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,
#4851
Erik Pevernagie
#37924
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Erik Pevernagie is a Belgian painter and writer, living in Uccle , who has held exhibitions in Paris, New York City, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, London, Brussels and Antwerp. Life Pevernagie has his background in Brussels, a bilingual city where Latin and Germanic cultures mix. He is the son and pupil of the expressionist painter Louis Pevernagie . From the start, he was interested in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic cultural heritage and became a Master in Germanic Philology at the Free University of Brussels . He took a postgraduate degree at Cambridge University and became a Professor at Erasmus University.
Go to Profile#4852
Krishnan Venkataramanand Lakshman Rajagopalan
#113720
Overall Influence
#4853
Kieron O'Hara
#36010
Overall Influence
Kieron O'Hara is a philosopher, computer scientist and political writer. He is an associate professor and principal research fellow within the department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton where he specialises in the politics, philosophy and epistemology of technology. He is also a research fellow at the Web Science Trust and the conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies.
Go to Profile#4854
Tony E. Hugli
#113729
Overall Influence
#4855
William John Gradishar
#113732
Overall Influence
#4856
Ian G. McKeith
#20338
Overall Influence
Ian G. McKeith is a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North-East of England. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Go to Profile#4857
Insha-Allah Rahmati
#85204
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Insha-Allah Rahmati is an Iranian philosopher, thinker, translator and a full professor of philosophy at Islamic Azad University in Tehran. His main interests are Ethics, Islamic philosophy and Traditionalist School .
Go to Profile#4858
Jeffrey Alan Sosman
#113759
Overall Influence
#4859
Mark Groudine
#113754
Overall Influence
Mark Groudine is an American radiation oncologist currently at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2015.
Go to Profile#4860
David Hershel Alpers
#69295
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
David Hershel Alpers is a gastroenterologist, researcher, professor, and former president of the American Gastroenterological Association . Early life and education David Hershel Alpers was born 9 May 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1960 and completed training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital . He studied molecular biology at the National Institute of Health under Gordon Tomkins before returning to MGH for gastroenterology fellowship and junior faculty positions .
Go to Profile#4861
Shannon Wheeler
#66811
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Shannon Wheeler is an American cartoonist, best known as a cartoonist for The New Yorker and for creating the satirical superhero Too Much Coffee Man. Early life Shannon Wheeler grew up in Berkeley, California, brought up by his mother. His father left the family to start a commune north of San Francisco. Wheeler also has two half-sisters. Wheeler attended the Walden Center and School. He later attended Berkeley High School, eventually graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in architecture in 1989.
Go to Profile#4862
Miklós Vető
#96295
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Miklós Vető was a Hungarian-born French philosopher. A historian of German Idealism, especially Schelling, he lived in Paris. As an author, many of his works were collected by libraries. Biography Vető was born in Budapest, and studied law at the University of Szeged. Because of his participation in the Revolution of 1956 he had to flee Hungary. As a refugee he was admitted to France in 1957. He studied philosophy first at the Sorbonne and then Oxford. He taught at Marquette and Yale Universities in the United States, the University of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and Rennes and Poitiers Universities in France.
Go to Profile#4863
Auberon Waugh
#14080
Overall Influence
1939 - 2001 (62 years)
Auberon Alexander Waugh was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron". After a traditional classical education at Downside School, he was commissioned in the army during National Service, where he was badly injured in a shooting accident. He went on to study for a year at Oxford University.
Go to Profile#4864
Anthony F. Lever
#113795
Overall Influence
#4865
Kenneth W. Mahaffey
#113800
Overall Influence
#4866
David L. Garbers
#113822
Overall Influence
#4867
William Z. Potter
#113824
Overall Influence
#4868
Mark S. Myerson
#113844
Overall Influence
#4869
Olle Johansson
#113845
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#4870
Sergio R. Ojeda
#113847
Overall Influence
#4871
Kenneth P. Offord
#113856
Overall Influence
#4872
Jay L. Grosfeld
#113883
Overall Influence
#4873
Werner Callebaut
#54997
Overall Influence
1952 - 2014 (62 years)
Werner Callebaut was a professor at the University of Hasselt, scientific director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, editor and chief of Biological Theory, and president of The International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.
Go to Profile#4874
Kenneth F. Schaffner
#89856
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Kenneth Francis Schaffner is an emeritus Distinguished University Professor, University Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He specializes in the history and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#4875
Sue Golding
#85830
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Johnny Golding is Professor of Philosophy & Fine Art, and senior tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Golding's work deals with the onto-epistemological nuances of radical matter: artificial and distributed intelligence, embodiment, and the ethical-political. Golding is Philosopher-in-Residence at the Royal Academy, London . Golding also leads the PHD Research Lab: Entanglement, which includes 25 PHD researchers; co-led with artist Meg Rahaim. Most recently the lab-produced: 'Entanglement: Just Gaming' - a mixed-media approach to consciousness, poetics, warfare, and risk set across several social platforms .
Go to Profile#4876
Alice Shalvi
#16405
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Alice Shalvi was an Israeli professor and educator. She played a leading role in progressive Jewish education for girls and advancing the status of women. Biography Alice Hildegard Margulies was born in Essen, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her parents, Benzion and Perl Margulies, were religious Zionists. Alice was the younger of two children. The family had a wholesale linen and housewares business.
