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,
#5951
Ian Oswald
#74847
Overall Influence
1929 - 2012 (83 years)
Ian Oswald was a sleep researcher and psychiatrist. Academic career He was educated first in London and later in Belper, Derbyshire. In 1947, he became a medical student at Caius College, Cambridge, gaining a First Class Honours degree in the Part 2 Tripos in Psychology. He completed his clinical studies in Bristol and, when in the Royal Air Force, gained a knowledge of electroencephalography. He spent two years at Oxford, and for his research received the MD in 1959.
Go to Profile#5952
Katharina Gaus
#86956
Overall Influence
1972 - 2021 (49 years)
Katharina Gaus was a German-Australian immunologist and molecular microscopist. She was an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow and founding head of the Cellular Membrane Biology Lab, part of the Centre for Vascular Research at the University of New South Wales. Gaus used new super-resolution fluorescence microscopes to examine the plasma membrane within intact living cells, and study cell signalling at the level of single molecules to better understand how cells "make decisions". A key discovery of Gaus and her team was how T-cells decide to switch on the body's immune system to attack diseases. He...
Go to Profile#5953
Bryn Arthur Bridges
#109360
Overall Influence
#5954
Daniel R. Cayan
#109372
Overall Influence
#5955
Alfonso Valéncia
#109375
Overall Influence
#5956
Shuguang Zhang
#35865
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Shuguang Zhang is an American biochemist. He is at the MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Molecular Architecture. Shuguang Zhang's research focuses on designs of biological molecules, particularly proteins and peptides. He has published over 170 scientific papers, which have cumulatively been cited over 35,000 times with an h-index of 88. On the “Updated science-wide author databases of standardizes citation indicators”, he is ranked 18th worldwide in the field of Biomedical Engineering. Zhang is also a co-founder and board member of Molecular Frontiers Foundation, which organizes annual Molecular Frontiers Symposia in Sweden and around the world.
Go to Profile#5957
David M. Ornitz
#109376
Overall Influence
#5958
Natalie Whitford Uhl
#55894
Overall Influence
1919 - 2017 (98 years)
Natalie Whitford Uhl was an American botanist who specialised in palms. The eldest of three sisters, she grew up on a farm in Rhode Island. She graduated B.S in 1940 from Rhode Island State College, publishing two papers on general plant morphology with Vernon Cheadle, her senior year advisor, the same year. In 1940 she went to Cornell University, earning her M.S. in 1943, and her Ph.D. in 1947. While at Cornell, she met and married her husband, Charles Uhl, abandoning botany to start a family.
Go to Profile#5959
Sunita J. Varjani
#109412
Overall Influence
#5960
Keiko Ozato
#109413
Overall Influence
#5961
Jack H. Oppenheimer
#109425
Overall Influence
#5962
Kikutaro Baba
#38837
Overall Influence
1905 - 2001 (96 years)
Kikutaro Baba was a Japanese malacologist. He was the leading researcher on sea slugs and bubble snails, opisthobranch gastropod mollusks in Japan. Biography 1932–1941 Kyushu University1948–1949 Osaka Kyoiku University1976 – Order of the Rising SunKikutaro Baba was married to Sonoko Baba. He died of pneumonia in hospital in Japan on 30 November 2001.
Go to Profile#5963
Guido Rasi
#81124
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Guido Rasi is an Italian physician who was the executive director of the European Medicines Agency . Biography Rasi was born in Padua, Italy. After his graduation in Medicine, he worked as a physician in Rome from 1978 to 1990. From 1990 until 2005 Rasi was employed at the Institute for Experimental Medicine of the National Research Council, Italy. During this time, he went for teaching and research to the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. In 2005 he was named director of research at the Institute of Neurobiology and Molecular Medicine of the National Research Council in Rome. In 2...
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Ethan M. Shevach
#78029
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ethan Menahem Shevach is an immunologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. Biography Shevach obtained his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1967. After clinical training, he joined NIAID as a senior staff fellow in 1972 becoming head of a research group the following year and a departmental head in 1987. As of 2018, he is head of the Department of Cellular Immunology at NIAID.
Go to Profile#5965
Marc S. Ernstoff
#109441
Overall Influence
#5966
Ying-Hui Fu
#91132
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Ying-Hui Fu is a Taiwanese-American biologist and human geneticist who has made important contributions to understanding the genetics of many neurological disorders. Her chief discoveries include describing Mendelian sleep phenotypes, identifying causative genes and mutations for circadian rhythm disorders, and characterizing genetic forms of demyelinating degenerative disorders. Fu is currently a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Go to Profile#5967
Reed C. Rollins
#95969
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Reed Clark Rollins was an American botanist, professor at Harvard University and one of the founders of both the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and the Organization for Tropical Studies. He was also the second president of each of them.
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Jiri Zidek
#104926
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dr. Jiri Zidek is a Czech-born American paleontologist and entomologist. He was founder of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Oklahoma in 1980. Publications Kansas Hamilton Quarry Acanthodes, with remarks on the previously reported North American occurrences of the genus J Zidek - 1976
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Nitya Anand
#16118
Overall Influence
1925 - Present (101 years)
Nitya Anand is a medicinal chemist who was the director of Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow from 1974 to 1984. In 2005, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission appointed him chairman of its scientific committee. In 2012, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.
Go to Profile#5970
Faraneh Vargha-Khadem
#73688
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Faraneh Vargha-Khadem is a British cognitive neuroscientist specializing in developmental amnesia among children. Faraneh was a part of the team that identified the FOXP2 gene, the so-called 'speech gene', that may explain why humans talk and chimps do not.
Go to Profile#5971
Marjorie Thompson
#85195
Overall Influence
1954 - 2014 (60 years)
Marjorie Ellen Thompson was an American biologist and musician who served as Associate Dean of Biological Sciences at Brown University. Thompson received a ScB in biochemistry and a PhD in biology from Brown, in 1974 and 1979 respectively, and was appointed Associate Dean of Biological Sciences in 1983, a position she continued to hold until her death in 2014. Her awards as Associate Dean included the Barrett Hazeltine Senior Class Citation in 1994 and 1996, the Onyx Award in 1998 and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and Advising in 2009. Outside of her work as an aca...
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Eric James Denton
#51727
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Sir Eric James Denton was a British marine biologist who won the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1987. Denton was born in Bentley, South Yorkshire. He was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an Ordinary degree in Physics, before pursuing biophysics research at University College London. He was subsequently a lecturer in Physiology at the University of Aberdeen, and then a physiologist at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth. From 1974 to 1987 he was the Director of the Marine Biological Association Laboratory.
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Richard B. Primack
#109511
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5974
Gert Storm,
#109514
Overall Influence
#5975
Alan Robert Lehmann
#109521
Overall Influence
#5976
Lawrence A. Frohman
#109528
Overall Influence
#5977
Clifford S. Patlak
#109547
Overall Influence
#5978
Edward V. Evarts
#109550
Overall Influence
#5979
Grant W. Liddle
#109552
Overall Influence
#5980
Denise Faustman
#48852
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Denise Louise Faustman is an American physician and medical researcher. An associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and director of the Immunobiology Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, her work specializes in diabetes mellitus type 1 and other autoimmune diseases. She has worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston since 1985.
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David Wasawo
#42798
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Professor David Peter Simon Wasawo was a Kenyan zoologist, conservationist, and university administrator. After studying at Uganda's Makerere University he earned an M.A. at the University of Oxford and a PhD at University of London. He taught at Makerere University, and was Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Nairobi, and later chancellor of Great Lakes University of Kisumu.
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Priscilla Kolibea Mante
#71824
Overall Influence
Priscilla Kolibea Mante is a Ghanaian neuropharmacologist, a researcher and lecturer from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, currently based at the Kumasi campus. Her research work focuses on alternatives of plant-based therapeutic options to manage drug-resistant epilepsy and the neglected tropical disease neurocysticercosis. In her work, she mostly explores the anticonvulsant activity of the plant alkaloid cryptolepine and its solid-lipid nanoparticles in the management of neurocysticercosis-induced epilepsy. Her goal is to identify a way to help cryptolepine permeate more e...
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Lincoln Constance
#78566
Overall Influence
1909 - 2001 (92 years)
Lincoln Constance was an American botanist and administrator at the University of California, Berkeley. Constance worked with Marion S. Cave for over twenty years to identify how many chromosomes different members of Hydrophyllaceae had. An expert on the parsley family, he was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences, and served as president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the California Botanical Society and the Botanical Society of America.
Go to Profile#5984
John J. Spitzer
#109564
Overall Influence
#5985
William Niering
#94839
Overall Influence
1924 - 1999 (75 years)
William Albert Niering was an American botanist and wetlands expert who was the Lucretia L. Allyn Professor of Botany at Connecticut College and director of the Connecticut College Arboretum. Early life and education Niering was born in Scotrun, Pennsylvania, to George and Emma Everitt Niering. He attended Pennsylvania State University in 1942. His education was interrupted by World War II, when he served in the army from 1942 to 1945; his active service took place in the South Pacific and he attained the rank of staff sergeant. After the war, he returned to Penn State. There, he received his undergraduate degree in biology in 1948 and his master's degree in botany in 1950.
Go to Profile#5986
Stephen N. Thibodeau
#109579
Overall Influence
#5987
Pernessa C. Seele
#48923
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Pernessa C. Seele is an American immunologist and interfaith public health activist. Seele is the CEO and founder of Balm in Gilead, Inc., a religious-based organization that provides support to people with AIDS and their families, as well as working for prevention of HIV and AIDS. In 1989 she initiated the Harlem Week of Prayer, with 50 churches, synagogues and mosques participating. This became an annual event and organizing force for the religious community to respond to the AIDS crisis.
Go to Profile#5988
Bruce Ernest Kemp
#109586
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#5989
Peter Koopman
#106408
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Peter Anthony Koopman is an Australian biologist best known for his role in the discovery and study of the mammalian Y-chromosomal sex-determining gene, Sry. Early life and education Peter Anthony Koopman was born on 3 December 1959 in Geelong, Victoria, to Dutch immigrant parents, and raised in the coastal town of Torquay, Victoria. He attended Oberon High School in Geelong, where he was School Captain. He studied science at the University of Melbourne from 1977 to 1979, majoring in genetics, and was a resident of Janet Clarke Hall. He undertook BSc Honours research at the Birth Defects Res...
Go to Profile#5990
Peter Kee Lin Ng
#104199
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Peter Kee Lin Ng is a Singaporean carcinologist and ichthyologist at the National University of Singapore, concurrently working as Director of both the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum and the Tropical Marine Science Institute. He has written extensively with over 510 technical papers, mostly in international journals - his research is primarily on the diversity and biology of marine and freshwater crabs in the Indo-West Pacific. He has many awards, the Singapore National Youth Award , National Youth Movement, People's Association ; the National Science Award 1995, National Science & Tec...
Go to Profile#5991
Thomas Kiørboe
#109621
Overall Influence
#5992
Thomas Thornton Macdonald
#109633
Overall Influence
#5993
David Lodge
#103065
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
David Lodge is an American biologist. He is best known for his work on the interrelated problems of invasive species, land use, and climate change, and their synergistic impacts on water resources. Biography Lodge is a 1975 graduate of Sewanee Academy and received his B.S., summa cum laude, in 1979 from Sewanee: The University of the South. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1982. From 1983-1985, he taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. From 1985-2016, he served on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame as a professor of biology, the directo...
Go to Profile#5994
Michael Sharpe
#109115
Overall Influence
Michael Sharpe is a British psychiatrist and academic, specialising in the psychiatric aspects of medical illness. He is Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Saint Cross College, Oxford. From 1997 to 2011, he was Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#5995
Jeffrey A. Hutchings
#91854
Overall Influence
1958 - 2022 (64 years)
Jeffrey Alexander Hutchings FRSC was a Canadian fisheries scientist. He was a professor of biology, and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries, and Oceans at Dalhousie University.
Go to Profile#5997
Rentala Madhubala
#105473
Overall Influence
Rentala Madhubala is an Indian scientist who studied molecular parasitology and functional genomics. She is the director of the Academic Staff College in Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was the Dean at the School of Life Sciences and the director of the Advanced Instrumentation Research Facility there.
Go to Profile#5998
James Trappe
#104042
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
James Martin Trappe is a mycologist and expert in the field of North American truffle species. He has authored or co-authored 450 scientific papers and written three books on the subject. MycoBank lists him as either author or co-author of 401 individual species, and over the course of his career he has helped guide research on mycorrhizal fungi, and reshaped truffle taxonomy: establishing a new order, two new families, and 40 individual genera.
Go to Profile#5999
Kit Kovacs
#105009
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kit Kovacs is a marine mammal researcher, best known for her work on biology, conservation and management of whales and seals. She is based at the Norwegian Polar Institute , Tromsø and is an Adjunct professor of biology, Marine Biology, at the University Centre in Svalbard .
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Rolf Anker Ims
#109720
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Rolf Anker Ims is a Norwegian ecologist. He was born in Oslo. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1989, and was appointed as a professor of landscape ecology at the University of Oslo in 1992. In 2001 he moved to the University of Tromsø. He became a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2000.
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