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Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#1851

William Seager

#28487

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

William Edward Seager is a Canadian philosopher. Now retired, he spent his career as a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His academic specialties lie in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.

#1852

Rebecca Roache

#47294

Overall Influence

Rebecca Roache is a British philosopher and Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, known for her work on the philosophy of language, practical ethics and philosophy of mind. She is particularly noted for her work on swearing, which has featured in various media, such as the BBC.

#1853

Pakudha Kaccayana

#11460

Overall Influence

was an Indian teacher and philosopher who lived around the 6th century BCE, contemporaneous with Mahavira and the Buddha. He was an atomist who believed in atomism which believed that everything is made of seven eternal elements – earth, water, fire, air, happiness, pain and soul.

#1854

Joseph Koterski

#39490

Overall Influence

1953 - 2021 (68 years)

Joseph Koterski, S.J. was an American Jesuit priest, philosopher, author, and professor at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. Biography In 1976, Koterski graduated with a H.A.B. degree in Classics from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1980, he earned a M.A. from Saint Louis University with a thesis titled Aristotle's Ethics and Reflective Equilibrium, and then two years later a Ph.D. from the same school, while there on a Danforth Fellowship. His dissertation, mentored by James Collins, was titled Truth and Freedom in Karl Jasper’s Philosophy of Science.

#1855

Raziel Abelson

#42920

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Raziel Abelson was an American academic. He served as Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at New York University and was a proponent of the Ordinary Language School of Philosophy. Biography He was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Rabbi Alter Abelson and Anna Goldina Schwartz. His brother was the playwright Lionel Abel .

#1856

Marc de Vries

#26156

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

M.J. de Vries , is professor of Reformational Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology. Biography Marc de Vries studied physics at the Free University of Amsterdam and graduated in 1982 on the subject: dissolving problems in physical education. In 1988 he got his promotion at the Eindhoven University of Technology on the subject: technology in physical education.

#1857

Karel Reisz

#4203

Overall Influence

1926 - 2002 (76 years)

Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker and film critic, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , a classic of kitchen sink realism, and the romantic period drama The French Lieutenant's Woman .

#1858

Alexander Bird

#31223

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Alexander James Bird is a British philosopher and Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Career In 2020, Bird was elected to the Bertrand Russell Professorship of Philosophy, succeeding Huw Price. Previously he was Peter Sowerby Professor of Philosophy and Medicine at King's College London and the professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol . Bird was lecturer then reader and head of department at the University of Edinburgh . Bird has also taught at Dartmouth College and at Saint Louis University and was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

#1859

Günther Jakobs

#7954

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Günther Jakobs , is a German jurist, specializing in criminal law, criminal procedural law and philosophy of law. Jakobs studied legal sciences in Cologne, Kiel and Bonn, and in 1967 he graduated from the University of Bonn with a thesis on criminal law and competition doctrine.

#1860

Allen Forte

#4773

Overall Influence

1926 - 2014 (88 years)

Allen Forte was an American music theorist and musicologist. He was Battell Professor Emeritus of the Theory of Music at Yale University and specialized in 20th-century atonal music and music analysis.

#1861

Richard Blyton Devereux

#58480

Overall Influence

#1862

Marilyn Friedman

#39279

Overall Influence

1945 - 2015 (70 years)

Marilyn Ann Friedman is an American philosopher. She holds the W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Education In 1967, she received an A.B. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1968, she moved to Canada for political reasons and resided there for a decade. By 1974 she received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. In 1964, while Friedman was taking a year off from college, she was persuaded by what she refers to as "a kind of political ignorance and apathy" by political chaos.

#1863

Julius Moravcsik

#39230

Overall Influence

1931 - 2009 (78 years)

Julius Matthew Emil Moravcsik was a Hungarian-American philosopher who specialized in ancient Greek philosophy. His main professional interests were in Greek philosophy – especially Plato, Aristotle, and the pre-Socratic philosophers. He also made important contributions to the philosophy of language, aesthetics, metaphysics, and ethics. In particular, he was engaged by the notion of friendship.

#1864

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

#16306

Overall Influence

1913 - 1994 (81 years)

Nicolás Gómez Dávila was a Colombian conservative philosopher and aphorist. Gómez Dávila's fame began to spread only in the last few years before his death, particularly by way of German translations of his works. He was one of the most radical critics of modernity whose work consists almost entirely of aphorisms which he called "escolios" .

#1865

Dan Flavin

#7378

Overall Influence

1933 - 1996 (63 years)

Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. Early life and career Daniel Nicholas Flavin Jr. was born in Jamaica, New York, of Irish Catholic descent, and was sent to Catholic schools. He studied for the priesthood at the Immaculate Conception Preparatory Seminary in Brooklyn between 1947 and 1952 before leaving to join his twin brother, David John Flavin, and enlist in the United States Air Force.

#1866

David Edelstein

#5570

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

David Edelstein is a freelance American film critic who has been the principal film critic for Slate and New York magazine, among others, and has appeared regularly on NPR's Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning programs. Over a long career, Edelstein has published more than 2000 film reviews. In 2021, Colin McEnroe called Edelstein "America's greatest living film critic".

#1867

Jesús Ballesteros

#33221

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Jesús Ballesteros is a Spanish philosopher and jurist. Education In 1965, he earned his law degree with highest qualifications. In 1971, he obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Valencia after defending a thesis about Giuseppe Capograssi.

#1868

Peter C. Gøtzsche

#7756

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Peter Christian Gøtzsche is a Danish physician, medical researcher, and former leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration and has written numerous reviews for the organization. His membership in Cochrane was terminated by its Governing Board of Trustees on 25 September 2018.

#1869

Armin Mohler

#15436

Overall Influence

1920 - 2003 (83 years)

Armin Mohler was a Swiss far-right political philosopher and journalist, known for his works on the Conservative Revolution. He is widely seen as the father of the Neue Rechte , the German branch of the European New Right.

#1870

Jay Bernstein

#43920

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jay M. Bernstein is an American philosopher, and University Distinguished Professor at The New School. He received a BA from Trinity College in 1970 and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a PhD in 1975, presenting the thesis "Kant and transcendental realism".

#1871

Sam B. Girgus

#41527

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Sam B. Girgus most recent book is Generations of Jewish Directors and the Struggle for America’s Soul. He is also editor of the Renewing the American Narrative book series for Palgrave Macmillan and the author of 10 books and editor of several other works. He is a retired professor of English and American Studies who taught at the Universities of New Mexico, Alabama, Oregon, the Opportunity Center and Vanderbilt University. His new essay on Serpico will appear in a new book on film and philosophy edited by philosopher Richard Kearney. He has held a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship and other awards.

#1872

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

#2449

Overall Influence

1921 - 2011 (90 years)

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow was an American medical physicist, and a co-winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for development of the radioimmunoassay technique. She was the second woman , and the first American-born woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

#1873

Christopher Fynsk

#29236

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Christopher Ingebreth Fynsk is an American philosopher. He is Professor and Dean of the Division of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and Professor Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen. He is well known for his work relating the political and literary aspects of continental philosophy. Fynsk's work is closely involved with that of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin and several contemporary artists, including Francis Bacon and Salvatore Puglia.

#1874

Drew Pardoll

#43702

Overall Influence

Andrew Mark Pardoll is Director of the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. He is also Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

#1875

Diedrich Diederichsen

Diedrich Diederichsen

#20953

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Diedrich Diederichsen is a German author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is an intellectual writer at the crossroads of the arts, politics, and pop culture. Diedrich Diederichsen was born and grew up in Hamburg where he worked as a music journalist and editor of the German Sounds magazine in the heyday of punk and new wave from 1979 to 1983. Until the 1990s he was then the editor-in-chief of the influential subculture magazine Spex in Cologne. Diederichsen worked as visiting professor in Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Pasadena, Offenbach am Main, Gießen, Weimar, Bremen, Vienna, St. Louis, Cologne, Los Angeles and Gainesville.

#1876

Max Müller

#37545

Overall Influence

1906 - 1994 (88 years)

Max Müller was a German philosopher and influential post–World War II Catholic intellectual. Müller was Professor at the University of Freiburg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Life Max Müller was born as the son of a jurist and completed his Gymnasium-Abitur in Freiburg at the Friedrich-Gymnasium Freiburg. Müller graduated in 1930 along with the philosopher Martin Honecker. He established his academic reputation in 1937 with a work on Tomas Aquinas . At this time he was active in the Catholic Youth Movement who were influenced by their study with Martin Heidegger, generating their own thinking in engagement with his philosophy.

#1877

Patricia Kitcher

#35130

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Patricia W. Kitcher is the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, widely known for her work on Immanuel Kant and on philosophy of psychology. She has held many positions at different universities, is a founding chair of a committee at the University of California, and has a lead role in multiple professional organizations. Kitcher's most notable interests throughout her career regard cognition and Kantian ethics. She is the author of multiple papers and two books.

#1878

Wolfgang Harich

Wolfgang Harich

#25563

Overall Influence

1923 - 1995 (72 years)

Wolfgang Harich was a philosopher and journalist in East Germany. A deserter from the German army in World War II and a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Harich became a professor of philosophy at Humboldt University in 1949. He was arrested in 1956 and sentenced to ten years in prison for the "establishment of a conspiratorial counterrevolutionary group." He was released in 1964, after eight years, and rehabilitated in 1990. In 1994 he joined the Party of Democratic Socialism.

#1879

K. George M. M. Alberti

#58839

Overall Influence

#1880

Andrew Collier

#29275

Overall Influence

1944 - 2014 (70 years)

Andrew Collier was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. He is known for his work on objectivity in the social sciences. Biography Born in 1944 in Enfield, London, Collier studied at Bedford College, London and completed his M.Phil. on Sartre at the University College London in 1971. He taught philosophy at the University of Warwick, University of Sussex, and the Bangor University, before taking up a post at the University of Southampton in 1988.

#1881

Andreas Teuber

#27465

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Andreas Teuber was an American academic and actor. He was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. Teuber studied under Paul Grice at Oxford University and at Harvard University with philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Teuber was also a Member and Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

#1882

Helen Khal

#22734

Overall Influence

1923 - 2009 (86 years)

Helen Khal was an American artist and critic of Lebanese descent. Early life Helen Khal was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania to a Lebanese American family from Tripoli, Lebanon. She started her painting career at the age of 21; when illness forced house rest, she began to draw. On a visit to Lebanon in 1946 she met and married a young Lebanese poet, Yusuf al-Khal , and remained in the country to study art at ALBA from 1946 to 1948. She returned to the United States briefly but in 1973, after moving back to Lebanon, she established Lebanon's first permanent art gallery, Gallery One.

#1883

Anita Superson

#52742

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Anita Superson is a professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky. She was also the visiting Churchill Humphrey and Alex P. Humphrey Professor of Feminist Philosophy at the University of Waterloo during the winter term of 2013.

#1884

Jay McDaniel

#24681

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Jay B. McDaniel is an American philosopher and theologian. He specializes in Buddhism, Whiteheadian process philosophy and process theology, constructive theology, ecotheology, interfaith dialogue, and spirituality in an age of consumerism. His current interest is "to see how these myriad concerns might unfold in China".

#1885

Edward Goldsmith

Edward Goldsmith

#8042

Overall Influence

1928 - 2009 (81 years)

Edward René David Goldsmith , widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher. He was a member the prominent Goldsmith family. The eldest son of Major Frank Goldsmith, and elder brother of the financier James Goldsmith. Edward Goldsmith was the founding editor and publisher of The Ecologist. Known for his outspoken views opposing industrial society and economic development, he expressed a strong sympathy for the ways and values of traditional peoples.

#1886

Louis Lasagna

#8847

Overall Influence

1923 - 2003 (80 years)

Louis Cesare Lasagna was an American physician and professor of medicine, known for his revision of the Hippocratic Oath. Early life and education Lasagna was an internationally recognized and respected expert in clinical pharmacology. Born in Queens, New York in 1923, Lasagna was raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, by his Italian immigrant parents, and graduated from New Brunswick High School. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1943 and earned his medical degree from Columbia University in 1947. During his time at Rutgers University, he joined Kappa Sigma Fraternity . After completing ...

#1887

Franca D'Agostini

#55213

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Franca D'Agostini is an Italian philosopher. Biography Franca d'Agostini was born in Turin. She earned her BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Turin, where she was a student of Gianni Vattimo. She taught Philosophy of Science at the Politecnico of Turin., and Logic and Epistemology of the Social Sciences in the Graduate School of Economic and Political and Social Sciences at the State University in Milan. She contributes to Italian newspapers such as La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Manifesto and Il Fatto Quotidiano. She is especially known for proposing a combination of analytical and continen...

#1888

Tadeusz Ślipko

#39162

Overall Influence

1918 - 2015 (97 years)

Tadeusz Ślipko was a Polish philosopher, chiefly ethicist. Biography He studied at the John Casimir University in Lwów . In 1939, he entered the Society of Jesus and underwent a two-year noviciate in Stara Wieś near Krosno. He studied philosophy at the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy in Kraków , 1941-1944, and theology at the Bobolanum Jesuit Faculty of Theology in Warsaw , 1944-1948. He was ordained a priest in 1947. He studied ethics and sociology at the Jagellonian University in Kraków , where he earned a Ph.D.

#1889

Jeremy J. Shapiro

Jeremy J. Shapiro

#16154

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Jeremy J. Shapiro , is an American academic, a professor emeritus at Fielding Graduate University who works in the area of critical social theory with emphasis on the social and cultural effects of information technology and systems, social change, and the aesthetics of music. His main intellectual products/innovations includethe concept of the universal semiotic of technological experience: a language of images, symbols, and technologies that integrates the conscious and unconscious, the public and the private, in advanced industrial civilization;zen socialism, an approach to socialism that f...

#1890

Reza Davari Ardakani

Reza Davari Ardakani

#21405

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Reza Davari Ardakani is an Iranian philosopher who was influenced by Martin Heidegger, and a distinguished emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. He is also the current member of the Iranian Academy of Sciences and former President of Academy from 1998 to 2023. He is known for his works on Intellect, politics, and underdevelopment.

#1891

Harold M. Frost

#59228

Overall Influence

#1892

Anthony O'Hear

#11984

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Anthony O'Hear is a British philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham and Head of the Department of Education. He is Honorary Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and editor of its journal Philosophy and co-founder of the Journal of Applied Philosophy with Brenda Almond. He is also editor emeritus of The Fortnightly Reviews new series.

#1893

Itala D'Ottaviano

#40823

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Itala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano is a Brazilian mathematical logician who was president of the Brazilian Logic Society. Topics in her work have included non-classical logic, paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and the history of logic.

#1894

Megan Terry

#17131

Overall Influence

1932 - 2023 (91 years)

Marguerite Duffy , known professionally as Megan Terry, was an American playwright, screenwriter, and theatre artist. Terry produced over fifty works for theater, radio, and television, and is best known for her avant-garde theatrical work from the 1960s. As a founding member of The Open Theater, she developed an actor-training and character-creation technique known as "transformation". She used this technique to create her 1966 work Viet Rock, which was both the first rock musical and the first play to address the war in Vietnam.

#1895

Daniel Markovits

#9330

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Daniel Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at the Yale Law School and the founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Private Law. He is the author of The Meritocracy Trap . Education After earning a B.A. in mathematics, summa cum laude, from Yale University, Markovits received a British Marshall Scholarship to study in England, where he was awarded an M.Sc. in econometrics and mathematical economics from the London School of Economics and a B.Phil. and D.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford. Markovits then returned to Yale to study law and, after clerking...

#1896

L. A. Paul

#45842

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Laurie Ann Paul is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Yale University. She previously taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Arizona. She is best known for her research on the counterfactual analysis of causation and the concept of "transformative experience."

#1897

Jacques Banchereau

#43681

Overall Influence

Jacques Banchereau is an internationally prominent French American immunologist and molecular biologist. As of 2022, he is Chief Scientific Officer at Immunai. He was formerly professor and director of immunological sciences at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine and also the former chief science officer, senior vice president, and DTA head of inflammation & virology at Hoffman-La Roche. He is best known for his extensive research on dendritic cells with Nobel Laureate Ralph M. Steinman. He is the fifth most cited immunologist ranked by Times Higher Education's report.

#1898

Cécile Fabre

#41692

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Cécile Fabre is a French philosopher, serving as professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. Since 2014 she has been a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her research focuses on political philosophy, the ethics of war, bioethics, and theories of justice.

#1899

Lars Gyllensten

Lars Gyllensten

#11217

Overall Influence

1921 - 2006 (85 years)

Lars Johan Wictor Gyllensten was a Swedish author and physician, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Gyllensten was born and grew up in a middle-class family in Stockholm, son of Carl Gyllensten and Ingrid Rangström, and nephew of Ture Rangström. He studied at the Karolinska Institute, becoming a doctor of medicine in 1953, and was an associate professor of histology there from 1955 to 1973.

#1900

Joyce Mitchell Cook

#46121

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Joyce Mitchell Cook was an American philosopher. She was the first African American woman to receive a PhD in philosophy in the United States. After earning that degree from Yale University, she was the first female teaching assistant allowed at the university. She went on to teach at Wellesley College, Connecticut College, Howard University. She served for several years as an analyst for African affairs at the State Department in Washington, D.C.

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