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,
#4401
John Rowe
#101687
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Wallis "Jack" Rowe is an American businessman and academic physician, who served as Chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc., a large health insurance company based in Connecticut, titles he retired from in February 2006.
Go to Profile#4402
John Gofman
#15339
Overall Influence
1918 - 2007 (89 years)
John William Gofman was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Gofman pioneered the field of clinical lipidology, and in 2007 was honored by the Journal of Clinical Lipidology with the title of "Father of Clinical Lipidology". With Frank T. Lindgren and other research associates, Gofman discovered and described three major classes of plasma lipoproteins, fat molecules that carry cholesterol in the blood. The team he led at the Donner Laboratory went on to demonstrate the role of lipoproteins in t...
Go to Profile#4403
Sybil Wolfram
#29495
Overall Influence
1931 - 1993 (62 years)
Sybil Wolfram was an English philosopher and writer, of German Jewish origin. She was a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993. Work She published two books, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction and In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England . She was the translator of Claude Lévi-Strauss's La pensée sauvage , but later disavowed the translation when she discovered the publisher had made changes to the translation that neither she nor Lévi-Strauss had authorized.
Go to Profile#4404
Inge Grundke‐iqbal
#107376
Overall Influence
#4405
John Paul Blass
#86220
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
John P. Blass, physician, biochemist and neurochemist, was born on February 21, 1937 in Vienna, Austria, and deceased March 12, 2023 in New York City. Both his parents were physicians; his father, Gustaf Blass, was a prominent Viennese radiologist and his mother, Jolan Wirth Blass, a student of Sigmund Freud, was a psychoanalyst originally from Budapest. The family then moved to Stamford, Connecticut. Both parents practiced psychiatry, Gustaf in a private sanitarium in Stamford and Jolan as a child psychiatrist in New York City and Connecticut. He is survived by his wife, son and two granddaug...
Go to Profile#4406
Arthur Hyman
#76792
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Arthur Hyman was a professor of philosophy at Yeshiva University. Early life and career Hyman was born in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany, on April 10, 1921. He was Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School until 2008, succeeded by David Berger. He taught philosophy at Yeshiva University for 55 years. He also taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Yale University, Columbia University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Go to Profile#4407
Huibert A. P. Pols
#107414
Overall Influence
#4408
R. Alan North
#107419
Overall Influence
#4409
Sampath Parthasarathy
#107433
Overall Influence
Sampath Parthasarathy is a former Associate Dean of Research and current Professor and Florida Hospital Chair in Cardiovascular Science in the College of Medicine at the University of Central Florida. He is the editor-in-chief of Healthcare and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medicinal Food.
Go to Profile#4410
A. Edward Maumenee
#107446
Overall Influence
#4411
Richard Watson
#68310
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Richard Allan Watson was an American philosopher, speleologist and author. Biography Watson taught philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis for forty years. He was considered one of the foremost living authorities on Descartes. He was an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy for Washington University.
Go to Profile#4412
Mahdi Abbaszadeh
#70618
Overall Influence
Mahdi Abbaszadeh is an Iranian philosopher and associate professor of epistemology at the Research Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought. He is a recipient of the Iranian Book of the Year Award for his book System of Illuminative Epistemology of Al-Suhrawardi.
Go to Profile#4413
Alireza Qaeminia
#74292
Overall Influence
Alireza Qaeminia is an Iranian philosopher and associate professor of epistemology at the Research Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought. He is a recipient of the Iranian Book of the Year Award for his book Biology of the Religious Text.
Go to Profile#4414
Joe Friggieri
#77982
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Prof. Joe Friggieri is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Malta, poet, playwright and theatre director. Biography Friggieri was the first professor of philosophy on the University of Malta faculty not to be a Catholic priest and succeeded Peter Serracino Inglott in 1996 upon the latter's retirement. He holds doctorates from the University of Milan and The University of Oxford. Friggieri has been guest research scholar and lecturer at the Universities of Venice, Amsterdam, St Andrews, Augsburg and Genova. He is currently a professor at the University of Malta and previously was a me...
Go to Profile#4415
Donna Cox
#14438
Overall Influence
Donna J. Cox is an American artist and scientist, Michael Aiken Endowed Chair; Professor of Art + Design; Director, Advanced Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ; Director, Visualization and Experimental Technologies at National Center for Supercomputing Applications ; and Director, edream . She is a recognized pioneer in computer art and scientific visualization, specifically cinematic scientific visualization.
Go to Profile#4416
Daniel Garber
#100057
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Daniel Garber is an American philosopher. He is the A. Watson Armour, III, University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is a specialist in the history of early modern philosophy and science.
Go to Profile#4417
Gu Su
#55867
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gu Su is a Chinese liberal political philosopher and was professor of Philosophy and Law at Darcy University, China. After graduating from Nanjing University, he studied at Duke University between 1983 and 1986. After then he taught at Nanjing university as a faculty member. His main work is Essential Ideas of Liberalism, published in China and Taiwan several times, introducing main ideas of liberalism and their implications to Chinese political and social practice. He has edited a series of books and written many articles in the national press, newspapers, magazines and journals on political and legal issues.
