The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#18651
Valentino Annibale Pastore
1868 - 1956 (88 years)
Valentino Annibale Pastore was an Italian philosopher and logician. Pastore was born in Orbassano. He studied literature at the University of Turin under Arturo Graf. His thesis La vita delle forme letterarie was published in 1892 in Turin. Pastore then turned to philosophy, influenced by the works of Pasquale d'Ercole, Friedrich Kiesow, Antonio Garbasso, and Giuseppe Peano, publishing his own thesis Sopra le teorie della scienza: logica, matematica, fisica in 1903.
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Boethus of Sidon
75 BC - 10 BC (65 years)
Boethus of Sidon was a Peripatetic philosopher from Sidon, who lived towards the end of the 1st century BC. None of his work has been preserved and the complete collection of quotings and paraphrases appeared first in 2020.
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Janus Cornarius
1500 - 1558 (58 years)
Janus Cornarius was a Saxon humanist and friend of Erasmus. A gifted philologist, Cornarius specialized in editing and translating Greek and Latin medical writers with "prodigious industry," taking a particular interest in botanical pharmacology and the effects of environment on illness and the body. Early in his career, Cornarius also worked with Greek poetry, and later in his life Greek philosophy; he was, in the words of Friedrich August Wolf, "a great lover of the Greeks." Patristic texts of the 4th century were another of his interests. Some of his own writing is extant, including a book...
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Maxime Hans Kuczyński
1890 - 1967 (77 years)
Max "Maxime" Hans Kuczyński was a German physician of Jewish origin. He was the father of the former President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Biography Maxime Kuczyński was born in Berlin, as the son of Emma and Louis Kuczyński, both of Jewish Polish origin. He studied medicine and natural science at the University of Rostock. In 1913 he received his degree in philosophy, and in 1919 a degree in medicine.
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William Mackintire Salter
1853 - 1931 (78 years)
William Mackintire Salter was the author of several books on philosophy and a critical and enduring major classic on Nietzsche. He was also a special lecturer for the Department of Philosophy in the University of Chicago and a pioneer in the Ethical movement.
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Dawes Hicks
1862 - 1941 (79 years)
George Dawes Hicks FBA was a British philosopher who was the first professor of moral philosophy at University College, London from 1904 until 1928 and professor emeritus thereafter until his death.
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Lawrence Alma-Tadema
1836 - 1912 (76 years)
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, , RWS was a Dutch painter who later settled in the United Kingdom, becoming the last officially recognised denizen in 1873. Born in Dronryp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in London, England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there.
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Edmundo Cetina Velázquez
1896 - 1959 (63 years)
Edmundo Cetina Velázquez was a Mexican philosopher and writer from Tenosique, Tabasco. He was born in 1896 and died in 1959. He was the son of Joaquin Cetina Moreno and Maria de Jesus Velázquez. He studied at the Instituto Juárez and later became a self-taught physician and a passionate student of philosophy and exact sciences. He wrote several essays on topics such as metaphysics, ethics, logic, mathematics, physics, and biology. Some of his writings are: Algunos balbuceos sobre una filosofía de la vida , Algunos aspectos de la Relatividad , La vida y la muerte , El problema del conocimiento , and El problema del ser .
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Crates of Mallus
200 BC - 145 BC (55 years)
Crates of Mallus was a Greek grammarian and Stoic philosopher, leader of the literary school and head of the library of Pergamum. He was described as the Crates from Mallus to distinguish him from other philosophers by the same name. His chief work was a critical and exegetical commentary on Homer. He is also famous for constructing the earliest known globe of the Earth.
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Uku Masing
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Uku Masing was an Estonian philosopher. He was a significant figure in Estonian religious philosophy. Masing also wrote poetry, mostly on religious issues. Masing authored one novel, Rapanui vabastamine ehk Kajakad jumalate kalmistul in the late 1930s, which was published posthumously in 1989. As a folklorist, he was a distinguished researcher of fairy tales, contributing to the international Encyclopedia of the Folktale. He was awarded the Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem and the Israeli Supreme Court for his participation during the Holocaust in helping a Jew in Estonia escape capture from 1941 until the end of the war.
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Boris Chicherin
1828 - 1904 (76 years)
Boris Nikolayevich Chicherin was a Russian jurist and political philosopher, who worked out a theory that Russia needed a strong, authoritative government to persevere with liberal reforms. By the time of the Russian Revolution, Chicherin was probably the most reputable legal philosopher and historian in Russia.
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Francis Asbury
1745 - 1816 (71 years)
Francis Asbury was a British-born Methodist minister who became one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. During his 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States, he devoted his life to ministry, traveling on horseback and by carriage thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.
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Claire Bombardier
#18664
William of Champeaux
1070 - 1121 (51 years)
Guillaume de Champeaux , known in English as William of Champeaux and Latinised to Gulielmus de Campellis, was a French philosopher and theologian. Biography William was born at Champeaux near Melun. After studying under Anselm of Laon and Roscellinus, he taught in the school of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, of which he was made canon in 1103. Among his pupils was Peter Abelard, whom he had a disagreement with because Abelard challenged some of his ideas, and because William thought Abelard was too arrogant. Abelard calls him the "supreme master" of dialectic after he replaced his master as the new teacher.
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Ecphantus the Pythagorean
Ecphantus or Ecphantos or Ephantus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher. He is identified as a Pythagorean of the 4th century BCE from Syracuse, Magna Graecia, but the details concerning his life are historically obscure; he may have not been a historical person, but rather a fictional character invented by Heraclides of Pontus for use in his philosophical dialogues. He also may have been the same figure as the attested Ecphantus of Croton.
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Miyake Setsurei
1860 - 1945 (85 years)
Miyake Setsurei was a Japanese philosopher and author. He helped found the Society for Political Education and its magazine Nihonjin . Biography He graduated from the University of Tokyo's Department of Philosophy in 1883.
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Maurice Utrillo
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Maurice Utrillo , born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955 Biography Utrillo was the son of the artist Suzanne Valadon , who was then an eighteen-year-old artist's model. She never revealed the father of her child; speculation exists that he was the offspring of a liaison with an equally young amateur painter named Boissy, or with the well-established painter Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, or even with Renoir. . In 1891 a Spanish artist, Miquel Utrillo, signed a legal document acknowledging paternity, although the question remains as to whether he was in fact the child's fa...
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Eubulides
500 BC - 400 BC (100 years)
Eubulides of Miletus was a philosopher of the Megarian school who is famous for his paradoxes. Life According to Diogenes Laërtius, Eubulides was a pupil of Euclid of Megara, the founder of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Aristotle, against whom he wrote with great bitterness. He taught logic to Demosthenes, and he is also said to have taught Apollonius Cronus, the teacher of Diodorus Cronus, and the historian Euphantus.
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Joseph Lister
1827 - 1912 (85 years)
Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, was a British surgeon, medical scientist, experimental pathologist and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative medicine. Joseph Lister revolutionised the craft of surgery in the same manner that John Hunter revolutionised the science of surgery.
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Brajendra Nath Seal
1864 - 1938 (74 years)
Sir Brajendra Nath Seal was a Bengali Indian humanist philosopher. He served as the second vice chancellor of Mysore University. He began his career as a lecturer at the Scottish Church College. His research works were published in some of leading journals during the British Raj, such as the Calcutta Review, Modern Review, New India, Dawn, Bulletin of Mathematical Society, Indian Culture, Hindustan Standard, British Medical Journal, Prabasi, Sabuj Patra, and Visva-Bharati.
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G. R. G. Mure
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Geoffrey Reginald Gilchrist Mure was a British idealist philosopher and Oxford academic, who specialised in the works of the German philosopher, Hegel. Biography Mure was born on 8 April 1893, the son of Reginald James Mure and Anna Charlotte Neave. He was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy under the tutelage of Harold Joachim. He took a First in Classical Moderations in 1913. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he enlisted in the Warwicks Royal Horse Artillery. He served in France and Belgium, 1915–18, and was awarded the Military Cr...
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Lovis Corinth
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Lovis Corinth was a German artist and writer whose mature work as a painter and printmaker realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism. Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Secession group, later succeeding Max Liebermann as the group's president. His early work was naturalistic in approach. Corinth was initially antagonistic towards the expressionist movement, but after a stroke in 1911 his style loosened and took on many expressionistic qualities. His use of color became more vibrant, and he created portraits and landscapess of extraordinary vitality and power....
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Gerhard von Kügelgen
1772 - 1820 (48 years)
Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen was a German painter, noted for his portraits and history paintings. He was a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and a member of both the Prussian and Russian Imperial Academies of Arts. His twin brother, Karl von Kügelgen, was also a painter of note.
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Junius Rusticus
100 - 170 (70 years)
Quintus Junius Rusticus , was a Roman teacher and politician. He was probably a grandson of Arulenus Rusticus, who was a prominent member of the Stoic Opposition. He was a Stoic philosopher and was one of the teachers of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, whom Aurelius treated with the utmost respect and honour.
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Vasa Stajić
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Vasa Stajić was a Serbian writer and philosopher. He was born in Mokrin in 1878, and died in Novi Sad in 1947 where he spent most of his life. He was secretary of the Serbian Cultural Society from 1920-1922 and its president twice . A statue of him appears in front of the Serbian Cultural Society.
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Sergei Tretyakov
1892 - 1937 (45 years)
Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov was a Soviet Russian constructivist writer, playwright, poet, and special correspondent for Pravda. Life and career Sergei Tretyakov was born to a Russian father, Mikhail Konstantinovich Tretyakov, and a Baltic German mother, Elizaveta Emmanuilovna Tretyakova . His father was a school teacher. Tretyakov graduated in 1916 from the department of law at Moscow University. He began to publish in 1913 and just before the Russian Revolution he became associated with the ego-futurists. In 1919 he married Ol’ga Viktorovna Gomolitskaya. Soon after the publication of Iro...
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David Bomberg
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
David Garshen Bomberg was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys. Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson, and Dora Carrington. Bomberg painted a series of complex geometric compositions combining the influences of cubism and futurism in the years immediately preceding World War I; typically using a limited number of striking colours, turning humans into simple, angular shapes, and sometimes overlaying the whole painting a strong grid-work colouring scheme.
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Pyotr Fedoseyev
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
Pyotr Nikolaevich Fedoseyev was a Soviet philosopher, sociologist, politician and public figure. Biography Fedossev was born in to a peasant family. In 1930 he graduated from the Gorky Pedagogical Institute and in the same year, from among the students of the socio-economic department of the pedagogical faculty, he was approved as a nominee for preparation for teaching philosophy. In 1936 he completed his postgraduate studies at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History, having defended his dissertation for the degree of Candidate of Philosophical Sciences on the topic "Formation of Philosophical Views of F.
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John Henry Cardinal Newman
#18680
Mnesarchus of Athens
160 BC - 85 BC (75 years)
Mnesarchus or Mnesarch , of Athens, was a Stoic philosopher, who lived c. 160 – c. 85 BC. Biography Mnesarchus was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus. Cicero says that he was one of the leaders of the Stoic school at Athens together with Dardanus at a time when Antiochus of Ascalon was turning away from scepticism . He was the teacher of Antiochus for a time, and he may also have taught Philo of Larissa. After the death of Panaetius , the Stoic school at Athens seems to have fragmented, and Mnesarchus was probably one of several leading Stoics teaching in this era. He ...
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John Bascom
1827 - 1911 (84 years)
John Bascom was an American professor, college president and writer. Life He was born on May 1, 1827, in Genoa, New York, and was a graduate of Williams College with the class of 1849. He graduated from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1855. Aside from the degrees he received in those places, he held many other scholarly and honorary degrees. He was professor of rhetoric at Williams College from 1855 to 1874, and was president of the University of Wisconsin from 1874 to 1887. He retired in 1903 and died in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on October 2, 1911.
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Vincenzo Botta
1818 - 1894 (76 years)
Vincenzo Botta was an Italian-born politician and professor of philosophy, and later, in the United States, of Italian language and literature. Biography Botta was educated at the University of Turin, and became professor of philosophy there. In 1849 he was elected to the Sardinian parliament, and in 1850 commissioned, in association with Dr. Parola, another deputy, to examine the educational system of Germany. Their report on the German universities and schools was published at the expense of the government. In 1853, he met Anne Lynch, a writer from the United States then traveling in Europe...
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Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra
1816 - 1880 (64 years)
Ferdinand Karl Franz Schwarzmann, Ritter von Hebra was an Austrian Empire physician and dermatologist known as the founder of the New Vienna School of Dermatology, an important group of physicians who established the foundations of modern dermatology.
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Dexippus
350 - 350 (0 years)
Dexippus was an Ancient Greek Neoplatonist philosopher from the 4th century AD, whose wrote a commentary on the Categories of Aristotle which is partially extant. Dexippus was likely a pupil of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, but little else in known about his life. Like many other neoplatonists, Dexippus advocated harmony between the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. In his work, Dexippus explains the categories to a student named Seleucus, and endeavors at the same time to refute the objections of Plotinus. His work was known to the later Neoplatonist Simplicius of Cilicia, who mentions his...
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George B. McClellan
1826 - 1885 (59 years)
George Brinton McClellan was an American military officer, politician, engineer, businessman and writer who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey. A West Point graduate, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican–American War before leaving the United States Army to serve as a railway executive and engineer until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Early in the conflict, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising the Army of the Potomac, which served in the Eastern Theater; he also served as Commanding General of the ...
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Joseph Torrey
1797 - 1867 (70 years)
Joseph Torrey was an American professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont and acting president of that university for five years. Biography Torrey was born in Rowley, Massachusetts on February 2, 1797. He received his education at Dartmouth College and Andover Seminary; later in his life he was honored by Harvard University with a Doctor of Divinity degree. Torrey joined the faculty of the University of Vermont in 1827, and remained there for the rest of his life, serving as its acting president from 1862 until his death.
