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,
#19251
Henry Bate of Mechelen
1246 - 1310 (64 years)
Henry Bate or Hendrik Baten a.k.a. Henricus Batenus was a Flemish philosopher, theologian, astronomer, astrologer, poet, and musician. He was Master of Arts of the University of Paris before 1274. He was a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, he became a canon and cantor of the Cathedral of Saint-Lambert, Liège before 1289.
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Abu Jafar ibn Harun al-Turjali
1180 - Present (846 years)
Abu Jafar ibn Harun al-Turjali was born and raised in Trujillo to a noted Muwallad Muslim family. He received his education in Cordoba and later entered Almoravid service as a physician in Seville in Al-Andalus, he was a talented reader regarding the works of philosophy, he was thoroughly familiar with the Principles and the Branches of medical science, he was an excellent practitioner and his cures were frequently successful. He was the renowned educator of Ibn Bajjah and the young Ibn Rushd in his late years.
Go to Profile#19253
Zdzisław Jachimecki
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Zdzisław Jachimecki was a Polish historian of music, composer, professor at the Jagiellonian University and the Kraków Music Academy, and member of the Polish Academy of Learning. Life Born in Lwów in 1882, in 1904–5 he studied counterpoint with Arnold Schönberg in Vienna.
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Leonard Parsons
1879 - 1950 (71 years)
Sir Leonard Gregory Parsons MRCS FRCP FRCOG FRS was a British Paediatrician. Parsons studied at Mason College and the University of Birmingham from 1896 to 1903. He graduated with a University of London external degree in medicine in 1903.
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Robert Tigerstedt
1853 - 1923 (70 years)
Robert Adolph Armand Tigerstedt was a Finnish-born medical scientist and physiologist who, with his student Per Bergman, discovered renin at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm in 1898. Renin is a component of the renin–angiotensin system which regulates blood pressure, salt and water homeostasis and is an important therapeutic target. Tigerstedt is also recognised as an educator, author and social campaigner.
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Eduard Zeis
1807 - 1868 (61 years)
Eduard Zeis was a German surgeon and ophthalmologist born in Dresden. He studied medicine at the Universities of Leipzig, Bonn and Munich, receiving his doctorate at Leipzig in 1832. Afterwards he opened a general practice in his hometown of Dresden, later becoming a professor of surgery at the University of Marburg . In 1850 he returned to Dresden and was senior medical officer at the newly founded city hospital in Dresden-Friedrichstadt.
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Henrik Sjögren
1899 - 1986 (87 years)
Henrik Samuel Conrad Sjögren was a Swedish ophthalmologist best known for describing the eponymous condition Sjögren syndrome. Sjögren received his medical degree in Stockholm 1927. His first experience with the syndrome was an encounter with a 49-year-old woman with arthritis and extreme dryness of the eyes and the mouth. He worked with his wife, Maria, to describe a total of 19 cases and presented these cases for his doctoral theses in 1933, which was published at the Karolinska Institute and titled "On knowledge of keratoconjunctivitis" that eventually served as the basis of identifying and naming of Sjögren's syndrome.
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Valentine Mott
1785 - 1865 (80 years)
Valentine Mott was an American surgeon. Life Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, New York. He graduated at Columbia College, studied under Sir Astley Cooper in London, and also spent a winter in Edinburgh. After acting as demonstrator of anatomy he was appointed professor of surgery in Columbia College in 1809. From 1811 to 1834 he was in very extensive practice as a surgeon, and most successful as a teacher and operator. He tied the innominate artery in 1818; the patient lived twenty-six days. He performed a similar operation on the carotid for the first time in the USA on 20 Sept 1829 b...
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Francesc Xavier Butinyà i Hospital
1834 - 1899 (65 years)
Francesc Xavier Butinyà i Hospital was a Spanish missionary Jesuit from Catalonia, teacher and writer and the founder of two religious congregations of Sisters. He was the son of a prosperous factory owner. Nevertheless, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in Spain, he was an early proponent of the natural connection of the Christian faith with the working class, who were suffering in miserable working and living conditions.
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Louis François de Pourtalès
1823 - 1880 (57 years)
Louis François de Pourtalès was a Franco-American naturalist, born at Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Early life and education Pourtales was born on 4 March 1824 and regarded as a Swiss representative of an old family with linage in France, Prussia, and Bohemia. After the death of his father, he succeeded to the title of Count and inherited a fortune that enabled his scientific pursuits.
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John Claymond
1468 - 1537 (69 years)
John Claymond was the first President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Claymond was admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, at the age of 16 in 1484, where he remained until his appointment as president in 1507. He remained in this post until 1516, during which time he befriended Desiderius Erasmus.
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Wilhelm Siegmund Frei
1885 - 1943 (58 years)
Wilhelm Siegmund Frei was a German dermatologist best known for his contributions to Durand-Nicolas-Favre disease, a sexually transmitted disease found mainly in tropical and subtropical climates. He is also known for the Frei Test, which was developed in 1925 for the detection of lymphogranuloma venereum .
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Thomas Markaunt
1382 - 1439 (57 years)
Thomas Markaunt was a Fellow and benefactor of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University. He is best known for his sizeable bequest of seventy-five books to Corpus Christi library, which were lent out to the student body in a formal academic system of electio. However he is also of note for his extensive compilation of early University records, known as "Markaunt's book", which gained him a historical reputation as an antiquarian. While the majority of his original bequest has not survived the centuries, the extensive electio records and surviving books have been the subject of much study...
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Wilhelm von Kobell
1766 - 1853 (87 years)
Wilhelm von Kobell was a German painter, printmaker and teacher. Biography Kobell was born in Mannheim, the son of Ferdinand Kobell, a landscape painter who cited Claude Lorrain as his influence. Wilhelm's initial lessons were supplied by his father and his uncle, Franz Kobell. He received further training under Franz Anton von Leydendorf and Egid Verhelst in the art of engraving at the Zeichnungsakademie in Mannheim. He studied the works in the galleries of Mannheim and Düsseldorf, especially those of Wouvermann, which he copied. During this time he practiced various styles, including 17th-c...
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John Carson
1752 - 1794 (42 years)
John Carson was an early American physician as well as one of the first trustees for the rechartered University of Pennsylvania. He later was appointed chair of the university's Chemistry Department.
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Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal
1820 - 1914 (94 years)
Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal , known as Sir Donald A. Smith between May 1886 and August 1897, was a Scottish-born Canadian businessman who became one of the British Empire's foremost builders and philanthropists. He became commissioner, governor and principal shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was president of the Bank of Montreal and with his first cousin, George Stephen , co-founded the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and afterwards represented Montreal in the House of Commons of Canada. He was Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1896 to 1914.
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Eta Harich-Schneider
1894 - 1986 (92 years)
Eta Harich-Schneider was a German harpsichordist, musicologist, Japanologist and writer. Life Born in Oranienburg, Harich-Schneider later gave her year of birth as 1897, whereas her gravestone in Vienna-Hietzing reads "1894".
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John Wall
1708 - 1776 (68 years)
John Wall , was an English physician, one of the founders of the Worcester Royal Infirmary and the Royal Worcester porcelain works. He was also involved in the development of Malvern as a spa town. Early life Wall was born at Powick, Worcestershire, in 1708, was the son of John Wall, a tradesman of Worcester city. He was educated at the King's School, Worcester, matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford on 23 June 1726, graduated B.A. in 1730, and migrated to Merton College, where he was elected fellow in 1735, and whence he took the degrees of M.A. and M.B. in 1736, and of M.D. in 1759.
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Jane Anne Russell
1911 - 1967 (56 years)
Jane Anne Russell was an endocrinologist. She researched pituitary extract. Education Russell graduated from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, California, in 1928, as the second best student in her class. At age 17, she entered the University of California Berkeley, and graduated in 1932 as first in her class. She was awarded the California Fellowship in Biochemistry in 1934 and the Rosenburg Fellowship in 1935.
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Friedrich Ludwig
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Friedrich Ludwig was a German historian, musicologist, and college instructor. His name is closely associated with the exploration and rediscovery of medieval music in the 20th century, particularly the compositional techniques of the Ars Nova and the isorhythmic motet.
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William Baldwin
1779 - 1819 (40 years)
William Baldwin was an American physician and botanist who is today remembered for his significant contributions to botanical studies, especially Cyperaceae. He lived in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, and served as a ship's surgeon on two voyages overseas. He published only two scientific papers, but his major contributions were in the knowledge that he imparted to other botanists in his letters to them and in the thousands of specimens that he provided for their herbaria. He wrote letters to Henry Muhlenberg, Stephen Elliott, William Darlington, Zaccheus Collins, and others. His most important collections were from Georgia, Florida, and eastern South America.
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Thomas Rymer Jones
1810 - 1880 (70 years)
Thomas Rymer Jones, FRS was an English surgeon, academic and zoologist. Life Jones was the son of a captain in the Royal Navy and he studied at Guy's Hospital in Paris. He became M.R.C.S. in 1833, but found himself unable to practice because of his hearing impairment.
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Zygmunt Vogel
1764 - 1826 (62 years)
Zygmunt Vogel was a Polish illustrator, educator, and painter in the classical style. He was sometimes called Ptaszek : a reference to his name and to the many years that he traveled almost continuously.
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Richard Heuberger
1850 - 1914 (64 years)
Richard Franz Joseph Heuberger was an Austrian composer of operas and operettas, a music critic, and teacher. Heuberger was born in Graz, the son of a bandage manufacturer. He initially studied engineering, but gave it up in 1876, and turned to music. He studied at the Graz Conservatory , and later transferred to Vienna, where he eventually became the chorus master of the Wiener Akademischer Gesangverein, conductor of the Wiener Singakademie, director of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein , and a teacher at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien.
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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, .
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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...
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Adolf Vossius
1855 - 1925 (70 years)
Adolf Vossius was a German ophthalmologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Königsberg and Giessen, receiving his doctorate in 1879. Following graduation, he remained at Giessen as an assistant to Arthur von Hippel at the university eye clinic. In 1882 he obtained his habilitation at Königsberg, where five years later, he was named an associate professor. In 1890 he returned to the University of Giessen as a full professor of ophthalmology. At Giessen he opened a new eye clinic on Friedrichstrasse.
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Paul Loye
1861 - 1890 (29 years)
Paul Loye was a French physician and "préparateur" for various physiological courses at the Sorbonne in the 1880s. His greatest contribution lay in his observations on the functions and organization of the brain and nervous system.
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Rudolph August Witthaus
1846 - 1915 (69 years)
Rudolph August Witthaus Jr. was an American physician, chemist, and toxicologist. He was the top authority on poisons in the United States and was a forensic toxicologist in many important capital murder cases of the late19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a survivor of the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre.
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Roscoe Ates
1895 - 1962 (67 years)
Roscoe Blevel Ates was an American vaudeville performer, actor of stage and screen, comedian and musician who primarily featured in western films and television. He was best known as western character Soapy Jones. He was also billed as Rosco Ates.
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Marriott Fawckner Nicholls
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Sir Marriott Fawckner Nicholls CBE, FRCS, was an English surgeon who specialised in the genitourinary tract. He served in the British Army in both the First and Second World Wars and was dean of the medical school at St George's Hospital for 20 years. At the age of 64 he became professor of surgery at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, where he maintained the position until his death five years later.
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Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, of Minto
1722 - 1777 (55 years)
Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Baronet, was born at Minto, Roxburghshire, and was a Scottish statesman, philosopher and poet. Early life Elliot was born in September 1722 in Minto, Roxburghshire. He was one of nine children born to Helen Steuart and Sir Gilbert Elliot, 2nd Baronet, of Minto.
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Philip Levine
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Philip Levine was an immuno-hematologist whose clinical research advanced knowledge on the Rhesus factor, Hemolytic disease of the newborn and blood transfusion. Life and career Levine was born in Kletsk, near Minsk , then in the Russian Empire. He moved with his family to New York when he was 8 years old where his family took on a more English sounding surname. The family settled in Brooklyn where Levine graduated from Boys' High School. He received a bachelor's degree at City College and a master's degree and, in 1923, an M.D. degree at Cornell University Medical School. About 1925, Levine became assistant to Karl Landsteiner at the Rockefeller Institute, New York City.
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Francesco Pucci
1543 - 1597 (54 years)
Francesco Pucci was an Italian philosopher and humanist. Life Pucci was born in Figline Valdarno. He was of the same family as the Cardinals Lorenzo Pucci, Roberto Pucci, and Antonio Pucci. He worked began in a mercantile house at Lyon and came into contact with the Protestant Reformation. He made his way to London, where he became acquainted with Antonio de Corro.
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Alfred Szendrei
1884 - 1976 (92 years)
Alfred Szendrei, also Alfred Sendrey and Aladár Szendrei was an American musicologist, organist, conductor, composer of Hungarian origin. He was one of the leading conductors and pioneers of German radio. In exile he changed his Hungarian surname "Szendrei" to the Americanized spelling "Sendrey".
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Rudolf Schirmer
1831 - 1896 (65 years)
Rudolf Schirmer was a German ophthalmologist from Greifswald. He initially studied medicine at the University of Greifswald, then furthered his studies at Göttingen, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. Later he returned to Greifswald, where he was habilitated for ophthalmology in 1860. In 1873 he attained the chair of ophthalmology, a position he held until his retirement in 1893. In 1885, he succeeded philosopher Wilhelm Schuppe as university rector at Greifswald.
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Henning Jakob Henrik Lund
1875 - 1948 (73 years)
Henning Jakob Henrik Lund or Intel'eraq was a Greenlandic lyricist, painter, and pastor. He wrote the lyrics to "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit," in the indigenous Greenlandic language, an Eskimo–Aleut language. The song was adopted as the national anthem of Greenland.
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Cornelius Rea Agnew
1830 - 1888 (58 years)
Cornelius Rea Agnew was an American surgeon. Early years Agnew was born in New York City, the son of William Agnew and Elizabeth Thompson Agnew; his ancestors, Huguenot, Irish and Scotch, came to America from time to time during the 18th century. He entered the Columbia College in 1845 and graduated from there in 1849 with the degree of A.B. He then received the degree of M.D. from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1852. In 1856, he married Mary Nash, daughter of Lora Nash, a New York merchant.
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Friedrich Martius
1850 - 1923 (73 years)
Friedrich Martius was a German internist who was one of the pioneers of constitutional thought in medicine. He was the father of philosopher Hedwig Conrad-Martius . He studied medicine at the Pépinière in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1874. Following graduation, he served as a military doctor, and afterwards worked as an assistant in the clinic of Carl Gerhardt in Berlin. In 1887 he received his habilitation, and later was appointed personal physician to Frederick Francis III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1891 he relocated to the University of Rostock as an associate professor and director of the medical clinic.
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