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 …

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#5101

G. Jeannette Thorbecke

#101534

Overall Influence

#5102

Paul W. Oman

#85862

Overall Influence

1908 - 1996 (88 years)

Paul Wilson Oman was an American entomologist and a specialist on leafhopper taxonomy. Paul Oman was born in Kansas in 1908 and was educated at Garnett high school, the University of Kansas and the George Washington University . His MA thesis was titled A generic revision of American Bythoscopinae and South American Jassinae and his PhD work from George Washington University was on The Nearctic Leafhoppers , a generic classification and checklist which was reviewed by Z.P. Metcalf who called it was "one of the most outstanding recent contributions to the stufy of one of the most difficult ...

#5103

John M. Dietschy

#101545

Overall Influence

#5104

Julius Marmur

#86802

Overall Influence

1926 - 1996 (70 years)

Julius Marmur was an American molecular biologist who made significant contributions to DNA research. His discovery, while working in the laboratory of Paul Doty at Harvard University, that the denaturation of DNA was reversible and depended on salt- and GC-content, had a major impact on how scientists thought about DNA, and how DNA could be handled in vitro. This discovery was a cornerstone of the recombinant DNA revolution.

#5105

Li Zhaoping

#54799

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Li Zhaoping, born in Shanghai, China, is a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She is the only woman to win the first place in CUSPEA, an annual national physics competition in China, during CUSPEA's 10-year history . She proposed V1 Saliency Hypothesis , and is the author of Understanding vision: theory, models, and data published by Oxford University Press.

#5106

Betty Diamond

#78912

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Betty Diamond is an American physician and researcher. She is director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Northwell Health's Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, NY. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

#5107

Ellen Silbergeld

#52379

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ellen Kovner Silbergeld is a leading American expert in the field of environmental health. Background Elizabeth Kovner was born in 1945. Her parents were Joseph Kovner, a lawyer and Mary Helen Gion. She has two siblings.

#5108

Marcel B. Roberfroid

#101592

Overall Influence

#5109

Axel Timmermann

Axel Timmermann

#49204

Overall Influence

Axel Timmermann is a German climate physicist and oceanographer with an interest in climate dynamics, human migration, dynamical systems' analysis, ice-sheet modeling and sea level. He served a co-author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and a lead author of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. His research has been cited over 18,000 times and has an h-index of 70 and i10-index of 161. In 2017, he became a Distinguished Professor at Pusan National University and the founding Director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Climate Physics. In December 2018, the Center began to utilize a 1.43...

#5110

Molly Przeworski

#72909

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Molly Fox Przeworski is an American population geneticist and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where she is also affiliated with the Department of Systems Biology, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and Program for Mathematical Genomics. Her research focuses on identifying the effects of natural selection on genetic variation in human and non-human organisms.

#5111

Charles Kurland

#101248

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Charles Gabriel Kurland is an American-born Swedish biochemist. Kurland earned a doctorate in 1961 at Harvard University, advised by James D. Watson. Kurland accepted a postdoctoral research position at the Microbiology Institute of the University of Copenhagen, then joined the Uppsala University faculty in 1971. He retired from Uppsala in 2001, and was granted emeritus status. He was later affiliated with Lund University.

#5112

Marcus Byrne

#40732

Overall Influence

Professor Marcus Byrne won the 2013 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology/Astronomy along with: Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Clarke Scholtz, and Eric Warrant, for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way. This research has practical applications, for example helping how to develop complex visual systems.

#5113

Peter R. Grant

#96938

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

#5114

Diana W. Bianchi

Diana W. Bianchi

#66349

Overall Influence

Diana W. Bianchi is the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a post often called “the nation’s pediatrician.” She is a medical geneticist and neonatologist noted for her research on fetal cell microchimerism and prenatal testing. Bianchi had previously been the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology at Tufts University School of Medicine and founder and executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center. She also has served as Vice Chair ...

#5115

Karen Guillemin

#47075

Overall Influence

Karen Guillemin is an American microbiologist known for her work on the role of bacteria in influencing animal development and health. She trained with renowned microbiologist Stanley Falkow, studying how the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori interacts with gastric epithelial cells. She joined the University of Oregon faculty in 2001, where she continued her work on H. pylori and gained widespread recognition for developing zebrafish as a model organism to study the effects of the microbiome on animal development and health. In 2012, she co-founded the Microbial Ecology and Theory of Animals Center for Host-Microbe Systems Biology.

