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,
#17901
Harold E. B. Pardee
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Harold Ensign Bennet Pardee was an American cardiologist and pioneer in electrocardiogram research. Biography Pardee was born on December 11, 1886, to Ensign Bennet Pardee, a physician. He was a grandnephew of Charles Inslee Pardee, former dean of the New York Medical College, and a direct descendant of William Brewster and William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony.
Go to Profile#17902
F. S. C. Northrop
1893 - 1992 (99 years)
Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop was an American legal philosopher and influential comparative philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 1915, and an MA from Yale University in 1919, he went on to Harvard University where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D. in 1924. At Harvard, Northrop studied under Alfred North Whitehead. He was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1923 as an instructor in Philosophy, and later was named professor in 1932. In 1947 he was appointed Sterling Professor of Philosophy and Law. He chaired the Philosophy department from 1938 to 1940 and was the fir...
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Gerhard Gentzen
1909 - 1945 (36 years)
Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen was a German mathematician and logician. He made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics, proof theory, especially on natural deduction and sequent calculus. He died of starvation in a Czech prison camp in Prague in 1945, having been interned as a German national after the Second World War.
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Archibald McIndoe
1900 - 1960 (60 years)
Sir Archibald Hector McIndoe was a New Zealand plastic surgeon who worked for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew. Early life Archibald McIndoe was born 4 May 1900 in Forbury, in Dunedin, New Zealand, into a family of four. His father was John McIndoe, a printer and his mother was the artist Mabel McIndoe née Hill. He had three brothers and one sister. McIndoe studied at Otago Boys' High School and later medicine at the University of Otago. After his graduation he became a house surgeon at Waikato Hospital.
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Stanhope Bayne-Jones
1888 - 1970 (82 years)
Stanhope Bayne-Jones was an American physician, bacteriologist, medical historian and a United States Army medical officer with the rank of brigadier general. Early life and education Bayne-Jones was born on November 6, 1888, in New Orleans as the son of physician. His grandfather Joseph Jones was also a physician and served in the medical department of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. In this way, Bayne-Jones was influenced in his future career choice.
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Otto Erich Deutsch
1883 - 1967 (84 years)
Otto Erich Deutsch was an Austrian musicologist. He is known for compiling the first comprehensive catalogue of Franz Schubert's compositions, first published in 1951 in English, with a revised edition published in 1978 in German. It is from this catalogue that the D numbers used to identify Schubert's works derive.
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J. C. C. McKinsey
1908 - 1953 (45 years)
John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey , usually cited as J. C. C. McKinsey, was an American mathematician known for his work on game theory and mathematical logic, particularly, modal logic. Biography McKinsey received B.S. and M.S. degrees from New York University and a Ph.D. degree in 1936 from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Blumenthal Research Fellow at New York University from 1936 to 1937 and a Guggenheim Fellow from 1942 to 1943. He also taught at Montana State College, and in Nevada, then Oklahoma, and in 1947 he went "to a research group at Douglas Aircraft Corporation" th...
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Henry Nelson Wieman
1884 - 1975 (91 years)
Henry Nelson Wieman was an American philosopher and theologian. He became the most famous proponent of theocentric naturalism and the empirical method in American theology and catalyzed the emergence of religious naturalism in the latter part of the 20th century. His grandson Carl Wieman is a Nobel laureate, and his son-in-law Huston Smith was a prominent scholar in religious studies.
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Dugald Baird
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Sir Dugald Baird FRCOG was a British medical doctor and a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology. Baird was most notable and influential in calling for the liberalising of abortion. In his delivery of the Sandoz lecture in November 1961, titled the Fifth Freedom, he advocated for freedom from the tyranny of fertility.
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Cornelis de Langen
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Cornelis Douwe de Langen was a Dutch physician. He spent a substantial part of his career in Java, Indonesia where he did extensive work on tropical medicine and observed an association between dietary cholesterol intake and incidence of gallstones, arteriosclerosis and other "Western diseases".
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Charles W. Morris
1903 - 1979 (76 years)
Charles William Morris was an American philosopher and semiotician. Early life and education A son of Charles William and Laura Morris, Charles William Morris was born on May 23, 1901, in Denver, Colorado.
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Walter Kaufmann
1921 - 1980 (59 years)
Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served more than 30 years as a professor at Princeton University.
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Maurice Mandelbaum
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Maurice Mandelbaum was an American philosopher and phenomenologist . He was professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University with stints at Dartmouth College and Swarthmore College. He held two degrees from Dartmouth and a PhD from Yale University. He was known for his work in phenomenology, epistemology, philosophy of perception , and the history of ideas.
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John Elof Boodin
1869 - 1950 (81 years)
John Elof Boodin was a Swedish-born American philosopher and educator. He was the author of numerous books proposing a systematic interpretation of nature. Boodin's work preserved the tradition of philosophical idealism within the framework of contemporary science. Boodin also focused on the social nature of human behavior believing an understanding required an appreciation of individual participation in social life and interpersonal relationship.
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Felix Fleischner
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Felix G. Fleischner was an Austrian-American radiologist from Boston. The Fleischner Society for thoracic imaging and diagnosis is named after him. Biography Felix Fleischner was born in Vienna. He became an expert in the field of radiology, and most of his work centered on the chest x-ray. He served as professor and head of radiology of the Second Medical Clinic of the University of Vienna.
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Boyd Henry Bode
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Boyd Henry Bode was an American academic and philosopher, notable for his work on philosophy of education. Bode was born in Ridott, Illinois. He grew up in rural areas of Iowa and South Dakota and attended Pennsylvania College in Iowa and later the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1897, and Cornell University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1900.
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David Weyhe Smith
1926 - 1981 (55 years)
David Weyhe Smith was an American pediatrician and dysmorphologist, best known for his pioneering book Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation and for describing fetal alcohol syndrome. Early life and education David Weyhe Smith was born in Oakland, California. He gained his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and undertook postdoctoral studies during 1950-51 and 1953-56 in the Department of Pediatrics. He worked with Lawson Wilkins in the field of pediatric endocrinology.
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Raphael Demos
1892 - 1968 (76 years)
Raphael Demos was a Greek-American philosopher. He was Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, emeritus, at Harvard University and an authority on the work of the Greek philosopher Plato. At Harvard, he taught Martin Luther King Jr.
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José Gaos
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
José Gaos was a Spanish philosopher who obtained political asylum in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War and became one of the most important Mexican philosophers of the 20th century. He was a member of the Madrid School.
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Philipp Frank
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Philipp Frank was a physicist, mathematician and philosopher of the early-to-mid 20th century. He was a logical positivist, and a member of the Vienna Circle. He was influenced by Mach and was one of the Machists criticised by Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-criticism.
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Louis Round Wilson
1876 - 1979 (103 years)
Louis Round Wilson was an important figure to the field of library science, and is listed in "100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century," an article in the December 1999 issue of American Libraries. The article lists what he did for the field of library science including dean at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School, directing the library at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and as one of the “internationally oriented library leaders in the U.S. who contributed much of the early history of the International Federation of Library Associations and Inst...
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Una Ellis-Fermor
1894 - 1958 (64 years)
Una Mary Ellis-Fermor , who also used the pseudonym Christopher Turnley, was an English literary critic, author and Hildred Carlile Professor of English at Bedford College, London . In recognition of her services to London University, there is now an award in her name to provide assistance for research students in the publication of scholarly work, in the fields of English, Irish or Scandinavian drama to which Fermor-Ellis herself had been a notable contributor.
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Alexander Burns Wallace
1906 - 1974 (68 years)
Alexander Burns Wallace was a Scottish plastic surgeon. He was a founding member and president of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and the first editor of the British Journal of Plastic Surgery. In authorship he appears as A. B. Wallace.
Go to Profile#17924
John Leofric Stocks
1882 - 1937 (55 years)
John Leofric Stocks DSO was a British philosopher and was briefly Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 1937. Biography Stocks was born the sixth of twelve children to John Edward Stocks, the vicar of Market Harborough, Leicestershire.
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W. W. Bartley III
1934 - 1990 (56 years)
William Warren Bartley III , known as W. W. Bartley III, was an American philosopher specializing in 20th century philosophy, language and logic, and the Vienna Circle. Early life and education Born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1934, Bartley was brought up in a Protestant home. He completed his secondary education in Pittsburgh and studied at Harvard University between 1952 and 1956, graduating with a BA degree in philosophy. While an undergraduate at Harvard, he was an editor at The Harvard Crimson newspaper. He spent the winter semester of 1956 and the summer semester of 1957 at the Harvard Divinity School and the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Lawrence H. Gipson
1880 - 1971 (91 years)
Lawrence Henry Gipson was an American historian, who won the 1950 Bancroft Prize and the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for History for volumes of his magnum opus, the fifteen-volume history of "The British Empire Before the American Revolution", published 1936–70. He was a leader of the "Imperial school" of historians who studied the British Empire from the perspective of London, and generally praised the administrative efficiency and political fairness of the Empire.
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Leo H. Bartemeier
1895 - 1982 (87 years)
Leo Henry Bartemeier was an American physician, psychoanalyst, and educator. He was President of the American Psychiatric Association. Biography Bartemeier was born on September 12, 1895, in Muscatine, Iowa, into a Roman Catholic family. He attended the local parochial school and then enrolled in St. Mary's College , a Jesuit center, and completed two years of college. He learned shorthand and typing when working for the Associated Press. He transferred and completed college at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, earning a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees, following acceptance of his thesis on animal research.
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Grete L. Bibring
1899 - 1977 (78 years)
Grete Lehner Bibring was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst who became the first female full professor at Harvard Medical School in 1961. Life Life in Vienna Grete Bibring was born as Margarethe Lehner on January 11, 1899, in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest child of factory owner Moriz Lehner and his wife Victoria Josefine Lehner, née Stengel. Her siblings were two older brothers, Ernst and Fritz, and a sister, Rosi. Her upbringing was amongst a wealthy Jewish family that often hosted dinner parties and imparted to her an appreciation for music, science, and art. She attended Akademisches Gymnasium until 1918, when she graduated.
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John Marwick
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
John Marwick was a New Zealand palaeontologist and geologist. Early life and family Marwick was born near Oamaru, New Zealand, on 3 February 1891, the son of Hugh Marwick, and his wife, Jane née Cuthbert. While at Waitaki Boys' High School he helped to collect fossil shells and learned the beginnings of how to classify molluscs. He studied and taught at the University of Otago, and in 1912 gained an MA with first-class honours in with a thesis on geology. In 1915, he married Marion Ivy Mary Keys at Mosgiel. They had two sons and two daughters, all becoming science graduates.
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Louis Sigurd Fridericia
1881 - 1947 (66 years)
Louis Sigurd Fridericia was a Danish hygienist born in Copenhagen. Fridericia's family moved to Denmark in the 1750s and took as a name a form of the name of the Jutland town, Fredericia, where they settled. He attended the University of Copenhagen and graduated in medicine in 1906.
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Ernst Moro
1874 - 1951 (77 years)
Ernst Moro was an Austrian physician and pediatrician who was the first in western medicine to describe the infant reflex that was named after him . Career Moro studied medicine in Graz, Austria, getting his M.D. in 1899. From 1901 to 1902 he worked with Theodor Escherich in Vienna, the discoverer of the Escherichia coli bacterium. He earned his habilitation in pediatrics in Munich in 1906, and became a professor of pediatrics in the University of Heidelberg in 1911.
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Louis Shores
1904 - 1981 (77 years)
Louis Shores was a librarian who worked for the promotion of the library as the center of all learning, in both public and academic institutions. Shores was recognized for his integration of audiovisual materials into library collections. He was named one of the “100 of the most important leaders we had in the 20th century” by American Libraries, and the impact of his vision can be seen today in libraries across the country.
