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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
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Stafford L. Warren
1896 - 1981 (85 years)
Stafford Leak Warren was an American physician and radiologist who was a pioneer in the field of nuclear medicine and best known for his invention of the mammogram. Warren developed the technique of producing stereoscopic images of the breast with X-rays while working in the Department of Radiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Fink
1783 - 1846 (63 years)
Gottfried Wilhelm Fink was a German composer, music theorist, poet, and a Protestant clergyman. Life From 1804 until 1808 Fink studied theology at the University of Leipzig where he joined the Corps Lusatia. There he made his first attempts at composition and poetry. Most of his song compositions are attributed to this period. From 1811 he held the office of vicar in Leipzig for some years, where he also founded an educational institution which he led until 1829. Since the beginning of the 19th century he worked for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitschrift . In 1827 he became the magazine's...
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Filipp Ovsyannikov
1827 - 1906 (79 years)
Filipp Vasilievich Ovsyannikov was the first Russian histologist and the founder of sturgeon breeding. Ovsyannikov graduated from the University of Dorpat in 1853. He worked in Claude Bernard's laboratory in 1860 and in Carl Ludwig's laboratory in 1869. He held the chair in physiology at the University of Kazan from 1858 to 1862 and the chair in anatomy at the University of Saint Petersburg from 1864 to 1886. In 1864, he established the Physiological Laboratory for the Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Ovsyannikov's laboratory was used for research by such young physiologists as Elias von Cyon ...
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François-Rodolphe de Weiss
1751 - 1818 (67 years)
François-Rodolphe de Weiss was a Swiss military officer, diplomat, writer, philosopher, and a follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Life He was born at Yverdon, son of François Rodolphe, seigneur de Daillens, and Henriette Russillon. He entered French military service in 1766, and Prussian in 1777. In 1785 he became a member of the Grand Conseil at Berne.
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Shuddhananda Bharati
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Kavi Yogi Maharishi Dr. Shuddhananda Bharati was an Indian philosopher and poet. His teachings are focused mainly on the search for God in Self, through the Sama Yoga practice he created. Biography Bharati was born in Sivaganga in South India, and attained Jeeva Samadhi in nearby Sholapuram. He spent 25 years in silence in Pondicherry from 1925 to 1950, in the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa. From the early 1950s to the 1970s, he lived beside the IIT near Adyar, Chennai. Bharati always lived alone, without an Ashram. He founded Shuddhananda Bharati Desiya Vidyalayam High ...
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Michele Savonarola
1384 - 1468 (84 years)
Michele Savonarola was an Italian physician, humanist and historian. He was professor of practical medicine at Padua before in 1440 becoming court physician to the House of Este at Ferrara. His grandson was the Dominican Order friar and preacher Girolamo Savonarola.
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Otto von Schrön
1837 - 1917 (80 years)
Otto von Schrön was a German physician and epidemiologist born in Hof, Bavaria. He served as a professor of anatomy at the University of Napoli. Biography From 1855 he studied medicine at the Universities of Erlangen and Munich. After obtaining his medical degree, he relocated to Italy, working at the Universities of Turin and Pavia. In 1864 he became a professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Naples.
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Gertrude Van Wagenen
1893 - 1978 (85 years)
Gertrude L. Van Wagenen was an American biologist. She was also a collector of anatomical illustrations and models. Early life Gertrude L. Van Wagenen was the daughter of Anthony Van Wagenen , a judge and lawyer in Sioux City, Iowa, and his wife Gertrude . She completed undergraduate studies at Iowa State University in 1913, where she majored in zoology and was a member of the Beta Zeta chapter of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. For a few years after graduating, she taught in Ottumwa, Iowa, and endured a case of scarlet fever, with the quarantine it required. In 1918, she collected corals, ...
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Edgar A. Singer Jr.
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
Edgar Arthur Singer Jr. was an American philosopher, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and proponent of experimentalism. Life and work Singer was a graduate student of George S. Fullerton at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1894 with the thesis entitled "On the composite nature of consciousness." After his dissertation, he briefly taught at Harvard for William James as an instructor in the psychology laboratory. He was professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1909 until 1943. He was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society in 1925.
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Ulrich Hugwald
1496 - 1571 (75 years)
Ulrich Hugwald was a Swiss humanist scholar and Reformer. Born in Wilen near Bischofszell, county of Thurgau, he was enrolled in the theological faculty in Basel University from 1519. He published critical pamphlets with Basel printer Adam Petri from 1520. He was in correspondence with a number of reformers, such as Vadianus, Michael Stifel, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Guillaume Farel. He also opened a private school of rhetorics in Basel. In 1524, he debated with Oecolampadius and Thomas Müntzer on the topic of believer's baptism. He joined the Basel Anabaptists in 1525, and was consequently imprisoned.
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