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,
#5651
Peter J. Wagner
#65467
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Peter J. Wagner is a paleontologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from The University of Chicago in 1995, conducted postdoctoral research at the Smithsonian Institution, served as a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History from 1996 through 2007, and was at the Smithsonian Institution from 2007 through 2017. He was given the Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society in 2004. His research focuses on macroevolution and paleoecology, especially as regards the systematics, evolutionary dynamics, morphology, and distribution of Paleozoic Molluscs.
Go to Profile#5652
Barry J. Hoffer
#106609
Overall Influence
#5653
Christer Halldin
#106611
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#5654
J. Christian Gillin
#106632
Overall Influence
#5655
Susannah J. Eykyn
#106645
Overall Influence
#5656
Samuel Dagogo-Jack
#21901
Overall Influence
Samuel E. Dagogo-Jack is a Nigerian-American physician. He is the A.C. Mullins Endowed Professor in Translational Research, Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He is also an Editor of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Go to Profile#5657
George B. Johnson
#93841
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dr George B. Johnson is a science educator who for many years has written a weekly column "On Science" in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. For over 30 years he was a biology professor at Washington University and a genetics professor at Washington University School of Medicine. He has authored 44 scientific papers and ten high school and college biology texts. Over 3 million students have learned biology from these texts.
Go to Profile#5658
Theodore Brown Rasmussen
#106661
Overall Influence
#5659
Henry Greely
#37361
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Henry T. "Hank" Greely is an American lawyer, a leading authority on the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those related to genetics, assisted reproduction, neuroscience and stem cell research.
Go to Profile#5660
Arthur James Boucot
#103293
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Arthur James Boucot was an American paleontologist, biostratigrapher, and taphonomist who was an expert in Silurian and Devonian marine invertebrates, particularly brachiopods. Early life Boucot was born in Philadelphia, and raised in an academic family with early exposure to geology and paleontology. He began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out in his freshman year to work at RCA. He was drafted into the United States Army during WWII, but enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces as a navigator with the Eighth Air Force on B-24 Bombers, and was awarded the Dist...
Go to Profile#5661
Martin L. Cody
#106693
Overall Influence
#5662
Egon Horak
#81552
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Egon Horak is an Austrian mycologist who has described more than 1000 species of fungi, including many from the Southern Hemisphere, particularly New Zealand and South America. He was an executive editor of the scientific journal Sydowia from 1975 to 1989, and a member of the editorial board afterwards.
Go to Profile#5663
Roland Douce
#84931
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Roland Douce was a plant biologist and professor who, along with his students, created a world-renowned plant biology centre in Grenoble, France, focusing on the biology of chloroplasts and mitochondria and their roles in plant metabolism under normal or stressed physiological conditions.
Go to Profile#5664
Ivan Sansom
#89090
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ivan Sansom is a British palaeontologist, Senior Lecturer in Palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham. His research primarily has focused on the conodont palaeobiology and the early Palaeozoic radiation of vertebrates.
Go to Profile#5665
Michael Sjöström
#106726
Overall Influence
#5666
Sharon. M. Wahl
#106733
Overall Influence
#5667
Kirk Johnson
#77178
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kirk R. Johnson is an American paleontologist, author, curator, and museum administrator, and is currently serving as Sant Director of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Early life and education Johnson was born in 1960 and grew up in Seattle, Washington. He attended Amherst College as an undergraduate, where he received a bachelor's degree in geology and fine arts. He joined Chi Psi Fraternity. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning a master's degree in geology and paleobotany. He received his Ph.D. in geology and paleobotany from Yale University in 1989.
Go to Profile#5668
Jeffrey Bluestone
#99790
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jeffrey A. Bluestone is the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco , and was, for a number of years, an earlier executive vice chancellor and provost of that university. He began the UCSF affiliation in 2000, after earlier extended positions at the NCI-NIH, and at The University of Chicago. Bluestone earned his undergraduate and masters degrees in microbiology from Rutgers State University, and his doctoral degree in immunology from Cornell Graduate School of Medical Science. His current re...
Go to Profile#5669
Jack A. Wolfe
#55424
Overall Influence
1936 - 2005 (69 years)
Jack Albert Wolfe was a United States Geological Survey paleobotanist and paleoclimatologist best known for his studies of Tertiary climate in western North America through analysis of fossil angiosperm leaves.
Go to Profile#5670
Kambadur Muralidhar
#98128
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kambadur Muralidhar or K. Muralidhar is an Indian biologist, known for his work in biochemistry, endocrinology and reproductive biology. He taught at Delhi University for over thirty years, and was Head of its Department of Zoology. Currently, he is Jawaharlal Nehru Chair Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India. He is also highly regarded as a teacher and educator, and has contributed to biology education at both high school and college levels.
Go to Profile#5671
Martin Reivich
#106785
Overall Influence
#5672
Bonnie S. Dunbar
#67580
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bonita Sue "Bonnie" Dunbar is a former professor in the department of molecular and cell biology at Baylor College of Medicine, a position she held from 1994 to 2004. Prior thereto she was an assistant professor in the same department at the same university from 1981 to 1983. From 1984 to 1994, also at Baylor College of Medicine, she also held a position as associate professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology. She is currently an honorary lecturer at the University of Nairobi. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Endocrine Society, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the New York Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5673
Irving B. Fritz
#106794
Overall Influence
#5674
Joseph D. Schulman
#76554
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Joseph Daniel Schulman is a physician, medical researcher, and biomedical entrepreneur in the fields of genetic diseases and human reproduction. Life Schulman was born in 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1966 and trained in pediatrics, genetics, and obstetrics & gynecology at Massachusetts General Hospital, the National Institutes of Health, and Cornell-New York Hospital Medical Center. Schulman worked at Cambridge University with Drs. Robert Geoffrey Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, contributing to the development of the first methods for successful human in-vitro fertilization .
Go to Profile#5675
Péter Érdi
#33757
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Péter Érdi is a Hungarian born computational neuroscientist who now lives in Michigan, United States where he is a Henry R. Luce Professor at Kalamazoo College. In his career he wrote several books and published many scholarly articles in the fields of Chemical kinetics, Computational neuroscience and Complex systems
Go to Profile#5676
Rod Welch
#87826
Overall Influence
Rodney A. Welch is professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a specialist in bacterial pathogenesis and toxins produced by the bacterium Escherichia coli. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and since 2004 has held the chair of Robert Turell Infections Diseases. In 2014 he was named as part of a team at Wisconsin-Madison that was awarded a grant of up to $16 million from the National Institutes of Health to search for new antibiotics.
Go to Profile#5677
John M. Walshe
#106823
Overall Influence
#5678
Edward Reich
#106835
Overall Influence
#5679
Bjørn Grinde
#42601
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Bjørn Grinde is a Norwegian biologist working as a scientist in the fields of genetics and evolution, with particular interests in human evolution, happiness and consciousness. Early life and education He was born and grew up in Oslo, Norway, but spent a year as a high-school exchange student at Michigan, USA, in 1969.
Go to Profile#5680
Constantine G. Lyketsos
#89918
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Constantine G. Lyketsos is the Elizabeth Plank Althouse Professor in Alzheimer's Disease Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He is the founding director of the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Alzheimer's Disease, and an associate director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer's Disease Research Center .
Go to Profile#5681
Lekh Raj Batra
#69930
Overall Influence
1929 - 1999 (70 years)
Lekh Raj Batra was a distinguished mycologist and linguist. He studied the symbiotic relationships of fungi and beetles focusing on ambrosia beetles and fungi, bio-systematics of hemiascomycetes and discomycetes and fungal diseases.
Go to Profile#5682
Richard Villems
#58576
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Richard Villems is an Estonian geneticist. From 2004 to 2014, he was President of Estonian Academy of Sciences. From 2009 to 2014, he was Director of Estonian Biocentre.
Go to Profile#5683
Garth Powis
#106944
Overall Influence
#5684
Anthonius Josephus Maria Leeuwenberg
#71141
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Anthonius Josephus Maria "Toon" Leeuwenberg was a Dutch botanist and taxonomist best known for his research into the genus Buddleja at the Laboratory of Plant Taxonomy and Plant Geography, Wageningen. He was responsible for sinking many Asiatic species as varieties, notably within Buddleja crispa. In 1962, he worked with Jan de Wilde on the flora of the Ivory Coast.
Go to Profile#5685
Joanna Moncrieff
#13339
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Joanna Moncrieff is a British psychiatrist and academic. She is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and a leading figure in the Critical Psychiatry Network. She is a prominent critic of the modern 'psychopharmacological' model of mental disorder and drug treatment, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry. She has written papers, books and blogs on the use and over-use of drug treatment for mental health problems, the mechanism of action of psychiatric drugs, their subjective and psychoactive effects, the history of drug treatment, and the evidence for its benefits and harms.
Go to Profile#5686
Michael D. Waterfield
#106955
Overall Influence
#5687
James S. Albert
#99148
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
James S. Albert is a professor of Biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Dr. Albert is an author of over 100 scientific papers on the evolution and diversity of fishes, and is an expert in the systematics and biodiversity of Neotropical electric fishes . Dr. Albert and his colleagues to date have described 50 new species.
Go to Profile#5688
Folasade Ogunsola
#27646
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Folasade Tolulope Ogunsola OON is a Nigerian professor of medical microbiology, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. She specializes in disease control, particularly HIV/AIDS. Ogunsola was provost of College of Medicine, University of Lagos and is reputed as being the first woman to occupy the position. She was also the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the institution between 2017 and 2021. She was acting vice chancellor of the University of Lagos for a short period in 2020 when the University was plunged into crisis as a result of the removal of the Vice Chancellor by the University ...
Go to Profile#5689
Claus O. Wilke
#98983
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Claus O. Wilke is a computational and evolutionary biologist and chair of the Department of Integrative Biology at University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dwight W. and Blanche Faye Reeder Centennial Fellow in Systematic and Evolutionary Biology, and currently holds the Joseph J. & Jeanne M. Lagowski Regents Professorship in Molecular Bioscience.
Go to Profile#5690
Helmut Sick
#42239
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
Helmut Sick was a German-Brazilian ornithologist. Sick was born in Leipzig, Germany. He emigrated to Brazil in 1939. A prominent ornithologist in Brazil, Sick published more than 200 papers, including his most influential work: Ornitologia Brasileira, Uma Introdução , later translated into English as Birds in Brazil: A Natural History . He also led scientific expeditions in remote areas in Brazil and described several species of birds, including the Brasília tapaculo, long-tailed cinclodes, Stresemann's bristlefront and golden-crowned manakin.
Go to Profile#5691
Jordan U. Gutterman
#107019
Overall Influence
#5692
Birgitta Bremer
#92477
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Birgitta Bremer , Swedish botanist and academic, is professor at Stockholm University, and director of the Bergius Botanic Garden. Career Professor Bremer obtained her doctorate in botany in 1980 from Stockholm University, with the thesis "Taxonomy of mosses of the genus Schistidium".
Go to Profile#5693
David Healy
#25964
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David Healy FRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author. His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology. Healy has written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, 200 other articles, and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1–3, Let Them Eat Prozac and Mania: A Short History of Bipolar...
Go to Profile#5694
Bettina Meiser
#94923
Overall Influence
Bettina Meiser is a professor at the University of New South Wales, with expertise in the psychosocial aspects of genetics; cancer, hereditary cancer, and the impact of genetic counselling and testing.
Go to Profile#5695
Donald Francis Hoelzl Wallach
#107051
Overall Influence
#5696
Lynn DeLisi
#84816
Overall Influence
Lynn Eleanor DeLisi is an American psychiatrist known for her research on schizophrenia. She is an attending psychiatrist at the VA Boston Healthcare System and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is the editor-in-chief of Psychiatry Research and the president of the Schizophrenia International Research Society. She was a co-founder of both the Schizophrenia International Research Society and the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics, and went on to serve as secretary of both organizations. She was one of two founding editors-in-chief of Schizophrenia Research, which she founded with Henry Nasrallah in 1988.
Go to Profile#5697
Michel Raymond
#107072
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#5698
Carl Grunfeld
#107092
Overall Influence
#5699
Aurore Avarguès-Weber
#61619
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Aurore Avarguès-Weber is a French cognitive neuroscientist and ethologist who is researching the behaviour of bees at the Centre de Recherche sur la Cognition Animale in Toulouse. In 2015, for investigating the brain mechanisms of visual cognition of social insects, she received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, one of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science. She has also received a CNRS Bronze Medal.
Go to Profile#5700
Vincent A. Miller
#107106
Overall Influence
