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,
#18001
Emit Snake-Beings
#186498
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Emit Snake-Beings also known as Snakebeings is a British/New Zealand writer multi-media visual artist and sound artist who has also worked in kinetic art, DIY ethos, DIY technology, sculpture, Cinematography, and Video Editing. He has a master's degree from the University of Waikato, and in 2016 was awarded a PhD, entitled The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement for his work linking the DIY ethic and Maker culture with contemporary theory of material agency and Material culture. Recent publications have focused on developing an idea of techno-animism an...
Go to Profile#18002
Richard Koszarski
#175122
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Richard Koszarski is a film historian. He was the founder of , and served as editor-in-chief from 1987 to 2012. He is a professor emeritus of English and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His collection of material on the early history of the Universal Pictures is held in the Library of Congress.
Go to Profile#18003
Ambrose Burnside
1824 - 1881 (57 years)
Ambrose Everett Burnside was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the Civil War and three-time Governor of Rhode Island, as well as being a successful inventor and industrialist.
Go to Profile#18004
Wieslaw Woszczyk
#127528
Overall Influence
Wieslaw Woszczyk is the James McGill Professor Research Chair of Music Technology at McGill University's School of Music. He finished his PhD at the University of Victoria. Between 1978 and 1998, he was director of the graduate program in sound recording, and between 1998 and 2001 he was chair of the Department of Theory. Additionally, Woszcyk is director of McGill Recording Studios and of the Laboratory of Virtual Acoustics Technology at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. He is also the founding director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media and Technology.
Go to Profile#18005
Newton Garver
#182417
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Newton Garver was an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at University at Buffalo. He is known for his works on Wittgenstein. Books Derrida & WittgensteinThis Complicated Form of LifeLimits to Power: Some Friendly RemindersNonviolence and community: Reflections on the Alternatives to Violence ProjectJesus, Jefferson, and the Task of FriendsWittgenstein and approaches to clarity
Go to Profile#18006
Ko Wen-je
#74031
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ko Wen-je is a Taiwanese politician and physician who served as the mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022. He has been the chairman of the Taiwan People's Party since 2019. Before becoming mayor, he was a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital. He was also a professor at National Taiwan University College of Medicine, and specialized in fields including trauma, intensive care, organ transplant, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation , and artificial organs. Due to his profession, he has been nicknamed Ko P or KP . Ko was responsible for standardising organ transplant procedures in Taiwan, and was the first physician to bring ECMO to Taiwan.
Go to Profile#18007
Charley Chase
1893 - 1940 (47 years)
Charles Joseph Parrott , known professionally as Charley Chase, was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director. He worked for many pioneering comedy studios but is chiefly associated with producer Hal Roach. Chase was the elder brother of comedian/director James Parrott.
Go to Profile#18008
Charles Adolphus Row
1816 - 1896 (80 years)
Charles Adolphus Row was an English Church of England clergyman and moral philosopher. Life Charles Adolphus Row was born in 1816. He was the third son of William Row of St John, Cornwall. He attended Pembroke College, Oxford where he matriculated on 7 May 1834 at the age of 17. He was a scholar at Pembroke from 1834–38. He obtained a B.A. on 29 November 1838 and an M.A. on 11 November 1841.
Go to Profile#18009
Henry Feffer
#111269
Overall Influence
1918 - 2011 (93 years)
Henry Leon Feffer of Bethesda, Maryland, was an American neurosurgeon. In the mid-1950s, he was one of the first medical doctors to systematically test whether low-back pain could be relieved with epidural injections of hydrocortisone. Today, physicians routinely give such injections before resorting to more invasive surgery. He was a Washington, D.C. spinal surgeon for more than four decades whose patients included Saddam Hussein.
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Claude Guillermet de Bérigard
1578 - 1663 (85 years)
Claude Guillermet de Bérigard , also known by the Latin form of his name Claudius Berigardus, was a French philosopher, physician and mathematician who became professor of philosophy at Pisa and Padua. He was a vocal opponent of the theories of Galileo. His last name is sometimes spelled Beauregard.
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Nicola Curtin
#137789
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Nicola Curtin is an English academic. She is Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics at Newcastle University. She is best known for being part of the Newcastle University team that developed Rubraca, a PARP inhibitor used as an anti-cancer agent addressing BRCA mutation, and for donating her share of the royalties to charity.
Go to Profile#18012
Grace Y. Kao
#184122
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Grace Yia-Hei Kao is an Asian American professor of ethics, who specializes in animal and human rights, ecofeminism, and Asian American Christianity. Kao earned her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts degrees from Stanford University, and her PhD. at Harvard University. She is Professor of Ethics at Claremont School of Theology, and was the first Asian American woman to receive tenure there. She has been appointed as the interim Bishop Roy I. Sano and Kathleen A. Thomas-Sano Endowed Chair in Pacific and Asian Theology. Kao is also the co-director of the Center for Sexuality, Gender, and ...
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Harry Morgan Ayres
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
Harry Morgan Ayres was a professor of English Literature at Columbia University an author, and editor. He edited The Reader's Dictionary of Authors including entries for Charles William Eliot, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, and George Moore and also contributed to the Library of the World's Best Literature.
Go to Profile#18014
Gertrude Hunter
#115831
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Gertrude Teixeira Hunter was an American doctor and professor of medicine. She served as the national director of health services for Head Start, and later became health administrator for the New England region of the United States Public Health Service. Over her career, she worked in several roles at Howard University College of Medicine. She was also an activist for AIDS healthcare in minority communities.
Go to Profile#18015
Henry Elijah Alvord
1844 - 1904 (60 years)
Henry Elijah Alvord was an American university administrator, educator, and Army officer. He served as the president of the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College and the Maryland Agricultural College as well teaching Military Science at Massachusetts Agricultural College .
Go to Profile#18016
John Richardson
#124915
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
John Richardson was an English actor who appeared in films from the late 1950s until the early 1990s. He was a male lead in Italian genre filmss, most notably Mario Bava's Black Sunday with Barbara Steele, but he was best known for playing the love interest of Ursula Andress in She and then of Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. .
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Ellen Umansky
#99053
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dr. Ellen M. Umansky is the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies and Director of the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield University located in Fairfield, Connecticut, positions that she has held since 1994.
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Seale Harris
1870 - 1957 (87 years)
Seale Harris was an American physician and researcher born in Cedartown, Georgia. He was nicknamed "the Benjamin Franklin of Medicine" by contemporaries for his leadership and writing on a wide range of medical and political topics. Dr. Harris' most celebrated accomplishments were his 1924 hypothesis of hyperinsulinism as a cause of spontaneous hypoglycemia.
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Marci Bowers
#8729
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marci Lee Bowers is an American gynecologist and surgeon who specializes in gender-affirming surgeries. Bowers is viewed as an innovator in gender confirmation/affirmation surgery, and is the first transgender woman to perform such surgeries.
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Peter Herrmann
#177331
Overall Influence
Peter Herrmann is a social philosopher, sociologist and academic of German origin. Between 1995 and 2013 he worked in Ireland where he occupied at the end the position of a senior research fellow at University College Cork, School of Applied Social Studies. 2013 he moved to Rome, Italy, where he worked independently, but in close connection with the Italian research institute EURISPES. From 2015 to 2017 he worked as Professor for Economics at Bangor College of Central South University of Forestry & Technology, Changsha, PRC, and as Senior Foreign Expert. School of Public Affairs, Dept. of Social Security and Risk Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R.China.
Go to Profile#18021
Gandy Brodie
1924 - 1975 (51 years)
Gandy Brodie was an American painter working primarily in New York City and Townshend, Vermont, during the middle part of the 20th century. He had ties to Abstract Expressionism through artists such as Willem de Kooning and his style, though singular, was considered second-generation Abstract Expressionism. His paintings were influenced by the works of artists such as Camille Corot, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, Chaïm Soutine, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee. Shane Brody, his only child, is a jazz and Americana guitarist who resides in Underhill, Vermont.
Go to Profile#18022
Bill Wringe
#190644
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#18023
Mary Harriott Norris
1848 - 1918 (70 years)
Mary Harriott Norris was an American author and educator. Born in Boonton, New Jersey to Charles Bryan Norris and Mary Lyon Kerr, she was educated at Vassar College, where she graduated with honor, receiving an A.B. degree in 1870. Two years later in 1872 she was invited back to deliver the annual commencement address to the college. She became a writer of short stories, novels, and educational articles; she edited several works and gave a number of lectures. Norris was a regular contributor to the Boston Journal of Education.
Go to Profile#18024
Mortimer Taube
1910 - 1965 (55 years)
Mortimer Taube was an American librarian. He is on the list of the 100 most important leaders in American Library and Information Science of the 20th century. He was important to the Library Science field because he invented Coordinate Indexing, which uses "uniterms" in the context of cataloging. It is the forerunner to computer based searches. In the early 1950s he started his own company, Documentation, Inc. with Gerald J. Sophar. Previously he worked at such institutions as the Library of Congress, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission. American Libraries calls him "...
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Gwen W. Collman
#157270
Overall Influence
Gwen W. Collman is an American environmental epidemiologist. Collman is acting deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and works as director of the division of extramural research and training.
