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,
#4751
Andrea Nye
#41119
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Andrea Nye is a feminist philosopher and writer. Nye is a Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater for the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department and an active member of the Women's Studies Department. In 1992, Nye received the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Award for Outstanding Research.
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Anand Pillay
#55531
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Anand Pillay is a British mathematician and logician working in model theory and its applications in algebra and number theory. Biography Pillay studied as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, obtaining a Bachelor in Mathematics and Philosophy in 1973 at Balliol College. At the University of London, he received his master's degree in mathematics in 1974 and his PhD in 1978 with Wilfrid Hodges at Bedford College, titled Gaifman Operations, Minimal Models, and the Number of Countable Models. In 1978, he was a Royal Society Fellow and visiting scientist at CNRS at Paris Diderot University.
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Mia Berner
#78361
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Mia Berner was a Norwegian philosopher, sociologist, university lecturer, radio journalist, essayist, novelist, poet and non-fiction writer. Berner grew up in Stavanger, and started studying philosophy at the University of Oslo. During the German occupation of Norway she was involved in resistance work, and had to flee to Sweden in 1943. She was married to the Swedish journalist Sven Öste, and the couple settled on the island of Tjörn, near Gothenburg. In 1975 she married the Finnish poet Pentti Saarikoski. Among her works is the memoir book PS. Anteckningar från et sorgeår from 1985, the nov...
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Gahan Wilson
#7675
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Gahan Allen Wilson was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations. Biography Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was inspired by the work of the satiric Mad and Punch cartoonists, and 1950s science fiction films. His cartoons and prose fiction appeared regularly in Playboy, Collier's and The New Yorker for nearly 50 years. He was a regular contributor to the National Lampoon humor magazine. He published cartoons and film reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. From 1992 through end of publication, he prepared all the front covers for the annual book Passport to World Band Radio.
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Quirino Principe
#36318
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Quirino Principe is an Italian philosopher of music, Germanist, translator and dramatist. actor. Teaching activity Principe holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Padua. He taught on the musicology courses of the "G. Verdi" Conservatory of Milan. Further teaching engagements have included those at the University of Trieste , at Roma Tre "Ostiense" University and at Verona Accademia per l'Opera Italiana .
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Mary Cushman
#50517
Overall Influence
Mary Cushman is an American vascular hematologist. She is a Full professor of Medicine and Pathology in the Robert Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. Early life and education Cushman grew up in western Massachusetts where she was encouraged by her mother to pursue "an easier, more traditional life and not have to work so hard." In spite of this, she enrolled at the University of Vermont, a school she described as "very progressive," and sought after a medical degree. Cushman earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Vermont in 1985 before enrolling at their Robert Larner College of Medicine for her medical degree.
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Gordon Park Baker
#46778
Overall Influence
1938 - 2002 (64 years)
Gordon Park Baker was an American-English philosopher. His topics of interest included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gottlob Frege, Friedrich Waismann, Bertrand Russell, the Vienna Circle, and René Descartes. He was noted for his collaboration with Peter Hacker and his disagreements with Michael Dummett.
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Thomas P. Stossel
#35396
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Thomas P. Stossel was an American hematologist, inventor, medical researcher, and writer that discovered gelsolin, and invented the BioAegis technology estate. He was also a professor emeritus of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor emeritus of clinical research at the American Cancer Society. He was Chief Scientific Advisor to BioAegis Therapeutics Inc., a clinical stage biotech company developing a non-immunosuppressive, anti-inflammatory with potential to address a wide range of infectious, inflammatory and degenerative diseases. He is the holder of more than 50 patents and had authored more than 300 papers, studies, and reviews.
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John Marenbon
#28096
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Alexander Marenbon FBA is a British philosopher and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His principal area of specialization is medieval philosophy. Career He obtained BA, MA, PhD, and DLitt degrees from the University of Cambridge. Since 1978 he has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a senior research fellow there since 2005. In 2010 he became an honorary professor of medieval philosophy at Cambridge, delivering an inaugural lecture entitled 'When was medieval philosophy?'. He has also taught at Paris-Sorbonne University, been a visiting fellow at both the Centre for Me...
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Brajendra Nath Seal
1864 - 1938 (74 years)
Sir Brajendra Nath Seal was a Bengali Indian humanist philosopher. He served as the second vice chancellor of Mysore University. He began his career as a lecturer at the Scottish Church College. His research works were published in some of leading journals during the British Raj, such as the Calcutta Review, Modern Review, New India, Dawn, Bulletin of Mathematical Society, Indian Culture, Hindustan Standard, British Medical Journal, Prabasi, Sabuj Patra, and Visva-Bharati.
