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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#4101
Eugene H. Blackstone
#72202
Overall Influence
#4102
Gerald J. Gleich
#72206
Overall Influence
#4103
John D. Lantos
#43868
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John D. Lantos is an American pediatrician and a leading expert in medical ethics. He is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Medicine and Director of the Children's Mercy Bioethics Center at Children's Mercy Hospital.
Go to Profile#4104
Alan Code
#49816
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alan Dodd Code is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Classics at Stanford University, and also Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. He is a leading scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, especially well known for his articles on Aristotle's metaphysics, science, and logic.
Go to Profile#4105
Charles T. Esmon
#72250
Overall Influence
#4106
Paul E. Griffiths
#34090
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Paul Griffiths is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and works primarily in the Philosophy of Science and more particularly Philosophy of Biology. Born in England in 1962, he received a B.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1984 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Australian National University in 1989 under the supervision of Kim Sterelny. He taught previously at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Queensland and the University of Otago. He spends part of each year at the University of Exeter in the Egenis: the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences. Griffith...
Go to Profile#4107
Mirza Fatali Akhundov
1812 - 1878 (66 years)
Mirza Fatali Akhundov , also known as Mirza Fatali Akhundzade, or Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh , was a celebrated Iranian Azerbaijani author, playwright, atheist, philosopher, and founder of Azerbaijani modern literary criticism, "who acquired fame primarily as the writer of European-inspired plays in the Azeri Turkic language".
Go to Profile#4108
Renato Baserga
#72295
Overall Influence
#4109
Sally Sedgwick
#54776
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Sally Sedgwick is an American philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at Boston University, and was previously the LAS Distinguished Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago .
Go to Profile#4110
Miguel Abensour
#27154
Overall Influence
1939 - 2017 (78 years)
Miguel Abensour was a French philosopher specializing in political philosophy. Beginning his academic career as a professor of political science at Dijon, then at the University of Reims, before teaching political philosophy at the Paris Diderot University , where he became emeritus professor. Founder and director of the editorial collection "Critique de la politique" at Payot and president of the Collège international de philosophie from 1985 to 1987, he is generally viewed as a left-libertarian thinker and as a theoretician of radical democracy.
Go to Profile#4111
Kian Fan Chung
#72347
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#4112
Juan Bautista Muñoz
1745 - 1799 (54 years)
Juan Bautista Muñoz was an 18th-century Spanish philosopher and historian. Biography Born in Museros in 1745, Juan Bautista Muñoz was the third of four sons. After the death of his father in 1751, his mother placed him under the tutelage of his uncle, the Dominican friar Gabriel Ferrandis at the convent of Pilar de Valencia, where he began to receive his first formal education. From 1753 to 1757, Muñoz was enrolled at the Jesuit seminary in Valencia, where he came under the influence of the polymath Antonio Eximeno Pujades, and began to take an interest in mathematics and modern philosophy...
Go to Profile#4113
Ole Fogh Kirkeby
#41740
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ole Fogh Kirkeby is a Danish philosopher and a professor at Copenhagen Business School in the Philosophy of Leadership. Education He is a Doctor of Philosophy from Aarhus University, graduated with honours, 1994, with the dissertation "Event and Body-mind. A phenomenological-hermeneutic Analysis". He has an MA in the History of Ideas from Aarhus University.
Go to Profile#4114
Étienne Vacherot
1809 - 1897 (88 years)
Étienne Vacherot was a French philosophical writer. Life Vacherot was born of peasant parentage at Torcenay, near Langres in the Haute-Marne département of France. He was educated at the École Normale, and returned there as director of studies in 1838, after some years spent in provincial schoolmasterships. In 1839 he succeeded his master Victor Cousin as professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. His Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie , was his first and best-known work. It drew on him attacks from the Clerical party which led to his suspension in 1851. Shortly afterwards he refused to swear allegiance to the new imperial government, and was dismissed from his post.
Go to Profile#4115
Karl Loewenstein
1891 - 1973 (82 years)
Karl Loewenstein was a German lawyer and political scientist, regarded as one of the prominent figures of Constitutional law in the twentieth century. His research and investigations into the typology of the different constitutions have had some impact on the Western constitutional thought. Loewenstein is credited with establishing the theoretical foundations of militant democracy to battle anti-democratic mass movements.
Go to Profile#4116
Denis MacEoin
#12457
Overall Influence
1949 - 2022 (73 years)
Denis M. MacEoin was a British academic, scholar and writer with a focus on Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies. He authored several academic books and articles, as well as many pieces of journalism. Since 2014 he published a number of essays on current events with a Middle Eastern focus at the Gatestone Institute, of which he was a Senior Fellow. He was a Senior Editor from 2009 to 2010 at Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the American think tank Middle East Forum, where he was also a Fellow.
Go to Profile#4117
Michael J. Perry
#17914
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael J. Perry is an American legal scholar, specializing in constitutional law, human rights, and law and religion. Career Perry was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He did his undergraduate studies, majoring in philosophy and minoring in theology, at Georgetown University . He studied law at Columbia University School of Law . Perry then served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein and, a year later, to U.S. Circuit Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler .
Go to Profile#4118
Andrew G. Morrow
#72458
Overall Influence
#4119
Michael E. Chopp
#72465
Overall Influence
#4120
Rena R. Wing
#65819
Overall Influence
Rena R. Wing is recognized for her well-established research on behavioral treatments of obesity. Dr. Wing's research examined positive outcomes for long-term weight loss as well as halting weight gain in individuals who are currently overweight. This led to an important development in Wing's research which was the layout of a lifestyle intervention for those with diabetes, particularly type 2.
Go to Profile#4121
Mircea Florian
1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Mircea Florian was a Romanian philosopher and translator. Active mainly during the interwar period, he was noted as one of the leading proponents of rationalism, opposing it to the Trăirist philosophy of Nae Ionescu. His work, comprising some 20 books, shows Florian as a disciple of centrists and rationalists such as Constantin Rădulescu-Motru and Titu Maiorescu.
Go to Profile#4122
Bob Fischer
#63472
Overall Influence
Robert William Fischer is an American philosopher who specializes in epistemology and ethics . He is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Texas State University, a Senior Research Manager at Rethink Priorities, and the Director of the Society for the Study of Ethics and Animals. His books include Modal Justification via Theories, in which he defends his account of "Theory-Based Epistemology of Modality", and The Ethics of Eating Animals, in which he argues that animal agriculture is frequently morally impermissible, but that veganism is nonetheless not morally required.
Go to Profile#4123
Shriharsha
1200 - 1200 (0 years)
Shri-harsha was a 12th century CE Indian philosopher and poet. Śrīharṣa works discuss various themes in Indian Philosophy, such as pramana. He has been often interpreted as promoting Advaita Vedānta in his Sweets of Refutation , however, this interpretation remains controversial among modern scholars. Śrīharṣa's thought was influential for both Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers and also for the Advaita Vedānta tradition.
Go to Profile#4124
Hannah Ginsborg
#68227
Overall Influence
Hannah Ginsborg is Willis S and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Education and career She received a B.A. in Philosophy and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1989. Her education included a year in Paris studying logic and philosophy at the Université de Paris-I, and a year in Berlin affiliated with the Freie Universität. Since 1988 she has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2004-2005 she was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
Go to Profile#4125
Jacques Miller
#19803
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Jacques Francis Albert Pierre Miller AC FRS FAA is a French-Australian research scientist. He is known for having discovered the function of the thymus and for the identification, in mammalian species of the two major subsets of lymphocytes and their function.
Go to Profile#4126
Worthington Hooker
1806 - 1867 (61 years)
Worthington Hooker was an American physician, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Worthington Hooker School in New Haven, Connecticut is named after him. He graduated Yale University in 1825 and Harvard University with a degree in Medicine in 1829. He practiced in Connecticut until 1852. Afterwards, he was professor of the theory and practice of medicine at Yale. He was vice president of the American Medical Association in 1864. His principal works are:Physician and Patient Homeopathy: An Examination of the Doctrines and Evidences physiologyRational Therapeutics Child's Book of Nature 3 volum...
Go to Profile#4127
Manuel Joël
1826 - 1890 (64 years)
Manuel Joël was a German Jewish philosopher and preacher. He was born in Birnbaum , Grand Duchy of Posen. After teaching for several years at the Breslau rabbinical seminary, founded by Zecharias Frankel, in 1863 he became the successor of Abraham Geiger in the rabbinate of Breslau. He made important contributions to the history of the school of Aqiba as well as to the history of Jewish philosophy, his essays on Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides being of permanent worth. But his most influential work was connected with the relations between Jewish philosophy and the medieval scholasticism. He showed...
Go to Profile#4128
Claude Tresmontant
#45243
Overall Influence
1925 - 1997 (72 years)
Claude Tresmontant was a French philosopher, Hellenist, and theologian. Biography Claude Tresmontant taught medieval philosophy and philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. He was a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. He was given the Maximilien-Kolbe Prize in 1973 and the Grand Prix of the Academy of Moral and Political Science for his complete works in 1987.
Go to Profile#4129
George W. Thorn
#53541
Overall Influence
1906 - 2004 (98 years)
George Widmer Thorn was an American physician whose contributions led to new treatments of kidney diseases and adrenal gland disorders, most notably Addison's disease. Thorn was Chief of Medicine at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, presently known as Brigham and Women's Hospital. Thorn pioneered the use of cortisone for treating Addison's disease, and devised an early test for this disease, now known as the Thorn test. His research of cortisone and ACTH led to new treatments of other diseases such as hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.
Go to Profile#4130
Lester Dragstedt
1893 - 1975 (82 years)
Lester Reynold Dragstedt was an American surgeon who was the first to successfully separate conjoined twins. He was considered nationally known, and a leading authority on ulcers and gastroneuro surgery.
Go to Profile#4131
Hans Wigzell
#72712
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
#4132
Jeffrey Nielsen
#65189
Overall Influence
Jeffrey Nielsen is founder of the Democracy House Project, and a published author. He is also a philosophy instructor at Westminster College, Salt Lake City; and Utah Valley University, Orem, Utah. He is perhaps best known for being both a supporter of gay marriage and a practicing Mormon.
Go to Profile#4133
Rubel Shelly
#24371
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Dr. Rubel Shelly is an author, minister, and professor at Lipscomb University. He is the former president of Rochester University . Life Shelly began as an instructor in the department of Religion and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University in 1975. In 1978, Shelly began preaching as Senior Minister for the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, formerly known as the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ, in Nashville, Tennessee where he continued until 2005. While preaching at Woodmont Hills, he also taught at Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Tennessee State University. ...
Go to Profile#4134
Jeffrey Stout
#43070
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jeffrey Lee Stout is an American religious studies scholar who is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Princeton University. He is a member of the Department of Religion, and is associated with the departments of Philosophy and Politics, the Center for the Study of Religion, and the Center for Human Values. His works focus on the possibility of ethical discourse in a religiously pluralistic society. He served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2007.
Go to Profile#4135
Eddy Zemach
#65543
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Eddy M. Zemach was an Israeli philosopher, born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine. He was Ahad Ha'am Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1965. His main research interests were aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of language.
Go to Profile#4136
Kay-Tee Khaw
#46276
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kay-Tee Khaw, is a Singaporean British physician and academic, specialising in the maintenance of health in later life and the causes and prevention of chronic diseases. She has been Professor of Clinical Gerontology at the University of Cambridge since 1989 and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge since 1991.
Go to Profile#4137
Jay Katz
#18349
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Jacob "Jay" Katz was an American physician and Yale Law School professor whose career was devoted to addressing complex issues of medical ethics and other ethical problems involving the overlaps of ethics, law, medicine and psychology.
Go to Profile#4138
Jalal al-Din Davani
1426 - 1502 (76 years)
Jalal al-Din Davani , also known as Allama Davani , was a theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet, who is considered to have been one of the leading scholars in late 15th-century Iran. A native of the town of Davan in the southern Iranian region of Fars, Davani completed his education at the provincial capital of Shiraz, where he started to distinguish himself. In the 1460s, he briefly served as the sadr of the Qara Qoyunlu governor of Fars, Mirza Yusuf, and accompanied the latter's father Jahan Shah in his battle against the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan , where the latter emerged victorious.
Go to Profile#4139
Ernst Platner
1744 - 1818 (74 years)
Ernst Platner was a German anthropologist, physician and Rationalist philosopher, born in Leipzig. He was the father of painter Ernst Zacharias Platner . Life Following the death of his father in 1747, the philologist Johann August Ernesti became his foster father. He received his early education at the gymnasium in Altenburg, the Thomasschule in Leipzig and at the gymnasium in Gera. Afterwards, he studied at the University of Leipzig, where in 1770 he became an associate professor of medicine. Later at Leipzig, he was appointed a full professor of physiology and philosophy . In 1783/84 and ...
Go to Profile#4140
James Beattie
1735 - 1803 (68 years)
James Beattie was a Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher. Career He became schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun in 1753. He took the position of usher at the grammar-school of Aberdeen in 1758.
Go to Profile#4141
Alan Stout
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Alan Ker Stout was a moral philosopher working at the University of Sydney, who also wrote on cinema. His father was G. F. Stout, British philosopher. Biography Stout gained his MA at Oxford in 1924 and, in June of that year, he was appointed to an assistant lectureship at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, under Professor James Gibson. In this period he published three articles on Descartes and produced plays. He married Evelyn Roberts in 1927, an undergraduate leading lady in his theatre productions.
Go to Profile#4142
Jerome Ravetz
#23339
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Jerome Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author of the NUSAP notational system and of Post-normal science. He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#4143
Andrew Weil
#2380
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Andrew Thomas Weil is an American medical doctor who advocates for integrative medicine including the 4-7-8 breathing technique. Early life and education Early years Andrew Thomas Weil was born in Philadelphia on June 8, 1942, the only child of parents who operated a millinery store, in a family that was Reform Jewish. He graduated from high school in 1959 and was awarded a scholarship from the American Association for the United Nations, giving him the opportunity to go abroad for a year, living with families in India, Thailand, and Greece. From this experience he became convinced that in many ways American culture and science was insular and unaware of non-American practices.
Go to Profile#4144
Carlo Penco
#25972
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Carlo Penco is an Italian analytic philosopher and full professor in philosophy of language at the University of Genoa in Italy. Biography Penco received his Ph.D. in Philosophy Summa cum Laude at the University of Genoa in 1972 with a specialization in the philosophy of science . He studied with Evandro Agazzi in Genoa, with Michael Dummett in Oxford, and later with Robert Brandom at the University of Pittsburgh. He has received various academic awards and fellowships including: CNR Fellow , NATO Fellow at Oxford University and Fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania .
Go to Profile#4145
Stanley Victor Keeling
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Stanley Victor Keeling , usually cited as S. V. Keeling, was a British philosopher, formerly a reader at University College London . He is best known for his 1934 monograph Descartes, printed in a second edition in 1968, which for decades served as the standard English introduction to the philosophy of Descartes. Keeling is also known for his 1934 annotated edition of Philosophical Studies by J. M. E. McTaggart. Honoring his passion for ancient, especially Greek, philosophy the UCL Department of Philosophy administer an annual memorial lecture, biennial colloquium and a postgraduate scholarsh...
Go to Profile#4146
Peter Wright
#4240
Overall Influence
1916 - 1995 (79 years)
Peter Maurice Wright CBE was a principal scientific officer for MI5, the British counter-intelligence agency. His book Spycatcher, written with Paul Greengrass, became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies. Spycatcher was part memoir, part exposé detailing what Wright claimed were serious institutional failures he investigated within MI5. Wright is said to have been influenced in his counterespionage activity by James Jesus Angleton, counter-intelligence chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency from 1954 to 1975.
Go to Profile#4147
Patricia Greenspan
#63954
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Patricia Greenspan is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Greenspan works in analytic philosophy of action, and is known for work on rationality, morality, and emotion that helped to create a place for emotion in philosophy of action and ethics.
Go to Profile#4148
Wlodek Rabinowicz
#59087
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Wlodek Rabinowicz is a Polish-Swedish philosopher and Professor Emeritus at Lund University. Rabinowicz's areas of expertise include ethics, normativityativity, decision theory and utilitarianism. From 1995 to 1998, he was editor-in-chief of Theoria.
Go to Profile#4149
Hans-Herbert Kögler
#44456
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Hans-Herbert Kögler , is a German-American philosopher. Biography 1960 born in Darmstadt. After finishing the Viktoriaschule in Darmstadt, Kögler studied in Frankfurt philosophy, history of art, and sociology of education. He was supported by the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes for a doctoral fellowship as well as a one-year USA-stipend. He completed his doctoral dissertation 1991 under the direction of Jürgen Habermas. During this work he already opened his European point of view to philosophical discussion in the United States with academic stays at Northwestern University , The New School , and Berkeley .
Go to Profile#4150
Roscoe O. Brady
#72926
Overall Influence
