Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#2001

Frank Haven Hinman

#62212

Overall Influence

#2002

Ralph Lerner

#33928

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Ralph Lerner is an American political philosopher. Lerner was born in Chicago, and attended the University of Chicago for his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in political science. His Ph.D. was advised by Leo Strauss. Lerner later joined the Chicago faculty, where he was named the Benjamin Franklin Professorship until 2003, when he was granted emeritus status.

#2003

Sohan Singh Hayreh

#62273

Overall Influence

#2004

Andrew McMichael

Andrew McMichael

#55835

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Sir Andrew James McMichael, is an immunologist, Professor of Molecular Medicine, and previously Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is particularly known for his work on T cell responses to viral infections such as influenza and HIV.

#2005

Brendan Myers

#49957

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Brendan Cathbad Myers is a Canadian philosopher and author known for his contributions in environmental philosophy, Druidry and Neo-Druidism, mythology, and applied virtue ethics. Philosophy and writings Normative in their conception, Myers' works fundamentally examine ideas regarding the interconnectedness of creation and emphasize the importance of strong moral character as vital to the health and well-being of the world and society. Myers criticizes utilitarian views, especially "negative" utilitarianism, which holds that ethics require nothing more than the minimization of harm, and of deontological views, which emphasize social duties and adhering to social norms, i.e.

#2006

Sterling M. McMurrin

Sterling M. McMurrin

#19925

Overall Influence

1914 - 1996 (82 years)

Sterling Moss McMurrin was a liberal Mormon theologian and Philosophy professor at the University of Utah. He served as United States Commissioner of Education in the administration of President John F. Kennedy.

#2007

Avedis Donabedian

#6316

Overall Influence

1919 - 2000 (81 years)

Avedis Donabedian was a physician and founder of the study of quality in health care and medical outcomes research, most famously as a creator of The Donabedian Model of care. Early life Avedis Donabedian was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in an Armenian family from Western Armenia. Although the rest of his parents' families perished from the Armenian genocide, Donabedian's immediate family was able to escape, ultimately migrating to Palestine. His father had qualified as a doctor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and soon after set up practice in the small Christian town of Ramallah, near Jerusalem.

#2008

Josef Simon

#48006

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Josef Simon was a contemporary German philosopher and professor of the University of Bonn, born in Hupperath. He wrote extensively on metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of German idealism and various philosophers, mainly Kant, Hamann and Nietzsche. Perhaps Simon's most influential work has been in the philosophy of language. His main work, Philosophie des Zeichens, has been influenced by, among others, Kant, Hegel, Peirce and Wittgenstein, Hamann, Humboldt or Nietzsche.

#2009

Anne Sauvagnargues

#38566

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Anne Sauvagnargues is a French philosopher specializing in the work of Gilles Deleuze. Biography A former student of the École Normale Supérieure in Fontenay-aux-Roses, she taught at the École normale supérieure of Lyon and has been professor at the University Paris X since 2010,

#2010

Richard Hanley

#54916

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Richard Hanley is a Zambian-born Australian philosopher. Life Richard Hanley, also known as "Hypertime Hanley" was born in Zambia and later moved to Australia as a small child. He studied at the University of Sydney, and completed his PhD at University of Maryland. He is now an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Delaware. Philosophically, he is a perdurantist following in the footsteps of David Lewis. Hanley believes that time travel is logically, physically, and epistemically possible.

#2011

Helen Beebee

#47426

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Helen Beebee is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds and a Fellow of the British Academy. Previously, Beebee was the Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy at Manchester. Beebee's work has been influential across a wide variety of fields, including causation, free will, and natural kinds. Eric Schliesser, writing on NewApps, described Beebee as 'one of the most prominent metaphysicists of our time'. Beebee has a significant interest in the problem of underrepresentation of women in the field of philosophy, and has spoken about the problems that face women philosophers in...

#2012

William Hirstein

#29866

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

William Hirstein is an American philosopher primarily interested in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at Elmhurst University.

#2013

Richard Grandy

#29426

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Richard Grandy is an American philosopher and logician, who is emeritus professor of philosophy at Rice University. Education and career Grandy earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University under the direction of Paul Benacerraf. He taught at Princeton University from 1967 to 1974, then at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill before moving to Rice University in 1980, where he spent the rest of his career.

#2014

Samuel Freeman

#33143

Overall Influence

Samuel Freeman is an American philosopher, Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading authority on the philosophy of John Rawls and also writes in political and legal philosophy, from a Rawlsian perspective.

