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,
#4401
Verna Wright
#23083
Overall Influence
1928 - 1998 (70 years)
Verna Wright, MD, FRCP, was a British evangelist, physician, professor of rheumatology at the University of Leeds and co-founder of United Beach Missions. Biography Wright was educated at Bedford School and studied medicine at the University of Liverpool, then spent two years at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. As an actively practising evangelical Christian, Wright helped to found United Beach Missions, an organization whose goal was to preach the Christian gospel message to holidaymakers in Llandudno. The organization, under his leadership, grew to over 3000 people, ministering on the beaches of Britain, France and Belgium.
Go to Profile#4402
Leo Kanner
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psy...
Go to Profile#4403
Ethan Zuckerman
#5231
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Ethan Zuckerman is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT until May 2020, and the author of the 2013 book Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, which won the Zócalo Book Prize. In 2020, he became an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#4404
Dudley Knowles
#53587
Overall Influence
1947 - 2014 (67 years)
Dudley Knowles was a British political philosopher and professor at Glasgow University. He was widely known for his influential book Political Philosophy . Publications Books2001 Political Philosophy 2002 Hegel and the Philosophy of Right 2009 Political Obligation: A Critical Introduction Books edited1990 Explanation and its Limits 1993 , Virtue and Taste 2009 G.W.F. Hegel
Go to Profile#4405
Protap Chunder Mozoomdar
1840 - 1905 (65 years)
Protap Chunder Mozoomdar was a leader of the Hindu reform movement, the Brahmo Samaj, in Bengal, India, and a close follower of Keshub Chandra Sen. He was a leading exemplar of the interaction between the philosophies and ethics of Hinduism and Christianity, about which he wrote in his book, The Oriental Christ.
Go to Profile#4406
Andrea Pozzo
1642 - 1709 (67 years)
Andrea Pozzo was an Italian Jesuit brother, Baroque painter, architect, decorator, stage designer, and art theoretician. Pozzo was best known for his grandiose frescoes using the technique of quadratura to create an illusion of three-dimensional space on flat surfaces. His masterpiece is the nave ceiling of the Church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome. Through his techniques, he became one of the most noteworthy figures of the Baroque period. He is also noted for the architectural plans of Ljubljana Cathedral , inspired by the designs of the Jesuit churches Il Gesù and S. Ignazio in Rome.
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Đuro Arnold
1853 - 1941 (88 years)
Đuro Arnold was a Croatian writer and philosopher. Early life and study Arnold was born as the 19th of 24 children of Ivan, a tax gatherer, and Sofija, née Vukanić. His ancestors arrived from Switzerland during the French Revolution. He was born in Ivanec and spent his early childhood in Krapina. He attended primary school in Zagreb, and high school in Varaždin and Zagreb, where he graduated in 1873.
Go to Profile#4408
Edward D. Freis
#59866
Overall Influence
1912 - 2005 (93 years)
Edward D. Freis was an American physician and researcher, who received the Albert Lasker Award for his studies of the treatment of hypertension. Early life Edward David Freis was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 3, 1912 to Lithuanian immigrants Roy and Rose Freis. He had his eyes set on becoming an actor, but after a few shows, he realized that acting was not for him, and he decided to become a doctor.
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Mahmoud Mohammed Taha
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, also known as Ustaz Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was a Sudanese religious thinker, leader, and trained engineer. He developed what he called the "Second Message of Islam", which postulated that the verses of the Qur'an revealed in Medina were appropriate in their time as the basis of Islamic law, , but that the verses revealed in Mecca represented the ideal and universal religion, which would be revived when humanity had reached a stage of development capable of implementing them, ushering in a renewed era of Islam based on the principles of freedom and equality. He was execu...
Go to Profile#4410
Thomas Donaldson
#30801
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Thomas Donaldson is The Mark O. Winkelman Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an expert in the areas of business ethics, corporate compliance, corporate governance, and leadership. He is Associate Editor for the Business Ethics Quarterly
Go to Profile#4411
Gunnar Skirbekk
#35227
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Gunnar Skirbekk is a Norwegian philosopher. He is professor emeritus at the Department of Philosophy and the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Go to Profile#4412
Paul W. Franks
#51630
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Paul Walter Franks is the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies at Yale University. He graduated with his PhD from Harvard University in 1993. Franks' dissertation, entitled "Kant and Hegel on the Esotericism of Philosophy", was supervised by Stanley Cavell and won the Emily and Charles Carrier Prize for a Dissertation in Moral Philosophy at Harvard University. He completed his B.A and M.A, in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to this, Franks received his general education at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and stud...
Go to Profile#4413
Seyyed Hassan Eslami Ardakani
#26015
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Seyyed Hassan Eslami Ardakani is an Iranian philosopher and professor of ethics at the University of Religions and Denominations. He is known for his expertise on virtue ethics, environmental ethics and research ethics. Eslami is a winner of Farabi International Award for his book Human Cloning in Catholic and Islamic Perspectives.
Go to Profile#4414
Jean–fréderic Colombel‡‡
#76999
Overall Influence
#4415
Rachel Yehuda
#24852
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Rachel Yehuda is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, the vice chair for veterans affairs in the psychiatry department, and the director of the traumatic stress studies division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She also leads the PTSD clinical research program at the neurochemistry and neuroendocrinology laboratory at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. In 2020 she became director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at Mount Sinai.
Go to Profile#4416
Simo Elaković
#51059
Overall Influence
1940 - 2016 (76 years)
Simo Elaković was a Serbian philosopher and Professor at University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. Biography After earning his degree in philosophy from the University of Belgrade, he has continued further specialization in Germany. He has worked as professor at a gymnasium in Dubrovnik and in Sremski Karlovci. He has been elected as assistant at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Economics. He worked as a Professor of Sociology at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Philosophy, then he moved to Belgrade, where he reaches a Professor of Philosophy title.
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Emma Goldman
1869 - 1940 (71 years)
Emma Goldman was a Lithuanian-born anarchist revolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#4418
Jouko Väänänen
#48886
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jouko Antero Väänänen is a Finnish mathematical logician known for his contributions to set theory, model theory, logic and foundations of mathematics. He served as the vice-rector at the University of Helsinki, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Helsinki, as well as a professor of mathematical logic and foundations of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Peter Aczel in 1977 with the PhD thesis entitled "Applications of set theory to generalized quantifiers". He was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2002.
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Garret A. FitzGerald
#37796
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Garret Adare FitzGerald is an Irish physician. He is professor of in translational medicine and Therapeutics and chair of the department of pharmacology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He researches aspects of cardiology, pharmacology, translational medicine, and chronobiology.
Go to Profile#4420
Esther Meek
#52582
Overall Influence
Esther Lightcap Meek is an American philosopher and a Professor of Philosophy emeritus at Geneva Collegein Western Pennsylvania. She is a Fellow Scholar of the Fujimura Institute with artist Makoto Fujimura, an Associate Fellow with the Kirby Laing Center for Public Theology, and a member of the Polanyi Society.
Go to Profile#4421
Vaclav Smil
#11230
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Vaclav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies. He has also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.
Go to Profile#4422
Aleksander Bobko
#18438
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Aleksander Bobko is the Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of Poland. He was previously the rector of Rzeszów University. Biography Bobko graduated in informatics from the AGH University of Science and Technology. He also earned advanced degrees in philosophy, including a doctorate and a habilitation, at the Pontifical University of John Paul II and at the Jagiellonian University. In the years 1998–2002, Bobko was a member of the city council of Rzeszów.
Go to Profile#4423
Cheshire Calhoun
#56589
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Cheshire Calhoun is a professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University and research professor at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona. She is best known for her work in feminist philosophy as well as writing on gay and lesbian philosophy and the morality of same-sex marriage.
Go to Profile#4424
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
1783 - 1853 (70 years)
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was a Danish painter. He was born in Blåkrog in the Duchy of Schleswig . He went on to lay the foundation for the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, and is referred to as the "Father of Danish painting".
