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,
#17251
Louis Arnaud Reid
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Louis Arnaud Reid was a British philosopher who held the foundation chair in Philosophy of Education at the London University Institute of Education. He was a founding contributor to the British Journal of Aesthetics, and is best known for his writings on epistemology and aesthetics. He influenced figures as diverse as Susanne Langer, Lionel Trilling and Harold Osborne. Jacques Barzun said that Reid's book A Study in Aesthetics was "the best discussion of art yet produced in our century."
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Thomas Abbt
1738 - 1766 (28 years)
Thomas Abbt was a German mathematician and writer. Biography Born in Ulm as the son of a wig-maker, Abbt visited a secondary school in Ulm, then moved in 1756 to study theology, philosophy and mathematics at the University of Halle, receiving a Magister degree in 1758. In 1760 he was appointed as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Frankfurt , where he wrote his most well-known work Vom Tode für's Vaterland .
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Oskar Kraus
1872 - 1942 (70 years)
Oskar Kraus was a Czech philosopher and jurist. Life Oskar Kraus, who converted from the Jewish to the Protestant faith, was born in Prague, the son of Hermann Kraus and Clara Reitler-Eidlitz. In 1899 he married Bertha Chitz.
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Isaac Abarbanel
1437 - 1508 (71 years)
Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel , commonly referred to as Abarbanel , also spelled Abravanel, Avravanel, or Abrabanel, was a Portuguese Jewish statesman, philosopher, Bible commentator, and financier. Name Some debate exists over whether his last name should be pronounced Abarbanel or Abravanel. The traditional pronunciation is Abarbanel. Modern scholarly literature, since Graetz and Baer, has most commonly used Abravanel, but his own son Judah insisted on Abarbanel, and Sefer HaTishbi by Elijah Levita, who was a nearby contemporary, twice vowels the name as Abarbinel .
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Rudolf Kaltenbach
1842 - 1893 (51 years)
Rudolf Kaltenbach was a German gynecologist who was a native of Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1865 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, and afterwards trained under Johann von Dumreicher at the surgical hospital in Vienna. From 1867 to 1873 he was an assistant to Alfred Hegar in Freiburg, and was later a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the University of Giessen. In 1887 he became an OB/GYN professor at Halle, where he succeeded Robert Michaelis von Olshausen . Kaltenbach served in the military during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars.
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Mordaunt Hall
1878 - 1973 (95 years)
Mordaunt Hall was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for The New York Times, working from October 1924 to September 1934. His writing style was described in his Times obituary as "chatty, irreverent, and not particularly analytical. […] The interest of other critics in analyzing cinematographic techniques was not for him."
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George Skene
1741 - Present (285 years)
Prof George Skene of Rubislaw was an 18th-century Scottish physician who co-founded the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Life He was born in Rubislaw House in Aberdeen in 1741 the son of Francis Skene, Regent of Marischal College and great grandson of George Skene, Provost of Aberdeen.
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Walter Mackenzie
1909 - 1978 (69 years)
Walter Campbell Mackenzie was a Canadian surgeon and academic. Born in Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Mackenzie received his BSc in 1927 and MD in 1932 from Dalhousie University and was honoured as one of two Malcolm Honour Society Medal winners. He began surgery training at McGill University then moved to the Mayo Clinic in 1933 to complete his MSc. From 1940 to 1945 served in the Royal Canadian Navy where he was promoted to surgeon-commander.
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Juan de Mal Lara
1524 - 1571 (47 years)
Juan de Mal Lara was a Spanish humanist, poet, playwright and paremiologue at the University of Seville during the period of the Spanish Renaissance in the reign of Philip II of Spain. Biography Mal Lara studied Latin and Greek grammar at the College of San Miguel in Sevilla. His teacher was Pedro Fernandez de Castilleja and later Mal Lara taught humanities to Mateo Alemán. It was a decade later, after studying at the University of Salamanca, where he was student of Hernán Núñez one of classmates was Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, known as the "Brocense"; later he went to Valencia and Barcelona, where he completed his studies with Francisco Escobar before returning again to Salamanca.
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Laura Bentivolgio Davia
1689 - Present (337 years)
Laura Bentivoglio Davia was an Italian aristocratic philosopher engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and natural philosophy. She was known primarily for creating relationships with leading natural philosophers associated with the University of Bologna and the Istituto delle Scienze .
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Walter Channing
1786 - 1876 (90 years)
Walter Channing was an American physician and professor of medicine. He was the brother of preacher William Ellery Channing and of fellow Harvard professor , Edward Tyrrel Channing. He was also the father of the poet William Ellery Channing. He was married to Eliza Wainwright Channing from 1831 until her death in 1834.
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Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid was a Scottish humanist and philosopher who became Latin secretary to King James VI and I. Life He was second son of James Reid, minister of Banchory Ternan, Kincardineshire, a cadet of the Pitfoddels family. Alexander Reid the surgeon, was a younger brother. Thomas was educated at the grammar school, Aberdeen, and at Marischal College and University, where he appears to have graduated M.A. about 1600. In 1602 he was appointed to a mastership in the grammar school, which he resigned in the following year on being chosen one of the regents in Marischal College.
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Jovita Idar
1885 - 1946 (61 years)
Jovita Idar Vivero was an American journalist, teacher, political activist, and civil rights worker who championed the cause of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. Against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted a decade from 1910 through 1920, she worked for a series of newspapers, using her writing to work towards making a meaningful and effective change. She began her career in journalism at La Crónica, her father's newspaper in Laredo, Texas, her hometown.
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Arthur Thomson
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Sir Arthur Peregrine Thomson MC, LLD, MD, FRCP was a British physician. Born in British Guiana the son of Arthur Henry Thomson, a colonial civil servant, he was educated at Dulwich College and Birmingham University, where he graduated in 1915 with first class honours in medicine, surgery and midwifery. He was also awarded the gold medal in clinical medicine, the Russell Memorial Prize, and was both Queen's and Ingleby Scholar.
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Theodor von Dusch
1824 - 1890 (66 years)
Theodor von Dusch was a German physician who was a native of Karlsruhe. He was the son of Baden statesman Alexander von Dusch . He studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where he had as instructors Jacob Henle , Karl von Pfeufer and Maximilian Joseph von Chelius . He earned his doctorate in 1847, and was habilitated for medicine in 1854. In 1870 he became professor and director of the policlinic at Heidelberg.
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Anton Kolig
1886 - 1950 (64 years)
Anton Kolig was an Austrian expressionist painter. Biography Anton Kolig was born in Neutitschein as the son of salon artist Ferdinant Kolig. He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts with Oscar Kokoschka in 1904–1907, then from 1907 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under the guidance of Heinrich Lefler and Alois Delug.
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Emilia Rensi
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Emilia Rensi was an Italian philosopher, free thinker, writer and teacher. She wrote for anarchist and progressive magazines, such as Flavia Steno's La Chiosa, Volontà , Umanità Nova and Franco Leggio's Sicilia Libertaria . She began publishing books on social, cultural and ethical subjects from the late 1960s onwards.
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Qadi Husayn Maybudi
Qadi Kamal al-Din Husayn ibn Mu'in al-Din Ali Maybudi , better known as Qadi Husayn Maybudi , was an Iranian scholar and qadi in the city of Yazd under the Aq Qoyunlu. He was executed in 1504 after having participated in a failed revolt against the Safavid shah Ismail I .
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Theodora Kimball Hubbard
1887 - 1935 (48 years)
Theodora Kimball Hubbard was the first librarian of the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture, and a contemporary of and collaborator with many significant figures in landscape architecture in expanding the body of knowledge in that subject area.
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Otto Küstner
1849 - 1931 (82 years)
Otto Ernst Küstner was a German gynecologist. Initially he studied medicine in Leipzig and Berlin, and during the Franco-Prussian War was a volunteer with the Garde-Füsilier-Regiment. Afterwards, he continued his studies at the University of Halle, obtaining his doctorate in 1873. He then furthered his education in Vienna, later returning to Halle as an assistant in the polyclinic of Theodor Weber and also in the obstetrics institute under Robert Michaelis von Olshausen.
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Eustachio Divini
1610 - 1685 (75 years)
Eustachio Divini was an Italian manufacturer and experimenter of optical instruments for scientific use in Rome. The origins Eustachio was born on 4 October 1610 in San Severino Marche, from the illustrious Divini's family. At the age of 4 his mother, Virginia Saracini, died and 7 years later his father, Tardozzo Divini, also died, so his brothers Vincenzo and Cipriano looked after him and his basic education before moving to Rome. At that time Divini was initiated into the military career but after a severe disease in 1629 he had to give up. After that he joined again his brothers.
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Themista of Lampsacus
300 BC - 260 BC (40 years)
Themista of Lampsacus , the wife of Leonteus, was a student of Epicurus, early in the 3rd century BC. Epicurus' school was unusual in the 3rd century, in that it allowed women to attend, and we also hear of Leontion attending Epicurus' school around the same time. Cicero ridicules Epicurus for writing "countless volumes in praise of Themista," instead of more worthy men such as Miltiades, Themistocles or Epaminondas. Themista and Leonteus named their son Epicurus.
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Leonteus of Lampsacus
301 BC - 201 BC (100 years)
Leonteus of Lampsacus was a pupil of Epicurus early in the 3rd century BCE. He was the husband of Themista, who also attended Epicurus' school. Such was the esteem in which they held Epicurus that they named their son after him.
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Liang Boqiang
1899 - 1968 (69 years)
Liang Boqiang 梁伯强 Chinese pathologist, member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, pioneer pathologist in China.
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Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider
1891 - 1990 (99 years)
Ilse Rosenthal-Schneider was a German-Australian physicist and philosopher. She is best known for her collaboration and correspondence with physicists Albert Einstein, Max von Laue, and Max Planck. Rosenthal-Schneider earned a PhD in philosophy in 1920 at the University of Berlin, where she first met Albert Einstein. After leaving Nazi Germany and emigrating to Australia in 1938, she became a tutor in the German department at the University of Sydney in 1945 and taught history and philosophy of science. In the 1940s and 1950s, she exchanged a series of letters with Albert Einstein about philo...
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Gil Jae
1353 - 1419 (66 years)
Gil Jae or Kil Jae was a Korean scholar-official of the Goryeo period then of the Joseon period. Works Yaeun jip Yaeun eunhaeng seupyu Yaeun sokjip See also Jeong Mong-juJeong Do-jeonKwon GeunJeong Inji
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James Dudley Fooshe
1844 - 1940 (96 years)
James Dudley Fooshe , known as J. D. Fooshe, was a soldier, author, farmer, philosopher, Methodist churchman and one of the last surviving Confederate veterans in Richmond Co., Georgia. He was a prolific writer of articles that dealt with reminiscences of the American Civil War and his philosophy of religion, social conduct and political economy.
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Walter C. Lowdermilk
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Walter Clay Lowdermilk was a soil conservationist who worked in countries throughout the world to help protect and reclaim lands in order to better feed their population. Lowdermilk worked with the Belgian Relief Effort after World War I, in China in the 1920s to help avert famine, with the Soil Conservation Service, in fascist Italy in the 1930s, in the United States, and in Mandatory Palestine planning land and water use.
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Gilbert Barling
1855 - 1940 (85 years)
Sir Harry Gilbert Barling, 1st Baronet was an English surgeon. Life Barling was born at Newnham on Severn, Gloucestershire and educated at a boarding school at Weston, near Bath. He went to Birmingham in 1875 at the age of 20, to take his matriculation exam at Queen's College, Birmingham , before going on to study at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and culminating in his admittance to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1879, becoming a Fellow in 1881. It was at this time he was appointed resident pathologist at the General Hospital which would start an association lasting for 60 years. He became President of the hospital in 1925.
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Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson
1833 - 1867 (34 years)
Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson FRSE FRCPE FRCSE was a short-lived but influential British physician and historian. He specialised in the effects of climate upon health. Life He was born Robert Edmund Jackson on 12 November 1833 in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. He was the son of Captain Thomas Jackson , a merchant mariner and shipowner, and his wife Arabella Scoresby , sister of Rev William Scoresby. Both his parents outlived him. He adopted the name Scoresby-Jackson on the death of his uncle.
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William Adam
1796 - 1881 (85 years)
William Adam was a British Baptist minister, missionary, abolitionist and Harvard professor. Scotland and India Adam was born in Dunfermline in Scotland, and it was after being inspired by the churchman Thomas Chalmers that he decided to go to India. He arranged to be educated at the Baptist College in Bristol and to the University of Glasgow. Adam volunteered to become a missionary and by 1818 he was working hard north of Calcutta trying to master Sanskrit and Bengali. Having learned these he was engaged in creating a translation of the new testament in Bengali. He worked with Ram Mohan Roy ...
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Friedrich Kraus
1858 - 1936 (78 years)
Friedrich Kraus was an Austrian internist. He was born in Bodenbach, Bohemia and died in Berlin. He is remembered for his achievements in the field of electrocardiography and his work in colloid chemistry.
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Michael J. Adams
1930 - 1967 (37 years)
Michael James Adams was an American aviator, aeronautical engineer, and USAF astronaut. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X-15, an experimental spaceplane jointly operated by the Air Force and NASA.
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Maciej Miechowita
1457 - 1523 (66 years)
Maciej Miechowita was a Polish renaissance scholar, professor of Jagiellonian University, historian, chronicler, geographer, medical doctor , alchemist, astrologer and canon in Kraków. Life He studied at the Jagiellonian University , obtaining his master's degree in 1479. Between 1480-1485 he studied abroad. Upon his return to the country, he became a professor at the Jagiellonian University, where he served as a rector eight times , and also twice as a deputy chancellor of the Academia.
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George Pickering
1904 - 1980 (76 years)
Sir George White Pickering, FRS was an English medical doctor and academic. Biography Pickering was Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford from 1956 to 1968, and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1968 to 1975.
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Charles Hunter Stewart
1854 - Present (172 years)
Charles Hunter Stewart was a Scottish physician and public health expert. Born in Edinburgh, Stewart studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In 1884 he became an assistant at the Laboratory of Public Health in Edinburgh under Henry Littlejohn.
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Metrodorus of Stratonicea
140 BC - 70 BC (70 years)
Metrodorus of Stratonikeia was at first a disciple of Epicureanism, but afterwards attached himself to Carneades. His defection from the Epicurean school is almost unique. It is explained by Cicero as being due to his theory that the scepticism of Carneades was merely a means of attacking the Stoics on their own ground. Metrodorus held that Carneades was in reality a loyal follower of Plato. Cicero speaks of him as an orator of great fire and volubility. He flourished about 110 BC.
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Franklin Rhoda
1854 - 1929 (75 years)
Franklin Rhoda . In the words of historian Mike Foster, Frank Rhoda was an "artist, musician, writer, surveyor, naturalist, social critic, defender of civil liberties and champion of Christ - the only theme unifying his versatile life was idealism that aimed to reform almost everything he encountered."
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Walter Gross
1904 - 1945 (41 years)
Dr. Walter Gross was a German physician appointed to create the Office for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare for the Nazi Party. He headed this office, renamed the Office of Racial Policy in 1934, until his suicide at the close of World War II.
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Dosa ben Saadia
935 - 1018 (83 years)
Dosa ben Saadia was a Talmudic scholar and philosopher who was the Gaon of Sura from 1012 until his death in 1018. Biography Born in Tiberias in about 935, his father Saadia Gaon was a prominent figure, the Sura Gaon from 928 to 942. In a letter written in 928, his father mentions his older brother Sheerit, although he does not mention Dosa. This has led scholars to place Dosa's birth around 935, meaning that he was only a young boy when his father died in 942. In 953, Sheerit and Dosa compiled a list of their father's books. Ibn Daud states in Sefer ha-Qabbalah that Dosa wrote a biography ab...
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Werner Zoege von Manteuffel
1857 - 1926 (69 years)
Werner Maximilian Friedrich Zoege von Manteuffel was a Baltic German medical surgeon. He was the earliest advocate of sterilisedd gloves. He studied at the University of Dorpat and became a doctor in 1886.
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Frank Barna Bigelow
1869 - 1949 (80 years)
Frank Barna Bigelow was an American librarian. Frank Barna was born at Amherst, Massachusetts, Feb. 7, 1869, third child of six of prominent Amherst physician Orvis Furman Bigelow, M.D. and Mary Helen Bigelow; grandson of Judge William Morrill Pingry of Vermont; and nephew of California Forty-niner Adoniram Judson Biglow [this branch of the singularly-related Bigelow/Biglow family was dropping the "e" in the name around this time], having sailed on a clipper ship around Cape Horn which docked in San Francisco on 10 October 1849. Frank Barna was educated at the schools of Amherst and was gra...
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Fritz de Quervain
1868 - 1940 (72 years)
Fritz de Quervain was a Swiss surgeon born in Sion. He was a leading authority on thyroid disease. In 1892 he received his doctorate from the University of Bern, and several years later became director of the surgical department at a hospital in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchâtel. In 1910 he was appointed to the chair of surgery at the University of Basel, and from 1918 was a professor of surgery at Bern and director of the Inselspital.
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Charles Alexandre Lesueur
1778 - 1846 (68 years)
Charles Alexandre Lesueur was a French naturalist, artist, and explorer. He was a prolific natural-history collector, gathering many type specimens in Australia, Southeast Asia, and North America, and was also responsible for describing numerous species, including the spiny softshell turtle , smooth softshell turtle , and common map turtle . Both Mount Lesueur and Lesueur National Park in Western Australia are named in his honor.
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Bernard Wagenaar
1894 - 1971 (77 years)
Bernard Wagenaar was a Dutch-American composer, conductor and violinist. Wagenaar was born in Arnhem. He studied at Utrecht University before starting his career as a teacher and conductor in 1914. He moved to the U.S. in 1920, and he became a citizen in 1927. From 1925 to 1968 he taught at the Juilliard School, where Ned Rorem, Jacob Druckman, Norman Dello Joio, Bernard Herrmann, Robert Ward, Tutti Camarata, Charles Jones, Alan Shulman, Katharine Mulky Warne, and James Cohn were among his pupils. He was an active member of the League of Composers and similar organizations and was an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands.
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Gyula Kornis
1885 - 1958 (73 years)
Gyula Kornis was a Hungarian Piarist, philosopher, educator, professor and politician, who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives for a short time in 1938. He had an important role in implementation of educational policy of Count Kuno von Klebelsberg, Minister of Religion and Education in the cabinet of István Bethlen in the 1920s. Kornis also served as interim President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1945, after the Second World War.
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Galeazzo di Santa Sofia
1352 - 1427 (75 years)
Galeazzo di Santa Sofia was an Italian physician and anatomist. Life He taught medicine at the universities in Bologna and Padua. He was called to Vienna where he introduced anatomy as a subject of study and in 1404 made the first dissection north of the Alps.
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Joseph Igersheimer
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Joseph Igersheimer was a German born ophthalmologist known for his work on arsphenamine for the treatment of syphilis. A Jew, after escaping the Nazis, While in forced exile from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939, Joseph Igersheimer was the architect of modern ophthalmology in Turkey. Earlier he was a pioneer in addressing the impact of syphilis on eyesight. He was the first to use arsphenamine in the treatment of syphilis of the eye and the first to operate on retinal detachment by closing the holes. In 1939 he joined the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine and became a major c...
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John Miller Turpin Finney
1863 - 1942 (79 years)
John Miller Turpin Finney was an American surgeon and academic who also served as a brigadier general during World War I. He is best remembered for serving as the first president of the American College of Surgeons.
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John Thomson
1765 - 1846 (81 years)
John Thomson FRS FRSE PRCPE was a Scottish surgeon and physician, reputed in his time "the most learned physician in Scotland". He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1834 to 1836.
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