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,
#17951
George Allman
1812 - 1898 (86 years)
George James Allman FRS FRSE was an Irish ecologist, botanist and zoologist who served as Emeritus Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University in Scotland. Life Allman was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of James C. Allman of Bandon, and received his early education at the Royal Academical Institution, Belfast. For some time he studied for the Irish Bar, but ultimately gave up law in favour of natural science. In 1843, he graduated in medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, and in the following year was appointed professor of botany in that university, succeeding the botanist William Al...
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Richard Quain
1800 - 1887 (87 years)
Richard Quain was an English anatomist and surgeon, born at Fermoy, Ireland, a brother of Jones Quain. He studied medicine in London and in Paris. He was appointed demonstrator in 1828 and professor of anatomy in 1832 at the University of London , resigning in 1850, and assistant surgeon in 1834 and surgeon in 1848 to the North London Hospital, from which he resigned in 1866. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1868.
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Francesco Puccinotti
1794 - 1872 (78 years)
Francesco Puccinotti was an Italian pathologist. Puccinotti was born in Urbino and started his career as the main doctor in Recanati but moved on to Macerata where he became the director of the civil hospital. He went on to teach the history of medicine at the universities of Pisa and Florence. He was briefly named to the Italian Senate after the Risorgimento.
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Euricius Cordus
1486 - 1535 (49 years)
Euricius Cordus born Heinrich Ritze was a German humanist poet, physician, botanist and naturalist. He is considered one of the founders of botany in Germany. Cordus was born in Simtshausen near Marburg the youngest of thirteen children born to a miller. He was educated at Frankenberg / Eder as well as at Marburg. He became a teacher in Kassel from 1509 to 1511 and then as a rent clerk in Felsberg. He later went to Erfurt where he met Conrad Mutian. He received a master's degree in 1516 and became rector at the Saint Marien college. He moved to study medicine in 1519 and became a doctor in 1521 and practiced in Braunschweig.
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Patrick Manson
1844 - 1922 (78 years)
Sir Patrick Manson was a Scottish physician who made important discoveries in parasitology, and was a founder of the field of tropical medicine. He graduated from University of Aberdeen with degrees in Master of Surgery, Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Law. His medical career spanned mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and London. He discovered that filariasis in humans is transmitted by mosquitoes. This is the foundation of modern tropical medicine, and he is recognized with an epithet "Father of Tropical Medicine". This also made him the first person to show pathogen transmission by a blood-feeding arthropod.
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Robert Harris
1849 - 1919 (70 years)
Robert Harris was a Welsh-born Canadian painter, most noted for his portrait of the Fathers of Confederation. Early life Born in Caerhun, Conwy, Wales, Robert Harris grew up on his father’s farm before moving to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in 1856. Encouraged by his mother, he developed an interest in art, and to practice drawing, he often sketched images from magazines. In 1867, he travelled to Liverpool, where he independently studied and sketched from the plaster casts in the local museum, learning human anatomy and proportion. Already skilled in portraiture, and receiving commiss...
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Robert Stewart MacDougall
1862 - 1947 (85 years)
Robert Stewart MacDougall FRSE LLD was a Scottish entomologist, agriculturalist and zoologist. In authorship he appears as R. S. MacDougall. Life MacDougall was born in Edinburgh on 5 June 1862. He was educated at George Heriot's School then studied sciences at the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA. He then began lecturing in Agricultural and Forest Zoology at the University of Edinburgh, before taking on the post of Professor of Biology at the Royal Dick Veterinary College in south Edinburgh.
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Erycius Puteanus
1574 - 1646 (72 years)
Erycius Puteanus was a humanist and philologist from the Low Countries. Name Erycius Puteanus is a latinization of his name, which was rendered in various ways, including Hendrick van den Putte , Errijck de Put or Eric van der Putte. This was also Latinized as Ericus Puteanus. He was also known as Henry du Puy.
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Burchard Mauchart
1696 - 1751 (55 years)
Burchard David Mauchart was professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and a pioneer in the field of ophthalmology. In 1748 he became one of the first to document the eye disorder now known as keratoconus. His surviving works are now to be found in the form of theses by his students.
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Gerolamo Accoramboni
1469 - 1537 (68 years)
Gerolamo Accoramboni is an Italian physician born in Gubbio in Umbria on February 1469 and died in Rome on 21 February 1537. Personal life Fourth son of Giovanni Filippo Accoramboni, he married Agnese Ubaldini with whom he had several children including:Fabio, jurist at the University of Padua.Claudio who married Tarquinia Paluzzi Albertoni in 1549: they had eleven children including Vittoria Accoramboni whose life will inspire Stendhal and John Webster .
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Kilian Stobæus
1690 - 1742 (52 years)
Kilian Stobæus was a Swedish physician, natural scientist, and historian. He offered a young Carl Linnaeus tutoring and lodging, as well as the use of his library, which included many books about botany. He also gave the student free admission to his lectures. In his spare time, Linnaeus explored the flora of Scania together with students sharing the same interests.
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Leopold Ritter von Dittel
1815 - 1898 (83 years)
Leopold Ritter von Dittel was an Austrian urologist born in Fulnek, a community now located in the Czech Republic. Dittel received his medical doctorate in 1840 from the University of Vienna, and as a young man worked as a physician in Trentschin-Teplitz. From 1853 to 1857, he was an assistant to Johann von Dumreicher and a surgical assistant at the university hospital in Vienna. Later, he became surgeon-in-chief of the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, and in 1865 attained the title of associate professor.
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Georg Joseph Beer
1763 - 1821 (58 years)
Georg Joseph Beer was an Austrian ophthalmologist. He is credited with introducing a flap operation for treatment of cataracts , as well as popularizing the instrument used to perform the surgery . Career Initially a theology student, in 1786 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna. Under the guidance of Joseph Barth , his primary focus turned to the field of ophthalmology. However, his professional relationship with Barth was never close, and he later referred to his years with Barth as his "years of torture" . The final break in their relationship was caused by Barth's...
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Virginia Lacy Jones
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.
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Morrill Wyman
1812 - 1903 (91 years)
Morrill Wyman was an American physician and social reformer. Best known today for his work on hay fever, he was one of the most respected doctors of his time, a social reformer, Harvard overseer, hospital president, and author in his long lifetime.
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#17967
Heraclides of Aenus
350 BC - 400 BC (-50 years)
Heraclides of Aenus was one of Plato's students. Around 360 BC, he and his brother Python assassinated Cotys I, the ruler of Thrace.
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Alfred Hoernlé
1880 - 1943 (63 years)
Reinhold Friedrich Alfred Hoernlé , usually referred to as Alfred Hoernlé, was a South African philosopher and social reformer. Early life Hoernlé was born in Bonn, Germany, and was the son of the Indologist A.F.R. Rudolf Hoernlé . His father was a missionary-scholar associated with the London Missionary Society and, therefore, Alfred was a British subject by birth.
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Elli Alexiou
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Elli Alexiou was a Greek author, playwright and journalist. The daughter of a printer and publisher, Alexiou was born in Heraklion, Crete. She taught French in a high school, and was politically active, joining the Communist Party in 1928 and working with the National Liberation Front resistance during World War II. After the war, she received a scholarship from the French government and studied in Paris. She was stripped of Greek citizenship in 1950, living as an exile until it was restored in 1965.
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Johann Hasler
1548 - 1593 (45 years)
Johann Hasler , also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
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Hosmer Allen Johnson
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Hosmer Allen Johnson, M.D., L.L.D. was an American physician, academic, and Mason from New York. Badly injured on the family farm, Johnson turned to teaching to support himself. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, to attend Rush Medical College. There, he became an understudy of William B. Herrick and joined his medical practice. Receiving a Doctor of Medicine in 1852, Johnson was named Lecturer on Physiology at Rush, eventually chairing a department there. In 1859, he co-founded the Chicago Medical College at Lind University, which later became the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.
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Wilhelm Uhthoff
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Wilhelm Uhthoff was a German ophthalmologist born in Klein-Warin. In 1877 earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, and later became a professor of ophthalmology at the Universities of Marburg and Breslau , where he succeeded Carl Friedrich Richard Förster .
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Carl Steffeck
1818 - 1890 (72 years)
Carl Constantin Heinrich Steffeck was a German painter and graphic artist. He was especially well known for his paintings of horses and dogs. Life He was the son of a "gentleman of independent means" who was interested in art. While he was still in the Gymnasium he sat in on classes at the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1837, he entered the master class of horse painter Franz Krüger and later worked in the studios of Carl Joseph Begas. He went to Paris in 1839, where he spent two months studying with Paul Delaroche and was influenced by the work of Horace Vernet. From 1840 to 1842, he lived in ...
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Rajmund Zamanja
1587 - 1647 (60 years)
Rajmund Zamanja or Raymundo Giamagnik was a Croatian theologian, philosopher and linguist from Dubrovnik. Biography He was born in Dubrovnik in 1587. He joined the Dominicans in 1601 from which he learned philosophy and theology. Four years later, in 1605, he went to the end of the study in Bologna. In 1612 he returned to Dubrovnik as a lecturer. Three times he was a general vicar of the Dominicans. Fourteen years later, in 1626, he established the first public gymnasium on the ground floor of the Dominican monastery . There he was a teacher and he emphasized the importance of learning Croat...
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Saviour Cumbo
1810 - 1877 (67 years)
Saviour Cumbo was a Maltese theologian and minor philosopher. His philosophical writings deal mainly with the relationship between reason and faith. Though his engagement with philosophical reflection was peripheral, his contribution in this field was at least interesting and at most insightful. No portrait of him has been identified up till now.
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Appiano Buonafede
1716 - 1793 (77 years)
Appiano Buonafede was an Italian priest and philosopher who published under the name Agatopisto Cromaziano. Appiano Buonafede was born in Comacchio, a Province of Ferrara, and died in Rome. He became a professor of theology while in Naples in 1740, and entering the religious body of the Celestines, rose to be general of the order in 1777.
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Berechiah ha-Nakdan
1200 - 1300 (100 years)
Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Nakdan was a Jewish exegete, ethical writer, grammarian, translator, poet, and philosopher. His best-known works are Mishlè Shu'alim and Sefer ha-Ḥibbur . Biography Little is known for certain about Berechiah's life and much discussion has taken place concerning his date and native country. He is thought to have lived sometime in the 12th or 13th century, and is likely to have lived in Normandy and England, with some placing him about 1260 in Provence. It is possible that he was a descendant of Jewish scholars of Babylonia. He also knew foreign languages and...
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Crates of Athens
400 BC - 260 BC (140 years)
Crates of Athens was a Platonist philosopher and the last scholarch of the Old Academy. Biography Crates was the son of Antigenes of the Thriasian deme, the pupil and eromenos of Polemo, and his successor as scholarch of the Platonic Academy, in 270–69 BC. The intimate friendship of Crates and Polemo was celebrated in antiquity, and Diogenes Laërtius has preserved an epigram of the poet Antagoras, according to which the two friends were united after death in one tomb. The epigram, according to him, reads:
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James Paget
1814 - 1899 (85 years)
Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet FRS HFRSE was an English surgeon and pathologist who is best remembered for naming Paget's disease and who is considered, together with Rudolf Virchow, as one of the founders of scientific medical pathology. His famous works included Lectures on Tumours and Lectures on Surgical Pathology . There are several medical conditions which were described by, and later named after, Paget:Paget's disease of bonePaget's disease of the nipple Extramammary Paget's disease refers to a group of similar, more rare skin lesions discovered by Radcliffe Crocker in 1889 which affec...
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Carl Braun
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Carl Braun , sometimes Carl Rudolf Braun alternative spelling: Karl Braun, or Karl von Braun-Fernwald, name after knighthood Carl Ritter von Fernwald Braun was an Austrian obstetrician. He was born 22 March 1822 in Zistersdorf, Austria, son of the medical doctor Carl August Braun.
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Nils Alwall
1904 - 1986 (82 years)
Nils Alwall was a Swedish professor at Lund University, Sweden. He was a pioneer in hemodialysis and the inventor of one of the first practical dialysis machines. Alwall pioneered the technique of ultrafiltration and introduced the principle of hemofiltration. Alwall is referred to as the "father of extracorporeal blood treatment."
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Khalil Kamarah'i
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Ayatollah Haj Mirza Khalil Kamarah'i . He was an author, researcher and philosopher of contemporary theology that sought to unite the Muslim sects supporting his cause. He studied under Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi in Arak and Qom. He continued his studies of various Islamic subjects and philosophy throughout his life. He worked with the administration in the Vatican City on various philosophical questions, which he later released in a separate book. He travelled to Cairo on behalf of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Mahmud Shaltut, the Grand Mufti and dean of Al-Azhar University Sheikh, for fatwa. H...
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Mulla Hamzah Gilani
Mulla Hamzah Gilani was an Iranian shia philosopher. He was one of the pupils of Muhammad Sadiq Ardestani. Life He was come from Gilan province but most of his life has been passed in Isfahan because of this, he also called as isfahani. It is not clear when he was born but according to Hazin lahiji, Molla Hamzeh died around 1134 lunar Hijrah. there is little information about his life in the main sources.
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James Lorrain Smith
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
James Lorrain Smith FRS FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish pathologist known for his works in human physiology, especially his research on respiration in collaboration with John Scott Haldane. Life He was born in the manse at Half Morton in rural Dumfriesshire the fourth son of Rev Walter Smith who was a Free Church of Scotland minister in the parish. He had several talented siblings, including the mycologist, Annie Lorrain Smith who worked informally at the British Museum. His brother Walter Smith became a professor of philosophy at Lake Forest College in Illinois whilst another brother, William Geor...
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Najm al-Din Kubra
1145 - 1221 (76 years)
Najm ad-Din Kubra was a 13th-century Khwarezmian Sufi from Khwarezm and the founder of the Kubrawiya, influential in the Ilkhanate and Timurid dynasty. His method, exemplary of a "golden age" of Sufi metaphysics, was related to the Illuminationism of Shahab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi as well as to Rumi's Shams Tabrizi. Kubra was born in 540/1145 and died in 618/1221.
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Jakob Martini
1570 - 1649 (79 years)
Jakob Martini was a German Lutheran theologian and philosopher. Biography Jakob Martini was born at Langenstein in the hill country to the west of Magdeburg. Adam Martini, his father, was a pastor.
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Thomas Dewar Weldon
1896 - 1958 (62 years)
Thomas Dewar "Harry" Weldon was a British philosopher. Life Thomas Weldon was born at 3 Bryanston Mansions, York Street, Marylebone, London, in 1896. After an education at Tonbridge School, he won a scholarship to read Literae humaniores at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he postponed to become an officer in the Royal Field Artillery in 1915. He spent World War I in France and Belgium, rising to acting captain, being wounded and winning the Military Cross and bar. He finally went up to Oxford in 1919, graduating with a first class degree in 1921. Weldon was elected a fellow and philosophy tutor at his college two years later, getting to know C.
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Takeuchi Seihō
1864 - 1942 (78 years)
Takeuchi Seihō was a Japanese painter of the Nihonga genre, active from the Meiji through the early Shōwa period. One of the founders of nihonga, his works spanned half a century and he was regarded as master of the prewar Kyoto circle of painters. His real name was Takeuchi Tsunekichi.
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Paul Krannhals
1883 - 1934 (51 years)
Paul Krannhals was a Baltic-German philosopher. He was an early supporter of the NSDAP in the 1920s and 1930s. His work Das Organische Weltbild was referred to by Otto Dietrich as "the first attempt from a National Socialist perspective...to scientifically clarify and present the organic or universalist worldview".
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Frederick F. Russell
1870 - 1960 (90 years)
Brigadier General Frederick Fuller Russell was a U.S. Army physician who perfected a typhoid vaccine in 1909. In 1911, a typhoid vaccination program was carried out to have the entire U.S. Army immunized. As a direct result of his research, the U.S. Army was the first military to make vaccination a required prophylaxis against typhoid. The 1911 measure eliminated typhoid as a significant cause of morbidity and mortality among U.S. military personnel.
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Max Koner
1854 - 1900 (46 years)
Max Johann Bernhard Koner was a German portraitist. Biography From 1873 to 1878, he studied at the Prussian Academy of Arts under Eduard Daege, Anton von Werner and others. He spent some time in Italy in 1875 and, after graduating went to study in Paris. In 1893, he became a member of the Academy.
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Socrates the Younger
420 BC - 400 BC (20 years)
Socrates the Younger was an ancient Athenian philosopher. Ancient texts suggest that he was a young student of the elder Socrates and later a cohort of Plato. He is best remembered for his depiction in Plato's Statesman, and scholars have suggested that he had ties to Academic and Pythagorean philosophy.
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Gottfried Otto Helmut Naumann
#17994
Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen
1215 - Present (811 years)
Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen was a thirteenth-century Spanish Jewish philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician. He was the author of the Midrash ha-Ḥokmah, considered the first of the great Hebrew encyclopedias, and notable for its in-depth treatment both of the exact sciences and of biblical and rabbinic texts.
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Jakob Eduard Polak
1818 - 1891 (73 years)
Jakob Eduard Polak was an Austrian physician, born to a Jewish family from Bohemia, who played an important role in introducing modern medicine in Iran. Life Polak studied medicine in Prague and Vienna. He was one of the six Austrian teachers invited by Amir Kabir, the Persian chief minister, as the instructors of Dar ul-Fonun, the first modern higher education institution in Iran. By his own account, he entered Iran on 24 November 1851, before the inauguration of the Dar ul-Fonun.
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Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden
1829 - 1887 (58 years)
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was an American geologist noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. He was also a physician who served with the Union Army during the Civil War.
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Dennis Hart Mahan
1802 - 1871 (69 years)
Dennis Hart Mahan [məˈhæn] was a noted American military theorist, civil engineer and professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1824–1871. He was the father of American naval historian and theorist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan.
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Charles C. Bass
1875 - 1975 (100 years)
Charles Cassidy Bass was an American medical doctor and researcher on tropical medicine who made significant contributions to understanding malaria, hookworm, and other diseases. Later Bass studied the relationship between dental health and general well-being. Bass articulated and promoted the "Bass Technique of Toothbrushing" and developed improved means of flossing teeth, for which some refer to Bass as "The Father of Preventive Dentistry". He subsequently became a university administrator, serving as dean of the Tulane University School of Medicine, from 1922 to 1940.
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Emilio Pettoruti
1892 - 1971 (79 years)
Emilio Pettoruti was an Argentine painter, who caused a scandal with his avant-garde cubist exhibition in 1924 in Buenos Aires. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Buenos Aires was a city full of artistic development. Pettoruti's career was thriving during the 1920s when "Argentina witnessed a decade of dynamic artistic activity; it was an era of euphoria, a time when the definition of modernity was developed." While Pettoruti was influenced by Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Abstraction, he did not claim to paint in any of those styles in particular. Exhibiting all over Europ...
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Musa Bigiev
1874 - 1949 (75 years)
Musa Bigiev was a Tatar Hanafi Maturidi scholar, theologian philosopher, publicist and one of the leaders of the Jadid movement. After receiving his education in Kazan, Bukhara, Istanbul and Cairo, he became a political activist for the Ittifaq, the political organisation of the Muslims of Russia. He also taught in Orenburg, wrote journalistic texts and translated classic works into Tatar. After emigrating from the Soviet Union, he travelled Europe and the Middle and Far East while writing and publishing.
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