Go to Profile#4425
Ioan Petru Culianu
#19536
Overall Influence
1950 - 1991 (41 years)
Ioan Petru Culianu or Couliano was a Romanian historian of religion, culture, and ideas, a philosopher and political essayist, and a short story writer. He served as professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago from 1988 to his death, and had previously taught the history of Romanian culture at the University of Groningen.
Go to Profile#4426
David Forman
#77277
Overall Influence
#4427
Fernando González
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
Fernando González Ochoa , was a Colombian writer and existentialist philosopher known as "el filósofo de Otraparte" . He wrote about sociology, history, art, morality, economics, epistemology and theology in a humorous, and creative style, in various genres of literature. González is considered one of the most original writers of Colombia during the 20th century. His ideas were controversial and had a great influence in the Colombian society at his time and still today. González work inspired Nadaism, a literary and cultural movement founded by Gonzalo Arango an some other writers, poets and painters that surrounded him.
Go to Profile#4428
Mary T. Clark
#40648
Overall Influence
1913 - 2014 (101 years)
Mary Twibill Clark was an American Roman Catholic nun, academic, and civil rights advocate. She was best known as a scholar of the history of philosophy, and was associated especially with Saint Augustine.
Go to Profile#4429
Kevin Hart
#44740
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kevin John Hart is an Anglo-Australian theologian, philosopher and poet. He is currently Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia. As a theologian and philosopher, Hart's work epitomizes the "theological turn" in phenomenology, with a focus on figures like Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida. He has received multiple awards for his poetry, including the Christopher Brennan Award and the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry twice.
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Thomas Addis
1881 - 1949 (68 years)
Thomas Addis Jr. was a Scottish physician-scientist from Edinburgh who made important contributions to the understanding of how blood clots work. He was a pioneer in the field of nephrology, the branch of internal medicine that deals with diseases of the kidney. Addis described the pathogenesis of haemophilia in 1911 and was the first to demonstrate that normal plasma could correct the defect in haemophilia.
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Joanna Wardlaw
#60428
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Joanna Marguerite Wardlaw is a Scottish physician, radiologist, and academic specialising in neuroradiology and pathophysiology. Wardlaw worked as a junior doctor before specialising as a radiologist. She continues to practice medicine as an Honorary Consultant Neuroradiologist with NHS Lothian. She has spent her entire academic career at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#4432
Ronald M Krauss
#77376
Overall Influence
#4433
Swami Shraddhanand
1856 - 1926 (70 years)
Swami Shraddhanand , also known as Mahatma Munshi Ram Vij, was an Arya Samaj sannyasi and an Indian Independence activist who propagated the teachings of Dayananda Saraswati. This included the establishment of educational institutions, like the Gurukul Kangri University, and played a key role on the Sangathan and the Shuddhi , a Hindu reform movement in the 1920s.
Go to Profile#4434
John Tienson
#34328
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
John L. Tienson was an American philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Memphis. He served as Co-Editor of the Southern Journal of Philosophy.
Go to Profile#4435
Barbara Creed
#28476
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Barbara Creed is a professor of cinema studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of six books on gender, feminist film theory, and the horror genre. Creed is a graduate of Monash and La Trobe universities where she completed doctoral research using the framework of psychoanalysis and feminist theory to examine horror films. She is known for her cultural criticism.
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Francesco Bonatelli
1830 - 1911 (81 years)
Francesco Bonatelli was a 19th-century Italian philosopher of the Roman Catholic spiritualist tradition. Francesco Bonatelli was born in Iseo, Brescia, Italy on 25 April 1830. He first studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and later taught that subject at the universities of Bologna and Padua . He was also one of the principal editors of Filosofia delle scuole italiane, a review founded in 1870 by Terenzio Mamiani which was dedicated to defending a Platonizing position. However, he resigned in 1874 when the Platonist Giovanni Maria Bertini published criticisms of Catholicism that Bonatelli considered too bold.
Go to Profile#4437
Bruce Avolio
#42439
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Bruce J. Avolio is an American academic in the field of leadership studies. He is the Professor of Management, Mark Pigott Chair in Business Strategic Leadership, and executive director of the Center for Leadership & Strategic Thinking in the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the Gerontological Society of America.