Go to Profile#4877
Horst Zincke
#113975
Overall Influence
#4878
Thomas Edward Adrian
#113984
Overall Influence
#4879
Henry Regnand
#106420
Overall Influence
Henry Regnand was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in logic and metaphysics. Life Little is known as yet about the private life of Regnand. He probably was a Dominican friar, but this is still unconfirmed sufficiently by documentary evidence. As an academic, he flourished during the first decade of the 18th century. At that time, he was active teaching philosophy at the Dominican Studium Generale of Portus Salutis at Valletta, Malta. No portrait of Regnand seems to have survived.
Go to Profile#4880
Juan Nuño
#76698
Overall Influence
1927 - 1995 (68 years)
Juan Antonio Nuño Montes was a philosopher, writer and university professor. Career After leaving Spain in 1947, Nuño settled in Venezuela where he studied philosophy at the Central University of Venezuela. In 1951 he studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of Paris. In 1962 he finished his doctoral degree under Juan David García Bacca at the Central University of Venezuela and spent a year in Switzerland studying with Józef Maria Bocheński. He was the chair of the Instituto de Filosofía de la UCV from 1975 to 1979. In 1976 he became a member of the International Institute of Philosophy of Unesco .
Go to Profile#4881
Éric Hachulla
#114011
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#4882
Hossein Baharvand
#28062
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Hossein Baharvand is an Iranian stem cell and developmental biologist. He received his B.Sc. in biology from Shiraz University in 1994, and M.Sc. in Developmental Biology from Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran in 1996. He then obtained his Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Khwarizmi University in 2004. He first joined the Royan Institute in 1995 in which he founded Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology.
Go to Profile#4883
Stephen Walsh
#17098
Overall Influence
Stephen Walsh is a British journalist, broadcaster, musicologist, and classical music biographer. He is the author of biographies of Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, and Debussy, as well as books on Schumann, Bartók, and the music of Stravinsky. As of 2021, he is an emeritus professor of Cardiff University.
Go to Profile#4884
Mikhail Minakov
#69474
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Mikhail Minakov is a philosopher, political scholar and historian , Doctor of Philosophy. His studies focus on human experience, social knowledge, the phenomenon of ideology, political creativity, and the history of modernization.
Go to Profile#4885
Axel Block
#101086
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Axel Block is a German cinematographer. Since 1974, Block has worked as director of photography on more than a hundred cinema and television productions, and lectured on film composition at several academies. From 1997 to 2015, Block held the position of applied visual arts professor at the University of Television and Film Munich.
Go to Profile#4886
Steven Grosby
#88196
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Steven Elliot Grosby is Professor of Religion at Clemson University. Education Grosby received his PhD from the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. Career Grosby's areas of research include the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the relation between religion and nationality, and Social and Political Philosophy.
Go to Profile#4887
Theodore Locke Phillips
#114061
Overall Influence
#4888
Drew Weissman
#7372
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Drew Weissman is an American physician and immunologist known for his contributions to RNA biology. Weissman is the inaugural Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, and professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania .
Go to Profile#4889
Daniel Clowes
#5382
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron , Ghost World , David Boring and Patience . Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential.
Go to Profile#4890
David Farrell Krell
#81906
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Farrell Krell , is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at DePaul University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Duquesne University, where he wrote his dissertation on Heidegger and Nietzsche. He has taught at many universities in Germany, France, and England. Specializing in Continental Philosophy, he has written many books on Heidegger and Nietzsche, including Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy , Intimations of Mortality: Time, Truth, and Finitude in Heidegger's Thinking of Being , The Good European: Nietzsche's Work Sites in Word and Image , and Infectious Nietzsche .
Go to Profile#4891
Harriet P. Dustan
#99581
Overall Influence
1920 - 1999 (79 years)
Harriet Pearson Dustan was an American physician who is known for her pioneering contributions to effective detection and treatment of hypertension. She was the first woman to serve on the Board of Governors of the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Go to Profile#4892
Crispin Jenkinson
#114110
Overall Influence
#4893
Ralph L. Nachman
#114145
Overall Influence
#4894
Alan J. Mccomas
#114166
Overall Influence
#4895
Peter Aaby
#90719
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Peter Aaby is trained as an anthropologist but also holds a doctoral degree in medicine. In 1978, Peter Aaby established the Bandim Health Project, a Health and Demographic Surveillance System site in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, which he has run ever since. In 2000, Peter Aaby was awarded the Novo Nordisk Prize, the most important Danish award within health research.
Go to Profile#4896
Massimo Cristofanilli
#114177
Overall Influence
#4897
Judy Lieberman
#74478
Overall Influence
Judy Lieberman is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and holds an endowed chair in cellular and molecular medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. Early life Judy Lieberman was born in September 1947, in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in New Jersey with her parents and two sisters Phyllis and Donna.
Go to Profile#4898
Bertram Sacktor
#114194
Overall Influence
#4899
Charles Vacanti
#12582
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Charles Alfred "Chuck" Vacanti is a researcher in tissue engineering and stem cells and the Vandam/Covino Professor of Anesthesiology, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. He is a former head of the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Massachusetts and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, now retired.
Go to Profile#4900
Gerald Gaus
#86923
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Gerald Francis "Jerry" Gaus was an American philosopher and the founding editor of the academic journal Politics, Philosophy & Economics. His last academic post was as the James E. Rogers Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His books include Public Reason and Diversity: Reinterpretations of Liberalism , The Open Society and Its Complexities , The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society , The Order of Public Reason , On Philosophy, Politics, and Economics , Contemporary Theories of Liberalism , Political Concepts and Political Theories , Justificatory Liberalism , ...
Go to Profile