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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,

#1901

Peter Caws

#30088

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Peter J. Caws was a British American philosopher and administrator, and University Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Human Sciences at the George Washington University. Biography Peter Caws was born in Southall, Middlesex, England in 1931. He received his B.Sc. in Physics at the University of London in 1952, and his PGCE in 1953. In 1953 he emigrated to the US and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Yale University in 1956.

#1902

Martti Olavi Siirala

#23406

Overall Influence

1922 - 2008 (86 years)

Martti Olavi Siirala was a Finnish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and philosopher. He was inspired by psychoanalysis, the anthropological medicine of Viktor von Weizsäcker and the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The outcome was a unique synthesis theory that Siirala called social pathology.

#1903

Jindřich Zelený

#40036

Overall Influence

1922 - 1997 (75 years)

Jindřich Zelený was a Czech philosopher and the author of several books. Early years He was born in Bítovany in 1922 and attended school in Chrudim and Hradec Králové. In 1948, Zeleny received a Ph.D. in philosophy and sociology from Charles University in Prague.

#1904

François Raffoul

#52124

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

François Raffoul is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Retired Professor of Philosophy and French Studies at Louisiana State University. He is known for his works on continental thought.

#1905

Eleuterio Ferrannini

#59519

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

#1906

Juha Varto

#48077

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Juha Varto is a Finnish philosopher, considered the most important phenomenologist in Finland, known also for his prolific output on a variety of philosophical themes. Since 1999 he has been professor of research in visual art and education at the Aalto University School of Art and Design, Helsinki. Before that he taught research methodology and acted as director of research in various Finnish universities and polytechnics and before that taught philosophy at the University of Tampere . During the 1990s Varto produced over 100 programmes for Finnish radio and television, mainly dealing with philosophical questions.

#1907

April DeConick

#16177

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

April D. DeConick is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She came to Rice University as a full professor in 2006, after receiving tenure at Illinois Wesleyan University in 2004. DeConick is the author of several books in the field of Early Christian Studies and is best known for her work on the Gospel of Thomas and ancient Gnosticism.

#1908

Arnold S. Relman

#11060

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Arnold Seymour Relman — known as Bud Relman to intimates — was an American internist and professor of medicine and social medicine. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991, where he instituted two important policies: one asking the popular press not to report on articles before publication and another requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest. He wrote extensively on medical publishing and reform of the U.S. health care system, advocating non-profit delivery of single-payer health care. Relman ended his career as professor emeritus at Harvard Medical ...

#1909

Terence Horgan

#26893

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Terence Edward Horgan is an American philosopher and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His areas of expertise include philosophy of mind and metaethics. Horgan obtained his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1970 from Stanford University. In 1974, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan under the supervision of Jaegwon Kim, with his dissertation titled "Microreduction and the Mind-Body Problem." After holding professorships in Illinois, Michigan, and Memphis, Horgan has been a professor in Tucson, Arizona since 2002.

#1910

John Rist

#49953

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

John Michael Rist is a British scholar of ancient philosophy, classics, and early Christian philosophy and theology, known mainly for his contributions to the history of metaphysics and ethics. He is the author of monographs on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, Plotinus, the dating of the Gospels, and Augustine. Rist is Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and part-time Visiting Professor at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome, held the Father Kurt Pritzl, O.P., Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. , and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University.

#1911

Mochus

#38572

Overall Influence

Mochus , also known as Mochus of Sidon and Mochus the Phoenician, is listed by Diogenes Laërtius along with Zalmoxis the Thracian and Atlas of Mauretania, as a proto-philosopher. Athenaeus claimed that he authored a work on the history of Phoenicia. Strabo, on the authority of Posidonius, speaks of one Mochus or Moschus of Sidon as the author of the atomic theory and says that he was more ancient than the Trojan war. He is also referred to by Josephus, Tatian, Eusebius, and Damascius.

#1912

Richard Mouw

#14919

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Richard John Mouw is an American theologian and philosopher. He held the position of President at Fuller Theological Seminary for 20 years , and continues to hold the post of Professor of Faith and Public Life.

#1913

Jan Zwicky

#28610

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Janine Louise Zwicky is a Canadian philosopher, poet, essayist, and musician. She was appointed to the Order of Canada in June 2022. Life and career Zwicky received her BA from the University of Calgary and earned her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1981 where her studies focussed on the philosophy of logic and science. She subsequently taught philosophy at Princeton University; philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities at the University of Waterloo; philosophy at the University of Western Ontario; philosophy, English, and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick; and philos...

#1914

Sam Keen

#4914

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Sam Keen is an American author, professor, and philosopher who is best known for his exploration of questions regarding love, life, wonder, religion, and being a male in contemporary society. He co-produced Faces of the Enemy, an award-winning PBS documentary; was the subject of a Bill Moyers' television special in the early 1990s; and for 20 years served as a contributing editor at Psychology Today magazine. He is also featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death.

#1915

T. A. Goudge

#36078

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Thomas Anderson Goudge was a Canadian philosopher and university professor. Career He was born on January 19, 1910, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, son of Thomas Norman and Effie Goudge. He graduated from the Halifax Academy in 1927, and studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1931 and a Master of Arts degree in 1932 from Dalhousie University. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Toronto in 1937 after having briefly studied from 1936 to 1937 at Harvard University. He married Helen Beryl Christilaw in Blind River, Ontario, on June 23, 1936, and had one son, the jurist Stephen T.

#1916

Gérard Raulet

#35929

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Gérard Raulet is a French philosopher, Germanist, and translator, specializing primarily in the thought of Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. He is a professor emeritus of German History and Thought at the Paris-Sorbonne University.

#1917

George Gilder

#2529

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

George Franklin Gilder is an American investor, author, economist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 book, Wealth and Poverty, advanced a case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the early months of the Reagan administration. He is the chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, LLC.

#1918

Ned Markosian

#35014

Overall Influence

Ned Markosian is an American philosopher. He is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Markosian is of Armenian descent and has four brothers. He received his BA from Oberlin College and his PhD in Philosophy from UMass Amherst in 1990. His doctoral advisor was Gareth Matthews. Markosian has previously taught at Lawrence University, University of New Hampshire, West Virginia University, Bay Path College, University of Hartford, and Western Washington University. He has been at UMass Amherst since Fall 2015.

#1919

Jon Kabat-Zinn

#3038

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the 'Stress Reduction Clinic' and the 'Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society' at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Seung Sahn, and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of hatha yoga, Vipassanā and appreciation of the teachings of Soto Zen and Advaita Vedanta led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness.

#1920

Lawrence Grossberg

Lawrence Grossberg

#16403

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lawrence Grossberg is an American scholar of cultural studies and popular culture whose work focuses primarily on popular music and the politics of youth in the United States. He is widely known for his research in the philosophy of communication and culture. Though his scholarship focused significantly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s on the politics of postmodernism, his more recent work explores the possibilities and limitations of alternative and emergent formations of modernity.

#1921

Bradley Hyman

#50588

Overall Influence

Bradley Theodore Hyman is currently John B. Penney, Jr. Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer Disease Research Center and Memory Disorder Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was educated at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa . He was awarded the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease in 2001 and the Potamkin Prize in 2006, together with Karen Duff and Karen Ashe.

#1922

Bruce L. Gordon

#21885

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Bruce L. Gordon is a Canadian philosopher of science , metaphysician and philosopher of religion. He is a proponent of intelligent design and has been affiliated with the Discovery Institute since 1997.

#1923

Mark Olssen

#18133

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Mark Olssen, FAcSS, a political theorist, is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Politics within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Surrey.

#1924

Philip Scheltens

#45429

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Philip Scheltens is a Dutch professor of neurology and founder of the Alzheimer Centre, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location VUmc in Amsterdam. Early life, education and career Philip Scheltens was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands, where he grew up in a family of four. His father led a factory. His grandfather developed Alzheimer’s disease in those years, which made an impression on his grandson. Philip attended the Christelijk Lyceum, where he graduated in 1976. As a teenager he was an enthusiastic drummer in several bands and was fascinated by science and mechanics.

#1925

Mohammed Sabila

#34280

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Mohammed Sabila was a Moroccan writer and philosopher. He was the author of several articles and books on politics and culture, and was known for translating some of the works of Martin Heidegger into Arabic.

#1926

Ken'ichi Mishima

#46198

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

, is a Japanese social philosopher and university professor. About Mishima studied philosophy, German and comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Tokyo. Between 1970 and 1980 he spent several years in Germany as a scholarship holder of the DAAD and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. From 1994 to 1995 he was a guest at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He was a professor at Osaka University until he moved to Tokyo University of Economics and Business as Professor of Social Philosophy and Contemporary Philosophy. Mishima is considered an important mediator of the so-called critical theory in East Asia.

#1927

Lars Svennerholm

#60156

Overall Influence

#1928

Alan Bryman

#25216

Overall Influence

1947 - 2017 (70 years)

Alan Bryman was Professor of Organisational and Social research at the University of Leicester, prior to this Bryman spent 31 years at Loughborough University. Academic career He is best known for three main areas of work. Bryman has long been associated with research methods and in particular the use of mixed methods; this led to him publishing the book Social Research Methods and Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS 12 and 13: A Guide for Social Scientists with Duncan Cramer. His Quantity and Quality In Social Research is yet another significant contribution in the field of research meth...

#1929

Robert William Schrier

#43634

Overall Influence

1936 - 2021 (85 years)

Robert William Schrier was founding editor-in-chief of the magazine Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology. Schrier was formerly Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine for 26 years, and Head of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension for 20 years. At the time of his death, he was Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He died in Potomac, Maryland.

#1930

Sandra Bartky

#33408

Overall Influence

1935 - 2016 (81 years)

Sandra Lee Bartky was a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. Her notable contributions to the field of feminist philosophy include the article, "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness". Sandra Lee Bartky died on October 17, 2016, at her home in Saugatuck, Michigan at age 81.

#1931

Stuart A. Aaronson

Stuart A. Aaronson

#26342

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Stuart A. Aaronson is an American author and cancer biologist. He has authored more than 500 publications and holds over 50 patents, and was the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and Chairman of Oncological Sciences at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City until March 2013, when he assumed the title of Founding Chair Emeritus of the Department of Oncological Sciences. The current Chairman of Oncological Sciences is Ramon E. Parsons.

#1932

Mohammad Ilkhani

#45945

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Mohammad Ilkhani is an Iranian philosopher and professor and chair of the department of philosophy at the Shahid Beheshti University. He is known for his research on Achard of St. Victor, Boethius and Christian theology. Ilkhani received his PhD from Free University of Brussels under the supervision of Lambros Couloubaritsis.

#1933

Cezary Wodziński

#48875

Overall Influence

1959 - 2016 (57 years)

Cezary Wodziński was a Polish philosopher, historian of philosophy, essayist, translator, and writer. He was a lecturer at Jagiellonian University in Cracow and at the University of Warsaw . Biography

#1934

Andy Blunden

#42768

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Andy Blunden is an Australian historian, writer, and Marxist philosopher based in Melbourne. Biography Blunden is a member and secretary of the Marxists Internet Archive Collective , a website which contains many Marxist and Marxist related text on history, philosophy and politics along with many other topics.

#1935

Ramón Xirau

#17658

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Ramón Xirau Subías was a Spanish-born Mexican poet, philosopher and literary critic. In 1939, as the Spanish civil war was coming to an end, Xirau emigrated to Mexico where he obtained Mexican citizenship in 1955. He obtained a Master's Degree in philosophy at the UNAM and an honorary doctorate from the Universidad de las Américas. He was a research faculty member of the UNAM y and the National System of Researchers. At the UNAM he taught at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature and did research at the Institute of Philosophy Research. He was a member of the Colegio Nacional since 1973.

#1936

Francis Daniels Moore

#15074

Overall Influence

1913 - 2001 (88 years)

Francis Daniels Moore was an American surgeon who was a pioneer in numerous experimental surgical treatments. Among his many achievements, he refined burn-treatment techniques, helped perform the world's first successful organ transplant , and accurately determined the volume of water and other nutrients in the human body using radioactive isotopes of those substances.

