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).

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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#2201

Kari Hemminki

#67807

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

#2202

John A. Robertson

#46317

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

John A. Robertson held the Vinson and Elkins Chair at The University of Texas School of Law. He wrote and lectured widely on law and bioethical issues. Robertson was the author of two books on bioethics, The Rights of the Critically Ill, published in 1983, and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies, published in 1994, and numerous articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation.

#2203

Richard Alan Cross

#46446

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Richard Alan Cross is Rev. John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy and former Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. Educated at Solihull School, Cross was formerly Professor of Medieval Theology at the University of Oxford and Tutor in Theology at Oriel College, Oxford, and holds a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree. His research interests lie in medieval theology and philosophy, especially Duns Scotus; Christology and the philosophy of religion.

#2204

Sandra Mitchell

#35618

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Sandra D. Mitchell is an American philosopher of science and historian of ideas. She holds the position of distinguished professor in the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the top rated school in the world for the subject according to the 2011 Philosophical Gourmet Report. Her research focuses on the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of social science, and connections between the two.

#2205

Lionel Blue

#28750

Overall Influence

1930 - 2016 (86 years)

Lionel Blue was a British Reform rabbi, journalist and broadcaster, described by The Guardian as "one of the most respected religious figures in the UK". He was best known for his longstanding work with the media, most notably his wry and gentle sense of humour on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He was the first British rabbi publicly to declare his homosexuality.

#2206

Henry T. Lynch

#6386

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Henry Thompson Lynch was an American physician noted for his discovery of familial susceptibility to certain kinds of cancer and his research into genetic links to cancer. He is sometimes described as "the father of hereditary cancer detection and prevention" or the "father of cancer genetics", although Lynch himself said that title should go to the early 20th century pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin.

#2207

Kristine Yaffe

#47371

Overall Influence

Kristine Yaffe is an American Cognitive decline and dementia researcher. She is the Scola Endowed Chair and Vice Chair and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Epidemiology and the Director of the Center for Population Brain Health at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2019, Yaffe was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

#2208

Wesley Wildman

#22523

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Wesley J. Wildman is a contemporary Australian-American philosopher, theologian, and ethicist. Currently, he is a full professor at the Boston University School of Theology, founding member of the faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, and convener of the Religion and Science doctoral program in Boston University's Graduate School. He is executive director of The Center for Mind and Culture, founding co-director of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, and founding co-editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior . Wildman's academic work has focused on interpreting religio...

#2209

Mihály András Vajda

Mihály András Vajda

#52075

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Mihály András Vajda was a Hungarian leftist intellectual who took part in the debates surrounding the development of national socialism, Marxism–Leninism, and the state of capitalism in the latter half of the 20th century. Involved in politics in his home country of Hungary, Vajda was expelled along with several other scholars from the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party in 1973 due to allegedly representing views that were "opposed to Marxism–Leninism and to the policy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party."

#2210

David Basinger

#44773

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

David Basinger is professor of philosophy at Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester, New York. He is also the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Chief Academic Officer at Roberts Wesleyan College. Basinger graduated from Grace College, Bellevue College, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with an MA and PhD. He is a proponent of open theism.

#2211

Maxine Greene

#14244

Overall Influence

1917 - 2014 (97 years)

Sarah Maxine Greene was an American educational philosopher, author, social activist, and teacher. Described upon her death as "perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, Columbia University", she was a pioneer for women in the field of philosophy of education, often being the sole woman presenter at educational philosophy conferences as well as being the first woman president of the Philosophy of Education Society in 1967. Additionally, she was the first woman to preside over the American Educational Research Association in 1981.

#2212

Carrie Figdor

#50123

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Carrie Figdor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and ethics. Before pursuing a career in philosophy, Figdor was a journalist with the Associated Press for eleven years.

#2213

Hywel Lewis

#41663

Overall Influence

1910 - 1992 (82 years)

Hywel David Lewis was a Welsh theologian and philosopher. He was best known for his defence of dualism and personal survival. Life Lewis was born in Llandudno, Wales, and educated at Caernarfon grammar school, the University College of North Wales, Bangor , and Jesus College, Oxford .

#2214

Kenneth M. Sayre

#22810

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Kenneth M. Sayre was an American philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Notre Dame . His early career was devoted mainly to philosophic applications of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and information theory. Later on his main interests shifted to Plato, philosophy of mind, and environmental philosophy. His retirement in 2014 was marked by publication of a history of ND's Philosophy Department, Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame.

