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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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#1801

Hilary Greaves

#38424

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Hilary Greaves is a British philosopher, currently serving as professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. From 2017 to 2022, she was the founding director of the Global Priorities Institute, a research centre for effective altruism at the university supported by the Open Philanthropy Project.

#1802

Steven Crowell

#52768

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Steven Crowell is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at Rice University, where he taught from 1983 to 2022. Crowell earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1981. His work has largely focused on twentieth-century European philosophy, including phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism.

#1803

Hermotimus of Clazomenae

#22785

Overall Influence

Hermotimus of Clazomenae , was a possibly historic or legendary Presocratic philosopher about whom many legendary feats were ascribed in antiquity, including the ability for his soul to leave his body and travel around. Some ancient sources also considered him a previous reincarnation of Pythagoras. Aristotle also credited him with some of the metaphysical doctrines on Nous that were more commonly attributed to Anaxagoras.

#1804

Lisa H. Schwartzman

#52847

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Lisa H. Schwartzman is a philosophy professor and well known feminist and social/political philosopher currently teaching at Michigan State University. Schwartzman earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2000 before going on to teach courses on feminist theory, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, and ethics at Michigan State.

#1805

Thomas LaMarre

#17654

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Thomas Mark Lamarre is an American-Canadian academic, author, Japanologist and professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies. Education LaMarre was awarded a bachelor's degree in Biology in 1981 at Georgetown University. He continued his studies in science and the Université de la Méditerranée Aix-Marseille II in France, earning a Master's equivalent degree in Oceanology in 1982, and a doctorate equivalent in Oceanology in 1985.

#1806

Ara Darzi, Baron Darzi of Denham

#11143

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Ara Warkes Darzi, Baron Darzi of Denham, is an Armenian-British surgeon, academic, and politician. Lord Darzi is an academic surgeon and holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London, specialising in the field of minimally invasive and robot-assisted surgery, having pioneered many new techniques and technologies. He is co-director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation and the NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre at Imperial College London. He has become strongly identified with trying to change the National Health Service in England and is re...

#1807

Melvin Fitting

#25166

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Melvin Fitting is a logician with special interests in philosophical logic and tableau proof systems. He was a professor at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. from 1968 to 2013. At the Graduate Center he was in the departments of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics, and at Lehman College he was in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He is now Professor emeritus.

#1808

James M. Edie

#44121

Overall Influence

1927 - 1998 (71 years)

James M. Edie was an American philosopher. Life and career Edie was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He studied at Saint John’s University in Minnesota and at the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm in Rome before obtaining his doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.

#1809

Robin Le Poidevin

#42474

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Robin Le Poidevin is Emeritus Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Leeds, whose special interests include agnosticism, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of space and time.

#1810

Mohsen Kadivar

#4097

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Mohsen Kadivar is a mujtahid, Islamic theologian, philosopher, writer, leading intellectual reformist, and research professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. A political Iranian dissident, Kadivar has been a vocal critic of the doctrine of clerical rule, also known as Velayat-e Faqih , and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran as well as constructional reform in understanding of shari'a and Shi'a theology. Kadivar has served time in prison in Iran for his political activism and beliefs.

#1811

Brian Treanor

#52592

Overall Influence

Brian Treanor is the current Casassa Chair in Social Values, Professor of Philosophy in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and the academic director of the Academy of Catholic Thought & Imagination at Loyola Marymount University. He received his Ph.D. from Boston College where he studied with Richard Kearney & Jacques Taminiaux.

#1812

Mary Louise Gill

#50430

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Mary Louise Gill is the David Benedict Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Brown University. Her work primarily focuses on Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers. Education and career Gill received a bachelor's in religion in 1972 from Barnard College and a master's in religion from Columbia University in 1974. She received a second bachelor's from Cambridge University in classics and ancient philosophy in 1976, and a master's and doctorate in classics and ancient philosophy from Cambridge, both in 1981.

#1813

Virgil Aldrich

#51239

Overall Influence

1903 - 1998 (95 years)

Virgil Charles Aldrich , was an American philosopher of art, language, and religion. Early life and education The son of Floyd Clement Aldrich and his wife Ann Hanley, Virgil Aldrich earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1925. He studied at Oxford University in 1927 and then went on to earn a Diplôme d'Études Supérieures de Philosophie at the Sorbonne in 1928 before completing his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley in 1931. He married Louise Hafliger on 3 September 1927 and they had one son, David Virgil Aldrich.

