Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#4651

Humberto Giannini

#33296

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Humberto Giannini Íñiguez was a Chilean philosopher of Italian descent. A disciple and continuator of , he was a member of the Academia Chilena de la Lengua and winner of the National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences in 1999.

#4652

Serene Khader

#69094

Overall Influence

Serene J. Khader is an American moral and political philosopher and feminist theorist. She is Professor and Jay Newman Chair in the Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her main areas of research are political philosophy, moral psychology, feminist philosophy, global justice and development ethics. In April 2017 she was elected vice-president of the Human Development and Capabilities Association.

#4653

Edmund Pfleiderer

1842 - 1902 (60 years)

Edmund Pfleiderer was a German philosopher and theologian. He entered the ministry and during the Franco-Prussian War served as army chaplain, an experience described in his eines feldgeistlichen im kriege 1870/71 . He was afterwards appointed professor ordinarius of philosophy at Kiel , and in 1878 he was elected to the philosophical chair at Tübingen. He published works on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, empiricism and scepticism in David Hume's philosophy, modern pessimism, Kantian criticism, English philosophy, Heraclitus of Ephesus and many other subjects.

#4654

William Hatcher Davis

#76688

Overall Influence

1939 - 2017 (78 years)

William Hatcher Davis was Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, where he taught for 47 years and served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy. He was interested in the philosophy of religion, ethics, epistemology, and pragmatism. Among his publications are The Freewill Question , Peirce's Epistemology , and "Why be Moral?" .

#4655

Charles Bernard Higgins

#80594

Overall Influence

#4656

Elizabeth V. Spelman

#69067

Overall Influence

Elizabeth V. Spelman is a philosopher in the United States. She is currently a professor at Smith College. She is a Barbara Richmond 1940 Professor in the Humanities. Due to this position she currently resides in Northampton, Massachusetts.

#4657

Norman Bethune

1890 - 1939 (49 years)

Henry Norman Bethune was a Canadian thoracic surgeon, early advocate of socialized medicine, and member of the Communist Party of Canada. Bethune came to international prominence first for his service as a frontline trauma surgeon supporting the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, and later supporting the Chinese Communist Party's Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bethune helped bring modern medicine to rural China, treating both sick villagers and wounded soldiers.

#4658

Richard Zach

#71328

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Richard Zach is a Canadian logician, philosopher of mathematics, and historian of logic and analytic philosophy. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. Research Zach's research interests include the development of formal logic and historical figures associated with this development. In the philosophy of mathematics Zach has worked on Hilbert's program and the philosophical relevance of proof theory. In mathematical logic, he has made contributions to proof theory and to modal and many-valued logic, especially Gödel logic.

#4659

Oscar Terán

#72112

Overall Influence

1938 - 2008 (70 years)

Oscar Terán was an Argentinean philosopher. Terán was born in Carlos Casares, Buenos Aires. He left his hometown in 1959 to study philosophy in the Buenos Aires University where he devoted himself to the study of history with the help of his teacher . In 1976 he was exiled in Mexico because of a military dictatorship. He was the author of numerous books and also a supporter of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Alfonsinismo in the 1980s.

#4660

Lawrence Einhorn

#12051

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Lawrence Einhorn is an American oncologist at Indiana University School of Medicine. A pioneer in cancer treatment research, Einhorn developed cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimens that increased cure rates while minimizing toxic side effects.

#4661

Beth Lord

#76274

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Beth Lord is a Canadian philosopher specialising in the history of philosophy, especially the work and influence of Immanuel Kant and Baruch Spinoza, and contemporary Continental philosophy. She is currently a Professor and Head of School in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, where she has worked since 2013.

