Browse the index
Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.
Category
Era
Countries (85)
10 figures
Sigmund Freud
1856 – 1939Invented psychoanalysis and the modern language of the unconscious.
Rudolf Steiner
1861 – 1925Founded anthroposophic medicine with Ita Wegman; still practised in European hospitals.
Lise Meitner
1878 – 1968Explained nuclear fission; passed over by the Nobel committee. Element 109 is meitnerium.
Joseph Schumpeter
1883 – 1950Creative destruction — the standard account of how innovation reshapes industries.
Erwin Schrödinger
1887 – 1961Wave mechanics and What Is Life?, which inspired the DNA hunters.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1889 – 1951Twice redirected philosophy — first with logical form, then with language as use.
Friedrich Hayek
1899 – 1992Prices as information; the intellectual engine of late-century market liberalism.
Karl Popper
1902 – 1994Falsifiability became science's demarcation criterion.
Viktor Frankl
1905 – 1997Logotherapy: meaning as the primary human drive, tested in the camps.
Peter Drucker
1909 – 2005Invented management as a discipline and named the knowledge worker.