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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#2051

Tommie Shelby

#22818

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher. Since 2013, he has served as the Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University, where he is the current chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. He is particularly known for his work in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, social theory , and the philosophy of social science.

#2052

Harry Austryn Wolfson

1887 - 1974 (87 years)

Harry Austryn Wolfson was an American scholar, philosopher, and historian at Harvard University, and the first chairman of a Judaic Studies Center in the United States. He is known for his seminal work on the Jewish philosopher Philo, but he also authored an astonishing variety of other works on Crescas, Maimonides, Averroes, Spinoza, the Kalam, the Church Fathers, and the foundations of Western religion. He collapsed the artificial barriers that isolated the study of Christian philosophy from Islamic philosophy and from Jewish philosophy . Being the first Judaica scholar to progress thr...

#2053

Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Souleymane Bachir Diagne

#11268

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a Senegalese philosopher. His work is focused on the history of logic and mathematics, epistemology, the tradition of philosophy in the Islamic world, identity formation, and African literatures and philosophies.

#2054

Peregrinus Proteus

95 - 165 (70 years)

Peregrinus Proteus was a Greek Cynic philosopher, from Parium in Mysia. Leaving home at a young age, he first lived with the Christians in Palestine. After being expelled from that community he adopted the life of a Cynic philosopher and eventually settled in Greece. Peregrinus is most remembered for his suicide after giving his own funeral oration, cremating himself on a funeral pyre at the Olympic Games in 165. By 180 AD, a statue of Peregrinus had been erected in his home city of Parium; it was reputed to have oracular powers.

#2055

Shaun Nichols

#15136

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

#2056

Yan Hui

521 BC - 490 BC (31 years)

Yan Hui was a Chinese philosopher. He was the favorite disciple of Confucius and one of the most revered figures of Confucianism. He is venerated in Confucian temples as one of the Four Sages. Names Yan Hui is also known by his courtesy name Ziyuan and as Yan Yuan, a combination of his surname and courtesy name. He is also reverently referred to as Master Yan or Yanzi.

#2057

Eugene Kamenka

#23567

Overall Influence

1928 - 1994 (66 years)

Eugene Kamenka was an Australian political philosopher and Marxist scholar. Biography Kamenka was born in Cologne in 1928 and migrated to Australia with his parents in 1937. He was educated at the Sydney Technical High School, and after interrupting his studies went to Jerusalem where he married his first wife Miriam Mizrachi. Later, he returned to Sydney University by her encouragement to complete his degree and begin work on his later published thesis "The Ethical Foundations of Marxism" for the Australian national university, published 1962. Professor John Anderson of Sydney University wa...

#2058

Paul Redding

#32912

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Paul Redding is an Australian philosopher and emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney. He is known for his research on Hegel's philosophy and the tradition of German idealism more generally. In particular he has pursued the relation of Hegel's logic to the approach to logic in analytic philosophy and pragmatism and, more recently, the tradition of Platonism. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

#2059

Penelope Mackie

1900 - Present (124 years)

Penelope Mackie was a British philosopher who specialised in metaphysics and philosophical logic, and was best known for her work on essence and modality. Mackie spent the majority of her career in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham , having also held appointments at the University of Birmingham, Virginia Commonwealth University, and New College, Oxford.

#2060

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie

#8635

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie is a French far-left philosopher and sociologist. He is the author of several books, articles and lectures pertaining to social and political philosophy, epistemology and critical theory, and the sociology of culture and intellectual life; with a particular interest in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault.

#2061

Richard Kroner

1884 - 1974 (90 years)

Richard Kroner was a German neo-Hegelian philosopher, known for his Von Kant bis Hegel , a classic history of German idealism written from the neo-Hegelian point of view. He was a Christian, from a Jewish background. He is known for his formulation of Hegel as 'the Protestant Aquinas'.

#2062

Lawrence Sklar

#15586

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Lawrence Sklar is an American philosopher. He is the Carl G. Hempel and William K. Frankena Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Education and career Sklar was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1938 and educated at Oberlin College and Princeton University where he worked with Hilary Putnam.

#2063

John McMurtry

#20125

Overall Influence

1939 - 2021 (82 years)

John McMurtry was a University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada. Most recently, he has focused his research on the value structure of economic theory and its consequences for global civil and environmental life. McMurtry was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in June 2001 by his peers for his work regarding the study of humanities and social sciences.

#2064

Oswald Avery

1877 - 1955 (78 years)

Oswald Theodore Avery Jr. was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for the experiment that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.