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Maurice Lenz
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Maurice Lenz was a pioneer in the field of radiation therapy. Born in Kovno, Russian Empire , Lenz studied at New York University and Bellevue Medical College, and received his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1913. He was a professor of radiation oncology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, a past president of the American Radium Society and held many other clinical and administrative roles throughout a long career in medicine.
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Elmer Belt
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Elmer Belt was an internationally recognized urologist, a pioneer in sex-change surgery, an important mover in the founding of the UCLA School of Medicine, and a book collector known for assembling a library of research materials about Leonardo da Vinci—the Elmer Belt Library of Vinciana—which he donated to the University of California, Los Angeles between 1961-66.
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Edward Ford
1902 - 1986 (84 years)
Colonel Sir Edward Ford, was an Australian soldier, academic and physician. He played an important role in the anti-malaria campaign in the South West Pacific Area during the Second World War, and in preventative medicine in Australia after the war, but is best known for his Bibliography of Australian Medicine.
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Humphry Rolleston
1862 - 1944 (82 years)
Sir Humphry Davy Rolleston, 1st Baronet, was a prominent English physician. Rolleston was the son of George Rolleston and Grace Davy, daughter of John Davy and niece of Sir Humphry Davy, Bt . He was educated at Marlborough College, proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge and graduated in Natural Sciences in 1886. After clinical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London he qualified MB in 1888 and MD in 1892.
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Max Ratschow
1904 - 1963 (59 years)
Max Ratschow was a German physician who helped establish the specialist discipline of angiology. Education Ratschow studied medicine at Rostock, Freiburg, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, and Breslau between 1924 and 1929. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1930 at the University of Breslau, before being awarded his post-doctoral lecturing qualification in 1936 at the Kiel University Institute of Physiology.
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Grace de Laguna
1878 - 1978 (100 years)
Grace Mead de Laguna was an American philosopher who taught at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Life Grace Mead Andrus was born on 28 September 1878 in East Berlin, Connecticut. She was the youngest child, and only daughter, of Wallace R. Andrus and Annis Andrus . Both parents were of Connecticut ancestry dating back to the 17th century. Her mother, Annis, had been a school teacher. Her father had served with the 17th Connecticut Volunteers during the Civil War, He would later work as a land agent for the Northern Pacific Railway whilst it was being built. This led to the family moving, wh...
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Heinrich Besseler
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Heinrich Besseler was a German musicologist born in Hörde. He is particularly known for his colossal work, Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance , which provided a new perspective on historical musicology by taking a history-of-ideas approach to music history.
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Hugo Leichtentritt
1874 - 1951 (77 years)
Hugo Leichtentritt was a German-Jewish musicologist and composer who spent much of his life in the USA. His pupils include composers Leroy Robertson and Erich Walter Sternberg. Early life Leichtentritt was born to a family of Jewish merchants in Pleschen, German Empire. His German father, Gerson Leichtentritt, was a successful distillery owner. His mother, Frances Caroline Wax, was from Boston, Massachusetts. His great-uncle, Hirsch Leichtentritt, had a high social rank among local nobility, and was responsible for the small Leichtentritt family fortune.
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Felix Lewandowsky
1879 - 1921 (42 years)
Felix Lewandowsky was a German dermatologist. Biography In 1902, he earned his doctorate at the University of Strassburg. From 1903 to 1907, he worked at the dermatological clinic in Bern, where he served as an assistant to Josef Jadassohn . Afterwards, he returned to his hometown of Hamburg, where he worked in dermatologist Eduard Arning’s department at St. Georg's Hospital. In 1917, he was appointed director of the dermatological clinic at Basel. While at Basel, he was the author of works on leprosy.
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Marshall Stearns
1908 - 1966 (58 years)
Marshall Winslow Stearns was an American jazz critic and musicologist. He was the founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies. Biography Stearns was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Edith Baker Winslow and Harry Ney Stearns . His father was a Harvard University graduate and an attorney.
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Gerald Mast
1940 - 1988 (48 years)
Gerald Mast was an author, film historian, and member of the University of Chicago faculty. He was a contributor to the modern discipline of film studies and film history. Life and career Mast was born in Los Angeles in 1940; his family included his mother, Bessie, and Linda, his sister. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in English. He taught at New York University, Oberlin College, and the Richmond College of the City University of New York, before joining the faculty of his alma mater in 1978. He chaired the Department of...
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Marc Amsler
1891 - 1968 (77 years)
Marc Amsler was a professor of ophthalmology in the Eye Clinic at the University of Zurich. He took the position as professor of ophthalmology in Zurich in 1944. His predecessor was Prof. Alfred Vogt. Prior to assuming the position at Zurich, Dr. Amsler was chief ophthalmologist in Lausanne, since 1935. His predecessor there, under whom he worked beforehand, was Jules Gonin. During his time in Lausanne, Amsler was instrumental in creating the Jules Gonin Medal which is awarded every four years and is considered the highest honor in ophthalmology. Amsler was professor and chief of the Zurich Eye Clinic until 1961.
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Robert H. Brower
1923 - 1988 (65 years)
Robert H. Brower was a professor of Far East Language and Literature, Japanese Language and Literature, chair of Far East Language and Literature at the University of Michigan from 1966 to 1988. Life as a student Professor Brower was born on March 23, 1923, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1944. He learned Japanese while serving with the armed forces in World War II, and received his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan in 1947 and 1952, respectively.
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Herman Dooyeweerd
1894 - 1977 (83 years)
Herman Dooyeweerd was a professor of law and jurisprudence at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam from 1926 to 1965. He was also a philosopher and principal founder of Reformational philosophy with Dirk Vollenhoven, a significant development within the Neocalvinist school of thought. Dooyeweerd made several contributions to philosophy and other academic disciplines concerning the nature of diversity and coherence in everyday experience, the transcendental conditions for theoretical thought, the relationship between religion, philosophy, and scientific theory, and an understanding of meaning, b...
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Markus Reiner
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Markus Reiner was an Israeli scientist and a major figure in rheology. Biography Reiner was born in 1886 in Czernowitz, Bukovina, then part of Austria-Hungary, and obtained a degree in Civil Engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna . After the First World War, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, where he worked as a civil engineer under the British mandate. Reiner married Margalit Obernik and had two children, Ephraim and Hana. He later remarried Dr. Rivka Schoenfeld and had two daughters, Dorit and Shlomit. His granddaughter is Prof. Tal Ilan. After the founding of the state of Israel, he became a professor at the Technion in Haifa.
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Eugène Dupréel
1879 - 1967 (88 years)
Eugène Dupréel was a Belgian philosopher. He has been professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles from 1907 to 1950, teaching logic, metaphysics, greek philosophy, moral philosophy and sociological theory. He developed an ethical theory and a theory of knowledge deeply influenced by sociology, and worked closely with the Institut de Sociologie Solvay. Leader of the "École de Bruxelles", he had a major influence on the argumentation theorist Chaïm Perelman and thus has been instrumental in the renewal of rhetoric.
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Wiktor Dega
1896 - 1995 (99 years)
Wiktor Dega was a Polish surgeon and orthopedist who was well known for his work on polio. Dega served as an expert for the World Health Organization and was one of the founders of the Polish Orthopedic Society. He created new apparatus and devices to help accident victims and survivors of polio, as well as new therapies and operations for congenital dislocations of the hip.
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Wilhelm Pfannenstiel
1890 - 1982 (92 years)
Wilhelm Hermann Pfannenstiel was a German physician, member of the Nazi Party from 1933, , and SS officer from 1934, . In August 1942 he witnessed, together with Kurt Gerstein, the gassing of Jews in Bełżec extermination camp. He may also share responsibility with other SS officials in criminal medical experimentations on unwilling and uninformed human beings, mainly Jews prisoners in Dachau concentration camp.
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