Go to Profile#18026
Sara Harris
#107749
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Sara E Harris is a Canadian scientist, and professor in the department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the associate dean academic in the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia. In 2015, she was named a 3M National Teaching Fellow for her MOOC on climate change.
Go to Profile#18027
Judith A. Cooper
#146627
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Judith Ann Cooper is an American speech pathologist serving as the deputy director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders . She was the acting director of the NIDCD from June 2018 to August 2019. Cooper is an elected fellow of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association.
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Alice Copping
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Alice Copping was senior lecturer in nutrition, Queen Elizabeth College, University of London. She was born in Stratford, New Zealand. Copping attended Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and graduated as Master of Science in 1926. She was awarded the Sarah Ann Rhodes scholarship the following year, and did two years of research work under J. C. Drummond at University College London. She then returned to New Zealand to lecture at the School of Home Science, University of Otago for a year, before returning to London to work in the Division of Nutrition at the Lister Institute.
Go to Profile#18029
Park Seung-cheol
#123885
Overall Influence
1940 - 2014 (74 years)
Park Seung-cheol was a South Korean physician and specialist in infectious diseases. Early life Park was the first son of Korean independence activist and Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea official Park Myeong-ryeol, who lived in exile in China during Japanese colonial rule. After World War II, the family returned to Korea, where the young Park was raised. When the Korean War broke out, he fled with his family to his father's hometown of Gwangcheon-eup, in Hongseong-gun, Chungcheongnam-do near the city of Gongju. He attended Gwangcheon Elementary School before returning to Seoul, where he studied at Kyungbock High School.
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Steven L. Small
#160053
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Steven L. Small is the Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professor in Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, and dean of its School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Small is a specialist in the neurobiology of language.
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Frederick Niecks
1845 - 1924 (79 years)
Frederick Niecks was a German musical scholar and author who resided in Scotland for most of his life. He is best remembered for his biographies of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann. Biography Friedrich Maternus Niecks was born in Düsseldorf, son of a conductor and teacher; his grandfather was a professional musician. He studied music under his father; he later studied violin under Leopold Auer and others, and studied piano and composition under Julius Tausch. At age 13 he made his debut playing Charles Auguste de Bériot's Violin Concerto No. 2, then joined the Musikverein orchestra, wi...
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Lauren Ackerman
#25756
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Lauren Vedder Ackerman was an American physician and pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-20th century. Early life Ackerman was born in March 1905 in Auburn, New York, to Bertha and John Ackerman. Both of his parents were college graduates. His father was a civil and mechanical engineer, who later became city manager of Watertown, New York. Despite growing up in a learned family environment, Lauren was an indifferent student with mediocre grades. After high school graduation in 1923 Ackerman began his college studies at St. Lawrence University , later transferring to, and graduating from, Hamilton College in 1927 with a B.S.
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Karel Frederik Wenckebach
1864 - 1940 (76 years)
Professor, Dr Karel Frederik Wenckebach was a Dutch anatomist who was a native of the Hague. He studied medicine in Utrecht, and in 1901 become a professor of medicine at the University of Groningen. Later he was a professor at the Universities of Strasbourg and Vienna .
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Jean Emily Henley
#126591
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Jean Emily Henley from was an anesthesiologist. She was the only child of Eugene Henry and Helen Esther Heller , who emigrated from Hungary and Germany respectively into the United States. She was fluent in German, due to that being her parents native language. The father changed the family surname to Henley while she was still a child. Both parents practiced lay psychotherapy and later obtained PhDs. As both a sculptor and linguist, she had many accomplishments.
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Marek Harat
#62693
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marek Harat is a Polish neurosurgeon, professor of medical sciences , colonel of the reserve. In 1993, he completed an internship in Canada, including at Toronto Western Hospital. Author of a number of publications and innovative neurosurgical procedures , including those related to deep brain stimulation. Promoter and reviewer of doctoral theses. Clinical Consultant in Neurosurgery at the 10th Military Clinical Hospital with Polyclinic in Bydgoszcz, he also works at the Medical College in Bydgoszcz of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit .
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Nicole Hassoun
#189782
Overall Influence
Nicole Hassoun is a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University and head of the Global Health Impact project, a research organization focused on promoting access to essential medicines. She is the author of Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations and Global Health Impact: Extending Access on Essential Medicines for the Poor.
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Frank R. Wallace
#188110
Overall Influence
1932 - 2006 (74 years)
Frank R. Wallace , born Wallace Ward, was an American author, publisher and mail-order magnate. Previously a professional poker player, he is originator of the philosophy of Neo-Tech an offshoot of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. He was convicted of various federal tax crimes in the 1990s. During his trials, he challenged the oath he was required to take before testifying which became the case United States v. Ward in which the Appeals Court upheld his right to recite an alternate oath.
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William A. Hammond
1828 - 1900 (72 years)
William Alexander Hammond was an American military physician and neurologist. During the American Civil War he was the eleventh Surgeon General of the United States Army and the founder of the Army Medical Museum .
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Stephan von Breuning
1774 - 1827 (53 years)
Stephan von Breuning was a German civil servant and librettist. He was Ludwig van Beethoven's lifelong friend, from his childhood in Bonn when receiving music lessons until acting as executor in Vienna.
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George Ian Scott
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
George Ian Scott CBE, FRSE, FRCSEd was a 20th-century Scottish ophthalmic surgeon who in 1954, became the first holder of the Forbes Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Edinburgh. He specialised in neuro-ophthalmology, studies of the visual fields and diabetic retinopathy. He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1964 to 1967, Surgeon-Oculist to the Queen in Scotland from 1965 and president of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1972.
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Wang Maozu
1891 - 1949 (58 years)
Wang Maozu was a Chinese educationist and philosopher. In the 1920s, he earned his master's degree at the Teachers College, Columbia University under the instruction of John Dewey, then became a researcher at Harvard University. Several years later, he returned to China and taught at Beijing Normal University, Beijing Women's Normal College and National Central University.
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Robert G. Gard Jr.
#62830
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Robert Gibbins Gard Jr. is a retired United States Army lieutenant general and former chairman of the board of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where his work focuses on nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, Iraq, Iran, military policy, nuclear terrorism, and other national security issues.
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Gustav von Bergmann
1878 - 1955 (77 years)
Gustav von Bergmann was a German internist born in Würzburg. He was the son of renowned surgeon Ernst von Bergmann . Education In 1903 he received his doctorate at Strasbourg, and afterwards worked at the second medical hospital in Berlin under Friedrich Kraus. In 1916 he became a full professor of internal medicine in Marburg, and later a professor at Frankfurt am Main , the Berlin Charité and Munich .
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Helen Haines
#104224
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Helen Mary Haines is an Australian politician who has served as the independent MP for the Victorian seat of Indi since the 2019 federal election. Early life and education Haines grew up on a dairy farm in Colac in southwestern Victoria with four brothers, and attended a public school in Eurack. She trained as a registered nurse at St Vincent's Hospital and later as a midwife at Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne. In 1986, she moved to northeastern Victoria and began working as a midwife at Wangaratta Base Hospital before being appointed matron and Director of Nursing at the Chiltern Bush Nursing Hospital.
Go to Profile#18045
H. Bricmore
#151950
Overall Influence
H. Bricmore, Brichemore, or Brydgemoore , surnamed Sophista, was a Scottish scholastic philosopher. Bricmore is stated by John Leland to have lived at Oxford, and to have written commentaries on some of the works of Aristotle. He is probably the same person as Brichemon, of whom Leland gives a very similar description. The only account of his life comes from Thomas Dempster who states that Bricmore was one of a number of Scots sent to the University of Oxford by decree of the council of Vienne, and that he was a canon of Holy Rood, Edinburgh. Dempster adds, implausibly, that he died in England...
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Mary Ann Smart
#74323
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Mary Ann Smart is a Canadian-born musicologist. Smart earned a doctorate from Cornell University and is the Terrill Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the study of nineteenth century opera.
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John Grant
#88362
Overall Influence
1930 - 2014 (84 years)
John Grant was a Scottish author and illustrator, possibly best known as the author of the Littlenose series of children's stories, which he read on the BBC's Jackanory in 55 programmes from 1968 to 1986.
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Carl Nicolai Starcke
1858 - 1926 (68 years)
Carl Nicolai Starcke was a Danish sociologist, politician, educator and philosopher. He is buried at Holmens Cemetery. He was the father of Viggo Starcke, another writer and publisher of books such as Denmark in World History.
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Bluma Tischler
#181650
Overall Influence
1924 - 2015 (91 years)
Bluma Gorfinkel Tischler was a Canadian pediatrician known for her work in treating phenylketonuria, including her role in the widespread implementation of the Guthrie test for detecting that illness.
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Trevanian
#32775
Overall Influence
1931 - 2005 (74 years)
Rodney William Whitaker was an American film scholar and writer who wrote several novels under the pen name Trevanian. Whitaker wrote in a wide variety of genres, achieved bestseller status, and published under several other names, as well, including Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot, and Edoard Moran. He published the nonfiction book The Language of Film under his own name.
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