The Most Influential People Across History
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
Lars Gyllensten
#11217
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Lars Johan Wictor Gyllensten was a Swedish author and physician, and a member of the Swedish Academy. Gyllensten was born and grew up in a middle-class family in Stockholm, son of Carl Gyllensten and Ingrid Rangström, and nephew of Ture Rangström. He studied at the Karolinska Institute, becoming a doctor of medicine in 1953, and was an associate professor of histology there from 1955 to 1973.
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Joyce Mitchell Cook
#46121
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
Joyce Mitchell Cook was an American philosopher. She was the first African American woman to receive a PhD in philosophy in the United States. After earning that degree from Yale University, she was the first female teaching assistant allowed at the university. She went on to teach at Wellesley College, Connecticut College, Howard University. She served for several years as an analyst for African affairs at the State Department in Washington, D.C.
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Peter Caws
#30088
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Peter J. Caws was a British American philosopher and administrator, and University Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Human Sciences at the George Washington University. Biography Peter Caws was born in Southall, Middlesex, England in 1931. He received his B.Sc. in Physics at the University of London in 1952, and his PGCE in 1953. In 1953 he emigrated to the US and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Yale University in 1956.
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Martti Olavi Siirala
#23406
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Martti Olavi Siirala was a Finnish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and philosopher. He was inspired by psychoanalysis, the anthropological medicine of Viktor von Weizsäcker and the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The outcome was a unique synthesis theory that Siirala called social pathology.
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Jindřich Zelený
#40036
Overall Influence
1922 - 1997 (75 years)
Jindřich Zelený was a Czech philosopher and the author of several books. Early years He was born in Bítovany in 1922 and attended school in Chrudim and Hradec Králové. In 1948, Zeleny received a Ph.D. in philosophy and sociology from Charles University in Prague.
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K. N. Jayatilleke
1920 - 1970 (50 years)
Kulatissa Nanda Jayatilleke was an internationally recognised authority on Buddhist philosophy whose book Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge has been described as "an outstanding philosophical interpretation of the Buddha's teaching" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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François Raffoul
#52124
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
François Raffoul is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Retired Professor of Philosophy and French Studies at Louisiana State University. He is known for his works on continental thought.
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Eleuterio Ferrannini
#59519
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
#3359
Juha Varto
#48077
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Juha Varto is a Finnish philosopher, considered the most important phenomenologist in Finland, known also for his prolific output on a variety of philosophical themes. Since 1999 he has been professor of research in visual art and education at the Aalto University School of Art and Design, Helsinki. Before that he taught research methodology and acted as director of research in various Finnish universities and polytechnics and before that taught philosophy at the University of Tampere . During the 1990s Varto produced over 100 programmes for Finnish radio and television, mainly dealing with philosophical questions.
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April DeConick
#16177
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
April D. DeConick is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She came to Rice University as a full professor in 2006, after receiving tenure at Illinois Wesleyan University in 2004. DeConick is the author of several books in the field of Early Christian Studies and is best known for her work on the Gospel of Thomas and ancient Gnosticism.
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Arnold S. Relman
#11060
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Arnold Seymour Relman — known as Bud Relman to intimates — was an American internist and professor of medicine and social medicine. He was editor of The New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991, where he instituted two important policies: one asking the popular press not to report on articles before publication and another requiring authors to disclose conflicts of interest. He wrote extensively on medical publishing and reform of the U.S. health care system, advocating non-profit delivery of single-payer health care. Relman ended his career as professor emeritus at Harvard Medical ...
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Terence Horgan
#26893
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Terence Edward Horgan is an American philosopher and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His areas of expertise include philosophy of mind and metaethics. Horgan obtained his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1970 from Stanford University. In 1974, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan under the supervision of Jaegwon Kim, with his dissertation titled "Microreduction and the Mind-Body Problem." After holding professorships in Illinois, Michigan, and Memphis, Horgan has been a professor in Tucson, Arizona since 2002.
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John Rist
#49953
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
John Michael Rist is a British scholar of ancient philosophy, classics, and early Christian philosophy and theology, known mainly for his contributions to the history of metaphysics and ethics. He is the author of monographs on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, Plotinus, the dating of the Gospels, and Augustine. Rist is Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and part-time Visiting Professor at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome, held the Father Kurt Pritzl, O.P., Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. , and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University.
