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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#2601

Godehard Link

#37151

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Godehard Link is a professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of Munich. External links Godehard Link at Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

#2602

Raimo Tuomela

#13405

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Raimo Heikki Tuomela Career Tuomela received his first degree of doctor of philosophy in 1968 from the University of Helsinki and the second one in 1969 from Stanford University. Tuomela was full professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki in 1971–2008.

#2603

Emerich Coreth

#29013

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Emerich Coreth was an Austrian Philosopher, Jesuit and Catholic Priest. He is well known for his works on metaphysics and philosophical anthropology. A close associate of Karl Rahner, Coreth is a renowned neo-Thomist of 20th century. He was the Rector of the University of Innsbruck and the Provincial of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus.

#2604

Govinda Chandra Dev

1907 - 1971 (64 years)

Govinda Chandra Dev , known as Dr. G. C. Dev, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Dhaka. He was assassinated at the onset of Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 by the Pakistan Army. Early life and education Dev was born in the village of Lauta of the Panchakhanda Pargana of Sylhet District, East Bengal on 1 February 1907. His ancestors were high-caste Brahmins who settled in Sylhet from Gujarat. After his father's death at an early age, Dev was raised by the local Christian missionaries. Dev passed the Entrance Examination in first division from Biani Bazar High English School in 1925.

#2605

Richard Aquila

#38512

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Richard Aquila is an American philosopher, currently the co-editor of Kantian Review and formerly a Distinguished Humanities Professor at University of Tennessee.

#2606

Ruth L. Saw

1901 - 1986 (85 years)

Ruth Lydia Saw was a British philosopher and aesthetician. Education and career Ruth Saw attended the County School for Girls in Wallington, Surrey, followed in 1926 by Bedford College, University of London, where she studied under Susan Stebbing. She accepted a position as lecturer in philosophy at Smith College and remained there for several years. She then returned to England and was appointed to a Lecturership in Philosophy at Bedford College in 1939 and remained there for the rest of her career. She became Reader in Philosophy in 1946 and then Professor of Aesthetics from 1961 to 1964. S...

#2607

Stephen Holgate

#32601

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Sir Stephen Townley Holgate, is a British physician who specializes in immunopharmacology, respiratory medicine and allergies, and asthma and air pollution, based at the University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

#2608

Jean-Toussaint Desanti

#16663

Overall Influence

1914 - 2002 (88 years)

Jean-Toussaint Desanti was a French educator and philosopher known for his work on both the philosophy of mathematics and phenomenology. Biography The son of Jean-François Desanti and Marie-Paule Colonna, he was born in Ajaccio and studied the philosophy of mathematics with Jean Cavaillès. During World War II, he was a member of the French Resistance, associating with Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux. He joined the French Communist Party in 1943 with his wife Dominique, remaining a member until 1956.

#2609

Eugene Borowitz

#20316

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Eugene B. Borowitz was an American leader and philosopher in Reform Judaism, known largely for his work on Jewish theology and Jewish ethics. He also edited a Jewish journal, Sh'ma, and taught at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

#2610

Mark Alan Walker

Mark Alan Walker

#30311

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Mark Alan Walker is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at New Mexico State University, where he occupies the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies. Prior to his professorship at NMSU Prof. Walker taught at McMaster University in the department of philosophy and the Arts & Science Programme. He is the author of Happy-People Pills for All and Free Money for All . Walker founded and was president of the former nonprofit organization Permanent End International , which had been devoted to ending hunger, illiteracy and environmental degradation through the dissemination of modular aquaponics systems for farming.

#2611

Kelly Oliver

#16034

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Kelly Oliver is an American philosopher specializing in feminism, political philosophy and ethics. She is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also a founder of the feminist philosophy journal philoSOPHIA.

#2612

Epimenides

700 BC - 600 BC (100 years)

Epimenides of Cnossos was a semi-mythical 7th or 6th century BC Greek seer and philosopher-poet, from Knossos or Phaistos. Life While tending his father's sheep, Epimenides is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy . Plutarch writes that Epimenides purified Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae, and that the seer's expertise in sacrifices and reform of funeral practices were of great help to Solon in his reform of the Athenian state. The only reward he would accept was a branc...

#2613

Shrimad Rajchandra

Shrimad Rajchandra

1867 - 1901 (34 years)

Shrimad Rajchandra was a Jain poet, mystic, philosopher, scholar, and reformer. Born in Vavaniya, a village near Morbi, he claimed to have recollection of his past lives at the age of seven. He performed Avadhāna, a memory retention and recollection test that gained him popularity, but he later discouraged it in favour of his spiritual pursuits. He wrote much philosophical poetry including Atma Siddhi. He also wrote many letters and commentaries and translated some religious texts. He is best known for his teachings on Jainism and his spiritual guidance to Mahatma Gandhi.

#2614

James H. Moor

#13409

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

James H. Moor is the Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He earned his Ph.D. in 1972 from Indiana University. Moor's 1985 paper entitled "What is Computer Ethics?" established him as one of the pioneering theoreticians in the field of computer ethics. He has also written extensively on the Turing Test. His research includes study in philosophy of artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and logic.

#2615

Curtis L. Carter

#27143

Overall Influence

Curtis L. Carter is a professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, focusing on aesthetics. He received a PhD from the University of Boston. His greatest accomplishment at Marquette was the creation of the Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art. Carter was the founding director from 1984-2007. Haggerty Museum attempts to build a greater appreciation for the arts in the Milwaukee and Marquette Community. He also teaches several classes on the philosophy of art.

#2616

Catherine Elgin

Catherine Elgin

#31881

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Catherine Z. Elgin is a philosopher working in epistemology and the philosophies of art and science. She is currently a professor of philosophy of education at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

#2617

James Earl Baumgartner

James Earl Baumgartner

#21768

Overall Influence

1943 - 2011 (68 years)

James Earl Baumgartner was an American mathematician who worked in set theory, mathematical logic and foundations, and topology. Baumgartner was born in Wichita, Kansas, began his undergraduate study at the California Institute of Technology in 1960, then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his PhD in 1970 from for a dissertation titled Results and Independence Proofs in Combinatorial Set Theory. His advisor was Robert Vaught. He became a professor at Dartmouth College in 1969, and spent his entire career there.

#2618

Lydia Goehr

#33576

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities, Department of Philosophy, at Columbia University. Her research specialties include the philosophy of music, aesthetics, critical theory, the philosophy of history, and 19th- and 20th-century philosophy.

#2619

Donald A. Crosby

Donald A. Crosby

#25634

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Donald Allen Crosby is an American theologian who is professor emeritus of philosophy at Colorado State University, since January 2000. Crosby's interests focus on metaphysics, American pragmatism, philosophy of nature, existentialism, and philosophy of religion. He is a member of the Highlands Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought and has been a leader in the discussions on Religious Naturalism.

#2620

Felix Adler

1851 - 1933 (82 years)

Felix Adler was a German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, influential lecturer on euthanasia, religious leader and social reformer who founded the Ethical Culture movement.

#2621

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh

#11009

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh is an Indian-American mathematician, logician, and philosopher who has worked in many areas in traditional logic, including recursion theory and proof theory. He is a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College at the City University of New York .

#2622

Naomi Zack

#22693

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Naomi Zack is a professor of philosophy at Lehman College, City University of New York , having formerly been a professor at the University of Albany and the University of Oregon. She has written thirteen books and three textbooks, and she has edited or co-edited five anthologies, in addition to publishing a large number of papers and book chapters, particularly in areas having to deal with race, feminism, and natural disasters. Zack has taken on a number of professional roles related to the representation of women and other under-represented groups in philosophy. Zack is also a member of the ...

#2623

Gopala Dasa

1722 - 1762 (40 years)

Gopala Dasa was a prominent 18th-century Kannada language poet and saint belonging to the Haridasa tradition. With other contemporary Haridasas such as Vijaya Dasa and Jagannatha Dasa, Gopala Dasa propagated the Dvaita philosophy of Madhvacharya in South India through Kirtans known as Dasara Padagalu with the pen-name "Gopala Vittala".He is Ganesa Amsha.

#2624

John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys

1872 - 1963 (91 years)

John Cowper Powys was an English philosopher, lecturer, novelist, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879. Powys appeared with a volume of verse in 1896 and a first novel in 1915, but gained success only with his novel Wolf Solent in 1929. He has been seen as a successor to Thomas Hardy, and Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance , Weymouth Sands , and Maiden Castle have been called his Wessex novels. As with Hardy, landscape is important to his works. So is elemental philosophy in his characters' lives. In 1934 he published an autobiography.

#2625

Maria Baghramian

Maria Baghramian

#29557

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Maria Baghramian is an Irish philosopher who is the Professor of American Philosophy in the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin . She was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010 and a member of the RIA Council from 2015 to 2018. Baghramian has published ten authored and edited books as well as articles and book chapters on topics in epistemology and twentieth century American Philosophy. She was the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies from 2003 to 2013.

#2626

Ioannis Theodorakopoulos

1900 - 1981 (81 years)

Ioannis Theodorakopoulos was a Greek philosopher. In 1920 Theodorakopoulos moved to Vienna to study Classical Philology and Philosophy. Subsequently, he continued his studies of philosophy in Heidelberg and received in 1925 his Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg.

#2627

U. G. Krishnamurti

U. G. Krishnamurti

#14146

Overall Influence

1918 - 2007 (89 years)

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti was a philosopher who questioned the state of spiritual enlightenment. Having pursued a religious path in his youth and eventually rejecting it, U.G. claimed to have experienced a devastating biological transformation on his 49th birthday, an event he refers to as "the calamity". He emphasized that this transformation back to "the natural state" is a rare, acausal, biological occurrence with no religious context. Because of this, he discouraged people from pursuing the "natural state" as a spiritual goal.

#2628

Joseph Gabel

#20295

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

Joseph Gabel was a French Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher. His work was always strongly influenced by Marxism; he was against Stalinism and critical of the work of Louis Althusser. He left Hungary because of a Numerus Clausus for Jewish citizens and first studied Psychopathology with Eugène Minkowski, then he turned to Sociology . He taught at the Mohammed-V University of Rabat from 1965 to 1971, and at Amiens University from 1971 to 1980.

#2629

Basava

1134 - 1196 (62 years)

Basava , also called Basaveshwara and Basavanna, was an Indian philosopher, poet, Lingayat social reformer in the Shiva-focused bhakti movement, and a Hindu Shaivite social reformer during the reign of the Kalyani Chalukya/Kalachuri dynasty. Basava was active during the rule of both dynasties but reached the peak of his influence during the rule of King Bijjala II in Karnataka, India.

#2630

H. B. Acton

1908 - 1974 (66 years)

Harry Burrows Acton was an English academic in the field of political philosophy, known for books defending the morality of capitalism, and attacking Marxism-Leninism. He in particular produced arguments on the incoherence of Marxism, which he described as a 'farrago' . His book The Illusion of the Epoch, in which this appears, is a standard point of reference. Other interests were the Marquis de Condorcet, Hegel, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, F. H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet and Sidney Webb. Acton also endorsed a version of negative utilitarianism, according to which the reduction of su...

#2631

Renaud Barbaras

#24628

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Renaud Barbaras is a French contemporary philosopher. An École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud alumnus, he is Chair of Contemporary Philosophy in the University of Paris 1, Sorbonne. Work A phenomenologist, Barbaras' works have primarily focused on the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. More recently, his readings of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka have influenced him into conceiving a phenomenology of life and accordingly, a cosmology in which man's place is to be thought anew.

#2632

Alvan Feinstein

#13326

Overall Influence

1925 - 2001 (76 years)

Alvan R. Feinstein was an American clinician, researcher and an epidemiologist who made significant impact on clinical investigation, especially on the field of clinical epidemiology that he helped define. He is regarded as one of the fathers of modern clinical epidemiology. He died at the age of 75 in Toronto on 25 October 2001 and is survived by his wife and two children.

#2633

Anne Sheppard

#27612

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Anne Sheppard is professor of ancient philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. She studied "Greats", , at St Anne's College, Oxford before completing her DPhil at Oxford on the literary theory of the Neoplatonist philosopher, Proclus. Sheppard's research interests relate to the interaction between philosophy and literature.

#2634

Kypros Nicolaides

Kypros Nicolaides

#15197

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Kyprianos "Kypros" Nicolaides is a Greek Cypriot physician of British citizenship, Professor of Fetal Medicine at King's College Hospital, London. He is one of the pioneers of fetal medicine and his discoveries have revolutionised the field. He was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2020 for 'improving the care of pregnant women worldwide with pioneering rigorous and creative approaches, and making seminal contributions to prenatal diagnosis and every major obstetrical disorder'. This is considered to be one of the highest honours in the fields of health and medicine and recog...

#2635

Marinus of Neapolis

440 - Present (1584 years)

Marinus was a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician and rhetorician born in Flavia Neapolis , Palestine. He was a student of Proclus in Athens. His surviving works are an introduction to Euclid's Data; a Life of Proclus, and two astronomical texts. Most of what we know of his life comes from an epitome of a work by Damascius conserved in the Byzantine Suda encyclopaedia.

#2636

Pontus Wikner

1837 - 1888 (51 years)

Carl Pontus Wikner was a famed Swedish lecturer in philosophy and professor of aesthetics in Oslo from 1884. Wikner's contribution to homosexual history consists foremostly of producing the first description of the problematics about homosexual identity and the coming-out process. He deposited for future research at the medical faculty in Uppsala his Psychological Self-Confessions from 1879 and diaries from 1853 to 1871. According to his own wishes, they were not published before his wife and sons - the nearest members of the family - had died.

#2637

William F. Vallicella

#35914

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

William F. Vallicella is an American philosopher. Biography Vallicella has a Ph.D. , taught for a number of years at University of Dayton and Case Western Reserve University , and retired to Gold Canyon, Arizona from where he now contributes to philosophy mainly online. He is the author of many published articles, primarily on the subjects of metaphysics and philosophy of religion.

#2638

José Rizal

1861 - 1896 (35 years)

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered a national hero of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.

#2639

Marilena de Souza Chaui

#27543

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Marilena de Souza Chaui is a Brazilian philosopher and Professor of Modern Philosophy in the University of São Paulo. She is a scholar of Baruch Spinoza and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Chaui is one of the founding members of Workers' Party and an assiduous critic of the capitalist model.

#2640

Karim Mojtahedi

Karim Mojtahedi

#46193

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Karim Mojtahedi is an Iranian philosophy professor at Tehran University. He has published over 20 books on philosophy. He was awarded UNESCO's Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science at the 4th International Farabi Festival and received a plaque of honor from Iran's Cultural Luminaries Association.

#2641

John Grier Hibben

John Grier Hibben

1861 - 1933 (72 years)

John Grier Hibben was a Presbyterian minister, a philosopher, and educator. He served as president of Princeton University from 1912–1932, succeeding Woodrow Wilson and implementing many of the reforms started by Wilson. His term as President began after the term of Acting Princeton President Stewart, who served for two years after Wilson's departure.

#2642

Tamar Ross

#19424

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Tamar Ross is a professor of Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan University and a specialist of religious feminist philosophy. Work Ross makes a vital contribution to philosophical questions around gender in Judaism by arguing that feminism is not external to Torah but rather integral to it. She argues for the concept of evolving revelation, that is, that people learn more as history evolves and societies develop and mature, and argues against the concept of Yeridat ha-dorot, the idea that knowledge of Torah diminishes with time. She also argues against approaches of more liberal movements which a...

#2643

Yoshishige Abe

1883 - 1966 (83 years)

Yoshishige Abe was a philosopher, educator, and statesman in Shōwa period Japan. As Minister of Education in the immediate post-war era, he oversaw major reforms to the Japanese educational system. Biography Abe was born in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture as the son of a doctor of Chinese medicine. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, and was a close associate of Natsume Sōseki, Seiichi Hatano, Kyoshi Takahama and Shigeo Iwanami, although he was forced to return home to teach English in Matsuyama due to reduced family circumstances. He later married the sister of Misao Fujimura. While stil...

#2644

Konstantin Melnikov

Konstantin Melnikov

1890 - 1974 (84 years)

Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov was a Russian architect and painter. His architectural work, compressed into a single decade , placed Melnikov on the front end of 1920s avant-garde architecture. Although associated with the Constructivists, Melnikov was an independent artist, not bound by the rules of a particular style or artistic group. In 1930s, Melnikov refused to conform with the rising Stalinist architecture, withdrew from practice and worked as a portraitist and teacher until the end of his life.

#2645

Osamu Tezuka

1928 - 1989 (61 years)

Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as , and . Additionally, he is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during Tezuka's formative years. Though this phrase praises the quality of his early manga works for children and animations, it also blurs the significant influence of his later, more literary, gekiga works.

#2646

Gary Peller

#14792

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gary Peller is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and a prominent member of the critical legal studies and critical race theory movements. Education and early career Peller received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University in 1977 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School where he served as a member of the Harvard Law Review. Peller then clerked for Morris Lasker, a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is currently a member of the Maryland state bar.

#2647

William W. Tait

#33151

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

William Walker Tait is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he served as a faculty member from 1972 to 1996, and as department chair from 1981 to 1987. Education and career Tait received his B.A. from Lehigh University in 1952, and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1958. Frederic Fitch served as his doctoral advisor.

#2648

Ronald H. Nash

#18027

Overall Influence

1936 - 2006 (70 years)

Ronald H. Nash was a philosophy professor at Reformed Theological Seminary. Nash served as a professor for over 40 years, teaching and writing in the areas of worldview, apologetics, ethics, theology, and history. He is known for his advocacy of Austrian economics, and his criticism of the evangelical left.

#2649

Richard Aaron

1901 - 1987 (86 years)

Richard Ithamar Aaron, , was a Welsh philosopher who became an authority on the work of John Locke. He also wrote a history of philosophy in the Welsh language. Early life and education Born in Blaendulais, Glamorgan, Aaron was the son of a Welsh Baptist draper, William Aaron, and his wife, Margaret Griffith. He was educated at Ystalyfera Grammar School, then at the University of Wales from 1918, where he studied history and philosophy. In 1923 he was elected a Fellow of the university, allowing him to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he gained a DPhil in 1928 for a dissertation on "The Hi...

#2650

Poul Martin Møller

Poul Martin Møller

1794 - 1838 (44 years)

Poul Martin Møller was a Danish academic, writer, and poet. During his lifetime, he gained renown in Denmark for his poetry. After his death, his posthumously published fiction and philosophical writings were well received. He also devoted several decades of study to classical languages and literature. While serving as a professor at the University of Copenhagen, he was a mentor to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions