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,
#5851
George J. Augustine
#102379
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
George James Augustine is an American neuroscientist known for his work on presynaptic mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and his contributions to the development of optogenetics, a tool to control neural activity using light. He is best known as the author of the popular neuroscience textbook published by Oxford University Press along with lead author Dale Purves.
Go to Profile#5852
Zheng Cui
#97304
Overall Influence
Zheng Cui is a biochemist currently serving as an Associate Professor of Pathology at Wake Forest University. As an oncologist and a cancer researcher Cui has proposed the unique idea that certain individuals naturally produce a special kind of white blood cell that contains an inherent resistance to cancer. This idea is extremely controversial within the cancer biology community. These white blood cells, in Cui's view, could potentially be extracted from donors and given to cancer victims, thus endowing them with cancer resistance. Cui's research seems to indicate that the resistance includes many types of cancer.
Go to Profile#5853
George C. Prendergast
#90091
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
George C. Prendergast is an American biomedical scientist. His research has focused on cancer pathobiology and immunology. Since 2004, he has been the President and CEO of Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, a cancer-focused research center in the U.S. He is also the co-director of the Program in Cancer Cell Biology & Signaling at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University.
Go to Profile#5854
Hitoshi Oshitani
#39357
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Hitoshi Oshitani is a Japanese university professor, virologist, medical doctor, public health expert and scientist who currently serves as the professor of virology, Department of Microbiology at Tohoku University. He is acclaimed and accredited with the crafting of the successful pandemic strategy of Japan called the "Three C's": Avoiding closed spaces, crowds and contact situations. He has been dubbed as the global ambassador of the "Japanese Model". He is also an integral member of the expert panel advising the Government of Japan in handling the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Despite being ...
Go to Profile#5855
Donald W. Black
#98266
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Donald W. Black is a prominent American psychiatrist, researcher and professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Iowa. He is the editor-in-chief of the Annals of Clinical Psychiatry. A researcher on gambling disorder, he received the Scientific Achievement Award from the National Center for Responsible Gaming in 2016. Black has lectured nationally and internationally and has authored more than 400 publications.
Go to Profile#5856
Arthur Veis
#108517
Overall Influence
1925 - 2023 (98 years)
#5857
Timothy John Entwisle
#88360
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Timothy John Entwisle , is an Australian botanist, much of whose research work is in phycology . See for example the articles. He was awarded a Ph.D. from La Trobe University in 1986 for work on the taxonomy of Vaucheria.
Go to Profile#5858
Helena Nader
#92074
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Helena Bonciani Nader is a Brazilian biomedical scientist based at the Federal University of São Paulo. She served as president of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science from 2011 to 2017. She works in glycobiology, specialising in the characterisation of proteoglycans. She is a member of The World Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#5859
William Edward Duellman
#108527
Overall Influence
#5860
Munro Peacock
#108544
Overall Influence
#5861
Michael Freeling
#100738
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Michael Freeling is an American geneticist and plant biologist. He is currently a professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California. He is known for early work on maize anaerobic metabolism, developmental genetics of the maize ligule, proposing the grasses as a single genetic system model with Jeffrey Bennetzen, and the discovery of biased gene retention following whole genome duplications in plants. In 1994 Freeling was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2017 he was awarded the McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies.
Go to Profile#5862
Stanley Watson
#73227
Overall Influence
Stanley J. Watson Jr. is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on regulation by the central nervous system of behavior in the brains of individuals with severe mental illness. He is the co-director of the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute with Huda Akil and the Ralph Waldo Gerard Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He is also the co-director of the University of Michigan node of the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium.
Go to Profile#5863
Harrison B. Tordoff
#87962
Overall Influence
1923 - 2008 (85 years)
Harrison Bruce "Bud" Tordoff was an American ornithologist and conservationist. He was brought up in Mechanicville in upstate New York, hunting and fishing, and became interested in wildlife management and zoology. He studied as an undergraduate at Cornell University, returning to complete his degree after a period of military service during World War II. He had served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Forces, and his five confirmed aerial victories qualified him as a fighter ace.
Go to Profile#5864
Bernard Rowe
#108593
Overall Influence
#5865
Giuseppe L. Viale
#108607
Overall Influence
#5866
Luigi Boitani
#103789
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Luigi Boitani is a professor of zoology at the Sapienza University of Rome, whose research interests include ecology, the protection of large mammals, and the management of protected areas. Boitani is president of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe.
Go to Profile#5867
Gideon Dreyfuss
#108615
Overall Influence
#5868
Harold Woolhouse
#97763
Overall Influence
1932 - 1996 (64 years)
Harold William Woolhouse was a British botanist. Woolhouse was born in Sheffield in 1932. He was educated at the University of Reading where he gained a BSc in Horticultural Botany and at the University of Adelaide in Australia where he gained his PhD.
Go to Profile#5869
Herbert Tabor
#108626
Overall Influence
#5870
Hediye Erdjument‐bromage
#108629
Overall Influence
#5871
Vittorio Lingiardi
#46310
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Vittorio Lingiardi is an Italian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Full Professor of Dynamic Psychology and past Director of the Clinical Psychology Specialization Program , Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. He has coordinated with Nancy McWilliams the second edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, the PDM-2 .
Go to Profile#5872
Howard Morris
#86963
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Howard Redfern Morris FRS is a British biochemist. He worked at Imperial College as a lecturer from 1975 to 1978, as a Reader in Protein Chemistry from 1978 to 1980, and as Professor of Biological Chemistry, from 1980.
Go to Profile#5873
Renzo Guerrini
#108648
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#5874
Malcolm Press
#32738
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Malcolm Colin Press is a British ecologist, professor and Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University , in the United Kingdom. Education Press was educated at Kingsbury High School. He studied environmental science at Westfield College, part of the University of London gaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1980 followed by a PhD from the University of Manchester in 1984 supervised by John A. Lee. In 2008, he was awarded a Diploma in Spanish and Latin American studies from the University of Sheffield.
Go to Profile#5875
Arnaud Delorme
#74484
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Arnaud Delorme is a university professor at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, an adjunct faculty member at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, a consulting research scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. At UCSD, Dr. Delorme contributed to development of the widely used Matlab toolbox for electroencephalography analysis, EEGLAB. He has been acknowledged for his contribution to the field of EEG research by being awarded a Bettencourt-Schueller young investigator award in 2002 and one of three of the ANT EEG Company 10-year Anniversary Young Researcher Awards in 2006.
Go to Profile#5876
David John. Lewis
#108671
Overall Influence
#5877
Barbara Low
#40346
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
Barbara Wharton Low was a biochemist, biophysicist, and a researcher involved in discovering the structure of penicillin and the characteristics of other antibiotics. Her early work at Oxford University with Dorothy Hodgkin used X-ray crystallography to confirm the molecular structure of penicillin, which at the time was the largest molecule whose structure has been determined using that method. Later graduate work saw her study with Linus Pauling and Edwin Cohn before becoming a professor in her own right. Low's laboratory would accomplish the discovery of the pi helix, investigate the struc...
Go to Profile#5878
Paul Licht
#108701
Overall Influence
#5879
Shahid Naeem
#107186
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Shahid Naeem is an ecologist and conservation biologist and is a Lenfest Distinguished professor and chair in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Naeem is the author of Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Well-Being, and has published over 100 scientific articles.
Go to Profile#5880
Jeffrey Harvey
#53150
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jeff Harvey is a Senior Scientist in the Department of Multitrophic Interactions at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, and formerly an associate editor of Nature. Harvey specializes in research concerning:"Intra-interspecific variation in plant quality and its effects on herbivores, parasitoids and hyperparasitoids; linking above- and below ground multitrophic interactions via plant defense.""Life-history, foraging and developmental strategies in hyperparasitoids.""Spatial and temporal effects on multitrophic interactions.""Science, ecology and advocacy."
Go to Profile#5881
Dai Rees
#100614
Overall Influence
1936 - 2021 (85 years)
Sir David Allan "Dai" Rees, FRS was a British biochemist and science administrator who was chief executive of the Medical Research Council between 1987 and 1996. Early life and education Rees was born in Silloth, Cumberland but educated in Wales: he attended Hawarden Grammar School and received his BSc and PhD degrees in chemistry from University College of North Wales, Bangor.
Go to Profile#5882
Jeffery L. Barker
#108742
Overall Influence
#5883
Juan E. González
#88112
Overall Influence
Dr. Juan E. González born in The Bronx, New York is a Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. González received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1991. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the faculty of UTD in 1996 as an assistant professor and was appointed to associate professor in 2002. González's research focuses on understanding the structural, biochemical and cell biology mechanisms by which molecular signals control bacterial communication.
Go to Profile#5884
Georges J. F. Köhler
#108763
Overall Influence
#5885
William Francis Brace
#91514
Overall Influence
1926 - 2012 (86 years)
William Francis Brace was an American geophysicist. Career Education Brace matriculated in 1943 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and after 1944–1946 service in the Navy, graduated with bachelor's degrees in 1946 in naval architecture and in 1949 in civil engineering. In 1953 he received his PhD from MIT's department of geology and geophysics. In 1953–1954 he was a Fulbright scholar at Bruno Sander's laboratory in Austria.
Go to Profile#5886
John Woinarski
#78107
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Casimir Zichy Woinarski is an Australian ornithologist, mammalogist, and herpetologist. He was awarded the 2001 Eureka Prize for Biodiversity Research. In the same year he was the recipient of the D. L. Serventy Medal, awarded by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region.
Go to Profile#5887
Oscar Touster
#108443
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Oscar Touster was an American molecular biologist. He was the founder and first chair of the molecular biology department of Vanderbilt University. He served as the president of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities from 1976 to 1988 and chaired the board of directors from 1988 until 1991.
Go to Profile#5888
Mark Mayer
#102739
Overall Influence
Mark Lee Mayer is scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health . His research investigates glutamate receptor ion channels, the major mediators of excitatory synapses in the brain. He has made numerous observations that have changed our view of receptor function and neurotransmission in the brain. Major findings include discovery of the block of NMDA receptors by extracellular Mg and their high Ca permeability; analysis of the permeation and block of Ca permeable AMPA and kainate receptors by cytoplasmic polyamines; and structural studies on ligand binding, allosteric modulation, a...
Go to Profile#5889
Sheldon Wolff
#86871
Overall Influence
1928 - 2008 (80 years)
Sheldon Wolff was an American radiobiologist, cytogeneticist, and environmental health expert on mutagenic chemicals. Biography He graduated from Tufts College with a B.S. in 1950 and from Harvard University with an M.A. in 1951 and with a Ph.D. in 1953. His doctoral dissertation "Some aspects of the chemical protection against radiation damage to Vicia faba chromosomes" was supervised by Karl Sax. From 1953 to 1966 Wolff worked in the biology division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory , where he studied radiation-induced cell damage. At the University of California, San Francisco he was a professor of cytogenetics and radiology from 1966 to 1996, when he retired as professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#5890
Elizabeth Fisher
#92082
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Mary Claire Fisher is a British geneticist and Professor at University College London. Her research investigates the degeneration of motor neurons during amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease triggered by Down syndrome.
Go to Profile#5891
Barry L. Jacobs,
#108830
Overall Influence
#5892
Pat Nuttall
#61505
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Patricia Anne Nuttall, OBE is a British virologist and acarologist known for her research on tick-borne diseases. Her discoveries include the fact that pathogens can be transmitted between vectors feeding on a host without being detectable in the host's blood. She is also a science administrator who served as the director of the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology & Hydrology . As of 2015, she is professor of arbovirology in the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#5893
Kenneth Colby
#5848
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Kenneth Mark Colby was an American psychiatrist dedicated to the theory and application of computer science and artificial intelligence to psychiatry. Colby was a pioneer in the development of computer technology as a tool to try to understand cognitive functions and to assist both patients and doctors in the treatment process. He is perhaps best known for the development of a computer program called PARRY, which mimicked a person with paranoid schizophrenia and could "converse" with others. PARRY sparked serious debate about the possibility and nature of machine intelligence.
Go to Profile#5894
Frederick Schram
#100467
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Frederick Robert Schram is an American palaeontologist and carcinologist. He received his B.S. in biology from Loyola University Chicago in 1965, and a Ph.D. on palaeozoology from the University of Chicago in 1968 .
Go to Profile#5895
Sabina Leonelli
#34424
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sabina Leonelli is a philosopher of science and professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. She is well known for her work on scientific practices, data-centric science, and open science policies. She was awarded the 2018 Lakatos award for her book Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study .
Go to Profile#5896
Morag Crichton Timbury
#97098
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Morag Crichton Timbury FRCPG FRCPath FRSE FRCP was a Scottish medical virologist, bacteriologist and science writer. Early life and education Morag Crichton McCulloch was born on 29 September 1930. Her parents were Dr Esther Sinclair McCulloch and William McCulloch. She attended St Bride's High School in East Kilbride before studying medicine at University of Glasgow. She graduated from the university with a MB ChB in 1953 and MD in 1960, and received her PhD in 1976.
Go to Profile#5897
Giuseppe Pantaleo
#108892
Overall Influence
#5898
John Marioni
#102746
Overall Influence
John Marioni is the Head of Research at the European Bioinformatics Institute and holds an appointment at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute in Cambridge University. He is a computational biologist known for his research on statistical and computational methods for the analysis of genomics data, in particular single-cell biology and evolutionary genomics. He co-chairs the Human Cell Atlas Analysis Working Group.
Go to Profile#5899
Biljana Stojković
#83208
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Biljana Stojković is a Serbian biologist, activist, and professor at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Biology. Stojković was the candidate of the We Must coalition in the 2022 presidential election.
Go to Profile#5900
Keith E. Idso
#80902
Overall Influence
Keith E. Idso is a botanist and vice president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He is the brother of Craig D. Idso and son of Sherwood B. Idso. He received his B.S. in Agriculture with a major in Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona and his M.S. from the same institution with a major in Agronomy and Plant Genetics. He completed his Ph.D. in Botany at Arizona State University. In 1994, Idso, along with his father, published a review paper on the topic of increased CO2 levels and their effects on plant growth. The paper concluded that not only did other f...
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