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,
#2201
Jeff Malpas
#22358
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Jeff Malpas is an Australian philosopher and emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. Known internationally for his work across the analytic and continental traditions, Malpas is also at the forefront of contemporary philosophical research on the concept of "place" , as first and most comprehensively presented in his Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography—now in its second edition—and further developed in numerous subsequent works.
Go to Profile#2202
Kenneth Einar Himma
#14574
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Kenneth Einar Himma is an American philosopher, author, lawyer, academic and lecturer. Born in Seattle, Himma earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1985, his master's from the University of California in 1987, and his doctorate of law from the University of Washington School of Law in 1990, before receiving his PhD in 2001 from the University of Washington for his thesis, "The Status of Legal Principles".
Go to Profile#2203
Elijah Millgram
#22906
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Elijah "Lije" Millgram is an American philosopher. He is E. E. Ericksen Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. His research specialties include practical reason and moral philosophy. Elijah Millgram received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991. He taught at Princeton University and Vanderbilt University before moving to Utah. He is a former fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.
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Agustín Rayo
#22155
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Agustín Rayo is a Mexican philosopher of logic, metaphysics, and language. He is the dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and a professor of philosophy. Rayo's number is named after him, as he is the creator of it.
Go to Profile#2205
Sara Ruddick
#16506
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Sara Ruddick was a feminist philosopher and the author of Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Education and career Ruddick earned a B.A. at Vassar College in 1957 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964. She taught philosophy and women's studies at the New School of Social Research for forty years. She was awarded the Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the Year Award by the Society for Women in Philosophy in 2002. A panel celebrating her work was held at the American Philosophical Association meeting in San Diego in 2012. She participated in the oral history project, Femini...
Go to Profile#2206
Eugenio Trías Sagnier
#22011
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Eugenio Trías Sagnier was a Spanish philosopher. Critics have likened his work to Ortega y Gasset in the philosophical literature written in Spanish. Biography Trías was born in Barcelona. After obtaining his bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Barcelona in 1964, he continued his studies in Pamplona, Madrid, Bonn and Cologne. Since 1965 he was assistant professor and, later, associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona . In 1976 he became assistant professor of aesthetics and composition at the School of Architecture of Barcelona.
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Luis Villoro
#12360
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Luis Villoro Toranzo was a Spanish–Mexican philosopher, researcher, university professor, diplomat, academic and writer. He published more than ten books between 1950 and 2007. Villoro was born in Barcelona on 3 November 1922 to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother. Between 1983 and 1987, he was a delegate for Mexico in UNESCO. He was named an honorary member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua in 2007.
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Rüdiger Safranski
#12373
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author. Life From 1965 to 1972, Safranski studied philosophy , German literature, history and history of art at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and as well at the Free University in Berlin . There, he worked as an assistant lecturer for German literature from 1972 to 1977. He earned a PhD from FU Berlin in 1976 for a dissertation by the title of "Studies on the Development of Working-Class Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany" . In the late 1970s, he worked as the co-publisher and editor of the Berliner Hefte, a journal on literary life.
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Adam Karl August von Eschenmayer
1768 - 1852 (84 years)
Adam Karl August von Eschenmayer was a German philosopher and physician. Life He was born at Neuenbürg in Württemberg in 1768. After receiving his early education at the Caroline academy of Stuttgart, he entered the University of Tübingen, where he was given the degree of doctor of medicine. He practised for some time as a physician at Sulz, and then at Kirchheim, and in 1811 he was chosen extraordinary professor of philosophy and medicine at Tübingen. In 1818 he became ordinary professor of practical philosophy, but in 1836 he resigned and took up his residence at Kirchheim, where he devoted...
Go to Profile#2210
Martha Kneale
#28681
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Martha Kneale was a British philosopher. Education and career Martha Hurst was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. She obtained her B.A. degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1933. Martha was a tutor and Fellow in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1936 to 1966.
Go to Profile#2211
Ruhollah Khomeini
1900 - 1989 (89 years)
Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.
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Bruno Leoni
1913 - 1967 (54 years)
Bruno Leoni was an Italian classical-liberal political philosopher and lawyer. Whilst the war kept Leoni away from teaching, in 1945 he became Full professor of Philosophy of Law. Leoni was also appointed Dean of the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pavia from 1948 to 1960.
Go to Profile#2213
Giacomo Marramao
#16264
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Giacomo Marramao is an Italian philosopher who teaches theoretical philosophy and political philosophy at the Roma Tre University in Rome. Education Marramao studied at the University of Florence where he graduated in philosophy under Eugenio Garin's guidance in 1969, and he was Fellow Scholar on behalf of the Italian CNR and the Humboldt Foundation at the Goethe University Frankfurt .
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Vasily Nalimov
#12162
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Vasiliy Vasilievich Nalimov was a Russian philosopher and humanist and wrote on Transpersonal Psychology. His main areas of research were the philosophy of probability and its biological, mathematical, and linguistic manifestations. He also studied the roles of gnosticism and mysticism in science. Thompson summarizes Nalimov as: "...philosopher, educator, devoted husband, mathematician, dissident, writer, and visionary".
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André Derain
1880 - 1954 (74 years)
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. Biography Early years Derain was born in 1880 in Chatou, Yvelines, Île-de-France, just outside Paris. In 1895 he began to study on his own, contrary to claims that meeting Vlaminck or Matisse began his efforts to paint, and occasionally went to the countryside with an old friend of Cézanne's, Father Jacomin along with his two sons. In 1898, while studying to be an engineer at the Académie Camillo, he attended painting classes under Eugène Carrière, and there met Matisse. In 1900, he met and shar...
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William C. Wimsatt
#7635
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
William C. Wimsatt is professor emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science , and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. He is currently a Winton Professor of the Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota and Residential Fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. He specializes in the philosophy of biology, where his areas of interest include reductionism, heuristics, emergence, scientific modeling, heredity, and cultural evolution.
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Yeshayahu Leibowitz
#4667
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy. He was known for his outspoken views on ethics, religion, and politics. Leibowitz cautioned that the state of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and controversially went on to describe Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehuma...
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Russell Blackford
#12350
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Russell Blackford is an Australian writer, philosopher, and literary critic. Early life and education Blackford was born in Sydney, and grew up in the city of Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, New South Wales. After graduating with first-class honours degrees in both arts and law from the University of Newcastle and University of Melbourne respectively, Blackford was awarded a PhD in English literature, also from Newcastle, on the return to myth in modern fictional narrative . He completed a Master of Bioethics at Monash University and was awarded a second PhD, in philosophy , for a thesis entitled "The philosophy of human enhancement".
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Charles Lalo
1877 - 1953 (76 years)
Charles Lalo was a French writer on aesthetics. Education and career Lalo studied philosophy at the University of Paris, gaining a doctorate in 1908. After being a schoolmaster, he succeeded Victor Basch in the chair of aesthetics at the Sorbonne, which he held from 1933 until his death.
Go to Profile#2220
Sven Ove Hansson
#14442
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Sven Ove Hansson is a Swedish philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy and History of Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He is an author and scientific skeptic, with a special interest in environmental risk assessment, as well as in decision theory and belief revision.
Go to Profile#2221
Henri Michaux
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Henri Michaux was a Belgian-born French poet, writer and painter. Michaux is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art: the Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York had major shows of his work in 1978 . His texts chronicling his psychedelic experiments with LSD and mescaline, which include Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones, are well known. So are his idiosyncratic travelogues and books of art criticism. Michaux is also known for his stories about Plume – "a peaceful man" – perhaps the most unenterprising hero in the history of literature, and his many misfortunes.
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John Harris
#16819
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John Morley Harris, FMedSci, FRSA, FRSB , is a British bioethicist and philosopher. He is the Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.
Go to Profile#2223
Giovanni Vailati
1863 - 1909 (46 years)
Giovanni Vailati was an Italian proto-analytic philosopher, historian of science, and mathematician. Life Vailati was born in Crema, Lombardy, and studied engineering at the University of Turin. He went on to lecture in the history of mechanics there from 1896 to 1899, after working as assistant to Giuseppe Peano and Vito Volterra. He resigned his university post in 1899 so that he could pursue his independent studies, making a living from high-school mathematics teaching. During his lifetime he became internationally known, his writings having been translated into English, French, and Polish, though he was largely forgotten after his death in Rome.
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Jürgen Mittelstraß
#11678
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Jürgen Mittelstraß is a German philosopher especially interested in the philosophy of science. Career Mittelstraß studied philosophy, history and protestant theology at the universities of Bonn, Erlangen, Hamburg and Oxford from 1956 until 1961. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen in 1961, where he afterwards wrote his habilitation, completing in 1968. He was influenced by the Erlanger Konstruktivismus.
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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
1881 - 1938 (57 years)
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until 1934 , was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism. Due to his military and political accomplishments, Atatürk is regarded as one of the most importa...
Go to Profile#2226
Joseph D. Sneed
#20667
Overall Influence
1938 - 2020 (82 years)
Joseph D. Sneed was an American physicist, and philosopher at the Colorado School of Mines. Early life He was born in Durant, OK. His father, Dabney W. Sneed, was a civil servant with the Postal Service and later an architect for the Federal Housing Administration. His mother, Sallabelle Atkison Sneed, was a homemaker and elementary school teacher.
Go to Profile#2227
Angie Hobbs
#23975
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Angela Hunter "Angie" Hobbs is a British philosopher and academic, who specialises in Ancient Greek philosophy and ethics. She is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.
Go to Profile#2228
Antoine Béchamp
1816 - 1908 (92 years)
Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp was a French scientist now best known for breakthroughs in applied organic chemistry and for a bitter rivalry with Louis Pasteur. Béchamp developed the Béchamp reduction, an inexpensive method to produce aniline dye, permitting William Henry Perkin to launch the synthetic-dye industry. Béchamp also synthesized the first organic arsenical drug, arsanilic acid, from which Paul Ehrlich later synthesized salvarsan, the first chemotherapeutic drug.
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Ernest Lepore
#23392
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Ernest or Ernie Lepore is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist and a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. Education and career Lepore earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1978, and began teaching at the University of Notre Dame before joining the philosophy department at Rutgers University in 1981, where he has taught ever since.
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Baruch Samuel Blumberg
#5041
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Baruch Samuel Blumberg , known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine , for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH and at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.
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Salomo Friedlaender
1871 - 1946 (75 years)
Salomo Friedlaender was a German-Jewish philosopher, poet, satirist and author of grotesque and fantastic literature. He published his literary work under the pseudonym Mynona, which is the German word for "anonymous" spelled backward. He is known for his philosophical ideas on dualism drawing on Immanuel Kant, and his avant garde poetry and fiction. Almost none of his work has been translated into English.
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John Woods
#17614
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
John Hayden Woods is a Canadian logician and philosopher. He currently holds the position of Director of the Abductive Systems Group at the University of British Columbia and is The UBC Honorary Professor of Logic. He is also affiliated with the Group on Logic, Information and Computation within the Department of Informatics at King's College London where he has held the Charles S. Peirce Visiting Professorship of Logic position since 2001.
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Yamaga Sokō
1622 - 1685 (63 years)
Yamaga Sokō was a Japanese military writer and philosopher under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period in Japan. As a scholar he applied the Confucian idea of the "superior man" to the samurai class of Japan. This became an important part of the samurai way of life and code of conduct.
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Loyal Rue
#25311
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Loyal D. Rue is an American philosopher of religion. He is a professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at Luther College of Decorah, Iowa. He focuses on naturalistic theories of religion and has been awarded two John Templeton Foundation fellowships. He has been for many years a member and lecturer at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science .
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W. H. Walsh
1913 - 1986 (73 years)
William Henry Walsh was a 20th-century British philosopher and classicist. He was an expert on Immanuel Kant. Life Walsh was born in Leeds on 10 December 1913, the son of Fred Walsh and his wife May Stephens. His father was a Baptist and his mother a Catholic, but he was raised with no religion in his life. He was one of three children, with two sisters Mary and Muriel. The family moved to Baildon near Bradford in his infancy. Walsh was educated at Bradford and Leeds Grammar School on a scholarship.
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John Kekes
#16691
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
John Kekes is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Education Kekes received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Australian National University. Work Kekes is the author of a number of books on ethics, including The Examined Life , The Morality of Pluralism , Moral Wisdom and Good Lives , The Art of Life , The Roots of Evil , Enjoyment , and The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work .
Go to Profile#2237
Lopamudra
#3702
Overall Influence
Lopamudra, also known as Kaveri, Kaushitaki and Varaprada, was a philosopher according to ancient Vedic Indian literature. She was the wife of the sage Agastya who is believed to have lived in the Rigveda period as many hymns have been attributed as her contribution to this Veda. She was not only the consort of Agastya but a Rishiki in her own right, as she was the well known Rishiki who visualized the "Hadi Panchadasi" mantra of the Srikul Shakta tradition of Hinduism. She was one of the prominent Brahmavadinis.
Go to Profile#2238
Don Marquis
#25179
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
Don Marquis was an American philosopher and deontologist whose main academic interests were in ethics and medical ethics. Marquis was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas until his death.
Go to Profile#2239
Wendell Phillips
1811 - 1884 (73 years)
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney. According to George Lewis Ruffin, a Black attorney, Phillips was seen by many Blacks as "the one white American wholly color-blind and free from race prejudice". According to another Black attorney, Archibald Grimké, as an abolitionist leader he is ahead of William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner. From 1850 to 1865 he was the "preeminent figure" in American abolitionism.
Go to Profile#2240
Rae Langton
#20407
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Rae Helen Langton, FBA is an Australian-British professor of philosophy. She is currently the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on Immanuel Kant's philosophy, moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, and feminist philosophy. She is also well known for her work on pornography and objectification.
Go to Profile#2241
Alexandre Matheron
#21793
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Alexandre Matheron was a French philosopher specializing in Baruch Spinoza and modern politics. His 1969 work Individu et communauté chez Spinoza is "widely regarded as one of the landmarks of Spinoza scholarship."
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Charles Butterworth
#15931
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Charles E. Butterworth is a philosopher of the Straussian school and currently an emeritus professor of political philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Butterworth is also a translator and editor of numerous books about the philosophers Rousseau, Alfarabi, and Averroes.
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Xavier Tilliette
#18083
Overall Influence
1921 - 2018 (97 years)
Xavier Tilliette was a French philosopher, historian of philosophy, and theologian. A former student of Jean Wahl and of Vladimir Jankélévitch, he was a member of the Society of Jesus and professor emeritus at the Catholic Institute of Paris , having taught also at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome , the Lateran University, and the Centre Sèvres in Paris.
Go to Profile#2244
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1709 - 1751 (42 years)
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his 1747 work L'homme machine . La Mettrie is most remembered for taking the position that humans are complex animals and no more have souls than other animals do. He considered that the mind is part of the body and that life should be lived so as to produce pleasure . His views were so controversial that he had to flee France and settle in Berlin.
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Paul Janet
1823 - 1899 (76 years)
Paul Alexandre René Janet was a French philosopher and writer. Biography Born in Paris, he became professor of moral philosophy at Bourges and Strasbourg , and of logic at the lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris . In 1864 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the Sorbonne, and elected a member of the academy of moral and political sciences.
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George Trumbull Ladd
1842 - 1921 (79 years)
George Trumbull Ladd was an American philosopher, educator and psychologist. Biography Early life and ancestors Ladd was born in Painesville, Ohio, on January 19, 1842, the son of Silas Trumbull Ladd and Elizabeth Williams.
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Theodore Brameld
1904 - 1987 (83 years)
Theodore Brameld was a philosopher and educator who supported the educational philosophy of social reconstructionism. His philosophy originated in 1928 when he enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago in the field of philosophy where he trained under the progressive philosopher and politician, T.V. Smith. After becoming intrigued by John Dewey’s philosophy of education, Brameld developed his own theory of schools being the ultimate source to bring about political and social change.
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Francesco Algarotti
1712 - 1764 (52 years)
Count Francesco Algarotti was an Italian polymath, philosopher, poet, essayist, anglophile, art critic and art collector. He was a man of broad knowledge, an expert in Newtonianism, architecture and opera. He was a friend of Frederick the Great and leading authors of his times: Voltaire, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis and the atheist Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Lord Chesterfield, Thomas Gray, George Lyttelton, Thomas Hollis, Metastasio, Benedict XIV and Heinrich von Brühl were among his correspondents.
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Debra Satz
#21409
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Debra Satz is an American philosopher and the Vernon R. & Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. She is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, Professor of Philosophy and, by courtesy, Political Science. She teaches courses in ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of social science.
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Donald Richie
#3508
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Donald Richie was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was seventeen.
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