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
Zef Jubani
1818 - 1880 (62 years)
Zef Jubani or Giuseppe Jubany in Italian was an Albanian folklorist and activist of the Albanian National Awakening. He is known for the publication of a Collection of Albanian Folk Songs and Rhapsodies in the Gheg Albanian dialect. Jubani advocated the creation of a unique alphabet of the Albanian language. For his political activities, which often were anti-clericalist, Jubani was denounced to the Holy See by the Jesuit missionaries of Shkodër.
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Eduardo Nicol
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Eduardo Nicol was a Mexican-Catalan philosopher. He arrived in Mexico in 1939, obtained his major in philosophy from National Autonomous University of Mexico , the biggest university in Mexico, where he taught from 1940. While at UNAM, he became the chairs of adolescent psychology and the history of psychology following .
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Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link
1767 - 1851 (84 years)
Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link was a German naturalist and botanist. Biography Link was born at Hildesheim as a son of the minister August Heinrich Link , who taught him love of nature through collection of 'natural objects'. He studied medicine and natural sciences at the Hannoverschen Landesuniversität of Göttingen, and graduated as MD in 1789, promoting on his thesis "Flora der Felsgesteine rund um Göttingen" . One of his teachers was the famous natural scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach . He became a private tutor in Göttingen.
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Richard von Schubert-Soldern
1852 - 1924 (72 years)
Richard Ritter von Schubert-Soldern was a philosopher in Austria-Hungary and later Austria. Schubert-Soldern earned a doctorate at the University of Prague in 1879 and habilitated at Leipzig University in 1882 with a thesis titled Ueber Trancendenz des Objects und Subjects .
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Christian Krohg
1852 - 1925 (73 years)
Christian Krohg was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist. Krohg was inspired by the realism art movement and often chose motifs from everyday life. He was the director and served as the first professor at the Norwegian Academy of Arts from 1909 to 1925.
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Tang Chun-i
1909 - 1978 (69 years)
Tang Chun-I or Tang Junyi was a Chinese philosopher who was one of the leading exponents of New Confucianism. Born in Sichuan, he moved to Hong Kong in 1949 due to the establishment of the People's Republic of China and co-founded New Asia College with the dual objective of modernizing China while upholding its traditional values.
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Aristobulus of Alexandria
200 BC - Present (2226 years)
Aristobulus of Alexandria also called Aristobulus the Peripatetic and once believed to be Aristobulus of Paneas, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school, though he also used Platonic and Pythagorean concepts. Like his successor, Philo, he attempted to fuse ideas in the Hebrew Scriptures with those in Greek thought.
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William H. Dietz
#18659
Christoph Schrempf
1860 - 1944 (84 years)
Christoph Schrempf was a German evangelical theologian and philosopher. Life Christoph Schrempf was a pastor and writer from Besigheim, Germany. He had a difficult childhood due to his father's alcoholism. His mother suffered from the violence until she fled, taking the children. Perhaps this made the young Christoph Schrempf sensitive to all forms of violence, including hidden violence. In his youth, Schrempf was an avid Bible reader. He studied religion and was vicar and assistant teacher in Tübingen. The normal path of a Protestant Württemberg Pastor seemed predetermined. He read the Bible with a critical scientific eye and explored the historical background of biblical texts.
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Philipp Spitta
1841 - 1894 (53 years)
Julius August Philipp Spitta was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life He was born in , near Hoya, and his father, also called Philipp Spitta, was a theologian and wrote the Protestant collection of hymns entitled Psalter und Harfe. As a child, the younger Spitta learnt the piano, pipe organ, and musical composition. He studied theology and classical philology at the University of Göttingen from 1860, graduating in 1864 with a Ph.D. for a dissertation on Tacitus . While at university, he composed, wrote a biography of Robert Schumann, and became friends with Johannes Brahms.
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Thomas Willis
1621 - 1675 (54 years)
Thomas Willis FRS was an English physician who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and was a founding member of the Royal Society. Life Willis was born on his parents' farm in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, where his father held the stewardship of the manor. He was a kinsman of the Willys baronets of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire. He graduated M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1642. In the Civil War years he was a Royalist, dispossessed of the family farm at North Hinksey by Parliamentary forces. In the 1640s, Willis was one of the royal physicians to Charles I.
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Kanji Swami
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Kanji Swami was a teacher of Jainism. He was deeply influenced by the Samayasāra of Kundakunda in 1932. He lectured on these teachings for 45 years to comprehensively elaborate on the philosophy described by Kundakunda and others. He was given the title of "Koh-i-Noor of Kathiawar" by the people who were influenced by his religious teachings and philosophy.
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Władysław Mieczysław Kozłowski
1858 - 1935 (77 years)
Władysław Mieczysław Kozłowski was a Polish philosopher. Life Kozłowski lectured at Brussels' Université Nouvelle and at Geneva University. In 1919–28 he was professor of the theory and methodology of science at Poznań University.
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Howard Selsam
1903 - 1970 (67 years)
Howard Selsam was an American Marxist philosopher. Background Howard Brillinger Selsam was born on 28 June 1903 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His parents were John T. Selsam, a grocer, and his mother was Flora Emig Selsam.
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Eugeniu Sperantia
1888 - 1972 (84 years)
Eugeniu Sperantia was a Romanian poet, aesthetician, essayist, sociologist and philosopher. He was born in Bucharest to folklorist Theodor Speranția and his wife Elena , a relative of poet Mihail Cruceanu. He attended primary and high school in his native city, graduating in 1906. That year, he made his published debut, in Ovid Densusianu's Vieața Nouă. Prior to that, he had frequented Alexandru Macedonski's circle. In 1910, he graduated from the philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest. Two years later, he received a doctorate in literature and philosophy; his thesis dealt with pragmatic apriorism.
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Austin Farrer
1904 - 1968 (64 years)
Austin Marsden Farrer was an English Anglican philosopher, theologian, and biblical scholar. His activity in philosophy, theology, and spirituality led many to consider him one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Anglicanism. He served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1960 to 1968.
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Christoph Gottfried Bardili
1761 - 1808 (47 years)
Christoph Gottfried Bardili was a German philosopher and cousin of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He was critical of Kantian idealism and proposed his own system of philosophy known as rational realism, a view based purely upon "thinking as thinking".
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Simon Foucher
1644 - 1696 (52 years)
Simon Foucher was a French polemic philosopher. His philosophical standpoint was one of Academic skepticism: he did not agree with dogmatism, but didn't resort to Pyrrhonism, either. Life He was born in Dijon, the son of a merchant, and appears to have taken holy orders at a very early age. For some years he held the position of honorary canon at Dijon, but he resigned in order to take up his residence in Paris. He graduated at the Sorbonne, having studied theology, and spent the remainder of his life in literary work in Paris, where he died.
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Johann Wilhelm Ritter
1776 - 1810 (34 years)
Johann Wilhelm Ritter was a German chemist, physicist and philosopher. He was born in Samitz near Haynau in Silesia , and died in Munich. Life and work Johann Wilhelm Ritter's first involvement with science began when he was 14 years old. He became an apprentice to an apothecary in Liegnitz , and acquired a deep interest in chemistry. He began medicine studies at the University of Jena in 1796. A self-taught scientist, he made many experimental researches on chemistry, electricity and other fields.
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Demetrius of Phalerum
350 BC - 283 BC (67 years)
Demetrius of Phalerum was an Athenian orator originally from Phalerum, an ancient port of Athens. A student of Theophrastus, and perhaps of Aristotle, he was one of the first members of the Peripatetic school of philosophy. Demetrius had been a distinguished statesman who was appointed by Cassander, the King of Macedon, to govern Athens, where Demetrius ruled as sole ruler for ten years. During this time, he introduced important reforms of the legal system, while also maintaining pro-Cassander oligarchic rule.
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Andrew Taylor Still
1828 - 1917 (89 years)
Andrew Taylor Still was the founder of osteopathic medicine. He was also a physician and surgeon, author, inventor and Kansas territorial and state legislator. He was one of the founders of Baker University, the oldest four-year college in the state of Kansas, and was the founder of the American School of Osteopathy , the world's first osteopathic medical school, in Kirksville, Missouri.
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Jean-Pierre de Crousaz
1663 - 1748 (85 years)
Jean-Pierre de Crousaz was a Swiss theologian and philosopher. He is now remembered more for his letters of commentary than his formal works. Life De Crousaz was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was a many-sided man, whose numerous works on many subjects had a great vogue in their day, but are now largely forgotten. He has been described as an initiateur plutôt qu'un créateur , chiefly because he introduced the philosophy of Descartes to Lausanne in opposition to the reigning Aristotelianism, and also as a Calvinist pedant of the French abbés of the 18th century.
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John Stuart Mackenzie
1860 - 1935 (75 years)
John Stuart Mackenzie was a British philosopher, born near Glasgow, and educated at Glasgow, Cambridge, and Berlin. In 1884-89 he was a fellow at Edinburgh and from 1890 to 1896 fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He lectured on political economy at Owens College, Manchester, in 1890-93, and in 1895 became professor of logic and philosophy in University College, Cardiff. Mackenzie was an idealist philosopher and a Hegelian of the type of Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, and Caird.
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Melchiorre Gioia
1767 - 1829 (62 years)
Melchiorre Gioja was an Italian writer on philosophy and political economy. His name is spelled Gioia in modern Italian. Biography Gioja was born at Piacenza, in what is now northern Italy. Originally intended for the church, he took orders, but renounced them in 1796 and went to Milan, where he devoted himself to the study of political economy. Having obtained the prize for an essay on "the kind of free government best adapted to Italy" he decided upon the career of a publicist.
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Félicité de La Mennais
1782 - 1854 (72 years)
Félicité Robert de La Mennais was a French Catholic priest, philosopher and political theorist. He was one of the most influential intellectuals of Restoration France. Lamennais is considered the forerunner of liberal Catholicism and social Catholicism.
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George Frederic Watts
1817 - 1904 (87 years)
George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
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Carl Van Vechten
1880 - 1964 (84 years)
Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. He gained fame as a writer, and notoriety as well, for his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. In his later years, he took up photography and took many portraits of notable people. Although he was married to women for most of his adult years, Van Vechten engaged in numerous homosexual affairs over his lifetime.
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Phaedrus
500 BC - 393 BC (107 years)
Phaedrus , son of Pythocles, of the Myrrhinus deme , was an ancient Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the philosopher Socrates. He was indicted in the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries in 415 during the Peloponnesian War, causing him to flee Athens.
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Mirza Fatali Akhundov
1812 - 1878 (66 years)
Mirza Fatali Akhundov , also known as Mirza Fatali Akhundzade, or Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh , was a celebrated Iranian Azerbaijani author, playwright, atheist, philosopher, and founder of Azerbaijani modern literary criticism, "who acquired fame primarily as the writer of European-inspired plays in the Azeri Turkic language".
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Juan Bautista Muñoz
1745 - 1799 (54 years)
Juan Bautista Muñoz was an 18th-century Spanish philosopher and historian. Biography Born in Museros in 1745, Juan Bautista Muñoz was the third of four sons. After the death of his father in 1751, his mother placed him under the tutelage of his uncle, the Dominican friar Gabriel Ferrandis at the convent of Pilar de Valencia, where he began to receive his first formal education. From 1753 to 1757, Muñoz was enrolled at the Jesuit seminary in Valencia, where he came under the influence of the polymath Antonio Eximeno Pujades, and began to take an interest in mathematics and modern philosophy...
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Étienne Vacherot
1809 - 1897 (88 years)
Étienne Vacherot was a French philosophical writer. Life Vacherot was born of peasant parentage at Torcenay, near Langres in the Haute-Marne département of France. He was educated at the École Normale, and returned there as director of studies in 1838, after some years spent in provincial schoolmasterships. In 1839 he succeeded his master Victor Cousin as professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. His Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie , was his first and best-known work. It drew on him attacks from the Clerical party which led to his suspension in 1851. Shortly afterwards he refused to swear allegiance to the new imperial government, and was dismissed from his post.
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Mircea Florian
1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Mircea Florian was a Romanian philosopher and translator. Active mainly during the interwar period, he was noted as one of the leading proponents of rationalism, opposing it to the Trăirist philosophy of Nae Ionescu. His work, comprising some 20 books, shows Florian as a disciple of centrists and rationalists such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru and Titu Maiorescu.
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Shriharsha
1200 - 1200 (0 years)
Shri-harsha was a 12th century CE Indian philosopher and poet. Śrīharṣa works discuss various themes in Indian Philosophy, such as pramana. He has been often interpreted as promoting Advaita Vedānta in his Sweets of Refutation , however, this interpretation remains controversial among modern scholars. Śrīharṣa's thought was influential for both Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers and also for the Advaita Vedānta tradition.
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Worthington Hooker
1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Worthington Hooker was an American physician, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Worthington Hooker School in New Haven, Connecticut is named after him. He graduated Yale University in 1825 and Harvard University with a degree in Medicine in 1829. He practiced in Connecticut until 1852. Afterwards, he was professor of the theory and practice of medicine at Yale. He was vice president of the American Medical Association in 1864. His principal works are:Physician and Patient Homeopathy: An Examination of the Doctrines and Evidences physiologyRational Therapeutics Child's Book of Nature 3 volum...
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Manuel Joël
1826 - 1890 (64 years)
Manuel Joël was a German Jewish philosopher and preacher. He was born in Birnbaum , Grand Duchy of Posen. After teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded by Zecharias Frankel, in 1863 he became the successor of Abraham Geiger in the rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions to the history of the school of Aqiba as well as to the history of Jewish philosophy, his essays on Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides being of permanent worth. But his most influential work was connected with the relations between Jewish philosophy and the medieval scholasticism. He showed...
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Jalal al-Din Davani
1426 - 1502 (76 years)
Jalal al-Din Davani , also known as Allama Davani , was a theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet, who is considered to have been one of the leading scholars in late 15th-century Iran. A native of the town of Davan in the southern Iranian region of Fars, Davani completed his education at the provincial capital of Shiraz, where he started to distinguish himself. In the 1460s, he briefly served as the sadr of the Qara Qoyunlu governor of Fars, Mirza Yusuf, and accompanied the latter's father Jahan Shah in his battle against the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan , where the latter emerged victorious.
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Ernst Platner
1744 - 1818 (74 years)
Ernst Platner was a German anthropologist, physician and Rationalist philosopher, born in Leipzig. He was the father of painter Ernst Zacharias Platner . Life Following the death of his father in 1747, the philologist Johann August Ernesti became his foster father. He received his early education at the gymnasium in Altenburg, the Thomasschule in Leipzig and at the gymnasium in Gera. Afterwards, he studied at the University of Leipzig, where in 1770 he became an associate professor of medicine. Later at Leipzig, he was appointed a full professor of physiology and philosophy . In 1783/84 and ...
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James Beattie
1735 - 1803 (68 years)
James Beattie was a Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher. Career He became schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun in 1753. He took the position of usher at the grammar-school of Aberdeen in 1758.
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Alan Stout
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Alan Ker Stout was a moral philosopher working at the University of Sydney, who also wrote on cinema. His father was G. F. Stout, British philosopher. Biography Stout gained his MA at Oxford in 1924 and, in June of that year, he was appointed to an assistant lectureship at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, under Professor James Gibson. In this period he published three articles on Descartes and produced plays. He married Evelyn Roberts in 1927, an undergraduate leading lady in his theatre productions.
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Ľudovít Štúr
1815 - 1856 (41 years)
Ludevít Štúr , also known as Ľudovít Velislav Štúr, was a Slovak revolutionary, politician, and writer. As a leader of the Slovak national revival in the 19th century, and the author of the Slovak language standard, he is lauded as one of the most important figures in Slovak history.
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Shalva Nutsubidze
1888 - 1969 (81 years)
Shalva Nutsubidze was a Georgian philosopher, cultural historian, rustvelologist, literary critic, translator, public figure, one of the founders of scientific school in the field of history of Georgian philosophy, one of the founders and prorector of the Tbilisi State University, Director of the Fundamental Library of the TSU, Dean of the Department of History of World Literature, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, elected member of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR , Meritorious Scientific Worker of Georgia .
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Božidar Knežević
1862 - 1905 (43 years)
Božidar Knežević was a Serbian philosopher, writer, and literary critic. Despite being educated for the priesthood, he abandoned the Orthodox religion, and began to develop his career in science and topics of social regeneration. He rejected dogmatism, believing instead that neither religious nor historical nor scientific knowledge could be wholly accurate.
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Ali ibn Ridwan
988 - 1061 (73 years)
Abu'l Hassan Ali ibn Ridwan Al-Misri was an Arab of Egyptian origin who was a physician, astrologer and astronomer, born in Giza. He was a commentator on ancient Greek medicine, and in particular on Galen; his commentary on Galen's Ars Parva was translated by Gerardo Cremonese. However, he is better known for providing the most detailed description of the supernova now known as SN 1006, the brightest stellar event in recorded history, which he observed in the year 1006. This was written in a commentary on Ptolemy's work Tetrabiblos.
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Firmin Abauzit
1679 - 1767 (88 years)
Firmin Abauzit was a French scholar who worked on physics, theology and philosophy, and served as librarian in Geneva during his final 40 years. Abauzit is also notable for proofreading or correcting the writings of Isaac Newton and other scholars.
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David the Invincible
600 - 600 (0 years)
David the Invincible was a neoplatonist philosopher of the 6th century. David was a pupil of Olympiodorus in Alexandria. His works, originally written in Greek, survive in medieval Armenian translation, and he was given the byname of "invincible" in the Armenian tradition, which considers David himself an Armenian.
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William of Saint-Amour
1202 - 1272 (70 years)
William of Saint-Amour was an early figure in thirteenth-century scholasticism, chiefly notable for his withering attacks on the friars. Biography William was born in Saint-Amour, Jura, then part of the Duchy of Burgundy, in c. 1200. Under the patronage of the Count of Savoy, he was active at the University of Paris from the 1220s, becoming master of arts in 1228. From a reference in a letter by Gregory IX, it is evident that he had become a doctor of Canon law by 1238. By 1250 he had been made master of theology.
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Walda Heywat
1599 - 1692 (93 years)
Walda Heywat , also called Mitku, was an Ethiopian philosopher. He was the beloved student of Zara Yacob, who wrote a well regarded work on the nature of truth and reason. Heywat took his mentor’s work and expanded upon it, turning it into a more practical guide
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Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov was a Bulgarian philosopher, pedagogue, mystic, and esotericist. A leading 20th-century teacher of Western Esotericism in Europe, he was a disciple of Peter Deunov , the founder of the Universal White Brotherhood.
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Lajos Fülep
1885 - 1970 (85 years)
Lajos Fülep was a Hungarian art historian, philosopher of art, pastor of the Reformed Church in Hungary and university professor. Life and career He was born in to the family of a veterinarian. Fülep received his primary education in the countryside and later returned to Budapest for university studies. During this period he wrote on art and history for various newspaper such as Népszava which made him well known in intellectual circles.
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