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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.

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.

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#3751

George Grant

1918 - 1988 (70 years)

George Parkin Grant was a Canadian philosopher and political commentator. He is best known for his Canadian nationalism, political conservatism, and his views on technology, pacifism, and Christian faith. He is often seen as one of Canada's most original thinkers.

#3752

Robert Crouse

#28300

Overall Influence

1930 - 2011 (81 years)

Robert Darwin Crouse was a Canadian religious philosopher and Anglican priest. Early life and education Crouse received his primary and secondary education in the village school of Crousetown and at King’s Collegiate School in Windsor. He arrived at Dalhousie University and King’s College in 1947, the year James Doull began teaching in the Classics Department. He graduated in Classics in 1951 and then spent a year studying philosophy at Dalhousie and theology at King’s.

#3753

Andreas Urs Sommer

Andreas Urs Sommer

#40543

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Andreas Urs Sommer is a German philosopher of Swiss origin. He specializes in the history of philosophy and its theory, ethics, philosophy of religion, and Skepticism. His historical studies center on the philosophy of Enlightenment and Nietzsche, but they also deal with Kant, Max Weber, Pierre Bayle, Jonathan Edwards, and others.

#3754

Élie Halévy

1870 - 1937 (67 years)

Élie Halévy was a French philosopher and historian who wrote studies of the British utilitarians, the book of essays Era of Tyrannies, and a history of Britain from 1815 to 1914 that influenced British historiography.

#3755

Hiroshi Aramata

Hiroshi Aramata

#6205

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Hiroshi Aramata is a Japanese author, polymath, critic, translator and specialist in natural history, iconography and cartography. His most popular novel was Teito Monogatari , which has sold over 5 million copies in Japan alone.

#3756

Paul Hoyningen-Huene

#40711

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Paul Hoyningen-Huene is a German philosopher who specializes in general philosophy of science and research ethics. He is best known for his Neo-Kantian interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn's ideas. Hoyningen-Huene, until 2014, held the chair for theoretical philosophy, particularly philosophy of science at Leibniz Universität Hannover and was director of the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science.

#3757

Eugen Fischer

1874 - 1967 (93 years)

Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, and also served as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin.

#3758

Harold Gillies

1882 - 1960 (78 years)

Sir Harold Delf Gillies was a New Zealand otolaryngologist and father of modern plastic surgery. Early life Gillies was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, the son of Member of Parliament in Otago, Robert Gillies. He attended Wanganui Collegiate School and studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where despite a stiff elbow sustained sliding down the banisters at home as a child, he was an excellent sportsman. He was a golf blue in 1903, 1904 and 1905 and also a rowing blue, competing in the 1904 Boat Race. In 1910, he acquired a position working as an ENT specialist for Sir Mils...

#3759

Paul Masson-Oursel

Paul Masson-Oursel

1882 - 1956 (74 years)

Paul Masson-Oursel was a French orientalist and philosopher, a pioneer of 'comparative philosophy'. Masson-Oursel was a student of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Pierre Janet, André Lalande, Marcel Mauss. With Sylvain Lévy, Alfred Foucher, Chavannes, Clément Huart, he learned Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Arab. La Philosophie Comparée, his Sorbonne doctoral dissertation, attempted to apply Comtean positivism and a comparative method which identified 'analogies' between the philosophies of Europe, India and China. Masson-Oursel argued that "philosophy cannot achieve positivit...

#3760

Franz J. Ingelfinger

1910 - 1980 (70 years)

Franz Joseph Ingelfinger was a German-American physician, researcher and journal editor. He served as Chief of Gastroenterology at Evans Memorial Department of Clinical Research, part of Boston University School of Medicine. He also served as Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1967 to 1976. His work was influential in the field of science journalism.

#3761

Luc Montagnier

#487

Overall Influence

1932 - 2022 (90 years)

Luc Montagnier was a French virologist and joint recipient, with and , of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus . He worked as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

#3762

Esperanza Guisán

#51193

Overall Influence

1940 - 2015 (75 years)

Esperanza Guisán was a Spanish moral and political philosopher. She was a professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Her work was devoted mainly to classical utilitarian theory. A list of many of her works appears at her Google Scholar Web page, including treatises on ethics, democracy, ethics without religion, and Kant.

#3763

Mario Sergio Cortella

Mario Sergio Cortella

#28353

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mario Sergio Cortella is a Brazilian philosopher, writer, educator and speaker most known for putting into the public sphere and helping popularize in questions related to philosophy in Brazilian contemporary society. He is also known as a prominent educator. Having studied with Paulo Freire, Cortella applied Freire's approach to education while he was secretary of education of São Paulo city during the '90s. He is professor of theological philosophy at PUC-SP.

#3764

Robert Maynard Hutchins

Robert Maynard Hutchins

1899 - 1977 (78 years)

Robert Maynard Hutchins was an American educational philosopher. He was president and chancellor of the University of Chicago, and earlier dean of Yale Law School . His first wife was the novelist Maude Hutchins. Although his father and grandfather were both Presbyterian ministerss, Hutchins became one of the most influential members of the school of secular perennialism.

#3765

Deborah Black

#42399

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Deborah Black is a Canadian philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is known for her works on Islamic philosophy. Books Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990

#3766

Dominic Pace

1851 - 1907 (56 years)

Dominic Pace was a Maltese theologian and minor philosopher. In philosophy he mostly specialised in Aristotelico-Thomist Scholasticism. Life Pace was born at Vittoriosa, Malta, on December 17, 1851. He joined the Dominicans in 1867 at almost 16 years of age. He accomplished his institutional studies in philosophy with the Dominicans at Rabat, Malta, and his theological ones with the Dominicans at Vittoriosa. Due to the colera epidemic which hit the Maltese islands in those days, Pace was sent to Florence, Italy, at the convent of Saint Maximin, to pursue his theological studies there. In 1874...

#3767

Regiomontanus

1436 - 1476 (40 years)

Johannes Müller von Königsberg , better known as Regiomontanus , was a mathematician, astrologer and astronomer of the German Renaissance, active in Vienna, Buda and Nuremberg. His contributions were instrumental in the development of Copernican heliocentrism in the decades following his death.

#3768

Jenann Ismael

#50351

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Jenann T. Ismael is a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the Foundational Questions Institute Ismael's work has been influential in the scholarship of metaphysics and the philosophy of physics.

#3769

Vladimir Bibikhin

Vladimir Bibikhin

#45490

Overall Influence

1938 - 2004 (66 years)

Vladimir Veniaminovich Bibikhin was the most prominent Soviet and Russian religious thinker of the New Russia and continued the Russian tradition of early 20th century religious thinking. He was known as a translator, philologist, and philosopher. He is best known for translations of Martin Heidegger, which caused mixed reactions among specialists. He lectured in authors' courses at the philosophy faculty of Moscow State University. Bibikhin undertook a sufficient number of translations to enable him to formulate his own theory of Europe. This theory consisted in part of a return to the past,...

#3770

Matilda Joslyn Gage

Matilda Joslyn Gage

1826 - 1898 (72 years)

Matilda Joslyn Gage was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women's suffrage in the United States but she also campaigned for Native American rights, abolitionism , and freethought . She is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention. She influenced her son-in-law L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

#3771

Aira Kaal

1911 - 1988 (77 years)

Aira Kaal was an Estonian writer. From 1931 to 1940, she studied in Tartu University, focusing on philosophy, but also learning Estonian literature, world literature and English. From 1938 to 1939, she worked in Great Britain, where she met her husband Arthur Robert Hone, with whom she returned to Estonia. From 1945 to 1950, she was a lecturer in the Tartu State University, teaching the foundations of Marxism-Leninism.

#3772

Benjamin Wiker

#19608

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Benjamin Wiker is a Roman Catholic ethicist and professor of political science and Human Life studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Biography Benjamin Wiker obtained his PhD in theological ethics from Vanderbilt University then went on to teach at a variety of institutions including Marquette University, Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, Thomas Aquinas College, and the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He came to attention in 2002 with the publication of Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists. In this book, Wiker aims to show how Darwinism by its very nature completely ...

