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 …
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#5301
James Zachos
#90855
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
James Zachos is an American paleoclimatologist, oceanographer, and marine scientist. He is currently a professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz where he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017. His research includes biological, chemical, and climatic evolution of late Cretaceous and Cenozoic oceans, and how past climatic conditions help predict the consequences of anthropogenic carbon emissions on future climate change.
Go to Profile#5302
Mercedes Pascual
#88423
Overall Influence
Mercedes Pascual is an Uruguayan theoretical ecologist, and a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, where she leads the Laboratory for Modeling and Theory in Ecology and Epidemiology . She was previously the Rosemary Grant Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Go to Profile#5303
William Stewart
#63454
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Sir William Duncan Paterson Stewart was President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1999–2002 and Chairman of the Microbiological Research Authority. Education Stewart was educated at Bowmore Junior Secondary School, Dunoon Grammar School and the University of Glasgow, where he gained Bachelor of Science, Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.
Go to Profile#5304
Paul C. Macdonald
#103600
Overall Influence
#5305
Anthony S. Weiss
#57992
Overall Influence
Anthony Steven Weiss AM PhD FRSC FTSE FRSN FRACI, FTERM, FBSE is a university researcher, company founder and entrepreneur. He is the leading scientist in human tropoelastin research and synthetic human elastin. He holds the McCaughey Chair in Biochemistry, heads the Charles Perkins Centre Node in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, and is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Sydney. His discoveries are on human elastic materials that accelerate the healing and repair of arteries, skin and 3D human tissue components. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Go to Profile#5306
Rudy Ballieux
#82724
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Rudolf Eugène Pierre Albertus "Rudy" Ballieux was a Dutch immunologist. Career Ballieux was born on 17 September 1930 in Pekalongan in the Dutch East Indies. After attending the Hogere Burgerschool he studied chemistry and medical science at Utrecht University. He earned his doctor title in 1963 under F.L.J. Jordan.
Go to Profile#5307
Francis W. Ruscetti
#103635
Overall Influence
#5308
Michael I. Miller
#50851
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Michael Ira Miller is an American-born biomedical engineer and data scientist, and the Bessie Darling Massey Professor and Director of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Biomedical Engineering. He worked with Ulf Grenander in the field of Computational Anatomy as it pertains to neuroscience, specializing in mapping the brain under various states of health and disease by applying data derived from medical imaging. Miller is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Imaging Science, Whiting School of Engineering and codirector of Johns Hopkins Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute....
Go to Profile#5309
Bogdan Đuričić
#47879
Overall Influence
1950 - 2008 (58 years)
Bogdan Djuricic was a Serbian biochemist. His chief area of scientific research was in molecular mechanisms of programmed cell death and biochemistry of ischemia. Education In 1974, he graduated from the Belgrade Medical School and earned his Doctorate in medicine. In 1982 he received his Ph.D. at the Belgrade Medical School.
Go to Profile#5310
Paul J. H. Harrison
#103648
Overall Influence
#5311
Ronald Swerdloff
#103658
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
#5312
Kim L. O'Neill
#98740
Overall Influence
Kim L. O'Neill is the developer of a monoclonal antibody that allows for the accurate, cheap and easy detection of cancer. O'Neill has a B.Sc. degree from New University of Ulster and a Ph.D. from the University of Ulster. He is a full professor of microbiology at Brigham Young University. In 1998 research by O'Neill suggested a link between caffeine and the formation of some cancers. O'Neill has served as associate director of BYU's cancer research center.
Go to Profile#5313
John Wallace Eaton
#103663
Overall Influence
#5314
Hongkui Zeng
#82688
Overall Influence
Hongkui Zeng is the Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, where she leads the creation of open-access datasets and tools to accelerate neuroscience discovery. In 2011-2014 Zeng led the team that created the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas, which indicates which regions of the mouse brain are connected to which other regions. Since then, she has led the creation of atlases of neuronal cell types in the brain of humans and mice.
Go to Profile#5315
Ralph DeBerardinis
#101574
Overall Influence
Ralph J. DeBerardinis is an American physician-scientist, the chief of the Division of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern and a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. DeBerardinis became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2018. DeBerardinis was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020. DeBerardinis is known for his contributions to research on cancer and pediatric inborn errors of metabolism.
Go to Profile#5316
Sabine Kastner
#79748
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sabine Kastner is a German-born American cognitive neuroscientist. She is professor of psychology at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University. She also holds a visiting scientist appointment at the University of California at Berkeley.
Go to Profile#5317
Stefan Grimm
#30463
Overall Influence
1963 - 2014 (51 years)
Stefan Grimm was a German biologist and professor of toxicology at Imperial College London. He researched signalling cascades in the development of tumours. Grimm was found dead in Northwood, Middlesex on 25 September 2014 after being told that he was "struggling to fulfil the metrics" of a professorial post by his head of department. The coroner described his death as "needless".
Go to Profile#5318
Kristian G. Andersen
#92765
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Kristian Andersen is a evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Andersen obtained a BSc in molecular biology from Aarhus University in 2004, and a PhD in immunology from the University of Cambridge in 2009.
Go to Profile#5319
Michael Crisp
#90395
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Michael Douglas Crisp is an emeritus professor in the Research School of Biology at the Australian National University located in Canberra. In 1976, he gained a PhD from the University of Adelaide, studying long-term vegetation changes in arid zones of South Australia. In 2020, Crisp moved to Brisbane, where he has an honorary position at the University of Queensland. Together with colleagues, he revised various pea-flowered legume genera .
Go to Profile#5320
Christopher E. Rudd
#75746
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Christopher Edward Rudd, is a Canadian-born immunologist-biochemist. He is currently Professor of Medicine at the Universite de Montreal and Director, Immunology-Oncology at the Centre de Recherche Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont .
Go to Profile#5321
Mary E. Rice
#96523
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Mary Esther Rice was an American invertebrate zoologist specializing in systematics, evolution and the development of marine invertebrates. She worked at the Smithsonian Institution as a curator, educator, research advisor, and administrator from 1966 until her retirement in 2002. She is known for her work on the life histories of Sipuncula, as well as for serving as the first director of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce.
Go to Profile#5322
Keith W. Kelley
#103348
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Keith Kelley is an American immunophysiologist, researcher and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Immunophysiology at the University of Illinois and Editor-In-Chief Emeritus of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. He is a Past-President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society.
Go to Profile#5323
G. Taru Sharma
#47951
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
G. Taru Sharma is an Indian biologist and the head of the physiology and climatology division at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Known for her studies on germ cell marker genes, Sharma is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and National Academy of Sciences . The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2006.
Go to Profile#5324
Gloria Lim
#17122
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Gloria Lim BBM is a retired Singaporean mycologist whose research focused on tropical fungi and who built up a fungal repository of regional samples. Lim was twice appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Singapore , the first woman to hold that position. After her retirement, she became the first Director of Singapore's National Institute of Education and helped it launch a university degree program. She served on the Public Service Commission as its first woman commissioner for 14 years, and then served as general manager of the Community Mediation Unit for 8 years. ...
Go to Profile#5325
Lars Walløe
#41902
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Lars Walløe is a Norwegian academic, chemist, physiologist, and scientific adviser to the Norwegian government. He was Head of Norwegian Delegation to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission ; and he was honored by the government of Japan for having "Contributed to the promotion of Japan’s policy in the field of fisheries." From 2002 to 2008 Walløe served as the president of Academia Europaea.
Go to Profile#5326
Wayne Levin
#103810
Overall Influence
#5327
Eveline Crone
#53199
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Eveline Crone is a Dutch professor of cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on risky behaviors in adolescent humans during puberty and examines the function of those risks. For her research in adolescent brain development and behaviour, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest recognition for Dutch scientists, in 2017.
Go to Profile#5328
Helga Dietrich
#91254
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
Helga Dietrich was a German orchidologist and author who is noted for her comprehensive guides to literature on orchids, and for her work as curator of the Botanischer Garten Jena. She described over eighty species of orchids, many from Cuba. She was a 2012 recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Dietrich studied biology at the University of Jena from 1959 and graduated in 1964 with a diploma on the topic The Pollen Morphology of the Plantaginaceae. Afterwards she was a research assistant at the Institute of Special Botany/Botanical Garden of the University. After receiving her doctorate in 1975, she was appointed curator of the Jena Botanical Garden.
Go to Profile#5329
Edward Khantzian
#16005
Overall Influence
1935 - 2021 (86 years)
Edward Khantzian was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Beginning in the 1970s, he developed a progressively more coherent and empirically-grounded self-medication hypothesis of drug abuse, which states that individuals use drugs in an attempt to self-medicate states of distress and suffering.
Go to Profile#5330
Alasdair Houston
#86702
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alasdair Iain Houston is an English evolutionary biologist and ecologist known for his work in behavioural ecology. He is Emeritus Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2012.
Go to Profile#5331
David Catcheside
#99879
Overall Influence
1907 - 1994 (87 years)
David Guthrie Catcheside FRS was a British plant geneticist. Life He was educated at Strand School and King's College London . He was a Lecturer in Botany at King's College London from 1933 to 1936, and at the University of Cambridge from 1937 to 1950. He was Professor of Genetics at the University of Adelaide from 1952 to 1955, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham from 1956 to 1964, and Professor of Genetics at the Australian National University from 1964 to 1972.
Go to Profile#5332
Amy Rosenzweig
#57774
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Amy C. Rosenzweig is a professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University. She was born in 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her current research interests include structural biology and bioinorganic chemistry, metal uptake and transport, oxygen activation by metalloenzymes, and characterization of membrane protein. For her work, she has been recognized by a number of national and international awards, including the MacArthur "Genius" Award in 2003.
Go to Profile#5333
Andrew Balmford
#94336
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Andrew Balmford is a professor of conservation science at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on planning conservation, comparing the costs and benefits of conservation and how conservation can be reconciled with other activities.
Go to Profile#5334
Douglas K. Mccormick
#103864
Overall Influence
#5335
Satoru Todo
#103870
Overall Influence
#5336
Susanna Larsson
#100960
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Susanna C. Larsson is a Swedish epidemiologist. She is associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She is currently also associated with the Neurology Unit, University of Cambridge, where she is part of a group engaged in a study on the effect of diet on stroke risk.
Go to Profile#5337
Munther A. Khamashta
#103887
Overall Influence
#5338
Jennifer Owen
#95019
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Jennifer Owen is a British zoologist. Career Jennifer Bak was the daughter of F. A. Bak, a noted amateur ornithologist and Leicester based textile manufacturer. She went on to study zoology in Oxford where, in 1955 as an undergraduate, she met Denis Owen. They married after graduation in 1958 and she went to the University of Michigan to work as a teaching fellow and complete a research PhD on the study of wasps. After the doctorate Owen took up teaching positions from 1962 in Makerere University, Uganda and Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone as well as Sweden. On her return to the department o...
Go to Profile#5339
Erminio Costa
#103896
Overall Influence
#5340
Susan Celniker
#94618
Overall Influence
Susan E. Celniker is an American biologist, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an adjunct professor Comparative Biochemistry department at UC Berkeley. She is the co-director of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project.
Go to Profile#5341
John Carlson
#92860
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John R. Carlson is an American biologist and professor. He currently holds the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. Research The Carlson lab studies insect chemosensation using the model organism Drosophila. Significant contributions to the field include discovery of the olfactory receptor genes in insects using the Drosophila genome, called the Odorant Receptor gene family, followed by the discovery of the insect taste receptor genes, called the Gustatory Receptor gene family, a system to deorphanize insect odorant receptors referr...
Go to Profile#5342
Stefan Priebe
#93353
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Stefan Priebe is a German-British psychologist and psychiatrist. Early life Priebe grew up in West-Berlin, completed school at the Canisius-Kolleg and studied psychology and medicine at the University of Hamburg. He later qualified as psychiatrist, neurologist and psychotherapist in Berlin, where he trained and worked at the Free University Berlin.
Go to Profile#5343
Stephen Brendan McMahon
#102312
Overall Influence
1954 - 2021 (67 years)
Stephen "Mac" McMahon , FMedSci, was the Sherrington Professor of Physiology at King's College London, and Director of the Wellcome Trust / London Pain Consortium. Professor McMahon led a world-renowned research laboratory at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases in central London from 1985 to 2021.
Go to Profile#5344
Włodzimierz Ptak
#57120
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Włodzimierz Wojciech Ptak was a Polish immunologist and microbiologist, professor of medical sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, professor and Vice-Rector at the Medical Academy in Kraków, later transformed into the Jagiellonian University Medical College, visiting professor at Yale University.
Go to Profile#5345
Ulrik Wisløff
#81073
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Ulrik Wisløf is a Norwegian researcher, a professor and an entrepreneur in the field of exercise physiology, and the Head of the Cardiac Exercise Research Group at the Dept. of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and he is also a Honorary Professor at University of Queensland Australia. He was appointed professor in 2008 and quickly built up an international, transdisciplinary and competitive group, as documented by >280 peer-reviewed publications and ~72 000 citations. According to Google Scholar, he figures among the world's 4 most cited scientists in the broad field of “exercise” and the most cited Exercise Physiologist worldwide.
Go to Profile#5346
Christopher D. Lima
#85601
Overall Influence
Christopher David Lima is an American biologist. He is currently Chair and Member at the Sloan Kettering Institute of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5347
Fumio Takei
#52207
Overall Influence
Fumio Takei is a Distinguished Scientist at the Provincial Health Services Authority and Terry Fox Laboratory, part of the British Columbia Cancer Agency. in Vancouver. He also is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Go to Profile#5348
Sandrine Dudoit
#62467
Overall Influence
Sandrine Dudoit is a professor of statistics and public health at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research applies statistics to microarray and genetic data; she is known as one of the founders of the open-source Bioconductor project for the development of bioinformatics software.
Go to Profile#5349
Jens Meiler
#82721
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Jens Meiler is a German-American biologist and structural chemist. He currently serves as a Professor of Chemistry and Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on protein structures and computational biology, drawing on interdisciplinary techniques from other sciences.
Go to Profile#5350
Harold Fox
#103924
Overall Influence
