The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18501
Jacob of Mies
1372 - 1429 (57 years)
Jacob of Mies was a Czech reformer from the Kingdom of Bohemia and colleague of Jan Hus. Life Jacob was born in 1372 in Stříbro near Pilsen in Bohemia . He studied at the University of Prague, receiving both bachelor's and the master's degrees in theology, and became pastor of the Church of St. Michael and an outspoken supporter of Jan Hus.
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Ernest Septimus Reynolds
1861 - 1926 (65 years)
Ernest Septimus Reynolds FRCP was emeritus professor of clinical medicine at the University of Manchester. In 1900 he wrote "An Epidemic of Peripheral Neuritis Amongst Beer Drinkers in Manchester and District" for the British Medical Journal, the first of a series of papers which caused a national sensation when they revealed the presence of dangerous levels of arsenic in local beer.
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Eduard Zuckmayer
1890 - 1972 (82 years)
Eduard Zuckmayer was a German music educator, composer, conductor and pianist. He was the older brother of the famous German writer Carl Zuckmayer . Family and Youth He was the first son of wealthy factory owner Carl Zuckmayer who produced tamper-evident lids for wine bottles in Nackenheim, a wine-growing village on the Rhine front. The parents of his mother, Amalie Zuckmayer , were converted from Judaism to Protestantism whereas he was raised as a Catholic.
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Edward Christopher Williams
1871 - 1929 (58 years)
Edward Christopher Williams was the first African-American professionally trained librarian in the United States. His sudden death in 1929 ended his career the year he was expected to receive the first Ph.D. in librarianship. Williams was born on February 11, 1871, in Cleveland, Ohio, to an African-American father and an Irish mother. Upon his graduation with distinction from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in 1892, he was appointed Assistant Librarian of Hatch Library at WRU. Two years later, he was promoted to librarian of Hatch Library until 1909, when he resigned to assume the responsibility of the Principal of M Street High School in Washington, D.C.
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David White Finlay
1840 - 1923 (83 years)
David White Finlay FRSE FRCP was a Scottish physician and yachtsman. He was Regius Professor of Medicine at Aberdeen University 1891 to 1912. He was Honorary Physician to the King in Scotland to both King Edward VII and King George V.
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Friedrich Karl Kasimir von Creutz
1724 - 1770 (46 years)
Friedrich Karl Kasimir von Creutz was a German poet, philosopher, writer and politician. He was born in Bad Homburg, where he also died, and was a councillor and ally of Frederick V, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg.
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Oskar Kaul
1885 - 1968 (83 years)
Hermann Friedrich Oskar Kaul was a German musicologist and professor at the University of Würzburg. Life Kaul was born in 1885 as the son of the chemist Alexander Kaul and Clara Hoffmanns in Upper Bavaria, Bruckmühl community. After elementary school he attended a Humanistisches Gymnasium in Cologne, then in 1905 he went to study music at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln there. Among others, he was student of Max van de Sandt, Lazzaro Uzielli, Fritz Steinbach, Ewald Straeßer and Waldemar von Baußnern. At the same time he studied German literature and philosophy at the University of Bonn.
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Maude Abbott
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University.
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Thomas Lewis
1881 - 1945 (64 years)
Sir Thomas Lewis, CBE, FRS, FRCP was a Welsh cardiologist. He coined the term "clinical science". Early life and education Lewis was born in Taffs Well, Cardiff, Wales, the son of Henry Lewis, a mining engineer, and his wife Catherine Hannah . He was educated at home by his mother, apart from a year at Clifton College, which he left due to ill-health, and the final two years by a tutor. Already planning to become a doctor, at the age of sixteen he began a Bachelor of Science course at University College, Cardiff, graduating three years later with first class honours. In 1902 he entered University College Hospital in London to train as a doctor, graduating MBBS with the gold medal in 1905.
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Alice Rebecca Brooks McGuire
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Alice "Sally" Rebecca Brooks McGuire was an American librarian. She was named Librarian of the Year by the Texas Library Association, and taught at the University of Texas in its Graduate School of Library Science.
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Leonard Thompson
1908 - 1935 (27 years)
Leonard Thompson is the first person to have received an injection of insulin as a treatment for Type 1 diabetes. Biography Thompson was first treated at the Hospital for Sick Children before being transferred to the care of physicians Andrew Almon Fletcher, Duncan Archibald Graham, and Walter Ruggles Campbell. Thompson received his first injection in Toronto, Ontario, on 11 January 1922, at 13 years of age. The first injection had an apparent impurity which was the likely cause for the allergic reaction he displayed. After a refined process was developed by James Collip to improve the canine...
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Michael Bernhard Valentini
1657 - 1729 (72 years)
Michael Bernhard Valentini was a German doctor and a collector. After obtaining his doctorate in 1686 in Giessen he became Professor of Medicine in that city and personal physician to the Margrave of Assia. He had an important Cabinet of curiosities and was the author of Museorum Museum, the first study of collections in Europe. In 1720 he published a work on the comparative anatomy of vertebrates. He was elected a Member of the Royal Society on 10 November 1715 and was also a Member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher and the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.
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Charles Frederick Hartt
1840 - 1878 (38 years)
Charles Frederick Hartt was a Canadian-American geologist, paleontologist and naturalist who specialized in the geology of Brazil. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Hartt graduated from Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1860, and by his graduation he had made extensive geological explorations in Nova Scotia. In 1860, he accompanied his father, Jarvis William Hartt, to Saint John, New Brunswick, where they established a high school for young women in which Charles Frederick taught for a year. Hartt also studied the geology of New Brunswick, and devoted special attention to the Devonian ...
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Celio Calcagnini
1479 - 1541 (62 years)
Celio Calcagnini , also known as Caelius Calcagninus, was an Italian humanist and scientist from Ferrara. His learning as displayed in his collected works is very broad. He had a wide experience: as soldier, academic, diplomat and in the chancery of Ippolito d'Este. He was consulted by Richard Croke on behalf of Henry VIII of England in the question of the latter's divorce. He was a major influence on Rabelais's literary and linguistic ideas and is presumed to have met him in Italy, as well as being a teacher of Clément Marot and was praised by Erasmus.
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Ammonius of Alexandria
Ammonius of Alexandria is assumed to be a Christian philosopher who lived in the 3rd century. He is possibly Ammonius Saccas, the Neoplatonist philosopher, also from Alexandria. Life Eusebius, who is followed by Jerome, asserted that Ammonius was born a Christian, and remained faithful to Christianity throughout his life. He wrote that Ammonius produced several scholarly works, most notably The Harmony of Moses and Jesus. Eusebius also wrote that Ammonius composed a synopsis of the four canonical gospels, traditionally assumed to be the Ammonian Sections, now known as the Eusebian Canons.
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Christian of Prachatice
1368 - 1439 (71 years)
Christian of Prachatice was a medieval Bohemian astronomer, mathematician and former Catholic priest who converted to the Hussite movement. He was the author of several books about medicine and herbs, and contributed to the field of astronomy with many papers and data recordings.
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Chen Hongmou
1696 - 1771 (75 years)
Chen Hongmou , courtesy name Ruzi and Rongmen , was a Chinese official, scholar, and philosopher, who is widely regarded as a model official of the Qing dynasty. Early life Chen was born in Lingui, Guangxi, to a family who migrated from Chenzhou in Hunan province in the late Ming dynasty. He was noted for the longest total service and most provincial posts than any other official during the Qing dynasty. In their work Anthology of Qing Statecraft Writings, He Changling and Wei Yuan praised him as an exemplary official, being surpassed only by Gu Yanwu.
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Margaret Mann
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Margaret Mann was a noted librarian and teacher who dominated the field of cataloging for almost fifty years. The bulk of her career was spent as a professor at the University of Michigan. She was hired as one of the first three full-time faculty members in the department of library science at Michigan in 1926 and retired in 1938. In 1999, American Libraries named her one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century".
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Selmar Aschheim
1878 - 1965 (87 years)
Selmar Aschheim was a German gynecologist who was a native resident of Berlin. Born into a Jewish family, in 1902 he received a doctorate of medicine in Freiburg, and later became director of the laboratory of the Universitäts-Frauenklinik at the Berlin Charité. In 1930 Aschheim attained the chair of biological research in gynecology at the University of Berlin. In 1933 he fled Nazi Germany and moved to Paris, where he worked in medical research at the Hôpital Beaujon.
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Gerbrand Bakker
1771 - 1828 (57 years)
Gerbrand Bakker was an eminent Dutch physician, professor at the University of Groningen. He first studied medicine with M.S. du Pui, physician in Alkmaar. In 1788 he enrolled at the University of Groningen, transferring two years later to the University of Leiden, where he received his doctorate in May 1794. His instructors were the celebrated Dupui, Sandifort, Paradys, and Voltelen. He married Jacoba Johanna Poel on January 4, 1800 at Enkhuizen. He practised first at Edam, and was made a reader at the Teyler surgical school at Haarlem in 1806. The next year, he declined a professorship at the University of Franeker.
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Edmund Biernacki
1866 - 1911 (45 years)
Edmund Faustyn Biernacki was a Polish physician. Biernacki was the first one to note a relationship between the sedimentation rate of red blood cells in a human blood sample and the general condition of the organism. This method, known as the Biernacki Reaction, is used worldwide to assess erythrocyte sedimentation rate , which is one of the major blood tests.
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Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch
1771 - 1849 (78 years)
Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch was a German physician and botanist from Kusel, a town in the Rhineland-Palatinate. Education Koch studied medicine at the Universities of Jena and Marburg, and afterwards was a Stadtphysicus in Trarbach and Kaiserslautern . In 1824 he became a professor of medicine and botany at the University of Erlangen, where he stayed for the remainder of his life. At Erlangen, he was also director of the botanical gardens. In 1833, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Georg Heinrich Weber
1752 - 1828 (76 years)
Georg Heinrich Weber was a German botanist, physician and professor at the University of Kiel. He was also the father of Friedrich Weber, the German entomologist. In botany, Weber was known for his work on lichens, algae, and bryophytes in addition to seed plants.
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Andrzej Abrek
1650 - 1700 (50 years)
Andrzej Abrek was a Polish philosopher. A rector and professor, he was the author of several Latin panegyrics.
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Thomas Horsfield
1773 - 1859 (86 years)
Thomas Horsfield was an American physician and naturalist who worked extensively in Indonesia, describing numerous species of plants and animals from the region. He was later a curator of the East India Company Museum in London.
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James Clark McKerrow
1887 - 1965 (78 years)
James Clark McKerrow was a British physician and philosopher. Biography McKerrow was born on 21 May 1887 in Workington. He was educated at University of Edinburgh and obtained his M.B. in 1912. During World War I he served in the Territorial Army but after being wounded joined family medical practice in Workington. McKerrow dedicated much of his life to studying evolution, philosophy, psychology and religious experiences. He studied at the British Museum Reading Room and filled 500 notebooks with his ideas. He wrote numerous philosophical and psychology books.
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Levi Cooper Lane
1828 - 1902 (74 years)
Levi Cooper Lane was an American physician and surgeon. He established the Cooper Medical College, forerunner to the Stanford University School of Medicine, as well as laying the groundwork for Stanford's medical library and the Stanford School of Nursing. The university's medical library is still named Lane Medical Library in his honor.
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Francis of Meyronnes
1285 - 1327 (42 years)
Francis of Meyronnes was a French scholastic philosopher. He was a distinguished pupil of Duns Scotus, whose teaching he usually followed. He acquired a great reputation for ability in discussion at the Sorbonne, and was known as the Doctor Illuminatus 'Enlightened teacher', as Magister Acutus or Doctor acutus, and as Magister abstractionum 'Master of abstractions'.
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Margaret Seward
1864 - 1929 (65 years)
Margaret Seward MBE became the earliest Chemist on staff at the Women's College , from 1896 to 1915. She became the pioneer woman to obtain a first class in the honour school of Natural Science and later received an MBE for her work on nutrition during World War I.
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Augustus Fendler
1813 - 1883 (70 years)
Augustus Fendler , alternatively written as August Fendler, was a Prussian-born American natural history collector. Early travels Fendler first attended preparatory school at the age of 12. After four years, he discontinued his education for financial reasons and apprenticed for the town clerk. He disliked the work, and yearned for travel.
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James Mason Hoppin
1820 - 1906 (86 years)
James Mason Hoppin was an American educator and writer. Biography James Mason Hoppin was born at Providence, Rhode Island on January 17, 1820. He graduated from Yale College in 1840 from Harvard Law School in 1842, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1845. He studied for some time abroad; and was pastor of a Congregational church at Salem, Massachusetts from 1850 to 1859. From 1861 to 1879 he was professor of homiletics at Yale, where he was also professor of art history from 1879 to 1899, when he became professor emeritus. He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Science...
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Siegfried Handloser
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Siegfried Adolf Handloser was a Nazi physician and convicted war criminal, convicted for overseeing medical atrocities at concentration camps. He was convicted at the 1947 Doctors' Trial during the subsequent Nuremberg trials and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was ultimately reduced to a 20-year term, though Handloser was released in 1954 and died of cancer the same year.
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Alexander Monro Primus
1697 - 1767 (70 years)
Alexander Monro was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist. His father, the surgeon John Monro, had been a prime mover in the foundation of the Edinburgh Medical School and had arranged Alexander's education in the hope that his son might become the first Professor of Anatomy in the new university medical school.
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William P. C. Barton
1786 - 1856 (70 years)
William Paul Crillon Barton , was a medical botanist, physician, professor, naval surgeon, and botanical illustrator. Biography Barton was born on November 17, 1786, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father William Barton, a lawyer, was the designer of the Great Seal of the United States. His uncle, Benjamin Smith Barton was an eminent medical botanist and vice-president of the American Philosophical Society. In 1813, the younger Barton was also elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
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Pranas Čepėnas
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Pranas Čepėnas was a Lithuanian historian, encyclopedist, journalist, and lexicographer. In 1926 Čepėnas earned a diploma in history from University of Lithuania. He worked as professor of history at Vilnius University. During World War II he emigrated to Germany and later to the U.S.
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Bernhard Münz
1856 - 1919 (63 years)
Bernhard Münz was an Austrian writer, philosopher, and librarian. Biography He was born in Leipnik to Jewish parents Johanna and Jakob Münz. His younger brother was journalist . Münz studied classical philology and philosophy at the Universities of Vienna, Innsbruck, and Munich, completing a Ph.D. at the former in 1877 under the supervision of Franz Brentano. After working briefly at the university library in Graz, he became in 1889 amanuensis in the library of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien, and succeeded Samuel Hammerschlag as its director in 1900.
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Anne Hazen McFarland
1867 - 1930 (63 years)
Anne Hazen McFarland was an American physician and medical journal editor who specialized in the treatment of mental illness in women. She criticized the contemporary idea that gynecological disorders caused insanity and nervousness in women.
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Giovanni Niccolò Muscat
1735 - 1800 (65 years)
Giovanni Niccolò Muscat was a Maltese doctor of law, and a major philosopher. His area of specialisation in philosophy was chiefly jurisprudence. Biography Early life Muscat was born into a very poor family on 8 March 1735. He seems to have lost his parents at a very young age, as he was raised by his aunt. Despite her poverty, this aunt worked hard to pay for the young Muscat's formal education, although it is unknown where he undertook his initial studies. His aunt also paid for his university studies, and it is known that he studied law but it is not certain where, although the Jesuit Col...
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Henry Alexander Miers
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Sir Henry Alexander Miers, FRS was a British mineralogist and crystallographer. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1896.
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Eduard Arning
1855 - 1936 (81 years)
Eduard Christian Arning was an English-German dermatologist and microbiologist from Manchester. Biography Arning received his early education from private tutors and at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg. In 1879 he obtained his medical doctorate from Strassburg, and afterwards was a medical assistant in Strassburg under Adolf Kussmaul and Oswald Kohts , and later in Berlin under Oskar Lassar . From 1884 to 1886, he researched leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands. In 1887 he became a specialist of dermatology and venereal disease in Hamburg, where from 1906 he served as physician-in-chief in the department of skin and venereal diseases at the "Allgemeines Krankenhaus St.
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John Sutherland
1808 - 1891 (83 years)
John Sutherland was a physician and promoter of sanitary science. Sutherland was born in Edinburgh, where he completed his high school studies. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1827, and graduated M.D. at the university in 1831.
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Pyotr Nikolsky
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Pyotr Vasilyevich Nikolsky was a Ukrainian ans Russian dermatologist. He was born in Usman in the Russian Empire and earned his medical degree from the Saint Vladimir Imperial University of Kyiv in 1884. After graduating, he studied under Mikhail Stukovenkov at the Department of Dermatology and Venerology in Kyiv. In 1896, he defended his doctoral thesis on pemphigus foliaceus, in which he described a dermatological condition involving a weakening relationship among the epidermal layers. The sloughing of skin associated with certain varieties of this condition is now referred to as Nikolsky's sign.
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Mary Harris Thompson
1829 - 1895 (66 years)
Mary Harris Thompson, MD, , was the founder, head physician and surgeon of the Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, renamed Mary Harris Thompson Hospital after her death in 1895. She was one of the first women to practice medicine in Chicago.
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August Wagenmann
1863 - 1955 (92 years)
August Emil Ludwig Wagenmann was a German ophthalmologist. August Wagenmann obtained a degree of medical doctor at the universities of Göttingen and Munich. After graduation, he received a position of assistant doctor in the Eye Clinic at Göttingen University, which was chaired by Theodor Leber. In 1888, August Wagenmann was qualified as a privatdocent in ophthalmology.
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Otto Kahler
1849 - 1893 (44 years)
Otto Kahler was a physician and pathologist born in Prague, Austrian Empire. In 1871 he obtained his medical doctorate in Prague, and following an educational trip to Paris, returned to his hometown as an assistant to Joseph Halla at the internal clinic. In 1882 he became an associate professor at Karl-Ferdinands-Universität, and a few years later , was a "full professor" of pathology and therapy. In 1889 he relocated to the University of Vienna, succeeding Heinrich von Bamberger as professor of special pathology. After a year in Vienna, he developed tongue cancer and his assistant, Friedrich Kraus , subsequently took over his lectures.
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Adolf Abicht
1793 - 1860 (67 years)
Adolf Abicht was a Polish-Lithuanian physician. He was a professor of general pathology, therapy, and medical history at the Vilnius University, and was a president of the Medical Society in Vilnius from 1829–1838.
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Paul von Bruns
1846 - 1916 (70 years)
Paul von Bruns was a German surgeon. He was born in Tübingen, and was the son of surgeon Victor von Bruns. His father-in-law was Protestant theologian Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker. Bruns was born July 2, 1846. In 1882, Bruns became director of the surgical clinic at Tübingen, as well as a full professor at the University. He was the author of works on numerous medical subjects — laryngotomy for removal of growths in the larynx, acute osteomyelitis, gunshot wounds, limb operations and the treatment of goiters, to name a few.
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Stephen Whisson
1710 - 1783 (73 years)
Stephen Whisson was a tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and coached 72 students in the 1744–1754 period. Biography Wisson was from St Neots, Huntingdonshire and was the son of a publican. In 1735, he matriculated from Wakefield School, Yorkshire.
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Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben
1806 - 1849 (43 years)
Baron Ernst von Feuchtersleben , was an Austrian physician, poet and philosopher. He was a member of the von Feuchtersleben family Life He was born as a son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben . He was of an old Saxon noble family. His older half-brother was Eduard von Feuchtersleben , son of Ernst von Feuchtersleben from his first marriage.
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Franz Josef Ruprecht
1814 - 1870 (56 years)
Franz Josef Ruprecht was an Austrian-born physician and botanist active in the Russian Empire, where he was known as Frants Ivanovič Ruprekht . He was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, and grew up in Prague, where he studied, and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1836. After a short stint in medical practice in Prague, he was appointed curator of the herbarium of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg in 1839, then assistant director of the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden between 1851 and 1855, and professor of botany in 1855 at the University of Saint Petersburg. He died in Saint...
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