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 Biology,
#5201
Robert Franz Schmidt
#66910
Overall Influence
1932 - 2017 (85 years)
Robert Franz Schmidt was a German physiologist and professor emeritus. From 1982 until 2000 he was the director of the Institute of Physiology at the University of Würzburg. Life Schmidt completed his A-level examinations in 1953 and graduated from the Neusprachliches Gymnasium in Frankenthal. The same year, he began his medical studies at Heidelberg University which he successfully completed in the winter semester of 1958/59. He obtained his first doctorate in medicine on 22 April 1959 in Heidelberg. After completing a medical internship and surgical residency between 1 May 1959 and 31 Octob...
Go to Profile#5202
Guillermina Lozano
#80837
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Guillermina 'Gigi' Lozano is an American geneticist. She is a professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Lozano is recognised for her studies of the p53 tumour suppressor pathway, characterising the protein as a regulator of gene expression .
Go to Profile#5203
Wendy Bickmore
#89481
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Wendy Anne Bickmore is a British genome biologist known for her research on the organisation of genomic material in cells. Early life and education Bickmore was born at Shoreham-by-Sea on 28 July 1961 to Beryl and Keith Bickmore. She was educated at Chichester High School for Girls where her interest in science began being influenced by her biology teacher and her parents who were keen amateur gardeners. Her interest in biochemistry was confirmed having read ‘The Chemistry of Life’ by Steven Rose and she went on to study biochemistry at St Hugh's College, Oxford graduating with a BA. She the...
Go to Profile#5204
Bengt Falck
#84467
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Bengt Olof Torsten Falck was a Swedish scientist, who was professor emeritus at the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University, Sweden. Falck has published numerous works in the fields of histology, endocrinology and neurobiology.
Go to Profile#5205
Anne Dell
#68754
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anne Dell is an Australian biochemist specialising in the study of glycomics and the carbohydrate structures that modify proteins. Anne's work could be used to figure out how pathogens such as HIV are able to evade termination by the immune system which could be applied toward understanding how this occurs in fetuses. Her research has also led to the development of higher sensitivity mass spectroscopy techniques which have allowed for the better studying of the structure of carbohydrates. Anne also established GlycoTRIC at Imperial College London, a research center that allows for glycobiology to be better understood in biomedical applications.
Go to Profile#5206
Graham Bell
#96925
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Graham Arthur Charlton Bell is a British academic, writer, and evolutionary biologist with interests in the evolution of sexual reproduction and the maintenance of variation. He developed the "tangled bank" theory of evolutionary genetics after observing the asexual and sexual behaviour patterns of aphids as well as monogonont rotiferss.
Go to Profile#5207
Richard Bartha
#81569
Overall Influence
Richard Bartha is an American microbiologist. He is best known professionally for his seminal discoveries in the field of bacterial pollution control . Life Dr. Bartha and graduate student Ronald Atlas were the first to discover that bacteria are capable of metabolizing petroleum, paving the way for the use of "oil-eating bacteria" to clean up oil spills. Dr. Bartha also made important discoveries regarding the abilities of bacteria to degrade other pollutants, such as pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated organic compounds, and metals.
Go to Profile#5208
Curtis Williams Sabrosky
#92764
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Curtis Williams Sabrosky was an American entomologist. He specialized in Diptera, especially Chloropidae. Sabrosky worked at the Systematic Entomology Laboratory of United States Department of Agriculture and at the National Museum of Natural History, where his collection is now located.
Go to Profile#5209
Jim Mann
#100593
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sir Joel Ivor Mann , generally known as Jim Mann, is a New Zealand nutritionist and endocrinologist. He is professor in human nutrition and medicine at the University of Otago and consultant physician at Dunedin Hospital. He has researched the role of lipids and carbohydrates in coronary heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, as well as the relationship between obesity and cancer. He was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours.
