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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18351
Virginia Lacy Jones
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.
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Morrill Wyman
1812 - 1903 (91 years)
Morrill Wyman was an American physician and social reformer. Best known today for his work on hay fever, he was one of the most respected doctors of his time, a social reformer, Harvard overseer, hospital president, and author in his long lifetime.
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#18354
Heraclides of Aenus
350 BC - 400 BC (-50 years)
Heraclides of Aenus was one of Plato's students. Around 360 BC, he and his brother Python assassinated Cotys I, the ruler of Thrace.
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Alfred Hoernlé
1880 - 1943 (63 years)
Reinhold Friedrich Alfred Hoernlé , usually referred to as Alfred Hoernlé, was a South African philosopher and social reformer. Early life Hoernlé was born in Bonn, Germany, and was the son of the Indologist A.F.R. Rudolf Hoernlé . His father was a missionary-scholar associated with the London Missionary Society and, therefore, Alfred was a British subject by birth.
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Elli Alexiou
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Elli Alexiou was a Greek author, playwright and journalist. The daughter of a printer and publisher, Alexiou was born in Heraklion, Crete. She taught French in a high school, and was politically active, joining the Communist Party in 1928 and working with the National Liberation Front resistance during World War II. After the war, she received a scholarship from the French government and studied in Paris. She was stripped of Greek citizenship in 1950, living as an exile until it was restored in 1965.
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Johann Hasler
1548 - 1593 (45 years)
Johann Hasler , also known as Haslerus, was a 16th-century Swiss theologian and physician. He is known for his association with a group of antitrinitarians including Johann Sylvan and Adam Neuser and for developing Galen's concept of heat and cold into the idea of a scale of temperature.
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Hosmer Allen Johnson
1822 - 1891 (69 years)
Hosmer Allen Johnson, M.D., L.L.D. was an American physician, academic, and Mason from New York. Badly injured on the family farm, Johnson turned to teaching to support himself. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, to attend Rush Medical College. There, he became an understudy of William B. Herrick and joined his medical practice. Receiving a Doctor of Medicine in 1852, Johnson was named Lecturer on Physiology at Rush, eventually chairing a department there. In 1859, he co-founded the Chicago Medical College at Lind University, which later became the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.
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Wilhelm Uhthoff
1853 - 1927 (74 years)
Wilhelm Uhthoff was a German ophthalmologist born in Klein-Warin. In 1877 earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, and later became a professor of ophthalmology at the Universities of Marburg and Breslau , where he succeeded Carl Friedrich Richard Förster .
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Carl Steffeck
1818 - 1890 (72 years)
Carl Constantin Heinrich Steffeck was a German painter and graphic artist. He was especially well known for his paintings of horses and dogs. Life He was the son of a "gentleman of independent means" who was interested in art. While he was still in the Gymnasium he sat in on classes at the Prussian Academy of Arts. In 1837, he entered the master class of horse painter Franz Krüger and later worked in the studios of Carl Joseph Begas. He went to Paris in 1839, where he spent two months studying with Paul Delaroche and was influenced by the work of Horace Vernet. From 1840 to 1842, he lived in ...
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Rajmund Zamanja
1587 - 1647 (60 years)
Rajmund Zamanja or Raymundo Giamagnik was a Croatian theologian, philosopher and linguist from Dubrovnik. Biography He was born in Dubrovnik in 1587. He joined the Dominicans in 1601 from which he learned philosophy and theology. Four years later, in 1605, he went to the end of the study in Bologna. In 1612 he returned to Dubrovnik as a lecturer. Three times he was a general vicar of the Dominicans. Fourteen years later, in 1626, he established the first public gymnasium on the ground floor of the Dominican monastery . There he was a teacher and he emphasized the importance of learning Croat...
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Susan Hayhurst
1820 - 1909 (89 years)
Susan Hayhurst was an American physician, pharmacist, and educator, and the first woman to earn a pharmaceutical degree in the United States. Early life and education Susan Hayhurst was born in Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Quakers Thomas and Martha Hayhurst. She attended school in Wilmington, Delaware and excelled in mathematics. While a young girl, she worked as a teacher at country schools in Bucks County. Taking an interest in chemistry and physiology, she enrolled at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in medicine in...
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Hellmuth Christian Wolff
1906 - 1988 (82 years)
Hellmuth Christian Wolff was a German composer and musicologist. As a young man he studied music in Berlin and Kiel. He later taught music in Leipzig from 1954-1971. He is particularly remembered for his numerous publications on the history of opera and in particular the subject of baroque opera. Also of interest, are his writings on the visual aspects of music which led him to study iconography, including a pictorial history of opera.
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Alice DeLamar
1895 - 1983 (88 years)
Alice DeLamar was the heiress to Joseph Raphael De Lamar. She was a patron of the arts, and helped fund plays by Mercedes de Acosta. DeLamar also donated some of her land in Palm Beach, Florida to the Audubon Society in the 1960s.
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Carl Julius Salomonsen
1847 - 1924 (77 years)
Carl Julius Salomonsen was a Danish bacteriologist who is considered the father of bacteriology in Denmark. He developed techniques for isolating microbes and for extracting pure cultures apart from some staining techniques.
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Isaac ben Joseph ibn Pulgar
1201 - 1500 (299 years)
Isaac ben Joseph ibn Pulgar or Isaac ben Joseph ibn Polkar or Isaac Polqar was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, poet, and controversialist, who flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century. Life Where he lived is not known, for though "Avilla" is given at the end of his translation of Al-Ghazali's Maqasid, the town-name as well as the date is probably the copyist's. He was a warm defender of Isaac Albalag, and continued his translation of Al-Ghazali's-work. It seems from his Ezer ha-Dat that he had been a friend of Abner of Burgos; but when the latter, after conversion, sent him one of ...
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Iacob Felix
1832 - 1905 (73 years)
Iacob Dimitrie Felix was a Romanian physician and hygienist. Biography Born in Hořice in the Kingdom of Bohemia, he graduated from high school in Prague and enrolled in the medical faculty of Vienna University. There, he became a doctor in medicine and surgery, as well as a specialist in obstetrics. He came from a Jewish family but converted to Christianity during his university days. During the subsequent decades he lived in Romania, he neither discussed his Jewish background nor adopted an attitude suggesting a rejection of Jewishness.
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Franz Meyen
1804 - 1840 (36 years)
Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen was a Prussian physician and botanist. Meyen was born in Tilsit, East Prussia. In 1830 he wrote Phytotomie, the first major study of plant anatomy. Between 1830 and 1832, he took part in an expedition to South America on board the Prinzess Luise, visiting Peru and Bolivia, describing species then new to science such as the Humboldt penguin.
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Friedrich Smend
1893 - 1980 (87 years)
Friedrich Smend was a German Protestant theologian and librarian at the Preußische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, publishing a catalogue of the writings of Adolf von Harnack. He was a liturgist, teaching as professor at the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin. His publications focus on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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Robert Cyril Layton Perkins
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Robert Cyril Layton Perkins FRS was a distinguished British entomologist, ornithologist, and naturalist noted for his work on the fauna of the islands of Hawaii and on Hymenoptera. He is not to be confused with his son John Frederick Perkins, also a hymenopterist.
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Fausto Torrefranca
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Fausto Torrefranca Italian musicologist and critic. Torrefranca studied in Turin and in Germany, he was also the music librarian at the conservatories in Naples and in Milan. He taught at the Catholic University of Milan and at the University of Florence.
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William Goodell
1829 - 1894 (65 years)
William Goodell was an eminent American gynecologist from Philadelphia, best remembered for first describing what is now referred to as Goodell's sign. Biography William Goodell was born in Malta, the son of missionary William Goodell, and studied at William's College, Massachusetts and Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, graduating in 1854. He worked in Constantinople until 1861. He then worked in general practice in West Chester until he was appointed Lecturer on Obstetric Diseases of Women at the University of Pennsylvania in 1870, and then Clinical Professor in Diseases of Women and ...
