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,
#4151
Reuven Sandyk
#103797
Overall Influence
#4152
Joel J. Kupperman
#65731
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Joel Jay Kupperman was an American professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and author of Six Myths about the Good Life, a popular philosophical volume centering on those values most worth engaging in human life. He was best known to the general public as a young math expert on the radio and television show Quiz Kids. He astounded audiences with his ability to do complex mathematics rapidly and seemingly "in his head." He also had strong general knowledge, and was often the winner of the weekly competitions featured on the show. The 1944 film Chip Off the Old Block, starring ...
Go to Profile#4153
Lester Grinspoon
#6643
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
Lester Grinspoon was an American psychiatrist and long-standing associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School best known for his groundbreaking works on the science and social policy of cannabis, psychedelics and other drugs, and for his commitment to changing harmful drug policies. He concurrently served as a senior psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, Massachusetts, for 40 years. Grinspoon was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychiatric Association. He was founding editor of The American Psychiatric Association Annual Review and Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Go to Profile#4154
Frédéric Lenoir
#49486
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Frédéric Lenoir is a French sociologist, philosopher and writer Biography Lenoir studied philosophy at the University of Fribourg followed by a PhD on Buddhism and the West at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. His first two novels – The Angel's Promise and The Oracle of the Moon – sold more than a million copies in twenty countries.
Go to Profile#4155
Fabrice Hadjadj
#53932
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Fabrice Hadjadj is a French writer and philosopher. Hadjadj was born in Nanterre to Jewish parents of Tunisian heritage. In his teens he was an atheist and anarchist, and he maintained a nihilistic attitude for most of his twenties until, in 1998, he converted to Catholicism.
Go to Profile#4156
Alexandre Marc
#33489
Overall Influence
1904 - 2000 (96 years)
Alexandre Marc, was a French writer and philosopher. He was the founder of personalist, federalist, communitarian thinking. He belonged to the non-conformists of the 1930s. Early life and education Marc was born as Alexandr Markovitch Lipiansky in Odessa, Russian Empire in 1904, in a Jewish family. During the Russian revolution he was expelled from the country, and moved to Paris where he completed his secondary education at the Lycée Saint-Louis in the mid-twenties. He studied philosophy at Jena. When he returned to France, he obtained a law degree and he graduated from Sciences Po in 1927.
Go to Profile#4157
Donald L. Loriaux
#103861
Overall Influence
#4158
Satoru Todo
#103870
Overall Influence
#4159
Graham Roger Serjeant
#103885
Overall Influence
#4160
Erminio Costa
#103896
Overall Influence
#4161
Andreas Bernkop-Schnürch
#83297
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Andreas Bernkop-Schnürch is an Austrian pharmaceutical technologist, scientist, pharmacist, entrepreneur, inventor and professor at the Institute of Pharmacy, University of Innsbruck. His research centers on the areas of pharmaceutical sciences, drug delivery, controlled release, bionanotechnology and polymer engineering. He is the inventor of various technologies such as thiolated polymers for that he coined the name thiomers in 2000 and phosphatase triggered charge converting nanoparticles for mucosal drug delivery. From 2016 to 2018 he served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the...
Go to Profile#4162
Gherardo Gnoli
#43156
Overall Influence
1937 - 2012 (75 years)
Gherardo Gnoli was a historian of Italian religions and Iran expert. Biography Gherardo Gnoli has been since 1996 the president of the Italian Institute for Africa and the East . He was also the head of the Public Counsel Institute and later the Italian Institute for the Middle and the Far East , which had been founded in 1933 by Giovanni Gentile and Giuseppe Tucci. He headed the Italy-Africa Institute , which had been founded in 1906 under the name of "Italian Colonial Institute" by Italian explorers, academics and diplomats.
Go to Profile#4163
Martin Jan Schalij
#103949
Overall Influence
#4164
Paolo Antonio Ascierto
#103950
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#4165
Nancy E. Davidson
#103964
Overall Influence
#4166
Carissa Véliz
#89362
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Carissa Véliz is a Mexican, Spanish, and British philosopher. She is an associate professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Oxford . Life and career Carissa Véliz studied a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy at the University of Salamanca. Later she studied a master of arts in Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. She got a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, with the doctoral thesis "On Privacy", which concerns the ethics and political philosophy of privacy.
Go to Profile#4167
Joseph Jordania
#13042
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Joseph Jordania is an Australian–Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist and professor. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne and the Head of the Foreign Department of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony at Tbilisi State Conservatory. Jordania is known for his model of the origins of human choral singing in the wide context of human evolution and was one of founders of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony in Georgia.
