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.
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#19201
Robley Dunglison
1798 - 1869 (71 years)
Robley Dunglison was an English-American physician, medical educator and author who served as the first full-time professor of medicine in the United States at the newly founded University of Virginia from 1824 to 1833. He authored multiple medical textbooks and is considered the "Father of American Physiology" after the publication of his landmark textbook Human Physiology in 1832. He was the personal physician to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. He consulted in the treatment of Andrew Jackson and was in attendance at Jefferson's death.
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Max Lingner
1888 - 1959 (71 years)
Max Lingner was a German painter, graphic artist, communist, and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. Life Born in Leipzig, the son of a xylographer, Lingner graduated from high school in 1907 and studied as a master student under Carl Bantzer at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he completed his training in 1912 with a painting Singing Girls, for which he received the "Saxon State Prize". On a study trip in 1913/1914 he visited England, the Netherlands, France and Belgium.
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Alexander Catlin Twining
1801 - 1884 (83 years)
Alexander Catlin Twining was an American scientist and inventor. Twining, the son of Stephen Twining and Almira Twining, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, July 5, 1801. He graduated from Yale College in 1820. He left College with the intention of entering the ministry, and soon after studied for one year in Andover Theological Seminary. In 1823 he returned to New Haven as tutor in at Yale, in which office he served for two years.
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Andrew Duncan
1773 - 1832 (59 years)
Andrew Duncan, the younger was a British physician and professor at the University of Edinburgh. Life Duncan was the son of Elizabeth Knox and Andrew Duncan, the elder, born at Adam Square in Edinburgh on 10 August 1773. His early education was at the High School in Edinburgh. He was then apprenticed to Alexander and George Wood, surgeons of Edinburgh. He graduated with an MA in 1793, and MD in 1794.
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Franz von Wirer
1771 - 1844 (73 years)
Franz de Paula Augustin Wirer Ritter von Rettenbach was an Austrian physician who was a native of Korneuburg in Lower Austria. He was a physician to Austrian royalty, a rector at the University of Vienna and instructor at the Vienna Medical School.
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Thrasybulos Georgiades
1907 - 1977 (70 years)
Thrasybulos Georgios Georgiades was a Greek musicologist, pianist, civil engineer and philosopher. He was for many years director of the Institute of Musicology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest German musicologists.
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Adam Steuart
1591 - 1645 (54 years)
Adam Steuart was a Scottish philosopher and controversialist. Life He became professor at the Academy of Saumur in 1617. In 1644, he was in London, where he engaged in propaganda for the Presbyterians against the Independents. The first attack on the Apologeticall Narration of the Five Dissenting Brethren was Steuart's. The Second Part of the Duply to M. S. alias Two Brethren addressed the issue of religious tolerance, which he classed with depravity. It was answered by John Goodwin. Steuart is mentioned in John Milton's poem On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament, a ...
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Alexander A. Maximow
1874 - 1928 (54 years)
Alexander Alexandrowitsch Maximow was a Russian-American scientist in the fields of Histology and Embryology whose team developed the hypothesis about the existence of "polyblasts". Maximow is renowned for his experimental work on the unitarian theory of hematopoiesis: all blood cells develop from a common precursor cell. Maximow served as a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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Francesco Pona
1595 - 1655 (60 years)
Francesco Pona was an Italian medical doctor, philosopher, Marinist poet and writer from Verona, whose works ranged from scientific treatises and history to poetry and plays. Biography A Veronese medical doctor and member of many academies, Pona was a prolific writer, producing medical and scientific texts, historiography, literary translation, drama, lyric poetry, prose romances, and tales. A follower of Cesare Cremonini, a heterodox Aristotelian professor at Padua, Pona was a leading member of the influential Accademia degli Incogniti - a society of Venetian intellectuals famous for the libertine and anti-clerical tendencies of many of its members.
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John Gordon
1786 - 1818 (32 years)
Dr John Gordon FRSE FRCSE was a short-lived but influential Scottish anatomist. In 1806 he served as president of the Royal Medical Society. In 1815 he caused an international stir by debunking the new science of phrenology and publicly criticising its principal European exponents, Johann Spurzheim and Franz Joseph Gall.
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Theodor Billroth
1829 - 1894 (65 years)
Christian Albert Theodor Billroth was a German surgeon and amateur musician. As a surgeon, he is generally regarded as the founding father of modern abdominal surgery. As a musician, he was a close friend and confidant of Johannes Brahms, a leading patron of the Viennese musical scene, and one of the first to attempt a scientific analysis of musicality.
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Giovanni Filoteo Achillini
1466 - 1538 (72 years)
Giovanni Filoteo Achillini was an Italian philosopher. Born in Bologna, he was the younger brother of philosopher Alessandro. He studied Greek, Latin, theology, philosophy, music, antiquities, jurisprudence, poetry, etc., but did not excel in any specific field. He accumulated ample collections of antiquities.
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James Gates Percival
1795 - 1856 (61 years)
James Gates Percival was an American poet, surgeon, and geologist, born in Berlin, Connecticut, and died in Hazel Green, Wisconsin. Biography James Gates Percival was a precocious child and a versatile, yet morbid and impractical man. He had a remarkable ability to write verse on various subjects and in almost every known meter. His sentimentalism and dazzling diction appealed to a wide audience, earning him a reputation as the foremost poet in the United States during the 1820s. Some of his most famous poems include "Prometheus," "The Coral Grove," and "The Graves of the Patriots." He was a...
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Vicente T. Mendoza
1864 - 1964 (100 years)
Vicente Teódulo Mendoza Gutiérrez was a Mexican musicologist, composer and artist. He is best known for his studies on the Mexican corrido. In 1907 when Vicente T. Mendoza was 13 years old, he went to Mexico City where he studied piano and composition at the National Conservatory. At the same time he studied drawing. Between 1912 and 1930 he worked as a topographer. Later on, he taught solfege at the Conservatory. His main interest rests in Mexican folklore and music paleography. Along with the collaboration of Daniel Castañeda he compiled a treatise of precolumbian instruments, published in 1937 under the name Instrumental Precortesiano.
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Anirvan
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Sri Anirvan , born Narendra Chandra Dhar, was an Indian Hindu monk, writer and philosopher. Widely known as a scholar, his principal works were a Bengali translation of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine and the three-volume treatise Veda Mimamsa.
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Johann Georg Sulzer
1720 - 1779 (59 years)
Johann Georg Sulzer was a Swiss professor of Mathematics, who later on moved on to the field of electricity. He was a Wolffian philosopher and director of the philosophical section of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and translator of David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals into German in 1755.
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James Allanson Picton
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
James Allanson Picton was a British independent minister, author, philosopher and Liberal politician. Picton promoted a philosophy known as Christian pantheism. Life Picton was born at Liverpool, the eldest son of Sir James Allanson Picton and his wife Sarah Pooley. His father was an architect and supporter of the Liverpool Free Library. He was educated at the High School, and at the Mechanics' Institute and joined his father's architectural practice at the age of 16. Three years later he decided to study for the ministry and joined the Lancashire Independent College and Owens College, Manchester.
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Siro the Epicurean
100 BC - 20 BC (80 years)
Siro was an Epicurean philosopher who lived in Naples. He was a teacher of Virgil, and taught at his school in Naples. There are two poems attributed to Virgil in the Appendix Vergiliana, which mention Siro, and where the author speaks of seeking peace in the company of Siro: I am setting sail for the havens of the blest to seek the wise sayings of great Siro, and will redeem my life from all care.
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Isaac Michaelson
1903 - 1982 (79 years)
Isaac Claude Michaelson was an Israeli ophthalmologist and member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Biography Michaelson was born in 1903 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. He studied ophthalmology at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1927.
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Grigory Ivanovich Rossolimo
1860 - 1928 (68 years)
Grigory Ivanovich Rossolimo was a Russian Empire and Soviet neurologist who was a native of Odessa. He specialized in the field of child neuropsychology. Biography In 1884 he graduated from the University of Moscow, and subsequently worked under Aleksei Kozhevnikov at the clinic of neurological diseases. He earned his medical doctorate in 1887, and in 1890 became head of the department of neurology at the clinic of Aleksei Alekseevich Ostroumov .