Go to Profile#5210
Yukio Yamori#
#102524
Overall Influence
#5211
Hugh R. B. Pelham
#102547
Overall Influence
#5212
Dale Elton Bauman
#102552
Overall Influence
#5213
Elias Landolt
#102555
Overall Influence
1926 - 2013 (87 years)
Elias Landolt was a Swiss geobotanist, known for his publications on Switzerland's native flora and Lemnoideae . Life and career Landolt grew up in the Zurich district Enge. He was the eldest son of the lawyer, politician and later Zurich's mayor Emil Landolt and the great-grandson of his namesake Elias Landolt, a forest scientist. At ETH Zurich , Elias Landolt studied natural science from 1945 to 1949 and received his doctorate there in 1953 under the professors Ernst Gäumann and Walo Koch with a dissertation on Ranunculus montanus . From 1953 to 1955, he was a postdoc in California, first ...
Go to Profile#5214
Vivette Denise D'agati
#102562
Overall Influence
#5215
Ronald J. Racine
#102565
Overall Influence
#5216
Brigitta Stockinger
#95825
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Brigitta Stockinger, FMedSci, FRS, is a molecular immunologist in the Francis Crick Institute in London. Stockinger's lab focus on understanding how certain immune cells, called T cells, develop and function as well as investigating how diet and other environmental factors can affect the way the immune system works.
Go to Profile#5217
Rebecca D. Jackson
#84255
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Rebecca D. Jackson is a medical researcher, medical practitioner and professor of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism. Her research has been significant in the understanding and treatment of osteoporosis. She also researches the opioid crisis in Ohio.
Go to Profile#5218
Lynda Bonewald
#95620
Overall Influence
Lynda Bonewald is a professor of anatomy, cell biology, physiology, and orthopaedic surgery and the founding director of the Indiana Center for Musculoskeletal Health at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She studies bone and the musculoskeletal system. She has served as president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities .
Go to Profile#5219
Christoph Handschin
#91146
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Christoph Handschin is a Swiss cell biologist at the Biozentrum University of Basel. Life Handschin studied biology at the University of Basel. He completed his doctorate in biochemistry in Urs A. Meyer's group at the Biozentrum. From 2002 to 2006, Handschin carried out research at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Medical School, before being appointed as an assistant professor of physiology and an SNSF professor to the University of Zurich in 2006 . In 2009 he returned to the Biozentrum, where he works in research and teaching as a professor of pharmacology.
Go to Profile#5220
Jacqueline Whang-Peng
#84160
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Jacqueline Jia-Kang Whang-Peng is a Taiwanese-American physician-scientist specialized in cytogenetics of cancer, as well as medical genetics, genetic oncology, and gene mapping. She was a researcher at the National Cancer Institute from 1960 to 1993.
Go to Profile#5221
Alastair Currie
#80752
Overall Influence
1921 - 1994 (73 years)
Sir Alastair Robert Currie PRSE FRCPE FRCPGlas FRCP FRCPath LLD was a Scottish pathologist, who was Professor of Pathology, at Edinburgh University, 1972–86, and then emeritus. He was eminent in the field of cancer research and humanitarian causes.
Go to Profile#5222
Theophil Staehelin
#102634
Overall Influence
#5223
Wolfgang Wick
#102636
Overall Influence
#5224
Arthur L. Beaudet
#102638
Overall Influence
#5225
Hans Georg Amsel
#93202
Overall Influence
1905 - 1999 (94 years)
Hans Georg Amsel was a German entomologist with four publications ranging from 1951 to 1962. His home town was Cologne, although he frequently was in Kiel. His original job was in the banking industry, and he later worked in a bookstore. After quitting his job as bookstore worker, he decided to follow his heart and transfer to zoology, where he became an entomologist. His specific profession was studying Lepidoptera. "Soon after he was appointed as Head of Department of Entomology at the Colonial and Overseas museum called to Bremen, then rendered military service and, worked as a private s...
Go to Profile#5226
Roger Dean
#99595
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Roger Thornton Dean is a British-Australian musician, academic, biochemist and cognitive scientist. He is married to poet, writer, musician and academic Hazel Anne Smith, and was educated in the UK at the Crypt School, Gloucester, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formerly, he was the foundation Director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney , and then the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra . From 2007 onwards he is a research professor of sonic communication at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University.
Go to Profile#5227
Olav Smidsrød
#100001
Overall Influence
1936 - 2017 (81 years)
Olav Aasmund Smidsrød was a Norwegian biochemist. He was born in Sem. He took the siv.ing. degree in 1961 and the dr.ing. degree in 1971 at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and was a professor at the University of Trondheim from 1977, later the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is known for his work with polymers, particularly heteropolysaccharides. In 2008 he was awarded the Gunnerus Medal. He is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.
Go to Profile#5228
Nilufar Mamadalieva
#95382
Overall Influence
Nilufar Mamadalieva is a biochemist from Uzbekistan. Biography Mamadalieva completed a Master's in science at Fergana State University and a PhD at the Institute of the Chemistry of Plant Substances in Tashkent. She is a scientific researcher at the institute. Her work focuses on the phytochemical and biological investigation of active compounds in the local medicinal plants of Central Asia.
Go to Profile#5229
Peter Szatmari
#67808
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Peter Szatmari is a Canadian researcher of autism and Asperger syndrome. Szatmari is a Professor and Vice-Chair, Research, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, at McMaster University. He is also the Director of the research training program in the department, and a member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Dr. Szatmari is Editor of the journal, Evidence-Based Mental Health, and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals.
Go to Profile#5230
Nicholas Francis Larusso
#102696
Overall Influence
#5231
Steven Mark Southwick
#102701
Overall Influence
#5232
C. Richard Tracy
#70679
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
C. Richard Tracy is an American biologist, a professor of biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Tracy earned bachelor's and master's degrees in biology at California State University, Northridge in 1966 and 1968, and then moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned a Ph.D. in zoology in 1972. After postdoctoral studies in Madison, he held a faculty position at Colorado State University from 1974 to 1995, when he moved to the University of Nevada, Reno. In 1980, Tracy visited the University of Washington in Seattle as a Guggenheim Fellow.
Go to Profile#5233
Vanessa M. Hirsch
#83581
Overall Influence
Vanessa M. Hirsch is a Canadian-American veterinary pathologist and scientist. She is a senior investigator and chief of the nonhuman primate virology section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Hirsch researches AIDS pathogenesis, the evolution and origins of primate lentiviruses, and HIV vaccine development.
Go to Profile#5234
Felix Mitelman
#73148
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Felix Mitelman is a Swedish geneticist and is professor of clinical genetics in Lund, Sweden. He is best known for his pioneering work on chromosome changes in cancer. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Polish Academy of Science. He was awarded the Jubilee Prize of the Swedish Medical Association in 1989, the Nordic Fernström prize in 2007, the Söderberg Prize in Medicine in 2008, and the European Society of Human Genetics Award in 2013. He is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Genes, Chro...
Go to Profile#5235
Nick Craddock
#83049
Overall Influence
Nick Craddock FRCPsych FMedSci is a British psychiatrist, the Director of the National Centre for Mental Health and Professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University in Wales. He specialises in the diagnosis and management of mood and psychotic illness. His interests include psychiatric genetics and genome-wide association studies.
Go to Profile#5236
Liette Vasseur
#86432
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Liette Vasseur is a Canadian biologist who has held the UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability: From Local to Global in the Department of Biological Sciences since 2014 at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. She is also a member of the Women and Gender Studies program and the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre. She is the President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.
Go to Profile#5237
Hee-Sup Shin
#80306
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Hee-sup Shin is a South Korean neuroscientist whose work focuses on brain research of genetically engineered mice via gene knockout in order to better understand the human brain. His research resulted in him being named a National Scientist by the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology. He is a former co-director of the Center for Cognition and Sociality leading the Social Neuroscience Group in the Institute for Basic Science located at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#5238
Deng Zixin
#99545
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Deng Zixin is a Chinese microbiologist and Professor of Microbiology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Born in Hubei, China, he graduated from Huazhong Agricultural University with a BSc in microbiology in 1982 and completed his PhD on the genetics of Streptomyces at the University of East Anglia in 1987. He was made a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005, a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences in 2006, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2010.
