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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Philosophy,
#4451
John Foster
#59502
Overall Influence
1941 - 2009 (68 years)
John Andrew Foster , known as John Foster, was a British philosopher and tutorial Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1966 to 2005 . He authored several books, including The Case for Idealism and A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism . His A. J. Ayer was described by Anthony Quinton as "the only serious monograph" about Ayer's philosophy".
Go to Profile#4452
Judith Goslin Hall
#33830
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Judith Goslin Hall is a pediatrician, clinical geneticist and dysmorphologist who is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Early life and education The daughter of a minister, Judith Goslin Hall was born on July 3, 1939, in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Garfield High School in Seattle and then attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. from which she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961.
Go to Profile#4453
May Brodbeck
1917 - 1983 (66 years)
May Brodbeck was an American philosopher of science. Biography Brodbeck was born in Newark, New Jersey. She studied chemistry at New York University, attending evening courses while working, and earned a bachelor's degree in 1941. Thereafter, she worked as a high-school chemistry teacher, before being recruited into the Manhattan Project. Following the war, she studied philosophy at the University of Iowa, completing a Ph.D. supervised by Gustav Bergmann in 1947, on the subject of John Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
Go to Profile#4454
Marin H. Kollef
#77651
Overall Influence
#4455
Renato Janine Ribeiro
#54181
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Renato Janine Ribeiro is a Brazilian full professor of ethics and political philosophy at the University of São Paulo. As of April 6, 2015, he was named Minister of Education of Brazil in the cabinet of Dilma Rousseff.
Go to Profile#4456
Randall Auxier
#39888
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Randall E. Auxier is a professor of philosophy and communication studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, a musician, environmental activist, union advocate, and candidate for the United States House of Representatives, nominated by the Green Party in the 12th Congressional District of Illinois. He is a radio host for WDBX Carbondale since 2001, a widely read author of popular philosophy, and also a co-founder and co-director of the AIPCT .
Go to Profile#4457
Eric Weisbard
#44779
Overall Influence
Eric Weisbard is an American music critic known for founding the Pop Conference, which is hosted annually by the Museum of Pop Culture . He also organized the conference for many years. Career Weisbard serves as professor of American studies at the University of Alabama. He is also the author of both a 33⅓ book entry about Use Your Illusion and the 2014 book Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music, and a former editor for Spin. With Craig Marks, he was also the co-editor of the Spin Alternative Record Guide, and has also written for the Village Voice. For Top 40 Democracy, he...
Go to Profile#4458
Hilary Robinson
#31086
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Hilary Robinson is a British academic and art theorist. She is Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory at Loughborough University's School of Social Sciences and Humanities. She was Dean of the School of Art and Design and a professor at Middlesex University, and previously served as Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the history, theory, and practice of feminist art.
Go to Profile#4459
Salvatore DiMauro
#64645
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Salvatore DiMauro, M.D., was born in Verona, Italy, November 14, 1939, graduated in medicine from the University of Padua in 1963 and completed his residency in neurology in 1966. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on genetic errors of energy metabolism and he defines disease entities using both biochemical and molecular approaches. As an "enzyme defect hunter", DiMauro has documented the molecular basis of many enzyme deficiencies, including carnitine palmitoyltransferase deficiency, the first error of fatty acid oxidation to be recognized in humans.
Go to Profile#4460
Costantino Iadecola
#77695
Overall Influence
#4461
Fiona Macpherson
#47482
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Fiona Macpherson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, where she is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017 and a member of Academia Europaea in 2018.
Go to Profile#4462
Glen Pettigrove
#51796
Overall Influence
Glen Allan Pettigrove is an American philosopher and Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He is known for his expertise on philosophy of emotions. Career Pettigrove has taught at the University of Auckland , Massey University and Santa Clara University .
Go to Profile#4463
Francesca Gargallo
#64381
Overall Influence
1956 - 2022 (66 years)
Francesca Gargallo was a Sicilian-born Mexican writer and poet. Life and career Born in Syracuse, Italy as Francesca Gargallo di Castel Lentini Celentani, she studied philosophy at the Università degli studi di Roma and then at the National Autonomous University of Mexico . A naturalized Mexican citizen, she lived in the country since 1979. She wrote many poetry books and novels such as; Calla mi amor que vivo, Estar en el mundo, La decisión del capitán, Marcha seca among others. Gargallo published work in magazines such as Proceso. Gargallo died of cancer on 3 March 2022, aged 65.
Go to Profile#4464
Lương Kim Định
#45620
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Lương Kim Định or Dominic Lương Kim Định, Kim Định was a Vietnamese catholic priest, scholar and philosopher. Biography He was born in Nam Dinh, French Indochina. He was ordained Catholic priest in 1943. He was a philosophy graduate of the Seminary of Saint Albert le Grand, and a professor of philosophy at Bui Chu Seminary . He afterwards went to Paris, France to study French civilization, sociology and philosophy at Institut Catholique de Paris, and Confucianism at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises. Returning to Vietnam in 1957, he taught philosophy at the Le Bao Tinh Academy and the ...
Go to Profile#4465
Hammalawa Saddhatissa
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Hammalawa Saddhatissa Maha Thera was an ordained Buddhist monk, missionary and author from Sri Lanka, educated in Varanasi, London, and Edinburgh. He was a contemporary of Walpola Rahula, also of Sri Lanka.
Go to Profile#4466
Jerome Groopman
1900 - Present (126 years)
Jerome E. Groopman has been a staff writer in medicine and biology for The New Yorker since 1998. He is the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and author of five books, all written for a general audience.
Go to Profile#4467
Michel Odent
#6312
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Michel Odent is a French obstetrician and childbirth specialist. Education Born in a French village in 1930, Odent studied medicine in Paris and was educated as a surgeon in the 1950s. He has been presented in Lancet as “one of the last real general surgeons”.
Go to Profile#4468
Arthur Thomson
1861 - 1933 (72 years)
Sir John Arthur Thomson was a Scottish naturalist who authored several notable books and was an expert on soft corals. Life He was born at Pilmuir east of East Saltoun, East Lothian, the second son of Isabella Landsborough and the Rev Arthur Thomson , a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, originally from Muckhart.
Go to Profile#4469
Roger Yates
#53176
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Roger Yates is an English lecturer in sociology at University College Dublin and the University of Wales, specialising in animal rights. He is a former executive committee member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection , a former Animal Liberation Front press officer, and a co-founder of the Fur Action Group.
Go to Profile#4470
Julien Freund
#32206
Overall Influence
1921 - 1993 (72 years)
Julien Freund was a French philosopher and sociologist. Freund was called an "unsatisfied liberal-conservative" by Pierre-André Taguieff, for introducing France to the ideas of Max Weber. His work as a sociologist and political theorist is a continuation of Carl Schmitt's. Freund, like many people from Alsace, was fluent in German and French. His works have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
Go to Profile#4471
Derek Denton
#19123
Overall Influence
1924 - 2022 (98 years)
Derek Ashworth Denton was an Australian scientist who elucidated the regulation of electrolytes in extracellular fluid, the hormones controlling this regulation, particularly aldosterone, and the instinctive behaviours controlling intake of water and salts. He was cited in 1995 at election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences as the world’s leading authority on the regulation of salt and water metabolism and relevant endocrine control mechanisms. He was one of Australia’s most eminent scientists.
Go to Profile#4472
Steven James Bartlett
#48454
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Steven James Bartlett is an American philosopher and psychologist notable for his studies in epistemology and the theory of reflexivity, and for his work on the psychology of human aggression and destructiveness, and the shortcomings of psychological normality. His findings challenge the assumption that psychological normality should serve as a standard for good mental health. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books and research monographs as well as many papers published in professional journals in the fields of epistemology, psychology, mathematical logic, and philosophy of science...
Go to Profile#4473
Francis Wade
1907 - 1987 (80 years)
Francis C. Wade was an American Jesuit and professor of philosophy at Marquette University. Biography Wade was born on November 11, 1907, in Whitesboro, Texas, where he was baptized in St. Thomas Church. He was the son of George H. Wade and Virginia M. Wade. He was educated at Whitesboro Public School and at St. Mary's College High School, St. Marys, Kansas. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1925. He was awarded his B.A. from Xavier University in 1930, his M.A. from Saint Louis University in 1932, and his S.T.L. from Saint Louis University in 1939.
Go to Profile#4474
Mark E. Josephson
#77906
Overall Influence
#4475
John Shaw Billings
1838 - 1913 (75 years)
John Shaw Billings was an American librarian, building designer, and surgeon who modernized the Library of the Surgeon General's Office in the United States Army. His work with Andrew Carnegie led to the development and his service as the first director of the New York Public Library. Billings oversaw the building of the Surgeon General's Library, which was the nation's first comprehensive library for medicine.
Go to Profile#4476
John Rockwell
#4355
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Sargent Rockwell is an American music critic, dance critic and arts administrator. According to Grove Music Online, "Rockwell brings two signal attributes to his critical work: a genuine admiration for all kinds of music and the arts, and the ability to fit a spirit of inquiry and enthusiasm for newer approaches to music into a reasoned overview of cultural history".