Go to Profile#4168
Donald Redelmeier
#52905
Overall Influence
Donald Redelmeier, M.D., M.S., FRCPC, FACP is a Canadian internist, the Canada Research Chair in Medical Decision Sciences and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is most well known for a seminal New England Journal of Medicine paper in 1997 connecting cellphone use and motor vehicle accidents, which has led to laws banning the use of cellphones while driving across the world. He is also known for his work on the peak–end rule and duration neglect. A recent publication showing an increased rate of motor vehicle accidents in patients who refuse vaccination was featured on m...
Go to Profile#4169
Zhang Gongyao
#69010
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Zhang Gongyao is a Chinese philosopher. He is a professor in Department of Philosophy, Central South University, China. He promoted the abolishment of traditional Chinese medicine. Biography Zhang was born in Chenzhou, Hunan in 1956. He received his M.A degree from Zhejiang University in 1988. In 2006, Zhang initiated a movement to call for abolishment of the traditional Chinese medicine.
Go to Profile#4170
Guy Haarscher
#42022
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Guy Haarscher is a professor of legal and political philosophy at the Free University of Brussels . He taught every other year from 1985 to 2008 at Duke University School of Law as an adjunct professor of law. He also taught at the Central European University in Budapest from 1992 to 2008 as a recurrent visiting professor. Guy Haarscher currently teaches at the ULB, as well as at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Go to Profile#4171
Jacob S. Selhub
#104086
Overall Influence
#4172
Mikael Knip
#104088
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#4173
Jean‐hillaire Saurat
#104187
Overall Influence
#4174
Jay Lynch
#18330
Overall Influence
1945 - 2017 (72 years)
Jay Patrick Lynch was an American cartoonist who played a key role in the underground comix movement with his Bijou Funnies and other titles. He is best known for his comic strip Nard n' Pat and the running gag Um tut sut. His work is sometimes signed Jayzey Lynch. Lynch was the main writer for Bazooka Joe comics from 1967 to 1990; he contributed to Mad, and in the 2000s expanded into the children's book field.
Go to Profile#4175
Christopher New
#73549
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher New is an English academic, author and philosopher. In 1969, New became the head of the philosophy department at The University of Hong Kong. He is the author of the historical novel series, The China Coast Trilogy, which deals with the British presence in China during the 20th century. New has also written novels set in India, Egypt and Europe. He currently divides his time between Asia and Europe.
Go to Profile#4176
Jack Cardiff
#8262
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Jack Cardiff, was a British cinematographer, film and television director, and photographer. His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor, to filmmaking more than half a century later.
Go to Profile#4177
Alan D. D’andrea
#104260
Overall Influence
#4178
Mauricio Suarez
#82455
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mauricio Suárez is a Spanish anglophone philosopher who specialises in philosophy and history of the natural sciences. He earned a BSc in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh , and an MSc and a PhD in philosophy of science from the London School of Economics . His doctoral thesis was on "Models of the world, data-models and the practice of science: The semantics of quantum theory". He currently holds a professorship in Logic and Philosophy of Science at Complutense University of Madrid.
Go to Profile#4179
William C. Reeves
#104302
Overall Influence
#4180
Ann Ferguson
#34279
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ann Ferguson , is an American philosopher, and Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She served as Amherst's director of women's studies from 1995 to 2001. She is known for her work on feminist theory.
Go to Profile#4181
C. Eric Lincoln
#28472
Overall Influence
1924 - 2000 (76 years)
Charles Eric Lincoln was an American scholar. He was the author of several books, including sociological works such as The Black Church Since Frazier and Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma , as well as fiction and poetry.
Go to Profile#4182
Jeffrey D Rothstein
#104328
Overall Influence
#4183
Frank Cole Spencer
#104346
Overall Influence
#4184
George N. Schlesinger
#83537
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
George N Schlesinger was a philosopher, rabbi, and author. He made major contributions in the areas of philosophy of religion, and philosophy of science. He taught and conducted research as a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from 1967 to 1999, and as a visiting professor at several other universities. His teaching and research interests included philosophy of time, philosophy of logic, and theism. He authored 10 books and more than 300 articles, earned many awards, and gave many presentations as a sought after speaker. His presentations at a summer conference resulted in the Philosophy of Time Society.
Go to Profile#4185
Hasan Özbekhan
#22567
Overall Influence
1921 - 2007 (86 years)
Dr. Hasan Özbekhan was a Turkish American systems scientist, cyberneticist, philosopher and planner who was Professor Emeritus of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He applied the field-of-systems theory to global problems, helped inspire the group of planners, diplomats, scientists and academics who came together as the Club of Rome.
Go to Profile#4186
Jacob Birger Natvig
#89543
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Jacob Birger Natvig was a Norwegian physician, a pioneer in the field of immunology in Norway. Career Born in Oslo, Natvig graduated as cand.med. in 1959, and as dr.med. in 1966. He worked as physician at the Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, from 1967 to 1977, and was then appointed director of the hospital from 1978 to 1986. From 1986 to 2004 he was professor of immunology at the University of Oslo.
Go to Profile#4187
Jeanine Basinger
#7449
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Jeanine Basinger is an American film historian who retired in 2020 as the Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, and Founder and Curator of The Cinema Archives at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
Go to Profile#4188
Funda Meric–bernstam
#104442
Overall Influence
#4189
Isidore S. Edelman
#104448
Overall Influence
#4190
Ira Black
#42212
Overall Influence
1941 - 2006 (65 years)
Ira Barrie Black was an American physician and neuroscientist who was an advocate of stem cell research and was the first director of the Stem Cell Institute of New Jersey at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School which was created to advance research in the field.
Go to Profile#4191
Donald Nixon Ross
#104476
Overall Influence
#4192
Maria Rosa Antognazza
#85742
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Maria Rosa Antognazza was an Italian-British philosopher who served as professor of philosophy at King's College London. Life and career Antognazza was educated at the Catholic University of Milan. She held research fellowships and visiting professorships in Italy, Germany, Israel, Great Britain, Switzerland, and the US. Among these were a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, a two-year Leverhulme Trust research fellowship, and in 2016 she was the Leibniz-Professor at the University of Leipzig. She held the 2019–2020 Mind Senior Research Fellowship for work on her book Thinking with Assen...
Go to Profile#4193
Hent de Vries
#75495
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Hendrik "Hent" de Vries Selected bibliography Books Chapters in books Journal articles
Go to Profile#4194
Ulf Landmesser
#54605
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Ulf Landmesser is a German specialist for cardiology and internal medicine. He is professor at the Institute for Health Research in Berlin and Head of the Medical Clinic of Cardiology at the Charité in Berlin. Landmesser is known for his work on coronary interventions and modern methods of catheter-based heart valve therapy.
Go to Profile#4195
Frank J Kelly
#90913
Overall Influence
Frank J. Kelly is a British professor of community health and policy and Head of the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London. He is an authority on the medical effects of air pollution.
Go to Profile#4196
Ananta Charan Sukla
#31261
Overall Influence
1942 - 2020 (78 years)
Ananta Charan Sukla was an Indian scholar of comparative literature, literary criticism, aesthetics, philosophy, and art history. He was the Founding Editor of Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics and edited and published the journal for over 40 years. He specialized in comparative aesthetics , literary theory, philosophy of art, philosophy of literature, religion, mythology, and cultural studies. He was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Sambalpur University, Sambalpur, Odisha.
Go to Profile#4197
Erica Benner
#67786
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Erica Benner is a political philosopher who has held academic posts at St Antony's College, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Yale University. She was awarded a DPhil by Oxford in 1993. She is the author of the books Really Existing Nationalisms , Machiavelli's Ethics , Machiavelli's Prince: A New Reading and Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom . Be Like the Fox was described by Terry Eagleton as "lively, compulsively readable biography", chosen by Julian Baggini as one of his picks for The Guardian's best books of 2017 list, and shortlisted for the 2018 Elizabe...
Go to Profile#4198
Hermann Rauhe
#35210
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Hermann Rauhe is a German musicologist. Life Rauhe was born in Wanna/Niederelbe. After he passed the Abitur at the in Cuxhaven in 1949, he studied music and music education at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg as well as musicology and literary criticism, pedagogy, philosophy, sociology, theology and phonetics at the University of Hamburg from 1951 to 1959. In 1955 he passed the First State Examination for the teaching profession at grammar schools with the combined subject music and German teaching. In 1959 he passed the Second State Examination and then the doctorate of philoso...
Go to Profile#4199
José-Alain Sahel
#65468
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
José-Alain Sahel is a French ophthalmologist and scientist. He is currently the chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, director of the UPMC Eye Center, and the Eye and Ear Foundation Chair of Ophthalmology. Dr. Sahel previously led the Vision Institute in Paris, a research center associated with the one of the oldest eye hospitals of Europe - Quinze-Vingts National Eye Hospital in Paris, founded in 1260. He is a pioneer in the field of artificial retina and eye regenerative therapies. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4200
Michael John Davies
#104600
Overall Influence