#2065

Carl F. H. Henry

Carl F. H. Henry

#6107

Overall Influence

1913 - 2003 (90 years)

Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was an American evangelical Christian theologian who provided intellectual and institutional leadership to the neo-evangelical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. He was ordained in 1942 after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to teach and lecture at various schools and publish and edit many works surrounding the neo-evangelical movement. His early book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism , was influential in calling evangelicals to differentiate themselves from separatist fundamentalism and claim a role in influencing the wider American culture.

#2066

Shaj Mohan

#12327

Overall Influence

Shaj Mohan is an Indian philosopher. His philosophical works are in the areas of metaphysics, reason, philosophy of technology, philosophy of politics, and secrecy. Mohan's works are based on the principle of anastasis according to which philosophy is an ever-present possibility on the basis of a reinterpretation of reason.

#2067

Rom Harré

#11579

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Horace Romano "Rom" Harré was a New Zealand-British philosopher and psychologist. Biography Harré was born in Āpiti, in northern Manawatu, near Palmerston North, New Zealand, but held British citizenship. He studied chemical engineering and later graduated with a BSc in mathematics and a Master's in Philosophy , both at the University of New Zealand, now the University of Auckland.

#2068

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek

#23441

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek is a Polish utilitarian philosopher and a university professor at the Institute of Philosophy at University of Łódź. She has also taught at a summer seminar on utilitarian ethics at the European Graduate School and Spring School for PhD students at the Dutch Research School of Philosophy. She is best known for her collaborations with the Australian philosopher Peter Singer.

#2069

Maxwell Finland

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

Maxwell Finland was an American scientist, medical researcher, an expert on infectious diseases. Finland led seminal research of antibiotic treatment of pneumonia. Early life and education Finland was born on March 15, 1902, in Zhashkiv near Kyiv, Ukraine. He immigrated as a child to the United States at the age of 4. Finland graduated from the Boston English High School and cum laude from Harvard College in 1922. He then graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1926.

#2070

Abdel Rahman Badawi

#17113

Overall Influence

1917 - 2002 (85 years)

Abdel Rahman Badawi was an Egyptian existentialist philosopher, professor of philosophy and poet. He has been called the "foremost master of Arab existentialism." He published more than 150 works, mostly rendering of Arabic philosophical manuscripts.

#2071

Quill Kukla

#28405

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Quill Kukla is a Canadian and American philosopher. They are a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and the Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. They are also Humboldt Research Scholar at Leibniz University Hannover for 2020 and 2021. They are known for their work in bioethics, analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and feminist philosophy.

#2072

Aetius

100 - 100 (0 years)

Aetius was a 1st- or 2nd-century AD doxographer and Eclectic philosopher. Works None of Aetius' works survives today, but he solves a mystery about two major compilations of philosophical quotes. There are two extant books named De Placita Philosophorum and Eclogae Physicae . The first of these is Pseudo-Plutarch and the second is by Stobaeus. They are clearly both abridgements of a larger work. Hermann Diels, in his great Doxographi Graeci , discovered that the 5th-century CE theologian Theodoret had full versions of the quotes which were shortened in the abridgements. This means that Theodoret had managed to procure the original book which Pseudo-Plutarch and Stobaeus had shortened.

#2073

Edward Kofler

#19510

Overall Influence

1911 - 2007 (96 years)

Edward Kofler was a mathematician who made important contributions to game theory and fuzzy logic by working out the theory of linear partial information. Biography Kofler was born in Brzeżany, Austrian-Hungarian empire and graduated as a disciple of among others Hugo Steinhaus and Stefan Banach from the University of Lwów Poland and the University of Cracow, having studied game theory. After graduation in 1939 Kofler returned to his family in Kolomyia , where he taught mathematics in a Polish high school. After German attack on the town 1 July 1941 he succeeded to escape to Kazakhstan together with his wife.

#2074

Robert Stainton

#20772

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Robert Stainton is a Canadian philosopher/linguist and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario. He is known for his works on the philosophy of language, cognitive science/philosophy of the mind, analytic metaphysics/philosophical logic, semantics and pragmatics. He is currently leading a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant-funded project on The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Languages with Christopher Viger. He is also “a fanatical carp fisher,” as he told Outdoor Canada.

#2075

Paul Brunton

1898 - 1981 (83 years)

Paul Brunton is the pen name of Raphael Hurst , a British author of spiritual books. He is best known as one of the early popularizers of Neo-Hindu spiritualism in western esotericism, notably via his bestselling A Search in Secret India which has been translated into over 20 languages.

#2076

James Tartaglia

#23365

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

James Phillip Frank Tartaglia is a British philosopher who defends metaphysical idealism and existential nihilism, as well as a jazz saxophonist whose "jazz-philosophy fusion" combines jazz music with philosophical ideas.

#2077

Julius von Kirchmann

Julius von Kirchmann

1802 - 1884 (82 years)

Julius Hermann von Kirchmann was a German jurist and philosopher. Biography Kirchmann was educated at Leipzig and Halle. In 1846 he was made state's attorney in the criminal court of Berlin, and two years afterwards was chosen to the Prussian National Assembly. From 1871 to 1876 he was a member of the German Reichstag. His philosophy was an attempt to mediate between realism and idealism.

#2078

Domenico Losurdo

Domenico Losurdo

#11559

Overall Influence

1941 - 2018 (77 years)

Domenico Losurdo was an Italian historian, essayist, Marxist philosopher, and communist politician. Life and career Born in Sannicandro di Bari, Losurdo obtained his doctorate in 1963 from the University of Urbino under the guidance of Pasquale Salvucci with a thesis on Johann Karl Rodbertus. During the sixties, he was radicalized and belonged to a small group of Italian communists which sided with the People's Republic of China in the Sino-Soviet split. Losurdo was director of the Institute of Philosophical and Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Urbino, where he taught history of philosophy as dean at the Faculty of Educational Sciences.

#2079

Asclepius of Tralles

$Asclepius of Tralles$

401 - 501 (100 years)

Asclepius of Tralles was a student of Ammonius Hermiae. Two works of his survive:Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, books I-VII .Commentary on Nicomachus' Introduction to Arithmetic

#2080

Max Beckmann

1884 - 1950 (66 years)

Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s, he was associated with the New Objectivity , an outgrowth of Expressionism that opposed its introverted emotionalism. Even when dealing with light subject matter like circus performers, Beckmann often had an undercurrent of moodiness or unease in his works. By the 1930s, his work became more explicit in its horrifying imagery and distorted forms with combination of brutal realism and socia...

#2081

Olaf Helmer

#9834

Overall Influence

1910 - 2011 (101 years)

Olaf Helmer was a German-American logician and futurologist. He was a researcher at the RAND Corporation from 1946 to 1968 and a co-founder of the Institute for the Future. Born in Berlin, Helmer studied mathematics and logic at the University of Berlin. He earned his doctorate there in 1934, under direction from philosopher Hans Reichenbach. That year he moved to London where he began a second doctorate study, on Russell's paradox, under direction from Susan Stebbing at the University of London. Russell himself was one of Helmer's examiners.

#2082

A. D. Gordon

1856 - 1922 (66 years)

Aaron David Gordon , more commonly known as A. D. Gordon, was a Labour Zionist thinker and the spiritual force behind practical Zionism and Labor Zionism. He founded Hapoel Hatzair, a movement that set the tone for the Zionist movement for many years to come. Influenced by Leo Tolstoy and others, it is said that in effect he made a religion of labor. Gordon moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1904, at age 48, where he was revered by younger Zionist pioneers for leading by example.

#2083

Zhuge Liang

181 - 234 (53 years)

Zhuge Liang , also commonly known by his courtesy name Kongming, was a Chinese statesman, strategist, and engineer who lived through the end of the Eastern Han dynasty and the early to mid-Three Kingdoms period of China. During the Three Kingdoms period, he served as the Imperial Chancellor of the state of Shu Han from its founding in 221 and later as regent from 223 until his death in September or October 234.

#2084

Sissela Bok

#9232

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Sissela Bok is a Swedish-born American philosopher and ethicist, the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners: Gunnar Myrdal who won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek in 1974, and Alva Myrdal who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982. She is considered one of the premier American women moral philosophers of the latter part of the 20th century.

#2085

John F. Kelly

#631

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

John Francis Kelly is an American former political advisor and retired U.S. Marine Corps general who served as White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019. He had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and was commander of United States Southern Command. He is now a board member at Caliburn International.

#2086

Richard Hönigswald

1875 - 1947 (72 years)

Richard Hönigswald was a well-known philosopher belonging to the wider circle of neo-Kantianism. Biography Hönigswald studied medicine and philosophy under Alois Riehl and Alexius von Meinong and from 1916 was professor of philosophy, psychology and pedagogy in Breslau . There he supervised Norbert Elias's doctorate up to its conclusion in 1924. He also influenced Hans-Georg Gadamer towards philosophy after the latter attended a seminar Hönigswald conducted on the philosophy of language. From 1930 he was a professor at Munich. The emphasis of his work lay on the theory of cognition from the point of view of validation and the philosophy of language.

#2087

Jc Beall

#19571

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Jc Beall is an American philosopher, formerly the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. As of late 2020 Beall holds the O’Neill Family Chair of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

#2088

Zofia Zdybicka

#36202

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Zofia Józefa Zdybicka is a nun and philosopher. She has been a professor at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin since 1978. Her order name is Maria Józefa in the Congregation of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus in Poland. She is a specialist in ontology and the philosophy of religion.

#2089

Charles Burney

1726 - 1814 (88 years)

Charles Burney was an English music historian, composer and musician. He was the father of the writers Frances Burney and Sarah Burney, of the explorer James Burney, and of Charles Burney, a classicist and book donor to the British Museum. He was a close friend and supporter of Joseph Haydn.

#2090

Jacob Friedrich von Abel

Jacob Friedrich von Abel

1751 - 1829 (78 years)

Jacob Friedrich von Abel was a German philosopher. His main interest was the human soul and in trying to find a proof for its immortality. Born in Vaihingen an der Enz, von Abel studied philology, philosophy and theology in the lower seminaries in Denkendorf and Maulbronn and in the higher seminary in Tübingen. He graduated in 1770 and was appointed professor of philosophy at the Militär-Pflanzschule at the Solitude Palace which moved later to Stuttgart. While there, he was one of Schiller's teachers and a good friend .

#2091

Nancey Murphy

#10977

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nancey Murphy is an American philosopher and theologian who is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in 1987.

#2092

Gaius the Platonist

75 - Present (1949 years)

Gaius the Platonist was a Middle Platonist philosopher who was active in the early to middle 2nd century AD. Very little is known about him or his philosophical opinions, None of Gaius's work survives, and we have no direct evidence that he ever wrote anything, however, the summaries of his teachings by his students influenced later developments of Neoplatonism. He was the teacher of Albinus, who was the teacher of Galen, and is known to have published a lost nine-volume summary of Gaius' lectures on Plato, which were used by the Neoplatonist philosopher Priscian of Lydia. Porphyry also mentions the works of Gaius were read in the school of Plotinus.

#2093

Sun Yat-sen

1866 - 1925 (59 years)

Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary statesman, physician, and political philosopher who served as the first provisional president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang . He is called the "Father of the Nation" in the present-day Republic of China and the "Forerunner of the Revolution" in the People's Republic of China for his instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the 1911 Revolution. Sun is unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders for being widely revered by both the Communist Party in Mainland China and the Nationalist Party in Taiwan.

#2094

Harold E. Varmus

Harold E. Varmus

#3798

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Harold Eliot Varmus is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.

#2095

Gerhard Krüger

1902 - 1972 (70 years)

Gerhard Krüger was a German philosopher who was very much influenced by the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. He was the son of Joseph May Krüger, an accountant, and Pauline Helene Martha .

#2096

Robin Collins

#12141

Overall Influence

Robin Alan Collins is an American philosopher. He currently serves as the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. His main interests include philosophical issues related to the relationship between religion and science and philosophical theology.

#2097

Hans C. Clevers

#36369

Overall Influence

#2098

George Holland Sabine

1880 - 1961 (81 years)

George Holland Sabine , popularly known as Sabine, was a professor of philosophy, dean of the graduate school and vice president of Cornell University. He is best known for his authoritative work A History of Political Theory, which traces the growth of political thought from the times of Plato to modern fascism and nazism. George Sabine was also a carpenter, a blacksmith, a cook, and a gardener and collected lithographs and etchings. In his review of A History of Political Theory, Leland Jenks noted, "Sabine is the only textbook writer who is abreast of recent Rousseau scholarship, as represe...

#2099

Monimus

400 BC - Present (2424 years)

Monimus of Syracuse, Magna Graecia, was a Cynic philosopher. Biography According to Diogenes Laërtius, Monimus was the slave of a Corinthian money-changer who heard tales about Diogenes of Sinope from Xeniades, Diogenes' master. In order that he might become the pupil of Diogenes, Monimus feigned madness by throwing money around until his master discarded him. Monimus also became acquainted with Crates of Thebes. Menander claimed that Monimus held three beggar's wallets instead of one; this may have been intended to imply that Monimus was three times as much of a Cynic as others, of might ha...

#2100

Joseph Fins

#18641

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Joseph J. Fins, M.D., D. Hum. Litt., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center.

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