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,
#3801
Walter Carnielli
#47396
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Walter Alexandre Carnielli is a Brazilian mathematician, logician, and philosopher, full professor of Logic at the State University of Campinas . With Bachelor and M.Sc. degrees in mathematics at the State University of Campinas in Campinas he obtained his Ph.D. in 1984 from the same university under the supervision of Newton da Costa and subsequently worked as a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley as a Research Fellow, following an invitation by Leon Henkin.
Go to Profile#3802
Gene Youngblood
#14965
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Gene Youngblood was an American theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas. His best-known book, Expanded Cinema, was the first to consider video as an art form and has been credited with helping to legitimate the fields of computer art and media arts. He is also known for his pioneering work in the media democracy movement, a subject on which he taught, wrote, and lectured, beginning in 1967.
Go to Profile#3803
Ernest Eugene Moore
#67413
Overall Influence
#3804
Bhaktivinoda Thakur
1838 - 1914 (76 years)
Bhaktivinoda Thakur , born Kedarnath Datta , was a Hindu philosopher, guru and spiritual reformer of Gaudiya Vaishnavism who effected its resurgence in India in late 19th and early 20th century and was hailed by contemporary scholars as the most influential Gaudiya Vaishnava leader of his time. He is also credited, along with his son Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, with pioneering the propagation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the West and its eventual global spread.
Go to Profile#3805
James T. Willerson
#67439
Overall Influence
#3806
Leszek Nowak
#22188
Overall Influence
1943 - 2009 (66 years)
Leszek Nowak was a Polish philosopher and legal theoretician. Biography Education In 1965, he graduated in law from Adam Mickiewicz University's Faculty of Law and Administration, having written Master of Jurisprudence thesis under the supervision of Zygmunt Ziembiński, who introduced Nowak to the field of legal theory and convinced him to major in the subject. In 1966 he completed his Master of Philosophy degree in philosophy at the University of Warsaw under the supervision of . In 1967 he obtained a Doctor of Law degree, writing a dissertation on the legal interpretation, the rule of law and semiotic functions of language.
Go to Profile#3807
Vinciane Despret
#23174
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Vinciane Despret is a Belgian philosopher of science, associate professor, at the University of Liège, Belgium. Biography Vinciane Despret first graduated in philosophy. She then studied psychology and graduated in 1991. She is most known for having provided a reflexive account on ethologists, observing babblers in the Negev desert and the way they would interpret those birds' complex dance moves.
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James Robert Brown
#44116
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
James Robert Brown is a Canadian philosopher of science. He is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. In the philosophy of mathematics, he has advocated mathematical Platonism, visual reasoning, and in the philosophy of science he has defended scientific realism mostly against anti-realist views associated with social constructivism. He has also argued for the socialization of medical research . He is largely known for his work on thought experiments.
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Gabriel Séailles
1852 - 1922 (70 years)
Gabriel Jean Edmond Séailles was a French philosopher. Life Séailles was born in Paris. He studied philosophy at the École normale supérieure, then taught philosophy in a number of colleges across France before spending months together with Jules Lachelier, to attend Wilhelm Wundt's lectures about epistemology at Leipzig University.; from this experience abroad he published, besides his logbook, a paper on didactics in Germany. He defended his PhD in literature in Paris in 1884, making his debut as a philosophical writer with his book Essay on genius in art exposing a theme of his interest in the underlying principles of art.
Go to Profile#3810
R. Lanier Anderson
#49536
Overall Influence
R. Lanier Anderson is an American philosopher and J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor in Humanities at Stanford University. He is an expert on Kant and post-Kantian philosophy, and has published widely on both Kant and Nietzsche.
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Niall Shanks
#27504
Overall Influence
1959 - 2011 (52 years)
Niall Shanks was an English philosopher and critic of intelligent design. Career Shanks was born in Cheshire, England, was educated at Rossall School, and later at the University of Leeds and the University of Liverpool. Shanks left England for Canada in 1981 and earned his PhD at the University of Alberta, Canada in 1987. Shanks moved to the United States in 1987. For a number of years Shanks was a member of the Department of Philosophy at East Tennessee State University, where he also held positions in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He then moved to Wichita State University where he was the Curtis D.
Go to Profile#3812
Wolfgang Müller-Lauter
#47098
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
Wolfgang Müller-Lauter was a German philosopher and scholar. He is particularly known for his groundbreaking work on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, considered to be one of the most important contributions to the study of Nietzsche in the twentieth century. He was Ordinary Professor of Philosophy at the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin and from 1993 Emeritus Professor in the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt University Berlin.
Go to Profile#3813
John Italus
1025 - 1085 (60 years)
John Italus or Italos was a neoplatonic Byzantine philosopher of the eleventh century. He was Calabrian in origin, his father being a soldier. He came to Constantinople, where he became a student of Michael Psellus in classical Greek philosophy. He succeeded Psellus in his position as head of the philosophical school. Subsequently, some of his tenets were found heretic in 1076-77 by Patriarch Cosmas I of Constantinople, and in 1082 he was personally condemned, having come into conflict with Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.
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Richard Bing
#36950
Overall Influence
1909 - 2010 (101 years)
Richard John Bing was a cardiologist who made significant contributions to his field of study. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Early life and education Born in Nuremberg to a hops merchant and a professional singer, he studied at the Conservatory at the Nuremberg Gymnasium but also took an interest in medicine. Trying to determine which path to take, after an indifferent reception from Richard Strauss and being inspired by Arrowsmith, he went into medicine, earning a degree at the University of Munich in 1934. His family—who were Jewish—left Nazi Germany shortly ...
Go to Profile#3815
Jean‐françois Bach
#67671
Overall Influence
#3816
Peter Deunov
1864 - 1944 (80 years)
Peter Dunov , also known by his spiritual name Beinsa Douno , and often called the Master by his followers, was a Bulgarian philosopher and spiritual teacher who developed a form of Esoteric Christianity known as the Universal White Brotherhood. He is widely known in Bulgaria, where he was voted second by the public in the Great Bulgarians TV show on Bulgarian National Television . Dunov is also featured in Pantev and Gavrilov's The 100 Most Influential Bulgarians in Our History . According to Petrov, Peter Dunov is “the most published Bulgarian author to this day.”
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John James Audubon
1785 - 1851 (66 years)
John James Audubon was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled The Birds of America , is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is...
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Kari Hemminki
#67807
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#3819
John A. Robertson
#46317
Overall Influence
1943 - 2017 (74 years)
John A. Robertson held the Vinson and Elkins Chair at The University of Texas School of Law. He wrote and lectured widely on law and bioethical issues. Robertson was the author of two books on bioethics, The Rights of the Critically Ill, published in 1983, and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies, published in 1994, and numerous articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation.
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Karel Slavoj Amerling
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Karel Slavoj Amerling was a Czech teacher, writer and philosopher. Biography Amerling was born in Klatovy, and was the son of a wealthy baker. After he studied philosophy in Vienna, he worked two years as a governor. Then he studied medicine in Prague, but he was also interested in philosophy, theology, mineralogy, and biology. In 1836 he earned his degree, and went on to become a secretary of Earl A. Šternberk, but had to leave this post due to illness. Later, he became a doctor in Prague.
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Richard Alan Cross
#46446
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Richard Alan Cross is Rev. John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy and former Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. Educated at Solihull School, Cross was formerly Professor of Medieval Theology at the University of Oxford and Tutor in Theology at Oriel College, Oxford, and holds a Master of Arts degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree. His research interests lie in medieval theology and philosophy, especially Duns Scotus; Christology and the philosophy of religion.
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Sandra Mitchell
#35618
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Sandra D. Mitchell is an American philosopher of science and historian of ideas. She holds the position of distinguished professor in the department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, the top rated school in the world for the subject according to the 2011 Philosophical Gourmet Report. Her research focuses on the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of social science, and connections between the two.
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Lionel Blue
#28750
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Lionel Blue was a British Reform rabbi, journalist and broadcaster, described by The Guardian as "one of the most respected religious figures in the UK". He was best known for his longstanding work with the media, most notably his wry and gentle sense of humour on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He was the first British rabbi publicly to declare his homosexuality.
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Henry T. Lynch
#6386
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Henry Thompson Lynch was an American physician noted for his discovery of familial susceptibility to certain kinds of cancer and his research into genetic links to cancer. He is sometimes described as "the father of hereditary cancer detection and prevention" or the "father of cancer genetics", although Lynch himself said that title should go to the early 20th century pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin.
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Franz Xaver Schmid
1819 - 1883 (64 years)
Franz Xaver Schmid; name sometimes given as Franz Xaver Schmid-Schwarzenberg was an Austrian-German educator and philosopher born in Schwarzenberg am Böhmerwald. From 1840 to 1844 he studied Catholic theology in Salzburg, receiving his doctorate of philosophy several years later in Freiburg im Breisgau. Afterwards he taught classes in history and philosophy at the Lyceum in Rastatt. In 1856 he became a lecturer at the University of Erlangen, where he subsequently became an associate professor of philosophy and pedagogy. During the 1850s, Schmid left the Catholic faith and embraced Protestantism.
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Kristine Yaffe
#47371
Overall Influence
Kristine Yaffe is an American Cognitive decline and dementia researcher. She is the Scola Endowed Chair and Vice Chair and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Epidemiology and the Director of the Center for Population Brain Health at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2019, Yaffe was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#3827
Hierocles of Alexandria
400 - 500 (100 years)
Hierocles of Alexandria was a Greek Neoplatonist writer who was active around AD 430. Life He studied under Plutarch at Athens in the early 5th century, and taught for some years in his native city. He seems to have been banished from Alexandria and to have taken up his abode in Constantinople, where he gave an offence in the court. Damascius relates as follows:"he went to Byzantium and there knocked against those in power. Taken to court, he was beaten by the blows of men. Covered in blood, he soaked the palm of his hand and sprinkled the judge, saying: Cyclops, come, drink some wine since ...
Go to Profile#3828
Wesley Wildman
#22523
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Wesley J. Wildman is a contemporary Australian-American philosopher, theologian, and ethicist. Currently, he is a full professor at the Boston University School of Theology, founding member of the faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, and convener of the Religion and Science doctoral program in Boston University's Graduate School. He is executive director of The Center for Mind and Culture, founding co-director of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, and founding co-editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior . Wildman's academic work has focused on interpreting religio...
Go to Profile#3829
Mihály András Vajda
#52075
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Mihály András Vajda was a Hungarian leftist intellectual who took part in the debates surrounding the development of national socialism, Marxism–Leninism, and the state of capitalism in the latter half of the 20th century. Involved in politics in his home country of Hungary, Vajda was expelled along with several other scholars from the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party in 1973 due to allegedly representing views that were "opposed to Marxism–Leninism and to the policy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party."
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Robert Adamson
1852 - 1902 (50 years)
Robert Adamson was a Scottish philosopher and Professor of Logic at Glasgow. Early life The philosopher Robert Adamson was born in Kingsbarns in Fife, Scotland. His father Robert Adamson was a Scottish solicitor, active in Dunbar, Coldstream, and later in Edinburgh. His mother Mary Agnes Buist was the daughter of David Buist, factor to George Baillie-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Haddington . Robert Adamson and Mary Agnes Buist were married on 21 November 1843 at Tyninghame, East Lothian, Haddingtonshire, Scotland. In 1855 Mrs. Adamson was left a widow with small means, and devoted herself entirely to the education of her six children .
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David Basinger
#44773
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
David Basinger is professor of philosophy at Roberts Wesleyan College, Rochester, New York. He is also the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Chief Academic Officer at Roberts Wesleyan College. Basinger graduated from Grace College, Bellevue College, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with an MA and PhD. He is a proponent of open theism.
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Maxine Greene
#14244
Overall Influence
1917 - 2014 (97 years)
Sarah Maxine Greene was an American educational philosopher, author, social activist, and teacher. Described upon her death as "perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, Columbia University", she was a pioneer for women in the field of philosophy of education, often being the sole woman presenter at educational philosophy conferences as well as being the first woman president of the Philosophy of Education Society in 1967. Additionally, she was the first woman to preside over the American Educational Research Association in 1981.
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Carrie Figdor
#50123
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Carrie Figdor is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and ethics. Before pursuing a career in philosophy, Figdor was a journalist with the Associated Press for eleven years.
Go to Profile#3834
Hywel Lewis
#41663
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
Hywel David Lewis was a Welsh theologian and philosopher. He was best known for his defence of dualism and personal survival. Life Lewis was born in Llandudno, Wales, and educated at Caernarfon grammar school, the University College of North Wales, Bangor , and Jesus College, Oxford .
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Kenneth M. Sayre
#22810
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Kenneth M. Sayre was an American philosopher who spent most of his career at the University of Notre Dame . His early career was devoted mainly to philosophic applications of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and information theory. Later on his main interests shifted to Plato, philosophy of mind, and environmental philosophy. His retirement in 2014 was marked by publication of a history of ND's Philosophy Department, Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame.
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Karsten Harries
#50933
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Karsten Harries is a German philosopher and Emeritus Howard H. Newman Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, where he taught from 1965 until his retirement. Harries is known for his expertise on Heidegger, early modern philosophy, and the philosophy of art and architecture.
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Josiah Thompson
#14313
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Josiah "Tink" Thompson is an American writer, retired professional private investigator, and former philosophy professor. In 1967, he published both The Lonely Labyrinth, a study of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works, and Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. The culmination of his half-century-long Kennedy assassination project, updating his own and others’ investigative work, correcting certain errors, and reconciling the whole body of valid forensic and eyewitness evidence, was published in early 2021 as Last Second in Dallas.
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John S. Meyer
#38496
Overall Influence
1924 - 2011 (87 years)
John Stirling Meyer, M.D. was an American doctor, known internationally for his work in neurology. He served in the United States Navy at the Naval Hospital Yokosuka Japan, where he conducted research on head injuries on veterans of World War II and the Korean War. In 1954, he became an instructor at Harvard University, and in 1957, he became the founding professor and Chairman of Neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine. In 1969, he went to Baylor College of Medicine to serve as the Director of the Neurological Institute. He later became the Chairman of Neurology.
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Owen Harding Wangensteen
1898 - 1981 (83 years)
Owen Harding Wangensteen was an American surgeon who developed the Wangensteen tube, which used suction to treat small bowel obstruction, an innovation estimated to have saved a million lives by the time of his death. He founded the Surgical Forum at the American College of Surgeons and was renowned for his surgical teaching. Amongst his most notable students were Walton Lillehei, Christiaan Barnard, K. Alvin Merendino, Norman Shumway and Edward Eaton Mason. He made contributions to surgical practices in other areas, including appendicitis, peptic ulcers and particularly gastric cancer. In h...
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Risieri Frondizi
1910 - 1983 (73 years)
Risieri Frondizi was an Argentine philosopher, anthropologist, and rector of the University of Buenos Aires. Background Risieri Frondizi Ercoli was born on 20 November 1910 in Posadas, Argentina. His parents were Julio Frondizi and Isabel Ercoli, who had arrived in the 1890s from Gubbio, Umbria, Italy. Frondizi had seven brothers and six sisters. They included Arturo Frondizi , Ricardo and Silvio . Frondizi studied at Harvard University. In 1943, Frondizi received his MA from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 1950, he received a doctorate from the National Autonomous University...
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Roberto Ardigò
1828 - 1920 (92 years)
Roberto Felice Ardigò was an Italian philosopher. He was an influential leader of Italian positivism and a former Roman Catholic priest. Ardigò was born in Casteldidone, in what is now the province of Cremona, in Lombardy, and trained for the priesthood. He resigned from the Church in 1871 after abandoning theology and faith in 1869. He was appointed as a professor of theology at the University of Padua in 1881, at a time when a reaction to idealism had taken place in philosophical circles.
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Rikki Ducornet
#19252
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Rikki Ducornet is an American writer, poet, and artist. Her work has been described as “linguistically explosive and socially relevant,” and praised for “deploy[ing] tactics familiar to the historical avant-garde, including an emphasis on gnosticism, cosmology, diablerie, bestiary, eroticism, and revolution, to produce an astounding body of work, cogent and ethical in its beauty and spirit.”
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Pinchas Polonsky
#29642
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Pinchas Polonsky is a rabbi, Russian-Israeli Jewish-religious philosopher, researcher, and educator active among the Russian-speaking Jewish community. He has written original books and a number of translations of works on Judaism.
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Jeremy Howick
#12813
Overall Influence
Jeremy Howick is a Canadian-born, British residing clinical epidemiologist and philosopher of science. He researches evidence-based medicine, clinical empathy and the philosophy of medicine, including the use of placebos in clinical practice and clinical trials. He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed papers, as well as two books, The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine in 2011, and Doctor You in 2017. In 2016, he received the Dawkins & Strutt grant from the British Medical Association to study pain treatment. He publishes in Philosophy of Medicine and medical journals. He is a member of ...
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Boris Vysheslavtsev
1877 - 1954 (77 years)
Boris Petrovich Vysheslavtsev was a Russian philosopher who belonged to the Russian Silver Age and Renaissance of Religion and Philosophy. Life He did his doctorate on Fichte in 1914 and became a lecturer, later professor in the philosophy of law at Moscow University. In September 1922, he became one of a group of prominent writers, scholars and intellectuals who were sent into forced exile on the so-called "philosophers' ships". He emigrated first to Berlin, then in 1924 to Paris. He spent most of his life at the Orthodox Theological Institute. While in Paris, he published the book The Ethics of a Transfigured Eros .
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Ferid Murad
#1441
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Ferid Murad was an American physician and pharmacologist, and a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Early life Ferid Murad was born in Whiting, Indiana, on September 14, 1936. His parents were Henrietta Josephine Bowman of Alton, Illinois, and Xhabir Murat Ejupi, an Albanian immigrant from Gostivar in present-day North Macedonia. who subsequently changed his name to John Murad after being processed at Ellis Island in 1913. His mother was from a Baptist family and ran away from home in 1935, aged 17, to marry his father, who was 39 and Muslim. Murad is the oldest of three boys.
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Hans Achterhuis
#51696
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Herman Johan "Hans" Achterhuis is Professor Emeritus in Systematic Philosophy at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. For now his research concerns particularly social and political philosophy and philosophy of technology.
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Paul Ehrlich
1854 - 1915 (61 years)
Paul Ehrlich was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure for syphilis in 1909 and inventing the precursor technique to Gram staining bacteria. The methods he developed for staining tissue made it possible to distinguish between different types of blood cells, which led to the ability to diagnose numerous blood diseases.
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Stasys Šalkauskis
1886 - 1941 (55 years)
Stasys Šalkauskis was a Lithuanian philosopher, educator, rector of Vytautas Magnus University. His philosophy of culture was developed by Antanas Maceina and other philosophers.
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Clement Finch
#61060
Overall Influence
1915 - 2010 (95 years)
Clement Alfred Finch , often deemed "The Iron Man", was an American physician specializing in hematology whose research on iron metabolism in the bloodstream at the University of Washington led to significant advancements in accurately diagnosing and treating anemia during a time period in which little was known about this aspect of the body. Finch was distinctively noted for using himself as a test subject by taking blood and bone marrow from his own bones before conducting similar tests on patients. He graduated in 1941 from the University of Rochester Medical School and a year later was married to the first of three wives.
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