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,
#5351
Ann C. Palmenberg
#90993
Overall Influence
Ann C. Palmenberg is a professor of virology and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her B.S. from St. Lawrence University and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Palmenberg has been given numerous awards for her research and involvement within the scientific community, such as Fellow for the American Academy of Microbiology. News articles have been published about her work within virology, including an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on her findings on the common cold.
Go to Profile#5352
Deborah Persaud
#31226
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Deborah Persaud is a Guyanese-born American virologist who primarily works on HIV/AIDS at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Biography Persaud was born on 23 August 1960 in Port Mourant, East Berbice-Corentyne, Guyana. At age 16 she moved to Brooklyn. Persaud attended the New York University School of Medicine after receiving her undergraduate degree from York College CUNY. She also earned a master's degree at the New York University School of Medicine. She started residency at the Babies Hospital of New York and finished her chief residency at the same hospital. Persaud later was a fellow at the New York University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#5353
Ali Mobasheri
#79646
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Ali Mobasheri is a Professor of Musculoskeletal Physiology at University of Surrey in England. He was educated at Dulwich College an independent school for boys in Dulwich, southeast London and is included on the List of Old Alleynians. He obtained his BSc from Imperial College London, his MSc from the University of Toronto and his DPhil from Wolfson College, Oxford at the University of Oxford. He has published more than 250 papers in leading scientific journals.
Go to Profile#5354
Quentin Bone
#96885
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Quentin Bone FRS was a British marine biologist. In 1971, he pioneered the application of electron microscopy to marine life. Biography Quentin Bone was the son of Stephen Bone, a painter, writer, broadcaster and war artist, and Mary Adshead, a painter, muralist, illustrator and designer. Educated first at Warwick School, he received his degree in zoology in 1951 from St John's College, Oxford. He became a doctor of philosophy in 1958 from Magdalen College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#5355
Joseph J. Schildkraut
#103946
Overall Influence
#5356
Charles Thomas Caskey
#103947
Overall Influence
#5357
Richard D Kolodner
#103955
Overall Influence
#5358
Hans G. Boman
#101647
Overall Influence
1924 - 2008 (84 years)
Hans Gustaf Boman was a Swedish microbiologist with a special focus on innate immunity. Boman was born on 16 August 1924 in Engelbrekt Parish, Stockholm, Sweden, and died on 3 December 2008. Boman's pioneering research on insect immunity formed the basis for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011.
Go to Profile#5359
Nancy E. Davidson
#103964
Overall Influence
#5360
Masato Kasuga
#103975
Overall Influence
#5361
Donald Lee Deangelis
#103986
Overall Influence
#5362
Heinrich Betz
#103989
Overall Influence
#5363
Lars Juhl Jensen
#103998
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5364
Guy Ourisson
#42095
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Guy Henry Ourisson was a French chemist. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences where he was vice president and then became the president. Awarded the Ernest Guenther Award in 1972 and the Heinrich Wieland Prize in 1985.
Go to Profile#5365
Donald J. Stewart
#81781
Overall Influence
#5366
Annalisa Pastore
#93858
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Annalisa Pastore is a Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology at King's College London. In 2018 she was appointed full professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. In 2022, she was appointed director of research for life sciences, chemistry and soft matter science at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. She resigned in Frebruary 2023.
Go to Profile#5367
Jun Wen
#100508
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Jun Wen is an evolutionary biologist and curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in the Department of Botany and has worked in the Laboratory of Molecular Systematics. She researches the monography, phylogenetics, biogeography, and ethnobotany of the plant families Araliaceae and Vitaceae. She has published over 190 scientific papers.
Go to Profile#5368
Michael J. Sadowsky
#102444
Overall Influence
Michael J. Sadowsky is an American microbiologist at the University of Minnesota. He is the director of the BioTechnology Institute and a Professor in the Department of Soil, Water, and Climate. Sadowsky's scientific career spans over 40 years, most of it focused on research studying the nature of bacteria and bacterial genes in ecological settings, with a particular emphasis on soil bacteria that are involved in nitrogen fixation.
Go to Profile#5369
David Charles Hooper
#104027
Overall Influence
#5370
Priyanga Amarasekare
#97454
Overall Influence
Priyanga Amarasekare is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles and distinguished Fellow of the Ecological Society of America . Her research is in the fields of mathematical biology and trophic ecology, with a focus on understanding patterns of biodiversity, species dispersal and the impacts of climate change. She received a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and received ESA's Robert H. MacArthur Award in 2022.
Go to Profile#5371
Sheila Anne Bingham
#104047
Overall Influence
#5372
Gary Nabel
#47589
Overall Influence
Gary J. Nabel is an American virologist and immunologist who is President and chief executive officer of ModeX Therapeutics in Natick, Massachusetts. He was the founding director of Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Go to Profile#5373
Ernest Mayer
#91927
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Ernest Mayer was a Slovenian botanist He studied Biology at the University of Ljubljana and at the University of Vienna. From September 1944 to December 1945, he was in the Yugoslav partisans and the Yugoslav People's Army. In 1947 he finished his studies in Vienna and graduated in botany as the main subject.
Go to Profile#5374
Renato D. Alarcón
#65495
Overall Influence
Renato D. Alarcón is an emeritus professor of Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and works at Cayetano Heredia University. He was born in Arequipa, Peru and would go on to graduate from Cayetano Heredia University as a surgeon in 1966. Renato did Psychiatric postgraduate training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1970, where we received his Master's degree in Public health. Today, he is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Alarcón serves as the Deputy Chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University. He was also the director of the Mood Disorders Unit at the Mayo Psychiatry and Psychology Treatment Center.
Go to Profile#5375
Henryk Okarma
#94084
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Henryk Okarma is a Polish biologist, professor of life sciences. His main areas of expertise are research on predatory mammals, especially wolf, lynx, wildcat, invasive species and research on hunting biology. He is an academic teacher at the Jagiellonian University, long-time director of the Institute of Wildlife Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5376
Anne Ferguson-Smith
#94644
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Anne Carla Ferguson-Smith is a mammalian developmental geneticist. She is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and International Partnerships at the University of Cambridge. Formerly head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, she is a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge and serves as President of the Genetics Society.
Go to Profile#5377
Jacob S. Selhub
#104086
Overall Influence
#5378
Michio Ui
#104123
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
#5379
Rachel Jenkins
#86778
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Rachel McDougall Jenkins is a professor of epidemiology and international mental health policy at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre and a visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Go to Profile#5380
Uğur Şahin
#96957
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Uğur Şahin is a German oncologist and immunologist. He is the founder and CEO of BioNTech, which developed one of the major vaccines against COVID-19. His main fields of research are cancer research and immunology.
Go to Profile#5381
Jean‐hillaire Saurat
#104187
Overall Influence
#5382
Menno Schilthuizen
#78589
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch evolutionary biologist, ecologist, and permanent research scientist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden and a professor of evolution and biodiversity at Leiden University.
Go to Profile#5383
Linda J. S. Allen
#39569
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Linda Joy Svoboda Allen is an American mathematician and mathematical biologist, the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University. Education and career Allen earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1975 from the College of St. Scholastica, and a master's degree in 1978 and doctorate in 1978 from the University of Tennessee. Her dissertation, Applications of Differential Inequalities to Persistence and Extinction Problems for Reaction-Diffusion Systems, was supervised by Thomas G. Hallam.
Go to Profile#5384
Walter J Koch
#104204
Overall Influence
#5385
Molly J. Crockett
#51506
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Molly J. Crockett is an American neuroscientist who studies human morality, altruism and decision making. She received the 2019 Janet Taylor Spence Award from the Association for Psychological Science.
Go to Profile#5386
Edward M. Stricker
#94628
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Edward M. Stricker is an American neuroscientist, now retired, formerly a University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and Dean at its Honors College. Professor Stricker earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1960, a master's degree in chemistry from that same institution in 1961, and a PhD in psychology from Yale University in 1965. He held faculty positions at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario from 1967 to 1971, and at the University of Pittsburgh from 1971 to 1986, before being named University Professor in 1986.
Go to Profile#5387
Himla Soodyall
#63306
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Himla Soodyall is a South African geneticist involved in finding some of the oldest human genetic lines, mainly focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work on DNA has pointed to southern Africa as the most likely geographic region of origin of the human species.
Go to Profile#5388
John D. Storey
#44391
Overall Influence
John D. Storey is the William R. Harman '63 and Mary-Love Harman Professor in Genomics at Princeton University. His research is focused on statistical inference of high-dimensional data, particularly genomic data. Storey was the founding director of the Princeton University Center for Statistics and Machine Learning.
Go to Profile#5389
Pat Monaghan
#94936
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Patricia Monaghan is Regius Professor of Zoology in the Institute of biodiversity, animal health & comparative medicine at the University of Glasgow. Biography Monaghan was educated at Durham University where her PhD investigated the utilisation of urban resources by the herring gull Larus arqentatus.
Go to Profile#5390
Allison Tong
#104258
Overall Influence
#5391
Dora E. Angelaki
#77400
Overall Influence
Dora Angelaki is a Professor of Neuroscience in the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. She previously held the Wilhelmina Robertson Professorship of Neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine. She looks at multi-sensory information flow between subcortical and cortical areas of the brain. Her research interests include spatial navigation and decision-making circuits. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.
Go to Profile#5392
Michel Bouvier
#104266
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#5393
Jean‐claude Baron
#104273
Overall Influence
#5394
David R. Soll
#74841
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David R. Soll is a professor of Biology at the University of Iowa. He is best known for the motion analysis of living cells, the discovery of Candida albicans phenotypic switching and monoclonal antibody technology.
Go to Profile#5395
Julio Licinio
#82206
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Julio Licinio is an Australian American psychiatrist who is SUNY Distinguished Professor at State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. He is simultaneously Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at Flinders University in Adelaide. Licinio has been Senior Vice President for Academic and Health Affairs, as well as Executive Dean, College of Medicine. Licinio is the founding and current chief editor of three journals from Springer Nature, Molecular Psychiatry, Translational Psychiatry, and Discover Mental Health.
Go to Profile#5396
Ray Ward Fuller
#104320
Overall Influence
#5397
Jeffrey D Rothstein
#104328
Overall Influence
#5398
James O. McInerney
#93094
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
James O. McInerney is an Irish-born microbiologist, computational evolutionary biologist, professor, and former head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and elected Fellow of the Linnean Society. In June 2020 he was elected president-designate of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution and in 2022 he took up the role of President.
Go to Profile#5399
Bryan Paul Morgan
#104333
Overall Influence
#5400
György Csaba
#104336
Overall Influence
