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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18201
Paul Loye
1861 - 1890 (29 years)
Paul Loye was a French physician and "préparateur" for various physiological courses at the Sorbonne in the 1880s. His greatest contribution lay in his observations on the functions and organization of the brain and nervous system.
Go to Profile#18202
Rudolph August Witthaus
1846 - 1915 (69 years)
Rudolph August Witthaus Jr. was an American physician, chemist, and toxicologist. He was the top authority on poisons in the United States and was a forensic toxicologist in many important capital murder cases of the late19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a survivor of the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre.
Go to Profile#18203
Roscoe Ates
1895 - 1962 (67 years)
Roscoe Blevel Ates was an American vaudeville performer, actor of stage and screen, comedian and musician who primarily featured in western films and television. He was best known as western character Soapy Jones. He was also billed as Rosco Ates.
Go to Profile#18204
Marriott Fawckner Nicholls
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Sir Marriott Fawckner Nicholls CBE, FRCS, was an English surgeon who specialised in the genitourinary tract. He served in the British Army in both the First and Second World Wars and was dean of the medical school at St George's Hospital for 20 years. At the age of 64 he became professor of surgery at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, where he maintained the position until his death five years later.
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Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, of Minto
1722 - 1777 (55 years)
Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, was born at Minto, Roxburghshire, and was a Scottish statesman, philosopher and poet. Early life Elliot was born in September 1722 in Minto, Roxburghshire. He was one of nine children born to Helen Steuart and Sir Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Baronet, of Minto.
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Philip Levine
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Philip Levine was an immuno-hematologist whose clinical research advanced knowledge on the Rhesus factor, Hemolytic disease of the newborn and blood transfusion. Life and career Levine was born in Kletsk, near Minsk , then in the Russian Empire. He moved with his family to New York when he was 8 years old where his family took on a more English sounding surname. The family settled in Brooklyn where Levine graduated from Boys' High School. He received a bachelor's degree at City College and a master's degree and, in 1923, an M.D. degree at Cornell University Medical School. About 1925, Levine became assistant to Karl Landsteiner at the Rockefeller Institute, New York City.
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Francesco Pucci
1543 - 1597 (54 years)
Francesco Pucci was an Italian philosopher and humanist. Life Pucci was born in Figline Valdarno. He was of the same family as the Cardinals Lorenzo Pucci, Roberto Pucci, and Antonio Pucci. He worked began in a mercantile house at Lyon and came into contact with the Protestant Reformation. He made his way to London, where he became acquainted with Antonio de Corro.
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Alfred Szendrei
1884 - 1976 (92 years)
Alfred Szendrei, also Alfred Sendrey and Aladár Szendrei was an American musicologist, organist, conductor, composer of Hungarian origin. He was one of the leading conductors and pioneers of German radio. In exile he changed his Hungarian surname "Szendrei" to the Americanized spelling "Sendrey".
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Rudolf Schirmer
1831 - 1896 (65 years)
Rudolf Schirmer was a German ophthalmologist from Greifswald. He initially studied medicine at the University of Greifswald, then furthered his studies at Göttingen, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. Later he returned to Greifswald, where he was habilitated for ophthalmology in 1860. In 1873 he attained the chair of ophthalmology, a position he held until his retirement in 1893. In 1885, he succeeded philosopher Wilhelm Schuppe as university rector at Greifswald.
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Henning Jakob Henrik Lund
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Henning Jakob Henrik Lund or Intel'eraq was a Greenlandic lyricist, painter, and pastor. He wrote the lyrics to "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit," in the indigenous Greenlandic language, an Eskimo–Aleut language. The song was adopted as the national anthem of Greenland.
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Cornelius Rea Agnew
1830 - 1888 (58 years)
Cornelius Rea Agnew was an American surgeon. Early years Agnew was born in New York City, the son of William Agnew and Elizabeth Thompson Agnew; his ancestors, Huguenot, Irish and Scotch, came to America from time to time during the 18th century. He entered the Columbia College in 1845 and graduated from there in 1849 with the degree of A.B. He then received the degree of M.D. from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1852. In 1856, he married Mary Nash, daughter of Lora Nash, a New York merchant.
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Friedrich Martius
1850 - 1923 (73 years)
Friedrich Martius was a German internist who was one of the pioneers of constitutional thought in medicine. He was the father of philosopher Hedwig Conrad-Martius . He studied medicine at the Pépinière in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1874. Following graduation, he served as a military doctor, and afterwards worked as an assistant in the clinic of Carl Gerhardt in Berlin. In 1887 he received his habilitation, and later was appointed personal physician to Frederick Francis III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1891 he relocated to the University of Rostock as an associate professor and director of the medical clinic.
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Robert Spittal
Robert Spittal MD FRSE was a 19th-century Scottish physician and amateur botanist. Life Spittal was born to Marion Brown and James Spittal. The family moved to 59 South Bridge in Edinburgh's Old Town in 1810.
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William of Falgar
William of Falgar was a Franciscan theologian from south-west France, a follower of Bonaventure. He entered the Franciscan Order at Toulouse. He became bishop of Viviers in 1296. Notes External links Franaut pageList of works
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Paul Silex
1858 - 1929 (71 years)
Paul Silex was a German ophthalmologist. He is known for contributions made involving war-related blindness. He studied medicine at the Universities of Halle, Berlin and Breslau, obtaining his doctorate in 1883. Afterwards he served as an assistant to ophthalmologist Ludwig Laqueur in Strasbourg, followed by several years as an assistant to Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger in Berlin.
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Peter Butterworth
1919 - 1979 (60 years)
Peter William Shorrocks Butterworth was an English actor and comedian best known for his appearances in the Carry On film series. He was also a regular on children's television and radio. Butterworth was married to actress and impressionist Janet Brown.
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Jay Webber Seaver
1855 - 1915 (60 years)
Jay Webber Seaver was an American physician and a pioneer of anthropometry. Life Seaver was born in Craftsbury, Vermont as son of William Seaver and Betsy Urie, and had four siblings. He studied at the Yale School of Medicine, where he became professor in his later life. Seaver measured the bodies of thousands of people attending the summer school resort at Chautauqua, New York., and published the results of his studies in his work Anthropometry and physical examination. A book for practical use in connection with gymnastic work and physical education.. On July 1, 1886, he married Leona Nancy...
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Alfred Charles Post
1806 - 1886 (80 years)
Alfred Charles Post was an American surgeon. Post was born in New York City. He graduated from Columbia College in 1822 and from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1827, studied in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and London .
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Wilhelm Prausnitz
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Wilhelm Prausnitz was a hygiene specialist. In 1879 he completed his university entrance examination together with Siegfried Czapski, Richard Reitzenstein and Felix Skutsch. A full professor since 1899 of hygiene and was head of the hygiene institute; the dean of the medical school at Graz, Austria, as well as a Privy Counsellor.
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Públia Hortênsia de Castro
1548 - 1595 (47 years)
Públia Hortênsia de Castro was a scholar and humanist in the court of Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal. Born in 1548 in Vila Viçosa, Portugal, she was named for Hortensia, the famous Roman orator and daughter of Quintus Hortensius, suggesting that her parents intended for her to become a well-educated woman. She evidently studied Greek and Latin, and by the time she was seventeen she was engaged in public debates on Aristotle. There are stories that, dressed as a boy and chaperoned by her brother, she attended the University of Coimbra, in Lisbon, but historians consider this unlikely....
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Laura Alberta Linton
1853 - 1915 (62 years)
Laura Alberta Linton was an American chemist and physician. Early life and education Linton was born in Mahoning County, Ohio, on April 8, 1853, the oldest child of Joseph and Christina Linton. The family were Quakers. The family farmed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before settling in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Linton graduated from the Winona Normal School in 1872, and went on to the University of Minnesota, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry.
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Rudolf Pöch
1870 - 1921 (51 years)
Rudolf Pöch was an Austrian medical doctor, anthropologist, and ethnologist. Pöch is also known as a pioneer in photography, cinematography, and audio engineering. He can be regarded as a founding father of the Institute for Anthropology and Ethnography at the University of Vienna.
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Henry Hayes Vowles
1843 - 1905 (62 years)
Henry Hayes Vowles was an English author, theologian and a Wesleyan Minister. He also published religious poetry. Parents He was the son of Henry Vowles of Bath and Mary Yeoman Harding of "The Chancellor" Wanstrow, Somerset. The parents of Henry Vowles were James Vowles of 2 Quiet Street Bath, and Martha Edney . James Vowles was the son of William Vowles of Walcot and Hannah Hancock. William Vowles was the son of James Vowles and Martha Jane married at Bath Abbey on 6 August 1728.
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Heinrich von Rustige
1810 - 1900 (90 years)
Heinrich Franz Gaudenz von Rustige was a German painter specializing in historical subjects and genres. Life and work From 1828, he was a student of Wilhelm von Schadow at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. After 1832, he began participating in exhibitions there.
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Edward Mott Moore
1814 - 1902 (88 years)
Edward Mott Moore was an American surgeon. He served as president of the American Medical Association and as president of the Board of Trustees of the University of Rochester. One type of radial fracture is named for him.
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Ferdinand Gumprecht
1864 - 1947 (83 years)
Ferdinand Adolph Gumprecht was a German internist born in Berlin. He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, Göttingen and Jena, earning his doctorate at the latter institution in 1889. In 1890 he became an assistant at the Krankenhaus Friedrichshain in Berlin, followed by work at the pathological institute and at the medical clinic at the University of Jena, where he served as an assistant to Paul Fürbringer and Roderich Stintzing .
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Tommaso del Garbo
1305 - 1370 (65 years)
Tommaso del Garbo or Thomas de Garbo was a professor of medicine in Perugia and Bologna. He was the son of the physician Dino del Garbo and a friend of the poet Petrarch. It is said that the physician Pietro da Tossignano studied under Garbo at the University of Bologna.
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Pierre Bardin
1590 - 1635 (45 years)
Pierre Bardin , born in Rouen, was a French philosopher and mathematician and Doctor of Letters. He was one of the first members of the Académie française and the first occupant of Seat 29.
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Amico Bignami
1862 - 1929 (67 years)
Amico Bignami was an Italian physician, pathologist, malariologist and sceptic. He was professor of pathology at Sapienza University of Rome. His most important scientific contribution was in the discovery of transmission of human malarial parasite in the mosquito.
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Peter F. Rothermel
1812 - 1895 (83 years)
Peter Frederick Rothermel was an American painter. Biography Rothermel was born in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania on July 8, 1812, although various sources give his birth year as 1813, 1814, and 1817. The artist's gravestone in Philadelphia gives the date as 1812. He had a common-school education, and studied land surveying. At age 20, he moved to Philadelphia and became a sign painter. Then at age 22, he took up the study of art. He was instructed in drawing by John Rubens Smith, and subsequently became a pupil of Bass Otis in Philadelphia.
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William S. Dix
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
William Shepherd Dix was a scholar and librarian who had a 22-year career as Librarian at Princeton University in New Jersey, without a degree in library science. His contributions to the field of librarianship, however, are varied and notable, making him worthy of recognition in the American Libraries' 100 most important figures.
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Josef Matyáš Trenkwald
1824 - 1897 (73 years)
Josef Matyáš Trenkwald was a Czech-Austrian painter. He was best known for his religious and historical paintings. Biography Josef Matyáš Trenkwald was born on 13 March 1824 in Prague. His father was a tax commissioner. He studied art with Christian Ruben at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague from 1841 to 1851, where he began painting scenes from Czech history, especially the era of the Hussite wars. In 1852, he moved to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and illustrated the Book of Songs by Heinrich Heine.
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Douglas Argyll Robertson
1837 - 1909 (72 years)
Douglas Moray Cooper Lamb Argyll Robertson FRSE, FRCSEd LLD was a Scottish ophthalmologist and surgeon. He introduced physostigmine into ophthalmic practice and the Argyll Robertson pupil is named after him. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
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Bertha Van Hoosen
1863 - 1952 (89 years)
Bertha Van Hoosen was an American surgeon devoted to women's health issues and the advancement of fellow women surgeons. Among other notable achievements, Van Hoosen was the first president and a founder of the American Medical Women's Association in 1915 and the first woman to be head of a medical division at a coeducational university. She published an autobiography detailing her personal experiences in medicine, Petticoat Surgeon.
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Tang Zhen
1630 - 1704 (74 years)
Tang Zhen , born Tang Dadao , courtesy name Zhuwan , was a Chinese philosopher and educator born in Dazhou during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. His given name was Dahao, but later he changed his given name to Zhen and his courtesy name to Puyuan .
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Fred Kelsey
1884 - 1961 (77 years)
Frederick Alvin Kelsey was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. Kelsey directed one- and two-reel films for Universal Film Manufacturing Company. He appeared in more than 400 films between 1911 and 1958, often playing policemen or detectives. He also directed 37 films between 1914 and 1920. Kelsey was caricatured as the detective in the 1943 MGM cartoon Who Killed Who? directed by Tex Avery. He was born in Sandusky, Ohio and died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Hollywood, California, aged 77.
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Edward S. Farrow
1855 - 1926 (71 years)
Edward Samuel Farrow, born in Worcester County, Maryland, was an author and a commander in the American Indian Wars of the late 19th century. He is particularly known for his service in the Sheepeater Indian War. Farrow was a graduate of the West Point Military Academy in 1876, and was a commanding officer of Indian Scouts in the Departments of the Columbia. He went on to become Assistant Instructor of Tactics at the US Military Academy , and published prolifically on the subject of Native American Indians, Military Training, and Mountain Scouting.
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Albert Pitres
1848 - 1928 (80 years)
Jean Marie Marcel Albert Pitres was a French neurological physician. He was born in Bordeaux and received his training in Paris, where he was the student of Jean Martin Charcot and Louis-Antoine Ranvier . He served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bordeaux – appointed 1885.
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Douglas Volk
1856 - 1935 (79 years)
Stephen Arnold Douglas Volk was an American portrait and figure painter, muralist, and educator. He taught at the Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York, and was one of the founders of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. He and his wife Marion established a summer artist colony in western Maine.
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Peter de Rivo
1420 - 1500 (80 years)
Peter de Rivo was a Flemish scholastic philosopher, teaching at the Old University of Leuven. His views on future contingents were controversial, being opposed by Henry of Zomeren, also at Leuven . De Rivo went to Rome in 1472 to defend his views to Pope Sixtus IV; they were condemned in 1473. Under pressure from the influence of Cardinal Bessarion to whom Henry had as secretary, de Rivo retracted partially his opinions in 1473, and more fully three years later. This meant that views going back at least to Peter Auriol, that future contingents lacked a truth value, had become heretical in th...
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Henry Beeching
1859 - 1919 (60 years)
Henry Charles Beeching was a British clergyman, author and poet, who was Dean of Norwich from 1911 to 1919. Biography H.C Beeching was born on 15 May 1859 in Sussex, the son of J. P. G. Beeching of Bexhill. He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and began work in a Liverpool parish at Mossley Hill. He was Rector of Yattendon from 1885 to 1900; Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1900; professor of Pastoral Theology at King's College London from 1900 to 1903; Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn from 1900 to 1903; Canon of Westminster Abbey from October 1902 until 1911 and Dean of Norwich from 1911 until his death.
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George Smith
1713 - 1776 (63 years)
George Smith was an English landscape painter and poet, known as "George Smith of Chichester". He and his two brothers, all artists, are known as the "Smiths of Chichester". Life and work George was born at Chichester in Sussex, where his father, William Smith, was a tradesman and Baptist minister. He was the second and most gifted of three brothers, who all practised painting and were known as 'the Smiths of Chichester.' When a boy he was placed with his uncle, a cooper, but, preferring art, became a pupil of his brother William, whom he accompanied to Gloucester; there and in other places ...
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William Manderstown
1485 - 1552 (67 years)
William Manderstown was a Scottish philosopher and Rector of the University of Paris. Life He was born in the diocese of St. Andrews, probably at the town of Manderston, Stirlingshire. Educated apparently at St. Andrews, he then attended the University of Paris, where he graduated licentiate in medicine, and became one of the school of Terminists . On 15 December 1525, he succeeded Jean Tixier de Ravisi as rector of the University of Paris. Before 1539 he returned to Scotland, where he and John Mair co-founded a bursary or chaplaincy in St. Salvator's, and endowed it with the rents of houses in South Street, St.
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Wilhelm Weismann
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Wilhelm Weismann was a German composer and musicologist. Life On 20 September, Weismann was born in Alfdorf/Württemberg on the plateau of Welzheim forest. His parents ran a general store. His mother, sister of the renowned musicologist Alfred Heuß, encouraged his artistic inclinations and he received his first piano and music lessons. At an early age the son of a merchant showed his musical interest by composing small choral pieces.
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Grace Arabell Goldsmith
1904 - 1975 (71 years)
Grace Arabell Goldsmith was a U.S. physician best known for her research on nutritional deficiency diseases, B-complex vitamins, and the vitamin enrichment of foods. She identified the cause of the disease pellagra.
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Heinrich Philipp August Damerow
1798 - 1866 (68 years)
Heinrich Philipp August Damerow was a German psychiatrist born in Stettin, Province of Pomerania, Prussia . He made significant contributions in the field of institutional psychiatry. In 1822 he earned his doctorate in Berlin, where he was a student of Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher and psychiatrist Anton Ludwig Ernst Horn. He continued his education in Paris, where he studied under Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, and at the Siegburg asylum north of Bonn, where he met with Carl Wigand Maximilian Jacobi. In 1830 he became an associate professor, and in 1836 was appointed director of Provinzial-Irrenanstalt near Halle.
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Fabrizio Mordente
1532 - 1608 (76 years)
Fabrizio Mordente was an Italian mathematician. He is best known for his invention of the "proportional eight-pointed compass" which has two arms with cursors that allow the solution of problems in measuring the circumference, area and angles of a circle. In 1567 he published a single sheet treatise in Venice showing illustrations of his device.
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Eliza Maria Mosher
1846 - 1928 (82 years)
Eliza Maria Mosher was a United States physician, inventor, medical writer, and educator whose wide-ranging medical career included an educational focus on physical fitness and health maintenance. She was the first Dean of Women at the University of Michigan, and the first woman professor to be recognized by the university.
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Arthur Thost
1854 - 1937 (83 years)
Hermann Arthur Thost was a German physician and otolaryngologist. He studied medicine at several universities in Europe, receiving his doctorate at Heidelberg University in 1879. After graduation, he remained in Heidelberg as an assistant to pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich. Later on, he was associated with the General Hospital in Eppendorf, then in 1919 was appointed an associate professor of otolaryngology at the newly established University of Hamburg. He was interested in local politics, being known for his advocacy of public medical insurance.
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Walter Kaufmann
1907 - 1984 (77 years)
Walter Kaufmann was a composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, librettist and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia , he trained in Prague and Berlin before fleeing the Nazi persecution of Jews to work in Bombay until Indian Independence. He then moved to London and Canada before settling in the USA as a professor of musicology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana in 1957. In 1964, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
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