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Jean Daujat
#21346
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Jean Daujat was a French philosopher of neo-Thomism, a disciple of Jacques Maritain, and the founder of the Centre d'études religieuses, the Center for Religious Studies, specializing in teaching Christian doctrine.
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Alimuddin Zumla
#20381
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Sir Alimuddin Zumla, , FRCP, FRCPath, FRSB is a British-Zambian professor of infectious diseases and international health at University College London Medical School. He specialises in infectious and tropical diseases, clinical immunology, and internal medicine, with a special interest in HIV/AIDS, respiratory infections , and diseases of poverty. He is known for his leadership of infectious/tropical diseases research and capacity development activities. He was awarded a Knighthood in the 2017 Queens Birthday Honours list for services to public health and protection from infectious disease. I...
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Jorge Romero Brest
1905 - 1989 (84 years)
Jorge Aníbal Romero Brest was an influential art critic in Argentina, who helped popularize avant-garde art in his country. Life and work Born in Buenos Aires in 1905, Romero Brest enjoyed multiple interests in his youth, and excelled in a variety of sports. His father, Enrique Romero Brest, established the National Institute of Physical Education. Jorge Brest began writing for his father's sports magazine, Revista de Educación Física. His research for these articles familiarized him with André Dunoyer de Segonzac's illustrations on the subject, and he developed an intellectual interest in art.
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Françoise Meltzer
#46120
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Françoise Meltzer is a professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is the Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Work Meltzer's scholarship includes work on contemporary critical theory and nineteenth-century French literature. She marshals postmodern critical theories in order to explore literary representations of the subject.
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Marcus Steinweg
#73806
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Marcus Steinweg is a German philosopher based in Berlin. His speciality is working between the fields of art and philosophy. He is an editor of the journal Inaesthetics. Biography Steinweg has worked on collaborations with artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn and Rosemarie Trockel. In 2011 he curated the exhibition “Kunst und Philosophie” at the Neue Berliner Kunstverein. He has given numerous talks, published many texts and participated in art exhibitions.
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Susan James
#46338
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Susan James is a British professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College London. She has previously taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Cambridge. She is well known for her work on the history of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy.
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Leopold Flam
#28609
Overall Influence
1912 - 1995 (83 years)
Leopold Flam was a Belgian philosopher. Together with Alphonse De Waelhens, Chaïm Perelman and Rudolf Boehm, he was one of leading philosophers of Belgium from the 1960s until the 1980s. Born in Antwerp, Flam studied social sciences, political history, philosophy at the University of Ghent and obtained a PhD in history. During World War II he was imprisoned in the Dossin Barracks at Mechelen and in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After the war he became a professor at the Free University of Brussels.
Go to Profile#4445
Ross Upshur
#50556
Overall Influence
Ross Upshur is a Canadian physician and researcher. He is a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health of the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, and heads its public health division.
Go to Profile#4446
Andreas-michael Zeiher
#77553
Overall Influence
#4447
Frank Sibley
#74395
Overall Influence
1923 - 1996 (73 years)
Frank Noel Sibley was a British philosopher who worked mainly in the field of aesthetics. He held the first Chair of Philosophy at Lancaster University. Sibley is best known for his 1959 paper "Aesthetic Concepts" , and for "Seeking, Scrutinizing and Seeing" . Both papers have been anthologized, "Aesthetic Concepts" multiple times.
Go to Profile#4448
Cornelis Willem Opzoomer
1821 - 1892 (71 years)
Cornelis Willem Opzoomer was a Dutch jurist, positivist philosopher and theologian. He was professor of philosophy at Utrecht University from 1846 to 1889. In 1856 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#4449
Antoni Ribas
#74887
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Antoni Ribas is a Spanish-American physician–scientist. He is a Professor of Medicine, Surgery, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Ribas served as president of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2021–2022.
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John P. Merrill
1917 - 1984 (67 years)
John Putnam Merrill was an American physician and medical researcher. He led the team which performed the world's first successful kidney transplant. He generally credited as the "father of nephrology" or "the founder of nephrology," which is the scientific study of the kidney and its diseases.
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