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,
#18101
Wilhelm Rust
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
Wilhelm Rust was a German musicologist and composer. He is most noted today for his substantial contributions to the Bach Gesellschaft edition of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born in Dessau, Rust studied piano and organ with his uncle Wilhelm Karl Rust, and later under Friedrich Schneider . From 1845 to 1848 he was music teacher in a Hungarian nobleman's family. He went to Berlin in 1849, where he taught and joined the Singakademie in 1850. He joined the Leipzig Bach-Verein in 1850, and played in numerous concerts. He became organist of St. Luke's in 1861, conductor of the Berlin Bach-Verein from 1862 to 1874, and Royal Music Director in 1864.
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Aonio Paleario
1503 - 1570 (67 years)
Aonio Paleario was an Italian Christian termed a reformer. Life He was born about 1500 at Veroli, in the Roman Campagna. Other forms of his name are Antonio Della Paglia, A. Degli Pagliaricci. In 1520 he went to Rome, where he entered the brilliant literary circle of Leo X. When Charles of Bourbon stormed Rome in 1527, Paleario went first to Perugia and then to Siena, where he settled as a teacher of Greek and Hebrew.
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Kara Keeling
#133096
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kara Keeling is an American humanities academic. As of 2016 she is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in the Critical Studies of Cinematic Arts and in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.
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John Adamson
1809 - 1870 (61 years)
John Adamson was a Scottish physician, pioneer photographer, physicist, lecturer and museum curator. He was a highly respected figure in St Andrews, and was responsible for producing the first calotype portrait in Scotland in 1841. He taught the process to his brother, the famous pioneering photographer Robert Adamson. He was curator of the Literary and Philosophical Society Museum at St Andrews from 1838 until his death.
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Johann von Wowern
1574 - 1612 (38 years)
Johann von Wowern was a German statesman, philologist, and lawyer. He is known for his 1603 work De Polymathia tractatio: integri operis de studiis veterum, the first work in Western Europe to use the term "polymath" in its title. Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge of various matters, drawn from all kinds of studies ... ranging freely through all the fields of the disciplines, as far as the human mind, with unwearied industry, is able to pursue them". Von Wowern lists erudition, literature, philology, philomathy and polyhistory as synonyms.
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Shitaye Alemu
#190821
Overall Influence
Shitaye Alemu Balcha is an Ethiopian physician and academic, "a venerated local internist who pioneered diabetes care in northern Ethiopia". An expert in non-communicable diseases, she has published on diabetes, epilepsy and HIV/AIDS in rural Ethiopia. She is Professor of Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Gondar.
Go to Profile#18107
William of Marseille
William of Marseille was a thirteenth-century English academic, teaching in France. He is known for the medical-astrological treatise De urina non visa. The method is to use a horoscope to deduce properties of the urine of a patient for diagnosis, when the urine itself cannot be obtained. This book was still used at the University of Bologna in 1405.
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Keith Black
#26720
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumors and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
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Lutgarde Thijs
#190830
Overall Influence
#18110
Claude Rogers
1907 - 1979 (72 years)
Claude Maurice Rogers was a British painter of portraits and landscapes, an influential art teacher, a founding member of the Euston Road School and at one time the President of the London Group of British artists.
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Raymond Cazallis Davis
1836 - 1919 (83 years)
Raymond Cazallis Davis was the chief librarian at the University of Michigan for 28 years. He was the first to offer a course at a college in bibliography. Early life Davis was born in Cushing, Maine, on June 23, 1836. His parents were George Davis and Catherine Davis. His father is of English and Welsh ancestry and his mother of Scotch and Irish. Davis's father was a sea captain. In 1849 when Davis was 13 years old his mother died. His father then took him on a two-year world tour.
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John Chalmers
#129361
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
John Chalmers is a Scottish orthopaedic surgeon. Biography Chalmers studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After qualifying as MB ChB in 1950 he worked as House officer in different hospitals. In 1952 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England one year later. From 1954 to 1957 he had his orthopaedic education at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He spent an Orthopaedic Fellowship at the University of Illinois and in 1958 was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. In 1961 he graduated M.D. and in 1963 a...
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Nils Brage Nordlander
#170964
Overall Influence
1919 - 2009 (90 years)
Nils Brage Nordlander was a Swedish speciality doctor attached to the Hospital of Ulleråker. As a politician, he served as the president of the county council of Uppsala, representing the Swedish People's Party, the predecessor of the Liberals.
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Hermann Friedberg
1817 - 1884 (67 years)
Hermann Friedberg was a German physician from Rosenberg , Silesia. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Paris, and Breslau, receiving from the last-named the degree of doctor of medicine in 1840. From 1849 to 1852 he was an assistant at the surgical hospital of the University of Berlin, and in 1852 was admitted as a privatdozent in surgery and pharmacology to the medical faculty of the Berlin University, at the same time conducting a private hospital for the treatment of surgical and ophthalmological diseases. In 1866 he was appointed professor of pharmacology at the Univ...
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Sextus Otto Lindberg
1835 - 1889 (54 years)
Sextus Otto Lindberg was a Swedish physician and botanist, known as a bryologist. Life He was born in Stockholm, and educated in Uppsala. He worked in the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part of the Russian Empire. He became professor of botany, and dean of the physics-mathematics faculty, at the University of Helsingfors.
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James Scott
#160503
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
James Scott FRCP, FIBiol, FMedSci, FRS is a British cardiologist. Scott undertook training at the London Hospital and in Birmingham, then in 1975 took up a position the Academic Department of Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital.
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Ernst Kohlschütter
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Ernst Otto Heinrich Kohlschütter was a German physician born in Dresden. He was the father of astronomer Arnold Kohlschütter . The son of Dr. Otto Kohlschütter , he studied medicine at the University of Leipzig. In 1862 he earned his doctorate with an influential dissertation on "sleep depth" titled Messungen der Festigkeit des Schlafes. With help from Theodor Weber , he was able to remain in Leipzig as an assistant at the university polyclinic. Later on, he received his habilitation at the University of Halle, becoming a privat-docent of internal medicine and subsequently a lecturer in balne...
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Charles Minnigerode
1814 - 1894 (80 years)
Charles Frederick Ernest Minnigerode was a German-born American professor and clergyman who is credited with introducing the Christmas tree to Williamsburg. He was professor of Latin and Greek at the College of William and Mary from 1842 to 1848. A Lutheran, Minnigerode became an Episcopalian. In 1845, he submitted himself as a candidate for the priesthood. The following year at Bruton Parish Church, Bishop John Johns ordained him to the transitional diaconate; and then to the priesthood in 1847.
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Susan Youens
#175937
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Susan Youens is the author of many books on German lieder. A musicologist, her work on Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf is considered some of the most scholarly and useful material on these composers. Both musicologists and performers have often cited her work.
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John MacVicar
#171332
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
John MacVicar was a British physician who was most notable for pioneering the diagnostic use of ultrasound in obstetrics as well as later, being a clinical educator. MacVicar was part of a team along with physician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown, who developed the worlds first obstetric ultrasound machine in 1963. Using the new technique of ultrasound, MacVicar's research transformed the treatment of gynaecological conditions in pregnant women, through the use of clinical trials.
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Jan Thomas
#44852
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Jan Thomas is a veterinary scientist and career academic. Thomas is currently the sixth vice-chancellor of Massey University, New Zealand and the second woman to hold the position. Thomas is the first female veterinarian and only the second veterinarian to become a Vice-Chancellor in either Australia or New Zealand.
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Pieter Gillis
1486 - 1533 (47 years)
Pieter Gillis , known by his anglicised name Peter Giles and sometimes the Latinised Petrus Ægidius, was a humanist, printer, and secretary to the city of Antwerp in the early sixteenth century. He is most famous as a friend and supporter of Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More. He seemed to have recommended the painter Hans Holbein the Younger to the court of England, where Thomas More received him delighted. Thomas More's Utopia, although fictional, includes Pieter Gillis as a character in Book I. More dedicated Utopia to Gillis, who may have designed the Utopian alphabet. They first met whe...
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Curtis Bernhardt
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Curtis Bernhardt was a German film director born in Worms, Germany, under the name Kurt Bernhardt. Career He trained as an actor in Germany, and performed on the stage, before starting as a film director in 1924, with Nameless Heroes. Other films include A Stolen Life and Sirocco .
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James Boevey
1622 - 1696 (74 years)
James Boevey was an English merchant, lawyer and philosopher of Huguenot parentage. Origins He was born in London at 6 a.m. on 7 May 1622 in Mincing Lane, in the parish of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. He was the youngest son of Andreas Boevey by his second wife Joanna der Wilde , daughter of Peter der Wilde. Andreas Boevey was a Dutch Huguenot from Courtrai in Flanders who had been brought to England aged 7 by his Huguenot parents following the invasion of the Low Countries by the Duke of Alva and the Duke's subsequent persecutions. Andreas had nine children by his first wife Esther Fenn and two by his second wife, the eldest of whom was James.
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Bernard Boxill
#189947
Overall Influence
Bernard Boxill is an American philosopher and distinguished professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is known for his works on ethics and political philosophy.
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Michael Kremer
#189946
Overall Influence
Michael Kremer is a philosopher who is known for his work in logic, philosophy of language and early analytic philosophy. He has published work on Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Ryle. He is currently the Mary R. Morton Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
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Nemat Sadat
#110564
Overall Influence
Nemat Sadat is an Afghan-American journalist, novelist, human rights activist, and former professor of political science at the American University of Afghanistan. Known for his debut novel The Carpet Weaver and his campaigning for LGBTQIA+ rights, particularly in the context of societal and cultural Islamic attitudes towards homosexuality in the Muslim world. Sadat is one of the first Afghans to have openly come out as gay and to campaign for LGBTQIA+ rights, gender freedom, and sexual liberty in Afghanistan.
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Marek Gatty-Kostyal
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Marek Gatty-Kostyal was a Polish chemist and pharmacist, known for his many contributions to pharmaceutical science.
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Heather MacNeil
#178716
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Heather MacNeil is a professor at the Faculty of Information of the University of Toronto, Canada. She teaches archives and record keeping related topics. She is a former General Editor of Archivaria and helped develop the concept of the Archival bond.
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Jean-Michel Frodon
#122921
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jean-Michel Frodon is a journalist, critic and historian of cinema. Biography Born Jean-Michel Billard, he writes with a pseudonym borrowed from Frodo of The Lord of the Rings. He has a master's degree and a DEA in history. He worked as an educator from 1971 to 1981. Next, he was a photographer from 1981 to 1985. In 1983, he became a journalist and film critic for the weekly periodical Le Point, of which his father, Pierre Billard, also a journalist and a film critic, was one of the founders and chief editors. He held this post until 1990.
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John Simon Gabriel Simmons
#79486
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
John Simon Gabriel Simmons was a British scholar of Slavonics. Early years John Simmons was born in Birmingham, England, in 1915. He joined the library at Birmingham University as a "library boy" in 1932, and in 1934 began to study Russian under Professor Konovalov. He graduated in 1937 with a BA in Spanish and Russian, but chose to stay on at the university as an assistant librarian, beginning a DPhil on the history of Russian printing. This was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. On his first trip to Russia, he met his wife, Fanny, whom he married in 1944.
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Miriam E. Carey
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Miriam Eliza Carey was an American librarian who helped establish the first libraries in prisons and hospitals in Iowa and Minnesota. Education and career Carey studied at Rockford Seminary , Oberlin College, Ohio and the library school of the University of Illinois, .
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Philippe Régnier
#81702
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Philippe Régnier is Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. He was formerly Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and Director of its Centre for Contemporary Asian Studies for 12 years. His publications focus on the socio-economic development of emerging economies.
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John White
1756 - 1832 (76 years)
John White was an Irish surgeon and botanical collector. Biography White was born in the townland of Drumaran, near Belcoo, in County Fermanagh in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, about 1756, and not, as stated in the Dictionary of Australian Biography and the Australian Dictionary of Biography, in Sussex, England. On 18 June 1778 John White qualified as a surgeon's mate, first rate, following examination at the Company of Surgeons in London. He entered the Royal Navy on 26 June 1778 as surgeon's mate aboard . He was promoted surgeon in 1780, serving aboard until 1786 when Sir Andr...
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Javed Iqbal Kazi
#55255
Overall Influence
1955 - 2014 (59 years)
Javed Iqbal Kazi was a Pakistani pathologist specialized in renal pathology, professor and chairman of Histopathology at Karachi Medical and Dental College, Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation, Dr. Ziauddin Hospitals & National Institute of Blood Diseases, and served as Dean of medicine of University of Karachi. He was also the board member of Journal of Pakistan Medical Association since 2005. He established the department of Histopathology at Sindh Institute of Urology & Transplantation, Karachi, in 1995 and is the pioneer of Renal and Transplant Pathology in Pakistan.
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Ralph Abraham
#141408
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ralph Lee Abraham Jr. is an American veterinarian, physician, and politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2015 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, he is a native and resident of Alto, Louisiana.
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Davide Tarizzo
#190322
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Davide Tarizzo is an Italian philosopher and professor, notable for his academic research and works on political theory and Post-Kantian European philosophy, with particular attention to biopolitics, psychoanalysis, and French theory. He currently serves as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Salerno.
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Danielle Peers
#186834
Overall Influence
Danielle Peers is a Canadian former wheelchair basketball player. They are an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures.
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Gordon Woods
#73898
Overall Influence
1952 - 2009 (57 years)
Gordon Woods was an American veterinary scientist who co-created Idaho Gem, the world's first cloned mule. Idaho Gem was the first clone born in the horse family. Early life Woods was raised in northern Idaho. He obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho. Woods received a doctorate of veterinary medicine from Colorado State University. He later obtained a second doctorate in reproductive biology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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Arnold Geering
1902 - 1982 (80 years)
Arnold Geering was a Swiss musicologist and philologist. Born in Basel, Geering was a son of and the brother of . He studied musicology and philology at the University of Basel, where he received his doctorate in 1931 and his habilitation in 1947. From 1950 to 1972, he was professor of musicology at the University of Bern. From 1948 to 1951, he was secretary of the International Musicological Society and from 1949 to 1963 director of the Schweizerisches Volksliedarchiv. Geering edited the works of Ludwig Senfl.
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Angela Davis
#190894
Overall Influence
#18142
Otto Gussmann
1869 - 1926 (57 years)
Otto Friedrich Gussmann was a German decorative artist, designer, and art professor. Biography His father was a pastor. After completing secondary school, he began an apprenticeship with a decorative painter in Stuttgart. He also took classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule . In 1892, he moved to the teaching institute at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. Four years later, he began studying at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.
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Theodore Marier
#155657
Overall Influence
1912 - 2001 (89 years)
Theodore Norbert Marier was a church musician, educator, arranger and scholar of Gregorian Chant. He founded St. Paul's Choir School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1963, and served as the second president of the Church Music Association of America.
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William Polk
1758 - 1834 (76 years)
Colonel William Polk was a North Carolina banker, educational administrator, political leader, renowned Continental officer in the War for American Independence, and survivor of the 1777/1778 encampment at Valley Forge.
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Justin Lewis
#34642
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Justin Lewis FLSW is a Professor of Communication and Creative Industries at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He is the Director of Clwstwr, an Arts and Humanities Research Council and Welsh Government funded Research & Development innovation centre for the Screen and News sectors and Media Cymru, a £50 million, 23 partner consortium, funded by UK Research and Innovation, Cardiff Capital Region and Welsh Government, designed to boost inclusive and sustainable media sector innovation in Wales. He is also Chief Field Editor for Frontiers in Comm...
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James Olson
#146917
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
James Olson is an American philosopher and author. A generalist focused on psychological aspects of the brain, neuropsychology, Olson explores the brain's role in influencing the nature of human consciousness, thought, and behavior. In particular, he seeks to understand how genetic dominance and functional lateralization combine to create a series of inheritable default brain-operating systems to help guide perception and response. Olson is the author of Whole Brain Thinking Can Save the Future , a book that seeks to explain human behavior by focusing on functional differences in the brain's ...
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Roger Stritmatter
#80680
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Roger A. Stritmatter is a Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University and the former general editor of Brief Chronicles, a delayed open access journal covering the Shakespeare authorship question from 2009 to 2016. He was a founder of the modern Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization that promotes Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of William Shakespeare. He is one of the leading modern-day advocates of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, and has been called the “first professional Oxfordian scholar”.
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Paul Laird
#83555
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Paul Robert Laird is an American musicologist at the University of Kansas born in Louisville, Kentucky. Education Raised in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey, Laird graduated in 1976 from Bridgewater-Raritan High School East, where he participated in the New Jersey All-State Orchestra.
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John Abbott
#135680
Overall Influence
1905 - 1996 (91 years)
John Albert Chamberlain Kefford was an English actor professionally known as John Abbott. His memorable roles include the invalid Frederick Fairlie in the 1948 film The Woman in White and the pacifist Ayelborne in the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy". He also played Sesmar on an episode of Lost in Space, "The Dream Monster", in 1966. Abbott was known as a Shakespearean actor.
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Olav Gurvin
1893 - 1974 (81 years)
Olav Gurvin was a Norwegian musicologist, a professor at the University of Oslo from 1957. He co-edited the first Norwegian music encyclopedia in 1949, and edited the magazine Norsk Musikkliv from 1942 to 1951.
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