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,
#5401
John M. MacDougal
#92600
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
John Mochrie MacDougal is an American botanist, noted for his work on the taxonomy of passion flowers, having discovered several new species. He earned his Bachelor of Science in 1975 at College of Charleston. In 1984 he earned his doctorate at Duke University.
Go to Profile#5402
Philip Reed Larsen
#104381
Overall Influence
#5403
Angelo Azzi
#104385
Overall Influence
#5404
Peter M. Groffman
#104394
Overall Influence
#5405
Eric W. Sanderson
#53362
Overall Influence
Eric W. Sanderson is a landscape ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, director of the Mannahatta Project and the author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. In 2013 Sanderson's book Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs was published.
Go to Profile#5406
Stuart Patton
#102787
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Stuart Joseph Patton was an American dairy scientist known for his research in the fields of milk chemistry and the biological processes that regulate milk synthesis in the mammary gland. He was professor of dairy science/food science at Pennsylvania State University from 1949 to 1980 and adjunct professor in the Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, and in the School of Family Studies and Consumer Sciences at San Diego State University until his retirement in 2001.
Go to Profile#5407
Joan E. Strassmann
#73771
Overall Influence
Joan E. Strassmann is a North American evolutionary biologist and the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology at the Washington University in St. Louis. She is known for her work on social evolution and particularly how cooperation prospers in the face of evolutionary conflicts.
Go to Profile#5408
Qutayba Hamid Hamid
#104438
Overall Influence
#5409
Isidore S. Edelman
#104448
Overall Influence
#5410
Kenneth L. Cooke
#24636
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Kenneth L. Cooke was an American mathematical biologist known for his contributions to the study of epidemics. He was the W. M. Keck Professor of Mathematics at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Go to Profile#5411
Marco Mt. Trabucchi
#104467
Overall Influence
#5412
William Stewart Agras
#31793
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
William Stewart Agras is an American psychiatrist and psychotherapist of British origin, research psychiatrist and Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford University. He normally goes by Stewart Agras.
Go to Profile#5413
Peter Del Tredici
#87367
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Peter Del Tredici is an American botanist and author. He is a former senior research scientist at Arnold Arboretum for 35 years and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was appointed curator of the Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection in 1982 and was editor of the journal Arnoldia from 1989 to 1992.
Go to Profile#5414
John D. Axtell
#88320
Overall Influence
1934 - 2000 (66 years)
John David Axtell was an American geneticist, Lynn Distinguished Professor of Agronomy, member of the National Academy of Sciences. Axtell received the Alexander von Humboldt Award in 1975, the Crop Science Research Award from the Crop Science Society of America in 1976, and the International Award for Distinguished Service to Agriculture in 1984. Axtell was widely noted for his research on sorghum . The New York Times and other sources reported that Axtell had been one of discoverers of high-lysine sorghum, and that the discovery was crucial to the fight against world hunger.
Go to Profile#5415
John M. O’keefe
#104495
Overall Influence
#5416
Denise P. Barlow
#74544
Overall Influence
1950 - 2017 (67 years)
Denise P. Barlow was a British geneticist who worked in the field of epigenomics. Barlow was an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization , an honorary professor of genetics at the University of Vienna and recipient of the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1991, she discovered the first mammalian imprinted gene, IGF2R, which codes for the insulin-like growth factor.
Go to Profile#5417
Larry Hanks
#68828
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Lawrence Michael Hanks is an American entomologist and professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Education and career Hanks received his B.S. from the University of California, Davis in 1978, his M.S. from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1982, and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1991. His Ph.D. supervisor was Robert Denno. As a graduate student, he became curious as to why trees in woodland settings were almost free of a pest that was infecting numerous trees in urban landscapes. He subsequently published a study ...
Go to Profile#5418
Jerrold S. Petrofsky
#25257
Overall Influence
Jerrold S. Petrofsky is a professor of physical therapy at Loma Linda University in the School of Allied Health Professions. He is best known for his development while at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, of a portable computer system which stimulated the leg muscles of paralysis victims allowing them control of their lower extremities. In November 1982 he rose to prominence when a student, Nan Davis, who had been paralyzed from the waist down for four years, was made able to walk using technology Petrofsky helped develop. Their story became the inspiration for the television movie Firs...
Go to Profile#5419
Alice L. Pérez Sánchez
#33398
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Alice L. Pérez Sánchez was the Vice-dean of Research at the University of Costa Rica between 2012 and 2016. Pérez has a degree in chemistry from the University of Costa Rica, and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Simon Fraser University, Canada. She is a professor in the chemistry department at the University of Costa Rica, and researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones en Productos Naturales, CIPRONA. She was director of CIPRONA from 2002 to 2010, and of the doctoral science program at the same university from 2009 to 2012. Her scientific work focuses on the synthesis of organic anti-p...
Go to Profile#5420
Peter Somogyi
#80124
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Peter Somogyi is the former Director of the Medical Research Council Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit at the University Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, England. Amongst many scientific honours he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2000, and awarded the first Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation Brain Prize in 2011.
Go to Profile#5421
Anindya Dutta
#101605
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Anindya Dutta is an Indian-born American biochemist and cancer researcher, a Chair of the Department of Genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine since 2021, who has served as Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2011–2021. Dutta's research has focused on the mammalian cell cycle with an emphasis on DNA replication and repair and on noncoding RNAs. He is particularly interested in how de-regulation of these processes promote cancer progression. For his accomplishments he has been elected...
Go to Profile#5422
C. Barry Osmond
#104577
Overall Influence
#5423
David Gottlieb
#104579
Overall Influence
#5424
Frederick Whatley
#83284
Overall Influence
1924 - Present (102 years)
Frederick Robert Whatley FRS was an English botanist and biochemist who held the title of Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford from 1971 to 1991. In 1954, Whatley, Mary Belle Allen and Daniel Israel Arnon discovered photophosphorylation in vitro. In 1967 he was nominated jointly with Allen and Arnon for a Nobel Prize.
Go to Profile#5425
Robert L. Last
#68196
Overall Influence
Robert L. Last is a plant biochemical genomicist who studies metabolic processes that protect plants from the environment and produce products important for animal and human nutrition. His research has covered production and breakdown of essential amino acids, the synthesis and protective roles of Vitamin C and Vitamin E as well as identification of mechanisms that protect photosystem II from damage, and synthesis and biological functions of plant protective specialized metabolites . Four central questions are: how are leaf and seed amino acids levels regulated, what mechanisms protect ...
Go to Profile#5426
Alan Cowman
#99126
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Alan Frederick Cowman AC, FRS, FAA, CorrFRSE, FAAHMS, FASP, FASM is an internationally acclaimed malaria researcher whose work specialises in researching the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, and the molecular mechanisms it uses to evade host responses and antimalarial drugs. He is currently deputy directory of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, and his laboratory continues to work on understanding how Plasmodium falciparum, infects humans and causes disease. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 and awarded the Companion of...
Go to Profile#5427
Sarah McAnulty
#54721
Overall Influence
Sarah McAnulty is an American squid biologist and science communicator. She is the founder of Skype a Scientist, a non-profit organization that connects scientists and teachers around the world for live video calls.
Go to Profile#5428
Katrina Edwards
#76572
Overall Influence
1968 - 2014 (46 years)
Katrina Jane Edwards was a pioneering geomicrobiologist known for her studies of organisms living below the ocean floor, specifically exploring the interactions between the microbes and their geological surroundings, and how global processes were influenced by these interactions. She spearheaded the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigation project at the University of Southern California, which is ongoing. Edwards also helped organize the deep biosphere research community by heading the Fe-Oxidizing Microbial Observatory Project on Loihi Seamount, and serving on several program steering committees involving ocean drilling.
Go to Profile#5429
Heinz Feldmann
#102514
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Heinz Ulrich Feldmann is a German-American virologist who currently serves as the chief of the laboratory of virology at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID and heads the Disease Modelling and Transmission section. His research focuses on highly pathogenic viruses that require strict biocontainment, including those that cause viral hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola and Lassa. He has been responsible for the development of timely viral countermeasures including the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine , development of vaccines and drugs against SARS-CoV-2, and epidemiology of SARS-CoV.
Go to Profile#5430
Richard Jude Samulski
#104676
Overall Influence
#5431
Aimée Classen
#90302
Overall Influence
Aimée Classen is an American ecologist who studies the impact of global changes on a diverse array of terrestrial ecosystems. Her work is notable for its span across ecological scales and concepts, and the diversity of terrestrial ecosystems that it encompasses, including forests, meadows, bogs, and tropics in temperate and boreal climates.
Go to Profile#5432
Marta Zlatic
#90611
Overall Influence
Marta Zlatic is a Croatian neuroscientist who is group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Her research investigates how neural circuits generate behaviour. Early life and education Zlatic is from Zagreb, Croatia. She has said that growing up she had excellent Latin and Greek teachers. She was awarded a full scholarship to study the Natural Sciences Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge. During her summer holidays from Cambridge, Zlatic studied linguistics and Russian at the University of Zagreb. Alongside her studies, Zlatic was involved with the Cambridge theatre scene, taking part in Greek tragedies and Shakespeare's plays.
Go to Profile#5433
Paola Allavena
#104694
Overall Influence
#5434
Henri Weimerskirch
#104720
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#5435
John Welsh
#93776
Overall Influence
1901 - 2002 (101 years)
John Henry Welsh was an American physiologist who pioneered early work on serotonin as a neurotransmitter in invertebrates. He also studied circadian rhythms, neurosecretion, and neuropharmacology. Welsh was born August 25, 1901, in Boothbay, Maine. He graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1922, followed by a M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. Welsh was on the staff of Harvard from 1927 until his retirement in 1970. He was Chairman of the Biology Department from 1947-1950, and served important roles at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research during his career. He taught summer ...
Go to Profile#5436
Peter S Kim
#104745
Overall Influence
#5437
Dermot H. Williamson
#104752
Overall Influence
#5438
Peter N. Devreotes
#102300
Overall Influence
Peter N. Devreotes is an American scientist and the Isaac Morris & Lucille Elizabeth Hay Professor and former director of the department of cell biology, with joint appointments in the Center for Cell Dynamics and department of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also serves on the scientific advisory board of the Allen Institute for Cell Science. He is best known for his contribution in the field of eukaryotic chemotaxis, signal transduction, and phosphoinositides biology.
Go to Profile#5439
Guido Reifenberger
#104802
Overall Influence
#5440
Alfred. Nisonoff
#104815
Overall Influence
#5441
Ting-Chao Chou
#67357
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Ting-Chao Chou is a Chinese American theoretical biologist, pharmacologist, cancer researcher and inventor. His 353 scientific papers have been cited in 40,108 times in over 1,469 biomedical journals as of October 15, 2022. He derived the median-effect equation from the physico-chemical principle of the mass-action law, and introduced the median-effect plot in 1976. With Paul Talalay of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he derived the combination index equation for multiple drug effect interactions, and introduced the concept of combination index for quantitative definition of synergism , additive effect , and antagonism using computerized simulations.
Go to Profile#5442
Hans Ulrich Bergmeyer
#104838
Overall Influence
#5443
Diego García-Borreguero
#29963
Overall Influence
Diego García-Borreguero is the Director of the Sleep Research Institute in Madrid, Spain. Until 2005, he was Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Department of Neurology of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz . He has completed fellowships in sleep medicine and sleep research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA and underwent residency training at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. He received his MD from the University of Navarre and completed his PhD at the University of Munich.
Go to Profile#5444
Varavudh Suteethorn
#89210
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Varavudh Suteethorn, or Warawut Suteethorn is a Thai palaeontologist and geologist. He is the current director of the Palaeontological Research and Education Centre, Mahasarakham University. He is best known for his work on vertebrate paleontology in northeastern Thailand, having contributed to the discovery of many fossil taxa and dig sites in the Khorat Plateau, as a part of a long-standing collaboration between Thai and French scientists.
Go to Profile#5445
Anna Wåhlin
#53816
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Anna Wåhlin is a Swedish researcher on the Antarctic and the polar seas. She is a professor of physical oceanography at the University of Gothenburg and co-chair of the Southern Ocean Observing System.
Go to Profile#5446
Ben Scheres
#102058
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Bernardus Johannes Godefridus Scheres Scheres is a Dutch developmental biologist. He is Professor of Plant Developmental Biology at Wageningen University. Scheres studied phytopathology at Wageningen University, where he received his doctorate in 1990. After a post-doctoral period at the Laboratory of Genetics in Ghent, he became a lecturer at the University of Utrecht, where he became Professor of Plant Developmental Biology in 1999 and Professor of Molecular Genetics in 2005.
Go to Profile#5447
Thomas Gordon Hartley
#82882
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Thomas Gordon Hartley was an American botanist. Biography In 1955 Hartley graduated in botany with the academic degree Bachelor of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In 1957 he received his Master of Science and in 1962 his Ph.D. degree at the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#5448
David Charles Burr
#104904
Overall Influence
#5449
Andreas Peschel
#97395
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Andreas Peschel is a German microbiologist and an expert in bacterial pathogens. Peschel is Head of the Infection Biology Department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Life Peschel grew up in Hagen, studied Biology at the University of Bochum and the University of Tübingen, Germany, and graduated in 1990. After gaining his doctorate in Biology at the University of Tübingen in 1995, he became a post-doctoral scholar in the Microbial Genetics Department at the University of Tübingen. He worked as a visiting scholar at the Research Center Borstel – Leibniz Center for Medicine and Bioscience...
Go to Profile#5450
Mark Hay
#104589
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mark Edward Hay is an American marine ecologist. He is Regents Professor and Harry and Linda Teasley Chair in the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is known for his research on the coral reefs of Fiji. He received the Cody Award from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2012, the Lowell Thomas Award from the Explorers Club in 2015, and the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
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