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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,

#2901

Joshua Cohen

#11107

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Joshua Cohen is an American philosopher specializing in political philosophy. He has taught at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently a member of the faculty at Apple University and the University of California, Berkeley.

#2902

Mark Johnston

#40714

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mark Johnston is an Australian-born philosopher working at Princeton University. Biography and career In 1980, after his undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne, Johnston came to Princeton University to work with Saul Kripke and David Lewis, arguably the two most influential anglophone philosophers in the late 20th century. Under their supervision he completed his dissertation Particulars and Persistence in 1984. He became an assistant professor at Princeton in 1984, received tenure there in 1987, and became a full professor in 1991. From 2005-2015 he was the Walter Cerf Professor of Philosophy.

#2903

Stephen Menn

#44583

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Stephen Menn is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and, between 2011 and 2015, was Professor of Ancient and Contemporary Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin and the author of Descartes and Augustine about the origin of Descartes' cogito. His specialties include ancient philosophy , medieval philosophy . He is also a mathematician, holding a doctorate in Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 1985 and one in Philosophy from University of Chicago in 1989.

#2904

Geneviève Fraisse

#18865

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Geneviève Fraisse is a French feminist philosopher. Early life She was born within Murs blancs , a community founded by Emmanuel Mounier at Châtenay-Malabry. Her parents, Paul Fraisse and Simone Fraisse , were both professors at the Sorbonne. In May 1968, she is a first year philosophy student at the Sorbonne. She co-funded with Jacques Rancière the journal Les Révoltes logiques .

#2905

Sarah Broadie

#34426

Overall Influence

1941 - 2021 (80 years)

Sarah Jean Broadie was a British philosopher, a Professor of Moral Philosophy and Wardlaw Professor at the University of St Andrews. Broadie specialised in ancient philosophy, with a particular emphasis on Aristotle and Plato. Her work engages with metaphysics and both ancient and contemporary ethics. She has achieved numerous honours throughout her career as an academic philosopher. Broadie studied Greats at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in 1960. Previously she has worked at the University of Edinburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Yale, Rutgers, and Princeton.

#2906

Sami Frashëri

1850 - 1904 (54 years)

Sami bey Frashëri or Şemseddin Sâmi was an Ottoman Albanian writer, philosopher, playwright and a prominent figure of the Rilindja Kombëtare, the National Renaissance movement of Albania, together with his two brothers Abdyl and Naim. He also supported Turkish nationalism against its Ottoman counterpart, along with secularism against theocracy.

#2907

John Turner

1865 - 1934 (69 years)

John Turner was an English-born anarcho-communist shop steward. He referred to himself as "of semi-Quaker descent." Turner was the first person to be ordered deported from the United States for violation of the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act.

#2908

Max Klinger

1857 - 1920 (63 years)

Max Klinger was a German artist who produced significant work in painting, sculpture, prints and graphics, as well as writing a treatise articulating his ideas on art and the role of graphic arts and printmaking in relation to painting. He is associated with symbolism, the Vienna Secession, and Jugendstil the German manifestation of Art Nouveau. He is best known today for his many prints, particularly a series entitled Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove and his monumental sculptural installation in homage to Beethoven at the Vienna Secession in 1902.

#2909

Henry K. Beecher

Henry K. Beecher

1904 - 1976 (72 years)

Henry Knowles Beecher was a pioneering American anesthesiologist, medical ethicist, and investigator of the placebo effect at Harvard Medical School. An article by Beecher's in 1966 on unethical medical experimentation in the New England Journal of Medicine — "Ethics and Clinical Research" — was instrumental in the implementation of federal rules on human experimentation and informed consent. A 1999 biography—written by Vincent J. Kopp, M.D. of UNC Chapel Hill and published in an American Society of Anesthesiologists newsletter—describes Beecher as an influential figure in the development of medical ethics and research techniques, though he has not been without controversy.

#2910

Valentin Feldman

1909 - 1942 (33 years)

Valentin Feldman was a French philosopher and Marxist of Jewish-Russian origin. In 1942, he was murdered by the Nazis during the Occupation of France. Born in Saint Petersburg, he left the USSR in 1922 at the end of the Civil War. He settled in Paris and studied at the Lycée Henri IV and the Sorbonne University. A pupil of French philosopher Victor Basch, he worked on aesthetics and wrote an essay, L'Esthétique française contemporaine , Félix Alcan, 1936.

#2911

Howard Kahane

#30221

Overall Influence

1928 - 2001 (73 years)

Howard Kahane was an American professor of philosophy at Bernard M. Baruch College in New York City. He was noted for promoting a popular, and non-mathematical, approach to logic, now known as informal logic. His best known publication in that area is his textbook Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life, now at the 12th edition, published in 2014.

#2912

Robert Stern

#38551

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Robert Arthur Stern is a British philosopher who serves as professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He is known for his work on the history of philosophy, particularly G. W. F. Hegel and Immanuel Kant. His current research is focused on the Danish ethicist Knud Ejler Løgstrup.

#2913

Ninomiya Sontoku

Ninomiya Sontoku

1787 - 1856 (69 years)

, also known as Ninomiya Kinjirō , was a Japanese agriculturalist. He lost his parents when he was a boy, but through hard work and diligence, he rebuilt his fallen family at the age of 20. Later, he rebuilt approximately 600 villages and became a shogunate retainer. His ideas and actions were inherited as the Hōtokusha Movement.

#2914

Leon Plantinga

#24932

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Leon B. Plantinga is an American musicologist specializing in music of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His writings have influenced scholarship on Clementi, Beethoven, and Schumann, and his textbook Romantic Music continues to serve as a standard textbook on nineteenth-century music in American universities. Having served as a faculty member of the Department of Music at Yale University from 1963 to 2005, he is now a member of the emeritus faculty. He is the brother of philosopher Alvin Plantinga and theologian Cornelius Plantinga.

#2915

Gerard Heymans

1857 - 1930 (73 years)

Gerardus Heymans was a Dutch philosopher and psychologist. From 1890 to 1927, he worked as a professor of philosophy at the University of Groningen . He also served as rector magnificus of the UG in the academic year 1908–1909. Heymans is one of the most influential philosophers of the Netherlands and the pioneer of Dutch psychology. The establishment of his psychological laboratory marked the start of experimental psychology in the Netherlands.

#2916

Swami Karpatri

1907 - 1982 (75 years)

Swami Karpatri , was born as Har Narayan Ojha into a Saryupareen Brahmin family of a village called Bhatni in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. He was a sannyasi in the Hindu Dashanami monastic tradition.

#2917

Peter Adamson

#26301

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Peter Scott Adamson is an American philosopher and intellectual historian. He holds two academic positions: professor of philosophy in late antiquity and in the Islamic world at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich; and professor of ancient and medieval philosophy at King's College London.

#2918

Félix Vallotton

Félix Vallotton

1865 - 1925 (60 years)

Félix Édouard Vallotton was a Swiss and French painter and printmaker associated with the group of artists known as . He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut. He painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in an unemotional, realistic style.

#2919

Lorenzo Valla

1407 - 1457 (50 years)

Lorenzo Valla was an Italian Renaissance humanist, rhetorician, educator and scholar. He is best known for his historical-critical textual analysis that proved that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, therefore attacking and undermining the presumption of temporal power claimed by the papacy. Lorenzo is sometimes seen as a precursor of the Reformation.

#2920

Yuen Kwok-yung

#29805

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Yuen Kwok-yung is a Hong Kong microbiologist, physician and surgeon. He is a prolific researcher, with most of his nearly 800 papers related to research on novel microbes or emerging infectious diseases. He led a team identifying the SARS coronavirus that caused the SARS pandemic of 2003–4, and traced its genetic origins to wild bats. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he has acted as expert adviser to the Hong Kong government.

#2921

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

1821 - 1881 (60 years)

Henri Frédéric Amiel was a Swiss moral philosopher, poet, and critic. Biography Born in Geneva in 1821, Amiel was descended from a Huguenot family that moved to Switzerland following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

#2922

Régis Jolivet

1891 - 1966 (75 years)

Régis Jolivet was a French philosopher and Roman Catholic priest. In 1932, he founded the school of philosophy at the Catholic University of Lyon, and was made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1961.

#2923

Zeno of Sidon

150 BC - 75 BC (75 years)

Zeno of Sidon was a Greek Epicurean philosopher from the Seleucid city of Sidon. His writings have not survived, but there are some epitomes of his lectures preserved among the writings of his pupil Philodemus.

#2924

Remigius of Auxerre

841 - 908 (67 years)

Remigius of Auxerre was a Benedictine monk during the Carolingian period, a teacher of Latin grammar, and a prolific author of commentaries on classical Greek and Latin texts. He is also accredited with collecting and compiling other early medieval thinkers' commentaries on these works.

#2925

François Poullain de la Barre

1647 - 1723 (76 years)

François Poullain de la Barre was an author, Catholic priest, and a Cartesian philosopher. Life François Poullain de la Barre was born during July 1647 in Paris, France, to a family with judicial nobility. He added "de la Barre" to his name later in life. After graduation in 1663 with a master of arts, he spent three years at the College of Sorbonne where he studied theology. In 1679, he became an ordained Catholic priest. From 1679 to 1688, he led two modest parishes, Versigny and La Flamengrie, in Picardy in northern France.

#2926

Polyaenus of Lampsacus

340 BC - 278 BC (62 years)

Polyaenus of Lampsacus , also spelled Polyenus, was an ancient Greek mathematician and a friend of Epicurus. Life He was the son of Athenodorus. His friendship with Epicurus started after the latter's escape from Mytilene in 307 or 306 BC when he opened a philosophical school at Lampsacus associating himself with other citizens of the town, like Pythocles, Colotes, and Idomeneus. With these fellow citizens he moved to Athens, where they founded a school of philosophy with Epicurus as head, or hegemon, while Polyaenus, Hermarchus and Metrodorus were kathegemones.

#2927

Michael Landmann

1913 - 1984 (71 years)

Michael Landmann was a Swiss-Jewish philosopher. Life Landmann was the son of economist Julius Landmann and philosopher Edith Landmann. Philologist Georg Peter Landmann is his brother. His parents were friends of Stefan George and were connected to the Georgekreis, a circle of writers inspired by George.

#2928

Boris Grushin

#17525

Overall Influence

1929 - 2007 (78 years)

Boris Andreevich Grushin was a well-known Soviet and Russian philosopher, sociologist and historical and sociological scientist. He is generally seen as the pioneer of public opinion polling in the Soviet Union more than thirty years before its breakup. Prominent American novelist Olga Grushin is his daughter.

#2929

Elizabeth A. Clark

#34542

Overall Influence

1938 - 2021 (83 years)

Elizabeth Ann Clark was a professor of the John Carlisle Kilgo professorship of religion at Duke University. She was notable for her work in the field of Patristics, and the teaching of ancient Christianity in US higher education. Clark expanded the study of early Christianity and was a strong advocate for women, pioneering the application of modern theories such as feminist theory, social network theory, and literary criticism to ancient sources.

#2930

Osip Gelfond

1868 - 1942 (74 years)

Osip Isaakovich Gelfond was a Russian physician and Marxist philosopher. Osip studied at the University of Paris, gaining a medical degree in 1896. He married Musia Gershevna in 1899, who had also recently graduated with a medical degree from the Sorbonne. Gelfond was friends with Anatoly Lunacharsky, Lazar Lagin and Lev Tumarkin.

#2931

Hippolyte Bernheim

Hippolyte Bernheim

1840 - 1919 (79 years)

Hippolyte Bernheim was a French physician and neurologist. He is chiefly known for his theory of suggestibility in relation to hypnotism. Life Born into a Jewish family, Bernheim received his education in his native town and at the University of Strasbourg, where he was graduated as doctor of medicine in 1867. The same year he became a lecturer at the university and established himself as a physician in the city.

#2932

Günter Ropohl

#25345

Overall Influence

1939 - 2017 (78 years)

Günter Ropohl was a German philosopher of technology. Biography Günter Ropohl studied mechanical engineering and philosophy at Stuttgart University, where he was a scholar of the philosopher Max Bense. After his PhD in 1970, he wrote his Habilitation thesis in Philosophy und Sociology at Karlsruhe University 1978 under the supervision of Hans Lenk. His work dealt with the systems theory of "Technik" , leading to the concept of general technology. In 1979, Ropohl became professor at the Universität Karlsruhe . Soon after, in 1981, he became professor for Allgemeine Technologie and philosophy of technology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany .

#2933

Moshé Machover

#16694

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Moshé Machover is a mathematician, philosopher, and socialist activist, noted for his writings against Zionism. Born to a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, Machover moved to Britain in 1968 where he became a naturalised citizen. He was a founder of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation, in 1962.

#2934

Jun Tosaka

1900 - 1945 (45 years)

was a Shōwa era Kyoto-trained Japanese intellectual, and teacher. Some identify strands of Marxism in his later philosophy. His criticisms of governments and their war policies caused him to end up in prison on various occasions.

#2935

Karl Albert

#36013

Overall Influence

1921 - 2008 (87 years)

Karl Albert was a German philosopher and professor emeritus at Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Born in Neheim, a borough of the Westphalia town of Arnsberg, Albert studied at University of Cologne and University of Bonn. His 1950 dissertation On the Aesthetics of the Sublime in German Idealism was written under the supervision of professor Erich Rothacker at University of Bonn. In the years 1952–1955 he was an assistant of Joseph Koch at Thomas-Institut in Cologne. 1958–1970 he taught philosophy at a local Gymnasium. In this period he majored in linguistics and classics. Then until 1972 he was a Lehrbeauftragter at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum.

#2936

Bartholomew Des Bosses

1668 - 1738 (70 years)

Bartholomew Des Bosses was a Jesuit theologian and philosopher, known mainly for his voluminous correspondence with Leibniz. Biography Des Bosses joined the Society of Jesus in 1686. In 1700, he taught at the Jesuit college in Emmerich, later moving to Hildesheim. He remained there until moving in 1710 to Cologne, taking up an appointment as professor of mathematics at the Jesuit college there. Apart from a stay in Paderborn in 1712 and 1713, he remained in Cologne for the rest of his life.

#2937

Trisha Brown

#8882

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers train their bodies, remains pervasively impactful within international postmodern dance.

#2938

Ricardo Maliandi

Ricardo Maliandi

#46752

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Ricardo Guillermo Maliandi Argentine writer and philosopher, devoted to ethics. He was professor in many Argentine universities and researcher in CONICET. Doctor in Philosophy for Mainz University, Germany. He received Konex Prize in 1986 for his labor on ethics.

#2939

Clodovis Boff

#28799

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Clodovis Boff is a Roman Catholic theologian, philosopher, writer and professor. Biography Clodovis Boff is grandson of Italian immigrants who arrived from Veneto region to Rio Grande do Sul in the late nineteenth century. He did his primary and secondary studies in Concordia, Rio Negro and Agudos. Boff studied philosophy in Mogi das Cruzes and obtained a doctorate in theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. As early as 1986 Clodovis Boff declared that the acquisition of Marxist categories have performed in the early stages of liberation theology an attitude of carelessness and exaggeration.

#2940

Dennis S. Charney

Dennis S. Charney

#12249

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Dennis S. Charney is an American biological psychiatrist and researcher, with expertise in the neurobiology and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. He is the author of Neurobiology of Mental Illness, The Physician's Guide to Depression and Bipolar Disorders and Molecular Biology for the Clinician, as well as the author of over 600 original papers and chapters. In 2022, he was listed #52 on Research.com's "Top Medicine Scientists in the United States," with an h-index of 194 with 146,109 citations across 651 publications. Charney is known for demonstrating that ketamine is effective for treating depression.

#2941

Martin Honecker

1888 - 1941 (53 years)

Martin Honecker was a German philosopher and psychologist. Biography The son of a businessman, he studied at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn and the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, with, among others, Adolf Dyroff. In 1914 Honecker graduated with a doctorate in the legal philosophy of Alessandro Turamini. He fought in World War I, but was captured by the French and interned in Switzerland.

#2942

Milič Čapek

#28894

Overall Influence

1909 - 1997 (88 years)

Milič Čapek, was a Czech–American philosopher. Čapek was strongly influenced by the process philosophy of Henri Bergson and to a lesser degree by Alfred North Whitehead. Much of his work was devoted to the relation of philosophy and modern physics, especially the philosophy of space and time and metaphysics.

#2943

Robert F. Almeder

#40464

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Robert F. Almeder is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgia State University. He is known in particular for his work on the philosophy of science, and has also written on the philosophy of mind, epistemology and ethics. He is the author of 24 books, including The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce , Death and Personal Survival , Harmless Naturalism: The Limits of Science and the Nature of Philosophy , Human Happiness and Morality , and Truth and Skepticism .

#2944

Pantaleo Carabellese

Pantaleo Carabellese

1877 - 1948 (71 years)

Pantaleo Carabellese was an Italian philosopher. Biography Graduated from the University of Naples with a "laurea" in history and again from the University of Rome in philosophy , Carabellese taught philosophy in Palermo, Sicily and in Rome , marrying in 1936. Having carried out a rigorous critique of Cartesianism , Carabellese completed critical studies of authors including Immanuel Kant and Antonio Rosmini . Carabellese is further known for his "critical ontology" , where Being is not the mere abstract object but the inherent and irreducible foundation of consciousness, and thus the "bei...

#2945

Feliks Koneczny

Feliks Koneczny

1862 - 1949 (87 years)

Feliks Karol Koneczny was a Polish historian, theatrical critic, librarian, journalist and social philosopher. He founded the original system of the comparative science of civilizations. Biography Koneczny was born in Kraków on 1 November 1862. His father was of Moravian origin. Koneczny's mother abandoned him at a young age while his father studied, although he had to work at a train station due to being expelled from the Jagiellonian University for partaking in the Kraków uprising.

#2946

Barbara Forrest

Barbara Forrest

#7491

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute. Biography Forrest is a graduate of Hammond High School. She received her B.A. in English in 1974 from Southeastern Louisiana University, her M.A. in Philosophy in 1978 from Louisiana State University, and her PhD in philosophy from Tulane University in 1988. She has taught philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University since 1988 and presently is a professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Political S...

#2947

Antoni Lange

1862 - 1929 (67 years)

Antoni Lange was a Polish poet, philosopher, polyglot , writer, novelist, science-writer, reporter and translator. A representative of Polish Parnassianism and symbolism, he is also regarded as belonging to the Decadent movement. He was an expert on Romanticism, French literature and a popularizer of Eastern cultures. His most popular novel is Miranda.

#2948

He Jiankui

#5894

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Areas of Specialization: Biophysics Jiankui He is a biophysics researcher, former professor at Southern University of Science and Technology, and the creator of the first gene-edited babies. He earned a BS from the University of Science and Technology of China and a PhD from Rice University. While at Rice University, he began working with CRISPR, and throughout his career, has used CRISPR on human embryos, mice and monkeys. He is the founder of two biotechnology companies, Direct Genomics and Vienomics Biotech. His most notable accomplishment, a successful gene-editing experiment, resulted in the birth of the very first gene-edited babies.

#2949

Maurice Cranston

Maurice Cranston

#17532

Overall Influence

1920 - 1993 (73 years)

Maurice William Cranston was a British philosopher, professor and author. He served for many years as Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics, and was also known for his popular publications. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was Professor of Political Theory at the European University Institute in Florence .

#2950

Ernst Bergmann

1881 - 1945 (64 years)

Ernst Bergmann was a German philosopher. In the early 1930s, he was known as the most famous German opponent of patriarchy, and after 1933, Bergmann became a leading proponent of a new pagan German religion .

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