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Johannes Acronius Frisius
1520 - 1564 (44 years)
Johannes Acronius Frisius was a Dutch doctor and mathematician of the 16th century. He was named after his city of birth, Akkrum in Friesland. From 1547 he worked as professor of mathematics in Basel, then after 1549 as professor of logic, and in 1564 of medicine. He died from the plague in the same year. Apart from mathematical and scientific works, he wrote Latin poetry and humanist tracts.
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Jessie Gray
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
Jessie Catherine Gray was a Canadian cancer surgeon, educator, and researcher. Known as the Canadian "First Lady of Surgery", Gray is described as a trailblazer for women surgeons and an example that women could excel in the male-dominated field of general surgery. During her career, she was considered one of the top four cancer surgeons in North America, and she earned many firsts and fellowships in her field.
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Bernhardus Albinus
1653 - 1721 (68 years)
Bernhardus Friedrich Albinus was a Dutch physician and anatomist. His sons Bernhard Siegfried Albinus and Friedrich Bernhard Albinus were also anatomists of note in Leiden. Albinus was born in Dessau in the principality of Anhalt, where his father, Christoforus Albinus, was the mayor. His ancestral family name, Weiss, had been changed to Albinus in the 16th century, after the fashion of the time, by his ancestor Petrus Weiss, poet and historian. In his youth, a poor physical constitution led to his being schooled at home before being sent to the public school of his city. When the scientist...
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Franz König
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
Franz König was a German surgeon. The son of a physician, he was born in Rotenburg an der Fulda. In 1855 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg, and was later district wound surgeon in Hanau. Afterwards he was a professor of surgery at the universities of Rostock and Göttingen , and eventually at the Charité-Berlin, where in 1895 he succeeded Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben. In 1904 he was succeeded at the Charité by Otto Hildebrand.
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James Hector
1834 - 1907 (73 years)
Sir James Hector was a Scottish-New Zealand geologist, naturalist, and surgeon who accompanied the Palliser Expedition as a surgeon and geologist. He went on to have a lengthy career as a government employed man of science in New Zealand, and during this period he dominated the colony's scientific institutions in a way that no single man has since.
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Pieter Otto van der Chijs
1802 - 1867 (65 years)
Pieter Otto van der Chijs was a Dutch coin expert and one of the early prizewinners of Teylers Tweede Genootschap . He was the son of J. van der Chijs and A.S. Bagelaar who encouraged him to start collecting. At the age of nine became interested in coins when he studied the ones his parents donated to the poor of Delft each week. He began to collect coins from around the world. After following school in Delft, he became a student of letters at the University of Leiden in 1820. He won a few prizes before devoting himself to his hobby. He wrote an essay on the art of collecting old coins in 1829 and in 1831 he became a member of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy.
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William Mackenzie
1791 - 1868 (77 years)
William Mackenzie was a Scottish ophthalmologist. He wrote Practical Treatise of the Diseases of the Eye, one of the first British textbooks of ophthalmology. Life Mackenzie was born in Queen Street, Glasgow, and studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. From 1840 to 1848 he studied in London and in Europe. He obtained his medical doctorate under Georg Joseph Beer at the University of Vienna, and returned to Britain in 1848. In 1849, Mackenzie settled in Glasgow and began practice as a physician.
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Domenico Gagliardi
1660 - 1745 (85 years)
Domenico Gagliardi was an Italian physician and anatomist. He may have served as a professor of anatomy at Rome and served as chief physician to four Popes. He studied the structure of bones, dissolving the structures, and observing them under a microscope as described in his 1689 book Anatome ossium novis inventis illustrata.
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Xeniades
500 BC - 500 BC (0 years)
Xeniades was a skeptical philosopher from Corinth, probably a follower of the pre-Socratic Xenophanes. There may have been two such persons, as he is referenced by Democritus c. 400 BC, though was also supposedly the purchaser of Diogenes the Cynic c. 350 BC, when he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. Xeniades was supposed to have been the man who persuaded Monimus to become a follower of Diogenes, and was the source of his skeptical doctrines.
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William Jones Nicholson
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
William Jones Nicholson was a career officer in the United States Army. He attained the rank of brigadier general during World War I as commander of the 157th Infantry Brigade, a unit of the 79th Division. He was most notable for leading his brigade to victory during the September 1918 Battle of Montfaucon, part of the first phase of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, for which he received the Distinguished Service Cross.
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Friedrich Schaarschmidt
1863 - 1902 (39 years)
Friedrich Schaarschmidt was a German landscape painter and figure painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting, conservator and art writer. Life Born in Bonn, Schaarschmidt was born in Bonn as the son of Professor Carl Schaarschmidt , a philosophy historian and head of the Bonn University Library. From 1880 until 1889, he studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, Hugo Crola, Johann Peter Theodor Janssen and Wilhelm Sohn, temporarily also Eduard von Gebhardt and Carl Ernst Forberg, were his teachers. As a practising artist, Schaarschmidt turned to En plein air. He often decorate...
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Shmuel Alexandrov
1865 - 1941 (76 years)
Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov of Bobruisk was a prominent student of the Volozhin Yeshiva, who became close to the tradition of Chabad Hasidism. Alexandrov was a Jewish Orthodox mystical thinker, philosopher and anarchist, whose religious thought, an original blending of Kabbalah, Orthodox Judaism, contemporary philosophy and secular literature, are marked by universalism and some degree of antinomianism. His works include פך השמן , a commentary on Pirkey Avot, and a large collection of essays, מכתבי מחקר וביקורת . Alexandrov was influenced by the anarchistic implications of the work of Rav Kook , from which he sought to derive practical instruction.
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Nicholas of Methone
Nicholas of Methone was a Byzantine theologian and philosopher who served as the bishop of Methone from around 1150. Nicholas wrote hagiography, hymnody, theology, biblical exegesis and panegyric. His most widely read works were his treatises against the practices and doctrines of the Latin Church, but modern scholarship regards his Refutation of the neoplatonist philosopher Proclus as his greatest work. Nicholas was close to the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos and served him as an advisor. He was involved in the major controversies over Bogomilism and the writings of Soterichos Panteugenos .
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Charles H. Stonestreet
1813 - 1885 (72 years)
Charles Henry Stonestreet was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served in prominent religious and academic positions, including as provincial superior of the Jesuit Maryland Province and president of Georgetown University. He was born in Maryland and attended Georgetown University, where he co-founded the Philodemic Society. After entering the Society of Jesus and becoming a professor at Georgetown, he led St. John's Literary Institution and St. John the Evangelist Church in Frederick, Maryland. He was appointed president of Georgetown University in 1851, holding the office for two years, during which time he oversaw expansion of the university's library.
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John Buckley Bradbury
1841 - 1930 (89 years)
John Buckley Bradbury was a medical doctor and Downing Professor of Medicine. The chair was discontinued on his death in 1930. Life He was born in Saddleworth in Yorkshire the eldest son of John Bradbury a merchant and manufacturer.
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Hannes Leitgeb
#19237
Alessandro Luzzago
1551 - 1602 (51 years)
Alessandro Luzzago was an Italian nobleman and organizer of Catholic charities. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been declared Venerable in 1899 by Pope Leo XIII. Life Luzzago was the son of Girolamo Luzzago and Paola Peschiera. He was baptised on November 8 in the Church of Santa Maria in Calchera. The Luzzago family was one of the most important noble families of Brescia. His mother was an early collaborator of Saint Angela Merici.
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Diogenes of Seleucia
Diogenes of Seleucia was an Epicurean philosopher, who has sometimes been confused with Diogenes of Babylon, who was also a native of Seleucia on the Tigris. He lived at the court of Syria, and was friends with king Alexander Balas, the supposed son of Antiochus Epiphanes. Athenaeus relates that Diogenes asked the king for a golden crown and a purple robe so that he could represent himself as the priest of Virtue. The king, apparently, agreed, but Diogenes subsequently gave the crown and robe to a female singer he was in love with, and the king hearing of this, summoned the girl to a banquet ...
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Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu
1919 - 1989 (70 years)
Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu was a Romanian philosopher, novelist, essayist and dramatist. Sîrbu was born in Petrila, Hunedoara. A university associate professor and theater critic, he was a victim of the communist regime, spending about 6 years as a political prisoner. He died at Craiova, aged 70. His main novel, Adio, Europa! , was published posthumously.
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Giorgio Politeo
1827 - 1913 (86 years)
Giorgio Politeo was a Dalmatian Italian philosopher and educator. He is said to have elaborated "a form of intuitionism based on Indian mysticism." Biography He was born in Split, Kingdom of Dalmatia on 15 April 1827. He attended the seminary in his city of birth. Said seminary also served as a high school for non-seminarians, under the name of Ginnasio Liceo Imperiale in Spalato; where Ugo Foscolo, who Politeo admired, had also studied. He came from an old and esteemed Split family, but a financial setback forced him to seek employment as a substitute teacher in the same seminary / high sch...
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Thomas Richard Fraser
1841 - 1920 (79 years)
Sir Thomas Richard Fraser was a British physician and pharmacologist. Together with Alexander Crum Brown he discovered the relationship between physiological activity and chemical constitution of the body.
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Ortwin
1475 - 1542 (67 years)
Hardwin von Grätz , better known in English as Ortwin , was a German humanist scholar and theologian. Ortwin was born in Holtwick and died in Cologne, Germany. He was raised by his uncle, Johannes von Grätz, in Deventer. In 1501 he left to pursue philosophical studies at the University of Cologne. After joining Kyuk Burse, Ortwin became licensed in 1505, attained Masters level in 1506, and became an Art Professor in 1507. He supplemented his salary by proofing documents for the Quentell printing house and wrote introductions and poetic dedications in the volumes of classical authors of the Mi...
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Willy Spatz
1861 - 1931 (70 years)
Willy Spatz was a German painter and lithographer. Life and work Born in Düsseldorf, Spatz, called Willy, was the fifth child of eight children of Gustav Wilhelm Gerhard Spatz, merchant and lottery collector in Düsseldorf and Johanna Wilhelmina, née Erbach.
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Pär-Erik Back
1920 - 1988 (68 years)
Pär-Erik Back was a Swedish social scientist. He was professor at Umeå University 1965–85 in political science, serving also as dean for the social sciences. Publications Herzog und Landschaft ,En klass i uppbrott ,Sammanslutningarnas roll i politiken 1870–1970 ,Det svenska partiväsendet .
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Aoyama Tanemichi
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Aoyama Tanemichi was a medical scientist and doctor specializing in internal medicine. He became a member of the Imperial Japan Academy in 1906, received the first class medal, "Order of the Sacred Treasure", in 1916, and was given the title of Danshaku in 1917.
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Philip Ferdinand
1555 - 1598 (43 years)
Philip Ferdinand was an English Hebraist. Born in Poland to Polish Jewish parents, he converted first to Roman Catholicism and then to Protestantism. He was a poor student at Oxford University, where he taught Hebrew. He matriculated at Cambridge University in 1596. He became professor of Hebrew at Leiden, where he died. He translated Rabbinic works into Latin.
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Heinrich Lauenstein
1835 - 1910 (75 years)
Heinrich Lauenstein was a German painter and art professor; associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. He specialized in portraits, many of them of children, and religious scenes. Life and work His father, Christoph Lauenstein, was a mill owner in Hildesheim. He worked as a decorative painter until 1859 when, thanks to a grant from King George V of Hanover., he was able to enroll at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, he studied with Heinrich Mücke, the brothers Andreas and Karl Müller, Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Rudolf Wiegmann. In 1863, he attended history painting classes taught by Eduard Bendemann then, from 1867, studied with the religious painter, Ernst Deger.
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Ellen Bliss Talbot
1867 - 1968 (101 years)
Ellen Bliss Talbot was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College, chairing the department of philosophy and psychology for 32 years. She is considered one of the first professional academic women philosophers.
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Julius Scriba
1848 - 1905 (57 years)
Julius Karl Scriba was a German surgeon serving as a foreign advisor in Meiji period Japan, where he was an important contributor to the development of Western medicine in Japan. Biography Scriba was born in Darmstadt, Germany and studied to become a pharmacist as well as a physician. His studies were interrupted by a year of military service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. He graduated three years after the end of the war from the University of Heidelberg and practiced medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau. He apprenticed under the noted surgeon Vincenz Czerny and from 1879 served as a lecturer at the University of Freiburg.
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Félix Taunay, Baron of Taunay
1795 - 1881 (86 years)
Félix Émile Taunay, Baron of Taunay , was a French Brazilian painter, and drawing and Greek teacher. He was the father of famous writer and politician Alfredo d'Escragnolle Taunay, the Viscount of Taunay.
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