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Vedanidhi Tirtha
Shri Vedanidhi Tirtha , was a Hindu philosopher, scholar, theologian and saint. He served as the pontiff of Shri Uttaradi Math from 1631-1635. He was the seventeenth in succession from Madhvacharya.
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Chrysanthius
310 - 390 (80 years)
Chrysanthius of Sardis was a Greek philosopher of the 4th century AD who studied at the school of Iamblichus. He was one of the favorite pupils of Aedesius, and devoted himself mainly to the mystical side of Neoplatonism. The Roman emperor Julian went to him by the advice of Aedesius, and subsequently invited him to come to the court and assist in the projected resuscitation of Hellenism. But Chrysanthius declined, citing the strength of unfavorable omens, though he probably realized the revival was unlikely to bear fruit.
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Aristonymus of Athens
Aristonymus of Athens was sent by Plato to reform the constitution of the Arcadiansns. Aristonymus was the father of Clitophon. Sources Plato, Republic, 328bPlutarch, Reply to Colotes, 1126c
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Archedemus of Tarsus
300 BC - 200 BC (100 years)
Archedemus of Tarsus was a Stoic philosopher who flourished around 140 BC. Two of his works: On the Voice and On Elements , are mentioned by Diogenes Laërtius. Archedemus is probably the same person as the Archedemus, whom Plutarch calls an Athenian, and who, he states, went into Parthia and founded a school of Stoic philosophers at Babylon.
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Epigenes, son of Antiphon
450 BC - 500 BC (-50 years)
Epigenes , son of Antiphon, of the deme of Cephisia, is mentioned by Plato among the disciples of Socrates, who were with him in his last moments. Xenophon represents Socrates as remonstrating with him on his neglect of the bodily exercises requisite for health and strength.
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Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr.
1887 - 1969 (82 years)
Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. , was an American conservationist. He was longtime president of the New York Zoological Society . Biography Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1887. Born into the wealthy and influential Osborn family, he was the son of Henry Fairfield Osborn, a prominent paleontologist, eugenicist and "distinguished Aryan enthusiast". After obtaining his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University, he went on to study biology at Cambridge University but then pursued a career in international business. Towards the end of the First World War, he served bri...
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William C. F. Robinson
1834 - 1897 (63 years)
Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson was an Irish colonial administrator and musical composer, who wrote several well-known songs. He was born in County Westmeath, Ireland, and was educated at home and at the Royal Naval School. He joined the Colonial Office service in 1858 and became the president of Montserrat in 1862.
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Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern
1845 - 1900 (55 years)
Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern was a German internist born in Ingolstadt. In 1869 he received his doctorate from the University of Munich, later working as an assistant of clinical medicine in Munich under Karl von Pfeufer and Joseph von Lindwurm . After the death of Felix von Niemeyer , he served as interim head of the medical clinic in Tübingen prior to the appointment of Carl von Liebermeister as Niemeyer's permanent replacement. Leichtenstern remained at the Tübingen clinic for several years, afterwards serving as head physician of internal medicine at the city hospital in Cologne .
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Philip Edward Smith
1884 - 1970 (86 years)
Philip Edward Smith was an American endocrinologist who is best known for his work studying the pituitary gland. He developed methods for removing pituitary glands from tadpoles and rats and showed that such removal resulted in cessation of growth, and atrophy of other endocrine glands such as the adrenal cortex and the reproductive organs. After graduating with a PhD in Anatomy from Cornell University in 1912, he joined the Department of Anatomy, Berkeley California until 1926. From 1927 to 1952 he served as Professor of Anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
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Christian Friedrich Michaelis
1770 - 1834 (64 years)
Christian Friedrich Michaelis was a German philosopher, music aesthete, and essayist. Life Michaelis was the son of a doctor and studied at the University of Leipzig from 1787, and in Jena from 1792. In 1793 he became a private lecturer in Leipzig and published numerous philosophical articles and writings, including the work Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst . He was also a frequent contributor to the music journal Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. His hopes of becoming a professor failed, presumably due to his closeness to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was dismissed in 1799 as a result of the atheis...
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Richard William Hunt
1908 - 1979 (71 years)
Richard William Hunt was a scholar, grammarian, palaeographer, editor, and author of a number of books about medieval history. He began his career as a lecturer in palaeography at Liverpool University, and worked at Bush House during World War II. In 1945 he obtained the position of Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, and he relocated to Oxford, remaining in the position until 1975.
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Thomas Gann
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Thomas William Francis Gann was a medical doctor by profession, but is best remembered for his work as an amateur archaeologist exploring ruins of the Maya civilization. Personal history Thomas Gann was born in Murrisk Abbey, County Mayo, Ireland, the son of William Gann of Whitstable, England, and Rose Garvey of Murrisk Abbey. He was raised in Whitstable, where his parents were prominent in the social life of the town. Gann trained in medicine in Middlesex, England.
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Simon of Tournai
1130 - 1201 (71 years)
Simon of Tournai was a professor at the University of Paris in the late twelfth century. His date of birth is uncertain, but he was teaching before 1184, as he signed a document at the same time as Gerard de Pucelle, the Bishop of Coventry, who died that year.
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Jethro Bithell
1878 - 1962 (84 years)
Jethro Bithell was a collier's son, born at Birchall Farm, Hindley, near Wigan. He graduated with first-class honours in Modern Languages from Owens College, Manchester, in 1900. After gaining his M.A. there, he continued his studies in Munich and Copenhagen and then returned to Manchester as Lecturer in German. In 1910 he was appointed Head of the German Department at Birkbeck College, London, where he remained until his retirement in 1938.
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Martha May Eliot
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Martha May Eliot , was a foremost pediatrician and specialist in public health, an assistant director for WHO, and an architect of New Deal and postwar programs for maternal and child health. Her first important research, community studies of rickets in New Haven, Connecticut, and Puerto Rico, explored issues at the heart of social medicine. Together with Edwards A. Park, her research established that public health measures could prevent and reverse the early onset of rickets.
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Wilfrid Zogbaum
1915 - 1965 (50 years)
Wilfrid "Zog" Zogbaum was an American painter, sculptor, and educator. He was also a commercial photographer in the late 1940s, and started a sculpture studio in Montauk. Life Wilfrid Zogbaum was born in 1915 in Newport, Rhode Island. Zogbaum's father was Admiral Rufus F. Zogbaum, Jr., and his grandfather was painter Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum.
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Daniel Blain
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
Daniel Blain, M.D. was an American physician and was the first medical director of the American Psychiatric Association , the first professional medical society, founded in the United States in 1844. He may be credited with the leadership which brought changes in the practice of psychiatry after World War II and in advocating the treatment for people with mental disorders.
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Phaedrus the Epicurean
138 BC - 70 BC (68 years)
Phaedrus was an Epicurean philosopher. He was the head of the Epicurean school in Athens after the death of Zeno of Sidon around 75 BC, until his own death in 70 or 69 BC. He was a contemporary of Cicero, who became acquainted with him in his youth at Rome. During his residence in Athens Cicero renewed his acquaintance with him. Phaedrus was at that time an old man, and was already a leading figure of the Epicurean school. He was also on terms of friendship with Velleius, whom Cicero introduces as the defender of the Epicurean tenets in the De Natura Deorum, and especially with Atticus. Cicero especially praises his agreeable manners.
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Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert
1768 - 1837 (69 years)
Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert was a French dermatologist born in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, Aveyron. He was a pioneer of dermatology. Life and work Originally planning to enter the priesthood, Alibert did not begin studying medicine until he was 26 years old. As a medical student in Paris, he studied with renowned physicians that included Pierre-Joseph Desault , Jean-Nicolas Corvisart , Xavier Bichat and Philippe Pinel . In 1801 he was appointed to the Hôpital Saint-Louis , where he administered to patients with skin disorders, syphilis and leprosy. Following the Restoration of the French monarchy, Alibert became a personal physician to Louis XVIII.
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Ludwig Thienemann
1793 - 1858 (65 years)
Friedrich August Ludwig Thienemann was a German physician and naturalist. Ludwig Thienemann was the son of Johann August Thienemann and Johanne Eleonora Friederike née Schreiber . He graduated as a doctor in 1819 and then travelled in Europe for two years, spending thirteen months in Iceland. He published a report on his travel in 1824–1827.
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Isaac Pennington
1745 - 1817 (72 years)
See Isaac Penington for other people with a similar name.Sir Isaac Pennington was an English physician, of whom there are two portraits in the National Portrait Gallery. Isaac Pennington was educated at Sedbergh School and St John's College, Cambridge. From 1773 to 1817 he was physician to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and from 1793 to 1817 Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University.
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Edmund Rose
1836 - 1914 (78 years)
Edmund Rose was a German surgeon who was a native of Berlin. He studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg, and subsequently was an assistant to surgeon Robert Ferdinand Wilms in Berlin from 1860 until 1864. From 1867 to 1881, he was a professor of surgery at the University Hospital of Zurich, and afterwards a professor at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin . Among his assistants at Zurich was surgeon Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein.
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Ercole Sassonia
1551 - 1607 (56 years)
Ercole Sassonia, also known as Hercules de Saxonia, Hercules Saxonia Patavinus, or Hercules of Saxony , was an Italian physician. Sassoonia was born and died in Padua, and was one of the great Italian clinicians of the Renaissance. He was educated in his hometown, and graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Padua. In 1575 he became the professor of medical practice at the university. Becoming famous as a teacher, he was invited to Vienna by Emperor Maximilian II, where he remained until 1600. His chief scientific works were in the fields of diagnostics, skin diseases, a...
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Thomas Sewall
1786 - 1845 (59 years)
Thomas Sewall was an American physician, writer and academic. He gained notoriety for being convicted of body snatching, and later went on to become a professor. Early life Thomas Sewall was on April 16, 1786, in Hallowell, Maine. In August 1812, he graduated from Harvard Medical School and began practicing medicine.
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J. Eugene Gallery
1898 - 1960 (62 years)
Joseph Eugene Gallery was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit. He studied sociology at Georgetown University, before serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. Upon his return, he graduated, and entered business in Washington, D.C. He then entered the Society of Jesus in 1931, and was later ordained a priest. He became a professor of sociology at the University of Scranton, and also worked in child welfare and in arbitrating industrial disputes. In 1947, Gallery became the president of the University of Scranton. During his presidency, the university's graduate school was established. Hi...
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William A. Pusey
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
William A. Pusey was an American physician and past president of the American Medical Association. He advocated for the use of radiation in the treatment of skin diseases and he was an expert in the study of syphilis. Pusey authored several books, including the first history of dermatology written in English.
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Rudolf Maria Holzapfel
1874 - 1930 (56 years)
Rudolf Maria Holzapfel was a Poland-born Austrian psychologist, philosopher. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times. Literary works Panidealische Psychologie der sozialen Gefühle, 1901Panideal. Das Seelenleben und seine soziale Neugestaltung, 2 vols., new ed., 1923Welterlebnis, 2 vols., 1928Nachgelassene Schriften, 1932
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Michael Moore
1640 - 1726 (86 years)
Michael Moore was an Irish priest, philosopher and educationalist. Early life Moore – generally referred to as Moore or Moor in contemporary documents – was born in Dublin about 1639. He left Ireland at a young age to be educated in Nantes and Paris, where he taught philosophy and rhetoric at the Collège des Grassins. He was proposed for the position of rector at the University of Paris in June 1677 by a faction who wished to replace the then rector, Nicholas Pieres, but felt compelled to decline the offer.
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