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Mochus
#38572
Overall Influence
Mochus , also known as Mochus of Sidon and Mochus the Phoenician, is listed by Diogenes Laërtius along with Zalmoxis the Thracian and Atlas of Mauretania, as a proto-philosopher. Athenaeus claimed that he authored a work on the history of Phoenicia. Strabo, on the authority of Posidonius, speaks of one Mochus or Moschus of Sidon as the author of the atomic theory and says that he was more ancient than the Trojan war. He is also referred to by Josephus, Tatian, Eusebius, and Damascius.
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Richard Mouw
#14919
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Richard John Mouw is an American theologian and philosopher. He held the position of President at Fuller Theological Seminary for 20 years , and continues to hold the post of Professor of Faith and Public Life.
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Jan Zwicky
#28610
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Janine Louise Zwicky is a Canadian philosopher, poet, essayist, and musician. She was appointed to the Order of Canada in June 2022. Life and career Zwicky received her BA from the University of Calgary and earned her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1981 where her studies focussed on the philosophy of logic and science. She subsequently taught philosophy at Princeton University; philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities at the University of Waterloo; philosophy at the University of Western Ontario; philosophy, English, and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick; and philos...
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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philosophical books.
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Sam Keen
#4914
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Sam Keen is an American author, professor, and philosopher who is best known for his exploration of questions regarding love, life, wonder, religion, and being a male in contemporary society. He co-produced Faces of the Enemy, an award-winning PBS documentary; was the subject of a Bill Moyers' television special in the early 1990s; and for 20 years served as a contributing editor at Psychology Today magazine. He is also featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death.
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T. A. Goudge
#36078
Overall Influence
1910 - 1999 (89 years)
Thomas Anderson Goudge was a Canadian philosopher and university professor. Career He was born on January 19, 1910, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, son of Thomas Norman and Effie Goudge. He graduated from the Halifax Academy in 1927, and studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1931 and a Master of Arts degree in 1932 from Dalhousie University. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Toronto in 1937 after having briefly studied from 1936 to 1937 at Harvard University. He married Helen Beryl Christilaw in Blind River, Ontario, on June 23, 1936, and had one son, the jurist Stephen T.
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Gérard Raulet
#35929
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Gérard Raulet is a French philosopher, Germanist, and translator, specializing primarily in the thought of Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. He is a professor emeritus of German History and Thought at the Paris-Sorbonne University.
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Juan Luis Vives
1492 - 1540 (48 years)
Juan Luis Vives March was a Spanish scholar and Renaissance humanist who spent most of his adult life in the southern Hapsburg Netherlands. His beliefs on the soul, insight into early medical practice, and perspective on emotions, memory and learning earned him the title of the "father" of modern psychology. Vives was the first to shed light on some key ideas that established how psychology is perceived today.
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Christine de Pizan
1363 - 1430 (67 years)
Christine de Pizan or Pisan , was an Italian-born French poet and court writer for King Charles VI of France and several French dukes. Christine de Pizan served as a court writer in medieval France after the death of her husband. Christine's patrons included dukes Louis I of Orleans, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, and his son John the Fearless. Considered to be some of the earliest feminist writings, her work includes novels, poetry, and biography, and she also penned literary, historical, philosophical, political, and religious reviews and analyses. Her best known works are The Book of the City...
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George Gilder
#2529
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
George Franklin Gilder is an American investor, author, economist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 book, Wealth and Poverty, advanced a case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the early months of the Reagan administration. He is the chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, LLC.
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Ned Markosian
#35014
Overall Influence
Ned Markosian is an American philosopher. He is currently professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Markosian is of Armenian descent and has four brothers. He received his BA from Oberlin College and his PhD in Philosophy from UMass Amherst in 1990. His doctoral advisor was Gareth Matthews. Markosian has previously taught at Lawrence University, University of New Hampshire, West Virginia University, Bay Path College, University of Hartford, and Western Washington University. He has been at UMass Amherst since Fall 2015.
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Émile Boirac
1851 - 1917 (66 years)
Émile Boirac was a French philosopher, parapsychologist, promoter of Esperanto and writer. Biography Boirac was born in Guelma, Algeria. He became president of the University of Grenoble in 1898, and in 1902 president of Dijon University. A notable advocate for the universal language, Esperanto, he presided over its 1st Universal Congress and directed the Academy of Esperanto.
