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).

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#3051

Gregory Currie

#59024

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Gregory Paul Currie FAHA is a British philosopher and academic, known for his work on philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. Currie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of York and Executive Editor of Mind & Language.

#3052

Peter Setlow

#85280

Overall Influence

#3053

Brian Druker

#10000

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Brian J. Druker is a physician-scientist at Oregon Health & Science University , in Portland, Oregon. He is the director of OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute, JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research, Associate Dean for Oncology in the OHSU School of Medicine, and professor of medicine.

#3054

Leslie Francis

#61908

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Leslie Pickering Francis is an American philosopher, currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Law at University of Utah. Francis holds joint appointments as Alfred C. Emery professor of law and professor of philosophy, and adjunct appointments in Family and Preventive Medicine , Internal Medicine , and Political Science, at the University of Utah. She was appointed to the rank of Distinguished Professor in 2009 and became director of the University of Utah Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences in 2015. Francis was President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2015-2016.

#3055

Henri Bortoft

#32558

Overall Influence

1938 - 2012 (74 years)

Peter Henri Bortoft was a British independent researcher and teacher, lecturer and writer on physics and the philosophy of science. He is best known for his work The Wholeness of Nature, considered a relevant and original recent interpretation of Goethean science. His book Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought was published in 2012.

#3056

Christopher D. Green

#43104

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Christopher Darren Green is professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been cross-appointed to the graduate philosophy and science and technology studies programs as well. His research mostly pertains to the history of psychology, though he also writes on methodological and statistical issues in psychology.

#3057

Antonio Vidal-Puig

#16212

Overall Influence

Antonio Vidal-Puig is a Spanish medical doctor and scientist who works as a Professor of Molecular Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Cambridge , best known for advancing the concept that pharmacological targeting of brown fat may serve to treat overweight and obesity in affected individuals, as well as for introducing the concept of adipose tissue "expandability" as an important factor in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance in the context of positive energy balance. His published work focuses on areas such as adipose tissue metabolism and lipotoxicity, regulation of insulin ...

#3058

Georges Didi-Huberman

Georges Didi-Huberman

#36843

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Georges Didi-Huberman FBA is a French philosopher and art historian. Biography Georges Didi-Huberman was born on 13 June 1953 in Saint-Étienne. He has been a scholar at the French Academy in Rome and resident in the Berenson Foundation of Villa I Tatti in Florence. He teaches at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, where he has been a lecturer since 1990.

#3059

Yvanka B. Raynova

Yvanka B. Raynova

#71776

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Yvanka B. Raynova is a Bulgarian philosopher, feminist, editor, translator, and publisher. She is full professor of contemporary philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute for Axiological Research in Vienna. She elaborated a post-personalist hermeneutic phenomenology based on some gnostic ideas. Her works include studies on continental philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, axiology , feminist philosophy, intercultural philosophy, religious studies, and translation studies.

#3060

Steven Evan Nissen

#85422

Overall Influence

#3061

Willie Esterhuyse

#53653

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Willem Petrus "Willie" Esterhuyse, OLS is an emeritus professor of philosophy and business ethics at the University of Stellenbosch, a columnist and critic of the system of apartheid. Early life Willem Petrus Esterhuyse was born in 1936 in Laingsburg, Cape Province, Union of South Africa . He married Annemarie Esterhuyse, née Barnard, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Stellenbosch. They have two daughters and four sons.

#3062

Pierre Corvol

#34882

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Pierre Corvol is a French doctor and biology researcher. He was director of the Collège de France from 2006 to August 2012. Early life and education Corvol studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, France. He served as resident at academic hospitals of Paris , and spent post-doctoral research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, in 1969.

#3063

Edward F. Domino

#85485

Overall Influence

#3064

Mattias Kumm

#54392

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Mattias Kumm is Inge Rennert Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, as well as holding a Research Professorship on "Globalization and the Rule of Law" at the Social Science Research Center and Humboldt University in Berlin.

#3065

Lawrence Dade Lunsford

#85590

Overall Influence

#3066

Nadežda Čačinovič

#38408

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Nadežda Čačinovič is a Croatian philosopher, sociologist and author. She was born to Slovene parents in Budapest in 1947 where her father Rudolf Čačinovič was serving as a military attache. She graduated in philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana. She subsequently studied at the University of Bonn from 1968 to 1970 where her father was serving as ambassador of Yugoslavia to West Germany. She obtained a doctorate and became a professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, being employed there ...

#3067

Ranjana Khanna

#28803

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Ranjana Khanna is a literary critic and theorist recognized for her interdisciplinary, feminist and internationalist contributions to the fields of post-colonial studies, feminist theory, literature and political philosophy. She is best known for her work on melancholia and psychoanalysis, but has also published extensively on questions of post-colonial agency, film, Algeria, area studies, autobiography, Marxism, the visual and feminist theory. She received her Ph.D in 1993 from the University of York. She has taught at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of Utah, and...

