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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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#2301

Rosemarie Tong

#20992

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Rosemarie "Rosie" Tong is an American feminist philosopher. The author of 1998's Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, an overview of the major traditions of feminist theory, she is the emeritus distinguished professor of health care ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

#2302

Michel Pêcheux

1938 - 1983 (45 years)

Michel Pêcheux was a French linguist and philosopher. He is best known for his theoretical, experimental and practical contributions to the field of discourse analysis, starting in the late 1960s. Career Born in Tours in 1938, Pêcheux studied philosophy at École normale supérieure between 1959-1963 under Louis Althusser. In 1966, he started his research career in the Department of Social Psychology of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. While at ENS, Pêcheux became involved with the journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse, where he began developing a Marxist approach to discourse analysis.

#2303

George Annas

#10837

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

George J. Annas is the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, School of Medicine, and School of Law.

#2304

Michael Bergmann

#36226

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael Abram Bergmann is an American analytic philosopher teaching in the department of philosophy at Purdue University. His primary interests are epistemology and philosophy of religion. In epistemology, he writes mostly on externalism and, in philosophy of religion, he mostly writes on the epistemology of religious belief and the problem of evil.

#2305

Thierry Coquand

Thierry Coquand

#6404

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Thierry Coquand is a French computer scientist and mathematician who is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Gothenburg, having previously worked at INRIA. He is known for his work in constructive mathematics, especially the calculus of constructions.

#2306

John Mullarkey

#30224

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

John Mullarkey is the Professor in Film and Television at Kingston University, London, and a member of The London Graduate School. Mullarkey's work explores variations of "non-standard-philosophy", arguing that philosophy is a subject that continually shifts its identity through engaging with "non-philosophical" fields such as film. Mullarkey's work notably engages with that of François Laruelle and Henri Bergson.

#2307

Muhammed Hamdi Yazır

1878 - 1942 (64 years)

Muhammed Hamdi Yazır also known as Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır and Elmalılı was a Turkish Maturidi theologian, logician, Qur'an translator, Qur'anic exegesis scholar, Islamic legal academic, philosopher and encyclopedist.

#2308

Francisco Sanches

Francisco Sanches

1550 - 1623 (73 years)

Francisco Sanches was a skeptic, philosopher and physician of Sephardi Jewish origin, born possibly in Tui, Spain or probably in Braga, Portugal . Early life and academic career In the auditorium of the University of Toulouse there is a portrait of Francisco Sánchez, which bears the following inscription: "Francisco Sanchez Lusitanus". Although the investigations carried out by Henry Pierre Cazac at the beginning of the 20th century – he presented, among other documents, an autograph by Sánchez that reads as follows: "Ego, Franciscus Sanctius, Hispanus, natus in civitate Tudensi [...]" – show...

#2309

Peter Trawny

#28837

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Peter Trawny is a German philosopher and professor at the University of Wuppertal. Life Peter Trawny studied philosophy, musicology and art history at the Ruhr University Bochum, where he the Magisterium graduated in 1992, after a guest stay at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg in Breisgau and at the University of Basel. In 1995, he received his doctorate under Klaus Held with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger's phenomenology of the world. With a doctoral scholarship from the Study Foundation of the German people, he was promoted and awarded in 1997 with the Second Prize of all faculties of the University of Wuppertal.

#2310

Moshe Halbertal

Moshe Halbertal

#15321

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Moshe Halbertal is an Israeli philosopher, professor, and writer, a noted expert on Maimonides, and co-author of the Israeli Army Code of Ethics. He currently holds positions as the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Gruss Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. In 2021 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

#2311

David Novak

#13814

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

David Novak, is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law . He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair of Jewish Studies as Professor of the Study of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto since 1997. His areas of interest are Jewish theology, Jewish ethics and biomedical ethics, political theory , and Jewish-Christian relations.

#2312

Peter Carmeliet

#16327

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Peter, Baron Carmeliet is a Belgian physician and professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . He is also Adjunct Director of the VIB Vesalius Research Center, KU Leuven. Among his research interests are vasculogenesis, angiogenesis, and vascular endothelial growth factor . In 2016, Carmeliet identified neuron-producing stem cells in the brain.

#2313

C. Everett Koop

#728

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Charles Everett Koop was an American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator who served as the 13th surgeon general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1989. According to the Associated Press, "Koop was the only surgeon general to become a household name" due to his frequent public presence around the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

#2314

Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius

Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius

1764 - 1855 (91 years)

Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius was a Protestant pastor, writer, philosopher, distinguished linguist, and translator. Mrongovius was a noted defender of the Polish language in Warmia and Mazury. Biography Mrongovius, son of Bartholomeus, was born in Hohenstein, Kingdom of Prussia . Mrongovius attended a school in Saalfeld , and then studied at the cathedral school in Königsberg. He matriculated on 21 March 1782 at Königsberg University. During his second semester, he attended Immanuel Kant's metaphysics lectures, followed by theology, logic, anthropology and moral philosophy, and physics.

#2315

Joseph Kleutgen

1811 - 1883 (72 years)

Joseph Wilhelm Karl Kleutgen was a German Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He was a member of the Society of Jesus, and contributed significantly to the establishment of Neo-scholasticism. Life Kleutgen was born in Dortmund, Westphalia. He began his studies with the intention of becoming a priest, but owing to the Protestant atmosphere of the school which he attended, his zeal for religion gradually cooled. From 28 April 1830, to 8 January 1831, he studied philology at the University of Munich. He was intensely interested in Plato's philosophy and the Greek tragic poets. As member of the ...

#2316

August Ludwig Hülsen

1765 - 1809 (44 years)

August Ludwig Hülsen , also known by the pseudonym Hegekern, was a German philosopher, writer and pedagogue of early German Romanticism. His thought played a role in the development of German idealism.

#2317

Lin Yutang

1895 - 1976 (81 years)

Lin Yutang was a Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist, philosopher, and translator. He had an informal style in both Chinese and English, and he made compilations and translations of classic Chinese texts into English. Some of his writings criticized the racism and imperialism of the West.

#2318

David Horrobin

#23769

Overall Influence

1939 - 2003 (64 years)

David Frederick Horrobin was a British-Canadian entrepreneur, medical researcher, author and editor. He is best known as the founder of the biotechnology company Scotia Holdings and as a promoter of evening primrose oil as a medical treatment, Horrobin was founder and editor of the journals Medical Hypotheses and Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, the latter journal co-founded with his then graduate student Morris Karmazyn.

#2319

Mogobe Ramose

#24053

Overall Influence

Mogobe Bernard Ramose is a South African philosopher, one of the key thinkers to have popularised African philosophy, and specifically Ubuntu philosophy, internationally. Ramose is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

#2320

Friedrich Eduard Beneke

Friedrich Eduard Beneke

1798 - 1854 (56 years)

Friedrich Eduard Beneke was a German psychologist and post-Kantian philosopher. Life Beneke was born in Berlin. He studied at the universities of Halle and Berlin, and served as a volunteer in the War of 1815. After studying theology under Schleiermacher and de Wette, he turned to pure philosophy, studying English writers and the German modifiers of Kantianism, such as Jacobi, Fries and Schopenhauer. In 1820, he published Erkenntnisslehre, Erfahrungsseelenlehre als Grundlage alles Wissens, and his inaugural dissertation De Veris Philosophiae Initiis. His marked opposition to the philosophy o...

#2321

Jacques-André Naigeon

Jacques-André Naigeon

1738 - 1810 (72 years)

Jacques-André Naigeon was a French artist, atheist–materialist philosopher, editor and man of letters best known for his contributions to the Encyclopédie and for reworking Baron d'Holbach's and Diderot's manuscripts.

#2322

Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy

1862 - 1905 (43 years)

Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy was a Russian religious philosopher. He was the son of Prince Nikolai Petrovitch Trubetskoy, co-founder of the Moscow Conservatory, and Sophia Alekseievna Lopouchina, who was a big influence on his religious thought. Trubetskoy and his brother, Evgenii Nikolaevitch Troubetzkoy , continued Vladimir Solovyov's work on developing a modern Christian philosophy of the world. He was also a professor of philosophy at Moscow University and a founding member of the underground discussion circle Beseda.

#2323

Jeremy Shearmur

#14683

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jeremy Shearmur is a British former reader in philosophy in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University, who retired at the end of 2013. He is currently an emeritus fellow, lives in Dumfries, Scotland, and is undertaking research and a limited amount of lecturing and Ph.D. supervision. He was educated at the London School of Economics.

#2324

Peter Janich

#19160

Overall Influence

1942 - 2016 (74 years)

Peter Janich was a professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg. He was born in Munich. Janich studied physics, philosophy and psychology at the Universities of Erlangen and Hamburg. He attained a doctorate in philosophy in 1969 and during 1969/70 was a guest lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. From 1973 to 1980 he was a professor for philosophy of science of the accurate sciences at the University of Konstanz. Since 1980 he has held the chair for systematic philosophy with an emphasis on theoretical philosophy at the Philipps University of Marburg.

#2325

Yorick Smythies

Yorick Smythies

1917 - 1980 (63 years)

Yorick Smythies was a student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein known for his notes of the philosopher's lectures. He was also a friend of, and character inspiration for, the novelist Iris Murdoch.

#2326

J. W. Dunne

1875 - 1949 (74 years)

John William Dunne was a British soldier, aeronautical engineer and philosopher. As a young man he fought in the Second Boer War, before becoming a pioneering aeroplane designer in the early years of the 20th century. Dunne worked on automatically stable aircraft, many of which were of tailless swept wing design, to achieve the first aircraft demonstrated to be stable. He later developed a new approach to dry fly fishing before turning to speculative philosophy, where he achieved some prominence and literary influence through his "serialism" theory on the nature of time and consciousness, fi...

#2327

Vincent C. Müller

#11189

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Vincent C. Müller is a German philosopher. He is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for ethics and philosophy of AI at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, president of the European Association for Cognitive Systems, and chair of the euRobotics topics group on 'ethical, legal and socio-economic issues'. Müller studied at the universities of Marburg, Hamburg, London and Oxford. He was Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at Princeton University, James Martin Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, and Professor at the TU Eindhoven.

#2328

Eudemus of Rhodes

Eudemus of Rhodes

370 BC - 300 BC (70 years)

Eudemus of Rhodes was an ancient Greek philosopher, considered the first historian of science, who lived from c. 370 BCE until c. 300 BCE. He was one of Aristotle's most important pupils, editing his teacher's work and making it more easily accessible. Eudemus' nephew, Pasicles, was also credited with editing Aristotle's works.

#2329

Ibn al-Khammar

942 - Present (1082 years)

Abū al-Khayr al-Ḥasan ibn Suwār ibn Bābā ibn Bahnām, called Ibn al-Khammār , was an East Syriac Christian philosopher and physician who taught and worked in Baghdad. He was a prolific translator from Syriac into Arabic and also wrote original works of philosophy, ethics, theology, medicine and meteorology.

#2330

Peter Wenz

#31852

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Peter S. Wenz is an American philosopher who specializes in environmental ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy and Legal Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Biography Wenz received his B.A. in philosophy in 1967 from Harpur College of the State University of New York at Binghamton and his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point from 1971 to 1976 before moving to Springfield. He has also taught at Polytechnic of the South Bank in London, England ; at Aberdeen University in Scotland ; at Oxford University in England and at The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand .

#2331

Anioł Dowgird

1776 - 1835 (59 years)

Anioł Dowgird was a philosopher of Polish Enlightenment and Lithuanian Enlightenment. Dowgird studied in Jesuit and Piarist schools, then joined the Piarist Order and took holy orders. Subsequently, he taught at Piarist schools and for a time was a professor of logic and ethics at Vilnius University.

#2332

Sylviane Agacinski

Sylviane Agacinski

#12361

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Sylviane Agacinski-Jospin is a French philosopher, feminist, author, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales , and wife of Lionel Jospin, former Prime Minister of France. Her theoretical articulation of parity inspired the French law which requires every political party to fill 50 percent of all candidacies in every seat with women.

#2333

Paul Waldau

#25605

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Paul Francis Waldau is an American ethicist and former professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where he headed the graduate program on anthrozoology, which he founded. He has several times served as Barker Lecturer in animal law at Harvard Law School, and is the author of a number of books on animal rights and speciesism.

#2334

Julie Favre

1833 - 1896 (63 years)

Julie Velten Favre , sometimes called Madame Jules Favre, was a French philosopher and educator. She is known for her work educating young women and for advancing a moral philosophy that advocated living a virtuous life, rather than one based on rules and punishment.

#2335

Jacques Taminiaux

Jacques Taminiaux

#26930

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Jacques Taminiaux was a Belgian philosopher and professor at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States. Biography Born in Seneffe, Taminiaux studied law and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His research interests are on phenomenology, aesthetics, political philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy.

#2336

Isidore of Alexandria

450 - 520 (70 years)

Isidore of Alexandria was a Greek philosopher and one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He lived in Athens and Alexandria toward the end of the 5th century AD. He became head of the school in Athens in succession to Marinus, who followed Proclus.

#2337

A. J. Muste

1885 - 1967 (82 years)

Abraham Johannes Muste , usually cited as A. J. Muste, was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, antiwar movement, and civil rights movement.

#2338

Alexis Kagame

1912 - 1981 (69 years)

Alexis Kagame was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the fields of ethnohistory and "ethnophilosophy" . As a professor of theology, he carried out wide research into the oral history, traditions and literature of Rwanda, and wrote several books on the subject, both in French and Kinyarwanda. He also wrote poetry, which was also published.

#2339

Richard Velkley

Richard Velkley

#15296

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Richard L. Velkley is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University. Velkley is known for his expertise on Kant, Rousseau, and post-Kantian philosophy. He is a former associate editor of The Review of Metaphysics and a former president of the Metaphysical Society of America .

#2340

Henryk Struve

1840 - 1912 (72 years)

Henryk Struve was a Polish philosopher. He has been called "perhaps the most remarkable person in logic in Warsaw in the 19th century". Struve taught philosophy at Warsaw University from 1862 to 1903. He wrote works in Polish, German and Russian.

#2341

Samuel Hahnemann

Samuel Hahnemann

1755 - 1843 (88 years)

Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician, best known for creating the pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine called homeopathy. Early life Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Saxony, near Dresden. His father Christian Gottfried Hahnemann was a painter and designer of porcelain, for which the town of Meissen is famous.

#2342

Samuel Morse

1791 - 1872 (81 years)

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of Morse code in 1837 and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

#2343

Charles Taliaferro

#32091

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Charles Taliaferro is an American philosopher specializing in theology and philosophy of religion. He is an emeritus professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Faithful Research, and a member of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of twenty books, most recently The Image in Mind; Theism, Naturalism and the Imagination, co-authored with the American artist Jil Evans. He has been a visiting scholar or guest lecturer at a large number of universities, including Brown, Cambridge, Notre Dame, Oxford, Princeton, and the University of Chicago.

#2344

Pavel Kopnin

1922 - 1971 (49 years)

Pavel Vasilyevich Kopnin was a Soviet philosopher, epistemologist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union and Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

#2345

Hans-Georg Backhaus

#15372

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Hans-Georg Backhaus is a German Marxian economist and philosopher. He is considered one of the most important theorists on the field of Marx's theory of value. He began a long-term cooperation with Helmut Reichelt already from his years of university studies.

#2346

Hilde Lindemann

#31186

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Hilde Lindemann is an American philosophy professor and bioethicist and emerita professor at Michigan State University. Lindemann earned her B.A. in German language and literature in 1969 at the University of Georgia. Lindemann also earned her M.A. in theatre history and dramatic literature, in 1972, at the University of Georgia. Lindemann began her career as a copyeditor for several universities. She then moved on to a job at the Hastings Center in New York City, an institute focused on bioethics research, and co-authored book The Patient in the Family, with James Lindemann Nelson, before deciding to earn a Ph.D.

#2347

David Charles

#33283

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

David Owain Maurice Charles FLSW is a professor of philosophy and classics at Yale University. He has previously been Colin Prestige Fellow, and Professor of Philosophy at Oriel College, Oxford, and CUF Lecturer in Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

#2348

Jean-Pierre Faye

Jean-Pierre Faye

#10222

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (99 years)

Jean-Pierre Faye is a French philosopher and writer of fiction and prose poetry. Life and career Faye was born in Paris. He was member of the editing committee of the avant-garde literary review Tel Quel, and later of Change. He received the Prix Renaudot for his 1964 novel L'Écluse . He is a regular contributor to Gilles Deleuze's literary journal Chimère. With Jacques Derrida and others, he authored the "Blue Report" , which led to the Collège international de philosophie, an open university, in 1983. He soon turned against deconstructionism and postmodernism, as he reflected in Langages totalitaires 2: la raison narrative .

#2349

Marx W. Wartofsky

#28574

Overall Influence

1928 - 1997 (69 years)

Marx W. Wartofsky was an American philosopher, specialising in historical epistemology. He was a professor of philosophy at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the editor of The Philosophical Forum. With Robert S. Cohen, he co-founded the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science, in 1960.

#2350

Nora Volkow

#5509

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Nora D. Volkow is a Mexican-American psychiatrist. She is currently the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse , which is part of the National Institutes of Health . Early life and education Born in Mexico City, Volkow is a daughter of Esteban Volkov, whose mother Zinaida Volkova was the eldest daughter of the Russian communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Volkow and her three sisters grew up in Coyoacán in the house where Trotsky was killed .

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