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,
#17351
Ibn Shaprut
1400 - Present (626 years)
Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut of Tudela was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and polemicist. He is often confused with the physician Shem-Tob ben Isaac of Tortosa, who lived earlier. He may also be confused with another Ibn Shaprut, Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, who corresponded with the king of the Khazars in the 900's.
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Xu Guangqi
1562 - 1633 (71 years)
Xu Guangqi or Hsü Kuang-ch'i , also known by his baptismal name Paul, was a Chinese agronomist, astronomer, mathematician, politician, and writer during the Ming dynasty. Xu was appointed by the Chinese Emperor in 1629 to be the leader of the ShiXian calendar reform, which he embarked on with the assistance of Jesuits. Xu was a colleague and collaborator of the Italian Jesuits Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis and assisted their translation of several classic Western texts into Chinese, including part of Euclid's Elements. He was also the author of the Nong Zheng Quan Shu, a treatise on agriculture.
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Alexander Savvas
1907 - 1981 (74 years)
Alexander Savvas was a Greek Professor of Medicine at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Anatomy. He wrote a number of anatomy books and research protocols, and was influential among Greek physicians for his educational method and proficient use of Greek language and medical terminology.
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Alfred Sokołowski
1849 - 1924 (75 years)
Alfred Marcin Sokołowski was a Polish pulmonologist and professor of the University of Warsaw. He specialised in the field of Phthisiatry and he was one of the pioneers of modern treatment to diseases of the respiratory system.
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Abul Hasan Hankari
1018 - 1093 (75 years)
Abul Hasan Hankari Abu Al Hasan Ali Bin Mohammad Qureshi Hashmi Hankari Harithi , town of Mosul , died 1st Moharram 486 AH , in Baghdad, was a Muslim mystic also renowned as one of the most influential Muslim scholar, philosopher, theologian and jurist of his time and Sufi based in Hankar.
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Philip Syng Physick
1768 - 1837 (69 years)
Philip Syng Physick was an American physician and professor born in Philadelphia. He was the first professor of surgery and later of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania medical school from 1805 to 1831 during which time he was a highly influential teacher. Physick invented a number of surgical devices and techniques including the stomach tube and absorbable sutures. He has been called the "Father of American Surgery."
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Deng Xi
545 BC - 501 BC (44 years)
Deng Xi was a Chinese philosopher and rhetorician who was associated with the Chinese philosophical tradition School of Names. Once a senior official of the Zheng state, and a contemporary of Confucius, he is regarded as China's earliest known lawyer, with clever use of words and language in lawsuits. The Zuo Zhuan and Annals of Lü Buwei critically credit Deng with the authorship of a penal code, the earliest known statute in Chinese criminology entitled the "Bamboo Law". This was developed to take the place of the harsh, more Confucian criminal code developed by the Zheng statesman Zichan.
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Károly Ferenczy
1862 - 1917 (55 years)
Károly Ferenczy was a Hungarian painter and leading member of the Nagybánya artists' colony. He was among several artists who went to Munich for study in the late nineteenth century, where he attended free classes by the Hungarian painter, Simon Hollósy. Upon his return to Hungary, Ferenczy helped found the artists colony in 1896, and became one of its major figures. Ferenczy is considered the "father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism" and the "founder of modern Hungarian painting".
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Robert Tuttle Morris
1857 - 1945 (88 years)
Robert Tuttle Morris , also known as Bob Morris, was an American surgeon and writer. Life Early life and the call of medicine Robert Tuttle Morris was born in Seymour, Connecticut on May 14, 1857, the eldest of six children. His father was a lawyer, probate judge, and Governor of Connecticut. His mother Eugenia was an author. He attended Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven before studying biology at Cornell University in Ithaca from 1875-1879. As a child he developed an acute interest in nature and animals and continually observed the phenomena of the natural world. While still in high school in New Haven he planned to attend the biology program organised by Dr.
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Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt
1901 - 1988 (87 years)
Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt was a German composer, musicologist, and historian and critic of music. Life Stuckenschmidt was born in Strasbourg. At as early an age as 19, he was the Berlin-based music critic/correspondent for the Prague-based periodical Bohemia, and lived as a freelance music writer in Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Prague, becoming personally acquainted with numerous composers of avant-garde music.
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Claude Aubery
1501 - 1596 (95 years)
Claude Aubery, Claude Auberi or Claudius Alberius Triuncurianus was a French Reformed Protestant physician, philosopher and theologian. His doctrine, close to that of Sebastian Castellio or Andreas Osiander, was called Alberianism.
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Frank Jeremiah Armstrong
1877 - 1946 (69 years)
Frank Jeremiah Armstrong was an American physician who was the first African-American graduate of Cornell College. He was the assistant of Booker T. Washington and later became a physician. He was murdered in his office in 1946, possibly by a burglar after a hospital's narcotics.
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Charles Conrad Abbott
1843 - 1919 (76 years)
Charles Conrad Abbott was an American archaeologist and naturalist. Biography Abbott was born at Trenton, New Jersey, son of Timothy and Susan Abbott; grandson of Joseph and Anne Abbott, and a descendant of John and Anne Abbott, settlers, from England, in New Jersey in 1684. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. During the American Civil War, he served as a surgeon in the Union Army. He received his M.D. degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1865, but never entered into the practice of the profession.
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Guillaume Dupuytren
1777 - 1835 (58 years)
Baron Guillaume Dupuytren was a French anatomist and military surgeon. Although he gained much esteem for treating Napoleon Bonaparte's hemorrhoids, he is best known today for his description of Dupuytren's contracture which is named after him and on which he first operated in 1831 and published in The Lancet, in 1834.
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John Charnley
1911 - 1982 (71 years)
Sir John Charnley, was an English orthopaedic surgeon. He pioneered the hip replacement operation, which is now one of the most common operations both in the UK and elsewhere in the world, and created the "Wrightington centre for hip surgery". He also demonstrated the fundamental importance of bony compression in operations to arthrodese joints, in particular the knee, ankle and shoulder.
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Heinrich Schmidt
1874 - 1935 (61 years)
Heinrich Schmidt was a German archivist, naturalist, philosopher, professor and a student of Ernst Haeckel. Early life and education Schmidt was born in Heubach in the German State of Thuringia. From 1890 to 1894 he attended a teacher training school in Hildburghausen and then worked as an elementary school teacher. In 1897 he moved on to scientific training in Jena. He studied there under the financial support of Ernst Haeckel and in 1900 became his private secretary. Since Schmidt lacked formal college training, Haeckel sent him the University of Zurich to study under his former student, Arnold Lang.
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Gaspare Aselli
1581 - 1626 (45 years)
Gaspare Aselli was an Italian physician noted for the discovery of the lacteal vessels of the lymphatic system. Aselli discovered the chylous vessels, and studied systematically the significance of these vascular structures.
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Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick
1852 - 1937 (85 years)
Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick was a German ophthalmologist who invented the contact lens. He was the nephew of the German physiologist Adolf Eugen Fick, and the son of the German anatomy professor Franz Ludwig Fick.
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George Blewett
1873 - 1912 (39 years)
George John Blewett was a Canadian philosopher and theologian. Biography Born on 9 December 1873, in Yarmouth Township in Elgin County, Ontario, the son of William Blewett, a farmer, and Mary Baker, he was raised on a farm near St. Thomas, Ontario. In 1897, he graduated from Victoria University in the University of Toronto. He studied at the University of Würzburg in 1899 and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in philosophy in 1900 from Harvard University. He also did postgraduate work at Oxford University and Cambridge University.
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Charles Delucena Meigs
1792 - 1869 (77 years)
Charles Delucena Meigs was an American obstetrician who worked as chair of obstetrics and diseases of women at Jefferson Medical College from 1841 to 1861. He worked as editor of The North American Medical and Surgical Journal and published multiple papers and books on various topics in obstetrics including thrombosis as a cause of sudden death in women during childbirth, diseases of the cervix and postpartum infections. He was a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and served as president from 1845 to 1855.
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Fritz Roeber
1851 - 1924 (73 years)
Fritz Roeber was a German illustrator, lithographer and history painter, associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. As Director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, he carried out some significant organizational changes.
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Nicolaus Mulerius
1564 - 1630 (66 years)
Nicolaus Mulerius was a professor of medicine and mathematics at the University of Groningen. Education and career Mulerius was born Nicolaas Des Muliers, son of Pierre Des Muliers and Claudia Le Vettre. He grew up in Bruges, where he was taught by Jacobus Cruquius, among others. Mulerius first studied Philology, Philosophy and Theology and from 1582 he also studied Medicine and Mathematics at the University of Leiden, where Lipsius, Vulcanius, Snellius and Heurnius were teachers. In 1589 he married Christina Six and set up practice for 13 years in Harlingen. In 1603 he became leading physician in Groningen, in 1608 he took the position as school master of the Leeuwarden gymnasium.
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George Bacon Wood
1797 - 1879 (82 years)
George Bacon Wood was an American physician, professor, and writer from Pennsylvania. A native of Greenwich, New Jersey, Wood was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received his medical degree in 1818. Four years later he became professor of chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and in 1821 took the chair of materia medica in the same institution, which he resigned in 1835 to accept the same branch in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1850, having been continuously connected with the latter institution in the position mentioned, h...
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Kiyoshi Shiga
1871 - 1957 (86 years)
Kiyoshi Shiga was a Japanese physician and bacteriologist. He had a well-rounded education and career that led to many scientific discoveries. In 1897, Shiga was credited with the discovery and identification of the Shigella dysenteriae microorganism which causes dysentery, and the Shiga toxin which is produced by the bacteria. He conducted research on other diseases such as tuberculosis and trypanosomiasis, and made many advancements in bacteriology and immunology.
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Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus
1350 - 1480 (130 years)
Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus was a French Jewish philosopher and controversialist. He lived at Arles, perhaps at Avignon also, and in other places in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He belonged to the well-known Nathan family, which claimed its descent from David; he was probably the grandson of the translator Maestro Bongodas Judah Nathan. According to the statement of Isaac himself, in the introduction to his concordance , he was completely ignorant of the Bible until his fifteenth year, his studies having been restricted to the Talmud and to religious philosophy.
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Luca Ghini
1490 - 1556 (66 years)
Luca Ghini was an Italian physician and botanist, notable as the creator of the first recorded herbarium, as well as the first botanical garden in Europe. Biography Ghini was born in Casalfiumanese, son of a notary, and studied medicine at the University of Bologna. By 1527 he was lecturing there on medicinal plants, and eventually became a professor.
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Walter Serauky
1903 - 1959 (56 years)
Walter Karl August Serauky was a German musicologist and Handel scholar. Life Born in Halle , Serauky, a Lutheran, was the son of an insurance agent and a housewife. After his Abitur in 1922 at the of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, he studied musicology as well as German language and literature, history and philosophy at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and the University of Leipzig. From 1923 to 1933 he was a member of the Freie Volksbühne. In 1928 he received his doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Halle with the dissertation Die musikalische Na...
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Martin Kirschner
1879 - 1942 (63 years)
Martin Kirschner was a German surgeon. Kirschner was born in Breslau, the son of Margarethe Kalbeck and Judge Martin Kirschner , who later served as city councillor of Breslau since 1873 and a member of the city parliament as of 1879. In 1892, he became burgomaster of Berlin and advanced to its Lord Mayor holding that office between 1899 and 1912.
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Telecles
201 BC - 167 BC (34 years)
Telecles , of Phocis or Phocaea, was the pupil and successor of Lacydes, and was joint leader of the Academy at Athens together with Evander. 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 that he...
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Antonio Musa Brassavola
1500 - 1555 (55 years)
Antonio Musa Brassavola was an Italian physician and one of the most famous of his time. He studied under Niccolò Leoniceno and Giovanni Manardo. He was the friend and physician of Ercole II, the duke of Este. He was also the consulting physician of Kings Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII and Popes Paul III, Leo X, Clement VIII and Julius III. He performed the first successful tracheotomy, and published an account of it in 1546. He was the chair of philosophy in Ferrara and also studied botany and medicine. A genus of orchid, called Brassavola, is named after him.
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Johann Juncker
1679 - 1759 (80 years)
Johann Juncker was a German physician and chemist. Juncker was a leader in the Pietist reform movement as it applied to medicine. He directed the Francke Foundations and initiated approaches to medical practice, charitable treatment, and education at the University of Halle that influenced others internationally. He was a staunch proponent of Georg Ernst Stahl and helped to more clearly present Stahl's phlogiston theory of combustion.
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John White Webster
1793 - 1850 (57 years)
John White Webster was an American professor of chemistry and geology at Harvard Medical College. In 1850, he was convicted of murder in the Parkman–Webster murder case and hanged. Biography Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Webster was well-connected both by family and by profession: his grandfather was a successful merchant; his mother, Hannah Webster, was a Leverett, a member of one of the great Harvard College dynasties, and a descendant of John Leverett, an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; his wife's sister married into the Prescotts, descendants of William Prescott, who commanded patriot troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and after whom the town of Prescott was named.
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Tominaga Nakamoto
1715 - 1746 (31 years)
was a Japanese philosopher. He was educated at the Kaitokudō academy founded by members of the mercantile class of Osaka, but was ostracised shortly after the age of 15. Tominaga belonged to a Japanese rationalist school of thought and advocated a Japanese variation of atheism, mukishinron . He was also a merchant in Osaka. Only a few of his works survive; his Setsuhei has been lost and may have been the reason for his separation from the Kaitokudō, and around nine other works' titles are known. The surviving works are his Okina no Fumi , Shutsujō Gogo , and three other works on ancient music...
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Salvador Zubirán
1898 - 1998 (100 years)
Salvador Zubirán Anchondo was one of Mexico's most prominent physicians and nutritionists. Biography He received his MD from the National University of Mexico Faculty of Medicine and visited the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, from 1924 to 1925, where he received a diploma.
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Niels Ryberg Finsen
1860 - 1904 (44 years)
Niels Ryberg Finsen was a Faroese physician and scientist. In 1903, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology "in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science."
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Johann von Dumreicher
1815 - 1880 (65 years)
Johann von Dumreicher, full name Johann Heinrich Georg Freiherr Dumreicher von Österreicher , was an Austrian surgeon. He was the father of Armand von Dumreicher , a politician known for educational reforms.
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John Levy
1910 - 1976 (66 years)
John Levy was a British mystic, artist, and musician, best known for translating the works of his guru Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon, Atma Darshan and Atma Niviriti into English. Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, Levy was an expert in Asian folk music, especially that of India. At one point in his life, he gave up his entire fortune and went to live in India with only a loincloth. In India, Levy was a student of V. K. Krishna Menon.
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Christian Gottlieb Geyser
1742 - 1803 (61 years)
Christian Gottlieb Geyser was a German painter and copper engraver. Life and work His father, , was a Lutheran theologian, as was his elder brother, . He began his law studies in 1761, at the University of Leipzig, but also took art lessons from Adam Friedrich Oeser. In 1764, when Oeser became the first Director of the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts, he hired Geyser as an assistant engraving teacher.
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Walter Chatton
1285 - 1343 (58 years)
Walter Chatton was an English Scholastic theologian and philosopher who regularly sparred philosophically with William of Ockham, who is well known for Occam's razor. Chatton proposed an "anti-razor". From his Lectura I d. 3, q. 1, a. 1:
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Peter Smith Michie
1839 - 1901 (62 years)
Peter Smith Michie was an American educator and soldier. Biography He was born in Brechin, Scotland, came to the United States in 1843, and was brought up in Cincinnati. He graduated second in the class of 1863 at West Point and entered the engineer corps. During the Civil War, he served in the campaign of 1864 against Richmond, Virginia; was chief engineer of General Benjamin Butler's Army of the James during the construction of the Dutch Gap Canal; and was at the head of all engineering operations of the left column at Hatcher's Run and in the pursuit of General Robert E. Lee's army.
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Gabriele Mucchi
1899 - 2002 (103 years)
Gabriele Mucchi was an Italian painter. Biography After graduating in architectural engineering at Bologna University in 1923, Gabriele Mucchi abandoned architecture to devote himself to painting, following in the footsteps of his father Antonio Maria. In 1926 he moved to Milan and the following year he exhibited with the Novecento Italiano group. He also started working as an illustrator collaborating with writers such as Achille Campanile and Cesare Zavattini . He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1930 and in the 5th and 6th Milan Triennial with paintings and decorative panels in 1933...
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Helmut Schultz
1904 - 1945 (41 years)
Helmut Schultz was a German musicologist at the University of Leipzig. Life Schultz was born in Frankfurt, Son of the Reich Court Council Reinhold Schultz, he studied musicology, philosophy and philology at the University of Leipzig from 1923 to 1927. In 1930 he received his doctorate in musicology from Johann Vesque von Püttlingen. , in 1932 the habilitation for musicology on Das madrigal als Formideal. Eine stilkundliche Untersuchung mit Belegen aus dem Schaffen des Andrea Gabrieli. From 1928 to 1932 he was assistant, from 1932 to 1933 private lecturer, from 1933 to 1945 as successor of Theodor Kroyer.
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Takaoki Sasaki
1878 - 1966 (88 years)
was a Japanese biochemist and oncologist known for demonstrating the induction of liver cancer in rats by Ortho-Aminoazotoluene with his pupil Tomizo Yoshida. In addition, he was also known as a master of fencing in Japan. He received the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy twice .
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Walter Hunziker
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Walter Hunziker was a Swiss professor who founded the Tourism Research Institute at the University of St. Gallen, co-developed the scientific study of tourism, developed the travel savings fund concept, co-founded the Association Internationale d'Experts Scientifiques du Tourisme and the Institut International de Glion. He was a director of the Swiss Tourism Federation, member of Swiss Advisory Committee for Trade Policy, and author.
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Alfred Stengel
1868 - 1939 (71 years)
Professor Alfred Stengel was an American surgeon, born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was president of the American College of Physicians and a clinical professor of medicine at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.
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Azharul Haque
1940 - 1971 (31 years)
Azharul Haque was a Bangladeshi physician-surgeon, who was killed in the Bangladesh Liberation War and is considered to be a martyr intellectual in Bangladesh. Early life Haque was born on 2 March 1940 in Dhaka, East Bengal, British Raj. His father Md. Zahurul Haque, was from West Bengal and was the jailer of Dhaka Central Jail. After his father died he lived under the care of his older brother, Anwarul Haque who was also a jail official. He moved around in East Bengal following the different places his brother was posted. He completed his Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery degree from Sylhet...
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Gary Ghahremani
Gary G. Ghahremani is an Iranian-American radiologist specializing in diagnostic and gastrointestinal imaging with over 40 years experience as Professor of Radiology. His work has been cited in over 5000 medical papers.
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Ludwig Babenstuber
1660 - 1726 (66 years)
Ludwig Babenstuber was a German philosopher and theologian and vice-chancellor of the University of Salzburg. He was born in 1660 at Teining in Bavaria. Having completed his early studies he entered the novitiate of the Order of St. Benedict at Ettal Abbey in 1681, made his religious profession in 1682, and thereafter devoted the greater part of his life to teaching.
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Niccolò Perotti
1429 - 1480 (51 years)
Niccolò Perotti, also Perotto or Nicolaus Perottus was an Italian humanist and the author of one of the first modern Latin school grammars. Born in Sassoferrato , Marche, Perotti studied with Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua in 1443, then in Ferrara with Guarino. He also studied at the University of Padua. At the age of eighteen he spent some time in the household of the Englishman William Grey, later Lord High Treasurer, who was travelling in Italy and was a student of Guarino. He transcribed texts for Grey and accompanied him to Rome when he moved there. He was a secretary of Cardinal Basilius...
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Clarisse Coignet
1824 - 1916 (92 years)
Clarisse Coignet was a French moral philosopher, educator, and historian. She was also associated with the social and political movement called La Morale independante, which advanced the idea that morality is independent from science and religion.
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