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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#3301

John Wahren

#90126

Overall Influence

#3302

Mark I. Wallace

#36184

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Mark Irvy Wallace is an American Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College, where he teaches courses on religion, environmental studies, and Interpretation theory. A self-described "Christian Animist", his teaching and research interests focus on the intersections between Christian theology, critical theory, environmental studies, and postmodernism as a part of the field of ecological theology. Through his work he seeks to "bring together biblical faith and the liberal arts."

#3303

Ludwig Finscher

#26095

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Ludwig Finscher was a German musicologist. He was a professor of music history at the University of Heidelberg from 1981 to 1995 and editor of the encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He is respected internationally as an authority on the history of Western Classical music from the 16th century to contemporary classical music, with a view on music in cultural, social, historical and philosophical context, in a clear language for both specialists and lay readers.

#3304

Arnold M. Katz

#90258

Overall Influence

#3305

Floris van den Berg

Floris van den Berg

#70511

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Floris van den Berg is a Dutch philosopher and author , mostly known for his atheism campaign in the Netherlands. Activities Van den Berg was raised in a liberal Catholic home, but became an atheist activist as an adult.

#3306

Hendrik Hart

#27933

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Hendrik Hart , often known as Henk Hart, was a Dutch-Canadian philosopher based in Toronto. History Hendrik Hart taught systematic philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, since its founding in 1967 until his retirement in 2001. Prior to that he was head of the philosophical Institute of the Free University in Amsterdam, where he studied under D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. His doctoral dissertation was written on the topic of John Dewey's theory of verification and was supervised by Dutch philosopher S. U. Zuidema.

#3307

Dennis J. Schmidt

#84073

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dennis Joseph Schmidt is an American philosopher living in Sydney, Australia where he is Research Professor and chair at Western Sydney University. Prior to moving to Sydney in 2015, he taught at Binghamton University , Villanova University , and Penn State University . He is known for his research on ancient Greek philosophy and literature, post-Kantian philosophy, hermeneutics and philosophy of art. He received his PhD in philosophy from the Boston College in 1982.

#3308

John W. Yolton

#51250

Overall Influence

1921 - 2005 (84 years)

John W. Yolton was an American historian of philosophy. He taught at Rutgers University from 1978 to 1992, and was a dean from 1978 to 1985. He authored or edited 15 books, several of which were about John Locke.

#3309

Kurt Rudolf Fischer

#47501

Overall Influence

1922 - 2014 (92 years)

Kurt Rudolf Fischer was a Jewish-Austrian philosopher who emigrated to Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1938 and to Shanghai in 1940. He was born in Vienna. He became Chinese boxing champion and started studying philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley after World War II, where he made friends with Paul Feyerabend. From 1967 to 1980 he was professor at Millersville University of Pennsylvania in Millersville, Pennsylvania. From 1979 - 2008 he was honorary professor at the University of Vienna.

#3310

John Bienenstock

#90320

Overall Influence

#3311

Douglas L. Mann

#84359

Overall Influence

Douglas L. Mann is an American physician. He is currently the Lewin Distinguished Professor in Cardiovascular Diseases and professor of medicine, cell biology and physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

#3312

Christopher Heath Wellman

#69083

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Christopher “Kit” Heath Wellman is an American philosopher. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is also dean of academic planning for Arts & Sciences. He is best known for his distinctive views on core questions in political theory, including political legitimacy, secession, the duty to obey the law, immigration, and the permissibility of punishment.

#3313

Peter Francis Buckley

#90410

Overall Influence

#3314

James Olen Armitage

#90418

Overall Influence

#3315

Sharyn Clough

#65855

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Sharyn Clough is professor of philosophy at Oregon State University. Her teaching and research specialties focus on public philosophy, Peace Literacy, philosophy of science, social epistemology, contemporary pragmatism, and feminist theory.

#3316

André R. Capron

#90462

Overall Influence

#3317

Delia Graff Fara

#76935

Overall Influence

1969 - 2017 (48 years)

Delia Ruby Graff Fara was an American philosopher who was professor of philosophy at Princeton University. She specialized in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. Early life Fara's mother was African-American and her father was of Irish and Jewish ancestry. She was raised by her mother as a single parent in New York after her father died when she was a child.

#3318

Henri Wald

#61576

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Henri "Ricu" Wald , also known as Henry Wald, was a Romanian professor, philosopher, logician, and essayist. Early life Wald was born to a family of small merchants in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Wald first became interested in philosophy at age sixteen, during a lecture given by one of his teachers. He was forced to leave high school in 1940 due to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws. Thus, Wald studied at a private college for Jewish students.

#3319

David W. Golde

#90523

Overall Influence

#3320

Tony Milligan

#76525

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Tony Milligan is a Scottish philosopher who is currently a Senior Researcher in the Philosophy of Ethics with the Cosmological Visionaries project at King's College London. Much of his research concerns the ethics of human attitudes towards outer space, but he has a broader concern with otherness: other people, other places, other creatures, and political opponents. Publications range across Iris Murdoch, the philosophy of love, animal ethics, space policy and civil disobedience.

#3321

Carlos Pérez Soto

Carlos Pérez Soto

#61140

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Carlos Pérez Soto is a Chilean teacher of physics, lecturer at various universities and a social sciences researcher. He is the author of several works covering a wide range of topics: philosophy of science and epistemology, political philosophy and Marxism, Dance History, anti-psychiatry.

#3322

Juan Arnau

#55527

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Juan Arnau , Spanish philosopher and essayist, a specialist in Eastern philosophies and religions. Biography After a few years working as a sailor and several trips to Africa, Juan Arnau studied Astrophysics at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he graduated in 1994.

#3323

Ron Mittler

#90582

Overall Influence

#3324

Thomas Platts-Mills

Thomas Platts-Mills

#53744

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Thomas Alexander Evelyn Platts-Mills, FRS son of British member of parliament and barrister John Platts-Mills, is a British allergy researcher and director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

#3325

Christine Tappolet

#71484

Overall Influence

Christine Tappolet is a philosopher, academic, and author. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Montreal, and has authored and edited several books including, Emotions, Values, and Agency, and Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction.

#3326

V'incent Marks

#90659

Overall Influence

#3327

Bruce Charlton

#16590

Overall Influence

Bruce Graham Charlton is a retired British medical doctor who was Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham. Until April 2019, he was Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at Newcastle University. Charlton was editor of the controversial and not-conventionally-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses from 2003 to 2010.

#3328

Rosalyn Diprose

#49160

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Rosalyn Diprose is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at University of New South Wales. A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney, The University of Sydney and UNSW Sydney, she is known for her research on ethics, embodiment, generosity and cultural difference.

#3329

Alfred Sommer

#12108

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Alfred Sommer is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin A deficient children with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year reduces child mortality by as much as 34 percent. The World Bank and the Copenhagen Consensus list vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective health interventions in the world.

#3330

Johan F. A. K. Van Benthem

#90723

Overall Influence

#3331

William R. Markesbery

#90736

Overall Influence

#3332

Theodore A. Slotkin

#90743

Overall Influence

#3333

Wim Blok

#74034

Overall Influence

1947 - 2003 (56 years)

Willem Johannes "Wim" Blok was a Dutch logician who made major contributions to algebraic logic, universal algebra, and modal logic. His important achievements over the course of his career include "a brilliant demonstration of the fact that various techniques and results that originated in universal algebra can be used to prove significant and deep theorems in modal logic."

#3334

Christine Seidman

Christine Seidman

#65676

Overall Influence

Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.

#3335

Edward Stinson

#65231

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Edward B. Stinson is an American retired cardiothoracic surgeon living in Los Altos, United States, who assisted Norman Shumway in America's first adult human-to-human heart transplantation on 6 January 1968 at Stanford University.

#3336

Kerry Courneya

#86635

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Kerry Stephen Courneya is a Canadian kinesiologist. As a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Cancer at the University of Alberta, his research focuses on physical activity after a cancer diagnosis .

#3337

Mpho Tshivhase

#71857

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (38 years)

#3338

John Butler Mulliken

#90848

Overall Influence

#3339

Vilhjálmur Árnason

#42864

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Vilhjálmur Árnason is professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland. Internationally, he is best known for his research on ethical aspects of controversial genetic research in Iceland by deCODE Genetics.

#3340

Adrian William Moore

Adrian William Moore

#58660

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Adrian William Moore is a British philosopher and broadcaster. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and tutorial fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. His main areas of interest are Kant, Wittgenstein, history of philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic and language, ethics and philosophy of religion.

#3341

Marcia Citron

#16276

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Marcia Judith Citron is an American professor of musicology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is a leading musicologist specializing in issues regarding women and gender, opera and film. Life and career Marcia Citron graduated from Brooklyn College with a BA in 1966 and from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an MA in 1968 and a PhD in 1971. She has been recognized with the Martha and Henry Malcolm Lovett Distinguished Service Professor of Musicology award, and has received grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic and Exchange Service and Rice University.

#3342

Stanley Perlman

#89124

Overall Influence

Stanley Marc Perlman is an American microbiologist and coronavirus researcher. He is professor of microbiology and immunology, professor of pediatrics, and the Mark Stinski Chair in Virology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. He has been researching coronaviruses for 38 years. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and a member of the American Society for Microbiology.

#3343

Joseph Kerman

#15630

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Joseph Wilfred Kerman was an American musicologist and music critic. Among the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field". He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

#3344

Michael W. Holmes

#23438

Overall Influence

Michael W. Holmes is the former Chair of the Department of Biblical and Theological Studies at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota and has taught at Bethel since 1982. Life Holmes received a BA in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara , an MA in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School , and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary . He did his PhD work under Bruce Metzger, who was widely considered to be one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century. Holmes' primary research areas are in New Testament textual criticism and the A...

#3345

Piotr Ponikowski

#45948

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Piotr Ponikowski is a Polish cardiologist, Professor of Medical Sciences, Vice-Rector of the Wrocław Medical University and Head of the Polish Cardiological Society . His scientific interests include research on heart failure, coronary heart disease and heart arrhythmia.

#3346

Samuel Berkovic

#71808

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Professor Samuel Frank Berkovic is an Australian neurologist and Laureate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne and Director of the Epilepsy Research Centre at Austin Health.

#3347

Ren Jiyu

#46759

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Ren Jiyu in Pingyuan County, Shandong Province was a philosopher, scholar in religious studies, historian, member of the Chinese Communist Party, and honorary director of the National Library of China. He died at 4:30 on July 11, 2009, in Beijing, at the age of 93.

#3348

J. Ukka T. Salonen

#91056

Overall Influence

#3349

William Irwin

#52700

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

William Irwin is Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and is best known for originating the "philosophy and popular culture" book genre with Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing in 1999 and The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer in 2001.

#3350

Bruno Pinchard

#78924

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Bruno Pinchard is a French writer and scholar, PhD, and professor of philosophy. Early life and career Bruno Pinchard was born into a family of musicians. His father is the composer Max Pinchard who gave him a musical education himself.

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