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G. R. G. Mure
1893 - 1979 (86 years)
Geoffrey Reginald Gilchrist Mure was a British idealist philosopher and Oxford academic, who specialised in the works of the German philosopher, Hegel. Biography Mure was born on 8 April 1893, the son of Reginald James Mure and Anna Charlotte Neave. He was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy under the tutelage of Harold Joachim. He took a First in Classical Moderations in 1913. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he enlisted in the Warwicks Royal Horse Artillery. He served in France and Belgium, 1915–18, and was awarded the Military Cr...
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Lorenzo Bruzzone
#81986
Overall Influence
#4763
Vijay Prashad
#5153
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Vijay Prashad is an American-based Indian historian, author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxist intellectual. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Editor of LeftWord Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. For Tricontinental, he writes a weekly newsletter. Ideologically a Marxist, Prashad is well known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, while expressing support for co...
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Michael Gelfand
1912 - 1985 (73 years)
Michael Gelfand, CBE, was a Zimbabwean medical practitioner of tropical medicine, who received a Papal Order of the Knighthood of St. Sylvester. Early life and education Gelfand was born 26 December, 1912 in Wynberg, Cape Province, Union of South Africa to immigrant Jewish-Lithuanian parents. He attended Wynberg Boys' High School and obtained his degree in medicine from the University of Cape Town in 1936. His further medical training was in London.
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John Heil
#65358
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
John Heil is an American philosopher, known primarily for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Heil is Professor of Philosophy at the Washington University in St. Louis, Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, and an Honorary Research Associate at Monash University. Heil is the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, the North American Representative of The Philosophical Quarterly, and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of seven books and over 100 articles and book chapters.
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Thomas Munro
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Thomas Munro was an American philosopher of art and professor of art history at Western Reserve University. He served as Curator of Education for the Cleveland Museum of Art for 36 years . Biography Munro was educated at Amherst College and received his B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University, where he was influenced by philosopher and educator John Dewey. Munro served as a sergeant with the psychological services of the Army Medical Corps before returning to Columbia to get his Ph.D. in 1920.
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Dermot Moran
#62520
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Dermot Moran is an Irish philosopher specialising in phenomenology and in medieval philosophy, and he is also active in the dialogue between analytic and continental philosophy. He is currently the inaugural holder of the Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy at Boston College. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a founding editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.
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John J. O'Meara
#65783
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
John J. O'Meara was an Irish classical scholar, historian of ancient and medieval philosophy , educationalist and writer. Biography John J. O'Meara was born in Eyrecourt to Mary Donelan and Patrick O'Meara on 18 February 1915, but lost his father when he was less than a year old. He had a younger brother, Patrick . He was educated at Rockwell College and Garbally, Ballinasloe, becoming for a time a Jesuit seminarist. In his autobiographical book, The Singing Masters, O'Meara describes the hard times of his childhood, including the terror brought by the British Black and Tans, and by the subsequent Irish Civil War.
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Tom Hayden
#11240
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Thomas Emmet Hayden was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring the Port Huron Statement and standing trial in the Chicago Seven case.
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Mahapurna
#68901
Overall Influence
Mahapurna , also called Periyanambi, was one of the teachers and maternal uncle of the medieval Vaishnava philosopher Ramanuja. He was responsible for initiating Ramanuja into Sri Vaishnavism. Biography Mahapurna was born in a Choḻiyar family and lived in the eleventh or twelfth century CE. He was a disciple of Yamunacharya, whom he helped with the management of the Ranganathasamy temple at Srirangam.
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Andrzej Grzegorczyk
#46044
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Andrzej Grzegorczyk was a Polish logician, mathematician, philosopher, and ethicist noted for his work in computability, mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. Historical family background Andrzej Grzegorczyk's foundational family background has its origins in the Polish intellectual, religious, patriotic and nationalist traditions. He was the only child to the Galician family of well-educated and wealthy parents, his father Piotr Jan Grzegorczyk was a Polish philologist and historian of Polish literature involved in literary criticism, bibliographic studies, and chronicles of the Polish cultural life.
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Isaak Izrailevich Prezent
1902 - 1969 (67 years)
Isaak Izrailevich Prezent was a Soviet philosopher of biology, best known for his work on Marxist methodology of science as one of the key figures of Lysenkoism. Early life and education Prezent was born in 1902 in the town of Toropets in a Jewish family. His father owned a shop in Zapadnaya Dvina.
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Eric Winer
#51995
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Eric P. Winer is a medical oncologist and clinical researcher specializing in breast cancer. He is director of Yale Cancer Center and president and physician-in-chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital Yale New Haven Health System, effective February 1, 2022. He also is Deputy Dean for Cancer Research at Yale School of Medicine. From 1997 to 2021, he was the Chief of the Breast Oncology Program at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Beginning in 2013, he held a range of institutional roles at Dana-Farber, including Chief of Clinical Development, the Thompson Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard SPORE in Breast Cancer.
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Anniceris
400 BC - 360 BC (40 years)
Anniceris was a Cyrenaic philosopher. He argued that pleasure is achieved through individual acts of gratification which are sought for the pleasure that they produce, but he also laid great emphasis on the love of family, country, friendship and gratitude, which provide pleasure even when they demand sacrifice.
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Brian Martin
#27014
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Brian Martin is a social scientist in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at the University of Wollongong in NSW, Australia. He was appointed a professor at the university in 2007, and in 2017 was appointed emeritus professor. His work is in the fields of peace research, scientific controversies, science and technology studies, sociology, political science, media studies, law, journalism, freedom of speech, education and corrupted institutions, as well as research on whistleblowing and dissent in the context of science. Martin was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International Director.
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David Braine
#68112
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
David Braine was a British analytic philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy of religion and metaphysics, who sought to marry the techniques and insights of analytical philosophy and phenomenology to the metaphysics of classical Thomism. His The Reality of Time and the Existence of God set out to prove the existence of God from the fact that the world enjoys continuity in time. He argued that nothing in the world could be the cause of this continuity, whence God came into the picture.
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Roy Yorke Calne
#21787
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Sir Roy Yorke Calne, FRCP, FRCS, FRS is a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. Career His most notable achievements are the world's first liver, heart, and lung transplant together with John Wallwork in 1987; the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver, and kidney cluster transplant in 1994, the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, and the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992.
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Romane Clark
#66253
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Romane Lewis Clark was an American philosopher and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is known for his works on logic, especially his eponymous paradox . Books Introduction to Logic, Romane Clark and Paul Welsh, D. Van Nostrana Company, Inc., Princeton, N.J., Toronto, New York, London, 1962.
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Paolo Mascagni
1755 - 1815 (60 years)
Paolo Mascagni was an Italian physician and anatomist. He is most well known for publishing the first complete description of the lymphatic system. Biography Early life Mascagni was born in the comune of Pomarance to Aurelio Mascagni and Elisabetta Burroni, both belonging to old gentry families of Chiusdino . He studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Siena. Upon graduating in 1777, renowned anatomist Pietro Tabarrani took Mascagni as an assistant. Upon Tabarrani's death in 1780, Mascagni was appointed as an anatomy lecturer at the University of Siena.
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R. James Long
#59160
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Raymond James Long is an American academic and professor emeritus of philosophy at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He is also a faculty member at St. John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. Long was the president of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy.
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Crescens the Cynic
#58668
Overall Influence
Crescens was a Cynic philosopher who attacked the Christians, and was in turn attacked by Justin Martyr. Eusebius, writing 150 years later, accused him of causing Justin's death. Life The only information regarding Crescens comes from hostile attacks by the church fathers. He was active, according to the Chronicon of Eusebius of Caesarea, around 152-153. Tatian refers to Crescens as being resident in the "great city", presumably Rome. According to Justin, Crescens attacked the Christians with great acrimony, calling them atheists: Crescens, that lover of bravado and boasting; for the man is n...
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Rada Iveković
#39599
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Rada Iveković is a Croatian professor, philosopher, Indologist and writer. Research Iveković's research interests include comparative philosophy , feminist theory and feminist philosophy as well as political philosophy.
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Joseph E. B. Lumbard
#25031
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Joseph E.B. Lumbard is an American Muslim scholar of Islamic studies and associate professor of Quranic studies at the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. He is the author, editor, and translator of several scholarly books and many articles on Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and Quranic studies.
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Eugeniusz Grodziński
#51733
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Eugeniusz Grodziński was a Polish philosopher, whose principal interests were philosophy of natural language, philosophical foundations of logic, and philosophical problems of psychology. He was born as Yefim Grodziński in Pskov, Russian Empire, studied law, and in 1957 emigrated from Vilnius, the Soviet Union to Warsaw, Poland. Until his retirement, he was a professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
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John Elliotson
1791 - 1868 (77 years)
John Elliotson , M.D. , M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S. , professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College London , senior physician to University College Hospital — and, in concert with William Collins Engledue M.D., the co-editor of The Zoist.
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John G. Batsakis
#82302
Overall Influence
#4787
Clyde Yancy
#58442
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Clyde Warren Yancy is an American cardiologist and the Magerstadt Professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He has previously served as the Past President of the American Heart Association. His research considers heart failure, heart transplantation and ways to prevent heart failure. He is Vice Dean of Diversity and Inclusion.