#3773

Xavier Léon

1868 - 1935 (67 years)

Xavier Léon was a French-Jewish philosopher and historian of philosophy. In 1893 Léon – together with Élie Halévy and others – helped found the French philosophical journal Revue de métaphysique et de morale. Léon remained editor of the journal until his death in 1935, when he was succeeded by Dominique Parodi. In 1900 he founded the International Congress of Philosophy, and in 1901 the Société Française de Philosophie. He wrote extensively on Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He is buried in the Jewish section of Père-Lachaise Cemetery.

#3774

Li Shicen

1892 - 1934 (42 years)

Li Shicen , born Li Bangfan , was a Chinese philosopher and editor of advanced philosophical journals of the May Fourth Movement, such as Minduo Magazine and Education Magazine. Li is best remembered as an exponent of the thought of Nietzsche, who was among the Western thinkers most influential in China in the early Republican era.

#3775

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme

1824 - 1904 (80 years)

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

#3776

Michael Gelven

#63120

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Michael Gelven, was a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University, where he taught for 46 years. Gelven held a Ph.D. in philosophy from Washington University, penned a well known commentary on Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, and wrote several books as well as numerous scholarly articles. Gelven was primarily interested in continental philosophy and had a wide range of specialties including: ontology, metaphysics, Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, philosophy in literature, and the philosophy of war.

#3777

Helmut Sturm

#41698

Overall Influence

1932 - 2008 (76 years)

Helmut Sturm was a German painter. He was born in Furth im Wald. From 1952 to 1958, he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. After this he joined Heimrad Prem, Lothar Fischer and Hans-Peter Zimmer in founding Gruppe SPUR, which in 1959 entered the Situationist International. He had a six-month scholarship in Paris before returning to Munich for the SPUR exhibition in Galerie van de Loo. He collaborated with Hans Platschek, Asger Jorn, Jørgen Nash, Constant, Maurice Wyckaert, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio and Guy Debord. In 1961 he stayed with Nash at Oerkelljunga, Sweden with Prem, ...

#3778

Arthur Collier

1680 - 1732 (52 years)

Arthur Collier was an English Anglican priest and philosopher who wrote about the non-existence of an absolute external world. Early life Collier was born at the rectoryy of Steeple Langford, Wiltshire. He entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in July 1697, but in October 1698 he and his brother William became members of Balliol. His father having died in 1697, it was arranged that the family living of Langford Magna should be given to Arthur as soon as he was old enough.

#3779

Alfred North Whitehead

#3780

James Otteson

#34638

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

James R. Otteson is an American philosopher and political economist. He is the John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Formerly, he was the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Economics, and executive director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University. He is also a Senior Scholar at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., a Research Professor in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and in the Philosophy Department at the University of Arizona, a Visitor of Ralston College, a Research Fellow for t...

#3781

Charlie Gere

#33542

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Charlie Gere is a British academic who is professor of media theory and history at The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, The University of Lancaster and previously, director of research at the Institute for Cultural Research at The University of Lancaster. He is author of several books and articles on new media art, art and technology, continental philosophy and technology. His main research interest is in the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, particularly in relation to post-conceptual art and philosophy.

#3782

Henry Johnstone Jr.

#36477

Overall Influence

1920 - 2000 (80 years)

Henry Johnstone Jr. was an American philosopher and rhetorician known especially for his notion of the "rhetorical wedge" and his re-evaluation of the ad hominem fallacy. He was Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University and began studying Classics in the late 1970s. He was the founder and longtime editor of the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric and edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

#3783

Charles Bray

1811 - 1884 (73 years)

Charles Bray was a prosperous British ribbon manufacturer, social reformer, philanthropist, philosopher, and phrenologist. Life Bray was born in 1811 and his education included time in the school run by Mary Franklin. He would have attended chapel every day.

#3784

Michael Roizen

#18273

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Michael Fredric Roizen is an American anesthesiologist and internist, an award-winning author and the chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. Roizen became famous for developing the RealAge concept and has authored or coauthored five number one New York Times best sellers.

#3785

Casimir Lewy

#47731

Overall Influence

1919 - 1991 (72 years)

Casimir Lewy was a Polish philosopher of Jewish descent. He worked in philosophical logic but published scantly. He was an influential teacher; several of his students went on to be prominent philosophers, including Simon Blackburn, Edward Craig, Ian Hacking, and Crispin Wright.

#3786

William Cleghorn

1718 - 1754 (36 years)

William Cleghorn was a British philosopher. He was born to a successful Scottish brewer, Hugh Cleghorn, and Jean Hamilton, and died in 1754, aged 36. William Cleghorn held the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1745 until his death in 1754. Four volumes of notes on Cleghorn's lectures on moral philosophy from 1746–47 are stored at the University of Edinburgh library.

#3787

Deborah Tannen

#2814

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Deborah Frances Tannen is an American author and professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Best known as the author of You Just Don't Understand, she has been a McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences following a term in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

#3788

Elizabeth Harman

#42094

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Harman is an American philosopher and Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Biography Harman's father is Gilbert Harman, professor of philosophy. Harman's mother was Lucy Harman, a psychotherapist at Princeton University.

#3789

Robert Proulx Heaney

#67204

Overall Influence

#3790

Remo Bodei

#48093

Overall Influence

1938 - 2019 (81 years)

Remo Bodei was an Italian philosopher. He was a professor of the history of philosophy at the UCLA University, Los Angeles California, and also had taught at the University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

#3791

Edmund Catharina Jason Husserl

#67256

Overall Influence

#3792

Gerhard Streminger

#54111

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Gerhard Streminger is an Austrian Philosopher and author, born in Graz in 1952 . From 1970, he studied philosophy and mathematics in Graz, Goettingen, Edinburgh with G.E.Davie and Oxford with J. L. Mackie. He gained his PhD in 1978 at the University of Graz, where he held posts from 1975 until 1997. In 1981 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Streminger was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Graz in 1988 and received the title of University Professor in 1995.

#3793

Alain LeRoy Locke

Alain LeRoy Locke

1885 - 1954 (69 years)

Alain LeRoy Locke was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. He is frequently included in listings of influential African Americans. On March 19, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe."

#3794

Rudolph Goclenius

Rudolph Goclenius

1547 - 1628 (81 years)

Rudolph Goclenius the Elder was a German scholastic philosopher. Gockel is often credited with coining the term "psychology" in 1590, though the term had been used by Marko Marulić at least 66 years earlier. Gockel had extensive backing, and made significant contributions to the field of ontology. He extended the development of many ideas from Aristotle. Several of Gockel's ideas were published and built upon by later philosophers.

#3795

Masayuki Yamamoto

#67271

Overall Influence

#3796

Frank E. Speizer

#41760

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Frank Erwin Speizer is an American physician and epidemiologist, currently Professor of Environmental Health and Environmental Science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Edward H. Kass Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on two major epidemiological cohort studies: the Nurses' Health Study, which explored women's illnesses and health risk factors, and the Harvard Six Cities study, which definitively linked air pollution to higher death rates in urban areas.

#3797

Agnes Callard

#37114

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Agnes Callard is an American philosopher and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She is also noted for her popular writings and work on public philosophy.

#3798

Kuruvilla Pandikattu

Kuruvilla Pandikattu

#31500

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Kuruvilla Pandikattu Joseph, SJ, is an Indian Jesuit priest. He is Chair Professor of JRD Tata Foundation on Business Ethics at XLRI, Jamshedpur and Professor of Philosophy, Science and Religion at Jnana Deepa, Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Pune, Maharashtra, India. He is also Director of JDV Centre for Science-Religion Studies and Association of Science, Society and Religion , Pune.

#3799

Jennifer Nagel

#59586

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jennifer Nagel is a Canadian philosopher at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metacognition. She has also written on 17th century philosophy, especially John Locke and René Descartes.

#3800

Dudley Andrew

#13883

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

James Dudley Andrew is an American film theorist. He is R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he has taught since the year 2000. Before moving to Yale, he taught for thirty years at the University of Iowa. Andrew has been called, on the occasion of one of his invited lecture series, "one of the most influential scholars in the areas of theory, history and criticism". He particularly specializes in world cinema, film theory and aesthetics, and French cinema. He has also written on Japanese cinema, especially the work of Kenji Mizoguchi. He has b...

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