#3068

Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas Christakis

#29717

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Nicholas A. Christakis is a Greek-American sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of human welfare . He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.

#3069

Krzysztof Pomian

Krzysztof Pomian

#36421

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Krzysztof Pomian , is a Polish philosopher, historian and essayist. He is a professor of history at the Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika in Toruń and, in 2001, was academic director of the Museum of Europe in Brussels.

#3070

Jean‐charles Fruchart

#85654

Overall Influence

#3071

Kenneth L. Davis

#85658

Overall Influence

#3072

Páll Skúlason

#32261

Overall Influence

1945 - 2015 (70 years)

Páll Skúlason was a professor of philosophy and former Rector of the University of Iceland. Born and raised in Akureyri, in northern Iceland, Páll Skúlason graduated from highschool in 1965. He studied philosophy at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, earning a BA in 1967 and a doctorate in 1973. His doctoral dissertation, Du cercle et du Sujet: problème de compréhension et de méthode dans la Philosophie de Paul Ricœur, considered the philosophy of French philosopher Paul Ricœur.

#3073

Alan M. Olson

#69638

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Alan M. Olson is a Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Emeritus, at Boston University. He received his degrees from Saint Olaf College , Luther Theological Seminary , Nashotah House, where he studied with Arthur Anton Vogel, and Boston University where he studied with Peter Anthony Bertocci, Erazim Kohak, Harold H. Oliver and John N. Findlay. He served as Chairman of the Religion Department at Boston University, 1980–1987, and Chairman of the Philosophy Department, ad interim, 1987-1989. During the 1970s he was Program Coordinator of the Boston University Institute for Philosophy and Religion; and was Executive Director of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy in Boston, 1998.

#3074

Stefan Gandler

#55824

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Stefan Gandler is a philosopher and social scientist. He studied at Frankfurt University and has lived in Mexico since 1993 Life Gandler studied Philosophy, Latin American studies, Romance Languages and Literatures and Political science in Frankfurt/Main, among others with Alfred Schmidt, and he was the Chairman of the Frankfurt General Students' Committee in 1989/90.

#3075

Anita Avramides

Anita Avramides

#82591

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Anita Avramides is a British philosopher whose work focuses on the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of the mind. She is a reader at the University of Oxford, based at St. Hilda's College, where she is Southover Manor Trust Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy. Since 2014, she has served as Vice Chair of the Philosophy Faculty at Oxford.

#3076

Wang Ruoshui

#60454

Overall Influence

1926 - 2002 (76 years)

Wang Ruoshui , was a Chinese journalist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was born in Shanghai, and graduated from Peking University with a degree in philosophy. After working at the People's Daily for over three decades, Wang was expelled from the party in 1987 during the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign, largely due to his long-standing vocal advocacy of Marxist humanism that led to the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983. After his exile from the party, he went to United States as a visiting scholar to continue his research. Wang was known as a major exponent of Marxist h...

#3077

Chris Atton

#37384

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Dr Christopher Frank Atton is the retired Professor of Media and Culture in the School of Arts and Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University. His work focuses on Alternative Media where his contribution has concentrated on the notion of alternative media not as an essentialised political position but as a set of socio-cultural processes that redraw the boundaries of expert culture and media power. His research interests include popular music, the creative economy, infoshops, and teaching and learning in higher education. Atton has also written on censorship and media ethics.

#3078

Martha Klein

#74030

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Martha Klein is a philosopher, specialising in the intersection of the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy, and especially in the question of the freedom of the will. After a period as lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford, Klein was elected a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford; she retired in 2006. Her research interests are in free will, moral responsibility and moral psychology.

#3079

Thierry Poynard

#85947

Overall Influence

#3080

Brian O'Shaughnessy

Brian O'Shaughnessy

#62464

Overall Influence

1925 - 2010 (85 years)

Brian Joseph O'Shaughnessy was an Australian philosopher of mind, who lived in London and taught at King's College London. He published papers on the nature of physical action and the will, at a time when this was quite unfashionable.

#3081

Hiroo Ed. Imura

#86008

Overall Influence

#3082

Yuriko Saito

#73566

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Yuriko Saito is a retired Japanese-American philosopher specializing in aesthetics, including wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy of appreciating transience and imperfection. She is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design .

#3083

Jean Lacoste

#66853

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jean Lacoste is a French-German philosopher, scholar and essayist. He is known for his research on Nietzsche, Goethe, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Cassirer. He is currently a philosophy professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

#3084

William J. Jagust

#86059

Overall Influence

#3085

Daniela Vallega-Neu

#82187

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Daniela Vallega-Neu is a German philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. She is known for her expertise on hermeneutics, deconstruction and Heidegger's thought. Books Heidegger’s Poietic Writings: From Contributions to Philosophy to The Event, Indiana University Press, 2018The Bodily Dimension in Thinking, SUNY Press, 2005Heidegger’s ‘Contributions to Philosophy.’ An Introduction, Indiana University Press, 2003Die Notwendigkeit der Gründung im Zeitalter der Dekonstruktion: Zur Gründung in Heideggers 'Beiträgen zur Philosophie'; unter Hinzuziehung der Derridaschen ...

#3086

David Magnus

#71241

Overall Influence

David Magnus is the Thomas A. Raffin Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Ethics and professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and the co-chair of the Ethics Committee at Stanford Hospital.

#3087

Michele Moody-Adams

#75252

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Michele Moody-Adams is an American philosopher and academic administrator. Between July 1, 2009, and September 2011, she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia University. She was the first woman and first African-American to hold the post. She has since resigned as dean, citing the decreasing autonomy of Columbia College. She remains a faculty member in the department of philosophy. In 2021, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#3088

Roopika Risam

#30022

Overall Influence

Roopika Risam is an associate professor of film and media studies and of comparative literature and faculty in the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement cluster at Dartmouth College. She is a scholar of digital and postcolonial humanities.

#3089

Shahbudin H. Rahimtoola

#86173

Overall Influence

#3090

Patrick O. Brown

Patrick O. Brown

#81230

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Patrick O'Reilly Brown is an American scientist and businessman who is the founder of Impossible Foods Inc. and professor emeritus in the department of biochemistry at Stanford University. Brown is co-founder of the Public Library of Science, inventor of the DNA microarray, and a former investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

#3091

Myron S. Cohen

#61380

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

For the American comedian and raconteur, see Myron Cohen. Myron Scott Cohen is an American physician-scientist who has made substantial contributions to our understanding of the transmission prevention of transmission of HIV. He is best known as chief architect of HIV Prevention Trials Network 052, a large-scale randomized clinical trial which demonstrated proof-of-concept for “treatment as prevention”: treating an HIV-infected person with antiviral drugs makes them less contagious and prevents transmission to their sexual partners. Cohen is J. Herbert Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#3092

Johannes. Ring

#86206

Overall Influence

#3093

George P. Fletcher

#16937

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

George P. Fletcher is the Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University School of Law. Fletcher attended Cornell University from 1956 to 1959, studying mathematics and Russian. He received a B.A. in 1960 from University of California, Berkeley and his J.D. in 1964 from the University of Chicago. He studied at the University of Freiburg from 1964 to 1965 and received a Masters in Comparative Law in 1965 from the University of Chicago. He taught at the law schools of the University of Florida, University of Washington, and Boston College and then UCLA, from 1969 to 1983. Since then ...

#3094

Kenneth G. Shelburne Mann

#86224

Overall Influence

#3095

James E. Faulconer

#62994

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

James E. Faulconer is an American philosopher, a former Richard L. Evans Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University, the former director of BYU's London Centre, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institution , and a senior research fellow at the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He previously served as the dean of undergraduate education and the chair of the Philosophy Department at BYU.

#3096

James G. Herman

#26106

Overall Influence

James Gordon Herman is an American oncologist. Herman studied chemistry at Hope College and earned a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Duke University in 1992, and a fellowship in medical oncology at Johns Hopkins in 1996. Herman then became associate professor of oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, and later the UPMC Endowed Chair for Lung Cancer Research at the University of Pittsburgh.

#3097

Roque Ferriols

#70620

Overall Influence

1924 - 2021 (97 years)

Roque Angel Jamias Ferriols was a Filipino Jesuit and philosopher known for pioneering the use of Tagalog in philosophizing. Ferriols' efforts are intimately linked to the broader Filipinization movement of the late 1960s to 1970s, a period marked by a shift toward the indigenization of knowledge production. His body of work is also influential to the development of phenomenological thought in the Philippines, in particular, in its interest in philosophizing lived experience.

#3098

Curt D. Furberg

#86328

Overall Influence

#3099

Colin Radford

#69938

Overall Influence

1935 - 2001 (66 years)

Colin John Radford was an English philosopher who worked primarily in aesthetics but had interests in a wide variety of philosophical topics. He is best known for describing the paradox of fiction in the 1975 essay "How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?" and developing the paradox in a number of subsequent essays.

#3100

Masashi Yanagisawa

#31044

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

is a Japanese-American molecular biologist and physician, famous for his discovery of the hormone endothelin and the neuropeptide orexin, the absence of which is the cause of narcolepsy. He is currently the Director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, University of Tsukuba, and an adjunct professor at the Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

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