#4662

Alejandro A. Rabinstein

#80685

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

#4663

Sandra Black

#39535

Overall Influence

Sandra Elizabeth Black, is a Canadian physician and neurologist known for her work in "contributing to improved diagnosis and treatment of vascular dementia, Alzheimer's disease and stroke". She is currently a Senior scientist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She holds the Brill Chair in Neurology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

#4664

Magnus Hundt

1449 - 1519 (70 years)

Magnus Hundt or Magnus Canis , also known as Parthenopolitanus, was a German philosopher, physician and theologian. Hundt coined the term anthropology, and he and Otto Casmann have been mentioned as founders of anthropology since they used the term in the 16th century.

#4665

Juan Manuel Silva Camarena

#51883

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Juan Manuel Silva Camarena , is a Mexican philosopher, Cathedratic Professor and academic functionary. Biography Juan Manuel Silva Camarena was born on November 6, 1945, younger son of the candy, chocolate and Mexican cream manufacturer Heladio Silva Chávez and Refugio Camarena Padilla , born in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco.

#4666

Peter Malfertheiner

#80743

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

#4667

Edward H. Shortliffe

#8247

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Edward Hance Shortliffe is a Canadian-born American biomedical informatician, physician, and computer scientist. Shortliffe is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. He was the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems, which obtained clinical data interactively from a physician user and was used to diagnose and recommend treatment for severe infections. While never used in practice , its performance was shown to be comparable to and sometimes more accurate than that of Stanford infectious disease faculty.

#4668

Juan Azor

1535 - 1603 (68 years)

Juan Azor was a Spanish philosopher and Jesuit priest. Life Azor was born at Lorca in the province of Murcia, southern Spain. He entered the Society of Jesus on 18 March 1559, and went on to become professor of philosophy and later of theology, both dogmatic and moral, at Piacenza, Alcalá, and Rome. He was a member of the first committee appointed by Father General Acquaviva to draw up the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum.

#4669

Karl. T. Weber

#4670

Petr Vopěnka

#42651

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Petr Vopěnka was a Czech mathematician. In the early seventies, he developed alternative set theory , which he subsequently developed in a series of articles and monographs. Vopěnka’s name is associated with many mathematical achievements, including Vopěnka's principle. Since the mid-eighties he concerned himself with philosophical questions of mathematics .

#4671

Ronald Anthony Depinho

#80775

Overall Influence

#4672

Clifford Williams

#46082

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Clifford Williams is an American professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He is also Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois. Williams graduated from Wheaton College in 1964 and from Indiana University with a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1972. He taught at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York from 1968 to 1982 with the exception of one semester at Houghton College. He then taught at Trinity International University from 1982 to 2012, becoming the chair of the philosophy department, with the exception of 1998–1999, where he taught at Wheaton College.

#4673

William Allen Banks

#80792

Overall Influence

#4674

Al-Shahrazuri

Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Mahmud Shahrazuri was a 13th-century Muslim physician, historian and philosopher. He was of Kurdish origin. It appears that he was alive in AD 1288. However, it is also said that he died in the same year.

#4675

Dionysius of Cyrene

#61477

Overall Influence

Dionysius of Cyrene , lived c. 150 BC, was a Stoic philosopher and mathematician. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon and Antipater of Tarsus. He was famed as a mathematician, and he is probably the Dionysius whose arguments are attacked by Philodemus in his book On Signs , where Dionysius is reported as arguing that the Sun must be very large because it reappears slowly from behind an obstruction.

#4676

Valentino Annibale Pastore

1868 - 1956 (88 years)

Valentino Annibale Pastore was an Italian philosopher and logician. Pastore was born in Orbassano. He studied literature at the University of Turin under Arturo Graf. His thesis La vita delle forme letterarie was published in 1892 in Turin. Pastore then turned to philosophy, influenced by the works of Pasquale d'Ercole, Friedrich Kiesow, Antonio Garbasso, and Giuseppe Peano, publishing his own thesis Sopra le teorie della scienza: logica, matematica, fisica in 1903.

#4677

Murray Clarke

#65720

Overall Influence

Murray Clarke is a Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada specializing in Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, and Naturalized Epistemology. He is the author of Reconstructing Reason and Representation.

#4678

Boethus of Sidon

75 BC - 10 BC (65 years)

Boethus of Sidon was a Peripatetic philosopher from Sidon, who lived towards the end of the 1st century BC. None of his work has been preserved and the complete collection of quotings and paraphrases appeared first in 2020.

#4679

Sergey Zagraevsky

Sergey Zagraevsky

#19916

Overall Influence

1964 - 2020 (56 years)

Sergey Zagraevsky was a Russian-Israeli painter, architectural historian, writer and theologian. Biography Zagraevsky was the son of architectural historian Wolfgang Kawelmacher and poet and dramatist Inna Zagraevsky .

#4680

Arshi Pipa

#29424

Overall Influence

1920 - 1997 (77 years)

Arshi Pipa was an Albanian and American writer, philosopher, poet and literary critic. Biography Arshi Pipa was born on 28 July 1920 in Shkodër and attended school there until 1938. Pipa received a BA equivalent degree in philosophy at the University of Florence in 1942. After he completed his studies he was a teacher of Italian language in different schools in Albania.

#4681

Carlo Strenger

#18350

Overall Influence

1958 - 2019 (61 years)

Carlo Strenger was a Swiss and Israeli psychologist, philosopher, existential psychoanalyst and public intellectual who served as professor of psychology and philosophy at Tel Aviv University . He was a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Terrorism at John Jay College, on the scientific advisory board of the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna, and a member of the Seminar for Existential Psychoanalysis in Zurich. His research focused on the impact of globalization on meaning, personal and group identity.

#4682

Dimitris Bertsimas

#12898

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dimitris Bertsimas is an American applied mathematician, and a professor in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2005, Bertsimas was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to optimization theory and stochastic systems and innovative applications in financial engineering and transportation.

#4683

Janus Cornarius

Janus Cornarius

1500 - 1558 (58 years)

Janus Cornarius was a Saxon humanist and friend of Erasmus. A gifted philologist, Cornarius specialized in editing and translating Greek and Latin medical writers with "prodigious industry," taking a particular interest in botanical pharmacology and the effects of environment on illness and the body. Early in his career, Cornarius also worked with Greek poetry, and later in his life Greek philosophy; he was, in the words of Friedrich August Wolf, "a great lover of the Greeks." Patristic texts of the 4th century were another of his interests. Some of his own writing is extant, including a book...

#4684

Maxime Hans Kuczyński

Maxime Hans Kuczyński

1890 - 1967 (77 years)

Max "Maxime" Hans Kuczyński was a German physician of Jewish origin. He was the father of the former President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Biography Maxime Kuczyński was born in Berlin, as the son of Emma and Louis Kuczyński, both of Jewish Polish origin. He studied medicine and natural science at the University of Rostock. In 1913 he received his degree in philosophy, and in 1919 a degree in medicine.

#4685

John Francis Nunn

#80916

Overall Influence

#4686

Bruce Waller

#47605

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Bruce Waller was a contemporary American philosopher notable for his theories about the nature of free will and its implications for human society. He was a philosophy professor at Youngstown State University from 1990 until he retired in 2019. Waller died on February 8, 2023, at the age of 76.

#4687

Mitchell Miller

#28104

Overall Influence

Mitchell H. Miller, Jr. is an American philosopher. He was, until his retirement in 2013, the Dexter Ferry Professor in Philosophy at Vassar College. The majority of his work concerns the late dialogues of Plato, but he has also written on Hesiod, Parmenides, and Hegel.

#4688

Bernardo Houssay

Bernardo Houssay

1887 - 1971 (84 years)

Bernardo Alberto Houssay was an Argentine physiologist. Houssay was a co-recipient of the 1947 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the role played by pituitary hormones in regulating the amount of glucose in animals, sharing the prize with Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori. He is the first Latin American Nobel laureate in the sciences.

