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).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#17501
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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John Clark Murray
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
John Clark Murray was a Scottish philosopher and professor. He held the Chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy at Queen's University from 1862 to 1872, and at McGill University from 1872 until 1903. During his academic career, Murray became the first professor at Queen's to offer courses to women; however, his equality advocacy caused unrest among the male professors. He was married to Margaret Polson Murray who founded the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire.
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Carl Johann Lasch
1822 - 1888 (66 years)
Carl Johann Lasch was a German artist of historical paintings. He was born in Leipzig. He attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. One of his teachers was Eduard Bendemann. He later attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. There he studied under Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Wilhelm von Kaulbach.
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Stanisław Wigura
1903 - 1932 (29 years)
Stanisław Wigura was a Polish aircraft designer and aviator, co-founder of the RWD aircraft construction team and lecturer at the Warsaw University of Technology. Along with Franciszek Żwirko, he won the international air contest Challenge 1932.
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Arthur Hollis Edens
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Arthur Hollins Edens served as President of Duke University from 1949 to 1960. Duke's third president after the school's expansion from college to university, Edens was first president hired from outside the university since 1894, when John C. Kilgo was hired away from Wofford College. An executive with the Rockefeller Foundation and a native Southerner, Edens launched a capital gifts program and a national development campaign. The success of these efforts allowed Duke University to strengthen its endowment and experience a period of great growth during his presidency with the Duke Universit...
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Cai Qiao
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Cai Qiao or Chiao Tsai was a Chinese physiologist and physician. Cai is famous for his discovery in 1920s, the ventral tegmental area, which also known as the ventral tegmental area of Tsai. He was elected as a member of Academia Sinica in 1948, also a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955.
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Shemariah of Negropont
1275 - 1352 (77 years)
Shemariah ben Elijah Ikriti of Negropont was a Greek-Jewish philosopher and Biblical exegete, contemporary of Dante and Immanuel the Roman. Life He was born probably at Rome, the descendant of a long line of Roman Jews. His father, in his youth, went as rabbi to Crete, whence his surname, "Ha-Yewani" , or "Ha-Iḳriṭti" . Shemariah had a critical mind, and knew Italian, Latin, and Greek. Up to 1305 he studied the Bible exclusively; then he took up Talmudic aggadah and philosophy. The earliest Tractatus version in Hebrew was translated by Shemariah and presented as his own work, titled Sefer ha...
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Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl
1782 - 1849 (67 years)
Friedrich Konrad Griepenkerl was a German Germanist, pedagogue, musicologist and conductor. Life Griepenkerl was born in Peine the son of a preacher, he first attended the school in Peine and changed in 1796 to the . From 1805 to 1808 he studied theology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, where he also studied philosophy and pedagogy with Johann Friedrich Herbart and philology with Christian Gottlob Heyne. In addition he studied music theory, piano and organ with Johann Sebastian Bach's devotee Johann Nikolaus Forkel . In 1808, on Herbart's advice, he went to Hofwil in Switzerland, wh...
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George Gilbert Ramsay
1839 - 1921 (82 years)
George Gilbert Ramsay was the Professor of Humanity at the University of Glasgow and the first president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. External links
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Frederic Poole Gorham
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
Frederic Poole Gorham was an American bacteriologist and educator. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of businessman Samuel Gorham and his wife Abby Harding Fish, he was educated in local schools before graduating from Providence High School in 1889 and matriculating to Brown University. After graduating in 1893, he became an instructor of Biology at Brown and was awarded his A.M. in 1894 upon examination, with special studies performed at Harvard. On June 24, 1897, he was married to Emma Mary Lapham in Burrillville, Rhode Island. Thereafter he became an assistant professor in 1899, then associate professor in 1901.
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K. W. Monsarrat
1872 - 1968 (96 years)
Keith Waldegrave Monsarrat was an English physician, surgeon, philosopher and writer. Biography Monsarrat was born in Kendal. He was educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man. In 1890 he joined the University of Edinburgh as a medical student and graduated with an MB ChB in 1894. He worked at Nottingham General Hospital and Great Yarmouth Hospital. He moved to Liverpool and obtained FRCS in 1897. He married the same year and took up medical practice in Liverpool.
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Leopold von Schrötter
1837 - 1908 (71 years)
Leopold Schrötter Ritter von Kristelli, was an Austrian internist and laryngologist born in Graz. He was the son of chemist Anton Schrötter von Kristelli, and father to physician Hermann Schroetter-Kristelli .
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Israel Hwasser
1790 - 1860 (70 years)
Israel Hwasser was a Swedish medical doctor and professor, who became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1854. Hwasser was the son of the vicar in Älvkarleby parish, Lars Adolph Hwasser, and Margareta Catharina Djurman. He grew up in the vicarage, receiving his schooling at home. When he was 14 years old he took the finishing exam, studentexamen, in Uppsala, and went on to study medicine there. In 1813 he finished his studies and defended his dissertation to become a Doctor of Medicine. The subject of his dissertation was the treatment of fevers with cold water.
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Orlando J. Smith
1842 - 1908 (66 years)
Orlando Jay Smith was an early 20th-century American philosopher. Though he was an avowed agnostic, he advocated for the search to a meaning in life which would be commensurate with the possible existence of an ultimate intelligence.
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Abraham Buschke
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Abraham Buschke was a Jewish German dermatologist who was a native of Nakel in the Province of Posen. Life In 1891 he received his doctorate in Berlin, and afterwards was a surgical assistant in Greifswald. Later he worked at dermatological clinics in Breslau under Albert Neisser and in Berlin with Edmund Lesser . In 1906 he became head of dermatology at Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Wedding.
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Robert Smith
1840 - 1885 (45 years)
Robert Smith FRCSE , also known as Bob Smith, was a Sierra Leonean medical doctor who served as an Assistant Colonial Surgeon in Sierra Leone during the late nineteenth century. Smith was the first African to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh after completing his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh.
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John Stuart of Inchbreck
1751 - Present (275 years)
Prof John Stuart of Inchbreck FRSE FSA was an 18th/19th century Scottish scholar. He was one of the joint founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. Life He was born at Castletown in the Mearns in 1751, the second son of Dr John Stuart of Inchbreck and his first wife, Elizabeth Lawson. The family estate was Inchbreck House near Glenbervie. He was educated at Glenbervie then Arbuthnott school. His older brother, Dr David Stuart, initially inherited the Inchbreck estate.
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John Williams
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
John Williams was a Tony Award-winning British stage, film, and television actor. He is remembered for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, as the chauffeur in Billy Wilder's Sabrina , as Mr. Brogan-Moore in Witness for the Prosecution , and as the second "Mr. French" on TV's Family Affair in its first season .
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Daniel Oliver
1787 - 1842 (55 years)
Daniel Oliver was an American physician. Oliver was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 9 September 1787; died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 June 1842, was the son of Reverend Thomas Fitch Oliver and the great grandson of Andrew Oliver. He was graduated at Harvard in 1806, and at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1810. He practiced for many years at Salem, Massachusetts, lectured on chemistry at Dartmouth in 1815–16, and in 1820 removed to Hanover, New Hampshire, having been appointed professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and of materia medica and therapeutics.
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Ridgely Hunt
1887 - Present (139 years)
Ridgely Hunt Jr. was a publishing executive and professor. After a 10-year career in the book distribution and publishing industries, Hunt served as librarian of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a grandson of William H. Hunt, the Secretary of the Navy during the Garfield Presidential Administration. Hunt was also a nephew of William Henry Hunt, who served as territorial Governor of Puerto Rico and as a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit.
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Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko
1842 - 1903 (61 years)
Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko was a German librarian and scholar, born in Neustadt, Silesia. Biography From 1859 to 1863 he studied classical philology at the universities of Breslau and Bonn. At Bonn, he was influenced by philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl and worked as an assistant at the university library. In 1863, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the prologues of Plautus and Terence. Following graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher in Opole and then in Lucerne .
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Alexander Russell Simpson
1835 - 1916 (81 years)
Sir Alexander Russell Simpson FRCPE FRSE LLD was a Scottish physician and Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh. He invented the axis-traction forceps also known as the obstetrics forceps which assisted in childbirth and reducing pain.
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#17531
George Dyson
1883 - 1964 (81 years)
Sir George Dyson was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.
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Samuel Gottlieb Vogel
1750 - 1837 (87 years)
Samuel Gottlieb von Vogel was a German physician. He is seen as the founding father of German seaside resorts. Vogel started studying medical science in Göttingen at the age of 14. In 1771 he attained a doctorate and in 1776 he achieved habilitation. He first started working as a physician in Göttingen, later moving to Ratzeburg. In the meantime he published several medicinal science books.
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Johannes Lippius
1585 - 1612 (27 years)
Johannes Lippius was an Alsatian theologian and music theorist. He coined the term "harmonic triad" in his Synopsis musicae novae . Life Lippius was born in Strasbourg, the son of the pastor of St. Peter, Johann Lippius , and his wife Susanna Klehmann. In early childhood, he had already received education in languages and the seven liberal arts, which allowed him to be appointed at the University of Strasbourg to the Master of Philosophy at a young age. By his twenty-first birthday he had given private and university lectures, after which he entered the University of Leipzig, 1606, the Univer...
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Lilian Welsh
1858 - 1938 (80 years)
Lilian Welsh was an American physician, educator, suffragist, and advocate for women's health. She was on the faculty at Woman's College of Baltimore and an active member of National American Woman Suffrage Association. Welsh was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2017.
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Moses Schorr
1874 - 1941 (67 years)
Moses Schorr, Polish: Mojżesz Schorr was a rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and modern rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.
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William John Macleay
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Sir William John Macleay was a Scottish-Australian politician, naturalist, zoologist, and herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Caithness, Scotland, second son of Kenneth Macleay of Keiss and his wife Barbara, née Horne. Macleay was educated at the Edinburgh Academy 1834–36 and then to studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh; but when he was 18 years old his widowed mother died, and he decided to go to Australia with his cousin, William Sharp MacLeay. They arrived at Sydney in March 1839 on HMS Royal George. William Macleay took up land at first near Goulburn, and after...
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Grant Liddle
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Grant Winder Liddle was an American endocrinologist whose research focused largely on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. He was a professor at Vanderbilt University and chaired its Department of Medicine from 1968 to 1983.
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Adib Pishavari
1844 - 1930 (86 years)
Seyyed Ahmad Adib Pishavari , also known as Sayyed Ahmad B. Sehab al-Din Razawi , was a Sufi scholar who born in or near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, and was descended from Omar Sohravardi. Adib was a master of Persian literature.
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Francesco Buonamici
1533 - 1603 (70 years)
Francesco Buonamici was an Italian philosopher, professor at the University of Pisa and writer who wrote about his ideas on motion in a treatise called De Motu. He was one of the teachers of Galileo.
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Giulio Sirenio
1553 - 1593 (40 years)
Giulio Sirenio was an Italian philosopher from Brescia. He was professor of theology and metaphysics at the University of Bologna. Works
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Henry Augustus Ward
1834 - 1906 (72 years)
Henry Augustus Ward was an American naturalist and geologist. Biography Henry Augustus Ward was born in Rochester, New York on March 9, 1834. After attending Williams College and the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard, where he was an assistant of Louis Agassiz, he traveled in Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, and studied at the Jardin des Plantes, the Sorbonne, and the School of Mines in Paris, and at the universities of Munich and Freiberg. Subsequently, he traveled in West Africa and the West Indies, making natural history collections.
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Arnoldus Arlenius
1510 - 1582 (72 years)
Arnoldus Arlenius Peraxylus, , born Arndt or Arnout van Eyndhouts or van Eynthouts, also known as Arnoud de Lens, was a Dutch humanist philosopher and poet. He was born in Aarle, near Helmond, , North Brabant, in the Netherlands, at that time part of the possessions of the Habsburgs. He studied under Macropedius and later travelled to Paris, and Ferrara and studied at the University of Bologna for five years, becoming a first-rate Greek scholar and supporting himself by bookselling and acting as a scout for the printers of Basel, arranging the publication of books such as Caelius Rhodiginus's ...
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Igor Sikorsky
1889 - 1972 (83 years)
Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was a Russian–American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, won him national recognition as well as F.A.I. license number 64. His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg.
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Ganapati Muni
1878 - 1936 (58 years)
Ayyala Somayajulu Ganapathi Sastry, also known as Ganapati Muni , was a disciple of Ramana Maharshi. He was also variously known as "Kavyakantha" , and "Nayana" by his disciples. Biography Ganapati Muni was born in Kalavarayai near Bobbili in Andhra Pradesh on 17 November 1878. His parents, Narasimha Sastri and Narasamamba had three sons, Muni being the second. Ganapati, when 18 years old, set out and wandered from one place to another, residing in places like Bhuvaneshwar, where he performed his tapas. When Ganapati was staying in Varanasi he learned of an assembly of Sanskrit scholars in the city of Nabadwip in Bengal.
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Louise Reed Stowell
1850 - 1931 (81 years)
Louise Reed Stowell was an American scientist, microscopist, author, and editor. She was the University of Michigan's first woman teacher , and the first woman appointed on District of Columbia Public Schools . She also served on the Board for the Girls' Reform School for District of Columbia. Stowell died in 1932.
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John Glaister
1856 - 1932 (76 years)
Professor John Glaister was a Scottish forensic scientist who worked as a general practitioner, police surgeon, and as a lecturer at Glasgow Royal Infirmary Medical School and the University of Glasgow. Glasgow University's Glaister Prize is named in his honour.
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John McClintock
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
John McClintock was an American Methodist Episcopal theologian and educationalist, born in Philadelphia. Biography McClintock matriculated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Ill health, however, forced him to leave Wesleyan in his freshman year. Unable to return, he graduated subsequently from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835, and was assistant professor of mathematics , professor of mathematics , and professor of Latin and Greek in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He opposed the Mexican–American War, as well as slavery, but did not consider himself an abolitionist.
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Bernhard von Langenbeck
1810 - 1887 (77 years)
Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck was a German surgeon known as the developer of Langenbeck's amputation and founder of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery. Life He was born at Padingbüttel, and received his medical education at Göttingen, where one of his teachers was his uncle Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck. He took his doctorate in 1835 with a thesis on the structure of the retina. After a visit to France and England, he returned to Göttingen as Privatdozent, and in 1842 became Professor of Surgery and Director of the Friedrichs Hospital at Kiel. Six years later he succeeded Johann Fried...
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Caterina Moriggi
1437 - 1478 (41 years)
Caterina Moriggi was an Italian Roman Catholic who became a professed religious and adhered to the teachings and traditions of Augustine of Hippo. She lived in contemplation in the Italian mountains before establishing a new order, dubbed Order of Saint Ambrose ad Nemus which followed the Augustinian rule. Moriggi became known as Catherine of Pallanza when she became a religious and was noted for her austere model of living and for her deep personal holiness.
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Knud Jeppesen
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Knud Jeppesen was a Danish musicologist and composer. He was the leading scholar of the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, about whose life and music he wrote numerous studies. Biography Jeppesen demonstrated early musical talent at age 10 when he was first encouraged by Hakon Andersen and Paul Hellmuth, although he was largely self-taught. Completing primary education in 1911, he first worked in Elbing and Liegnitz as an opera coach and conductor. He found employment in Berlin in 1914, but returned to Denmark because of the outbreak of war. In Copenhagen he became a pupil of promine...
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