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,
#17751
Ion Dragoumis
1878 - 1920 (42 years)
Ion Dragoumis was a Greek diplomat, philosopher, writer and revolutionary. Biography Born in Athens, Dragoumis was the son of Stephanos Dragoumis who was foreign minister under Charilaos Trikoupis. The Dragoumis family was a prominent Greek family, which originated from Vogatsiko in Kastoria regional unit. Ion's great-grandfather, Markos Dragoumis , was a member of the Filiki Eteria revolutionary organisation.
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Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld
1605 - 1655 (50 years)
Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld was a German philosopher, logician and encyclopedic writer from Siegen. A follower of Ramus and pupil of Johann Heinrich Alsted at the Herborn Academy , Bisterfeld became head of the academy in Weissenburg in Transylvania, where he died.
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Géza Révész
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Géza Révész was a Hungarian-Dutch psychologist of Jewish heritage, and is regarded as one of the pioneers of European psychology. Life Révész was born in the Siófok, Hungary, a town located at Lake Balaton, where his father owned a famous vineyard. He studied law in Budapest and received his doctorate in 1902, when he finished his dissertation entitled Das Trauerjahr der Witwe.
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Charmadas
168 BC - 103 BC (65 years)
Charmadas was a Greek Academic Skeptic philosopher and a disciple of Carneades at the Academy in Athens. He was famous for his elegant style. Charmadas introduced the teaching of rhetoric into the Academy and is said to have had many students. He was a pupil of Carneades for seven years and later he led his own school in the Ptolemaion, a gymnasium in Athens. He was from Alexandria and seems to have lived there, before he went to Athens around 145 BC He was an excellent rhetorician and famous for his outstanding memory and for his ability to memorize whole books and then recite them. Like Philo of Larissa he seems to have pursued a more moderate philosophical scepticism.
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Wilhelm von Kaulbach
1805 - 1874 (69 years)
Wilhelm von Kaulbach was a German painter, noted mainly as a muralist, but also as a book illustrator. His murals decorate buildings in Munich. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
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Paolo Giovio
1483 - 1552 (69 years)
Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian, biographer, and prelate. Early life Little is known about Giovio's youth. He was a native of Como; his family was from the Isola Comacina of Lake Como. His father, a notary, died around 1500. He was educated under the direction of his elder brother Benedetto, a humanist and historian. Although interested in literature, he was sent to Padua to study medicine. He graduated in 1511.
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Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno
1470 - 1550 (80 years)
Ovadia ben Jacob Sforno was an Italian rabbi, Biblical commentator, philosopher and physician. A member of the Sforno family, he was born in Cesena about 1475 and died in Bologna in 1549. Biography After acquiring in his native town a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, rabbinic literature, mathematics, and philosophy, he went to Rome to study medicine. There his learning won for him a prominent place among scholars; and when Reuchlin was at Rome and desired to perfect his knowledge of Hebrew literature, Cardinal Domenico Grimani advised him to apply to Obadiah.
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Joseph Vialatoux
1880 - 1970 (90 years)
Joseph Vialatoux was a French Catholic philosopher based in Lyon, a leading member of the Catholic social activist Chronique sociale. He had liberal Christian democratic views. He was a prolific author, and an early critic of the right-wing Action Française.
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Muro Kyūsō
1658 - 1734 (76 years)
or Muro Naokiyo , was a Neo-Confucian scholar and an official of the Tokugawa shogunate during the rule of Tokugawa Yoshimune. Muro was responsible for the reintroduction of orthodox neo-Confucianist thought into government and societal life, attempting to reverse the growth of unorthodox views that were becoming popular during this time. He was also an author of Neo-Confucianist works, such as the Shundai Zatsuwa and Rikuyu engi taigi, although much of his work would only be known posthumously. Muro was a proponent of the Chu Hsi school of thought.
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Christopher J. Mcdougle
#17761
Dhardo Rimpoche
1917 - 1990 (73 years)
Dhardo Rinpoche , born Thubten Lhundup Legsang, was the 12th in a line of tulkus from Dhartsendo on the eastern border of Tibet who hailed from the Nyingma Gompa in Dhartsendo called Dorje Drak . The 11th tulku rose to the Abbot of Drepung and during the 1912 invasion of Tibet by China was the most senior of the retired abbots in the National Assembly. He died in 1916 and the 12th Tulku was born in 1917.
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Édouard Schuré
1841 - 1929 (88 years)
Eduard Schuré was a French philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist, music critic, and publicist of esoteric literature. Biography Schuré was the son of a doctor in the Alsatian town of Strasbourg, who died when Édouard was fourteen years old. Schuré mastered French as well as German, and was influenced by German and French culture in his formative years. He received his degree in law at the University of Strasbourg, but he never entered into practice. Schuré called the three most significant of his friendships those with Richard Wagner, Marguerita Albana Mignaty and Rudolf Steiner.
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Oskar Fleischer
1856 - 1933 (77 years)
Oskar Fleischer was a German musicologist. Life Born in Zörbig Anhalt-Bitterfeld, after attending the Latin secondary school at the Francke Foundations in Halle, Fleischer studied ancient and modern languages, history of literature and philosophy at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1882 to 1886 and was promoted to Dr. phil. He then completed a four-year degree in musicology in Berlin. In 1888, he took over the management of the "Royal Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments" at the Berlin University of the Arts, whose holdings he was able to expand considerably with the acquisition of Snoeck's private collection.
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Francis C. Colpaert
#17765
Zhan Ruoshui
1466 - 1560 (94 years)
Zhan Ruoshui , was a Chinese philosopher, educator and a Confucian scholar. Biography Zhan was born in Zengcheng, Guangdong. He was appointed the president of Nanjing Guozijian in 1524. He was later appointed the Minister of Rites , Minister of Personnel , and then Minister of War at Nanjing of the Ming dynasty.
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José María Albiñana
1883 - 1936 (53 years)
José María Albiñana was a Spanish physician, neurologist, medical writer, philosopher and anti-republican right-wing politician. Born in Enguera, Valencia, he was a Doctor of Medicine specialising in mental health. He was also a doctor in law and philosophy and with Delgado Barreto founded the Partido Nacionalista Español.
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Uroš Nestorović
1765 - 1825 (60 years)
Uroš Stefanović Nestorović also known as Uroš Stefan Nestorović was a writer, jurist, philosopher, and pedagogue who headed all Eastern Orthodox schools in the Habsburg Monarchy. Uroš Nestorović is considered one of the most prominent Serbian enlighteners and educators along with Teodor Janković Mirijevski, Stefan Vujanovski, Dimitrie Eustatievici and Avram Mrazović.
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Marius Nizolius
1488 - 1567 (79 years)
Marius Nizolius was an Italian humanist scholar, known as a proponent of Cicero. He considered rhetoric to be the central intellectual discipline, slighting other aspects of the philosophical tradition. He is described by Michael R. Allen as the heir to the oratorical vision of Lorenzo Valla, and a better nominalist.
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Léon Metchnikoff
1838 - 1888 (50 years)
#17770
Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu
1911 - 1975 (64 years)
Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu was a Turkish painter, mosaic-maker, muralist, writer and poet. His art work was inspired by Anatolian village scenes and folk literature, and included traditional handicraft folk patterns.
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Francis Home
1719 - 1813 (94 years)
Francis Home FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician, and the first Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Edinburgh, known to make the first attempt to vaccinate against measles, in 1758. In 1783 he was one of the founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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Stewart Duke-Elder
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Sir William Stewart Duke-Elder was a Scottish ophthalmologist, a dominant force in his field for more than a quarter of a century. Life Duke-Elder was born in the manse in Tealing near Dundee. His father, Rev Neil Stewart Elder, was the village minister of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother was Isabelle Duke, daughter of Rev John Duke of the Free Church in Campsie, Stirlingshire.
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William Henry Jackson
1843 - 1942 (99 years)
William Henry Jackson was an American photographer, Civil War veteran, painter, and an explorer famous for his images of the American West. He was a great-great nephew of Samuel Wilson, the progenitor of America's national symbol Uncle Sam. He was the great-grandfather of cartoonist Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead comics.
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Henri Le Fauconnier
1881 - 1946 (65 years)
Henri Victor Gabriel Le Fauconnier was a French Cubist painter born in Hesdin. Le Fauconnier was seen as one of the leading figures among the Montparnasse Cubists. At the 1911 Salon des Indépendants Le Fauconnier and colleagues Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay caused a scandal with their Cubist paintings. He was in contacts with many European avant-garde artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, writing a theoretical text for the catalogue of the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich, of which he became a member. His paintings were exhibited in Moscow reproduced as exam...
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August Deusser
1870 - 1942 (72 years)
August Deusser was a German painter and art professor, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Life and work From 1892 to 1897, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; finishing as a master student of Peter Janssen At first, he painted genre and historical works; with subjects ranging from farmers in the field, to scenes from Shakespeare. In one of his first successes, he won a competition for decorating the meeting room of the courthouse in Kleve; with a scene depicting the evening before the .
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Ludwig Wachler
1767 - 1838 (71 years)
Johann Friedrich Ludwig Wachler was a German literary historian and theologian. He was the father-in-law of lexicographer Franz Passow. Biography Wachler studied theology from 1784 at the University of Jena, but due to consequences stemming from a duel, he was forced to leave Jena, and subsequently relocated to the University of Göttingen, where he became a student of philology. At Göttingen he was a pupil of Christian Gottlob Heyne, Ludwig Timotheus Spittler and Johann Christoph Gatterer. In 1788, Wachler became an associate professor at Rinteln, where he gave lectures in philology and church history.
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Peter C. Hayes
#17778
Fujiwara Seika
1561 - 1619 (58 years)
Fujiwara Seika was a Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher and writer during the Edo period. His most well-known student was Hayashi Razan . Life He was born in Harima Province on February 8, 1561 to the Reizei family. At the age of seven or eight he was sent to the Shōkoku-ji temple to become a Zen Buddhist priest. There, he studied Confucianism alongside his Zen studies. In 1596, Fujiwara attempted to travel to Ming China in order to study under an authentic Confucian master, but inclement weather forced the party to turn back. Fujiwara learned more about Neo-Confucianism from the Korean schol...
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Nicolai Abildgaard
1743 - 1809 (66 years)
Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard was a Danish neoclassical and royal history painter, sculptor, architect, and professor of painting, mythology, and anatomy at the New Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen, Denmark. Many of his works were in the royal Christiansborg Palace , Fredensborg Palace, and Levetzau Palace at Amalienborg.
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Stephanus of Alexandria
600 - 622 (22 years)
Stephanus of Alexandria was a Byzantine philosopher and teacher who, besides philosophy in the Neo-Platonic tradition, also wrote on alchemy, astrology and astronomy. He was one of the last exponents of the Alexandrian academic tradition before the Islamic conquest of Egypt.
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Urbano González Serrano
1848 - 1904 (56 years)
Urbano González Serrano was a Spanish philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, pedagogue, literary critic, and politician. Juan Antonio Garcia posited González was the principal developer of krausoposivitismo, a mixture of positivism and Krausism. These beliefs were determined by Yvan Lissorgues as an amalgamation of "abstract idealism of the Hegelian type and extrapolations of some philosophers and scientists".
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Thomas Cogswell Upham
1799 - 1872 (73 years)
Thomas Upham was an American philosopher, psychologist, pacifist, poet, author, and educator. He was an important figure in the holiness movement. He became influential within psychology literature and served as the Bowdoin College professor of mental and moral philosophy from 1825-1868. His most popular work, Mental Philosophy received 57 editions over a 73-year period. Additionally, he produced a volume of 16 other books and the first treatise on abnormal psychology, as well as several other works on religious themes and figures. Specific teachings included a conception of mental faculties...
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Alexander Marx
1878 - 1953 (75 years)
Alexander Marx was an American historian, bibliographer and librarian. Biography Born in Elberfeld, Germany, son of George Marx, a banker, and Gertrud Marx-Simon, a published poet. Alexander Marx grew up in Königsberg . He spent a year in a Prussian artillery regiment where he excelled in horsemanship. Later he studied at the University of Berlin and at the Rabbiner-Seminar , marrying in 1905 Hannah the daughter of R' David Zvi Hoffmann, rector of the Seminar. In 1903, Marx accepted Solomon Schechter's invitation to teach history at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and be its librarian.
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Bernard R. Jr. Bach
#17785
Albert Busuttil
1891 - 1956 (65 years)
Albert Busuttil was a Maltese minor philosopher. In philosophy he was mostly interested in politics and labour rights. Life Busuttil was born at Sliema, Malta in 1891. He studied at the Lyceum and at the University of Malta, and later joined the Jesuits. He continued his philosophical studies in Jersey, France, and his theology in Posillipo, Naples, in Italy, both centres of Jesuit teaching. He was ordained a priest in 1922. Afterwards, he taught ethics in Ireland, and history of philosophy in Catania, Sicily. In Malta he taught philosophy, apologetics, mathematics, physics, and sociology. Between 1928 and 1945 Busuttil was Prefect of Studies at St.
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Pyotr Kireevsky
1808 - 1856 (48 years)
Pyotr Vasilievich Kireevsky was a Russian folklorist and philologist many of whose materials remain unpublished to this day. Kireevsky was an ardent Slavophile like his elder and more famous brother Ivan Vasilievich . He spent his entire life collecting folk songs and lyrics. Some of these were contributed by Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksey Koltsov, and Vladimir Dahl.
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Konstantin Chkheidze
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Konstantin Alexandrovich Chkheidze was a Czech-Georgian-Russian writer, philosopher, and White émigré. Born to a Georgian father, of the noble family of Chkheidze, and a Russian mother, Chkheidze entered the Imperial Russian military service and fought on the side of White armies during the civil war in the North Caucasus. In 1921, as part of the defeated White Cossack forces, Chkheidze was evacuated to Lemnos whence he moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1923. Chkheidze graduated from the Russian Faculty of Law in Prague and then lectured there. He joined the Eurasianists in the 1920s and emerged as one of their leaders in the 1930s.
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Heinrich von Zügel
1850 - 1941 (91 years)
Heinrich Johann von Zügel was a German painter who specialized in pictures of farm and domestic animals, often posed with a human in a dramatic or humorous situation. Life Beginning in 1867, Zügel was a student at the art school in Stuttgart under Bernhard von Neher and Heinrich von Rustige, where he studied animal and genre painting. Two years later, he transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, but was not inspired by the teaching methods of Karl von Piloty and decided to work independently. Afterwards, he spent some time in Vienna and finally settled in Munich. Anton Braith became an important mentor for him there.
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Thomas Gordon
1714 - 1797 (83 years)
Prof Thomas Gordon FRSE was a Scottish philosopher, mathematician and antiquarian. He was Professor of Humanity at King's College, Aberdeen. He was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783.
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Gerson ben Solomon Catalan
1288 - 1344 (56 years)
Gerson ben Solomon Catalan, also known as Gerson ben Solomon of Arles, was a French Jewish author of the thirteenth century. He compiled an encyclopedia entitled Sha'ar ha-Shamayim in Hebrew, which was widely read later in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. He lived in southern France , possibly at Arles. He died, possibly at Perpignan, toward the end of the thirteenth century.
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Michael Gottlieb Agnethler
1719 - 1752 (33 years)
Michael Gottlieb Agnethler was a German botanist and numismatist. Early life Michael Agnethler was born to an aristocratic Transylvanian Saxon family of Hermannstadt . The Agnethlers had been of a long, prestigious history, with many local socialites in the region. The name of the family originated from the Saxon town of Agnetheln.
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Ludwig Mach
1868 - 1951 (83 years)
Ludwig Mach was an Austrian physician and chemist. Building on the work of Ludwig Zehnder in 1891, Mach added refinements to an instrument which became known as the Mach–Zehnder interferometer. He went on to employ photography for collecting visual data streamlines in the field of Aerodynamics.
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Igino Petrone
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Igino Petrone was an Italian jurist and philosopher. He was born in the town of Limosano in the province of Campobasso. In 1891 he obtained a baccalaureate in law at the University of Naples. He obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study the philosophy of rights in Munich. He obtained in 1894, a teaching position at the University of Rome. In 1897 he was appointed professor of legal philosophy at the University of Modena. In 1900 he obtained a professorship of moral philosophy at the University of Naples. All the while, he was very active in writing about his field of interest. He was ...
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D. I. Suchianu
1895 - 1985 (90 years)
Dumitru Ion Suchianu, most often shortened to D. I. Suchianu or D.I.S. , was a Romanian essayist, translator, economist and film theorist, also noted for his participation in politics. The son of a distinguished Armenian teacher-editor and his Romanian socialist wife, he was acquainted with, and inspired by, writer Ion Luca Caragiale, who visited his childhood home. Attending Iași's Boarding High School in the 1910s, he formed a lasting bond with Mihai Ralea. The two young men went on to study together at the University of Paris, where they earned their credentials as social scientists and political thinkers; Ralea also married Suchianu's sister Ioana.
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Thomas Pennant
1726 - 1798 (72 years)
Thomas Pennant was a Welsh naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales. As a naturalist he had a great curiosity, observing the geography, geology, plants, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish around him and recording what he saw and heard about. He wrote acclaimed books including British Zoology, the History of Quadrupeds, Arctic Zoology and Indian Zoology although he never travelled further afield than continental Europe. He knew and maintained correspondence with many of the scientific figures of his day.
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Hoimar von Ditfurth
1921 - 1989 (68 years)
Hoimar von Ditfurth was a German physician and scientific journalist. He was the father of Christian von Ditfurth, a historian, and Jutta Ditfurth, a writer and journalist. Ditfurth won many awards during his long career, including the Adolf Grimme Awards in 1968, the Bambi Prize in 1972, and the Kalinga Prize in 1978.
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William Blake Richmond
1842 - 1921 (79 years)
Sir William Blake Richmond was a British painter, sculptor and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. He is best known for his portrait work and decorative mosaics in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
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Jo Gwang-jo
1482 - 1520 (38 years)
Jo , also often called by his art name Jeong-am , was a Korean Neo-Confucian scholar who pursued radical reforms during the reign of Jungjong of Joseon in the early 16th century. He was framed with charges of factionalism by the power elite that opposed his reform measures and was sentenced to drink poison in the Third Literati Purge of 1519. He has been widely venerated as a Confucian martyr and an embodiment of "seonbi spirit" by later generations in Korea. Some historians consider him one of the most influential figures in 16th century Korea. He is known as one of the 18 Sages of Korea and...
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Profiat Duran
1350 - 1415 (65 years)
Profiat Duran , full Hebrew name Isaac ben Moses ha-Levi; was a Jewish apologist/polemicist, philosopher, physician, grammarian, and controversialist in the 14th century. He was later sometimes referred to by the sobriquet Efodi through association with his two grammars entitled "Ephod." After being forcibly converted in 1391, he also appears in official records under his converso Christian name Honoratus de Bonafide. After escaping Spain, he returned to practicing Judaism openly, and wrote a number of works including polemics against Christianity and grammar.
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Karl Theodor Bayrhoffer
1812 - 1888 (76 years)
Karl Theodor Otto Christian August Bayrhoffer was a German American philosopher, free-thinker, and publicist. In 1834 he received his PhD from the University of Marburg, where he later became a professor of philosophy. In 1847 he founded the free-religious movement in Marburg. He became a member of the Diet of Hesse-Kassel in 1848 and in 1850 was President of the Chamber. After impeachment and the defeat of his party, he was imprisoned for a time before emigrating to the United States. and settling in Wisconsin as a farmer. When his sons became old enough to manage the farm, he returned to h...
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