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).
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#601
Robert Stoller
#6225
Overall Influence
1924 - 1991 (67 years)
Robert Jesse Stoller , was an American professor of psychiatry at UCLA Medical School and a researcher at the UCLA Gender Identity Clinic. He was born in Crestwood, New York, and died in Los Angeles, California. He had psychoanalytic training at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute from 1953 to 1961 with analysis by Hanna Fenichel. He has been criticized for research into finding the cause of transgender identities with intent to prevent them, and later similar research he inspired.
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Louis Reichardt
#12998
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Louis French Reichardt is a noted American neuroscientist and mountaineer, the first American to summit both Everest and K2. He was also director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the largest non-federal supporter of scientific research into autism spectrum disorders and is an emeritus professor of physiology and biochemistry/biophysics at UCSF, where he studied neuroscience. The character of Harold Jameson, U.C.S.F. biophysicist and mountaineer in the film K2, is based on Reichardt, though the events of his actual 1978 K2 attempt with Jim Wickwire bear little resemblance ...
Go to Profile#603
Masatoshi Takeichi
#11601
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
is a Japanese cell biologist known for his identification of the cadherin class of adhesion molecules, which plays important roles in the construction of tissues. He shared the 2005 Japan Prize with Erkki Ruoslahti for "fundamental contribution in elucidating the molecular mechanisms of cell adhesion".
Go to Profile#604
Bonnie Bassler
#15991
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Bonnie Lynn Bassler is an American molecular biologist; the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University; and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She has researched cell-to-cell chemical communication in bacteria and discovered key insights into the mechanism by which bacteria communicate, known as quorum sensing. She has contributed to the idea that disruption of chemical signaling can be used as an antimicrobial therapy.
Go to Profile#605
Shirley M. Tilghman
#6069
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Shirley Marie Tilghman, is a Canadian scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator. She is now a professor of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.
Go to Profile#606
Giacomo Rizzolatti
#5758
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Giacomo Rizzolatti is an Italian neurophysiologist who works at the University of Parma. Born in Kyiv, UkSSR, he is the Senior Scientist of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex of the macaque monkey, and has written many scientific articles on the topic. He also proposed the premotor theory of attention. He is a past president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society. Rizzolatti was the 2007 co-recipient, with Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese, for the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. He is an elected member of th...
Go to Profile#607
Theodore Holmes Bullock
#19885
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
Theodore Holmes Bullock is one of the founding fathers of neuroethology. During a career spanning nearly seven decades, this American academic was esteemed both as a pioneering and influential neuroscientist, examining the physiology and evolution of the nervous system across organizational levels, and as a champion of the comparative approach, studying species from nearly all major animal groups—coelenterates, annelids, arthropods, echinoderms, molluscs, and chordates.
Go to Profile#608
Bengt Saltin
#20399
Overall Influence
1935 - 2014 (79 years)
Bengt Saltin was a Swedish professor in exercise physiology, who spent parts of his career in Denmark. After starting his medical studies at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, in the 1950s, he commenced his doctoral studies at the Department of Physiology at the Royal Gymnastic Central Institute in Stockholm in 1960. Per-Olof Åstrand became his tutor, and in 1964 he presented his doctoral thesis. He thereafter proceeded with introducing muscle physiology and biochemistry studies at the same department.
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Sidney Udenfriend
#24634
Overall Influence
1918 - 1999 (81 years)
Sidney Udenfriend was an American biochemist, pharmacologist, founding director of the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, co-discoverer of a color test to detect an intestinal tumor often linked with diseased heart valves. Udenfriend was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Ames Award, Hillebrand Award, the Arthur S. Flemming award, Gairdner Award, the Van Slyke Award chief of the laboratory in the National Heart Institute, He was also a member the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Biological Chemists, American Society for Pharmacology...
Go to Profile#610
Shi Zhengli
#11862
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Shi Zhengli is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan. She came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi was included in Times 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Go to Profile#611
Jeffrey M. Friedman
#9553
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Jeffrey M. Friedman is a molecular geneticist at New York City's Rockefeller University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His discovery of the hormone leptin and its role in regulating body weight has had a major role in the area of human obesity. Friedman is a physician scientist studying the genetic mechanisms that regulate body weight. His research on various aspects of obesity received national attention in late 1994, when it was announced that he and his colleagues had isolated the mouse ob gene and its human homologue. They subsequently found that injections ...
Go to Profile#612
Günter P. Wagner
#14345
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Günter P. Wagner is an Austrian-born evolutionary biologist who is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary biology at Yale University, and head of the Wagner Lab. Education and training After undergraduate education in chemical engineering, Wagner studied zoology and mathematical logic at the University of Vienna, Austria. During his graduate study, Wagner worked with the Viennese zoologist Rupert Riedl and the theoretical chemist Peter Schuster, and finished his PhD in theoretical population genetics in 1979. Wagner conducted postdoctoral research at Max Planck Institutes in Göttingen and Tübi...
Go to Profile#613
Philippa Marrack
#17767
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Philippa "Pippa" Marrack, FRS is an English immunologist and academic, based in the United States, best known for her research and discoveries pertaining to T cells. Marrack is the Ida and Cecil Green Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health and a distinguished professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Denver.
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Robert K. Crane
#14834
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Robert Kellogg Crane was an American biochemist best known for his discovery of sodium–glucose cotransport. Early life Crane was born on December 20, 1919, in Palmyra, New Jersey, to Wilbur Fiske Crane, Jr. architect and engineer, and Mary Elizabeth McHale Crane. He is the grandson of Stephen Crane's brother Wilbur.
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Kim Nasmyth
#19195
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Kim Ashley Nasmyth is an English geneticist, the Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, former scientific director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology , and former head of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on the segregation of chromosomes during cell division.
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Michael Ashburner
#19606
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
Michael Ashburner was an English biologist and Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He was also the former joint-head and co-founder of the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.
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Efraim Racker
#15227
Overall Influence
1913 - 1991 (78 years)
Efraim Racker was an Austrian biochemist who was responsible for identifying and purifying Factor 1 , the first part of the ATP synthase enzyme to be characterised. F1 is only a part of a larger ATP synthase complex known as Complex V. It is a peripheral membrane protein attached to component Fo, which is integral to the membrane.
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Sylvia Earle
#4625
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.
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Richard Keynes
#8938
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Richard Darwin Keynes, CBE, FRS was a British physiologist. The great-grandson of Charles Darwin, Keynes edited his great-grandfather's accounts and illustrations of Darwin's famous voyage aboard into The Beagle Record: Selections From the Original Pictorial Records and Written Accounts of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, which won praise from the New York Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review.
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Steven Henikoff
#21786
Overall Influence
Steven Henikoff is a scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and an HHMI Investigator. His field of study is chromatin-related transcriptional regulation. He earned his BS in chemistry at the University of Chicago. He earned his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in the lab of Matt Meselson in 1977. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and HHMI. In 1992, Steven Henikoff, together with his wife Jorja Henikoff, introduced the BLOSUM substitution matrices.
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Gilles-Éric Séralini
#9448
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Gilles-Éric Séralini is a French molecular biologist, political advisor and activist on genetically modified organisms and foods. He is of Algerian-French origin. Séralini has been a professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen since 1991, and is president and chairman of the board of CRIIGEN.
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J. Heinrich Matthaei
#15397
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Johannes Heinrich Matthaei is a German biochemist. He is best known for his unique contribution to solving the genetic code on 15 May 1961. Career Whilst a post-doctoral visitor in the laboratory of Marshall Warren Nirenberg at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, he discovered that a synthetic RNA polynucleotide, composed of a repeating uridylic acid residue , coded for a polypeptide chain encoding just one kind of amino acid, phenylalanine. In scientific terms, he discovered that polyU codes for polyphenylalanine and hence the coding unit for this amino acid is composed of a series of Us or, as we now know the genetic code is read in triplets, the codon for phenylalanine is UUU.
Go to Profile#623
John D. Ferry
#18679
Overall Influence
1912 - 2002 (90 years)
John Douglass Ferry was a Canadian-born American chemist and biochemist noted for development of surgical products from blood plasma and for studies of the chemistry of large molecules. Along with Williams and Landel, Ferry co-authored the work on time-temperature superposition in which the now famous WLF equation first appeared. The National Academy of Sciences called Ferry "a towering figure in polymer science". The University of Wisconsin said that he was "undoubtedly the most widely recognized research pioneer in the study of motional dynamics in macromolecular systems by viscoelastic t...
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Julie Ahringer
#16693
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Julie Ann Ahringer is an American/British Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Director of the Gurdon Institute and a member of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She leads a research lab investigating the control of gene expression.
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Harry Ostrer
#7237
Overall Influence
Harry Ostrer is a medical geneticist who investigates the genetic basis of common and rare disorders. In the diagnostic laboratory, he translates the findings of genetic discoveries into tests that can be used to identify people's risks for disease prior to occurrence, or for predicting its outcome once it has occurred. He is also known for his study, writing and lectures on the origins of the Jewish people.
Go to Profile#626
Darren Naish
#11410
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Darren William Naish is a British vertebrate paleontologist, author and science communicator. As a researcher, he is best known for his work describing and reevaluating dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles, including Eotyrannus, Xenoposeidon, and azhdarchid pterosaurs. Much of his research has focused on Wealden Group fossils from the Isle of Wight.
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Seymour Jonathan Singer
#11610
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Seymour Jonathan Singer was an American cell biologist and professor of biology, emeritus, at the University of California, San Diego. Biography Singer was born in New York City and attended Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. in 1943. He received his doctorate from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1947. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Linus Pauling at Caltech during 1947–1948, where he, along with Harvey Itano, co-discovered the basis of abnormal hemoglobin in sickle-cell anemia, reported in the famous paper "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease". He worked for the U.S.
Go to Profile#628
Harriet Creighton
#19816
Overall Influence
1909 - 2004 (95 years)
Harriet Baldwin Creighton was an American botanist, geneticist and educator. Background Born in Delavan, Illinois, Creighton graduated from Wellesley College in 1929, and went on to complete her Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1933.
Go to Profile#629
Meave Leakey
#12723
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Meave G. Leakey is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.
Go to Profile#630
Janet Rowley
#8775
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Janet Davison Rowley was an American human geneticist and the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers, thus proving that cancer is a genetic disease. Rowley spent the majority of her life working in Chicago and received many awards and honors throughout her life, recognizing her achievements and contributions in the area of genetics.
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Fotis Kafatos
#14197
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Fotis Constantine Kafatos was a Greek biologist. Between 2007-2010 he was the founding president of the European Research Council . He chaired the ERC Scientific Council from 2006-2010. Thereafter, he was appointed Honorary President of the ERC.
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Noreen Murray
#15052
Overall Influence
1935 - 2011 (76 years)
Noreen Elizabeth, Lady Murray was an English molecular geneticist who helped pioneer recombinant DNA technology by creating a series of bacteriophage lambda vectors into which genes could be inserted and expressed in order to examine their function. During her career she was recognised internationally as a pioneer and one of Britain's most distinguished and highly respected molecular geneticists. Until her 2001 retirement she held a personal chair in molecular genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She was president of the Genetical Society, vice president of the Royal Society, and a memb...
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Charles David Allis
#18964
Overall Influence
1951 - 2023 (72 years)
Charles David Allis was an American molecular biologist, and the Joy and Jack Fishman Professor at the Rockefeller University. He was also the Head of the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics, and a professor at the Tri-Institutional MD–PhD Program .
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James E. Darnell
#19610
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
James Edwin Darnell Jr. is an American biologist who made significant contributions to RNA processing and cytokine signaling and is author of the cell biology textbook Molecular Cell Biology. In 2004, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He became a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2013.
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Alberto Granado
#4641
Overall Influence
1922 - 2011 (89 years)
Alberto Granado Jiménez was an Argentine–Cuban biochemist, doctor, writer, and scientist. He was also the youthful friend and traveling companion of Che Guevara during their 1952 motorcycle tour in Latin America. Granado later founded the University of Santiago de Cuba School of Medicine. He authored the memoir Traveling with Che Guevara: The Making of a Revolutionary, which served as a reference for the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, in which he was played by Rodrigo de la Serna. An elderly Alberto Granado makes a short appearance at the end of the film.
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Russell Mittermeier
#9479
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist and herpetologist. He has written several books for both popular and scientist audiences, and has authored more than 300 scientific papers. Biography Russell A. Mittermeier is Chief Conservation Officer of Re:wild . He served as President of Conservation International from 1989 to 2014, then Executive Vice-Chair from 2014 to 2017. He specialises in the fields of primatology, herpetology, biodiversity and conservation of tropical forests. He has undertaken research in more than 30 countries, including Amazonia and Madagascar.
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Virginijus Šikšnys
#8738
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Virginijus Šikšnys is a Lithuanian biochemist and a professor at Vilnius University. He is a chief scientist at the Vilnius University Institute of Biotechnology. Biography Šikšnys studied organic chemistry at Vilnius University, receiving his Masters in 1978, then moved to Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he studied enzyme kinetics and received Candidate of Sciences degree in 1983. From 1982 till 1993 he worked at the Institute of Applied Enzymology in Vilnius. In 1993 he was a visiting scientist in Robert Huber’s laboratory at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, Martinsried, Germany.
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Bernard Baars
#3270
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Bernard J. Baars is a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, CA., and is currently an Affiliated Fellow there. He is best known as the originator of the global workspace theory, a theory of human cognitive architecture and consciousness. He previously served as a professor of psychology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook where he conducted research into the causation of human errors and the Freudian slip, and as a faculty member at the Wright Institute.
Go to Profile#639
Mina Bissell
#11719
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Mina J. Bissell is an Iranian-American biologist known for her research on breast cancer. In particular, she has studied the effects of a cell's microenvironment, including its extracellular matrix, on tissue function.
Go to Profile#640
Zhores Medvedev
#3630
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Zhores Aleksandrovich Medvedev was a Russian agronomist, biologist, historian and dissident. His twin brother is the historian Roy Medvedev. Biography Early life and education Zhores Medvedev and his twin brother Roy were born on 14 November 1925 in Tbilisi, Transcaucasian SFSR, USSR. Their mother Yulia , was a cellist, and their father, Alexander Medvedev, was a philosopher in a military academy in Leningrad. Zhores, named after French socialist leader Jean Jaurès , was drafted into the Red Army in 1943, but was soon discharged after being seriously wounded in a battle on the Taman Peninsula.
Go to Profile#641
Werner Franke
#16156
Overall Influence
1940 - 2022 (82 years)
Werner Wilhelm Franke was a German biologist and a professor of cell and molecular biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He was an anti-doping pioneer in Germany. Life Franke was born in Paderborn on 31 January 1940. After completing high school , he studied chemistry, biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg. Following completion of his doctorate and habilitation he became a university professor in Heidelberg and, at the same time, became the head of a department at the German Cancer Research Center. In 1982, Franke became the president of the European Cell Biology Organization , a post he held until 1990.
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Sahotra Sarkar
#6030
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Sahotra Sarkar is an Indian-American professor at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the philosophy of biology. Education and career Sarkar is originally from India where he lived in Darjeeling until 1975. He earned a BA from Columbia University, where he won a Van Amringe Mathematical Prize, and a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago where he worked with William_C._Wimsatt. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin , the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology , and the Edelstein Centre for the Philosophy of Science . He was a visiting schol...
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Norman Pirie
#9470
Overall Influence
1907 - 1997 (90 years)
Norman Wingate Pirie FRS , was a British biochemist and virologist who, along with Frederick Bawden, discovered that a virus can be crystallized by isolating tomato bushy stunt virus in 1936. This was an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA.
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Newton Morton
#14476
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Newton Ennis Morton was an American population geneticist and one of the founders of the field of genetic epidemiology. Early life and education Morton was born in Camden, New Jersey. When he was three months old, his family moved to New Haven, Connecticut. His interest in science started at an early age, when he would collect butterflies. Morton attended Hopkins School, later transferring to Swarthmore College for two years. He lost enthusiasm for entomology, so instead he decided to pursue a career in genetics after being inspired by Dobzhansky's book, Genetics and the Origin of Species.
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Douglas Hanahan
#20297
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Douglas Hanahan is an American biologist, professor and director emeritus of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is currently member of the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute.
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Michael Eisen
#13556
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Michael Bruce Eisen is an American computational biologist and the former editor-in-chief of the journal eLife. He is a professor of genetics, genomics and development at University of California, Berkeley. He is a leading advocate of open access scientific publishing and is co-founder of Public Library of Science . In 2018, Eisen announced his candidacy U.S. Senate from California as an Independent, though he failed to qualify for the ballot.
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Tadamitsu Kishimoto
#10094
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Tadamitsu Kishimoto is a Japanese immunologist known for research on IgM and cytokines, most famously, interleukin 6. He did postdoctoral work under Kimishige Ishizaka, the discoverer of IgE at Johns Hopkins University.
Go to Profile#648
Stephen Blair Hedges
#11932
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Stephen Blair Hedges is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Center for Biodiversity at Temple University where he researches the tree of life and leads conservation efforts in Haiti and elsewhere. He co-founded Haiti National Trust.
Go to Profile#649
Joel Hedgpeth
#16476
Overall Influence
1911 - 2006 (95 years)
Joel Walker Hedgpeth was a marine biologist, environmentalist and author. He was an expert on the marine arthropods known as sea spiders , and on the seashore plant and animal life of southern and northern California. He was a spokesperson for care for the floral and faunal diversity of the California coastline.
Go to Profile#650
John Yudkin
#6642
Overall Influence
1910 - 1995 (85 years)
John Yudkin FRSC was a British physiologist and nutritionist, and the founding Professor of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London. Yudkin wrote several books recommending low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss, including This Slimming Business . He gained an international reputation for his book Pure, White and Deadly , which warned that the consumption of sugar is dangerous to health, an argument he had made since at least 1957. Specifically, he wrote that sugar consumption was a factor in the development of conditions such as dental caries, obesity, diabetes, and h...
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