#1937

David Kyle Johnson

#20938

Overall Influence

David Kyle Johnson is a Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He specializes in logic, metaphysics, free will, and philosophy of religion. Early life Johnson was born in Guymon, Oklahoma in 1977.

#1938

Peter Lamarque

#48163

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Peter Vaudreuil Lamarque is a British aesthethician and philosopher of art, working in the analytic tradition. Since 2000, he has been a professor of philosophy at the University of York. He is known primarily for his work in philosophy of literature and on the role of emotions in fiction.

#1939

Naveed Sattar

#51412

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Naveed Amjid Sattar is a Scottish medical researcher and Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the Institute of Cardiovascular & Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow, as well as an Honorary Consultant in Metabolic Medicine at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He was described by the BBC as "a leading expert in diabetes and cardio-vascular disease research". He has been an ISI Highly Cited Researcher since 2014. In 2016, he was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow,...

#1940

Ladislav Hejdánek

Ladislav Hejdánek

#20067

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

Ladislav Hejdánek was a Czech philosopher and a proponent of Charter 77. He was born in Prague and graduated from the Charles University in Prague. In 1952 he attained a degree in philosophy with his dissertation "Truth and its ontological premises". From 1956 to 1968 he worked at the Prague Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. Then he took a position at the Institute for Philosophy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, but was expelled in 1971.

#1941

Gáspár Miklós Tamás

#36664

Overall Influence

1948 - 2023 (75 years)

Gáspár Miklós Tamás , often referred to as TGM, was a Romanian-born Hungarian political philosopher and public intellectual, influenced by Marxism and libertarian socialism. He was a contributor to online newspaper Mérce and to OpenDemocracy, where he wrote primarily about political and aesthetic questions. He was the father of British poet and writer Rebecca Tamás.

#1942

Arash Abizadeh

#28262

Overall Influence

Arash Abizadeh is an Iranian-Canadian philosopher and Professor at the Department of Political Science and Associate Member of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. He is known for his expertise on democratic theory and Thomas Hobbes. He is a recipient of Rhodes Scholarship .

#1943

Heiner Bielefeldt

Heiner Bielefeldt

#12524

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Heiner Bielefeldt is a German philosopher, historian and Catholic theologian. He is Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Policy at the University of Erlangen. From 2010 to 2016, he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

#1944

Ian Mitroff

#12387

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ian Irving Mitroff is an American organizational theorist, consultant and professor emeritus at the USC Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California He is noted for a wide range of contributions in the field of organizational theory from contributions on strategic planning assumptions and management information systems, to the subjective side of the workplace and spirituality, religion, and values.

#1945

Yoram Hazony

#10915

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Yoram Reuben Hazony is an Israeli-American philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. He has argued for national conservatism in his 2018 book, The Virtue of Nationalism and 2020's Conservatism: A Rediscovery.

#1946

Penelope Deutscher

#42208

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Penelope Deutscher is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University whose work focuses on French philosophy from the 20th and 21st centuries and gender theory. She has written four books dealing with subjects ranging from gender and feminism to the works of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Simone de Beauvoir. In 2002–2003, Deutscher also served as the Lane Professor for the Humanities at the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University.

#1947

Arthur Earl Walker

#13003

Overall Influence

1907 - 1995 (88 years)

Arthur Earl Walker was a Canadian-born American neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and epileptologist remembered for the eponymous syndromes Dandy–Walker syndrome, Dandy–Walker-like syndrome and Walker–Warburg syndrome. During his career he published over 400 research articles and 8 books.

#1948

Milton Packer

#60680

Overall Influence

#1949

Bronisław Baczko

Bronisław Baczko

#43097

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Bronisław Baczko was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. Together with Leszek Kołakowski, he was a leading figure in the Warsaw School of the history of ideas in the late 1950s and 1960s.

#1950

Nicholas Griffin

#37696

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Nicholas John Griffin is a retired Canadian-based philosopher. He was Director of the Bertrand Russell Centre at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, where he held a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy.

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