Go to Profile#4418
Jean-Louis Le Moigne
#35970
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Jean-Louis Le Moigne is a French specialist in systems theory and constructivist epistemology. He is an alumnus from École Centrale Paris. Biography Jean-Louis Le Moigne was born on 22 March 1931 in Casablanca, French Morocco. He is married to Maguy Le Moigne, and they have 3 children.ECP Engineer . Diplomas from ITP Harvard Business School and the MIT Sloan School of Management .Industrial Career 1959–1971: Shell Group France: lubricant development; operational research; Informational Organization; Central Planning; Director of South-West Region, Logistics.Professor , later Emeritus Profess...
Go to Profile#4419
Cindy Lee Grines
#107569
Overall Influence
#4420
Michael Dexter
#57338
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael Dexter FRS is a British haematologist and director of the Wellcome Trust, from 1998 to 2003. Education Dexter was inspired to take A levels at night school and went on study physiology and zoology at the University of Salford. After graduating, he continued in academia and received a PhD from the University of Manchester in 1974 for research into Leukemia. Dexter also received a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Salford in 1982.
Go to Profile#4421
George Henry Radcliffe Parkinson
#96897
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
George Henry Radcliffe Parkinson was a British philosopher and historian of philosophy. Biography Parkinson was born in 1923 in Tianjin, China, to British parents. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Literae Humaniores in 1949, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1952. His doctoral thesis concerned Baruch Spinoza. Later work focused on Gottfried W. Leibniz. In 1950 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading, under then Head of Department Professor H A Hodges, and he remained in the department until he retired.
Go to Profile#4422
Bryan Stone
#49531
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Bryan P. Stone is an American theologian who is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Boston University School of Theology, and a Co-director of the Center for Practical Theology. Stone writes on topics related to both systematic theology and practical theology. He is associated with both postliberalism and Christian pacifism, having been influenced by thinkers such as John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Wesley, and in his earliest work with liberation theology and process theology.
Go to Profile#4423
Gilles Montalescot
#107679
Overall Influence
#4424
Sanjiv Chopra
#12102
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Sanjiv Chopra, M.B.B.S, M.A.C.P, is an Indian-born American physician, Professor of Medicine and former Faculty Dean for Continuing Medical Education at Harvard Medical School. He currently serves as a Marshall Wolf Master Clinician Educator at Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-director of the CME Division in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Go to Profile#4425
Gilles Salles
#72536
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Gilles Salles is a French haematologist who joined the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in 2020 after a career as a French University Professor & Medical Doctor in Lyon University Hospitals . He is specialized in hematologic malignancies, in particular non-Hodgkin and Hodgkin lymphomas.
Go to Profile#4426
Michael Brauer
#107698
Overall Influence
#4427
Christine L. Borgman
#43834
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Christine L. Borgman is Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. She is the author of more than 200 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Two of her sole-authored monographs, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World , have won the Best Information Science Book of the Year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She is a lead investigato...
Go to Profile#4428
Eduardo Lourenço
#31309
Overall Influence
1923 - 2020 (97 years)
Eduardo Lourenço de Faria , best known as Eduardo Lourenço, was a Portuguese essayist, professor, critic, philosopher and writer. Early life Coming from a small village in Beira Interior, he is the eldest of the seven children of Abílio de Faria, Captain of Infantry, and Maria de Jesus Lourenço. He moved to Guarda in 1932 and entered the Military College in 1934, one year after his father left for Nampula, Mozambique.
Go to Profile#4429
Karim S. Fizazi
#107757
Overall Influence
#4430
Pierre Vassalli
#107770
Overall Influence
#4431
Kai-man Kwan
#83682
Overall Influence
Kai-man Kwan is a Chinese Christian philosopher at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the current Director of the Centre for Sino-Christian Studies. Education and career After graduating as an electrical engineer from the University of Hong Kong in 1983, Kwan worked as a Science and Maths teacher first at Matteo Ricci College, and then at Carmel Alison Lam Foundation Secondary School. He completed his M.Phil. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1993 from Oxford University under the supervision of Richard Swinburne. The next year he joined Hong Kong Baptist University as a part-time Lecturer. He served as the Head of the Department of Religion and Philosophy from 2013 to 2018.
Go to Profile#4432
Frances Alice Shepherd
#70973
Overall Influence
Frances Alice Shepherd, is a Canadian oncologist recognized for her research on lung cancer and her contributions to the design, development, and conduct of clinical trials. She is currently a senior staff physician at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, where she has held the Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research since 2001, and she is a full professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#4433
David William Dodick
#107840
Overall Influence
#4434
Patrick Aidan Heelan
#89068
Overall Influence
1926 - 2015 (89 years)
Patrick Aidan Heelan, S.J. was an Irish Jesuit priest, physicist, and philosopher of science. He was William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. Biography Patrick A. Heelan was born in Dublin to an Irish father and a Belgian mother. He joined the Society of Jesus at 16, received his B.A. in 1947 and his M.A. in 1948, all with first-class honors, in mathematics and mathematical physics at University College, Dublin during which time he also worked with Erwin Schrödinger and John Synge at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies both mathematicians famous for their work in general relativity and cosmology.
