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,
#19001
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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William Herbert Sweet
#19024
Pierre Scheuer
1872 - 1957 (85 years)
Pierre Scheuer was a Belgian Jesuit priest, metaphysician and mystic. Life and works Scheuer made his first profession in the Society of Jesus in 1901. In 1916 he completed his formation and began teaching.
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Peter Glassen
1920 - 1986 (66 years)
Peter Glassen was a professor of philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1949 until his death in 1986. He was an analytic moral philosopher, publishing several articles in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was also known for his arguments against metaphysical materialism, and spent a year in the psychology department at the University of Saskatchewan.
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Louis Eugène Marie Bautain
1796 - 1867 (71 years)
Louis Eugène Marie Bautain , was a French philosopher and theologian. Life Bautain was born at Paris. At the École Normale he came under the influence of Victor Cousin. In 1816 he adopted the profession of higher teaching, and was soon after called to the chair of philosophy in the University of Strasbourg. He held this position for many years, and gave a parallel course of lectures as professor of the literary faculty in the same city. The reaction against speculative philosophy, which carried away De Maistre and Lamennais, influenced him also.
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Huberto Rohden
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Huberto Rohden Sobrinho, known as Huberto Rohden, was a Brazilian philosopher, educator and theologist. He was born in São Ludgero. A pioneer of transcendentalism in Brazil who wrote more than 100 works, where he taught ecumenical lecture of spiritual approach towards Education, Philosophy, Science, emphasizing self-knowledge.
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Momtazuddin Ahmed
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Momtazuddin Ahmed was a Bangladeshi philosopher and educationist. Early life and education Ahmed was born to a Bengali Muslim family from Brahmanbaria in the erstwhile Tippera District of eastern Bengal. He studied in Dhaka University and obtained MA in philosophy in 1927. In 1937 he earned his PhD degree in philosophy from University College London. His research for dissertation was on metaphysics and logic under the advisers John Cook Wilson and Bradley Stamp.
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Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
1743 - 1803 (60 years)
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin was a French philosopher, known as le philosophe inconnu , the name under which his works were published; he was an influential of the mystic and human mind evolution and became the inspiration for the founding of the Martinist Order.
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Hans Eppinger
1879 - 1946 (67 years)
Hans Eppinger Jr. was an Austrian physician of part-Jewish descent who performed experiments upon concentration camp prisoners. Early years Hans Eppinger was born in Prague, the son of the physician Professor Hans Eppinger [Sr] [1848-1916] a son of Heinrich Eppinger , notary and chancellery director in the monastery of Braunau in Bohemia and his wife Aloisia Salomon. Hans Eppinger Sr married Georgine Zetter in Klagenfurt and had two daughters and a son, Hans Eppinger junior. Hans Eppinger Jr received an education in Graz and Strasbourg. In 1903, he became a medical doctor in Graz, working at a medical clinic.
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Piotr Chmielowski
1848 - 1904 (56 years)
Piotr Chmielowski was a Polish philosopher, literary historian and critic. Life After studying at Warsaw's Main School in Russian Poland and at Leipzig University , Chmielowski taught till 1898 in Warsaw private schools. From 1903 he was a professor at Lwów University in Austrian Poland.
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Teo Otto
1904 - 1968 (64 years)
Teo Otto was a Swiss stage designer. He trained in Kassel and Paris and in 1926 taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar. In 1928 he became an assistant at the Berlin Staatsoper. Following the Nazis' seizure of power in Germany, he returned to Switzerland where he was resident designer at the Zürich Schauspielhaus for 25 years.
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Conrad Gessner
1516 - 1565 (49 years)
Conrad Gessner was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zürich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly realised his talents and supported him through university, where he studied classical languages, theology and medicine. He became Zürich's city physician, but was able to spend much of his time on collecting, research and writing. Gessner compiled monumental works on bibliography and zoology and was working on a major botanical text at the time of his death from plague at the age of 49. He is regarded as the father of modern scientific bibliography, zoology and botany.
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Eugène Boudin
1824 - 1898 (74 years)
Eugène Louis Boudin was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary and economic, garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire; and Corot called him the "King of the skies".
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Alf Ahlberg
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Alf Ahlberg was a Swedish academic, writer, humanist and philosopher. Early life and education Ahlberg was born in 1892 in Laholm, Sweden, the son of Axel Ahlberg and Anna Lindskog, and the brother of the architect Hakon Ahlberg. He studied at Lund University and came to know in particular Sigfrid Lindstrom and Gunnar Aspelin. In the summer, he stayed in Lund to read Schopenhauer in the botanical garden of Lund at the foot of Aagardhs statue. He earned a Master of Business Administration in 1911 and his PhD in 1917 with the thesis, "Material problems of Platonism: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, ...
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René Maheu
1905 - 1975 (70 years)
René Gabriel Eugene Maheu was a French professor of philosophy and the sixth Director-General of UNESCO. He was a close friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He was head of the French Information Office in London and after teaching in Morocco during World War II, he occupied a managerial post in the France-Afrique press agency in Algiers, before joining the Executive Office of the Resident-General in Rabat. In 1946 he entered UNESCO as Chief, Division of Free Flow of Information. In 1949 Jaime Torres Bodet appointed him Director of his Executive Office. In 1954 he became Assistant Director-General and was UNESCO's representative at UN Headquarters from 1955 to 1958.
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Pierre-Sylvain Régis
1632 - 1707 (75 years)
Pierre Sylvain Régis was a French Cartesian philosopher and a prominent critic of Spinoza. Known as a philosopher, he was nominated to the French Academy of Sciences in 1699. Life Born at La Salvetat de Blanquefort, near Agen, he had a classical education, and then went to Paris. He attended the lectures of Jacques Rohault, and became a follower of the philosophy of René Descartes. He then taught the principles of Cartesianism at Toulouse , Aigues-Mortes, Montpellier , and Paris . The prohibition issued against the teaching of Cartesianism put an end to his lectures.
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Shao Yong
1011 - 1077 (66 years)
Shao Yong , courtesy name Yaofu , named Shào Kāngjié was a Chinese cosmologist, historian, philosopher, and poet who greatly influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism across China during the Song dynasty.
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Hugo Junkers
1859 - 1935 (76 years)
Hugo Junkers was a German aircraft engineer and aircraft designer who pioneered the design of all-metal airplanes and flying wings. His company, Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG , was one of the mainstays of the German aircraft industry in the years between World War I and World War II. His multi-engined, all-metal passenger- and freight planes helped establish airlines in Germany and around the world.
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Augustus John
1878 - 1961 (83 years)
Augustus Edwin John was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John.
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Thomas Beddoes
1760 - 1808 (48 years)
Thomas Beddoes was an English physician and scientific writer. He was born in Shifnal, Shropshire and died in Bristol fifteen years after opening his medical practice there. He was a reforming practitioner and teacher of medicine, and an associate of leading scientific figures. He worked to treat tuberculosis.
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John Wyndham
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids , filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos , which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.
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Karl Rudolf Sohn
1845 - 1908 (63 years)
Karl Friedrich Rudolf Sohn was a German portrait painter in the Academic style. Biography His father was the landscape painter, Karl Ferdinand Sohn. After graduating from the , he was drafted for military service, but was rejected for "physical weaknesses". In 1863, he began studying engineering at the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe. He completed his studies in 1866, but never practiced as an engineer. He returned to Düsseldorf and, shortly before his father's death, he began to study art with him. From 1867 to 1870, he was a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied history painting with Karl Müller and figure painting with Julius Roeting.
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Félicien Challaye
1875 - 1967 (92 years)
Félicien Robert Challaye was a French philosopher, anti-colonialist and human rights activist. Early life Félicien Challaye was born on 1 November 1875 in Lyon, France. He earned the agrégation in Philosophy in 1897.
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James Edwin Creighton
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
James Edwin Creighton was an American idealist philosopher, Cornell academic, founding president of the American Philosophical Association, and president of the American Philosophical Society. Biography Creighton graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Dalhousie College, Halifax, in 1887, and became a student at the foreign universities of Leipzig and Berlin. Later he came to Cornell University as a graduate student, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy there in 1892. From 1889 to 1892, Dean Creighton was an instructor in philosophy at Cornell, being advanced during the three following years to an associate professorship.
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Ralph Tyler Flewelling
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Ralph Tyler Flewelling was an American philosopher. Biography Early life He was born on November 23, 1871, near De Witt, Michigan, and educated at the University of Michigan, Alma College . the Garrett Biblical Institute , and Boston University.
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Georg Ernst Stahl
1659 - 1734 (75 years)
Georg Ernst Stahl was a German chemist, physician and philosopher. He was a supporter of vitalism, and until the late 18th century his works on phlogiston were accepted as an explanation for chemical processes.
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Karl von Prantl
1820 - 1888 (68 years)
Karl von Prantl was a German philosopher and philologist. Biography He was born at Landsberg on the Lech. In 1843 he became doctor of philosophy at Munich Observatory, where he was made professor in 1859. He was also a member of the Academies of Berlin and Munich. Strongly in agreement with the Hegelian tradition, he defended and amplified it in Die gegenwärtige Aufgabe der Philosophie and Verstehen und Beurteilen .
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Kurt J Isselbacher
#19050
Jerzy Żuławski
1874 - 1915 (41 years)
Jerzy Żuławski was a Polish literary figure, philosopher, translator, alpinist and patriot whose best-known work is the science-fiction epic, Trylogia Księżycowa , written between 1901 and 1911.
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