#5116

Peter M. Kareiva

#101676

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

#5117

Roger Morse

#79070

Overall Influence

1927 - 2000 (73 years)

Roger A. Morse, Ph.D. was an American bee biologist who taught many beekeepers both the rudiments and the finer practices, through his research and publications. During his long career, three new parasites of the honeybee, acarine mite, varroa mite, and African small hive beetle were introduced to the United States. These, along with the Africanized honeybee and pesticide kills were all important beekeeping issues. Morse was extensively involved in research on each of these and provided guidance to the beekeeping industry.

#5118

György Jánossy

#101704

Overall Influence

#5119

Jenny Baeseman

#55071

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Jenny Baeseman is an American polar researcher who studies the survival mechanisms of bacteria in cold environments. She is the founding director of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists , executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research , and was previously the executive director of the World Climate Research Program Climate and Cryosphere.

#5120

Falko Feldmann

#73368

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Falko Feldmann is a German biologist and practitioner of phytomedicine. He is coordinator of matters concerning approval and registration of active substances and agents for plant protection, including international cooperation on questions about European Plant Protection Laws. He also holds the post of director of the Deutschen Phytomedizinischen Gesellschaft e.V. and is involved in a number of organisations and committees relevant to plant protection.

#5121

Christine L. Mummery

#91657

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Christine L. Mummery is an appointed professor of Developmental Biology at Leiden University and the head of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

#5122

Gary D. Foster

#95030

Overall Influence

Gary D. Foster is a British phytopathologist. Education Foster was educated at Banbridge Academy from 1976-1983. Foster then read microbiology at Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1986. Four years later, he received a doctorate from the same institution. Foster completed postdoctoral research at the University of Leicester.

#5123

Hans Ris

#101747

Overall Influence

#5124

David Cooper

#56490

Overall Influence

1949 - 2018 (69 years)

David Albert Cooper was an Australian HIV/AIDS researcher, immunologist, professor at the University of New South Wales, and the director of the Kirby Institute. He and Professor Ron Penny diagnosed the first case of HIV in Australia.

#5125

Paula Rudall

#81153

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Paula J Rudall is a British botanist, who was head of the Department of Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Career Paula Rudall graduated from the University of London, with a B.Sc., and went on to get her Ph.D. and D.Sc. at the same institution. She was the head of the Department of Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and has been the recipient of a number of awards including the Linnean Medal . She is known for her work on the taxonomy and phylogeny of monocotyledons. Retired.

#5126

Edwin Rubel

#81973

Overall Influence

Edwin Rubel is an American academic and Developmental Neurobiologist holding the position of emeritus professor at the University of Washington. He was the Founding Director and first Virginia Merrill Bloedel Chair in Basic Hearing Research from 1989 to 2017.

#5127

Alan P. Wolffe

#101762

Overall Influence

#5128

Karen R. Hitchcock

Karen R. Hitchcock

#64613

Overall Influence

1943 - 2019 (76 years)

Karen R. Hitchcock was an American biologist and university administrator who had leadership positions at an American and a Canadian university. She served as the President of SUNY's University at Albany in Albany, New York, from 1996 until her resignation in 2003. She was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario from 2004 until an abrupt resignation in 2008, when she announced her departure in a sudden email to students. After her sudden departure from Queen's University, she returned, with husband Murray Blair, to the Albany, New York, area to live in Vische...

#5129

Jens Christian Frisvad

#101765

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

#5130

Robert S. Desowitz

#85367

Overall Influence

1926 - 2008 (82 years)

Robert S. Desowitz was a researcher of tropical medicine, parasites, and malaria, and an author. Life and career Desowitz was born in New York, where he attended Niagara Falls High School. He served in the United States Army from 1944 to 1946. He received a bachelor's degree from the University at Buffalo in 1948. He earned a double doctorate in parasitology and medical biology from the University of London in 1951.

#5131

Jan-jaap Verhoef

#101777

Overall Influence

#5132

Paul-Peter Tak

#23598

Overall Influence

Paul-Peter Tak M.D. PhD FMedSci is an immunologist and academic specialising in the fields of internal medicine, rheumatology and immunology. Tak has been the President & CEO of Candel Therapeutics since September 2020.

#5133

Edwin H. McConkey

#89866

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Edwin H. McConkey is an American biologist. , he is a professor emeritus at the department for Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado. His contributions to taxonomy include the original description the northern subspecies of mole skink, Plestiodon egregius similis.

#5134

Ulrich Dirnagl

#101795

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

#5135

Manuel Casanova

Manuel Casanova

#48451

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Manuel F. Casanova is the SmartState Endowed Chair in Childhood Neurotherapeutics and a professor of Biomedical Sciences at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. He is a former Gottfried and Gisela Kolb Endowed Chair in Outpatient Psychiatry and a Professor of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville.

#5136

Thomas F. Gallagher

#101802

Overall Influence

#5137

Donald McGillivray

#81119

Overall Influence

1935 - 2012 (77 years)

Donald John McGillivray in New South Wales, Australia, usually known as D.J. McGillivray, was an Australian botanical taxonomist. He was trained in forestry, and became interested in plant taxonomy just before he transferred in 1964 to the National Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, New South Wales.

#5138

Robert Arnold Zimmerman

#101813

Overall Influence

#5139

Clyde Wayne Bardin

#101824

Overall Influence

#5140

Igor Goryanin

#59235

Overall Influence

Igor I. Goryanin is a systems biologist, who holds a Henrik Kacser Chair in Computational Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh. He also heads the Biological Systems Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.

#5141

P. Dee Boersma

#90087

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

P. Dee Boersma, also known as Dee Boersma is a conservation biologist and professor at the University of Washington, where she is Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Science. Dr. Boersma's area of work focuses on seabirds, specifically Magellanic penguins. She has directed the Magellanic Penguin Project at Punta Tombo, Argentina since 1982. She is the founder of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, hosted at the University of Washington, and dedicated to the study of sential species as early warning systems of natural or human caused environmental change.

#5142

Ramon Diaz-Arrastia

#77473

Overall Influence

Ramon Diaz-Arrastia is an American neurologist and clinical investigator. He is the John McCrae Dickson, MD Presidential professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Director of Clinical Traumatic Brain Injury Research, and Attending Neurologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

#5143

Beryl B. Simpson

#97128

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Beryl B. Simpson is a professor emerita in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously she was an associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in the Department of Botany. She studies plant systematics and tropical botany, focusing on angiosperms found in the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America. She was awarded the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany for her decades of work on the subject.

#5144

Abraham Erasmus van Wyk

#97270

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Abraham Erasmus van Wyk, also known as Braam van Wyk is a South African plant taxonomist. He has been responsible for the training of a significant percentage of the active plant taxonomists in South Africa and has also produced the first electronic application for the identification of trees in southern Africa.

#5145

Terry b. Strom

#101896

Overall Influence

#5146

Jacques Robert Fresco

#48771

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Jacques Robert Fresco was an American biochemist. Fresco earned a dual chemistry and biology bachelor's degree from New York University, completed a master's degree in biology followed by a doctorate in biochemistry. Prior to joining the Princeton University faculty in 1960, he worked for the American Heart Association. Fresco was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968, and retired from Princeton as Damon B. Pfeiffer Professor in the Life Sciences, Emeritus.

#5147

Helen Rodd

#83434

Overall Influence

Helen Rodd is a Canadian zoologist who is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Rodd's work focuses on reproductive strategies among live-bearing fish as a system to understand mate selection among animals. Her work on mate preference in guppy fish attracted media attention in numerous nature magazines and the United States public broadcasting service, as well as academic notice, based upon her research finding that female guppies in Trinidad may choose males for orange coloration similar to a favored food, the fruit of a local tree. In 2001, Rodd was a...

#5148

Aaron John Sharp

Aaron John Sharp

#78147

Overall Influence

1904 - 1997 (93 years)

Aaron John Sharp , known professionally as Jack Sharp, was an American botanist and bryologist, considered an expert on mosses. Early life Sharp was raised on a dairy farm near East Liberty, Ohio. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University and earned his degree in botany in 1927. After receiving his undergraduate degree, Sharp was introduced to bryology by George Elwood Nichols while taking his classes at the University of Michigan Biological Station. Sharp earned his M.S. from the University of Oklahoma while studying under Paul Sears in 1929.

#5149

Hugh Loxdale

#85211

Overall Influence

Hugh David Loxdale is an entomologist. He was professor of ecology at the Institute of Ecology, University of Jena from 2009 to 2010, president of the Royal Entomological Society from 2004 to 2006, and honorary visiting professor at the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University. Loxdale works on the population biology, ecology, and genetics of insects, especially aphids and their wasp parasitoids.

#5150

Richard Houlston

#89313

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Richard Somerset Houlston is a British medical geneticist. He is a professor of molecular and population genetics at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. Education Houlston graduated BSc, MB BS from Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, University of London and was subsequently awarded MD and PhD degrees from the University of London and a DSc from Imperial College, London.

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