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,

#3351

John Nathan

#7308

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

John Weil Nathan is an American translator, writer, scholar, filmmaker, and Japanologist. His translations from Japanese into English include the works of Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburō Ōe, Kōbō Abe, and Natsume Sōseki. Nathan is also an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and director of many films about Japanese culture and society and American business. He is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#3352

Giuliano Toraldo di Francia

#42990

Overall Influence

1916 - 2011 (95 years)

Giuliano Toraldo di Francia was an Italian physicist and philosopher, known mainly for his experimental and theoretical studies in optics. Biography He was the son of the geographer and general Orazio Toraldo di Francia. After his high school studies he graduated in physics at the University of Florence in 1940 with Nello Carrara, of whom he soon became assistant at the Institute of Physics. At the same time, he carried out research activities at the National Institute of Optics in Arcetri, then directed by Vasco Ronchi. After the war, he worked at the Ducati optical research center in Bologn...

#3353

William R. Schroeder

#81260

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

William Ralph Schroeder is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is known for his expertise on continental philosophy and ethics. He has authored several books about philosophy.

#3354

Joel Moss

#91203

Overall Influence

#3355

Azeem Majeed

#14805

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Azeem Majeed is a Professor and Head of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College, London, as well as a general practitioner in South London and a consultant in public health. In the most recent UK University Research Excellence Framework results , Imperial College London was the highest ranked university in the UK for the quality of research in the “Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care” unit of assessment.

#3356

Shaul G. Massry

#91256

Overall Influence

#3357

Karl Widerquist

#26419

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Karl Widerquist is an American political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University in their campus in Qatar. He is best known as an advocate of basic income, but is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism, right-libertarianism, social contract theory, and the belief that modern societies fulfill the Lockean proviso.

#3358

Archie J. Bahm

#40949

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Archie John Bahm was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico. Biography Bahm served as Acting Chair of the University of New Mexico's Department of Philosophy from 1954 to 1955 and again from 1964 to 1965. He was a member of numerous committees to support and promote the exchange of philosophical ideas and organized the Albuquerque Chapter of the Southwestern Regional American Humanist Association in 1954. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. He was also an organizer, past president, and past secretary-treasurer of the New Mexico Phi...

#3359

Jack Tuszyński

#10910

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Jack Tuszyński is a Polish professor of oncology and physicist. Biography Tuszyński graduated with a master's degree in physics from the University of Poznan in 1980 and obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics three years later from the University of Calgary. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the chemistry department the same year. From 1983 to 1988 he worked at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, then worked in the same department at the University of Alberta for two years. From 1990 to 1993 he was promoted to associate, then full professor, and as of 2005 became Allard Chair of the Cross Cancer Institute.

#3360

Heidi Ravven

#46063

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Heidi M. Ravven is the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies at Hamilton College, where she has taught her specialization, Jewish Philosophy, and general Jewish Studies since 1983. She is a Fellow in Neurophilosophy of the Integrative Neurosciences Research Program, which is co-directed by Vilayanur Ramachandran and Kjell Fuxe. She has been appointed Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the School of Marxism at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China, for 2017-20.

#3361

Miguel León-Portilla

Miguel León-Portilla

#5854

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Miguel León-Portilla was a Mexican anthropologist and historian, specializing in Aztec culture and literature of the pre-Columbian and colonial eras. Many of his works were translated to English and he was a well-recognized scholar internationally. In 2013, the Library of Congress of the United States bestowed on him the Living Legend Award.

#3362

Hartmut Winkler

#56401

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Hartmut Winkler has been a professor of Media Studies, Media Theory and Media Arts at the University of Paderborn in Germany since April 1999. Winkler is influential in the field of digital media. His works include Switching/Zapping , Film Theory, Der Filmische Raum und der Zuschauer and Computers and Media Theory, Docuverse . Another one of his works is "Search Engines: Metamedia on the Internet?" , where he attempts to explain how a search engine is a black box, that is, he tries to show that the system of input and output many viewers use is not a legitimate neutral source. He also discus...

#3363

David Satcher

#2592

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

David Satcher, is an American physician, and public health administrator. He was a four-star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and served as the 10th Assistant Secretary for Health, and the 16th Surgeon General of the United States.

#3364

Clare Palmer

#78013

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Clare Palmer is a British philosopher, theologian and scholar of environmental and religious studies. She is known for her work on environmental and animal ethics. She was appointed as a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas A&M University in 2010. She had previously held academic appointments at the Universities of Greenwich, Stirling, and Lancaster in the United Kingdom, and Washington University in St. Louis in the United States, among others.

#3365

René Schérer

#23524

Overall Influence

1922 - 2023 (101 years)

René Schérer was a French philosopher and professor emeritus of the universite de Paris VIII. Biography Schérer was born in Tulle on 25 November 1922. He is the younger brother of filmmaker Éric Rohmer . He was Guy Hocquenghem's teacher and lover, with whom he co-wrote two books. In 2007, then aged 85, he commented on the history of his life and his work in an interview with Geoffroy de Lagasnerie: After all: interviews on an intellectual life, published by Cartouche.

#3366

S. Matthew Liao

S. Matthew Liao

#73060

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

S. Matthew Liao is an American philosopher specializing in bioethics and normative ethics. He is internationally known for his work on topics including children’s rights and human rights, novel reproductive technologies, neuroethics, and the ethics of artificial intelligence. Liao currently holds the Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics, and is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He has previously held appointments at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Princeton.

#3367

César Rendueles

César Rendueles

#73666

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

César Rendueles is a Spanish sociologist and essayist. Life Although born in Girona, he grew up in Gijon and lives in Madrid. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, was an associate professor at the Carlos III University and visiting professor at the National University of Colombia. He currently teaches sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a founding member of the cultural intervention group Ladinamo, which edited the magazine of the same name. He directed cultural projects for eight years at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He often writes on epistemology, political phi...

#3368

Tomáš Halík

#9018

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Tomáš Halík is a Czech Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian. He is a professor of sociology at the Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish by St. Salvator Church in Prague, and president of the Czech Christian Academy.

#3369

Denis Buican

#17734

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Denis Buican is a Romanian-French scientist, bilingual writer, biologist, philosopher and a historian of science. He has studied genetics. Background His father Dumitru Peligrad a boyar and philanthropist was placed under house arrest after the invasion of Romania by the Red Army , but he refused to submit to regular police checks. Although belonging to a class deemed "unhealthy" by the then communist regime, the young researcher was a brilliant undergraduate at the University of Bucharest.

#3370

Torben Grodal

#64042

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Torben Grodal is an author and professor emeritus of Film and Media studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Grodal was born on 25 January 1943 in Holbæk, Denmark. Career Grodal studied literature at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He was hired as an assistant professor in the Literature Department after he finished his studies. For many years he was a professor of literature at the University of Copenhagen. Grodal became a professor of Film and Media studies after this new department was created at the University of Copenhagen. In 2013 Torben Grodal retired and became a p...

#3371

Jerome Paul Kassirer

#91653

Overall Influence

#3372

John J. McDermott

#54647

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

John Joseph McDermott was an American philosopher and a professor at Texas A&M University. He was a distinguished professor at Texas A&M since 1981 and held the Melbern G. Glasscock Chair in the Humanities.

#3373

Allegra de Laurentiis

#79344

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Allegra de Laurentiis is a European philosopher, educated at the Universities of Rome, Tübingen and Frankfurt, who has been teaching at American universities since 1987. She is now a Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. She is known for her works on philosophy of Hegel.

#3374

Michael R. Hayden

Michael R. Hayden

#37928

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Michael R. Hayden, is a Killam Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, the highest honour UBC can confer on any faculty member. Only four such awards have ever been conferred in the Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Hayden is also Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine. Hayden is best known for his research in Huntington disease .

#3375

Merton Sandler,

#91719

Overall Influence

#3376

Michael Berenbaum

#6102

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and filmmaker, who specializes in the study of the Holocaust. He served as deputy director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust , Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute .

#3377

Michael Peters

#83828

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Michael Adrian Peters is a New Zealand education academic. He is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

#3378

Jan Deckers

#66554

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Jan Deckers works in bioethics at Newcastle University. His work revolves mainly around three topics: animal ethics, reproductive ethics and embryo research, and genetics. Animal ethics Deckers has published numerous articles in animal ethics, mainly on the ethical issues associated with the human consumption of animal products. This topic has been approached from various angles, including its connections with the causation of harm to animals, environmental degradation, climate change, and the emergence and spread of zoonoses. Early work also considered the relevance of the philosophy of Alfr...

#3379

Werner Hacke

#91771

Overall Influence

#3380

Nathan Widder

#65310

Overall Influence

Nathan Widder is an American-born political philosopher whose work engages with the history of Western political thought and philosophy, contemporary Continental philosophy, and feminist political theory.

#3381

James F. Ross

#80374

Overall Influence

1931 - 2010 (79 years)

James Francis Ross was an American philosopher. James Ross, a creative thinker in philosophy of religion, law, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, was a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1962 until his death. He published widely.

#3382

Igor Douven

#81305

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Igor Douven a philosopher, cognitive psychologist and formal epistemologist, known for coordinating the research group Formal Epistemology: Foundations and Applications at the KU Leuven. In 2010 he became Endowed Chair in philosophy at the University of Groningen. In 2013, he joined the "Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies" research group at Paris 8 University.

#3383

Jean-Jacques Pelletier

#56484

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jean-Jacques Pelletier is a French Canadian philosophy professor and author. Pelletier was a long-time philosophy teacher with the Lévis-Lauzon post-secondary school, but is best known in several media as an author of French-language thrillerss, some of which have an element of fantasy. Many of his works have received critical acclaim, as his short story "La Bouche barbelée" won a CBC/Radio-Canada contest in 1993.

#3384

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron

#58758

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron is a French Roman Catholic philosopher. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Poitiers and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is the author of many books about Bergson and Hegel. He is an expert on spiritualism.

#3385

Marc E. Rothenberg

#89367

Overall Influence

Marc E. Rothenberg is an American physician-scientist who has made significant contributions to the fields of allergy, gastroenterology, and immunology. He is currently a Professor of Pediatrics, at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, the Director of the Division of Allergy and Immunology, the Director of the Cincinnati Center for Eosinophilic Disorders, and the principal investigator of the Consortium of Eosinophilic Disease Researchers as part of the Rare Disease Clinical Research Network of the National Institute of Health. ...

#3386

John Goligher

#75380

Overall Influence

1922 - 1998 (76 years)

John Cedric Goligher was a British surgeon who specialised in diseases of the rectum and colon and in coloproctology. He was "renowned worldwide" and had "a national and international reputation" He is considered to have been "one of the preeminent clinical investigative surgeons" of his time.

#3387

Alan White

#40651

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Alan White is an American philosopher and Mark Hopkins Professor of Philosophy at Williams College. He was a president of the Metaphysical Society of America . Education and career Alan White received his B.A. from Tulane University in 1972, followed by a M.A. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1976 and 1980 respectively under the direction of Stanley H. Rosen and Thomas Seebohm. He then took up visiting professor positions at Davidson College and East Tennessee State University before joining the faculty of The New School for Social Research in 1982 as Assistant Professor of Philosophy.

#3388

Jeffrey M. Isner

#91948

Overall Influence

#3389

Mihai Gheorghiade

#91949

Overall Influence

#3390

Frode Alfson Bjørdal

Frode Alfson Bjørdal

#71497

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Frode Alfson Bjørdal is philosophy professor emeritus at the University of Oslo, Norway. Education Bjørdal did his undergraduate studies in philosophy, logic, mathematics and economics at the University of Bergen, Norway, and was a DAAD-Stipendiat at the Johan Wolfgang von Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1985/86. He studied philosophy at University of California, Santa Barbara, United States, from 1988 to 1992, and got his PhD from there in 1993.

#3391

Aldo Gargani

#52822

Overall Influence

1933 - 2009 (76 years)

Aldo Giorgio Gargani was an Italian philosopher. He studied philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Oxford University, and Queen's College. He was professor of Aesthetics and History of Philosophy at the University of Pisa.

#3392

Robert C. Bast Jr.

#92001

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Robert Clinton Bast Jr., is an American physician-scientist who is currently Vice President for Translational Research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Bast is best known for the discovery of CA125, a serum biomarker for ovarian cancer that has contributed to the care of ovarian cancer patients worldwide. His research spans early detection, enhancing chemotherapy and understanding regulation of dormancy and the role of autophagy in breast and ovarian cancer.

#3393

Marietta Stepanyants

Marietta Stepanyants

#72895

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Marietta Stepanyants is a Russian philosopher, the founder and the Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in “Philosophy in the Dialogue of Cultures” and the Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. She is an Honored Scholar of the Russian Federation and an active member of the Academy of Humanities since 1995.

#3394

Joe Leigh Simpson

#92042

Overall Influence

#3395

Kiarina Kordela

#70150

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

A. Kiarina Kordela Career From 2010 to 2017 Kordela was an Honorary Adjunct Professor at the Writing and Society Research Center, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her research combines philosophy, political theory, psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory and literature, analysis of culture and ideology, intellectual history, and biopolitics.

#3396

Massimo Cacciari

#57684

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Massimo Cacciari is an Italian philosopher, politician and public intellectual. Biography Born in Venice, Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua , where he also received his doctorate, writing a thesis on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. In 1985, he became professor of Aesthetics at the Architecture Institute of Venice. In 2002, he founded the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, where he was appointed Dean of the Department in 2005. Cacciari has founded several philosophical reviews and published essays centered on the ...

#3397

Frederick G. Hayden

#92089

Overall Influence

#3398

Luciano Gattinoni

#92126

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

#3399

Vincent O'Keefe

#24089

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Father Vincent O'Keefe S.J. was the Vicar General of the Society of Jesus and a President of Fordham University. Biography In 1981 the order's superior general, Pedro Arrupe, suffered a stroke. O'Keefe was appointed Vicar General to guide the Jesuits as they began the process of selecting a new General. The pope, in a highly unusual and historic decision, intervened and appointed instead Jesuit Father Paolo Dezza as a special pontifical delegate to serve as the Jesuits' interim leader.

#3400

Diego Bubbio

#87257

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Paolo Diego Bubbio is an Italian philosopher and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is known for his research on post-Kantian philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of religion . He is the editor of the "Contemporary Studies in Idealism" book series for Lexington Books.

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