#1814

Georges Rey

#26212

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Georges Leon Rey is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland. Biography Rey received a doctoral degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1978. His thesis was titled The possibility of psychology: some preliminary issues, and was completed under Hilary Putnam.

#1815

Herman De Dijn

#57096

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Herman De Dijn is a Belgian academic philosopher and historian of philosophy with a particular interest in the ethics of Spinoza, known as a public intellectual in both Belgium and the Netherlands. Life De Dijn was born in Galmaarden in 1943 and was educated at the Sint-Catharinacollege, Geraardsbergen. He studied at the KU Leuven, graduating Doctor of Philosophy in 1971. After postdoctoral study at the University of Cambridge he was appointed to the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, where he was a full professor from 1979 until 2008, when he became professor emeritus. From 1995 to 2000 he ...

#1816

Krzysztof Michalski

#36357

Overall Influence

1948 - 2013 (65 years)

Krzysztof Michalski was a Polish philosopher and the rector of Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen founded by him in Vienna in 1982. Life Krzysztof Michalski was born in Warsaw. He studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw, where he received his Ph.D. in 1974 with a thesis on Heidegger and Contemporary Philosophy. In 1977, he spent one year in Germany as a Humboldt Fellow, from 1978 onwards he taught philosophy at the University of Warsaw. In 1981/82 he was a Thyssen Fellow at the Heidelberg University and in 1982/1983 a Fellow Commoner of Churchill College at Cambridge. In 1986, he was habilitated for Philosophy at the University of Warsaw with the study Logic and Time.

#1817

Jeanne Hersch

#14179

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Jeanne Hersch was a Swiss philosopher of Polish-Jewish origin, whose works dealt with the concept of freedom. She was the daughter of Liebman Hersch. Education and career Hersch was born in 1910 in Geneva, Switzerland. She later studied under the existentialist Karl Jaspers in Germany in the early 1930s. She taught French, Latin and Philosophy in the International School of Geneva, the world's first international school, for 33 years .

#1818

Janet Murray

#5864

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Janet Horowitz Murray is an American professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999, she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT, where she taught humanities and led advanced interactive design projects since 1971. She is well known as an early developer of humanities computing applications, a seminal theorist of digital media, and an advocate of new educational programs in digital media.

#1819

Denise Riley

#22126

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Denise Riley is an English poet and philosopher. Life Riley lives in London. She was educated for a year at Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated from New Hall, Cambridge. She was, until recently, Professor of Literature with Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is currently A. D. White Professor-at-large at Cornell University.

#1820

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi

#21833

Overall Influence

1922 - 1993 (71 years)

Mohammed Aziz Lahbabi was a Moroccan philosopher, novelist and poet writing in Arabic and French. Career Some of his books were translated into more than 30 languages. Lahbabi studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and received a doctorate of philosophy. He was professor of philosophy and dean of the faculty of letters at the Mohammed V University in Rabat. Characteristic of his philosophical writings is the union of Arab-Islamic and Western-humanistic ideas. He also wrote poetry, fiction, and non-fiction books on economics, politics, and literature. Lahbabi was one of the founders of the Union of Arab Writers of the Maghreb and the review Afaq .

#1821

Geydar Dzhemal

#22780

Overall Influence

1947 - 2016 (69 years)

Geydar Dzhahidovich Dzhemal was a Russian Islamic public figure, activist, philosopher, poet, political and social activist. He was the founder and chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia He was also the Co-chairman and member of the Presidium of the Russian Social Movement "Russian Islamic Heritage", permanent member of the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress, one of the founders and a member of the Coordinating Council of the Left Front, member of The Other Russia. He took part in the Dissenters' March.

#1822

Birger Hjørland

#16213

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Birger Hjørland is a professor of knowledge organization at the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen. His main areas of study pertain to theory of library and information science and of knowledge organization. Hjørland has contributed important developments to domain analysis and concept theory. He has been cited as an anchor of North American knowledge organization studies, as well as an information science pioneer.

#1823

Henryk Hiż

#37798

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Henryk Hiż was a Polish analytical philosopher specializing in linguistics, philosophy of language, logic, mathematics and ethics, active for most of his life in the United States, one of the youngest representatives of the Lwów–Warsaw school.

#1824

Andrzej Wierciński

Andrzej Wierciński

#31436

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Andrzej Wiercinski is a Hermeneutician, Philosopher, and Theologian. As the transdisciplinary thinker, he is Professor of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw, President-Founder of the International Institute for Hermeneutics , and President of Agora Hermeneutica .

#1825

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri

#31503

Overall Influence

1935 - 2010 (75 years)

Mohammed Abed Al Jabri was one of the most known Moroccan and Arab philosophers; he taught philosophy, Arab philosophy, and Islamic thought in Mohammed V University in Rabat from the late 1960s until his retirement. He is considered one of the major philosophers and intellectual figures in the modern and contemporary Arab world. He is known for his academic project "Critique of Arab Reason", published in four volumes between the 1980s and 2000s. He published several influential books on the Arab philosophical tradition.

#1826

Kenneth Allen Taylor

Kenneth Allen Taylor

#33050

Overall Influence

1954 - 2019 (65 years)

Kenneth Allen Taylor was an American philosopher and co-host of the radio program Philosophy Talk. Education and career Taylor received his A.B. from the University of Notre Dame in 1977. He received his Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Chicago, where he completed his dissertation under the supervision of Leonard Linsky. Before coming to Stanford, Taylor taught in the philosophy departments at Rutgers University, University of Maryland at College Park, Wesleyan University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Middlebury College.

#1827

Mabogo P. More

#44775

Overall Influence

Mabogo P. More is a South African philosopher working in the area of Black existentialism, including philosophical analysis of the life and work of Steve Biko. Awards In 2015, More was awarded the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

#1828

Hilary Bok

#39629

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Hilary Bok is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Bioethics and Moral & Political Theory at Johns Hopkins University. Bok received a B.A. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1981 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991.

#1829

Harold C. Neu

#57533

Overall Influence

#1830

Eliseo Vivas

#33069

Overall Influence

1901 - 1993 (92 years)

Eliseo Vivas was a 20th-century philosopher and literary theorist. As a child, his family fled Colombia in response to the presidency of Cipriano Castro. They went to Curacao, then Paris, then, in 1915, to New York City. Vivas served as the Venezuelan consul in Philadelphia, then turned to academia studying or teaching at, among other schools, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Northwestern University, Rockford College, and the University of Iowa.

#1831

Gordon Parker

#15506

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Gordon Barraclough Parker AO is an Australian psychiatrist who is scientia professor of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales . Parker’s particular focus is on the phenomenology and epidemiology of mood disorders, social psychiatry, and the treatment and management of mood disorders. His research has assisted in modelling psychiatric conditions – depression, bipolar and personality disorders – and examining causes, mechanisms and treatments for mood disorders, together with innovative clinical work. Parker is a critic of the current unitary classification of major depressive disorder , and has proposed the revival of the diagnosis of melancholia.

#1832

Andrew Bowie

#45710

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Andrew S. Bowie is Professor of Philosophy and German at Royal Holloway, University of London and Founding Director of the Humanities and Arts Research Centre . He has worked to promote a better understanding of German philosophy in the Anglophone analytical tradition - including the works of Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Novalis , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor W. Adorno, ...

#1833

Ángel Cappelletti

Ángel Cappelletti

#54226

Overall Influence

1927 - 1995 (68 years)

Ángel Cappelletti was a philosopher and university professor. He was born in Rosario. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires where he also received his PhD in 1954. He moved to Venezuela in 1968 and began teaching at the Simon Bolivar University until his retirement in 1994, when he returned to Rosario. During his career he translated works from Greek and Latin and composed numerous works on ancient philosophy as well as on the subjects as positivism and anarchism in Latin America.

#1834

K. Danner Clouser

#54779

Overall Influence

1930 - 2000 (70 years)

K. Danner Clouser was an American bioethicist. He gained his bachelor's degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1955, then completed a PhD at Harvard University in 1961. After having taught at Dartmouth College and Carleton College, he moved to the Pennsylvania State University, where he pursued his career and became University Professor of Humanities . In 1968, he established one of the first humanities courses at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. At Dartmouth College, he met several moral philosophers with whom he continued to collaborate: Bernard Gert, Charles M.

#1835

Dean Ornish

#5376

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dean Michael Ornish is an American physician and researcher. He is the president and founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The author of Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less and The Spectrum, he is an advocate for using diet and lifestyle changes to treat and prevent heart disease.

#1836

Tullio Gregory

#52952

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Tullio Gregory was an Italian philosopher and historian of medieval and early modern philosophy. He was professor in La Sapienza, Rome, and collaborated with several institutions, either in Italy or abroad. His work and interpretations have shed new light on Medieval thought and on the connection to early modern philosophy .

#1837

Herbert W. Franke

Herbert W. Franke

#3642

Overall Influence

1927 - 2022 (95 years)

Herbert W. Franke was an Austrian scientist and writer. Die Zeit calls him "the most prominent German writing Science Fiction author". He is also one of the important early computer artists , creating computer graphics and early digital art since the late 1950s. Franke was also active in the fields of future research as well as speleology. He used his pen name Sergius Both as this Avatar name in Active Worlds and Opensimulator grids. The Sergius Both Award is given for creative scripting in Immersionskunst by Stiftung Kunstinformatik, first time issued at Amerika Art 2022.

#1838

Donald S. Fredrickson

#57787

Overall Influence

#1839

Jeffrey L. Saver

#57801

Overall Influence

#1840

Nalin de Silva

#15359

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Thakurartha Devadithya Guardiyawasam Lindamulage Nalin Kumara de Silva is a Sri Lankan philosopher and a political analyst. He is the former Sri Lankan ambassador in Myanmar. He was a professor in the department of mathematics, a member of University Grant Commission and the dean of the faculty of science at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.

#1841

Pierre Aubenque

#42787

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Pierre Aubenque was a French philosopher. He was strongly focused on Aristotle. Biography Aubenque was a student at the École normale supérieure in Paris and earned his Agrégation in philosophy in 1950. He became an assistant professor at the University of Montpellier, then a professor at the University of Franche-Comté and Aix-Marseille University. In 1969, he began teaching philosophy at Sorbonne University. He also wrote many works published by Éditions Beauchesne.

#1842

Volker Halbach

#47818

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Volker Halbach is a German logician and philosopher. His main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, and epistemology, with a focus on formal theories of truth. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Tutorial Fellow of New College, Oxford.

#1843

Ivo Urbančič

#30081

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Ivo Urbančič was a Slovenian philosopher. He is considered by many to be one of the fathers of the phenomenological school in Slovenia. Biography Born Ivan Urbančič in Robič near Kobarid, in what was then the Italian administrative region of Julian March to a peasant Slovene family, his family left the region when he was a child to escape Fascist persecution and moved to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

#1844

Ramchandra Gandhi

#33463

Overall Influence

1937 - 2007 (70 years)

Ramchandra Gandhi was an Indian philosopher. He was a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the son of Devdas Gandhi and Lakshmi and also brother of Rajmohan Gandhi, Gopalkrishna Gandhi and Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee.

#1845

Roger Unger

#47151

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Roger H. Unger was an American physician known for his studies of the physiology of pancreatic islets. In particular the elucidation of the roles of insulin and glucagon in the regulation of normal blood glucose homeostasis and in the pathogenesis of diabetes, and the establishment of glucagon as a hormone. He was the Touchstone/West Distinguished Chair in Diabetes Research at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

#1846

Alison Stone

#45888

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Alison Stone is a British philosopher. She is a Professor of European Philosophy in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. Career Stone has a D.Phil. from the University of Sussex on Hegel and feminist philosophy, and before joining Lancaster University in 2002 she held a temporary lectureship and a research fellowship at Cambridge University.

#1847

Johan Braeckman

Johan Braeckman

#25755

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Johan Braeckman is a Flemish philosopher. He is professor in philosophy at the University of Ghent and taught at various other institutions e.g. University of Amsterdam. He is editor of the skeptical organisation SKEPP's magazine Wonder en is gheen Wonder. His research, conducted along with a dozen doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, focuses on the philosophical problems associated with the life sciences, in particular the evolutionary theory and neuroscience.

#1848

Nick Trakakis

#34856

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Nick Trakakis is an Australian philosopher who is Assistant Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion of the Australian Catholic University. He has previously taught at Monash University and Deakin University, and during 2006–2007 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. He works mainly at the intersections of philosophy , religion, and theology.

#1849

Susan Hurley

#20173

Overall Influence

1954 - 2007 (53 years)

Susan Lynn Hurley was appointed professor in the department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick in 1994, professor of philosophy at Bristol University from 2006 and the first woman fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She wrote on practical philosophy as well as on philosophy of mind, bringing these disciplines closer together. Her work draws on sources from the social sciences as well as the neurosciences, and can be broadly characterised as both naturalistic and interdisciplinary.

#1850

Arto Haapala

#51765

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Arto Haapala is a Finnish philosopher, aesthetician and Professor of Aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at Helsinki University, Finland. Haapala received his PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 1985. He is also active in the work of the Finnish Society for Aesthetics and the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics in Lahti, Finland.

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