#2015

Robert Stam

#14761

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Robert Stam is an American film theorist working on film semiotics. He is a professor at New York University, where he teaches about the French New Wave filmmakers. Stam has published widely on French literature, comparative literature, and on film topics such as film history and film theory. Together with Ella Shohat, he co-authored Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media.

#2016

Margaret Urban Walker

#37652

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Margaret Urban Walker is an American philosopher and academic who is the Donald J. Schuenke Chair Emerita in Philosophy at Marquette University. Before her appointment at Marquette, she was the Lincoln Professor of Ethics at Arizona State University, and before that she was at Fordham University. She has also previously held visiting appointments at Washington University in St. Louis, University of South Florida, and Catholic University of Leuven.

#2017

Justus Azzopardi

#53367

Overall Influence

Justus Azzopardi was a minor Maltese philosopher. His area of specialisation in philosophy was chiefly metaphysics. No portrait of him is known to exist as yet. Life Little is known of Azzopardi’s personal life. He was a diocesan priest, a professor of philosophy, and an adherent to Aristotelico-Thomistic Scholasticism.

#2018

James Heisig

#19551

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

James Wallace Heisig is a philosopher who specialises in the field of philosophy of religion. He has published a number of books on topics ranging from the notion of God in analytical psychology, the Kyoto School of Philosophy to contemporary inter-religious dialogue. His books, translations, and edited collections, which have appeared in 18 languages, currently number 90 volumes.

#2019

Alan Carter

#45551

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Alan Brian Carter is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Life and work Carter earned a BA at the University of Kent at Canterbury, a MA at the University of Sussex and a DPhil at St Cross College at the University of Oxford. Carter's first academic position was Lecturer in Political Theory at University College Dublin. He then became Head of the Philosophy Department at Heythrop College, University of London. Subsequently, he was Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Bucharest.

#2020

Joseph A. Bracken

#38359

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. is an American philosopher and Catholic theologian. Bracken is a proponent of process philosophy and process theology of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Much of his work is devoted to a synthesis of revealed religion and Christian trinitarian doctrines with a revised process theology. Bracken introduced a field theoretic approach to process metaphysics.

#2021

Gregory L. L. Moneta

#62733

Overall Influence

#2022

Ronald de Sousa

#21497

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Ronald Bon de Sousa Pernes is a Swiss-born Canadian philosopher and academic. He is an emeritus professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Toronto, which he joined in 1966. Biography De Sousa possesses both UK and Canadian citizenship. Educated in Switzerland and England, he took his B.A. at New College, Oxford University in 1962, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1966. His thesis Categories, Translation, and Linguistic Theory was supervised by Paul Benacerraf.

#2023

Dominik Perler

#31327

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Dominik Perler is a Swiss philosopher. He was born in Freiburg im Üechtland Perler studied philosophy at the University of Fribourg, University of Bern and University of Göttingen. After finishing his PhD thesis at the University of Fribourg in 1991, Perler was a visiting scholar at Cornell University and at UCLA. After he was granted Habilitation in 1995 at the University of Göttingen, he became professor at the University of Basel in 1997. In 2003 Perler took up a professorship in theoretical philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

#2024

David Miller

#27488

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

David Leslie Miller is an English political theorist. He is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and an Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously lectured at the University of Lancaster and the University of East Anglia. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge, and his Bachelor of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford. Previous works include Social Justice, On Nationality and Citizenship and National Identity. Miller is known for his support of a modest form of liberal nationalism.

#2025

Michel Clouscard

#20193

Overall Influence

1928 - 2009 (81 years)

Michel Clouscard was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist. An opponent of capitalism, a critic of the evolution of ideas of progress confronted with the liberal mutations of the end of the 20th century, his work is linked to the thought of Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, whose links and unity he shows. He is known to have philosophically shown the collusion between capitalism and the French theory, represented by Lévi-Strauss and Deleuze, constructing his own concept of neo-Kantianism. He developed a philosophical research around the idea of social contract, postulating that "the constituti...

#2026

Adam Muto

#13073

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Adam Muto is an American writer, storyboard artist, animator, and producer known for his work as the executive producer and showrunner of the animated television series Adventure Time. Career Muto was a classmate of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward at CalArts. When Ward was first working on the Adventure Time pilot for the Frederator incubator series Random! Cartoons, Muto assisted him by drawing props. Eventually, Muto went on to work on the television series, serving as a storyboard artist. During the show's first season, he was partnered with Elizabeth Ito, but during the show's second and third seasons, he was partnered with Rebecca Sugar.

