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,
#17351
Carlos Brandt
1875 - 1964 (89 years)
Carlos Brandt was a Venezuelan author, naturopath, philosopher and vegetarianism activist. Biography He was born in Miranda, Venezuela, the son of a German immigrant Karl Brandt, a coffee planter and exporter, and Zoraida Tortolero, mother to Carlos, Juan Luis, Fernando, Augusto, Asteria and Mary. His younger brother was the composer Augusto Brandt. He studied in Puerto Cabello Elementary School and was sent to Germany to join the Pro Gymnasium in Hamburg, aged 14 to 19. He toured Germany and France, and returned to Venezuela at 19, fluent in German, French and English. At 25, he met Leo Tolstoy, which encouraged his literary ambitions.
Go to Profile#17352
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
1772 - 1835 (63 years)
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth was a German physician born in Stuttgart. He studied medicine at Karlsschule Stuttgart, and following graduation attended lectures by Antonio Scarpa and Johann Peter Frank at Pavia. Afterwards he accompanied his father to the United States, where he practiced medicine for several months in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1797 he was appointed professor of anatomy, physiology, surgery and obstetrics at the University of Tübingen. In 1805 he founded an in-patient clinic at Tübingen, where in 1822 he was appointed chancellor of the university.
Go to Profile#17353
Dimitar Gyuzelov
1902 - 1945 (43 years)
Dimitar Gyuzelov was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary and philosopher. He is the father of Macedonian writer Bogomil Gyuzel and artist Liljana Gyuzelova, who between 1996 and 2006 worked on an art installation titled The Perpetual Return, dedicated to her father, his murder, and the stigma that the children of prominent Bulgarians who had been persecuted by the Yugoslav authorities after 1945 had to endure.
Go to Profile#17354
Karl Julius Perleb
1794 - 1845 (51 years)
Karl Julius Perleb was a German botanist and natural scientist. Life From 1809 to 1811, Karl Julius Perleb studied at the University of Freiburg and earned a doctorate in philosophy and in 1815 a degree in medicine. He lived in Vienna for a brief period of time. In 1818 he returned to the University of Freiburg and began a post-doctoral fellowship. He remained at the university for the remainder of his life. He became an associate professor of natural history in 1821, and in 1823 he became a full professor. From 1828 to 1845 he served as director of the Freiburg Botanical Garden. In 1838 he was appointed prorector at Freiburg University.
Go to Profile#17355
Edwin Lankester
1814 - 1874 (60 years)
Edwin Lankester FRS, FRMS, MRCS was an English surgeon and naturalist who made a major contribution to the control of cholera in London: he was the first public analyst in England. Life Edwin Lankester was born in 1814 in Melton, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, to 'poor but clever parents' according to his son E. Ray Lankester . His father was a builder.
Go to Profile#17356
Johann Hast
1808 - 1852 (44 years)
Johann Hast was a German philosopher born in Ottenstein-Ahaus. He studied philosophy and philology at the Academy of Münster, and afterwards taught classes at a vocational school in Münster. Later in his career, he worked as a bookseller and private journalist in Berlin and Münster, publishing works on philosophy, religion, education, et al. Among his literary works were two books involving Hermesian philosophy:Hauptmomente der Hermesischen Philosophie , Über das Fürwahrhalten der theoretischen und das Fürwahrannehmen der praktischen Vernunft im Hermesischen Systeme .He was the author of a cr...
Go to Profile#17357
Heinrich Frenkel
1860 - 1931 (71 years)
Heinrich Simon Frenkel was a Swiss physician and neurologist born in Heiden, a town overlooking Lake Constance. He was an early practitioner of neuro-rehabilitation, advocating a regimen of special exercises for patients with neurological disorders.
Go to Profile#17358
Adolf Phalén
1884 - 1931 (47 years)
Adolf Krister Hermansson Phalén, born 19 January 1884 in Tuna, Kalmar County, died 16 October 1931 in Uppsala, was a Swedish philosopher. Biography Phalén entered Uppsala University in 1902 where he intended to study law. However, after passing the preparatory examination for law students in 1903, he switch to philosophy instead. He took a bachelor's degree in 1907 and a licentiate degree in 1910, studying for professor Karl Reinhold Geijer. He became a Ph.D. in 1912, after having written a thesis on Hegelian philosophy. Phalén became acting professor in theoretical philosophy in Uppsala from ...
Go to Profile#17359
Paul Grice
1913 - 1988 (75 years)
Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language who created the theory of implicature and the cooperative principle , which became foundational concepts in the linguistic field of pragmatics. His work on meaning has also influenced the philosophical study of semantics.
Go to Profile#17360
Sigmund Spaeth
1885 - 1965 (80 years)
Sigmund Gottfried Spaeth was an American musicologist who sought to de-mystify classical music for the general public. His extensive knowledge of both the classical repertoire and popular song enabled him to trace the melodies of current hits back to earlier sources; this talent garnered him fame as the "Tune Detective," a role he played as an entertainer, educator, and as an expert witness in cases of plagiarism and infringement of copyrighted music.
Go to Profile#17361
Gunnar Dahlberg
1893 - 1956 (63 years)
Gunnar Dahlberg was a Swedish physician, eugenist and geneticist. From 1922 to 1924 he was the assistant of Herman Lundborg at Statens institut för rasbiologi. In 1935, when Lundborg retired, Dahlberg succeeded him as the head of the institute. Dahlberg held the post until his death in 1956 and was succeeded by the geneticist Jan Arvid Böök.
Go to Profile#17362
Ray Farquharson
1897 - 1965 (68 years)
Ray Fletcher Farquharson was a Canadian medical doctor, university professor, and medical researcher. Born in Claude, Ontario, he attended and taught at the University of Toronto for most of his life, and was trained and employed at Toronto General Hospital. With co-researcher Arthur Squires, Farquharson was responsible for the discovery of the Farquharson phenomenon, an important principle of endocrinology, which is that administering external hormones suppresses the natural production of that hormone.
Go to Profile#17363
Richard Kroner
1884 - 1974 (90 years)
Richard Kroner was a German neo-Hegelian philosopher, known for his Von Kant bis Hegel , a classic history of German idealism written from the neo-Hegelian point of view. He was a Christian, from a Jewish background. He is known for his formulation of Hegel as 'the Protestant Aquinas'.
Go to Profile#17364
Henry M. Sheffer
1882 - 1964 (82 years)
Henry Maurice Sheffer was an American logician. Life and career Sheffer was a Polish Jew born in the western Ukraine, who immigrated to the USA in 1892 with his parents and six siblings. He studied at the Boston Latin School before entering Harvard University, learning logic from Josiah Royce, and completing his undergraduate degree in 1905, his master's in 1907, and his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1908.
Go to Profile#17365
Ernst Gräfenberg
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Ernst Gräfenberg was a German-born physician and scientist. He is known for developing the intra-uterine device , and for his studies of the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm. The G-spot is named after him.
Go to Profile#17366
Peter Choong
Peter Fook Meng Choong is an Australian doctor and professor who specializes in orthopaedics. He is the Director of Orthopaedics at St. Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne and the Hugh Devine Chair of Surgery at the University of Melbourne. In 2014, he became the first surgeon to perform a 3D-printed heel transplant.
Go to Profile#17367
Gunapala Piyasena Malalasekera
1899 - 1973 (74 years)
Gunapala Piyasena Malalasekera, OBE, JP, was a Sri Lankan academic, scholar and diplomat best known for his Malalasekara English-Sinhala Dictionary. He was Ceylon's first Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Ceylon's High Commissioner to Canada, the United Kingdom and Ceylon's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. He was the Professor Emeritus in Pali and Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies.
Go to Profile#17368
John Macmurray
1891 - 1976 (85 years)
John Macmurray was a Scottish philosopher. His thought both moved beyond and was critical of the modern tradition, whether rationalist or empiricist. His thought may be classified as personalist, as his writings focused primarily on the nature of human beings. He viewed persons in terms of their relationality and agency, rather than the modern tendency to characterize them in terms of individualism and cognition.
Go to Profile#17369
Taro Takemi
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Taro Takemi, , was a Japanese physician who served as 11th President of the Japan Medical Association for 25 years from 1957 to 1982, and also served as president of the World Medical Association from 1975 to 1976.
Go to Profile#17370
Margaret Elizabeth Egan
1905 - 1959 (54 years)
Margaret Elizabeth Egan was an American librarian and communication scholar who is best known for “Foundations of a Theory in Bibliography,” published in Library Quarterly in 1952 and co-authored with Jesse Hauk Shera. This article marked the first appearance of the term "social epistemology" in connection with library science.
Go to Profile#17371
Lauren Klein
Lauren Klein is an American academic who works as an associate professor, and director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Emory University. Klein is best known for her work in digital humanities and for co-authoring the book Data Feminism with Catherine D'Ignazio.
Go to Profile#17372
Gerald Heard
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
Henry FitzGerald Heard , commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer and broadcaster, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books.
Go to Profile#17373
Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
Andrew Seth, FBA, DCL , who changed his name to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in 1898 to fulfill the terms of a bequest, was a Scottish philosopher. His brother was James Seth, also a philosopher. Early life and education Their father, Smith Kinmont Seth, was the son of a farmer from Fife and a bank clerk in the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Their mother, Margaret, was the daughter of Andrew Little a farmer from Berwickshire. An elder brother died in infancy.
Go to Profile#17374
Max Seiffert
1868 - 1948 (80 years)
Maximilian Seiffert was a German musicologist and editor of Baroque music. Biography Seiffert was born in Beeskow an der Spree, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a teacher. He was first educated at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium, in Berlin, where he studied under Philipp Spitta, and then at the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in 1891 for his dissertation J. P. Sweelinck und seine direkten deutschen Schüler .
Go to Profile#17375
Wilhelm Dilthey
1833 - 1911 (78 years)
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held G. W. F. Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history's status as a science. He could be considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in it...
Go to Profile#17376
Percy Moreau Ashburn
1872 - 1940 (68 years)
Percy Moreau Ashburn was a colonel and medical officer in the United States Army. With then Lieutenant Charles Franklin Craig, Ashburn made the link that mosquitoes were involved in the transmission of Dengue fever. As a major, he served as the sixth commanding officer of the Walter Reed General Hospital, and as a colonel, he served as the first commandant of the Medical Field Service School at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#17377
Thomas Okey
1852 - 1935 (83 years)
Thomas Okey was an expert on basket weaving, a translator of Italian, and a writer on art and the topography of architecture and art works in Italy and France. Okey's first experience of the Italian language came when he attended the Extension Lectures at Toynbee Hall in the 1880s.
Go to Profile#17378
Hans Zinsser
1878 - 1940 (62 years)
Hans Zinsser was an American physician, bacteriologist, and prolific author. The author of over 200 books and medical articles, he was also a published poet. Some of his verses were published in The Atlantic Monthly. His 1940 publication, As I Remember Him: the Biography of R.S., won one of the early National Book Awards, the sixth and last annual award for Nonfiction voted by members of the American Booksellers Association.
Go to Profile#17379
Jørgen Løvset
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Jørgen Løvset was a Norwegian professor of medicine, gynecology and obstetrics. He was the son of a farmer Arnt Løvset and Helle Hove , married Selma Margaret Nilsen in 1924, divorced 1950, and married again in 1951 with the nurse Aslaug Tordis Gil .
Go to Profile#17380
Karel Frederik Wenckebach
1864 - 1940 (76 years)
Professor, Dr Karel Frederik Wenckebach was a Dutch anatomist who was a native of the Hague. He studied medicine in Utrecht, and in 1901 become a professor of medicine at the University of Groningen. Later he was a professor at the Universities of Strasbourg and Vienna .
Go to Profile#17381
Newton Phelps Stallknecht
1906 - 1981 (75 years)
Newton Phelps Stallknecht was an American philosopher and a professor of comparative literature and philosophy at Indiana University. In addition, he was the Director of the School of Letters at Indiana University from 1953-1972. He also served as a president of the Metaphysical Society of America. Stallknecht was educated at Princeton University, achieving his A.B. in 1927, A.M. in 1928, and Ph.D. in 1930. During World War II, he was attached to the United States Army Security Agency in Washington. His publications cover both philosophy and comparative literature, with a philosophical fo...
Go to Profile#17382
Donald Wing
1904 - 1972 (68 years)
Donald Goddard Wing was an Associate Librarian at Yale University from 1939 to 1970, best known for his publication of the bibliographic work A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of the English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700 , and companion work A Gallery of Ghosts; Books Published Between 1641-1700 Not Found in the Short-Title Catalogue . Wing's Short title catalogue was a continuation of the earlier A Short-Title Catalogue of Books….1475-1640 compiled by Pollard and Redgrave. His Short-Title Catalogue became so ...
Go to Profile#17383
Ruth Shaw Wylie
1916 - 1989 (73 years)
Ruth Shaw Wylie was a U.S.-born composer and music educator. She described herself as “a fairly typical Midwestern composer,” pursuing musical and aesthetic excellence but not attracting much national attention: “All good and worthy creative acts do not take place in New York City,” she wrote in 1962, “although most good and worthy rewards for creative acts do emanate from there; and if we can’t all be on hand to reap these enticing rewards we can take solace in the fact that we are performing good deeds elsewhere.” She was among the many twentieth-century American composers whose work contri...
Go to Profile#17384
Eugenio Imaz
1900 - 1951 (51 years)
Eugenio Ímaz Echeverría was a Spanish philosopher and translator. He is the grandfather of Carlos Imaz Gispert, the Mexican politician. Biography He graduated in law and philosophy from the Universidad Central de Madrid . Through a grant from the Board for the Expansion of Studies Imaz travelled to Germany, where he worked at different universities and completed his studies for two years. From this period, he collaborated in publications such as Revista de Occidente y Cruz y Raya.
Go to Profile#17385
H. L. D. Kirkham
1887 - 1949 (62 years)
Harold Laurens Dundas Kirkham was an Anglo-American plastic surgeon. He was the first Professor of Plastic Surgery at Baylor University, Texas and also served with the US Navy Medical Corps, becoming head of plastic surgery at the United States Naval Medical Center San Diego during the Second World War.
Go to Profile#17386
Harry Morgan Ayres
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Harry Morgan Ayres was a professor of English Literature at Columbia University an author, and editor. He edited The Reader's Dictionary of Authors including entries for Charles William Eliot, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, and George Moore and also contributed to the Library of the World's Best Literature.
Go to Profile#17387
Naomi Scheman
1900 - Present (126 years)
Naomi Scheman is a Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is also a guest professor at the Umeå Center for Gender Studies in Sweden. Scheman was one of the first scholars to bring Wittgenstein's thoughts in to feminist philosophy.
Go to Profile#17388
Farquhar Buzzard
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Sir Edward Farquhar Buzzard, 1st Baronet, was a prominent British physician and Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford . Career Farquhar Buzzard was born on 20 December 1871, one of six children of the neurologist Thomas Buzzard. and his wife Isabel Wass. Educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford, during his career he was Consultant Physician at St. Thomas' Hospital, London, Goulstonian Lecturer in 1907 at the Royal College of Physicians, London, a physician at the Belgrave Hospital for Children, the National Hospital for Paralysed and Epileptic, the Royal ...
Go to Profile#17389
Olav Torgersen
1907 - 1978 (71 years)
Olav Torgersen was a Norwegian pathologist. He was born in Kristiansand as a son of wholesaler Carl Torgersen and Kristine Torgersen . He finished his secondary education in 1926 and graduated from the Royal Frederick University with the cand.med. degree in 1934. In 1939 he married colonel's daughter Ada Jørgensen .
Go to Profile#17390
Jakob Johann von Uexküll
1864 - 1944 (80 years)
Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll was a Baltic German biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology and animal behaviour studies and was an influence on the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of Umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and philosopher Martin Heidegger. His works established biosemiotics as a field of research.
Go to Profile#17391
Wilhelm Pfannenstiel
1890 - 1982 (92 years)
Wilhelm Hermann Pfannenstiel was a German physician, member of the Nazi Party from 1933, , and SS officer from 1934, . In August 1942 he witnessed, together with Kurt Gerstein, the gassing of Jews in Bełżec extermination camp. He may also share responsibility with other SS officials in criminal medical experimentations on unwilling and uninformed human beings, mainly Jews prisoners in Dachau concentration camp.
Go to Profile#17392
Walker Percy
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
Walker Percy, OblSB was an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is noted for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans; his first, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction.
Go to Profile#17393
John S. Richards
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
John S. Richards was a librarian who served as the president of the American Library Association from 1955 to 1956. Early life and career John Stewart Richards was born February 16, 1892, in Chicago, Illinois. His family moved to the Pacific Northwest when he was four years old, and he grew up in Yakima Valley. In 1912 Richards began his studies at the University of Washington; under the tutelage of University Librarian William E. Henry, Richards studied library science and became the first alumnus to graduate from the University of Washington Library School with an A.B. degree in 1916.
Go to Profile#17394
Bernhard Fischer-Wasels
1877 - 1941 (64 years)
Bernhard Fischer-Wasels , known as Bernhard Fischer until 1926, was a German physician and anatomical pathologist, who served as Director of the Senckenberg Institute of Pathology , Professor of Pathology and Rector of the Goethe University Frankfurt . He was a leading cancer researcher and is world-renowned as the father of petrochemical carcinogenesis.
Go to Profile#17395
Penelope Mackie
1900 - Present (126 years)
Penelope Mackie was a British philosopher who specialised in metaphysics and philosophical logic, and was best known for her work on essence and modality. Mackie spent the majority of her career in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham , having also held appointments at the University of Birmingham, Virginia Commonwealth University, and New College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#17396
Robert Bruce Raup
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Robert Bruce Raup , was a Professor in the Philosophy of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. He was a well-known writer in the 1930s, whose writings were influenced by his own teacher and mentor, the American philosopher John Dewey. Like his mentor, Professor Raup is often associated with the pedagogical concept of promoting practical judgment as something appropriate and necessary within the context of a modern democratic society. He was best known for his criticism of the American public education system, which he claimed was inadequate and ineffective in its methods.
Go to Profile#17397
Moses Schönfinkel
1888 - 1942 (54 years)
Moses Ilyich Schönfinkel was a logician and mathematician, known for the invention of combinatory logic. Life Moses Schönfinkel was born on in Ekaterinoslav, Russian Empire . Moses Schönfinkel was born to a Jewish family. His father was Ilya Girshevich Schönfinkel, a merchant of first guild, who was in а grocery store trade, and his mother, Maria “Masha” Gertsovna Schönfinkel came from a prominent Lurie family. Moses had siblings named Deborah, Natan, Israel and Grigoriy. Schönfinkel attended the Novorossiysk University of Odessa, studying mathematics under Samuil Osipovich Shatunovskii , who worked in geometry and the foundations of mathematics.
Go to Profile#17398
Matila Ghyka
1881 - 1965 (84 years)
Prince Matila Costiescu Ghyka , was a Romanian naval officer, novelist, mathematician, historian, philosopher, academic and diplomat. He did not return to Romania after World War II, and was one of the most significant members of the Romanian diaspora. His first name is sometimes written as Matyla.
Go to Profile#17399
Ernst Fritz Schmid
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
Ernst Fritz Schmid was a German musicologist and Mozart scholar. Life Born in Tübingen, Schmid was the son of Wilhelm Schmid from Graz and grandson of Karl Emil Kauffmann. Initially, Schmid studied violin, viola and viola d'amore at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich from 1924 to 1927 and was also active as a violist in Düsseldorf in 1927. He then studied musicology in Freiburg, Tübingen and Vienna. He received his doctorate in 1929 and his habilitation in 1934. From 1935 to 1937 he was Extraordinarius for Musicology at the University of Tübingen and its university music director. Around 193...
Go to Profile#17400
Éric Weil
1904 - 1977 (73 years)
Éric Weil was a French-German philosopher noted for the development of a theory that places the effort to understand violence at the center of philosophy. Calling himself a post-Hegelian Kantian, Weil was a key figure in the 20th century reception of Hegel in France, as well as the renewed interest in Kant in that country. The author of major original works, critical studies, and numerous essays in French his adopted language, as well as German and English, Weil was both an active academic as well as public intellectual. Involved in various fecund moments of French intellectual life, Weil was...
Go to Profile