#2215

Karsten Harries

#50933

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Karsten Harries is a German philosopher and Emeritus Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, where he taught from 1965 until his retirement. Harries is known for his expertise on Heidegger, early modern philosophy, and the philosophy of art and architecture.

#2216

Josiah Thompson

#14313

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Josiah "Tink" Thompson is an American writer, retired professional private investigator, and former philosophy professor. In 1967, he published both The Lonely Labyrinth, a study of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works, and Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. The culmination of his half-century-long Kennedy assassination project, updating his own and others’ investigative work, correcting certain errors, and reconciling the whole body of valid forensic and eyewitness evidence, was published in early 2021 as Last Second in Dallas.

#2217

John S. Meyer

#38496

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

John Stirling Meyer, M.D. was an American doctor, known internationally for his work in neurology. He served in the United States Navy at the Naval Hospital Yokosuka Japan, where he conducted research on head injuries on veterans of World War II and the Korean War. In 1954, he became an instructor at Harvard University, and in 1957, he became the founding professor and Chairman of Neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine. In 1969, he went to Baylor College of Medicine to serve as the Director of the Neurological Institute. He later became the Chairman of Neurology.

#2218

Rikki Ducornet

#19252

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Rikki Ducornet is an American writer, poet, and artist. Her work has been described as “linguistically explosive and socially relevant,” and praised for “deploy[ing] tactics familiar to the historical avant-garde, including an emphasis on gnosticism, cosmology, diablerie, bestiary, eroticism, and revolution, to produce an astounding body of work, cogent and ethical in its beauty and spirit.”

#2219

Pinchas Polonsky

Pinchas Polonsky

#29642

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Pinchas Polonsky is a rabbi, Russian-Israeli Jewish-religious philosopher, researcher, and educator active among the Russian-speaking Jewish community. He has written original books and a number of translations of works on Judaism.

#2220

Jeremy Howick

#12813

Overall Influence

Jeremy Howick is a Canadian-born, British residing clinical epidemiologist and philosopher of science. He researches evidence-based medicine, clinical empathy and the philosophy of medicine, including the use of placebos in clinical practice and clinical trials. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers, as well as two books, The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine in 2011, and Doctor You in 2017. In 2016, he received the Dawkins & Strutt grant from the British Medical Association to study pain treatment. He publishes in Philosophy of Medicine and medical journals. He is a member of ...

#2221

Ferid Murad

#1441

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ferid Murad was an American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Early life Ferid Murad was born in Whiting, Indiana, on September 14, 1936. His parents were Henrietta Josephine Bowman of Alton, Illinois, and Xhabir Murat Ejupi, an Albanian immigrant from Gostivar in present-day North Macedonia. who subsequently changed his name to John Murad after being processed at Ellis Island in 1913. His mother was from a Baptist family and ran away from home in 1935, aged 17, to marry his father, who was 39 and Muslim. Murad is the oldest of three boys.

#2222

Hans Achterhuis

Hans Achterhuis

#51696

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Herman Johan "Hans" Achterhuis is Professor Emeritus in Systematic Philosophy at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. For now his research concerns particularly social and political philosophy and philosophy of technology.

#2223

Clement Finch

#61060

Overall Influence

1915 - 2010 (95 years)

Clement Alfred Finch , often deemed "The Iron Man", was an American physician specializing in hematology whose research on iron metabolism in the bloodstream at the University of Washington led to significant advancements in accurately diagnosing and treating anemia during a time period in which little was known about this aspect of the body. Finch was distinctively noted for using himself as a test subject by taking blood and bone marrow from his own bones before conducting similar tests on patients. He graduated in 1941 from the University of Rochester Medical School and a year later was married to the first of three wives.

#2224

Peter Koslowski

#29727

Overall Influence

1952 - 2012 (60 years)

Peter Koslowski was a professor of philosophy, especially philosophy of management and organisation and history of modern philosophy, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam . Biography He was born in Göttingen, Germany, in 1952, and studied at University of Tübingen, University of Munich, and Virginia Tech. He earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1979 and his master's degree in economics 1980 .1985-87 Professor and director, Institute for the Studium fundamentale, Witten/Herdecke University. Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Political Economy 1987-20041987-2001 Founding director, Forschungs...

#2225

Ruth Hagengruber

Ruth Hagengruber

#46613

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Ruth Hagengruber is a German philosopher, currently professor and head of philosophy at the University of Paderborn. She specialises in the history of women philosophers as well as philosophy of economics and computer science and is a specialist on Émilie Du Châtelet. Hagengruber is the director of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists and founder of the research area EcoTechGender. She invented the Libori Summer School and is the creator of the Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers, for which she holds the position of editor in chief together with Ma...

#2226

Valerie Tiberius

#51577

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Valerie Tiberius is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, an institution she has been affiliated with since 1998. She has published numerous reviewed papers, as well as five books - Deliberation about the Good: Justifying What We Value; The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits; Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction; Well-Being as Value Fulfillment: How We Can Help Each Other to Live Well; and What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters. Much of her work has taken a practical, empirical approach to philosophical questions,...

#2227

Nelson Goodman

#68298

Overall Influence

#2228

H. J. Blackham

#19936

Overall Influence

1903 - 2009 (106 years)

Harold John Blackham was a leading British humanist philosopher, writer and educationalist. He has been described as the "progenitor of modern humanism in Britain". Biography Blackham was born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, on 31 March 1903, to Harriet Mary and Walter Roland Blackham . His siblings were Olive Dingle Blackham , Lorna Langstone Blackham , Sylvia Kerslake Blackham , and Joyce Maude Blackham . Blackham left school following the end of World War I, and became a farm labourer, before gaining a place at Birmingham University to study divinity and history. He acquired a teaching d...

#2229

James Garson

#50156

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

James Garson is an American philosopher and logician. He has made significant contributions in the study of modal logic and formal semantics. He is author of Modal Logic for Philosophers and What Logics Mean by Cambridge University Press. Garson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Illinois at Chicago , and Rice University.

#2230

Tasuku Honjo

#2568

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 . He is also known for his molecular identification of cytokines: IL-4 and IL-5, as well as the discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation.

#2231

Christine Foyer

#33966

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Christine Helen Foyer is professor of plant science at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. She is President Elect of the Association of Applied Biologists, the General Secretary of the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biologists, an elected Board Member of the American Society of Plant Biologists and a Member of the French Academy of Agriculture. She has published and co-authored many papers on related subjects.

#2232

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya

#41743

Overall Influence

1918 - 1993 (75 years)

Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya was an Indian Marxist philosopher. He made contributions to the exploration of the materialist current in ancient Indian philosophy. He is known for Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism, which is his exposition of the philosophy of Lokayata. He is also known for work on history of science and scientific method in ancient India, especially his 1977 book Science and Society in Ancient India on the ancient physicians Charaka and Sushruta. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honour, posthumously, in 1998.

#2233

John Hardwig

#56936

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

John Hardwig is a retired philosopher who was head of the philosophy department at the University of Tennessee. He has published widely on bioethics, end of life issues and the notion of epistemic dependency and the role of experts. He is best known for a 1997 article proposing that individuals have a duty to die in situations when those who love them would have their lives seriously compromised by continuing to take care of them.

#2234

Arda Denkel

#58574

Overall Influence

1949 - 2000 (51 years)

Arda Denkel was a Turkish philosopher. He studied at the University of Oxford and, under Peter Strawson, wrote his D.Phil. dissertation which he later developed into a more expansive study with his book The Natural Background of Meaning in 1999.

#2235

Marc Allan Pfeffer

#68526

Overall Influence

#2236

Shimon Sakaguchi

Shimon Sakaguchi

#13922

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Shimon Sakaguchi is an immunologist and a Distinguished Professor of Osaka University. He is best known for the discovery of regulatory T cells and to describe their role in the immune system. This discovery is used in the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.

#2237

David Estlund

#28980

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

David Estlund is the Lombardo Family Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, where he has taught since 1991. He works primarily in political philosophy. Education and career Estlund earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and taught briefly at the University of California, Irvine, before moving to Brown. He has spent fellowship years at the Program in Ethics at Harvard University and at Australian National University. His research interests center on liberalism, justice, and especially democracy. He sits on the editorial board of the academic journal Representation.

#2238

James Garvey

#53513

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

James Garvey is an American philosopher based in Britain. Career He is Managing Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, an educational charity supporting philosophy inside and outside the academy. He is editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine, a quarterly which aims to publish readable, accessible philosophy. With Jeremy Stangroom, he edits Think Now, a series of books on social and political philosophy. He is a regular and controversial contributor to The Guardian, commenting on morality and climate change, arguing that the developed nations have a moral obligation to take action. He ha...

#2239

James R. Lupski

#28438

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

James R. Lupski is the Cullen Endowed Chair in Molecular Genetics and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. Lupski obtained his BA degree from New York University in 1979 and his PhD and MD degrees in 1984 and 1985, respectively, from the same institution. He later moved for his Residency in Pediatrics to Baylor College of Medicine, where he has stayed since. Lupski is affected by a genetic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth and has studied the condition as part of his research. He has contributed to the discovery and definition of genomic disorders and se...

#2240

Lawrence M. Lichtenstein

#68636

Overall Influence

#2241

Joseph Tanke

#49699

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Joseph Tanke is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His work focuses on Continental philosophy, the history of philosophy, aesthetics, art theory, and historical ontology. Tanke is known for his analysis of major figures in the French philosophical tradition, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière. His book Foucault's Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Modernity is one of the first systematic presentations of Michel Foucault's writings on visual art. Tanke is the first scholar to publish a comprehensive critical introduction to the th...

#2242

Sophie Oluwole

#22518

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Sophie Bosede Oluwole was a Nigerian professor and philosopher, and was the first doctorate degree holder in philosophy in Nigeria. She was a practitioner of Yoruba philosophy, a way of thinking which stems from the ethnic group based in Nigeria. She was vocal about the role of women in philosophy, and the underrepresentation of African thinkers in education.

#2243

Sergei N. Artemov

#43041

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Sergei Nikolaevich Artemov is a Russian-American researcher in logic and its applications. He currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he is the founder and head of its research laboratory for logic and computation. His research interests include proof theory and logic in computer science, optimal control and hybrid systems, automated deduction and verification, epistemology, and epistemic game theory. He is best known for his invention of logics of proofs and justifications.

#2244

Louis Dupré

#28201

Overall Influence

1925 - 2022 (97 years)

Louis Dupré was a Belgian-American philosopher, professor at Yale University. Life and work Dupré was born in Veerle/Laakdal, Belgium, studied at the University of Louvain where he graduated in 1956. His doctoral dissertation on The Starting Point of Marxist Philosophy received the University’s biennial J.M. Huyghe prize in social studies. Receiving a study grant from the Danish Government he went to Kopenhagen to do research on Kierkegaard. In 1958 he emigrated to the USA and taught modern philosophy at Georgetown University until 1973 when he was appointed T. Lawrason Riggs professor in th...

#2245

Mark Lance

#62891

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Mark Norris Lance is a professor in the Philosophy Department and Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University. Life Lance earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh under the direction of Robert Brandom and Nuel Belnap. His main areas of expertise are philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophical logic, and metaphysics. He also writes and speaks extensively on anarchist theory. Lance is a critic of anarcho-primitivism and its rejection of language.

#2246

Yossi Dahan

#21342

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Yossi Dahan is a law professor and the Head of the Human Rights Division at the College of Law and Business. He is the chairperson and cofounder of Adva Center, an editor and cofounder of Haokets.org, and teaches philosophy at the Open University. Dahan is an expert in labor law, workers' rights and global justice, theories of social justice, the right to education and educational justice.

#2247

Arnold Berleant

Arnold Berleant

#55747

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Arnold Jerome Berleant is an American scholar and author who is active in both philosophy and music. Arnold Berleant was born in Buffalo, New York. He received his advanced musical education at the Eastman School of Music and his doctorate in philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is Professor of Philosophy at Long Island University, former Secretary-General and Past President of the International Association of Aesthetics, and former Secretary-Treasurer of the American Society for Aesthetics. His books and articles in philosophy focus on aesthetics, environmental aesthetics, and ethics.

#2248

John Hyman

#54024

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

John Hyman is a British philosopher. He was Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Oxford before being appointed as Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London in September 2018.

#2249

Gilles Châtelet

#14456

Overall Influence

1944 - 1999 (55 years)

Gilles Châtelet was a French philosopher and mathematician. Biography Châtelet began studying at the École Normale Supérieure Fontenay-Saint-Cloud-Lyon in 1963. During the student upheavals of the late 1960s and the following years, he was a member of the Communist Party and associated with the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire . He became a gay activist due to his time in California in 1969, but went to the FHAR as a "way of finding again the ambiance of the United States." He later studied at University of Paris XI where he obtained his PhD in pure mathematics on 20 December 1975 a...

#2250

Ana de Miguel

#45139

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Ana de Miguel Álvarez is a Spanish philosopher and feminist. Since 2005 she has been a titular professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at King Juan Carlos University of Madrid. She directs the course History of Feminist Theory at the Complutense University of Madrid's .

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