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Ferdinand Foch
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
Ferdinand Foch was a French general and military theorist who served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War. An aggressive, even reckless commander at the First Marne, Flanders and Artois campaigns of 1914–1916, Foch became the Allied Commander-in-Chief in late March 1918 in the face of the all-out German spring offensive, which pushed the Allies back using fresh soldiers and new tactics that trenches could not withstand. He successfully coordinated the French, British and American efforts into a coherent whole, deftly handling his strategic reserves. He stopped the German offensive and launched a war-winning counterattack.
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Hermias
401 - 450 (49 years)
Hermias was a Neoplatonist philosopher who was born in Alexandria c. 410 AD. He went to Athens and studied philosophy under Syrianus. He married Aedesia, who was a relative of Syrianus, and who had originally been betrothed to Proclus, but Proclus broke the engagement off after receiving a divine warning. Hermias brought Syrianus' teachings back to Alexandria, where he lectured in the school of Horapollo, receiving an income from the state. He died c. 450 AD , at a time when his children, Ammonius and Heliodorus, were still small. Aedesia, however, continued to receive an income from the sta...
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Jon Kabat-Zinn
#3038
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the 'Stress Reduction Clinic' and the 'Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society' at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Seung Sahn, and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of hatha yoga, Vipassanā and appreciation of the teachings of Soto Zen and Advaita Vedanta led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness.
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Lawrence Grossberg
#16403
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Lawrence Grossberg is an American scholar of cultural studies and popular culture whose work focuses primarily on popular music and the politics of youth in the United States. He is widely known for his research in the philosophy of communication and culture. Though his scholarship focused significantly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s on the politics of postmodernism, his more recent work explores the possibilities and limitations of alternative and emergent formations of modernity.
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Bradley Hyman
#50588
Overall Influence
Bradley Theodore Hyman is currently John B. Penney, Jr. Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer Disease Research Center and Memory Disorder Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was educated at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa . He was awarded the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease in 2001 and the Potamkin Prize in 2006, together with Karen Duff and Karen Ashe.
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Alfred Henry Lloyd
1864 - 1927 (63 years)
Alfred Henry Lloyd was an American philosopher. Life Lloyd received both his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Harvard. He studied philosophy at Göttingen University and Heidelberg University, before returning to Harvard for his Ph.D., which he received in 1893. Upon returning from Europe in 1891, Lloyd was recruited by John Dewey as an instructor in philosophy at the University of Michigan. He remained there his entire career, becoming full professor in 1906. He was named dean of the Graduate School in 1915.
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Bruce L. Gordon
#21885
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Bruce L. Gordon is a Canadian philosopher of science , metaphysician and philosopher of religion. He is a proponent of intelligent design and has been affiliated with the Discovery Institute since 1997.
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Vladimir Dvorniković
1888 - 1956 (68 years)
Vladimir Dvorniković was an ethnic Croat and politically Yugoslav philosopher, ethno-psychologist, and a strong proponent of a Yugoslav ethnicity. He was a professor at the University of Zagreb during the 1920s. Dvorniković was also an advocate of psychologism and animal philosophy. He is best known for authoring the book "Characterology of the Yugoslavs."
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Mark Olssen
#18133
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Mark Olssen, FAcSS, a political theorist, is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Politics within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Surrey.
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Leonid Andreyev
1871 - 1919 (48 years)
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, who is considered to be a father of Expressionism in Russian literature. He is regarded as one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age literary period. Andreyev's style combines the elements of realist, naturalist, and symbolist schools in literature. Of his 25 plays, his 1915 play He Who Gets Slapped is regarded as his finest achievement.
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Philip Scheltens
#45429
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Philip Scheltens is a Dutch professor of neurology and founder of the Alzheimer Centre, Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location VUmc in Amsterdam. Early life, education and career Philip Scheltens was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands, where he grew up in a family of four. His father led a factory. His grandfather developed Alzheimer’s disease in those years, which made an impression on his grandson. Philip attended the Christelijk Lyceum, where he graduated in 1976. As a teenager he was an enthusiastic drummer in several bands and was fascinated by science and mechanics.
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Moriz Carrière
1817 - 1895 (78 years)
Moriz Carrière was a German philosopher and historian. Carrière was born in Griedel near Darmstadt, Germany. After studying at Giessen, Göttingen and Berlin, he spent a few years in Italy studying the fine arts, and established himself in 1842 at Giessen as a teacher of philosophy. In 1853 he was appointed professor at the University of Munich, where he lectured mainly on aesthetics. In the academy in Munich, he lectured on art history.
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Mondino de Luzzi
1275 - 1326 (51 years)
Mondino de Luzzi, or de Liuzzi or de Lucci, , also known as Mundinus, was an Italian physician, anatomist and professor of surgery, who lived and worked in Bologna. He is often credited as the restorer of anatomy because he made seminal contributions to the field by reintroducing the practice of public dissection of human cadavers and writing the first modern anatomical text.
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Mohammed Sabila
#34280
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Mohammed Sabila was a Moroccan writer and philosopher. He was the author of several articles and books on politics and culture, and was known for translating some of the works of Martin Heidegger into Arabic.
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Ken'ichi Mishima
#46198
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
, is a Japanese social philosopher and university professor. About Mishima studied philosophy, German and comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Tokyo. Between 1970 and 1980 he spent several years in Germany as a scholarship holder of the DAAD and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. From 1994 to 1995 he was a guest at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He was a professor at Osaka University until he moved to Tokyo University of Economics and Business as Professor of Social Philosophy and Contemporary Philosophy. Mishima is considered an important mediator of the so-called critical theory in East Asia.
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Lars Svennerholm
#60156
Overall Influence
#3392
Alan Bryman
#25216
Overall Influence
1947 - 2017 (70 years)
Alan Bryman was Professor of Organisational and Social research at the University of Leicester, prior to this Bryman spent 31 years at Loughborough University. Academic career He is best known for three main areas of work. Bryman has long been associated with research methods and in particular the use of mixed methods; this led to him publishing the book Social Research Methods and Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS 12 and 13: A Guide for Social Scientists with Duncan Cramer. His Quantity and Quality In Social Research is yet another significant contribution in the field of research meth...
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Robert William Schrier
#43634
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Robert William Schrier was founding editor-in-chief of the magazine Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology. Schrier was formerly Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine for 26 years, and Head of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension for 20 years. At the time of his death, he was Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He died in Potomac, Maryland.
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Sandra Bartky
#33408
Overall Influence
1935 - 2016 (81 years)
Sandra Lee Bartky was a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. Her notable contributions to the field of feminist philosophy include the article, "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness". Sandra Lee Bartky died on October 17, 2016, at her home in Saugatuck, Michigan at age 81.
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James Ensor
1860 - 1949 (89 years)
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX.
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Stuart A. Aaronson
#26342
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Stuart A. Aaronson is an American author and cancer biologist. He has authored more than 500 publications and holds over 50 patents, and was the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and Chairman of Oncological Sciences at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City until March 2013, when he assumed the title of Founding Chair Emeritus of the Department of Oncological Sciences. The current Chairman of Oncological Sciences is Ramon E. Parsons.
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Samuel George Morton
1799 - 1851 (52 years)
Samuel George Morton was an American physician, natural scientist, and writer. As one of the early figures of scientific racism, he argued against monogenism, the single creation story of the Bible, instead supporting polygenism, a theory of multiple racial creations.
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Wincenty Lutosławski
1863 - 1954 (91 years)
Wincenty Lutosławski was a Polish philosopher, author, and member of the Polish National League. Life and career Early life Wincenty was the eldest son of Franciszek Dionizy Lutosławski, a landowner from Drozdowo and Maria Lutosławska, nee Szczygielska. He was half-brother to Józef Lutosławski, who was the father of composer Witold Lutosławski. In his youth he was home schooled. In 1880, after suffering a breakdown, he became an atheist and materialist. A year later he graduated from secondary school in Mitawa and commenced his studies at the Riga Polytechnic, where he lasted only for three semesters.
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Helen Knight
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Helen Knight was a British philosopher. She was one of few women active in the early days of analytic aesthetics. Life and education Knight was born in Swiss Cottage, London and attended Fremarch School, Hampstead. She began her BA at Bedford College, London, before coming to Cambridge University in 1921 where she took Part II Moral Sciences in 1923 and obtained a first class degree. From 1923 to 1925 she was a Research Student at Newnham College. She married psychologist Rex Knight on 30 January 1926 , and then appears to have taken a break from academic philosophy until 1932 when she returned to Newnham as Sarah Smithson Research Fellow.
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Mohammad Ilkhani
#45945
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Mohammad Ilkhani is an Iranian philosopher and professor and chair of the department of philosophy at the Shahid Beheshti University. He is known for his research on Achard of St. Victor, Boethius and Christian theology. Ilkhani received his PhD from Free University of Brussels under the supervision of Lambros Couloubaritsis.
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