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,
#17851
Ferdinand Gumprecht
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Ferdinand Adolph Gumprecht was a German internist born in Berlin. He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, Göttingen and Jena, earning his doctorate at the latter institution in 1889. In 1890 he became an assistant at the Krankenhaus Friedrichshain in Berlin, followed by work at the pathological institute and at the medical clinic at the University of Jena, where he served as an assistant to Paul Fürbringer and Roderich Stintzing .
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Tommaso del Garbo
1305 - 1370 (65 years)
Tommaso del Garbo or Thomas de Garbo was a professor of medicine in Perugia and Bologna. He was the son of the physician Dino del Garbo and a friend of the poet Petrarch. It is said that the physician Pietro da Tossignano studied under Garbo at the University of Bologna.
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Pierre Bardin
1590 - 1635 (45 years)
Pierre Bardin , born in Rouen, was a French philosopher and mathematician and Doctor of Letters. He was one of the first members of the Académie française and the first occupant of Seat 29.
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Amico Bignami
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
Amico Bignami was an Italian physician, pathologist, malariologist and sceptic. He was professor of pathology at Sapienza University of Rome. His most important scientific contribution was in the discovery of transmission of human malarial parasite in the mosquito.
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Peter F. Rothermel
1812 - 1895 (83 years)
Peter Frederick Rothermel was an American painter. Biography Rothermel was born in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania on July 8, 1812, although various sources give his birth year as 1813, 1814, and 1817. The artist's gravestone in Philadelphia gives the date as 1812. He had a common-school education, and studied land surveying. At age 20, he moved to Philadelphia and became a sign painter. Then at age 22, he took up the study of art. He was instructed in drawing by John Rubens Smith, and subsequently became a pupil of Bass Otis in Philadelphia.
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William S. Dix
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
William Shepherd Dix was a scholar and librarian who had a 22-year career as Librarian at Princeton University in New Jersey, without a degree in library science. His contributions to the field of librarianship, however, are varied and notable, making him worthy of recognition in the American Libraries' 100 most important figures.
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Josef Matyáš Trenkwald
1824 - 1897 (73 years)
Josef Matyáš Trenkwald was a Czech-Austrian painter. He was best known for his religious and historical paintings. Biography Josef Matyáš Trenkwald was born on 13 March 1824 in Prague. His father was a tax commissioner. He studied art with Christian Ruben at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague from 1841 to 1851, where he began painting scenes from Czech history, especially the era of the Hussite wars. In 1852, he moved to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and illustrated the Book of Songs by Heinrich Heine.
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Douglas Argyll Robertson
1837 - 1909 (72 years)
Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson FRSE, FRCSEd LLD was a Scottish ophthalmologist and surgeon. He introduced physostigmine into ophthalmic practice and the Argyll Robertson pupil is named after him. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
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Bertha Van Hoosen
1863 - 1952 (89 years)
Bertha Van Hoosen was an American surgeon devoted to women's health issues and the advancement of fellow women surgeons. Among other notable achievements, Van Hoosen was the first president and a founder of the American Medical Women's Association in 1915 and the first woman to be head of a medical division at a coeducational university. She published an autobiography detailing her personal experiences in medicine, Petticoat Surgeon.
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Tang Zhen
1630 - 1704 (74 years)
Tang Zhen , born Tang Dadao , courtesy name Zhuwan , was a Chinese philosopher and educator born in Dazhou during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. His given name was Dahao, but later he changed his given name to Zhen and his courtesy name to Puyuan .
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Fred Kelsey
1884 - 1961 (77 years)
Frederick Alvin Kelsey was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. Kelsey directed one- and two-reel films for Universal Film Manufacturing Company. He appeared in more than 400 films between 1911 and 1958, often playing policemen or detectives. He also directed 37 films between 1914 and 1920. Kelsey was caricatured as the detective in the 1943 MGM cartoon Who Killed Who? directed by Tex Avery. He was born in Sandusky, Ohio and died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Hollywood, California, aged 77.
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Edward S. Farrow
1855 - 1926 (71 years)
Edward Samuel Farrow, born in Worcester County, Maryland, was an author and a commander in the American Indian Wars of the late 19th century. He is particularly known for his service in the Sheepeater Indian War. Farrow was a graduate of the West Point Military Academy in 1876, and was a commanding officer of Indian Scouts in the Departments of the Columbia. He went on to become Assistant Instructor of Tactics at the US Military Academy , and published prolifically on the subject of Native American Indians, Military Training, and Mountain Scouting.
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Albert Pitres
1848 - 1928 (80 years)
Jean Marie Marcel Albert Pitres was a French neurological physician. He was born in Bordeaux and received his training in Paris, where he was the student of Jean Martin Charcot and Louis-Antoine Ranvier . He served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bordeaux – appointed 1885.
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Douglas Volk
1856 - 1935 (79 years)
Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk was an American portrait and figure painter, muralist, and educator. He taught at the Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York, and was one of the founders of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. He and his wife Marion established a summer artist colony in western Maine.
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Peter de Rivo
1420 - 1500 (80 years)
Peter de Rivo was a Flemish scholastic philosopher, teaching at the Old University of Leuven. His views on future contingents were controversial, being opposed by Henry of Zomeren, also at Leuven . De Rivo went to Rome in 1472 to defend his views to Pope Sixtus IV; they were condemned in 1473. Under pressure from the influence of Cardinal Bessarion to whom Henry had as secretary, de Rivo retracted partially his opinions in 1473, and more fully three years later. This meant that views going back at least to Peter Auriol, that future contingents lacked a truth value, had become heretical in th...
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Henry Beeching
1859 - 1919 (60 years)
Henry Charles Beeching was a British clergyman, author and poet, who was Dean of Norwich from 1911 to 1919. Biography H.C Beeching was born on 15 May 1859 in Sussex, the son of J. P. G. Beeching of Bexhill. He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish at Mossley Hill. He was Rector of Yattendon from 1885 to 1900; Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900; professor of Pastoral Theology at King's College London from 1900 to 1903; Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn from 1900 to 1903; Canon of Westminster Abbey from October 1902 until 1911 and Dean of Norwich from 1911 until his death.
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George Smith
1713 - 1776 (63 years)
George Smith was an English landscape painter and poet, known as "George Smith of Chichester". He and his two brothers, all artists, are known as the "Smiths of Chichester". Life and work George was born at Chichester in Sussex, where his father, William Smith, was a tradesman and Baptist minister. He was the second and most gifted of three brothers, who all practised painting and were known as 'the Smiths of Chichester.' When a boy he was placed with his uncle, a cooper, but, preferring art, became a pupil of his brother William, whom he accompanied to Gloucester; there and in other places ...
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William Manderstown
1485 - 1552 (67 years)
William Manderstown was a Scottish philosopher and Rector of the University of Paris. Life He was born in the diocese of St. Andrews, probably at the town of Manderston, Stirlingshire. Educated apparently at St. Andrews, he then attended the University of Paris, where he graduated licentiate in medicine, and became one of the school of Terminists . On 15 December 1525, he succeeded Jean Tixier de Ravisi as rector of the University of Paris. Before 1539 he returned to Scotland, where he and John Mair co-founded a bursary or chaplaincy in St. Salvator's, and endowed it with the rents of houses in South Street, St.
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Wilhelm Weismann
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Wilhelm Weismann was a German composer and musicologist. Life On 20 September, Weismann was born in Alfdorf/Württemberg on the plateau of Welzheim forest. His parents ran a general store. His mother, sister of the renowned musicologist Alfred Heuß, encouraged his artistic inclinations and he received his first piano and music lessons. At an early age the son of a merchant showed his musical interest by composing small choral pieces.
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Grace Arabell Goldsmith
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Grace Arabell Goldsmith was a U.S. physician best known for her research on nutritional deficiency diseases, B-complex vitamins, and the vitamin enrichment of foods. She identified the cause of the disease pellagra.
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Heinrich Philipp August Damerow
1798 - 1866 (68 years)
Heinrich Philipp August Damerow was a German psychiatrist born in Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Prussia . He made significant contributions in the field of institutional psychiatry. In 1822 he earned his doctorate in Berlin, where he was a student of Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher and psychiatrist Anton Ludwig Ernst Horn. He continued his education in Paris, where he studied under Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, and at the Siegburg asylum north of Bonn, where he met with Carl Wigand Maximilian Jacobi. In 1830 he became an associate professor, and in 1836 was appointed director of Provinzial-Irrenanstalt near Halle.
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Fabrizio Mordente
1532 - 1608 (76 years)
Fabrizio Mordente was an Italian mathematician. He is best known for his invention of the "proportional eight-pointed compass" which has two arms with cursors that allow the solution of problems in measuring the circumference, area and angles of a circle. In 1567 he published a single sheet treatise in Venice showing illustrations of his device.
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Eliza Maria Mosher
1846 - 1928 (82 years)
Eliza Maria Mosher was a United States physician, inventor, medical writer, and educator whose wide-ranging medical career included an educational focus on physical fitness and health maintenance. She was the first Dean of Women at the University of Michigan, and the first woman professor to be recognized by the university.
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Arthur Thost
1854 - 1937 (83 years)
Hermann Arthur Thost was a German physician and otolaryngologist. He studied medicine at several universities in Europe, receiving his doctorate at Heidelberg University in 1879. After graduation, he remained in Heidelberg as an assistant to pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich. Later on, he was associated with the General Hospital in Eppendorf, then in 1919 was appointed an associate professor of otolaryngology at the newly established University of Hamburg. He was interested in local politics, being known for his advocacy of public medical insurance.
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Walter Kaufmann
1907 - 1984 (77 years)
Walter Kaufmann was a composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, librettist and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia , he trained in Prague and Berlin before fleeing the Nazi persecution of Jews to work in Bombay until Indian Independence. He then moved to London and Canada before settling in the USA as a professor of musicology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana in 1957. In 1964, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
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Joice NanKivell Loch
1887 - 1982 (95 years)
Joice NanKivell Loch MBE was an Australian author, journalist and humanitarian worker who worked with refugees in Poland, Greece and Romania after World War I and World War II. Biography Joice Mary NanKivell was born at Farnham sugar cane plantation in Ingham in far north Queensland in 1887. Her father acted as manager of the plantation for Fanning, NanKivell, a company run by the Fanning brothers and her wealthy grandfather, Thomas NanKivell. The family fortune was lost however when Kanaka labour was abolished and Joice and her parents walked off the property virtually penniless. Her father,...
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William Pole
1561 - 1635 (74 years)
Sir William Pole of Colcombe House in the parish of Colyton, and formerly of Shute House in the parish of Shute , both in Devon, was an English country gentleman and landowner, a colonial investor, Member of Parliament and, most notably, a historian and antiquarian of the County of Devon.
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Ethel Collins Dunham
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Ethel Collins Dunham , and her life partner, Martha May Eliot, devoted their lives to the care of children. Dunham focused on premature babies and newborns, becoming chief of child development at the Children's Bureau in 1935. She established national standards for the hospital care of newborn children and expanded the scope of health care for growing youngsters by monitoring their progress in regular home visits by Children's Bureau staff.
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Pat Sullivan
1887 - 1933 (46 years)
Patrick Peter Sullivan was an Australian-American cartoonist, pioneer animator, and film producer best known for producing the first Felix the Cat silent cartoons. Early life Sullivan was born in Paddington, New South Wales, the second son of Patrick Sullivan, an immigrant from Ireland and his Sydney-born wife Margaret, née Hayes. Around 1909, Sullivan left Australia and spent a few months in London, England, before moving to the United States around 1910. He worked as assistant to newspaper cartoonist William Marriner and drew four strips of his own. When Marriner died in 1914, Sullivan joined the new animated cartoon studio set up by Raoul Barré.
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James Graham
1856 - 1913 (57 years)
Sir James Graham was a Scottish-born physician and politician, active in Australia. He was Mayor of Sydney in 1901. Graham was born in Edinburgh, son of Thomas Graham, marble polisher, and his wife Jane . Graham graduated M.A. at University of Edinburgh in 1879 and M.B. and C.M. in 1882. Graham migrated to Sydney in 1884 but then returned to Europe in August 1888 and studied at Berlin, Vienna and Paris. In 1888, he obtained the M.D. degree of Edinburgh Medical School with gold medal for his thesis on "Hydatid Disease in its Clinical Aspects". Returning to Sydney he was appointed superintende...
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Joseph Lieutaud
1703 - 1780 (77 years)
Joseph Lieutaud was a French physician. Biography Early life Joseph Lieutaud was born on 21 June 1703 at 31 Rue Cardinale in Aix-en-Provence. His father was Jean-Baptiste Lieutaud, a lawyer, and his mother, Louise Garibel. He started studying botany, following in the wake of his uncle, Pierre Joseph Garidel, and went on to be called upon as a doctor in the Hotel-Dieu in Aix-en-Provence. He graduated from the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1725.
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Édouard Collignon
1831 - 1913 (82 years)
Édouard Charles Romain Collignon was a French engineer and scientist, known for the Collignon projection and for his role in building railways in Russia. Career After graduating from the l'École polytechnique in 1849, he became an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées. He became inspecteur des Ponts et chaussées in 1878.
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Louis Waldenburg
1837 - 1881 (44 years)
Louis Waldenburg was a German physician. Waldenburg was born in Filehne, Posen. He graduated from the University of Berlin . After a postgraduate course at Heidelberg he established himself in Berlin as a specialist in chest and throat diseases. From 1864 to 1868 he co-edited the Allgemeine Medizinische Central-Zeitung . In 1865 he earned the title of Privatdozent at Berlin University. From 1868 until his death he edited the Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift . In 1871 he was appointed assistant professor, and in 1877 department physician, at the Charité hospital in Berlin.
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Georg Forster
1510 - 1568 (58 years)
Georg Forster was a German editor, composer and physician. Forster was born at Amberg, in the Upper Palatinate. While a chorister at Elector Ludwig V’s court in Heidelberg around 1521, he was a colleague of Caspar Othmayr who would also become a composer of renown. Forster received his first instruction in composition from the Kapellmeister Lorenz Lemlin. Forster died at Nuremberg.
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Carl Ebert
1887 - 1980 (93 years)
Carl Anton Charles Ebert , was a German actor, stage director and arts administrator. Ebert's early career was as an actor, training under Max Reinhardt and becoming one of the leading actors in his native Germany during the 1920s. During that decade he was also appointed to administrative posts, both theatrical and academic. In 1929 he directed opera for the first time, and during the 1930s established a reputation as an operatic director in Germany and beyond. A strong opponent of Nazism, he left Germany in 1933 and did not return until 1945.
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Georg Lotheissen
1868 - 1941 (73 years)
Georg Lotheissen was an Austrian surgeon born in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1892 he earned his medical doctorate in Vienna, and following graduation was an assistant to Emil Zuckerkandl , and a surgical apprentice under Theodor Billroth and Carl Gussenbauer . From 1895 to 1901, he served as first assistant to Viktor von Hacker at the surgical clinic at Innsbruck, where in 1899 he received his habilitation in surgery. In 1902 he returned to Vienna, where in 1915 he became an associate professor.
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Franz Cumont
1868 - 1947 (79 years)
Franz-Valéry-Marie Cumont was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who brought these often isolated specialties to bear on the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism.
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Arthur Groenouw
1862 - 1945 (83 years)
Arthur Groenouw was a German ophthalmologist born in Bosatz, a village near Ratibor. He studied medicine in Breslau, and was an assistant to physiologist Rudolf Heidenhain and ophthalmologist Wilhelm Uhthoff . In 1892 he was habilitated for ophthalmology in Breslau, and in 1899 attained the title of professor.
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George Packer Berry
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
George Packer Berry was an American physician and medical educator. He served as dean of Harvard Medical School for sixteen years and is credited with greatly modernizing that institution's medical education program.
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Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy was a French biophysicist and philosopher. He is probably best remembered by scientists for his work on the surface tension, and other properties, of liquids. Life and work Du Noüy was a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille. His mother wrote many novels, one of which, Amitié Amoureuse, was translated into 16 languages and ran for 600 editions in France. Born and educated in France, du Noüy obtained the degrees of LL.B., Ph.B., Sc.B., Ph.D., and Sc.D.
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Bernard Keen
1890 - 1981 (91 years)
Sir Bernard Augustus Keen FRS was a British soil scientist and Fellow of University College London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1935. Further reading ‘KEEN, Sir Bernard ’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 4 June 2011
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Stanley Davidson
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Sir Leybourne Stanley Patrick Davidson was a British physician, medical investigator and author who wrote the medical textbook Principles and Practice of Medicine, which was first published in 1952.
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John Browne
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
John Symonds Lyon Browne was an English-born Canadian physician. He was born in Wembley, London, the son of a civil engineer, and came to Canada with his family in 1905. In 1912, the family moved to Montreal. Browne was educated at Westmount High School and at McGill University. He went on to work in Germany, Austria and England under a travelling fellowship from the Royal Society of Canada. Browne returned to McGill as a research fellow, later becoming a professor of medicine, Medical Department chairman and director of the Royal Victoria Hospital. He was forced to leave those positions due ...
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Karl Loewenstein
1891 - 1973 (82 years)
Karl Loewenstein was a German lawyer and political scientist, regarded as one of the prominent figures of Constitutional law in the twentieth century. His research and investigations into the typology of the different constitutions have had some impact on the Western constitutional thought. Loewenstein is credited with establishing the theoretical foundations of militant democracy to battle anti-democratic mass movements.
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Charles A. Hufnagel
1916 - 1989 (73 years)
Charles A. Hufnagel, M.D. was an American surgeon who invented the first artificial heart valve in the early 1950s. Hufnagel was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and reared in Richmond, Indiana. His father was also a surgeon. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. At Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, he began work on the heart and other organ transplants and explored the use of plastic to replace blood vessels, developing a technique called multi-point fixation, which would have great importance in the placement of the artificial aort...
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Horace Kallen
1882 - 1974 (92 years)
Horace Meyer Kallen was a German-born American philosopher who supported pluralism and Zionism. Biography Horace Meyer Kallen was born on August 11, 1882, in the town of Bernstadt, Prussian Silesia . His parents were Jacob David Kallen, an Orthodox rabbi, and Esther Rebecca Glazier. In 1887, the family emigrated to the United States. Kallen studied philosophy at Harvard University under George Santayana; in 1903, he received a BA magna cum laude.
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Norwood Russell Hanson
1924 - 1967 (43 years)
Norwood Russell Hanson was an American philosopher of science. Hanson was a pioneer in advancing the argument that observation is theory-laden — that observation language and theory language are deeply interwoven — and that historical and contemporary comprehension are similarly deeply interwoven. His single most central intellectual concern was the comprehension and development of a logic of discovery.
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Robert Foster Kennedy
1884 - 1952 (68 years)
Dr Robert Foster Kennedy MD FRSE was an Irish-born neurologist largely working in America. He gives his name to Foster-Kennedy syndrome, the Kaplan-Kennedy test and Kennedy's Syndrome. He was one of the first medical doctors to use electroconvulsive treatment for mental conditions and one of the first to recognise and define shell shock in the First World War.
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John Macleod
1876 - 1935 (59 years)
John James Rickard Macleod, , was a Scottish biochemist and physiologist. He devoted his career to diverse topics in physiology and biochemistry, but was chiefly interested in carbohydrate metabolism. He is noted for his role in the discovery and isolation of insulin during his tenure as a lecturer at the University of Toronto, for which he and Frederick Banting received the 1923 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. Awarding the prize to Macleod was controversial at the time, because according to Banting's version of events, Macleod's role in the discovery was negligible. It was not until d...
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Stephen Butterfill
Stephen Andrew Butterfill is a British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is known for his research on philosophical issues in cognitive and developmental psychology.
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