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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18351
Jim Newhook
#186774
Overall Influence
1915 - 1997 (82 years)
James Carl Newhook was a New Zealand veterinary scientist, university lecturer and writer.
Go to Profile#18352
Jan Krzysztof Damel
1780 - 1840 (60 years)
Jan Krzysztof Damel, also known as Jonas Damelis and Johann Damehl in other languages was a Polish neoclassicist artist in the age of Partitions, associated with the School of Art at Vilnius University .
Go to Profile#18353
Cheryl Metoyer-Duran
#118201
Overall Influence
Cheryl Metoyer is an Eastern Band Cherokee researcher and professor of library and information science. Her research is focused on Indigenous systems of knowledge, especially in relation to American Indian and Alaskan tribal nations, as well as ethics and leadership in cultural communities. She holds the position of Associate Professor Emeritus and the Director of the Indigenous Information Research Group at the iSchool at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#18354
Jan van der Hoeve
1878 - 1952 (74 years)
Jan van der Hoeve was a Dutch ophthalmologist. He is recognised for his concept of the phakomatoses, often called neurocutaneous syndromes. Van der Hoeve graduated from the University of Leiden and received his doctorate at the University of Bern. He became a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Groningen and later at the University of Leiden. Van der Hoeve became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923. He was elected president of the Physical Section of the institute in 1932.
Go to Profile#18355
Ralina Joseph
#190134
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Ralina Joseph is an American academic. She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, examining representations of race, gender, and sexuality in popular media.
Go to Profile#18356
Harry Medovy
#108944
Overall Influence
1904 - 1995 (91 years)
Harry Medovy, OC was a Canadian pediatrician and academic. Born in the Russian Empire, his parents moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba when Medovy was one to escape persecution against Jews. He studied at the University of Manitoba receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1923 and a Doctor of Medicine in 1928. During World War II, he served with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. In 1932, he joined the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Manitoba and was department head from 1954 to 1970. In 1954, he was appointed head of the Department of Pediatrics and Pediatrician-in-Chief of the Children's...
Go to Profile#18357
Alain Vadeboncoeur
#75176
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alain Vadeboncoeur is a Canadian emergency physician and science communicator living in Montreal. In addition to have built and lead the Montreal Heart Institute's emergency department from 1999 to 2021, he is active in the research community and is a frequent speaker in French-language media, dispelling myths about health issues, and very active in social media. He is also an author and a playwright. His social commitment to the public health system has made him more visible in Quebec news.
Go to Profile#18358
Marguerite Littleton Kearney
#27902
Overall Influence
Marguerite T. Littleton Kearney is an American nurse scientist. She is the director of the National Institute of Nursing Research's Division of Extramural Science Programs. Littleton Kearney was the associate dean for research at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Graduate School of Nursing.
Go to Profile#18359
Fares Sayegh
#189059
Overall Influence
Fares E. Sayegh is a Greek orthopaedic surgeon at the G. Papanikolaou General Hospital and a professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, both in Thessaloniki, Greece. He has an h-index of 18 His most-cited articles are:
Go to Profile#18360
Petra Lewis
#149112
Overall Influence
Petra Lewis is a Professor of Radiology and Obstetrics at Dartmouth College. She is a leader in radiology education. Early life and education Lewis studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1987. After graduating, she was awarded a fellowship in nuclear medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#18361
Valerie Montgomery Rice
#45726
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Valerie Montgomery Rice is an American obstetrician, gynecologist, and college administrator. She is the president and dean of Morehouse School of Medicine. Early life and education Montgomery Rice is from Georgia. She completed a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1987, she earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#18362
Anny Rosenberg Katan
1898 - 1992 (94 years)
Anny Rosenberg Katan was a child psychologist born in Vienna, Austria, who pioneered the use of psychoanalysis to treat emotionally disturbed youth. She had close personal ties to the Sigmund Freud family and was one of the first child analysts in the city of Vienna.
Go to Profile#18363
Friedrich Boerner
1723 - 1761 (38 years)
Friedrich Boerner or Börner was a German physician. Boerner was born in Leipzig. His father, Christian Friedrich Boerner, wanted him to study theology and he started to study theology at the University of Wittenberg, but eventually he finish medicine. He was a professor of this university until he had to come back to Leipzig the raising of Seven Years' War . He died in Leipzig in 1761.
Go to Profile#18364
Kerry Murphy
#183529
Overall Influence
Kerry Murphy is an Australian musicologist noted for her scholarship of colonial music history and French music. Murphy is Professor of Music and Head of Musicology at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Go to Profile#18365
Malegapuru William Makgoba
#132975
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Malegapuru William Makgoba is a leading South African immunologist, physician, public health advocate, academic and former vice-chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. In 2013 he was recognised as "a pioneer in higher education transformation", by being awarded the Order of Mapungubwe in Silver, but has also generated extensive controversy during that process. He is also responsible for the unjust and unfair dismissal of several high profile academics from UDW and was accused of sexual harassment from his direct staff.
Go to Profile#18366
Mike Ashley
#144482
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Michael James Wallace Ashley is a British retail entrepreneur and chief executive of Frasers Group Plc . He owned the Newcastle United football club between 2007 and 2021. According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2021, Ashley is the 61st richest person in the UK with an estimated net worth of £2.718 billion. In August 2021, Ashley announced that he intended to step down as CEO of Frasers Group Plc in May 2022, but would remain a director of the main Board.
Go to Profile#18367
Jerzy Limon
#64659
Overall Influence
1950 - 2021 (71 years)
Jerzy Limon was a Polish literary scholar, translator and writer specialising in Shakespearean and Elizabethan theatre. He initiated the creation of the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre and served as its first director.
Go to Profile#18368
Tetyana Pertseva
#77301
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Tetyana Oleksiivna Pertseva is a Ukrainian pulmonologist, physician-scientist, and academic administrator. She is the rector of the Dnipro State Medical University and editor-in-chief of Medičnì Perspektivi. Pertseva is an elected academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Go to Profile#18369
Nalla Tan
#124433
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Nallammah "Nalla" Ruth Tan was a Singaporean physician, women's rights advocate and writer. She is known for her early advocacy of sex education and public health education in Singapore. She was also known for her poetry and short story writing.
Go to Profile#18370
Jeshua ben Judah
Jeshua ben Judah was a Karaite scholar, exegete and philosopher, who lived in eleventh-century Iraq or at Jerusalem. He was pupil of Joseph ben Abraham ha-Ro'eh. Jeshua was considered one of the highest authorities among the Karaites, by whom he is called "the great teacher" .
Go to Profile#18371
Grigory Gurev
1891 - 1978 (87 years)
Grigory Abramovich Gurev was a Soviet philosopher, popularizer of anti-religious knowledge, the author of several books on the history of religion and atheism. Major works: "The Great Conflict" , "The Story of a Single Misconception" , "Charles Darwin and Atheism" .
Go to Profile#18372
Maksim Sedej
1909 - 1974 (65 years)
Maksim Sedej was a Slovene painter, one of the key figures of the mid-20th-century art scene in Slovenia. Sedej was born in Dobračeva on the northern outskirts of Žiri in 1909. He studied art at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts between 1928 and 1932. His work was exhibited amid the selection of Yugoslav art at the Venice Biennale in 1940 and 1954. He worked as a professor at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design.
Go to Profile#18373
John Wilson
#177337
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
John Michael Wilson is an American documentary filmmaker. He is the creator and director of How To with John Wilson, a comedy-docuseries on HBO. Early life and education Wilson was born in Astoria, Queens, and grew up on Long Island. He became interested in film as a teenager when his father gave him a movie camera. Wilson cites Les Blank, George Kuchar and Bruce Brown as influences.
Go to Profile#18374
Guillermo Feliú Cruz
1900 - 1973 (73 years)
Guillermo Feliú Cruz was a Chilean historian, bibliographer and librarian. He learned historical method by José Toribio Medina who later successfully proposed Feliú Cruz as curator of Biblioteca Americana in the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile.
Go to Profile#18375
Arnold Walter
1902 - 1973 (71 years)
Arnold Maria Walter, OC was a Canadian musicologist, educator, composer and writer. He founded the Canadian Opera Company, and was Director of Music at University of Toronto. Early years Arnold Maria Walter was born in Hanušovice, Moravia, Austria-Hungary . He studied law at the University of Prague, then musicology at the University of Berlin. In addition, he had private music lessons in piano and composition with Rudolf Breithaupt, Frederic Lamond, and Franz Schreker.
Go to Profile#18376
Firdous Azim
#121442
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Firdous Azim is a professor of English at BRAC University, a literary critic, and a women's rights activist. She is the chairperson of the Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University. She is a member of Naripokkho.
Go to Profile#18377
Greg Murphy
#132802
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Gregory Francis Murphy is an American politician and urologist representing North Carolina's 3rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. He served as a representative in the North Carolina General Assembly from 2015 to 2019.
Go to Profile#18378
Martha H. Mowry
1818 - 1899 (81 years)
Martha H. Mowry was an American physician and the first woman physician in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. She was also an advocate for women's suffrage and human welfare reform. Early life and education
Go to Profile#18379
Miles Vandahurst Lynk
1871 - 1956 (85 years)
Miles Vandahurst Lynk was an American physician and author noted for his efforts to create opportunities for African Americans in science, specifically for medical doctors. He was known both as the founder, editor and publisher of Medical and Surgical Observer , as well as founding the University of West Tennessee College of Medicine and Surgery.
Go to Profile#18380
Leó Weiner
1885 - 1960 (75 years)
Leó Weiner was one of the leading Hungarian music educators of the first half of the twentieth century, and a composer. Life Education Weiner was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. His brother gave him his first music and piano lessons. As children, he and Fritz Reiner played piano four hands.
Go to Profile#18381
Archibald Menzies
1754 - 1842 (88 years)
Archibald Menzies was a Scottish surgeon, botanist and naturalist. He spent many years at sea, serving with the Royal Navy, private merchants, and the Vancouver Expedition. He was the first recorded European to reach the summit of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa and introduced the Monkey Puzzle tree to England.
Go to Profile#18382
Safra Catz
#123936
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Safra Ada Catz is an American billionaire banker and technology executive. She is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, she was named co-president and chief financial officer , reporting to founder Larry Ellison. In September 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would step down as CEO and that Mark Hurd and Catz had been named as joint CEOs. In September 2019, Catz became the sole CEO after Hurd resigned due to health issues.
Go to Profile#18384
Joseph Müller-Blattau
1895 - 1976 (81 years)
Joseph Maria Müller-Blattau was a German musicologist and National Socialist cultural official. He is regarded as a "nestor of Saarbrücken musicology" but also as a "singer of a musical seizure of power" because of his activities in National Socialism.
Go to Profile#18385
John Blund
1175 - 1248 (73 years)
John Blund was an English scholastic philosopher, known for his work on the nature of the soul, the Tractatus de anima, one of the first works of western philosophy to make use of the recently translated De Anima by Aristotle and especially the Persian philosopher Avicenna's work on the soul, also called De Anima. He taught at Oxford University along with Edmund of Abingdon. David Knowles said that he was "noteworthy for his knowledge of Avicenna and his rejection of the hylomorphism of Avicebron and the plurality of forms.", although the problem of the plurality of forms as understood by later scholastics was not formulated explicitly in Blund's time.
Go to Profile#18386
Janaka de Silva
#26941
Overall Influence
Janaka de Silva FRCP FNASSL is a Sri Lankan physician and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya. Janaka de Silva was educated at Royal College, Colombo and holds degrees from the universities of Colombo and Oxford. He had his higher specialist clinical training at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Go to Profile#18387
Türkan Saylan
#35800
Overall Influence
1935 - 2009 (74 years)
Türkan Saylan was a Turkish medical doctor in dermatology, academic, writer, teacher and social activist. She was famous for fighting leprosy, and for founding a charitable foundation called "Association for the Support of Contemporary Living" .
Go to Profile#18388
Selma Feldbach
1878 - 1924 (46 years)
Selma Feldbach was the first Estonian woman to become a medical doctor. In 1904 she graduated in medicine from the University of Bern.
Go to Profile#18389
Andreas Anagnostakis
1826 - 1897 (71 years)
Andreas Anagnostakis was a Greek ophthalmologist, physician, and educator. He is best known for inventing the ophthalmoscope, a handheld tool used in diagnostics and still relevant today. He is credited as the first ophthalmologist in Greece.
Go to Profile#18390
Franziska Grieder
#38783
Overall Influence
Franziska B. Grieder is a Swiss-American veterinary scientist. She is the director of the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs at the National Institutes of Health. Grieder was a faculty member and researcher at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Go to Profile#18391
Thaddeus Seymour
#52675
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Thaddeus Seymour was an American academician. Seymour was born in New York City. His father, Whitney North Seymour was president of the American Bar Association. Seymour went to Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, and studied English literature at the University of North Carolina, where he received his master's degree and doctoral degrees. He was an English professor at Dartmouth College and later dean at Dartmouth. From 1969 to 1978 he was president of Wabash College, and from 1978 to 1990 he was president of Rollins College.
Go to Profile#18392
Henry Cadwalader Chapman
1845 - 1909 (64 years)
Dr. Henry Cadwalader Chapman was an American physician and naturalist. Early life Chapman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Henry was the son of George W. Chapman, lieutenant in the United States Army, and Emily, granddaughter of Abraham Markoe, first captain of the Philadelphia City Troop. His grandfather was Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, the founding president of the American Medical Association.
Go to Profile#18393
Tula Giannini
#30267
Overall Influence
Prof. Tula Giannini is an American academic with subject expertise in musicology, digital culture, and digital heritage. Tula Giannini holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, an M.L.S. degree in Library Science from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. degree in Musicology from Bryn Mawr College. Early in her career, she was a professional flautist. She taught at the Catholic University, Rutgers University, and the University of Hawaiʻi. Director of the Talbott Library at Westminster Choir College, and Head of Collection Management at Adelphi University. She j...
Go to Profile#18394
George Smith
1919 - 1984 (65 years)
George Smith was a 20th century Scottish surgeon who emigrated to the United States of America. Life He was born on 4 June 1919 in Carnoustie the son of John Shand Smith and his wife Lilimina Myles Mathers. He was educated at the Grove Academy. He then studied Medicine at St. Andrews University graduating MB ChB in 1942, and starting as an intern at Dundee Royal Infirmary.
Go to Profile#18395
Thomas Bayrle
#85041
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Thomas Bayrle is a German sculptor, painter, graphic artist and video artist. He is known as a pop artist. Life Thomas Bayrle is the son of the painter and graphic artist Alf Bayrle and the art historian Elisabeth Weiss. Bayrle wanted to become a textile engineer, and completed a two-year apprenticeship as a pattern designer and weaver in 1956. While working on Jacquard looms in Göppingen, Bayrle became inspired by the machine's rhythmic sound and the repetitive patterns of the fabric.
Go to Profile#18396
Ernst Wertheim
1864 - 1920 (56 years)
Ernst Wertheim was an Austrian gynecologist born in Graz. Ernst Wertheim was the son of Theodor Wertheim, an Austrian chemistry professor at the University of Graz, remembered for his chemical studies of garlic. He received his doctorate from the University of Graz on February 29, 1888, and subsequently became an assistant in the department of general and experimental pathology. In 1889 he worked under Otto Kahler at the second university clinic in Vienna, followed by an assignment at the second Vienna women's clinic under Rudolf Chrobak . He worked there until September 30, 1890, when he relocated to Prague as an assistant to Friedrich Schauta at the university women’s clinic.
Go to Profile#18397
N. Frank Ukadike
#115034
Overall Influence
1950 - 2018 (68 years)
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike was a scholar of African cinema and film history, and a member of faculty at Tulane University. Life Born in 1950, Udadike gained a BA from Croydon College and a master's in film and telecommunications from the University of Oregon. At New York University he gained a master's in cinema studies in 1986 and a PhD in 1989. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan before moving to Tulane University in 1998.
Go to Profile#18398
Paul Draper
#107908
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Paul Edward Draper is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer, formerly the frontman of the rock band Mansun. Biography Early days Paul Draper grew up on Garmoyle Road in Wavertree, Liverpool before moving with his family to Connah's Quay, Deeside. Draper described the area as being "the absolute nothing of Great Britain", adding "Deeside is just the bit where the Welsh people really aren't Welsh because they were infiltrated by the English in the Fifties and Sixties. It's where everyone from Liverpool ended up. Basically, just after the war, Liverpool had 800,000 people; now it's got 390,000 people, and the missing 400,000 all live in Deeside.
Go to Profile#18399
Helen O'Toole
#186994
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Helen O'Toole is an Irish-born painter based in the United States, who is known for abstract paintings suggestive of landscape. She has exhibited throughout Ireland and the United States, in Singapore, and at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Portland Art Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, Tacoma Art Museum, and Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Her work has been featured in the journals Artforum, Arts Magazine, New Art Examiner, and Zyzzyva, as well as the Chicago Tribune, The Irish Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and National Public Radio. Art writers frequen...
Go to Profile#18400
Erich Valentin
#108568
Overall Influence
1906 - 1993 (87 years)
Erich Valentin was a German musicologist. Life Born in Strasbourg, Valentin, the son of a postal clerk, studied musicology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 1925 and was awarded a doctorate in 1928 with his dissertation Die Entwicklung der Tokkata im 17. und 18. Jahrhunder. In 1931, he published the first independent Telemann biography on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann. From 1928 to 1935, he was a teacher at the seminar for music education in Magdeburg and music correspondent for various magazines, then he worked as a critic and music writer in Munich until 1939.
Go to Profile