Go to Profile#5239
Erik Bongcam-Rudloff
#61222
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Erik Bongcam-Rudloff is a Chilean-born Swedish biologist and computer scientist. He received his doctorate in medical sciences from Uppsala University in 1994. He is Professor of Bioinformatics and the head of SLU-Global Bioinformatics Centre at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His main research deals with development of bioinformatics solutions for the Life Sciences community.
Go to Profile#5240
Jack H. Mendelson
#102765
Overall Influence
#5241
Susan McElroy
#96165
Overall Influence
Susan Lynn McElroy is Chief Research Officer at Lindner Center of HOPE. Education and early career McElroy did her B.A. at Colgate University, Hamilton, and her M.D. at Cornell University Medical College, both in New York. This was followed by an internship in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and a residency in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Massachusetts. She has also had fellowships at Cornell University Medical College, Harvard Medical School, and McLean Hospital.
Go to Profile#5242
Jean Gotman
#102795
Overall Influence
#5243
W. John Kress
#97938
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Walter John Emil Kress is an American botanist and the vice-president for science at the National Museum of Natural History. He currently holds the appointment as the Director of the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet at the Smithsonian and is the former Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.
Go to Profile#5244
Robert Dunn
#45227
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Robert Dunn is a biologist, writer and professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. He has written several books and his science essays have appeared at magazines such as BBC Wildlife Magazine, Scientific American, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic and others. He has become known for efforts to involve the public as citizen scientists in arthropod surveys and bacterial flora studies. His projects include studies of belly button biodiversity, mites that live on human faces, ants in backyards, and fungi and bacteria in houses.
Go to Profile#5245
Igor B. Dawid
#102835
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
#5246
Hélène Bergès
#47656
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Hélène Bergès is a French scientist and was the Director of the French Plant Genomic Resources Center from its foundation until 2019. Education Bergès completed a doctorate in 1995 at the Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University in the fields of genetics and molecular biology.
Go to Profile#5247
Zulma Brandoni de Gasparini
#78611
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Zulma Nélida Brandoni de Gasparini is an Argentine paleontologist and zoologist. She is known for discovering the fossils of the dinosaur Gasparinisaura, which was named after her. Work Born in the city of La Plata, Argentina on 15 May 1944, Brandoni de Gasparini graduated in zoology from the National University of La Plata in 1966 and obtained her PhD in Natural Sciences in 1973.
Go to Profile#5248
Nathan J. Robinson
#63551
Overall Influence
Nathan Jack Robinson is a marine biologist and science communicator from the United Kingdom. During his career, Robinson has been at the center of several viral videos. These have included videos of him removing a plastic drinking straw from the nostril of a sea turtle as well as a plastic fork from the nostril of a different sea turtle, and a video recorded by him and Edith Widder of a live giant squid. This video is the first-time that a live giant squid has been recorded in US waters and is the second time this species has ever been caught alive on film.
Go to Profile#5249
Chen Hang
#48535
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Chen Hang was born in 1931. She is a botanist and horticulturist. Career Chen was born in Guangde County, Anhui Province. In 1949, she studied in the Department of Horticulture, Zhejiang University. In 1953, she graduated from the Department of Horticulture, Zhejiang Agricultural College
Go to Profile#5250
Sean Cutler
#67048
Overall Influence
Sean R. Cutler is a professor of plant cell biology at the University of California, Riverside. In 2009 Cutler showed how abscisic acid, a naturally-produced plant stress hormone, helps plants survive by inhibiting their growth in times of drought. Cutler also discovered pyrabactin, a synthetic chemical that mimics abscisic acid. His research was named by Science magazine as one of the top 10 breakthroughs of the year. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile