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,
#18751
Tilopa
928 - 1009 (81 years)
Tilopa was an Indian Buddhist monk in the tantric Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He lived along the Ganges River, with wild ladies as a tantric practitioner and mahasiddha. He practised Anuttarayoga Tantra, a set of spiritual practices intended to accelerate the process of attaining Buddhahood. He became a holder of all the tantric lineages, possibly the only person in his day to do so. As well as the way of insight, and Mahamudra he learned and passed on the Way of Methods, today known as the 6 Yogas of Naropa, and guru yoga. Naropa is considered his main student.
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Kaneko Daiei
1881 - 1976 (95 years)
Kaneko Daiei was a Japanese Shin Buddhist philosopher and priest during the first half of the 20th century, belonging to the Ōtani-ha branch of Shin Buddhism. He was born to the priest of Saiken-ji, a Shin Buddhist temple in Jōetsu, Niigata Prefecture. He attended Shinshu University from 1901 when it was under the new leadership of Kiyozawa Manshi. It was at this time that he met and became close to Soga Ryojin. After graduating, he returned home and worked to propagate the ideas of Kiyozawa. In 1916, Kaneko took up a position on the faculty of Ōtani University. In 1925 and 1926, he published ...
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Matthias Jakob Schleiden
1804 - 1881 (77 years)
Matthias Jakob Schleiden was a German botanist and co-founder of cell theory, along with Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow. He published some poems and non-scientific work under the pseudonym Ernst.
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Ali Murad Davudi
1922 - 1979 (57 years)
Dr Ali Murad Davudi was an Iranian Baháʼí who was a member of the national governing body of the Baháʼís in Iran. He was a professor at Tehran University in the philosophy department. In 1979, during a wave of persecution toward Baháʼís, he was kidnapped and has been presumed a victim of state execution.
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John of Paris
1240 - 1304 (64 years)
John of Paris , also called Jean Quidort and Johannes de Soardis , was a French philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar. Life John of Paris was born in Paris at an unknown date. Having obtained the degree of Master of Arts with distinction, he joined the Dominican Order, when about twenty years of age, at the Convent of St. James in his native city. There he taught philosophy and theology, and obtained the degree of Master of Theology. He was endowed with great ability, possessed great literary and linguistic attainments, and was considered one of the best theologians of the university a...
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Victor Goldschmidt
1914 - 1981 (67 years)
Victor Goldschmidt was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. Born in Germany, he came to France in 1933. Before the war he studied at the Sorbonne and at the École pratique des hautes études under Henri Marguerite.
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Tomoji Abe
1903 - 1973 (70 years)
was a Japanese novelist, social critic, humanist, and translator of English and American literature. Although he began writing as a modernist, in his later works he represented the intellectual movement in Japanese literature. This movement departed from Japanese traditional thinking and from established forms of narration, which focused on esthetic values and emotional states of mind ; it also departed from modernist views, which continued to be popular in world literature and in Japan . Abe's intellectual approach was incompatible with the socio-political atmosphere of Japan in the early Shō...
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Xenarchus of Seleucia
Xenarchus of Seleucia in Cilicia, was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher and grammarian. Xenarchus left home early, and devoted himself to the profession of teaching, first at Alexandria, afterwards at Athens, and last at Rome, where he enjoyed the friendship of Arius, and afterwards of Augustus; and he was still living, in old age and honour, when Strabo wrote. Xenarchus disagreed with Aristotle on many issues. He denied the existence of the aether, composing a treatise entitled Against the Fifth Element. He is also mentioned by Simplicius, by Julian the Apostate, and by Alexander of Aphrodisia...
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Arnold Böcklin
1827 - 1901 (74 years)
Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss Symbolist painter. Biography He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin , was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trade. His mother, Ursula Lippe, was a native of the same city. Arnold studied at the Düsseldorf academy under Schirmer, and became a friend of Anselm Feuerbach. He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. Schirmer, who recognized in him a student of exceptional promise, sent him to Antwerp and Brussels, where he copied the works of Flemish and Dutch masters. Böcklin then went to Paris, wo...
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Thomas Charles Hope
1766 - 1844 (78 years)
Thomas Charles Hope was a Scottish physician, chemist and lecturer. He proved the existence of the element strontium, and gave his name to Hope's Experiment, which shows that water reaches its maximum density at .
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Onasander
Onasander or Onosander was a Greek philosopher. He was the author of a commentary on the Republic of Plato, which is lost, but we still possess his Strategikos , a short but comprehensive work on the duties of a general. It is dedicated to Quintus Veranius, consul in AD 49, and legate of Britain. It was the chief authority for the military writings of the emperors Maurice and Leo VI, and Maurice of Saxony, who consulted it in a French translation and expressed a high opinion of it.
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Gabriel Wagner
1660 - 1717 (57 years)
Gabriel Wagner was a radical German philosopher and materialist who wrote under the nom-de-plume Realis de Vienna. A follower of Spinoza and acquaintance of Leibniz, Wagner did not believe that the universe or bible were divine creations, and sought to extricate philosophy and science from the influence of theology. Wagner also held radical political views critical of the nobility and monarchy. After failing to establish lasting careers in cities throughout German-speaking Europe, Wagner died in or shortly after 1717.
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Hedwig Conrad-Martius
1888 - 1966 (78 years)
Hedwig Conrad-Martius was a German phenomenologist who became a Christian mystic. Life and works She initially considered a literary career, but later became interested in philosophy. This started at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She also studied at Göttingen. To celebrate its foundation festival, in 1912 Goettingen University gave a prize to the best original work on a philosophical topic. The names of all competitors were sealed, opened only after declaring a winner. Of about 200 philosophical works, only hers - titled "The Intuitional-Theoretical Principles of Positivism" - was awarded the prize.
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Francisque Bouillier
1813 - 1899 (86 years)
Francisque Bouillier was a French philosopher, born in Lyons. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and in 1839 was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Lyons. From 1849 to 1864 he was dean of the faculty at Lyons and from 1867 to 1870 director of the École Normale Supérieure. His works include:Histoire et critique de la révolution cartésienne Théorie de la raison impersonnelle Du principe vital et de l'âme pensante Du plaisir et de la douleur La vraie conscience Souvenirs d'un vieil universitaire
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Théodore Eugène César Ruyssen
1868 - 1967 (99 years)
Théodore Eugène César Ruyssen was a French historian of philosophy and pacifist. Biography Ruyssen was born in Clisson, Loire-Atlantique, France. He was professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Bordeaux, and president of l'Association de la Paix par le Droit from 1896 to 1948.
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John Lord Cameron
#18767
Ferdinand Eckstein
1790 - 1861 (71 years)
Ferdinand Eckstein , Baron d'Eckstein, was a philosopher and playwright. Biography He was born in Copenhagen as the son of a German Jew who had converted to Lutheran Protestantism. Eckstein converted to Catholicism in Rome in 1807 under the influence of Friedrich Schlegel, and settled in France, after Napoleon's defeat. He worked from 1815 to 1830 as a police-inspector, and was an advocate of religious and civil liberty.
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Han Ryner
1861 - 1938 (77 years)
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple, L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique of fellow anarchist individualist Émile Armand. His thought is mainly influenced by stoicism and epicureanism.
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Benjamin Waterhouse
1754 - 1846 (92 years)
Benjamin Waterhouse was a physician, co-founder and professor of Harvard Medical School. He is most well known for being the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States, which he carried out on his own family.
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Hans Pichler
1882 - 1958 (76 years)
Hans Pichler was an Austrian-born German philosopher. A student of Windelband and Meinong, he revived in his work the philosophy of Wolff contra the epistemologism of the Neo-Kantians, particularly in his Über Christian Wolffs Ontologie . Among those influenced by Pichler's turn to realist ontology was Nicolai Hartmann.
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Vincent of Beauvais
1190 - 1264 (74 years)
Vincent of Beauvais was a Dominican friar at the Cistercian monastery of Royaumont Abbey, France. He is known mostly for his Speculum Maius , a major work of compilation that was widely read in the Middle Ages. Often retroactively described as an encyclopedia or as a florilegium, his text exists as a core example of brief compendiums produced in medieval Europe.
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Abdul Bari Nadvi
1886 - 1976 (90 years)
Abdul Bari Nadvi was an Indian Muslim scholar born in 1886 in the Barabanki district near Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. His father Hakim Abdul Khaliq was a student of Maulana Mohammad Naeem Farangi Mahli. His younger brother Saad-ud-Din Ansari was among the founding members of the Jamia Millia Delhi and taught there for a long time. Abdul Bari Nadvi died in Lucknow on 30 January 1976. He was survived by four sons and two daughters, all of whom are now deceased.
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Teles of Megara
250 BC - Present (2276 years)
Teles of Megara , was a Cynic philosopher and teacher. He wrote various discourses , seven fragments of which were preserved by Stobaeus. Life Nothing is known about Teles except for the limited information he reveals in his writings. In his discourse On Exile he refers to events in the Chremonidean War in the 260s BC, and he makes a specific reference to Hippomedon's governorship in Thrace under Ptolemy III Euergetes in the years following 241 BC, thus this discourse was written shortly after this date. His native city is uncertain: he makes various indirect references to Megara which show that he was living and teaching there, but it is possible that he originally came from Athens.
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Clemens Timpler
1563 - 1624 (61 years)
Clemens Timpler was a German philosopher, physicist and theologian. Along with Jakob Degen , he is considered an important Protestant metaphysician, establishing the Protestant Reformed Neuscholastik.