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Ramachandra Dattatrya Ranade
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Ramchandra Dattatray Ranade was an Indian scholar-philosopher-saint of Karnataka and Maharashtra. Biography He was born on 3 July 1886 in Jamakhandi, in Bagalkot District of Karnataka. After completing his schooling he studied at Deccan College, Pune. In the year 1914 he passed M.A. with full honours and for a very brief period joined the teaching staff of Fergusson College, Pune. He taught at Willindon College, Sangli, on a regular basis before being invited to join Allahabad University as Head of Department of Philosophy where he rose to be the Vice-Chancellor. After retirement in 1946 he ...
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William Mitchell
1861 - 1962 (101 years)
Sir William Mitchell was an Australian philosopher and academic. He was Professor of English Language, Literature, Mental and Moral Philosophy at the University of Adelaide from 1894–1922, Vice-Chancellor 1916–1942 and Chancellor 1942–1948.
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Donald Jay Grout
1902 - 1987 (85 years)
Donald Jay Grout was an American musicologist. He is best known as the author of A Short History of Opera, first published in 1947. The fourth edition was published by Columbia University Press in 2003.
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Angelica Kauffman
1741 - 1807 (66 years)
Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann , usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.
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Otto Lilienthal
1848 - 1896 (48 years)
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliderss, therefore making the idea of "heavier than air" a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical.
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Antoine Le Grand
1629 - 1699 (70 years)
Antoine Le Grand was a French Recollect and Cartesian philosopher. Life Born in Douai, Spanish Netherlands, he was attached at an early age to the English community of St. Bonaventure's convent there, and became a Franciscan Recollect friar, and taught philosophy and divinity. Sent on the English mission, he resided for many years in Oxfordshire, and in 1695 he was tutor in the family of Henry Fermor of Tusmore. His advocacy of Cartesianism met with strong resistance from Samuel Parker, who would become bishop of Oxford. Towards the close of his life he engaged in sharp controversies on metaphysical topics with John Sergeant, a secular priest.
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Vanja Sutlić
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Vanja Sutlić was a Croatian philosopher. He was regarded as the father of the Heideggerian philosophy in Yugoslavia and its successor states, especially in Croatia and Slovenia. He was born in Karlovac, Yugoslavia. He graduated from philosophy at the University of Zagreb, where he also obtained his PhD. In, he was hired as an assistant professor at the University, but in 1952 he was removed by the Yugoslav Communist authorities and forcibly transferred to Nova Gradiška. Already in 1953, he could return to Zagreb, continuing his teaching position. Between 1956 and 1964, he taught at the University of Sarajevo.
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Johan Andreas Dèr Mouw
1863 - 1919 (56 years)
Johan Andreas Dèr Mouw was a Dutch poet and philosopher. During Dèr Mouw's life only some of his poems were published in literary journals. His penname "Adwaita" is Sanskrit for "he who is without two-ness".
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John Punch
1603 - 1661 (58 years)
John Punch was an Irish Franciscan scholastic philosopher and theologian. Punch was ultimately responsible for the now classic formulation of Ockham's Razor, in the shape of the Latin phrase entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, "entities are not to be multiplied unnecessarily." His formulation was slightly different: Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate. Punch did not attribute this wording to William of Ockham, but instead referred to the principle as a "common axiom" used by the Scholastics.
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Peter Helias
1100 - 1200 (100 years)
Peter Helias was a medieval priest and philosopher. Born in Poitiers, he became a pupil of Thierry of Chartres at Paris in the 1130s, also teaching grammar and rhetoric in his school. Around 1155 he returned to Poitiers where he later died.
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Diogenes of Babylon
240 BC - 150 BC (90 years)
Diogenes of Babylon was a Stoic philosopher. He was the head of the Stoic school in Athens, and he was one of three philosophers sent to Rome in 155 BC. He wrote many works, but none of his writings survived, except as quotations by later writers.
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Bhudev Mukhopadhyay
1827 - 1894 (67 years)
Bhudev Mukhopadhyay was a writer and intellectual in 19th century Bengal. His works were considered ardent displays of nationalism and philosophy in the period of the Bengal renaissance. His novel Anguriya Binimoy was the first historical novel written in Bengal.
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Milan Kujundžić Aberdar
1842 - 1893 (51 years)
Milan Kujundžić Aberdar was a Serbian poet, philosopher and politician. Biography He was born in Belgrade and given the name Janićije but later he changed it to Milan. His pseudonym Aberdar came from his collected poems.
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Demetrius the Cynic
Demetrius , a Cynic philosopher from Corinth, who lived in Rome during the reigns of Caligula, Nero and Vespasian . Biography Demetrius was the intimate friend of Seneca, who wrote about him often, and who describes him as the perfect man: Demetrius, who seems to have been placed by nature in our times that he might prove that we could neither corrupt him nor be corrected by him; a man of consummate wisdom, though he himself disclaimed it, constant to the principles which he professed, of an eloquence worthy to deal with the mightiest subjects, scorning mere prettinesses and verbal niceties, but expressing with infinite spirit, the ideas which inspired it.
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