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).

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#4801

Hani N. Sabbah

#112986

Overall Influence

#4802

Gabriel G. Nahas

#112988

Overall Influence

#4803

Renato Treves

#8673

Overall Influence

1907 - 1992 (85 years)

Renato Treves was an Italian sociologist. Biography Treves was born in Turin, Italy of a Jewish family. According to Vincenzo Ferrari, Treves "devoted his first academic study to the diffusion of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon's doctrines in Italy" before turning his attention to the neo-Kantian movement and Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law.

#4804

Mohammed Allal Sinaceur

#93326

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Mohammed Allal Sinaceur is a Moroccan philosopher, politician and writer. He was the Moroccan Minister of Cultural Affairs. Biography Sinaceur was born in Oujda, Morocco in 1941. He is a member of a well connected Moroccan family. His brother Mohamed Habib Sinaceur, a politician, died in 2000. One of his brothers is a General and another, Jamal Eddine Sinaceur, is a diplomat. He was the Moroccan Minister for Cultural Affairs in 1994.

#4805

Heinrich R. Schelbert

#113009

Overall Influence

#4806

Elaine Storkey

#29081

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Elaine Storkey is an English philosopher, sociologist, and theologian. She is known for her lecturing, writing and broadcasting. Early years and education Born Elaine Lively on 1 October 1944, Storkey is the eldest of the three children of James and Anne Lively. She grew up in Ossett, Yorkshire, and was Head Girl at Ossett Grammar School , whose former pupils included the novelist Stan Barstow, a friend of her parents, and the artist twins: Donald and Peter Heywood. Her brother Philip Lively has lectured in universities in Japan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, her sister, Elizabeth Slac...

#4807

Robert Rowland Smith

#55046

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Robert Rowland Smith is a British author and philosopher. His books include Derrida and Autobiography , Breakfast with Socrates: The Philosophy of Everyday Life , and AutoBioPhilosophy: An Intimate Story of What It Means to Be Human . He is a regular speaker at public and private events, addressing a wide range of topics that includes philosophy, psychology, politics, and art. Alongside his literary career, Smith works as a business adviser and practitioner of Systemic Family Constellations.

#4808

Joel S. Greenberger

#113022

Overall Influence

#4809

Sacha Golob

#98738

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Sacha Yevgeny Golob is a British philosopher and a Reader in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London. Golob is known for his expertise on French and German philosophy, in particular the work of Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger.

#4810

André Comte-Sponville

André Comte-Sponville

#50574

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

André Comte-Sponville is a French philosopher. Biography André Comte-Sponville was born in Paris, France. He studied in the École Normale Supérieure and earned a PhD from Panthéon-Sorbonne University, and is aggregated in philosophy. He is a proponent of atheism and materialism, but in a particular form, because of his spiritualistic aim.

#4811

Giampiero Girolomoni

#113034

Overall Influence

#4812

Hans-rudolf Brunner

#113057

Overall Influence

#4813

Volker Schirrmacher

#113060

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

#4814

Donna M. Mancini

#113125

Overall Influence

#4815

I. William Zartman

#34462

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Ira William Zartman is Professor Emeritus at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He earlier directed the school's Conflict Management and African Studies programs. He holds the Jacob Blaustein Chair in International Organizations and Conflict Resolution. He is a founder and current Board Chairman of the International Peace and Security Institute .

#4816

Robert Walser

#24455

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Robert Walser is an American musicologist associated with the "new musicology". He is author of the book Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, concerning heavy metal music. Walser currently is a member of the faculty at Case Western Reserve University.

#4817

George Bălan

#99670

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

George Bălan was a Romanian musicologist, philosopher and aphorist. Life and career Born in Turnu Măgurele, Bălan graduated at the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory and got his doctorate in musical aesthetics at the Lomonosov University. He was professor in his Alma Mater and at the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. In 1977 he moved to Munich in Bavaria, West Germany, where he converted to Catholicism and publicly attacked on various occasions the Romanian communist ruling.

#4818

Donald P. Becker

#113182

Overall Influence

#4819

Luc Ferry

#52348

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Luc Ferry is a French philosopher and politician, and a proponent of secular humanism. He is a former member of the Saint-Simon Foundation think-tank. Biography He received an Agrégation de philosophie , a Doctorate in Political science , and an Agrégation in political science . As a professor of political science and political philosophy, Luc Ferry taught at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon —during which time he also taught and directed graduate research at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne—, then at the University of Caen . He finally was a professor at Paris Diderot Unive...

#4820

Richard Schlegel

#17340

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

C. Richard Schlegel is an American scientist and professor. He was the Chair of the Department of Pathology at Georgetown University from 2000-2019 and is now the director of the Center for Cell Reprogramming at Georgetown. Conditionally Reprogrammed Cells technology.

#4821

Vivian Welch

#83585

Overall Influence

Vivian Andrea Welch is a Canadian clinical epidemiology methodologist and population health researcher. She is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Epidemiology and Public Health and Editor in Chief of the Campbell Collaboration.

#4822

Arthur Joseph Mccullough

#113240

Overall Influence

#4823

Steven R. Goldberg

#113249

Overall Influence

#4824

Frederica Perera

#47817

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Frederica Perera is an American environmental health scientist and the founder of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career has focused on identifying and preventing harm to children from prenatal and early childhood exposure to environmental chemicals and pollutants. She is internationally recognized for pioneering the field of molecular epidemiology, incorporating molecular techniques into epidemiological studies to measure biologic doses, preclinical responses and susceptibility to toxic exposure.

#4825

David James Mcconkey

#113253

Overall Influence

#4826

Gerhard Ehninger

#113282

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#4827

Cecilia Trifogli

#82293

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Cecilia Trifogli, FBA is an Italian philosopher and academic. She has been Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Oxford since 2008, and a Fellow of All Souls College since 1999. Her research focuses on philosophy in the Middle Ages, including epistemology, metaphysics, and the reception of Aristotle's philosophy.

#4828

John Hennon

#83172

Overall Influence

John Hennon was a Dutch medieval philosopher in the late Scholastic tradition. He was from Nijmegen, and studied at the University of Paris, where he received his magister artium and baccalaureus formatus in sacra pagina .

#4829

H. Gilbert Welch

H. Gilbert Welch

#90265

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

H. Gilbert Welch is an American academic physician and cancer researcher. He was an internist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont, as well as a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. In September 2018, Welch resigned from Dartmouth College after a 20-month long research misconduct investigation at Dartmouth concluded he had committed plagiarism.

#4830

Thomas Forster

#39917

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Thomas Edward Forster is a British set theorist and philosopher. His work has focused on Quine's New Foundations, the theory of well-quasi-orders and better-quasi-orders, and various topics in philosophy.

#4831

Emmanuel Agius

#86442

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Emmanuel Agius is a Maltese minor philosopher mostly specialised and interested in ethics. Education Agius was born at Mqabba, Malta, in 1954. He studied at the University of Malta from where he acquired a Bachelor’s degree and a Licentiate in Theology . Subsequently, he studied in Belgium at the University of Leuven from where he acquired a Master’s degree in philosophy and a Doctorate degree in Theology . Afterwards, he studied bioethics first as a Research Fellow of Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung at the University of Tübingen in Germany, then as a Fulbright Scholar at the National Reference Library of Bioethics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.

#4832

Mike Lynch

#66419

Overall Influence

Michael Felix Lynch MBCS is a Professor Emeritus in the Information School of the University of Sheffield, England, his main research having been in chemoinformatics. Lynch obtained B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from University College, Dublin in 1954 and 1957. Following two years in industry in the UK, he joined the staff of Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus, Ohio in the US, in 1961.

#4833

Beryl Benacerraf

#34888

Overall Influence

Beryl Rice Benacerraf was an American radiologist and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology and radiology at Harvard Medical School. She was a pioneer in the use of prenatal ultrasound to diagnose fetal abnormalities, including Down syndrome. In 2021, she was recognized as a "Giant in Obstetrics and Gynecology" by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

#4834

Eliseo Guallar

#107382

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Eliseo Guallar is an American epidemiologist. He is a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research focuses on cardiovascular diseases.

#4835

Lawrence Yannuzzi

#34437

Overall Influence

Lawrence Yannuzzi is an American physician, ophthalmologist, and vitreo-retinal surgeon who is noted as an internationally recognized retinal specialist. Early career and family Yannuzzi graduated from Harvard College. He graduated from the Boston University School of Medicine where he received an M.D. degree in 1964. He did a residency in ophthalmology at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital from 1965 to 1968. He was board certified in ophthalmology in 1971.

#4836

Claudio Fiocchi

#113448

Overall Influence

#4837

Lauri O. Saxen

#113451

Overall Influence

#4838

Wei Shen Lim

#98569

Overall Influence

Wei Shen Lim is a consultant respiratory physician and honorary professor of medicine at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, England. Lim graduated from University of Nottingham Medical School in 1991 and has been on the specialist register for General Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine since 2002. Since November 2020 or earlier, he has been chairman of the COVID-19 subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which provides advice to the UK government.

#4839

Ann Cudd

#93252

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Ann E. Cudd is an American philosopher and academic. She is the president of Portland State University as of August 1, 2023. She was previously the provost and senior vice chancellor and professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at Boston University. She also served as vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies, as well as university distinguished professor of philosophy, at the University of Kansas, and was an affiliated faculty member in the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies Program during her time there....

#4840

Margaret Billingham

Margaret Billingham

#64176

Overall Influence

1930 - 2009 (79 years)

Margaret E. Billingham was a pathologist at Stanford University Medical Center, who made significant achievements in the early recognition and grading of transplant rejection following cardiac transplantation, known as 'Billingham's Criteria'. She also described chronic rejection and techniques in heart endomyocardial biopsy.

#4841

Kuan‐teh Jeang

#113560

Overall Influence

#4842

Matthew K. Wynia

#95883

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Matthew K. Wynia is an American physician and bioethicist who has been the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus since 2015. He also oversees an art gallery and forum there. He previously directed the American Medical Association's Institute on Ethics for 15 years. He also previously served as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, as the president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and as the director of patient and physician engagement at the American Medical Association in Chi...

#4843

John Dent,

#113620

Overall Influence

#4844

Sergio Cotta

#47155

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Sergio Cotta was an Italian philosopher, jurist and university professor. He was considered a specialist on the political thought of the Enlightenment. Cotta, along with André Masson and Robert Shackleton, was considered the most important interpreter of Montesquieu during the 20th century.

#4845

Vinod Harichand Thourani

#113637

Overall Influence

#4846

Jerry R. Mendell

#113647

Overall Influence

#4847

Louis Raphael Kavoussi

#113656

Overall Influence

#4848

Khoo Boo-chai

#113670

Overall Influence

#4849

David Rimoin

#34532

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

David Lawrence Rimoin was a Canadian American geneticist. He was especially noted for his research into the genetics of skeletal dysplasia , inheritable diseases such as Tay–Sachs disease, and diabetes.

#4850

Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani

#86922

Overall Influence

1925 - 2005 (80 years)

Sayyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani was an Iranian professor of philosophy and Islamic mysticism. In addition to Iranian sheikhs, Ashtiani's many students included William Chittick from the US, Christian Bonaud from France, and Matsu Muto from Japan.

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