#2027

James Hall

#46268

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

James H. Hall is an American philosopher. He was the James Thomas Professor of Philosophy at the University of Richmond from 1965 until his retirement in 2005. He remains at the university as Professor Emeritus. His philosophical interests include: 20th Century analytic philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and logical empiricism. He has produced two lecture series for The Teaching Company: Philosophy of Religion and Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason.

#2028

C. A. J. Coady

#25289

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Cecil Anthony John Coady, more commonly publishing as C. A. J. Coady and less formally known as Tony Coady , is a prominent Australian philosopher with an international reputation for his research, particularly in epistemology but also in political and applied philosophy. Coady's best-known work relates to the epistemological problems posed by testimony, most fully expounded in his book Testimony: a Philosophical Study . It was influential in establishing a new branch of inquiry within the field of epistemology. He is also well known for his publications on issues related to political violence.

#2029

Joseph Rizzo

#51545

Overall Influence

Joseph Rizzo was a minor Maltese philosopher and theologian who probably specialised in logic. Life Rizzo was a diocesan priest. He studied theology and was a professor of philosophy. He taught philosophy in Malta at least between 1781 and 1782. No other information is known as yet about his personal life, and no portrait of him seems to have survived.

#2030

Brihaspati

#1934

Overall Influence

Brihaspati , also known as Guru, is a Hindu deity. In the ancient Vedic scriptures of Hinduism, Brihaspati is a deity associated with fire, and the word also refers to a rishi who counsels the devas . In some later texts, the word refers to the largest planet of the solar system, Jupiter, and the deity is associated with the planet as a Navagraha.

#2031

Eero Tarasti

#14600

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Eero Aarne Pekka Tarasti , is a Finnish musicologist and semiologist, currently serving as Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. He received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Helsinki in 1978, writing his dissertation Myth and Music on Richard Wagner, Jean Sibelius, and Igor Stravinsky. Then, Tarasti served at the University of Jyväskylä between 1979–1984, where he was appointed Professor of Arts Education in 1979 and Professor of Musicology in 1983. In 1984 he took the position of Professor of Musicology in Helsinki, succeeding Erik Tawaststjerna. Tarasti has hel...

#2032

Julian Young

#47773

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Julian Padraic Young is an American philosopher and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University. He is known for his expertise on post-Kantian philosophy. Career He specializes in Continental philosophy, philosophy of art, environmental philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Prior to moving to the United States, Professor Young taught at all levels at the universities of Auckland, Pittsburgh, Calgary and Tasmania, the following: Introduction to Ethics, Introduction to Metaphysics and Theory of Knowledge, Introduction to Theories of Human Nature, British Empiricis...

#2033

Julius Tomin

#32174

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Julius Tomin is a Czech philosopher. He became known in the 1970s and 1980s for his involvement with the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, which ran an underground education network in the former Czechoslovakia, offering seminars in philosophy in people's homes.

#2034

Dimitris Dimitrakos

Dimitris Dimitrakos

#45176

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Dimitris Dimitrakos is a Greek philosopher, currently Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy in the Philosophy of Science Department of the University of Athens. Biography Dimitrakos originally studied economics at the London School of Economics

#2035

Karl Ameriks

#51758

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Karl P. Ameriks is an American philosopher. He is the Emeritus McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Education and career Ameriks studied at Yale University, A.B., summa cum laude , Ph.D. , where he wrote his thesis under the direction of Karsten Harries. He joined the faculty at Notre Dame in 1973, and taught there for more than forty years.

#2036

Raymond Plant, Baron Plant of Highfield

#14833

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Raymond Plant, Baron Plant of Highfield FKC is a British Labour peer and academic. Lord Plant was educated at Havelock School in Grimsby, King's College London , and the University of Hull . He is currently Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy at King's College London and was previously Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, having previously served as Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, from 1994 to 2000. He is an Honorary Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford. Before moving to Oxford he was Professor of European Political Thought at the University of Southampto...

#2037

Itzhak Brook

#63229

Overall Influence

#2038

Antonio Cua

#45102

Overall Influence

1932 - 2007 (75 years)

Antonio S. Cua was an eminent scholar in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy who was professor emeritus of philosophy at The Catholic University of America. Cua was primarily interested in Western moral philosophy, moral psychology and Chinese ethics, in particular Confucian ethics. He was the author of many important scholarly works, and the chief editor of the Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, the first English-language encyclopedia on 'Chinese philosophy'.

#2039

Marcus George Singer

#41547

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Marcus George Singer was an American philosopher. His works include Generalization in Ethics – An Essay in the Logic of Ethics, with the Rudiments of a System of Moral Philosophy . Personal life Marcus George Singer was born in 1926 in New York City. His father, David Singer, a lawyer, died when MGS was 9 years old from a rare autoimmune disease. His mother, Esther Kobre Singer, was a concert level pianist and received awards from the City of New York for her service typing books in braille. Her father and uncle, through their small bank, provided loans to many Jews to pay passage to the USA .

#2040

Françoise Dastur

#54187

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Françoise Dastur is a French philosopher. She is Professor Emeritus at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. She is a specialist of the works of Martin Heidegger. Bibliography Heidegger and the Question of Time , translated by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, Humanity Books, 1998Death: An Essay on Finitude, translated by John Llewelyn, Continuum, 2002Telling Time: Sketch of a Phenomenological Chronology , translated by Edward Bullard, The Athlone Press, 2000How Are We to Confront Death?: An Introduction to Philosophy , Robert Vallier , David Farrell Krell , Fordham University Press, 2012Q...

#2041

Richard Middleton

#9571

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Richard Middleton FBA is Emeritus Professor of Music at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is also the founder and co-ordinating editor of the journal Popular Music. Education Middleton studied at Clare College, Cambridge and at the University of York, where his PhD was supervised by Wilfrid Mellers.

#2042

Mario Aurelio Poli

Mario Aurelio Poli

#22314

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Mario Aurelio Poli is an Argentine prelate of the Catholic Church who was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires from 2013 to 2023. He was the Bishop of Santa Rosa from 2008 to 2013 and before that an auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires from 2002 to 2008. Pope Francis, his predecessor in Buenos Aires, made him a cardinal in 2014.

#2043

Ben Goldacre

#1564

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Ben Michael Goldacre is a British physician, academic and science writer. He is the first Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials to require open science practices in clinical trials.

#2044

Blay Whitby

#17062

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Dr Blay Whitby is a philosopher and technology ethicist, specialising in computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics. He is based at the University of Sussex, England. Blay Whitby graduated with first class honours from New College, Oxford University in 1974 and completed his PhD on "The Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence" at Middlesex University in 2003. His publications are predominantly in the area of the philosophy and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. His views place particular stress on the moral responsibilities of scientific and technical professionals, having some features in common with techno-progressivism.

#2045

Ole Martin Moen

Ole Martin Moen

#37253

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Ole Martin Moen is a Norwegian philosopher who works primarily with applied ethics and value theory. He is Professor of Ethics at Oslo Metropolitan University and Researcher in Philosophy and Principal Investigator for the 5-year research project "What should not be bought and sold?" at the University of Oslo, funded by the Research Council of Norway.

#2046

François Dosse

#15610

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

François Dosse is a French historian and philosopher who specializes in intellectual history. Biography After devoting his doctoral thesis to the Annales School, Dosse turned his research interests to structuralism, the philosopher Paul Ricœur and the historian Michel de Certeau. François Dosse is one of the founders of the journal EspacesTemps. In 2007, he published Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari, biographie croisée , where he advocated the rehabilitation of Guattari in an intellectual history that had made place only for Deleuze. In 2011 he published a biography on the French historian...

#2047

Isaac Malitz

#36420

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Isaac Richard Jay Malitz is a logician who introduced the subject of positive set theory in his 1976 Ph.D. Thesis at UCLA.

#2048

David L. Paulsen

#37124

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

David Lamont Paulsen was a professor emeritus of philosophy at Brigham Young University . From 1994 to 1998 he held the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding at BYU. He was an active faculty member at BYU from 1972–2011.

#2049

David Lyons

#34543

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

David Lyons is an American moral, political and legal philosopher who is emeritus professor of philosophy and of law at Boston University. Education and career Lyons earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University where he studied under John Rawls. He taught at Cornell University from 1964 until 1995, when he joined the BU faculty. His former students include David O. Brink.

#2050

Jacinto Convit

#7624

Overall Influence

1913 - 2014 (101 years)

Jacinto Convit García was a Venezuelan physician and scientist, known for developing a vaccine to prevent leprosy and his studies to treat cancer. He played a role in founding Venezuela's National Institute of Biomedicine and held many leprosy-related positions. Among Convit's many honors for his work on leprosy and tropical diseases was Spain's Prince of Asturias Award in the Scientific and Technical Research category and France's Legion of Honor. In 1988, Convit was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his experimental anti-leprosy vaccine.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions