He was the second son of William Benjamin Carpenter. His grandfather was Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter.
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Jacques Genest
#17227
José Gregorio Hernández
1864 - 1919 (55 years)
José Gregorio Hernández Cisneros OFS was a Venezuelan physician. Born in Isnotú, Trujillo State, he became a highly renowned doctor, more so after his death. He was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2021.
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Feliks Jaroński
1777 - 1827 (50 years)
Feliks Jaroński was a Polish Catholic priest and philosopher. Life In 1809–18 Jaroński was a professor at Kraków University. A follower of Kantism, he postulated a renewal of philosophy through the rejection of empiricism and a return to metaphysics. He was the first to write a history of Polish logic.
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H. W. B. Joseph
1867 - 1943 (76 years)
Horace William Brindley Joseph, FBA , published as H. W. B. Joseph, was a British philosopher, who spent his academic career as a Fellow and Tutor at New College, Oxford. Biography Early life Horace William Brindley Joseph was born at Chatham, Kent, on 28 September 1867, the eldest surviving son of Alexander Joseph , rector of St John's, Chatham, and Honorary Canon of Rochester Cathedral, and his wife, Janet Eleanor née Acworth , daughter of George Acworth, a solicitor, and cousin of Sir William Acworth. Joseph attended Allhallows School in Honiton and then Winchester College as a scholar . ...
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Émile Saisset
1814 - 1863 (49 years)
Émile Edmond Saisset was a French philosopher. Life Émile Edmond Saisset was born at Montpellier. He studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, and carried on the eclectic tradition of his master along with Ravaisson and Jules Simon. In 1842 he was professor of philosophy at Caen, at the École Normale in Paris. He later moved on to the College de France in 1843. He became a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques at the Sorbonne in 1862. Saisset, known as "fashionable psychologist", was associated with the Eclectic school of Victor Cousin.
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Zygmunt Zawirski
1882 - 1948 (66 years)
Zygmunt Zawirski was a Polish philosopher and logician. His main field of study was philosophy of physics, history of science, multi-valued logic and relation of multi-valued logic to calculus of probability.
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Jakob Frohschammer
1821 - 1893 (72 years)
Jakob Frohschammer was a German theologian and philosopher. Biography Frohschammer was born at Illkofen, which is now in the municipality of Barbing, near Regensburg. Destined by his parents for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he studied theology at Munich, but felt an ever-growing attraction to philosophy. Nevertheless, after much hesitation, he took what he himself calls the most mistaken step of his life, and in 1847 entered the priesthood. His keenly logical intellect, and his impatience of authority where it clashed with his own convictions, quite unfitted him for that unquestioning obedience which the Church demanded.
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Thomas Rawson Birks
1810 - 1883 (73 years)
Thomas Rawson Birks was an English theologian and controversialist, who figured in the debate to try to resolve theology and science. He rose to be Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His discussions led to much controversy: in one book he proposed that stars cannot have planets as this would reduce the importance of Christ's appearance on this planet.
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Harry Slochower
1900 - 1991 (91 years)
Harry Slochower was an Austrian-American scholar, philosopher and psychoanalyst. Biography Slochower was born Hersch Zloczower in Bukowina, formerly part of Austria and now Romania. He arrived in the United States on the S. S. Frankfurt in October 1913, joining his parents who had arrived in February 1911. He grew up in the Bronx and studied philosophy and German at the City College of New York, graduating in 1923. He also studied at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg, before receiving his PhD from Columbia for a book on Richard Dehmel. He was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1929 f...
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Isaac Cardoso
1604 - 1683 (79 years)
Isaac Cardoso was a Jewish physician, philosopher, and polemic writer. Life He was born of Marrano parents at Trancoso, near Celorico, in the province of Beira, Portugal in 1603 or 1604 and died at Verona in 1683. He was an older brother of Abraham Miguel Cardoso.
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Claude Emerson Welch
#17237
Lanza del Vasto
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Lanza del Vasto was an Italian philosopher, poet, artist, Catholic and nonviolent activist. He was born in San Vito dei Normanni, Italy and died in Murcia, Spain. A western disciple of Mohandas K. Gandhi, he worked for inter-religious dialogue, spiritual renewal, ecological activism and nonviolence.
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Kong Yingda
574 - 648 (74 years)
Kong Yingda , courtesy names Chongyuan and Zhongda , was a Chinese philosopher during the Sui and Tang dynasty. An amorous Confucianist, who is considered one of the most influential Confucian scholars in Chinese history. His most important work is the Wujing Zhengyi , which became the standard curriculum for the imperial examinations, and the basis for all future official commentaries of the Five Classics. He was also "skilled at mathematics and the calendar."
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Petrus Camper
1722 - 1789 (67 years)
Petrus Camper FRS , was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, palaeontology, and the facial angle. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," which he distinguished from natural history. He studied the orangutan, the Javan rhinoceros, and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale.
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Anselm of Laon
1050 - 1117 (67 years)
Anselm of Laon , properly Ansel , was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics. Biography Born of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of the 11th century, he is said to have studied under Saint Anselm at Bec, though this is almost certainly incorrect. Other potential teachers of Anselm have been identified, including Bruno of Cologne and Manegold of Lautenbach. By around 1080, he had moved back to his place of birth and was teaching at the cathedral school of Laon, with his brother Ralph. Around 1109, he became dean and chancellor of the cathedral, and in 1115 he was one of Laon's two archdeacons.
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Fritz Berolzheimer
1869 - 1920 (51 years)
Fritz Berolzheimer, Juris Doctor was a German philosopher of law. He was the author of the five volume System der Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie . In 1907 he co-founded the Archiv für Rechts- und Wirtschaftsphilosophie .
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Lothar Meyer
1830 - 1895 (65 years)
Meyer was a distinguished German chemist who some historians feel deserves credit for the invention of the periodic table of the elements. He was born in Varel, a small town in the Duchy of Oldenburg, the son of a physician. After graduating from Gymnasium (secondary school) in Oldenburg, the young Lothar (he never used his first given name) studied medicine at the University of Zurich with Carl Ludwig and at the University of Würzburg with Rudolf Virchow. In 1854, Meyer transferred to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied chemistry with Robert Bunsen (of Bunsen burner fame). Intrig...
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Teodosio Lares
1806 - 1870 (64 years)
Teodosio Lares he was a Mexican lawyer and politician. He studied Philosophy and Jurisprudence in the Seminary of Guadalajara. In 1827 he began his career as a lawyer in the Supreme Court of the State of Jalisco. He returned to Zacatecas, where he was magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice. In 1836 he was director of the Literary Institute of Zacatecas. In 1848 he was deputy to the General Congress for the state of Zacatecas. In 1850 he was appointed senator of the Tercio by the Chamber of Deputies.
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Anna Brackett
1836 - 1911 (75 years)
Anna Callender Brackett was an American philosopher, translator, feminist, and educator. She translated Karl Rosenkranz's Pedagogics as a System and wrote The Education of American Girls, a response to arguments against the coeducation of males and females.
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Theodor Litt
1880 - 1962 (82 years)
Theodor Litt was a German culture and social philosopher as well as a pedagogue. In the debate with Dilthey, Simmel and Cassirer, Litt developed an independent approach in cultural philosophy and philosophical anthropology, which was determined by the dialectical view of the relationship between the individual and society, man and the world, reason and life. At the same time, he projected these thoughts into a that had its starting point in progressive education at the beginning of the 20th century and, via Litt's student , extended into the discussion on educational reform in the 1970s. Lit...
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Mieko Kamiya
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Mieko Kamiya was a Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagashima Aiseien Sanatorium. She was known for translating books on philosophy. She worked as a medical doctor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tokyo University following World War II. She was said to have greatly helped the Ministry of Education and the General Headquarters, where the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers stayed, in her role as an English-speaking secretary, and served as an adviser to Empress Michiko. She wrote many books as a highly educated, multi-lingual person; one of her books, titled On the Me...
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Jacques Chevalier
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Jacques Chevalier was a French Catholic philosopher and a politician. Chevalier was born in Cérilly, Allier, educated at the École normale supérieure and the University of Oxford and taught at the Faculty of Letters in Grenoble. He was a specialist of Plato and author of many books, mainly about the history of philosophy.
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Étienne Noël Damilaville
1723 - 1768 (45 years)
Étienne Noël Damilaville was an 18th-century French man of letters, friend of Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert. He served in various military and administrative functions of the Ancien Régime. He was a member of the bodyguard of King Louis XV, and then a senior civil servant in the tax office responsible for supervising the Vingtième. His official roles meant that his correspondence was unexamined by censors, enabling him to circulate letters between leading thinkers of the day, most particularly during the Sirven affair.
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James Hunt
1833 - 1869 (36 years)
James Hunt was an anthropologist and speech therapist in London, England, during the middle of the nineteenth century. His clients included Charles Kingsley, Leo Tennyson , and Lewis Carroll author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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Gunnar Landtman
1878 - 1940 (62 years)
Gunnar Landtman was a Finnish philosopher as well as a sociology and philosophy professor. A pupil of Edvard Westermarck, he graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1905. He later became an associate professor there from 1910 to 1927 and then a temporary professor until his death in 1940. At the university, Landtman was a member of the Prometheus Society, a student society promoting freedom of religion. Landtman was the first modern sociological anthropologist. His most important journey was a two-year trip to Papua New Guinea where he lived with the Kiwai Papuans from 1910 to 1912. He w...
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