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,
#2251
Erich Frauwallner
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Erich Frauwallner was an Austrian professor, a pioneer in the field of Buddhist studies. Career and life Frauwallner studied classical philology and Sanskrit philology in Vienna. He taught Indology from 1928-29 at the University of Vienna. His primary interest was Buddhist logic and epistemology, and later Indian Brahmanic philosophy, with close attention to primary source texts.
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Joachim Jungius
1587 - 1657 (70 years)
Joachim Jungius was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher of science. Life Jungius was a native of Lübeck. He studied metaphysics at the Universities of Rostock and Giessen, where in 1608 he earned his degree.
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Jean Anouilh
1910 - 1987 (77 years)
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromi...
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Lucien Goldmann
1913 - 1970 (57 years)
Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist. His wife was sociologist Annie Goldmann. Biography Goldmann was born in Bucharest, Romania, but grew up in Botoşani. He studied law at the University of Bucharest and the University of Vienna under the Austromarxist jurist Max Adler. In 1934, he went to the University of Paris to study political economy, literature, and philosophy. He moved to Switzerland in November 1942, where he was placed in a refugee camp until 1943.
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Béatrice Longuenesse
#26874
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Béatrice Longuenesse is a French philosopher and academic, who is the Silver Professor of Philosophy Emerita at New York University. Her work focuses on Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the philosophy of mind. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Longuenesse is one of the most prominent living Kant scholars, and her works have generated significant discussion around parts of Kant's corpus that were previously largely overlooked.
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Gianni Vattimo
#23051
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Gianteresio Vattimo was an Italian philosopher and politician. Biography Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and graduated with a laurea in 1959. In 1963 he moved to Heidelberg and studied with Karl Löwith, Habermas and Hans-Georg Gadamer with a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Then, Vattimo returned to Turin where he became assistant professor in 1964, and later full professor of Aesthetics in 1969. While remaining at Turin, becoming Professor of Theoretical Philosoph...
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David Petraeus
#313
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
David Howell Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until his resignation on November 9, 2012. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus served 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan from July 4, 2010, to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th commander, U.S. Central Command from October 13, ...
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David Gordon
#13949
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David Gordon is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is editor of The Mises Review.
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Eli Eduardo de Gortari
#25860
Overall Influence
1918 - 1991 (73 years)
Eli Eduardo de Gortari de Gortari was a logician, philosopher of science and engineer. Biography Elí de Gortari was a student of the Engineering School of the National Autonomous University of Mexico , matriculating in 1938. His goal was to become an engineer, which he achieved in two years. His commitment to public welfare led him to enroll in sanitation engineering, but he continued his studies of mathematics and philosophy. Eventually, in 1948, he would become a professor of philosophy of science. In 1949 he obtained a master's degree in philosophy and published a thesis "The Science of Lo...
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Jean-Louis Vincent
#36172
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Baron Jean-Louis Vincent is a Belgian physician and Professor of intensive care medicine at the Université libre de Bruxelles and intensivist in the Department of Intensive Care at Erasme University Hospital in Brussels.
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William Ernest Hocking
1873 - 1966 (93 years)
William Ernest Hocking was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce in revising idealism to integrate and fit into empiricism, naturalism and pragmatism. He said that metaphysics has to make inductions from experience: "That which does not work is not true." His major field of study was the philosophy of religion, but his 22 books included discussions of philosophy and human rights, world politics, freedom of the press, the philosophical psychology of human nature; education; and more. In 1958 he served as president of the Metaphysical Society of America.
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Dariush Shayegan
#8517
Overall Influence
1935 - 2018 (83 years)
Dariush Shayegan was one of the most consequential thinkers of contemporary Iran and the Near East. Life and career He was born in Tabriz from an Shia Iranian Azeri father and a Georgian Sunni mother; his mother descended from an aristocratic family from Georgia. Shayegan studied at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at the Tehran University. Besides Persian, Shayegan wrote in French and English, and spoke fluently Georgian, Russian, and Turkish .. Having spent his teens at boarding school in Great Britain, Shayegan subsequently lived, during...
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Gernot Böhme
#24107
Overall Influence
1937 - 2022 (85 years)
Gernot Böhme was a German philosopher and author, contributing to the philosophy of science, theory of time, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. He is the main pioneer of German ecocriticism, the study of the relationship between culture and the environment. He has been the director of the Institute for Practical Philosophy in Darmstadt, Hesse, since 2005. Despite being one of Germany's most acclaimed public intellectuals, very little of his work has so far been translated into English.
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Taha Abdurrahman
#26002
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Taha Abderrahmane, is a Moroccan philosopher, and one of the leading philosophers and thinkers in the Arab and Islamic worlds. His work centers on logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of morality and contractarian ethics. He believes in multiple modernities and seeks to establish an ethical and humanitarian modernity based on the values and principles of Islam and the Arab tradition.
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Shmuley Boteach
#2770
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Jacob Shmuel Boteach , commonly known as Shmuley Boteach , is an American rabbi, author, and television host. He is the author of 31 books, including the best-seller Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy and Kosher Jesus . For two seasons, he hosted the prime-time reality television series Shalom in the Home, which was one of the highest-rated shows on TLC. His outspokenness has earned him both praise and criticism; he has been described as one of the most influential Jews in the United States and the world.
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Ganganath Jha
1872 - 1941 (69 years)
Mahamahopadhyaya Sir Gaṅgānāth Jhā was a scholar of Sanskrit, Indian philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. He is considered to have probably translated the most Sanskrit philosophical texts than any other scholar and notable examples of texts he has translated include the Slokavartika , the Tantravarttika and the Sabara-Bhashya . As per the Dutch orientalist, Jan Willem de Jong, his translations cannot be described as 'elegant or literal" though they render "well enough the general ideas expressed in the text."
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Kate Soper
#16256
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Kate Soper is a British philosopher. She is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. Background Soper was educated at the University of Oxford and worked as a translator and journalist. Her PhD was from Sussex University titled Marxism and the Theory of Needs. She taught at Sussex university before moving to the University of North London in 1987 . She taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in European Studies and Literature and Modernity. She retired c.2009, becoming Emeritus Professor.
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W. B. Gallie
#23733
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Walter Bryce Gallie was a Scottish social theorist, political theorist, and philosopher. Career Early life Gallie was born in Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow, the son of an engineer. He worked as a classics teacher at Sedbergh School between the wars and later published his memoirs of this in the book An English School.
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Andrew David Irvine
#19752
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Andrew David Irvine, FSCC is a Canadian academic who teaches at the University of British Columbia. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Sydney University and is a professor of philosophy and mathematics at UBC Okanagan. He has served as vice-chair of the UBC Board of Governors, as head of the UBCO Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political Science, as president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, and as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. An advocate of traditional democratic civil liberties, Irvine has written about the importance of the rule of law for both modern and ancient democracies.
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François Dagognet
#20210
Overall Influence
1924 - 2015 (91 years)
François Dagognet was a 20th-century French philosopher. François Dagognet was born in Langres. He studied both science and philosophy, and was a student of Georges Canguilhem. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lyon before becoming Professor of Philosophy at Pantheon-Sorbonne University.
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Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins
#26438
Overall Influence
Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins is a Canadian philosopher who holds a Canada Research Chair and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. She is also a professor at the Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen. Her primary research areas are epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics. She is one of the principal editors of the journal Thought.
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David Theo Goldberg
#7220
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
#2273
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
1893 - 1937 (44 years)
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky , nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the show trials of 1936-38.
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Chester M. Southam
#3944
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Chester Milton Southam was an immunologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College; he went to Thomas Jefferson University in 1971 and worked there until the end of his career. He ran many experiments involving the injection of live cancer cells into human subjects, without disclosing that they were cancer cells, and using subjects with questionable ability to consent, such as incarcerated people and senile patients in long-term care at a hospital. The New York State Attorney General encouraged the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York to take away Southam's medical license.
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John Frame
#10104
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
John Mcelphatrick Frame is a retired American Christian philosopher and Calvinist theologian especially noted for his work in epistemology and presuppositional apologetics, systematic theology, and ethics. He is one of the foremost interpreters and critics of the thought of Cornelius Van Til.
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Paul Russell
#17465
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Paul Russell is a professor in philosophy at Lund University, where he is Director of the Lund/Gothenburg Responsibility Project [LGRP]. His position at Lund is a half-time research position and has been made possible thanks to a major grant from the Swedish Research Council for "the international recruitment of leading researchers" . Prior to his current position at Lund University he has held positions as Professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, and at Gothenburg University.
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Alois Höfler
1853 - 1922 (69 years)
Alois Höfler was an Austrian philosopher and university professor of education in Prague and Vienna. He was seen by the logical positivist Otto Neurath as an important link between Bernard Bolzano's work and the Vienna Circle.
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Warren Goldfarb
#29622
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Warren David Goldfarb is Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of analytic philosophy and in logic, most notably the classical decision problem.
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Ulla Wessels
#30554
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Ulla Wessels is a German analytic philosopher working in practical philosophy, particularly ethics. She is a Professor of Practical Philosophy in the Philosophy Department of the Saarland University in Saarbrücken.
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Miran Božovič
#23865
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Miran Božovič is a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, associated with the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis. Božovič was born in Ljubljana. He holds a degree in comparative literature and philosophy from the University of Ljubljana, and a PhD in philosophy. He teaches early modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana.
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William Harry Jellema
1893 - 1982 (89 years)
William Harry Jellema was the founder of Calvin College's philosophy department. He taught at Calvin College from 1920 to 1936, transferred to Indiana University and then returned to Calvin from 1948 to 1963. Following his mandatory retirement from Calvin College, Jellema taught for a year at Haverford College and was invited by James Zumberge to found the philosophy department at Grand Valley State College in Allendale, Michigan, and continue his teaching for another five years.
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Anders Sandberg
#5040
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Anders Sandberg is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow at Reuben College.
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Donald M. MacKinnon
#26324
Overall Influence
1913 - 1994 (81 years)
Donald Mackenzie MacKinnon was a Scottish philosopher and theologian. Life He was born in Oban on 27 August 1913, the son of Donald M. MacKinnon, Procurator Fiscal, and his wife, Grace Isabella Rhynd.
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Philippe Devaux
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Philippe Devaux was a French-speaking Belgian philosopher and logician, professor at the University of Liège. Through his numerous works and translations , he played a great part in the development of analytic philosophy in French-speaking countries.
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Inoue Enryō
1858 - 1919 (61 years)
Inoue Enryō was a Japanese philosopher, Shin Buddhist priest and reformer, educator, and royalist. A key figure in the reception of Western philosophy, the emergence of modern Buddhism, and the permeation of the imperial ideology during the second half of the Meiji Era. He is the founder of Toyo University and the creator of Tetsugaku-dō Park 哲学堂公園 in Tokyo. Because he studied all kinds of mysterious phenomena and apparitions in order to debunk superstitions, he is sometimes called "Professor Specter" and the "Spook Doctor".
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Enrique Molina Garmendia
1871 - 1964 (93 years)
Enrique Molina Garmendia was a Chilean educator and philosopher who promoted and aided in the development of the decentralization of education in Chile. His greatest achievement was founding the Universidad de Concepción , the third oldest university in Chile and the first to be located outside the capital Santiago. Garmendia is considered the most distinguished pedagogue of his time, as well as one of the most influential Chilean philosophers.
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Max Bernhard Weinstein
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Max Bernhard Weinstein was a German physicist and philosopher. He is best known as an opponent of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and for having written a broad examination of various theological theories, including extensive discussion of pandeism.
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Jaap Mansfeld
#33035
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Jaap Mansfeld is a Dutch Emeritus Professor of philosopher and a historian of philosophy. Life Jaap Mansfeld began his studies in 1954 at the University of Utrecht, where he received his doctorate in 1964 with a thesis on Parmenides. From 1973 until his retirement in 2001 he was a professor of ancient philosophy, and subsequently professor of History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, at Utrecht University. He has been a full member of the Academia Europaea since 1989., as well as a member of the board for several scholarly journals. In 1991 he was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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John Russon
#30840
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
John Russon is a Canadian philosopher, working primarily in the tradition of Continental Philosophy. In 2006, he was named Presidential Distinguished Professor at the University of Guelph, and in 2011 he was the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute's Canadian Lecturer to India.
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Mario Dal Pra
#35991
Overall Influence
1914 - 1992 (78 years)
Mario Dal Pra was an Italian philosopher, academic, and historian. During World War II, he was also a partisan. Dal Pra was noted for developing his concept of praxis into an original philosophical approach called "transcedentalism of praxis". His works also included his investigations of Thomas Hobbes' view on logic.
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Annette Baier
#21819
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Annette Claire Baier was a New Zealand philosopher and Hume scholar, focused in particular on Hume's moral psychology. She was well known also for her contributions to feminist philosophy and to the philosophy of mind, where she was strongly influenced by her former colleague, Wilfrid Sellars.
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Noah Porter
1811 - 1892 (81 years)
Noah Thomas Porter III was an American Congregational minister, academic, philosopher, author, lexicographer and an outspoken anti-slavery activist. Porter Mountain, of the Adirondack Mountains, was named for him after he was the first to climb it in 1875. He was President of Yale College .
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Frederick Suppe
#29353
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Frederick Suppe is a professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He has prominent work in the philosophy of science including much work with the semantic view of theories. Biography Suppe received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has research interests in the philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics, philosophical theology and philosophy of gender.
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Metrodorus of Lampsacus
331 BC - 278 BC (53 years)
Metrodorus of Lampsacus was a Greek philosopher of the Epicurean school. Although one of the four major proponents of Epicureanism, only fragments of his works remain. A Metrodorus bust was found in Velia, slightly different modeled to depict Parmenides.
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Farah Pahlavi
#950
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Farah Pahlavi is the widow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and was successively Queen and Empress of Iran from 1959 to 1979. She was born into a prosperous family whose fortunes were diminished after her father's early death. While studying architecture in Paris, she was introduced to the Shah at the Iranian embassy, and they were married in December 1959. The Shah's first two marriages had not produced a son—necessary for royal succession—resulting in great rejoicing at the birth of Crown Prince Reza in October of the following year. Diba was then free to pursue interests other than domestic duties, though she was not allowed a political role.
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Étienne Souriau
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Étienne Souriau was a French philosopher, best known for his work in aesthetics. Biography Son of Paul Souriau, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure and received his agrégation of philosophy in 1925. After teaching at the universities of Aix-en-Provence and Lyon he eventually became a professor at the Sorbonne, where he held a chair in aesthetics. He was the editor of the Revue d'esthétique and was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in 1958. Recently, the works of Bruno Latour have reawoken interests on Souriau's oeuvre, specially his works on ontology and metaph...
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Rüdiger Bubner
#35286
Overall Influence
1941 - 2007 (66 years)
Rüdiger Bubner was a German philosopher. Since 1996, he was professor at Heidelberg. He was also member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Theological Faculty of the University of Fribourg. His main areas of specialisation were aesthetics and practical philosophy with reference to ancient philosophy, German Idealism, and Phenomenology.
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William Sweet
#14526
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
William Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society. Biography Sweet was born in St. Albert near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and studied political science, theology, and philosophy in Canada, South Africa, France, and Germany. He completed a DEA in political science at the Sorbonne at the Université de Paris , a PhD in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, a DTh in systematic theology at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, and a D.Ph. at the Université Saint-Paul. He also studied at Carleton University, the University of Manitoba, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the Centre Sèvres .
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Nikolay Dobrolyubov
1836 - 1861 (25 years)
Nikolay Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov was a Russian poet, literary critic, journalist, and prominent figure of the Russian revolutionary movement. He was a literary hero to both Karl Marx and Lenin. Biography Dobrolyubov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, where his father was a poor priest.
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Stefan Lorenz Sorgner
#11475
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is a German metahumanist philosopher, a Nietzsche scholar, a philosopher of music and an authority in the field of ethics of emerging technologies. Life Sorgner was born on 15 October 1973 in Wetzlar . He studied philosophy at King's College London , the University of Durham , the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena . He taught philosophy and ethics at the Universities of Giessen, Jena, Erfurt and Erlangen. Currently, he teaches at a US Liberal Arts College, John Cabot University. Sorgner is a member of several editorial and adviso...
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