Go to Profile#4435
James Giles
#82098
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
James Giles is a Canadian philosopher and psychologist. He has written about the philosophy of perception, personal identity and the self, mindfulness, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, and has published theories of the evolution of human hairlessness, the nature of sexual desire, sexual attraction, and gender. His wide range of academic interests and often controversial views have earned him the title of an "interdisciplinary maverick."
Go to Profile#4436
Jeffrey A. Engelman
#107898
Overall Influence
#4437
Jean Curthoys
#73349
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Jean Curthoys is an Australian feminist philosopher. She was born in Broken Hill, New South Wales, the daughter of Geoffrey and Barbara Curthoys, leading members of the Communist Party of Australia. Her sister Ann Curthoys is an academic historian. After studying science and philosophy at the University of Sydney, she helped teach the first feminist philosophy course in Sydney in 1973. Her 1997 book, Feminist Amnesia, accuses later academic feminist theory of abandoning the liberation theory of the 1960s for an intellectually and morally sterile careerism.
Go to Profile#4438
Murray Epstein
#107910
Overall Influence
#4439
Salim Abdool Karim
#63381
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Salim S. Abdool Karim, MBChB, MMed, MS, FFPHM, FFPath , DipData, PhD, DSc, FRS is a South African public health physician, epidemiologist and virologist who has played a leading role in the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemic. His scientific contributions have impacted the landscape of HIV prevention and treatment, saving thousands of lives.
Go to Profile#4440
Bastiaan C. Van Fraassen
#107923
Overall Influence
#4441
Fernand Brunner
#78628
Overall Influence
1920 - 1991 (71 years)
Fernand Brunner was a Swiss philosopher. After studying in Lausanne and in Paris, became a professor at the University of Neuchâtel. He united philosophical introspection with the study of the History of Philosophy in a personalized manner. He was interested in ancient history, the Middle Ages, the Modern era, traditional Arab and Jewish philosophies, as well as ideas from India, studying the differences between philosophy and tradition. Among Western traditions, he was particularly interested in the platonic and neoplatonic traditions, in Meister Eckhart, in Solomon Ibn Gabirol, and in Lei...
Go to Profile#4442
Troyen Anthony Brennan
#107936
Overall Influence
#4443
Joseph Dancis
#94400
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
Joseph Dancis was an American pediatrician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City known for his research contributions to neonatology and placentology. He received the John Howland Award in 1988. Early life Dancis was born on March 19, 1916, in Brooklyn and was raised in the Bronx. He attended Columbia College from 1931 to 1934 and received an M.D. from Saint Louis University School of Medicine in 1938. After graduating, he returned to New York City to complete a rotating internship and a residency in pediatrics at Queens General Hospital. He served in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1945 and was stationed in Hawaii.
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Arnór Hannibalsson
#96731
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
Arnór Hannibalsson was an Icelandic philosopher, historian, and translator. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland. He completed a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Moscow and a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
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Eric W. Fonkalsrud
#107986
Overall Influence
#4446
Cyril Clarke
#15776
Overall Influence
1907 - 2000 (93 years)
Sir Cyril Astley Clarke, KBE, FRCP, FRCOG, FRC Path, FRS was a British physician, geneticist and lepidopterist. He was honoured for his pioneering work on prevention of Rh disease of the newborn, and also for his work on the genetics of the Lepidoptera .
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Eric Paul Krenning
#107991
Overall Influence
#4448
Hasna Begum
#77877
Overall Influence
1935 - 2020 (85 years)
Hasna Begum was a Bangladeshi philosopher and feminist, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Dhaka until her retirement in December 2000. Education and career She earned her BA and MA from the University of Dhaka and her PhD in moral philosophy from Monash University, where she was the first doctoral advisee of Australian philosopher Peter Singer. The title of her doctoral dissertation was Moore’s Ethics: Theory and Practice. Begum was a prolific author, and translated a number of philosophical classics into Bengali.
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José Arthur Giannotti
#105300
Overall Influence
1930 - 2021 (91 years)
José Arthur Giannotti was a Brazilian philosopher, essayist, and university professor. He was a full professor and emeritus at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo.
Go to Profile#4450
Laura J. Snyder
#73326
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Laura J. Snyder is an American historian, philosopher, and writer. She is a Fulbright Scholar, is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, was the first Leon Levy/Alfred P. Sloan fellow at The Leon Levy Center for Biography at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and is the recipient of an NEH Public Scholars grant. She writes narrative-driven non-fiction books including, most recently, Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing, which won the Society for the History of Technology's 2016 Sally Hacker Prize. In 2019, Snyder signed a contract with A. A. Knopf to author a biography of Oliver Sacks, based on exclusive access to the Sacks archive.
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