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Theophilos Corydalleus
1570 - 1646 (76 years)
Theophilos Corydalleus was a Greek Neo-Aristotelian philosopher who initiated the philosophical movement known as Korydalism or Corydalism. He was also an Eastern Orthodox cleric , physician, physicist, astronomer, mathematician, author, educator and geographer. His philosophical thought kept influencing Greek education for two hundred years after its inception.
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Emil Utitz
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Emil Utitz was a Czech philosopher and psychologist of Jewish descent. He was educated in Prague, where he was a classmate of Franz Kafka. After studies in Munich, Leipzig, and Prague, he became a professor in Rostock, and from 1925 was Chair of Philosophy at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. After his forced retirement in 1933, he became a professor in Prague. In 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto, where he was head of the library. After the liberation of Theresienstadt in 1945, he returned to Prague. Utitz died in Jena in 1956, while travelling through East Germany to give lec...
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Pierre Charron
1541 - 1603 (62 years)
Pierre Charron , French Catholic theologian and major contributor to the new thought of the 17th century. He is remembered for his controversial form of skepticism and his separation of ethics from religion as an independent philosophical discipline.
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Fritz Medicus
1876 - 1956 (80 years)
Fritz Medicus was a German-Swiss philosopher. He was awarded his doctorate while studying in Jena, with the publication of his dissertation, Kant's transcendental aesthetics and non-euclidian geometry. He was the Chair of Philosophy at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, and moved to ETH Zurich in 1911. Medicus wrote in the tradition of German idealism.
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Sitting Bull
1831 - 1890 (59 years)
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
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Johann Christian Reil
1759 - 1813 (54 years)
Johann Christian Reil was a German physician, physiologist, anatomist, and psychiatrist. He coined the term psychiatry – Psychiatrie in German – in 1808. Reil was one of five children, and was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Northwest Germany. He married Johanna Wilhelmine Leveaux in October, 1788. Together they had two sons and four daughters.
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Abu Bishr Matta ibn Yunus
870 - 940 (70 years)
Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus al-Qunnāʾī was an Arab Christian philosopher who played an important role in the transmission of the works of Aristotle to the Islamic world. He is famous for founding the Baghdad school of Aristotelian philosophers.
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Henry Ercole
Henry Ercole was a minor Maltese mediaeval philosopher who specialised mainly in ethics and logic. He enjoyed great esteem from his contemporaries, both as an administrator and a philosopher. Life It is unclear where Ercole was born in Malta or when. He was a Dominican friar, but it is not known where he completed his initial studies. The first documentary evidence about him is in 1711, when he was Master of Studies at the Studium Generale of the Dominicans at Rabat, Malta. Four years later, in 1715, he held the same office at Trapani, Sicily.
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James H. Hyslop
1854 - 1920 (66 years)
James Hervey Hyslop, Ph.D., LL.D, was an American psychical researcher, psychologist, and professor of ethics and logic at Columbia University. He was one of the first American psychologists to connect psychology with psychic phenomena. In 1906 he helped reorganize the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City and served as the secretary-treasurer for the organization until his death.
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Richard Lance Barnett
#18785
John Cantius
1390 - 1473 (83 years)
John Cantius was a Polish priest, scholastic philosopher, physicist and theologian. Biography John Cantius was born in Kęty, a small town near Oświęcim, Poland, to Anna and Stanisław Kanty. He attended the Kraków Academy at which he attained bachelor, and licentiate. In 1418 he became a Doctor of Philosophy. Upon graduation he spent the next three years conducting philosophy classes at the university, while preparing for the priesthood.
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François Gigot de la Peyronie
1678 - 1747 (69 years)
François Gigot de la Peyronie was a French surgeon who was born in Montpellier, France. His name is associated with a condition known as Peyronie's disease. As a teenager, he studied philosophy and surgery in Montpellier, where in 1695 he received his diploma as a barber-surgeon. Peyronie became fascinated with phalluses, which later developed into a lifelong obsession. He continued his education in Paris as a student of Georges Mareschal , who was chief-surgeon at the Hôpital de la Charité. Afterwards he returned to Montpellier as lecturer on anatomy and surgery, and was surgeon-major at the Hôtel-Dieu de Montpellier.
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Marcel Foucault
1865 - 1947 (82 years)
Marcel Foucault was a French philosopher and psychologist. Marcel Foucault was professor of philosophy at the University of Montpellier. In 1906 he founded a laboratory of experimental psychology at the university.
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Richard Assmann
1845 - 1918 (73 years)
Richard Assmann was a German meteorologist and physician who was a native of Magdeburg. He made numerous contributions in high altitude research of the Earth's atmosphere. He was a pioneer of scientific aeronautics and considered a co-founder of aerology.
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William Bartram
1739 - 1823 (84 years)
William Bartram was an American botanist, ornithologist, natural historian and explorer. Bartram was the author of an acclaimed book, now known by the shortened title Bartram's Travels, which chronicled his explorations of the southern British colonies in North America from 1773 to 1777. Bartram has been described as "the first naturalist who penetrated the dense tropical forests of Florida".
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Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales
1741 - 1816 (75 years)
Jean-Baptiste-Claude Delisle de Sales or Jean-Baptiste Isoard de Lisle was a French philosopher noted for his multi-edition, multi-volume opus The Philosophy of Nature: Treatise on Human Moral Nature.
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Hermogenes
500 BC - 400 BC (100 years)
Hermogenes was an ancient Athenian philosopher best remembered as a close friend of Socrates as depicted by Plato and Xenophon. Life Hermogenes was the son of Hipponicus, brother of the wealthy Callias, and resident of the Alopece deme alongside Socrates. Although he belonged to the great family of Callias, he is mentioned by Xenophon as a man of very little property, suggesting that he may have been an illegitimate son of Hipponicus. Plato, on the other hand, suggests that he was unjustly deprived of his property by Callias, his brother.
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Francisco Romero
1891 - 1962 (71 years)
Francisco Romero was a Latin American philosopher who spearheaded a reaction against positivism. Biography Romero was born in Seville, Spain, but spent much of his adult life in Latin America, especially Argentina, where he emigrated in 1904. He entered the Argentine army in 1910 and retired with the rank of major in 1931. He became a friend of the Argentine philosopher Alejandro Korn, and when he left military service he took over Korn's professorships at the universities of La Plata and Buenos Aires. Due to his strong disapproval of the Peronist government, he resigned his university positi...
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Malek Bennabi
1905 - 1973 (68 years)
Malek Bennabi was an Algerian writer and philosopher, who wrote about human society, particularly Muslim society with a focus on the reasons behind the fall of Muslim civilization. According to Malek Bennabi, the lack of new ideas in Islamic thought emerged what he coined civilizational bankruptcy. He argued that in order to recover its former magnificence, Islamic society had to become an environment in which individuals felt empowered. In order to satisfy his spiritual and material needs, a Muslim needed to feel that his industry and creativity would find reward.
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Donald Davidson
1893 - 1968 (75 years)
Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author. An English professor at Vanderbilt University from 1920 to 1965, he was a founding member of the Fugitives and the overlapping group Southern Agrarians, two literary groups based in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a supporter of segregation in the United States.
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Anton Mauve
1838 - 1888 (50 years)
Anthonij "Anton" Rudolf Mauve was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. He signed his paintings 'A. Mauve' or with a monogrammed 'A.M.'. A master colorist, he was a very significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh.
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Herman of Carinthia
1100 - 1160 (60 years)
Herman of Carinthia , also called Hermanus Dalmata or Sclavus Dalmata, Secundus, by his own words born in the "heart of Istria", was a philosopher, astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and translator of Arabic works into Latin.
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Hermann Oppenheim
1857 - 1919 (62 years)
Hermann Oppenheim was one of the leading neurologists in Germany. Life and work Oppenheim is the son of Juda Oppenheim , the long-time rabbi of the Warburg synagogue community , and his wife, Cäcilie, née Steeg .
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Johan Christian Dahl
1788 - 1857 (69 years)
Johan Christian Claussen Dahl , often known as or , was a Danish-Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the "golden age" of Norwegian painting. He is often described as "the father of Norwegian landscape painting" and is regarded as the first Norwegian painter to reach a level of artistic accomplishment comparable to that attained by the greatest European artists of his day. He was also the first to acquire genuine fame and cultural renown abroad. As one critic has put it, "J.C. Dahl occupies a central position in Norwegian artistic life ...
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Giovanni Rasori
1766 - 1837 (71 years)
Giovanni Rasori was an Italian academic, physician and translator. Career Rasori was born in Parma. He began studying at the university of that city with results so brilliant that he deserved the interest of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma that allowed him to complete his studies at the University of Florence, Pavia, London and Paris, where he remained fascinated by the illuminist and pre-revolutionary climate of the time. In Parma, he was a pupil of the anatomist Flaminio Torrigiani.
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Jeffries Wyman
1814 - 1874 (60 years)
Jeffries Wyman was an American naturalist and anatomist, born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Wyman died in Bethlehem, New Hampshire of a pulmonary hemorrhage. Career He graduated Harvard College in 1833 and Harvard Medical School in 1837. He was made curator at Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1839 and remained affiliated there until 1842. Fees from Lowell Institute lectures enabled him to study in Europe, from 1841 to 1842, where he had the opportunity to study under anatomist Richard Owen in London. Upon his return to the United States, he had hoped to gain a professorship at Harvard College but the position went to Asa Gray.
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