Go to Profile#4477
Joan Copjec
#38677
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joan K. Copjec is an American philosopher, theorist, author, feminist, and prominent American Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist. She is Professor of Modern Culture & Media at Brown University. Early life and career Joan K. Copjec was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1946; her family is of Czech ancestry. She received her bachelor's degree in English literature, with a minor in Classics, in 1968 from Wheaton College. She received her master's degree in English in 1969 from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and began her doctoral work there, with a minor in Film in 1972. Abandoning her original Ph.D.
Go to Profile#4478
John Haddox
#37293
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
John Herbert Haddox was an American philosopher known for his thought in the area of ethics and social philosophy, and for his groundbreaking work of introducing Mexican philosophers to the English-speaking world. He taught over 56 years at the University of Texas at El Paso before becoming professor emeritus in philosophy upon his retirement in 2013. His best known books were Vasconcelos of Mexico: Philosopher and Prophet, and Antonio Caso: Philosopher of Mexico, both of which were published by the University of Texas Press. He also wrote extensively on Chicano and Native American thought...
Go to Profile#4479
Andrzej Leder
#45931
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andrzej Leder is a Polish philosopher of culture, practicing psychotherapist, and internationally recognized expert on Polish cultural history. Biography Andrzej Leder, the son of Witold Leder and Ewa Lipińska, graduated from the Medical University of Warsaw, and in philosophy from the University of Warsaw. He then obtained his doctorate from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, supervised by Professor . He has worked at the latter institute since 1996, including from 2010 as an associate professor.
Go to Profile#4480
Max Weismann
#39626
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Max Weismann was an American philosopher and a long-time friend and colleague of Mortimer Adler, with whom he co-founded the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas in Chicago. He was director and president of the Center and dedicated his time and talents to promoting the philosophical and pedagogical ideas of Dr. Adler, especially the importance of the study of the "Great Books". He also compiled, edited, and published How To Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization, a 600-page tome of never-published work from Adler's television series The Great Ideas. Weism...
Go to Profile#4481
Robert Redeker
#31608
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Robert Redeker is a French writer and philosophy teacher. He was teaching at the Pierre-Paul-Riquet high school, in Saint-Orens-de-Gameville, and at the École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile. He is currently in hiding under police protection.
Go to Profile#4482
Bruce Mark Psaty
#78021
Overall Influence
#4483
Vishal Mangalwadi
#14664
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Vishal Mangalwadi is a social reformer, political columnist, Indian Christian philosopher, writer and lecturer. Early life Vishal was born in Chhattarpur , India, to Victor and Kusum Mangalwadi and grew up along with his six siblings in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Go to Profile#4484
Charles F. Code
#78095
Overall Influence
#4485
Gerald Midgley
#43332
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Gerald Robert Midgley is a British organizational theorist, professor of systems thinking, director of the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull, and past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is known for his work on "Systemic Intervention;" which he defined as "purposeful action by an agent to create change in relation to reflection upon boundaries."
Go to Profile#4486
Frederick Wilhelmsen
#37902
Overall Influence
1923 - 1996 (73 years)
Frederick D. Wilhelmsen was a Catholic philosopher known for his explication and advancement of the Thomistic tradition. He also was a political commentator, assessing American politics and society from a traditionalist perspective, and a political thinker, addressing what he perceived to be the failings of secular-liberal democracy. He principally was a professor at the University of Dallas from 1965 to his death in 1996. He also taught at the University of Santa Clara, the Al-Hikma University in Baghdad, the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and lectured and taught classes at many other universities.
Go to Profile#4487
Michel Hulin
#55569
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Michel Hulin is a French philosopher, specialised in Indian philosophy. An alumn of the École normale supérieure, he obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the Paris-Sorbonne University in 1977 with a dissertation on the Vedic concept of ahamkara. He was a professor of Indian and comparative philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne from 1981 to 1998. His research has focused on classical Indian philosophy, such as the nondualism in Vedanta, Tantric-inspired texts in Shaivism and the confrontations between European and Asian traditions of thought.
Go to Profile#4488
Giulio Romano
1499 - 1546 (47 years)
Giulio Pippi , known as Giulio Romano , was an Italian painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the sixteenth-century style known as Mannerism. Giulio's drawings have long been treasured by collectors; contemporary prints of them engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi were a significant contribution to the spread of sixteenth-century Italian style throughout Europe.
Go to Profile#4489
Antonin Sertillanges
1863 - 1948 (85 years)
Antonin-Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P. , also known as Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, was a French Catholic philosopher and spiritual writer. Biography Born Antonin-Gilbert, he took the name Antonin-Dalmace when he entered the Dominican order. In 1893 he founded the Revue Thomiste and later became professor of moral philosophy at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Henri Daniel-Rops wrote that it was rumored that President Raymond Poincaré asked Léon-Adolphe Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, for a reply to Pope Benedict XV's peace proposals, and that Amette passed the request along to Sertillan...
Go to Profile#4490
John Rock
1890 - 1984 (94 years)
#4491
Joanna Bryson
#25197
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Joanna Joy Bryson is professor at Hertie School in Berlin. She works on Artificial Intelligence, ethics and collaborative cognition. She has been a British citizen since 2007. Education Bryson attended Glenbard North High School and graduated in 1982. She studied Behavioural Science at the University of Chicago, graduating with an AB in 1986. In 1991 she moved to the University of Edinburgh where she completed an MSc in Artificial Intelligence before an MPhil in Psychology. Bryson moved to MIT to complete her PhD, earning a doctorate under Lynn Andrea Stein in 2001 for her thesis "Intelligence by Design: Principles of Modularity and Coordination for Engineering Complex Adaptive Agents".
Go to Profile#4492
Philipp E. Scherer
#78221
Overall Influence
#4493
Per Bauhn
#52221
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Per Roald Bauhn is a Swedish philosopher and a professor of practical philosophy at the University of Kalmar since 2004, and at Linnaeus University since 2010. His main subjects include the study of ethics and political philosophy. Per Bauhn has authored books on topics as diverse as nationalism, political terrorism, the virtue of courage, and the duty to rescue. He has also contributed to the field of philosophical aesthetics. His philosophical work is inspired by the agency-based ethical theory of Alan Gewirth. Per Bauhn is married to Turkish sociologist and women's studies scholar Fatma ...
Go to Profile#4494
Israel Eldad
#11404
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Israel Eldad , was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group Lehi in Mandatory Palestine. Biography Israel Scheib was born in 1910 in Pidvolochysk, Galicia in a traditional Jewish home. The Scheibs wandered as refugees during the First World War. In 1918, in Lvov, young Scheib witnessed a funeral procession for Jews murdered in a pogrom. After high school, Scheib enrolled at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna for religious studies and the University of Vienna for secular studies. He completed his doctorate on "The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, B...
Go to Profile#4495
Hans Heinz Holz
#50447
Overall Influence
1927 - 2011 (84 years)
Hans Heinz Holz was a German Marxist philosopher. Born in Frankfurt am Main, he was professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg and from 1979 to 1993 at the University of Groningen. He is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of philosophy on one hand and for his openly expressed ideological viewpoints on the other. Influenced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's monadology, he regards Widerspiegelung not only as an epistemological but also as an ontological category. Some critics spot here a hazard of deviating from materialism. Though Holz saw himself as in footsteps of Lenin, his vision is disputed among the leftist circles.
Go to Profile#4496
Helen Nissenbaum
#15891
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech. She is best known for the concept of "contextual integrity" and her work on privacy, privacy law, trust, and security in the online world. Specifically, contextual integrity has influenced the United States government's thinking about privacy issues.
Go to Profile#4497
Stafford Lightman
#58773
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Stafford Louis Lightman has been Professor of Medicine, University of Bristol, since 1993. He was president of the British Neuroscience Association 2017–2019. Education Lightman was educated at Repton School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge . He did his clinical training at Middlesex Hospital Medical School
Go to Profile#4498
Peter Carravetta
#70965
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Peter Carravetta is an Italian philosopher, poet, literary theorist and translator. Works The Elusive Hermes. Method, Discourse, Interpreting Existenz delle voci The Sun and Other Things Linfinito Weak Thought, Gianni Vattimo, Translated by Peter Carravetta, SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, 2012 Translation of Il pensiero debole, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1983
Go to Profile#4499
Julius Ebbinghaus
1885 - 1981 (96 years)
Julius Ebbinghaus was a German philosopher, one of the closest followers of Immanuel Kant active in the twentieth century. He was influenced by the Heidelberg school of neo-Kantianism of Wilhelm Windelband, and wrote on philosophy of law and the categorical imperative. Professor at Marburg University since 1940; 1954 professor emeritus, continuing lectures until 1966. In October 1945, he became installed as Rector Magnificus by order of the American occupation forces. He was the son of famous psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
Go to Profile#4500
Janet Broughton
#62406
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Janet Broughton is Emerita Professor of Philosophy and former Vice Provost for the Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. Her academic research focuses on early modern philosophy, in particular that of David Hume and René Descartes.
Go to Profile