#4689

Tony Cragg

#9616

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Sir Anthony Douglas Cragg is an Anglo-German sculptor, resident in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977. Early life and training Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool. His father was an aerospace engineer. He first worked as a lab technician for the British Rubber Producers Research Association after high school. He studied art at Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology, Cheltenham, from 1968 to 1970, and painted at the Wimbledon School of Art, London, from 1970 to 1973. The same year he went on to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London, completing an MA in 1977.

#4690

Sara Negri

#65755

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sara Negri is a mathematical logician who studies proof theory. She is Italian, worked in Finland for several years, where she was a professor of theoretical philosophy in the University of Helsinki, and currently holds a position as professor of mathematical logic at the University of Genoa.

#4691

John Olney

#20710

Overall Influence

1931 - 2015 (84 years)

John Olney was a medical doctor and a professor of psychiatry, pathology, and immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine. He is known for his work on brain damage. He coined the term excitotoxicity in his 1969 paper published in Science. Olney's lesions are named after him. In 1996 he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He had campaigned for greater regulation of monosodium glutamate , aspartame and other excitotoxins for over twenty years. He died at his residence on April 14, 2015 at the age of 83.

#4692

Christine K. Cassel

#38044

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation.

#4693

Kenneth Calman

#12216

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Sir Kenneth Charles Calman, HonFAcadMEd is a Scottish doctor and academic who formerly worked as a surgeon, oncologist and cancer researcher and held the position of Chief Medical Officer of Scotland, and then England. He was Warden and Vice-Chancellor of Durham University from 1998 to 2006 before becoming Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. He held the position of Chair of the National Cancer Research Institute from 2008 until 2011. From 2008 to 2009, he was convener of the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution.

#4694

William Mackintire Salter

1853 - 1931 (78 years)

William Mackintire Salter was the author of several books on philosophy and a critical and enduring major classic on Nietzsche. He was also a special lecturer for the Department of Philosophy in the University of Chicago and a pioneer in the Ethical movement.

#4695

Cercops

#26115

Overall Influence

Cercops was one of the oldest Orphic poets. He was called a Pythagorean by Clement of Alexandria. Cicero, was said by Epigenes of Alexandria to have been the author of an Orphic epic poem entitled the "Descent to Hades", which seems to have been extant in the Alexandrian period. Others attribute this work to Prodicus of Samos, or Herodicus of Perinthus, or Orpheus of Camarina.

#4696

Dawes Hicks

1862 - 1941 (79 years)

George Dawes Hicks FBA was a British philosopher who was the first professor of moral philosophy at University College, London from 1904 until 1928 and professor emeritus thereafter until his death.

#4697

Kathy Wilkes

#36636

Overall Influence

1946 - 2003 (57 years)

Kathleen Vaughan Wilkes was an English philosopher and academic who played an important part in rebuilding the education systems of former Communist countries after 1990. She established her reputation as an academic with her contributions to the philosophy of mind in two major works and many articles in professional journals. As a conscientious college tutor, she won the respect and affection of her students and academic colleagues. Her most notable contribution lay in her clandestine activities behind the Iron Curtain, which led to the establishment of underground universities and academic networks in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.

#4698

Peter Jüni

#37024

Overall Influence

Peter Jüni is a Swiss physician, general internist, and epidemiologist based in England. He was previously both a member of, and the scientific director of, the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, and also a director of a research centre at St Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

#4699

Shahrokh Shariat

#61653

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Shahrokh François Shariat is currently professor and chairman of the Department of Urology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna General Hospital, Vienna, Austria. He is also adjunct professor of urology at Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, NY; adjunct professor of urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; adjunct professor of urology at the Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, CZ; adjunct professor of urology at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, RU; honorary professor of urology, University of Jordan, Amman, ...

#4700

Jesse Roth

#42176

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Jesse Roth is an American physician and endocrinologist, currently at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. He received his BA in 1955 from Columbia University, his MD in 1959 from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in 1961, and a fellowship in endocrinology at Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center in 1963. Beginning with his fellowship work with Solomon Berson and Rosalyn Yalow, Jesse Roth's research career focused on insulin action. His laboratory at the National Institutes of Health elucidated much o...

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions