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
Albrecht von Graefe
1828 - 1870 (42 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht von Gräfe, often Anglicized to Graefe , was a Prussian pioneer of German ophthalmology. Graefe was born in Finkenheerd, Brandenburg, the son of Karl Ferdinand von Graefe . He was the father of the far right politician Albrecht von Graefe .
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Karl Richard Lepsius
1810 - 1884 (74 years)
Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist. He is widely known for his magnum opus Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien. Early life Karl Richard Lepsius was the son of Karl Peter Lepsius, a classical scholar from Naumburg, and his wife Friederike , who was the daughter of composer Carl Ludwig Traugott Gläser. The family name was originally "Leps" and had been Latinized to "Lepsius" by Karl's paternal great-grandfather Peter Christoph Lepsius. He was born in Naumburg on the Saale, Saxony.
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Ptolemy-el-Garib
200 - Present (1826 years)
Ptolemy-el-Garib was a Hellenistic pinacographer, probably of the Peripatetic school, who wrote a Life of Aristotle notable for its catalog of Aristotle's works. This work survives in an Arabic manuscript in Istanbul. A critical edition, with French translation was published by Marwan Rashed.
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Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara
1454 - 1504 (50 years)
Domenico Maria Novara was an Italian scientist. Life Born in Ferrara, for 21 years he was professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna, and in 1500 he also lectured in mathematics at Rome. He was notable as a Platonist astronomer, and in 1496 he taught Nicolaus Copernicus astronomy. He was also an astrologer.
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Johann Ritter von Oppolzer
1808 - 1871 (63 years)
Johann Ritter von Oppolzer was an Austrian physician born in Nové Hrady, Bohemia. He was the father of the astronomer Theodor von Oppolzer . In 1835 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Prague, and later worked as a university professor at Prague , Leipzig and Vienna , where he also served as rector in 1860/61. In 1863, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Francis Dominic Bencini
1664 - 1744 (80 years)
Francis Dominic Bencini was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised in apologetics. Life Benici began his studies in Malta, and went on to become a diocesan priest. He then studied theology in Rome, from where he obtained his graduate colours. Thereafter, he immediately began teaching dogmatic theology at the Collegio Urbano, in Rome, Italy. While there, he was also installed as librarian of Propaganda Fide, and chosen as secretary to the pontifical councils. He dedicated much of his intellectual energies to the anti-reformist polemic which was in full swing during his times.
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Johann Winter von Andernach
1505 - 1574 (69 years)
Johann Winter von Andernach was a German Renaissance physician, university professor, humanist, translator of ancient, mostly medical works, and writer of his own medical, philological and humanities works.
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Dorothy Hansine Andersen
1901 - 1963 (62 years)
Dorothy Hansine Andersen was an American physician, pediatrician, and pathologist who first identified cystic fibrosis. She was the first to describe the disease, and name it. In 1939, she was awarded the E. Mead Johnson Award for her identification of the disease. In 2002, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
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Claes Hellerström
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Gotthardt Kuehl
1850 - 1915 (65 years)
Gotthardt Kuehl was a German painter and a representative of early German Impressionism. He gained wide international recognition during his lifetime. Life and work His father, Simon Kühl, was the Sexton and organist at . He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, . From 1878 to 1889, he lived in Paris. He also made study trips to Italy and the Netherlands. In 1888, he married Henriette Simonson-Castelli , daughter of the portrait painter, .
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Marian Gieszczykiewicz
1889 - 1942 (53 years)
Marian Teodor Ludwik Gieszczykiewicz was a Polish physician, bacteriologist. Gieszczykiewicz was professor at the Jagiellonian University starting in 1924 and member of the Polish Academy of Skills. During the German occupation he taught at the so-called "Secret Universities".
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Charles-Emmanuel Sédillot
1804 - 1883 (79 years)
Charles-Emmanuel Sédillot was a French military physician and surgeon. He was the son of orientalist Jean Jacques Emmanuel Sédillot , and an older brother to historian Louis-Pierre-Eugène Sédillot.
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Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz
1872 - 1905 (33 years)
Kazimierz Radosław Elehard baron Kelles-Krauz was a Polish philosopher and sociologist, member of the Polish Socialist Party. He was one of the most significant Marxist thinkers at the end of the 19th century.
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Jan Jesenius
1566 - 1621 (55 years)
Jan Jesenius, also written as Jessenius , was a Bohemian physician, politician and philosopher. Life Early years He was from an old noble family, the House of Jeszenszky, originally from the Kingdom of Hungary. He presented himself in his own works as eques Ungarus . According to scholar publications, he had Slovak, Polish or German roots. His father, Boldizsár Jeszenszky de Nagyjeszen, left Turóc County because of the Ottomans' military campaign against Upper Hungary and settled down in Silesia in 1555. He married Marta Schülerin, who came from a wealthy German bourgeois family.
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Mary Putnam Jacobi
1842 - 1906 (64 years)
Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi was an English-American physician, teacher, scientist, writer, and suffragist. She was the first woman admitted to study medicine at the University of Paris and the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college in the United States.
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Nikolai Semashko
1874 - 1949 (75 years)
Dr. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko , was a revolutionary, Soviet statesman and academic who became People's Commissar of Public Health in 1918, and served in that role until 1930. He was one of the organizers of the health system in the Soviet Union , an academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Russian SFSR .
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Yoshioka Yayoi
1871 - 1959 (88 years)
Yoshioka Yayoi was a Japanese physician, educator, and women's rights activist. She founded the Tokyo Women's Medical University in 1900, as the first medical school for women in Japan. She was also known as Washiyama Yayoi.
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Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt
1833 - 1902 (69 years)
Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt was a German internist born in Speyer. Biography He studied medicine at the University of Würzburg, earning his doctorate in 1856. Subsequently, he was an assistant to Heinrich von Bamberger and Franz von Rinecker in Würzburg, and worked under Wilhelm Griesinger in Tübingen.
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Ahmad al-Buni
1200 - 1225 (25 years)
Sharaf al-Din or Shihab al-Din or Muḥyi al-Din Abu al-Abbas Aḥmad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qurashi al-Sufi, better known as Ahmad al-Buni , was a mathematician and philosopher and a well known Sufi. Very little is known about him. His writings deal with the esoteric value of letters and topics relating to mathematics, sihr and spirituality. Born in Buna , al-Buni lived in Egypt and learned from many eminent Sufi masters of his time.
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Gregorio Bressani
1703 - 1771 (68 years)
Gregorio Bressani was an Italian philosopher. Life Bressani was born in Treviso. He graduated from the University of Padua studying literature and philosophy. He was a dear friend of Francesco Algarotti although they had very different opinions. Bressani opposed Galilei and Newton theories in favor of a more scholastic approach. He died in Padua.
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Jean-Baptiste Oudry
1686 - 1755 (69 years)
Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French Rococo painter, engraver, and tapestry designer. He is particularly well known for his naturalistic pictures of animals and his hunt pieces depicting game. His son, Jacques-Charles Oudry, was also a painter.
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Dominicus Gundissalinus
1115 - 1190 (75 years)
Dominicus Gundissalinus, also known as Domingo Gundisalvi or Gundisalvo , was a philosopher and translator of Arabic to Medieval Latin active in Toledo. Among his translations, Gundissalinus worked on Avicenna's Liber de philosophia prima and De anima, Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae, and al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae, in collaboration with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud and Johannes Hispanus. As a philosopher, Gundissalinus crucially contributed to the Latin assimilation of Arabic philosophy, being the first Latin thinker in receiving and developing doctrines, such as Avicenna's...
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Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly
1691 - 1750 (59 years)
Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly was a French philosopher. A member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, he founded the ESAD de Reims. Lévesque de Pouilly studied philosophy and literature in Paris. He was a friend of Nicolas Fréret and Lord Bolingbroke, met Isaac Newton in England, and is likely to have hosted David Hume in Reims.
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Joachim Dietrich Brandis
1762 - 1846 (84 years)
Joachim Dietrich Brandis was a German-Danish physician. Family He was a son of the judge Christian Dietrich Brandis , and belonged to a prominent family from Hildesheim. He was the father of the philosopher Christian August Brandis and the grandfather of the forestry academic and administrator in India Sir Dietrich Brandis.
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Vincenz Czerny
1842 - 1916 (74 years)
Vincenz Czerny was a German Bohemian surgeon whose main contributions were in the fields of oncological and gynecological surgery. Czerny was born in Trutnov, Bohemia, Austrian Empire. He initially studied at Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague, later transferring to the University of Vienna, where he was a student of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke . In 1866 he graduated summa cum laude. Afterwards, he remained in Vienna as an assistant to Johann Ritter von Oppolzer and Theodor Billroth . In 1871 he became a clinical director at the University of Freiburg.
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Anthony J. Raimondi
#17377
Friedrich Eduard Schulz
1799 - 1829 (30 years)
Friedrich Eduard Schulz was a German philosopher and orientalist, who was one of the first to uncover evidence of the Kingdom of Urartu. Research on Urartu In 1827, the French scholar Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin recommended that his government send Schulz, then a young professor at the University of Giessen, to the area around Lake Van in what is now eastern Turkey on behalf of the French Oriental Society. Schulz discovered and copied numerous cuneiform inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulz also re-discovered the Kelishin stele, bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, located on the Kelishin pass on the current Iraqi-Iranian border.
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Philipp Jarnach
1892 - 1982 (90 years)
Philipp Jarnach was a German composer of modern music , pianist, teacher, and conductor. Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec, France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besides composer such as Hindemith, Jarnach is considered one of the leading and formative composer of the late German Romantic and early modern eras. Until 1914 he lived in Paris, where he studied piano under Édouard Risler and harmony under Albert Lavignac at the Conservatoire de Paris. During the First World War he was a student of Ferruccio Busoni in Zürich. He later completed the opera Doktor Faust which B...
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Samuel D. Gross
1805 - 1884 (79 years)
Samuel David Gross was an American academic trauma surgeon. Surgeon biographer Isaac Minis Hays called Gross "The Nestor of American Surgery." He is immortalized in Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic , a prominent American painting of the nineteenth century. A bronze statue of him was cast by Alexander Stirling Calder and erected on the National Mall, but moved in 1970 to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
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Hiroyuki Arai
#17381
Robert A Wilson
#17382
Nakai Riken
1732 - 1817 (85 years)
was a leading academic in the Kaitokudo academy tradition of scholarship. He was the younger son of Nakai Shuan , one of the Kaitokudo's two founding leaders, and was influenced by his teacher and mentor Goi Ranju. His intellectualised way of being led to continued engagement with but physical separation from the Kaitokudo. Much is made of his demeanor reflecting his.
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Antonio Comellas y Cluet
1832 - 1884 (52 years)
Antonio Comellas y Cluet was a philosopher. Comellas studied philosophy and theology in Vic, and entered the diocesan seminary in Solsona, Lleida. After his ordination he continued to teach Latin at Solsona until 1862, when he was appointed professor of theology. During his stay there he published two pamphlets. The first was a discourse, delivered at the opening of the scholastic term, 1866–67, in which he tried to explain in a new manner the procession of the Holy Trinity, and the second a translation, accompanied by prologue and notes, of a work by Reginald Baumstark, Pensamientos de un p...
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John William Ballantyne
1861 - 1923 (62 years)
John William Ballantyne FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician and obstetrician. In his teaching of female doctors he was a pioneer in the advancement of female professional training in the field of medicine. He made major advances in the field of midwifery in the late 19th and early 20th century, with influences still felt today. He founded the science of antenatal pathology.
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James Tissot
1836 - 1902 (66 years)
Jacques Joseph Tissot , better known as James Tissot , was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life.
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Ichthyas
Ichthyas , the son of Metallus, was a Greek philosopher and a disciple and successor of Euclid of Megara in the Megarian school. He was a colleague of Thrasymachus of Corinth in the school. Ichthyas is described as a man of great eminence, and Diogenes of Sinope is said to have addressed a dialogue to him.
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Sergei Tolstoy
1863 - 1947 (84 years)
Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy was a composer and ethnomusicologist who was among the first Europeans to make an in-depth study of the music of India. He was also an associate of the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, and participated in helping the Doukhobors move to Canada.
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James H. Lubowitz
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Paul Cullinan
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Fan Zhongyan
989 - 1052 (63 years)
Fan Zhongyan , courtesy name Xiwen , was a Chinese military strategist, philosopher, poet, and politician of the Song dynasty. After serving the central government for several decades, Fan was appointed Prime Minister or Chancellor over the entire Song empire. Fan's philosophical, educational and political contributions continue to be influential to this day, and his writings remain a core component of the Chinese literary canon. His attitude towards official service is encapsulated by his oft-quoted line on the proper attitude of scholar-officials: "They were the first to worry the worries of All-under-Heaven, and the last to enjoy its joys".
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Thomas J. Walley
#17392
Nusret Fişek
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Hasan Nusret Fişek was a Turkish physician and Minister of Health. Early years Nusret Hasan Fişek was born in Sivas to Hayrullah Fişek, a commander at the Turkish War of Independence, and Mukaddes on November 21, 1914. He had a brother, A. Hicri Fişek. He was registered in Istanbul.
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Joachim Camerarius
1500 - 1574 (74 years)
Joachim Camerarius , the Elder, was a German classical scholar. His critical abilities, his deep understanding of Greek and Latin, and his wide-ranging knowledge of the ancient world made him one of the foremost German scholars of his time.
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Edmund Dickinson
1624 - 1707 (83 years)
Edmund Dickinson or Dickenson was an English royal physician and alchemist, author of a syncretic philosophical system. Life He was son of the Rev. William Dickinson, rector of Appleton in Berkshire , by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Colepepper, and was born on 26 September 1624. He received his primary education at Eton College, and in 1642 entered Merton College, Oxford, where he was admitted one of the Eton postmasters. He took the degree of B.A. 22 June 1647, and was elected probationer-fellow of his college, On 27 November 1649 he had the degree of M.A. conferred upon him. Applying himself to the study of medicine, he obtained the degree of M.D.
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Thomas Louis Hanna
1928 - 1990 (62 years)
Thomas Louis Hanna was a philosophy professor and movement theorist who coined the term somatics in 1976. He called his work Hanna Somatic Education. He proposed that most negative health effects are due to what he called Sensory Motor Amnesia. He claimed that many common age-related ailments are not simply a matter of time but the result of poor movement habits.
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Nathan Smith Davis
1817 - 1904 (87 years)
Nathan Smith Davis Sr., M.D., LLD was a physician who was instrumental in the establishment of the American Medical Association and was twice elected its president. He became the first editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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James Agee
1909 - 1955 (46 years)
James Rufus Agee was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for Time Magazine, he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family , won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize. Agee is also known as a co-writer of the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and as the screenwriter of the film classics The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter.
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Johann Nikolaus Forkel
1749 - 1818 (69 years)
Johann Nikolaus Forkel was a German musicologist and music theorist, generally regarded as among the founders of modern musicology. His publications include Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work, the first substantial survey on the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Altheides
1193 - 1262 (69 years)
Altheides was a Cypriot philosopher, primarily known from sayings attributed to him in the works of others. Little is known about the wandering philosopher known as Altheides of Cyprus, and little of his work remains available to modern scholars. His parents were Greek merchants living on the island under the rule of Guy of Lusignan. He was born a year before Guy's death, in 1193. At some point in his late teens he left Cyprus as a seaman on a Moorish trading vessel.
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Joseph Lane
1851 - 1920 (69 years)
Joseph Lane was an English libertarian socialist campaigner. Biography Lane was born on 2 April 1851 in Benson, Oxfordshire, England, to Thomas Lane, who was a cordwainer, and Mercy Lane . Lane had very little education, beginning farm work at a young age. As a boy he also took a keen interest in politics and attending election meetings. He moved to London and at the age of 15 began work as a carter. In the early 1870s he was involved in the Land Tenure Reform Association and the republican movement.
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