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Patricia A. Ganz
#62521
Overall Influence
Patricia Anne Ganz is an American medical oncologist. She is a professor of health policy and management in the Fielding School of Public Health and a professor of medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In 2007, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine.
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Annibale Carracci
1560 - 1609 (49 years)
Annibale Carracci was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.
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William Fontaine
1909 - 1968 (59 years)
William Thomas Valerio Fontaine was an American philosopher. Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1967, he was an American Professor of philosophy in the Ivy League. He was African American and advocated for African American rights.
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Angela Vincent
#53403
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Angela Vincent is Emeritus professor at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Career and research Angela Vincent was born in 1942, the third child of Carmen and Joseph Molony . After St Mary's Convent, Ascot, she studied medicine at King's College London and Westminster Hospital School of Medicine . After one year as a junior doctor at St Steven's and St Charles' hospitals in London , she obtained an MSc in biochemistry from University College London. In 1967 she married Philip Morse Vincent and they have four children.
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Algis Uždavinys
#62421
Overall Influence
1962 - 2010 (48 years)
Algis Uždavinys was a Lithuanian philosopher and scholar. His work pioneered the hermeneutical comparative study of Egyptian and Greek religions, especially their esoteric relations to Semitic religions, and in particular the inner aspect of Islam . His books have been published in Lithuanian, Russian, English and French, including translations of Plotinus, Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamy into Russian and Lithuanian.
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Fernando Tesón
#31014
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Fernando Tesón is an Argentine-American legal scholar who is known for his contributions to the philosophy of law and to neoclassical liberal theory. He is the Tobias Simon Eminent Scholar at Florida State University College of Law. His publications include Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality ; Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation [with Guido Pincione]; A Philosophy of International Law ; and many articles in law, philosophy, and international relations journals and collections of essays. Before entering academia, Professor Tesón was a career diplomat for the Argentina Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires for four years.
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Fran Balkwill
#57325
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Frances Rosemary Balkwill is an English scientist, Professor of Cancer Biology at Queen Mary University of London, and author of children's books about scientific topics. Early life and education Balkwill was born in south-west London in 1952, and was educated at Surbiton High School. She obtained a BSc in Cellular Pathology at the University of Bristol and a PhD on leukaemia cell biology in the Medical Oncology Department at St Bartholomew's Hospital supervised by Gordon Hamilton Fairley.
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Ted Cohen
#73976
Overall Influence
1939 - 2014 (75 years)
Ted Cohen was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. His interests included philosophy of art, history of the philosophy of art, especially in the 18th-century, and the philosophy of language.
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Noël O'Sullivan
#29713
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Noël O'Sullivan is currently Research Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Hull. He studied at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. In 1967 he joined the Politics Department at Hull University. In 1992 he was given a personal chair in political philosophy at Hull.
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Syed Mir Hassan
1844 - 1929 (85 years)
Syed Mir Hassan was an Indian Ahl-e-Hadith scholar of the Qur'an, Hadith, Sufism, and the Arabic language. He was a professor of Arabic at Scotch Mission College in Sialkot and was awarded the title of Shams al-’Ulama’ by the British Crown. Mir Hassan is best known as the teacher of the philosopher-poet Muhammad Iqbal and the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. He was also the paternal uncle of the Pakistani journalist Syed Nazeer Niazi and was affiliated with Sir Syed Ahmed Khan's rationalist school of Islamic modernism.
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Miskawayh
932 - 1030 (98 years)
Ibn Miskawayh , full name Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb Miskawayh al-Rāzī was a Persian chancery official of the Buyid era, and philosopher and historian from Parandak, Iran. As a Neoplatonist, his influence on Islamic philosophy is primarily in the area of ethics. He was the author of the first major Islamic work on philosophical ethics entitled the Refinement of Character , focusing on practical ethics, conduct, and the refinement of character. He separated personal ethics from the public realm, and contrasted the liberating nature of reason with the deception and temptation of nature.
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Ian Almond
#7118
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ian Almond is a literary scholar. He is professor of world literature at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Biography Ian Almond was born in 1969 in Skipton, England. He received his PhD in literature at Edinburgh University, and worked for University of Bari in Italy, Erciyes University and Boğaziçi University in Turkey, Frei University in Germany, and Georgia State University in the US, before coming to Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Qatar in 2013.
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Jayshree Talwalkar
#80978
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jayshree Talwalkar, also known as Didiji, which literally translates as elder sister in Hindi, is an Indian philosopher, spiritual leader, social reformer. She has represented Swadhyay and Indian philosophy at different conferences.
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