Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#18901

Fred C. Cole

1912 - 1986 (74 years)

Fred Carrington Cole was an American librarian and historian. He was president of the Council on Library Resources and Washington and Lee University. In 1999, American Libraries named him one of the "100 Most Important Leaders We Had in the 20th Century".

#18902

Viktor Mucha

1877 - 1933 (56 years)

Viktor Mucha was a dermatologist from Austria. He was involved in early syphilis research. He studied medicine at the universities of Vienna and Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1904. From 1905 he worked as an assistant under Ernst Finger in the department of skin and venereal diseases at Vienna. He was also a physician at the Kaiserin-Elisabethspital and the St. Anna-Kinderspital . In 1912 he obtained his habilitation for dermatology and syphilology at the university, becoming an associate professor in 1921.

#18903

Hosney Yosef

#77994

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Hosney Mohammed Ahmed Ali Yosef OBE is a former radiologist, who was in 2006 made OBE in recognition of his services to medicine in western Scotland. Yosef was born in Egypt and came to Scotland in 1974 to work as a cancer specialist at Hairmyres Hospital. was a senior consultant in clinical oncology at the Beatson Oncology Centre in Glasgow and an honorary clinical senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1978.

#18904

Ann Van Gysel

#186544

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Ann Van Gysel is a Belgian scientist and businesswoman. In 2011 she started Turnstone Communications, offering communications and business development services to biotech and pharma industry. She teaches science communications at the University of Antwerp and University of Ghent and is a director to the board of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp.

#18905

Yu-Chuan Jack Li

#81451

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Yu-Chuan Jack Li is the founder of Biomedical Informatics education and research institute. Li was the founding dean of the College of Medical Science and Technology at Taipei Medical University in 2011, composed of the original Department of Biomedical Informatics, the Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, the Department of Cancer Biology and Drug Discovery, the Department of Medical Neuroscience and the Department of Translational Science. Li also founded the International Center for Health Information Technology at TMU in 2015 to foster global awareness and international collaboration in healthcare.

#18906

Roger Kempf

#89820

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Roger Kempf was a French writer, philosopher, Germanist and ethnologist of literature, and emeritus professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich. He was awarded several literary prizes, including the Prix Alfred Née of the Académie française in 1969 for his book Sur le corps romanesque, the Prix Ève Delacroix of the Académie française in 2005 for L'indiscrétion des frères Goncourt and the Prix Femina essai in 2004 for the same work.

#18907

Gerald Peary

#88657

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Gerald Peary is an American film critic, filmmaker, editor of the University Press of Mississippi, and a former curator of the Harvard Film Archive. Early life and education Peary graduated from Rider University in 1964, went on to earn an MA in drama from New York University in 1966, and received a Ph.D. in Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1977 with the dissertation, The Rise of the American Gangster Film, 1913-1930. Peary was a 1986 Fulbright Fellow in Belgrade, studying Yugoslavian film comedy.

#18908

Uddharan Dutta Thakura

1481 - 1541 (60 years)

Uddharan Dutta Takur was an Indian philosopher and saint from the Gaudiya Vaishnava school of Vedanta tradition, producing a great number of philosophical works on the theology and practice of Bhakti yoga, Vaishnava Vedanta and associated disciplines. He is known as one of the Dwadasha gopas, .

#18909

Roger Kneebone

#110410

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Roger Lister Kneebone is British professor of surgical education at Imperial College London. A graduate of St Andrews and Manchester universities, he performed trauma procedures in the war zones of Southern Africa before working as a general practitioner in Wiltshire and after completing a PhD. Upon return, he became involved in medical education based around simulation and computer-based learning, challenging the "documentary framework". He co-founded the United Kingdom's only Masters in Education in Surgical Education.

#18910

Enrique Suñer Ordóñez

Enrique Suñer Ordóñez

1878 - 1941 (63 years)

Enrique Suñer Ordóñez was a Spanish professor of pediatric medicine at the University of Madrid and administrator in the Franco government. He was vice president of the Education and culture committee of Franco's first government. He was subsequently appointed president of the Comisión Liquidadora de Responsabilidades Políticas where he oversaw an anti-intellectual purging of schoolteachers and denouncing of leading intellectuals such as Ramón Menéndez Pidal, María Goyri, and many others. The enormous backlog of cases he sent to the Commission led to dysfunction, and his eventual replacement...

#18911

Peter Marshall Murray

1888 - 1969 (81 years)

Peter Marshall Murray, M.D. was president of the National Medical Association from 1932 to 1933. Biography He was born on June 9, 1888, in Houma, Louisiana to John L. Murray and Louvinia Smith. He attended Dillard University and graduated in 1910. In 1914 he was awarded his M.D. from Howard University. He interned at Freedmen's Hospital and then taught at Howard University. He served on the Howard University Board of Trustees.

#18912

Lucien-Marie Pautrier

Lucien-Marie Pautrier

1876 - 1959 (83 years)

Lucien-Marie Pautrier was a French dermatologist. Biography He studied medicine in Marseille and Paris, where he was steered towards dermatology by Émile Leredde, and subsequently worked with dermatologist Louis-Anne-Jean Brocq at the Hôpital Saint-Louis. He served as a medical officer to a field artillery regiment in World War I, during which, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery and became a chevalier in the Légion d’Honneur .

#18913

Sabu

#171885

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Hiroyuki Tanaka, known professionally as Sabu, is a Japanese actor and film director. Career Born in Wakayama Prefecture, Sabu studied at an Osaka fashion school before deciding to go to Tokyo to become a professional musician. It was suggested he try acting and in 1986 he made his film debut in Sorobanzuku. He earned his first starring role in the 1991 World Apartment Horror, a live-action film directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo of Akira fame. Working from a script he wrote himself, he made his directorial debut with the 1996 Dangan Runner, a film that set his early style of "quirky action-comedies ...

#18914

Claus Bock

#122541

Overall Influence

1926 - 2008 (82 years)

Claus Victor Bock was a professor of German studies. In the early 1950s, Bock studied with Ronald Peacock at the University of Manchester, attracted by the latter's research on Hölderlin, and obtained a PhD at Basle under Walter Muschg. After working briefly as an assistant lecturer at his alma mater, he became a lecturer at Queen Mary College, London , then reader , and finally professor of German, Westfield College, London . Two of Bock's noted PhD students were Jeremy Adler and John Fletcher.

#18915

Lance McCaskill

Lance McCaskill

1900 - 1985 (85 years)

Lancelot William McCaskill was a New Zealand agricultural instructor, lecturer, conservationist and writer. Born in Winchester, South Canterbury, New Zealand, he became aware of soil erosion problems in 1929 through his work towards his master's thesis Fertilizers in New Zealand, 1867–1929. He argued in favour of land management and conservation over downstream engineering solutions. His long career of public advocacy for soil conservation made him a pioneer of environmentalism, as it is understood today.

#18916

Rudolf Leubuscher

Rudolf Leubuscher

1822 - 1861 (39 years)

Rudolf Leubuscher was a German physician and psychiatrist who was a native of Breslau. He obtained his medical doctorate in 1844 with the dissertation, De indole hallucinationum in mania religiosa, afterwards serving as an assistant to Heinrich Philipp August Damerow at the newly constructed provincial mental institution in Halle. In 1848 he became habilitated at Humboldt University of Berlin, and in 1855 was a director at the medical clinic in Jena. He later returned to Berlin as a physician and associate professor at the university. He died in Berlin in 1861 at the age of 39.

#18917

D.R. Bhandarkar

1875 - 1950 (75 years)

Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar was an Indian archaeologist and epigraphist who worked with the Archaeological Survey of India . Born in Marathi Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family, he was the son of eminent Indologist, R. G. Bhandarkar.

#18918

Stephen Epstein

#120923

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Stephen E. Epstein is the Head of Translational and Vascular Biology Research at the MedStar Heart and Vascular Institute, MedStar Washington Hospital Center and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

#18919

Victoria Sendón de León

Victoria Sendón de León

#190413

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Victoria Sendón de León is a Spanish philosopher, feminist and writer. A difference feminist, Sendón de León has criticized equality feminism’s emphasis on rationality and ideals of equality:

#18920

Claudia Lux

#146324

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Claudia Lux is German librarian and the Member of the National Committee of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Life and education After studying social sciences, Lux received her Ph.D. in sinology in 1985 at Ruhr University Bochum. She started to work as a sinologist at the State Library.

#18921

Annie Goldson

#92729

Overall Influence

Anne Veronica Goldson is a New Zealand journalism and film academic specialising in documentaries. Her films include Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl, Brother Number One and Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web.

#18922

Anton Flettner

1885 - 1961 (76 years)

Anton Flettner was a German aviation engineer and inventor. Born in Eddersheim , Flettner made important contributions to airplane, helicopter, vessel, and automobile designs. After serving Germany in both World Wars, Anton Flettner emigrated to the United States post World War II as a consultant to the office of Naval Research at the United States Navy.

#18923

Michelle Bholat

#182617

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Michelle Bholat is an American physician. She is an associate professor of family medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she serves as vice-chair of clinical affairs and is a member of the Medical Board of California.

#18924

Hermann Senator

Hermann Senator

1834 - 1911 (77 years)

Hermann Senator was a German internist who was a native of Gnesen in the Prussian Province of Posen . Of Jewish descent, he studied medicine in Berlin, where he received his medical doctorate in 1857. Among his instructors in Berlin were Johannes Peter Müller , Johann Lukas Schönlein and Ludwig Traube . In 1875, he became chief physician in the internal medicine department at the Augusta-Hospital, and in 1881 became head physician at the Berlin Charité.

#18925

Jacqueline Cochran

1906 - 1980 (74 years)

Jacqueline Cochran was an American pilot and business executive. She pioneered women's aviation as one of the most prominent racing pilots of her generation. She set numerous records and was the first woman to break the sound barrier on 18 May 1953. Cochran was the wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots , which employed about 1000 civilian American women in a non-combat role to ferry planes from factories to port cities. Cochran was later a sponsor of the Mercury 13 women astronaut program.

#18926

John Walker

1893 - 1991 (98 years)

John Walker was a Canadian horticulturist and plant breeder who developed numerous varieties of trees and shrubs. His selections have been used in shelterbelts and landscaping applications across Canada and in northern countries around the world. Some of his selections include:Coronation Triumph PotentillaDensity and Korman SpireaJubilee WillowRadiance Amur MaplePrairie Princess PhloxGarry Pink ViburnumHill PoplarWalker PoplarWalker CaraganaHe was a founding member of the Indian Head Horticultural Society and past president of the Saskatchewan Institute of Agrologists, the Saskatchewan Hortic...

#18927

Ida Mann

1893 - 1983 (90 years)

Professor Dame Ida Caroline Mann, Mrs Gye, DBE, FRCS was "a distinguished ophthalmologist ... equally well known for her pioneering research work on embryology and development of the eye, and on the influences of genetic and social factors on the incidence and severity of eye disease throughout the world". Only six other women were Fellows at this time.

#18928

Günther C. Feigl

#117245

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Günther C. Feigl is an Austrian neurosurgeon. Feigl is an internationally renowned expert in minimally invasive neurosurgery. His main areas of expertise are skull base surgery and neurooncology. He specializes in the surgery of gliomas, minimally invasive endoscopy-assisted microvascular decompression in trigeminal neuralgia and facial hemispasm as well as the surgery of acoustic neuromas , tumors of the pineal gland and meningiomas of the skull base. Furthermore, his specialties comprise treatment of pituitary adenomas, spinal cord tumours and metastases as well as the area of pediatric ...

#18929

Ajit Varki

#26079

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Ajit Varki is a physician-scientist who is distinguished professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine, founding co-director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the University of California, San Diego , and founding co-director of the UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny . He is also executive editor of the textbook Essentials of Glycobiology and distinguished visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. He is a specialist advisor to the Human Gene Nome...

#18930

John Henderson

1747 - 1785 (38 years)

John Henderson was an English actor who played many Shakespearean and other roles. He first acted in Bath, where he was known as "The Bath Roscius", and then in London. Had he not died young he would have been remembered as a worthy successor to David Garrick.

#18931

Qiao Jie

#58092

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Qiao Jie is a Chinese obstetrician, reproductive physician and biologist. She is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and currently president of Peking University Third Hospital. She is also director of the National Clinical Research Center on Obstetrics & Gynecology, president of China Women Doctors' Association and chair for the Reproductive Medical Society of Chinese Medical Doctor Association.

#18932

Alfred Daniell

1853 - 1937 (84 years)

Alfred Daniell FRSE was a Welsh-born British advocate, remembered for his contributions to Physics. His textbooks have been translated into most European languages, and other languages from Afrikaans to Japanese.

#18933

Fritz Lange

1864 - 1952 (88 years)

Fritz Lange was a German orthopedic surgeon. He studied medicine at the universities of Jena, Leipzig and Munich, receiving his doctorate in 1892. He furthered his education in Rostock and Strasbourg, where he was pupil of Otto Wilhelm Madelung. In 1895 he studied orthopedics under Adolf Lorenz in Vienna, and during the following year, obtained his habilitation for orthopedic surgery. In 1908 he became a full professor of orthopedics at the University of Munich.

#18934

Igor Boelza

#177202

Overall Influence

1904 - 1994 (90 years)

Igor Fyodorovich Belza or Boelza was a Soviet music historian and composer who wrote 4 symphonies, 5 piano sonatas, 2 cello sonatas, a string quartet, and several film scores for Alexander Dovzhenko. He was the father of Svyatoslav Belza, a showman and a TV personality.

#18935

Lisa Robinson

#182567

Overall Influence

Lisa Robinson is a clinician-scientist. She is a University of Toronto professor in the Department of Paediatrics and the Vice Dean Strategy and Operations at the Faculty of Medicine, former Head of the Division of Nephrology at The Hospital for Sick Children, a Senior Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute, and the first-ever Chief Diversity officer for the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto.

#18936

James Douglas Miller

#133123

Overall Influence

1937 - 1995 (58 years)

James Douglas Miller FRSE was a Scottish neurosurgeon of international repute. The Douglas Miller Memorial Lecture is named in his honour. Life He was born in Glasgow on 20 July 1937. His father was an executive at Collins the publisher. He was educated at Glasgow Academy then studied medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating with an MB ChB. Meeting Bryan Jennett he was inspired to be a neurosurgeon.

#18937

Richard Lower

#23971

Overall Influence

1929 - 2008 (79 years)

Richard Rowland Lower was an American pioneer of cardiac surgery, particularly in the field of heart transplantation. Lower was born in Detroit, attended Amherst College, and received his medical degree from Cornell University in 1955. Lower and Norman Shumway developed many of the techniques required to conduct successful heart transplantation, including the use of hypothermia and the orthotopic technique, which became the standard technique for cardiac transplantation.

#18938

Jarbas Barbosa

#191230

Overall Influence

Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr. is a public health expert from Brazil who is currently serving as the Director of the Pan American Health Organization and Regional Director for the Americas of the World Health Organization ; his five-year term in this position starting on 01 February 2023. He is replacing Carissa Etienne of Dominica, who had served has the PAHO Director since 2013.

#18939

Henning Rønne

1878 - 1947 (69 years)

Henning Rønne was a Danish ophthalmologist. He studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen, where he graduated with an M.B. in 1903. Later he became an assistant to Jannik Petersen Bjerrum , with whom he performed important studies in campimetry. In 1910 he earned his medical doctorate, and in 1931 became a professor of ophthalmology at the university.

#18940

Georges Hayem

1841 - 1933 (92 years)

Georges Hayem was a physician and hematologist born in Paris. He studied medicine in Paris, and later became a professor of therapy and materia medica. Beginning in 1878 he practiced medicine at the Hôpital Tenon; later on, he was associated with the Hôpital St. Antoine. From 1893 until 1911 he held the chair of clinical medicine.

#18941

Leslie Jacobson

#185125

Overall Influence

Leslie Bravman Jacobson is a George Washington University professor emeritus of theatre, playwright, director, and the founding artistic director of the longest-running women's theatre in the United States, Horizons: Theatre from a Woman's Perspective in Washington, D.C. She was also a founder and vice president of the 501 not-for-profit Bokamoso Youth Foundation, president of the League of Washington Theatres, and recipient of a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship.

#18942

Louisa Aldrich-Blake

Louisa Aldrich-Blake

1865 - 1925 (60 years)

Dame Louisa Brandreth Aldrich-Blake was a pioneering surgeon and one of the first British women to enter the world of modern medicine. Born in Chingford, Essex, she was the eldest daughter of a curate. Louisa Aldrich-Blake graduated in medicine from the Royal Free Hospital in 1893. She obtained her Master of Surgery degree and was a lead surgeon by 1910. Louisa volunteered for military medical service during the First World War. She was one of the first people to perform surgery on rectal and cervical cancers. In recognition of her commitment and achievements, a statue of her was erected in Tavistock Square, London.

#18943

Elizabeth H. West

Elizabeth H. West

1873 - 1948 (75 years)

Elizabeth H. West , was a librarian and archivist active in the United States during the early 20th century. West was appointed the Texas State Librarian in 1918, was two time President of the Texas Library Association, co-founder and first President of the Southwestern Library Association, and was the first Head Librarian of Texas Technological College .

#18944

Harminder Dua

#40907

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Professor Harminder Singh Dua is an Indian-British medical doctor and researcher. He is the chair and professor of ophthalmology at University of Nottingham and is the head of the Division of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. Prior, he was associate professor at the Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA when he was invited to chair in Nottingham in April 1994. He earlier did his Graduation in Medicine from Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur.

#18945

Graham MacGregor

#117309

Overall Influence

Graham Alexander MacGregor is a British academic, professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Wolfson Institute, Queen Mary University of London MacGregor trained at Charing Cross Hospital where he was taught by the distinguished nephrologist, Professor Hugh de Wardener. MacGregor's own speciality at this stage was also in kidney disease. He developed an interest in the relationship between kidney function and high blood pressure which led him to a parallel campaigning role, attempting to persuade food manufacturers to reduce the quantity of salt in factory produced food.

#18946

Richard Thompson

Richard Thompson

#50390

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Sir Richard Paul Hepworth Thompson, is a British physician and past president of the Royal College of Physicians in London. Biography Thompson studied medicine at Oxford University and St Thomas' Hospital, and specialised in gastroenterology. He conducted research with Prof Roger Williams, and at the Mayo Clinic. He was appointed consultant at St Thomas' from 1972 until his retirement in 2005. He continued to conduct research in nutritional gastroenterology. From 1982 until 2005 he was also attached to King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes. He was a member of the Medical Household of Elizabeth II, and head from 1993 until 2005.

#18947

Shrenik Rao

#109208

Overall Influence

Shrenik Rao is an Indian film-maker, academic, and broadcaster. He is the founder and chief executive of Dolsun Media and 7MB – 7 Media Broadcasting Pvt Ltd . He was a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism & an alumnus of the London School of Economics.

#18948

Albert Brachet

1869 - 1930 (61 years)

Albert Auguste Toussaint Brachet was a Belgian physician and professor of anatomy and embryology at the Free University of Brussels . Brachet was a founder of the field of "causal embryology", the study of embryology and development using experiments.

#18949

Jaana Toivari-Viitala

#155744

Overall Influence

1964 - 2017 (53 years)

Jaana Toivari-Viitala was an egyptologist and museum curator from Finland, who was Chair of the Finnish Egyptology Society and Head of the Department of Egyptology at the University of Helsinki. Biography Toivari-Viitala was born in Loviisa on 16 May 1964. She was passionate about Ancient Egypt since her childhood. She studied for her PhD at the Leiden University, which explored the lives of the women who lived at Deir el-Medîna, the village where the builders of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. This work examined many aspects of women's lives there, including sex, maternity and property ownership.

#18950

Richard Paltauf

Richard Paltauf

1858 - 1924 (66 years)

Richard Paltauf was an Austrian pathologist and bacteriologist. Biography Paltauf was born on 9 February 1858, in Judenburg, Styria. In 1880 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Graz, and from 1881 to 1883 was an assistant to pathologist Hans Kundrat in Graz. Afterwards, he remained as Kundrat's assistant at the University of Vienna, where in 1888 he obtained his habilitation in pathological anatomy. In 1892 he became an associate professor of general pathology and pathological histology, and during the following year became head of the institute for pathological histology and bacteriology.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions