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,
#6051
Charles L. Hoppel
#110257
Overall Influence
#6052
Osmund Holm-Hansen
#104338
Overall Influence
Osmund Holm-Hansen is a Norwegian-born American scientist, for whom Mount Holm-Hansen, in Antarctica is named. A plant physiologist by training, from 1962 Holm-Hansen was the head of polar research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Go to Profile#6053
Sarah E. Diamond
#88059
Overall Influence
Sarah E. Diamond is an American ecologist and biologist who is currently the George B. Mayer Chair in Urban and Environmental Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A climate scientist, Diamond's research focuses on predicting how ecological and biological systems will respond and adapt to the changing climate.
Go to Profile#6054
Gary M. Bokoch
#110311
Overall Influence
#6055
René H. Wijffels
#110313
Overall Influence
#6056
Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan
#40025
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan AM FRS, also known as "Srini", is an Australian bioengineer and neuroscientist who studies visual systems, particularly those of bees and birds. A faculty member at the University of Queensland, he is a recipient of the Prime Minister's Prize for Science and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society .
Go to Profile#6057
Paul Schedl
#99007
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Paul Daniel Schedl is a Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Schedl has made significant contributions to the field of the control of gene expression in developmental systems using the model system Drosophila melanogaster. On the genomic level, his lab has uncovered the mechanisms of chromatin regulation by the Polycomb and trithorax group genes. At the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level, he made discoveries in the regulation of alternative splicing of the sex determination gene, Sxl. At the level of translational control, he discovered the function of the orb ...
Go to Profile#6058
Beatrice H. Hahn
#110342
Overall Influence
#6059
Cristen Willer
#95207
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Cristen Jennifer Willer is an American-Canadian bioinformatician and geneticist. She is an associate professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#6060
Lia Addadi
#103664
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Lia Addadi is a professor of structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She works on crystallisation in biology, including biomineralization, interactions with cells and crystallisation in cell membranes. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2017 for “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”, and the American Philosophical Society .
Go to Profile#6061
Inder J. Chopra
#110386
Overall Influence
#6062
E. R. Ørskov
#110396
Overall Influence
#6063
Robert D. Gibbons
#110401
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#6064
Russell Tuttle
#71424
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Russell Howard Tuttle is a distinguished primate morphologist, paleoanthropologist, and a four-field trained Anthropologist. He is currently an active Professor of Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago. Tuttle was enlisted by Mary Leakey to analyze the 3.4-million-year-old footprints she discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania. He determined that the creatures that left these prints walked bipedally in a fashion almost identical to human beings. He currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Go to Profile#6065
Benedetto Lanza
#66392
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Benedetto Lanza was an Italian herpetologist and chiropterologist. He published over 500 works, with the first one being published in 1946. He described 68 new taxa. He was Professor of Biology and Director of the Natural History Museum at the Università degli Studi di Firenze.
Go to Profile#6066
Jean Vance
#108123
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jean Vance is a British-Canadian biochemist. She is known for her pioneering work on subcellular organelles and for her discovery of a connection between the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondrial membrane. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#6067
Santiago Grisolı́a
#110413
Overall Influence
#6068
Thomas B. Tomasi
#110417
Overall Influence
#6069
Duojia Pan
#104556
Overall Influence
Duojia Pan is a Chinese-American developmental biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he is Fouad A. and Val Imm Bashour Distinguished Professor of Physiology, chairman of the department of physiology, and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . His research is focused on molecular mechanisms of growth control and tissue homeostasis and their implications in human disease.
Go to Profile#6070
Yojiro Kimura
#97455
Overall Influence
1912 - 2006 (94 years)
was a Japanese botanist, known for his classification of monocotyledons, and of Japanese species of Hypericum. Selected publications Kimura, Y. 1953. The system and phylogenetic tree of plants. J. Jpn. Bot. 28: 97–104.Kimura, Y. 1956. Système et phylogénie des monocotyledones. Notulae Systematicae, Herbier du Muséum de Paris 15:137–159.Kimura, Y. "Shokubutsu bunrui taikei no rekishi" [The History of Botanical Classification Systems] in "Seibutsugakushi ronshu" [Essays on The History of Biology]Yasaka Shobo, 1987Chuou Kouron Sha, Inc., 1983
Go to Profile#6071
Robert Henry Harms
#110434
Overall Influence
#6072
Geneviève Almouzni
#100946
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Geneviève Almouzni is a French biologist, a specialist in epigenetics and director of the Curie Institute's research centre. Biography Geneviève Almouzni was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses from 1980 to 1985. In 1988, she defended a thesis in microbiology at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie on the use of a system derived from xenope eggs to study DNA chromatin replication and assembly under the supervision of Marcel Méchali.
Go to Profile#6073
Marjorie G. Horning
#50571
Overall Influence
1917 - 2020 (103 years)
Marjorie Janice Groothuis Horning was an American biochemist and pharmacologist. She was considered to be a pioneer of chromatography for her work in developing new techniques and applying them to the study of drug metabolism. She demonstrated that drugs and their metabolites can be transferred from a pregnant woman to her developing child, and later through breast milk, from a mother to a baby. Horning's work made possible the prevention of birth defects, as doctors began to warn of the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and smoking during pregnancy.
Go to Profile#6074
Florent Ginhoux
#110450
Overall Influence
#6075
John Crook
#36248
Overall Influence
1930 - 2011 (81 years)
John Hurrell Crook was a British ethologist who filled a pivotal role in British primatology. As Reader in Ethology in the Psychology Department of University of Bristol, he led a research group studying social and reproductive behaviour in birds and primates throughout the 1970s–80s, turning to the socio-psychological anthropology of Himalayan peoples in the 1990s. In his later years he was the Teacher of the Western Chan Fellowship.
Go to Profile#6076
Anthony-jake Demetris
#110479
Overall Influence
#6077
Adrian Krainer
#108164
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Adrian Robert Krainer is a Uruguayan-American biochemist and molecular geneticist known for his research into RNA gene-splicing. He helped create a drug for patients with spinal muscular atrophy. Krainer holds the St. Giles Foundation Professorship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, New York.
Go to Profile#6078
Serge E. Przedborski
#110519
Overall Influence
#6079
John H. R. Maunsell
#103260
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
John Henry Richard Maunsell is a British-American neuroscientist who is the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Formerly the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, as of 2021 he is a co-editor of the Annual Review of Vision Science.
Go to Profile#6080
Klaus Wyrtki
#110539
Overall Influence
#6081
Norman l. Letvin
#110554
Overall Influence
#6082
Robert Kaptein
#110557
Overall Influence
#6083
Kim D. Pruitt
#96806
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kim Dixon Pruitt is an American bioinformatician. She is chief of the information engineering branch at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Pruitt led the development of the RefSeq gene database.
Go to Profile#6084
Richard Ector Peter
#110577
Overall Influence
#6085
Hans Walter Heldt
#110583
Overall Influence
#6086
Alain de Weck
#87531
Overall Influence
1928 - 2013 (85 years)
Alain L. de Weck, , was a Swiss immunologist and allergist. His main scientific contributions were in the area of characterization and prevention of drug allergy. He was the founding director of the Institute of Clinical Immunology at the University of Bern from 1971 to 1993 and authored or co-authored over 600 peer-reviewed publications. He is the recipient of a number of patents that led to commercial allergy products and services. He served as president of international scientific organizations such as the International Union of Immunological Societies and the International Association fo...
Go to Profile#6087
Janet Sprent
#96711
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Janet Irene Sprent, FRSE OBE is a British botanical scientist, and emeritus professor at University of Dundee. Education and career After graduating from Imperial College London in 1954 with a BSc and ARCS, Sprent worked for a year at Rothamsted Experimental Station before undertaking a PhD at the University of Tasmania. She taught botany for two years at Rochester Grammar School before being awarded a lectureship at Goldsmiths College in 1960. Sprent moved to Dundee, Scotland in 1967 where she secured a research fellowship at the University of Dundee. She became dean of the Faculty of Scienc...
Go to Profile#6088
Suzanne Walker
#75710
Overall Influence
Suzanne Walker is a professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on mechanisms of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.
Go to Profile#6089
Jean-Pierre Gattuso
#70223
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Jean-Pierre Gattuso is a French ocean scientist conducting research globally, from the pole to the tropics and from nearshore to the open ocean. His research addresses the biology of reef-building corals, the biogeochemistry of coastal ecosystems, and the response of marine plants, animals and ecosystems to global environmental change. He is also interested in transdisciplinary research, collaborating with social scientists to address ocean-based solutions to minimize climate change and its impacts. He is currently a CNRS Research Professor at Sorbonne University.
Go to Profile#6090
Ludwig N. Carbyn
#80635
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ludwig "Lu" Norbert Carbyn is an internationally recognized expert on wolf biology, a research scientist emeritus at the Canadian Wildlife Service, and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. He has studied wolf ecology and behaviour in Canada since 1970, including pioneering research into the ecological role of wolves as predators in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and great plains as well as the wolf-bison ecosystem of Wood Buffalo National Park. On a Canadian Wildlife Service assignment in Jasper National Park, he became the first human to study wild wolves from...
Go to Profile#6091
Harry Smith
#98000
Overall Influence
1935 - 2015 (80 years)
Harry Smith was a British botanist. Smith is best known for his discovery that phytochromes can detect changes in the colour that plants receive , which allows them to adjust their growth rates accordingly.
Go to Profile#6092
Corneille Ewango
#88321
Overall Influence
Corneille E.N. Ewango is a Congolese environmentalist, and was responsible for the Okapi Faunal Reserve's botany program in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1996 to 2003. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2005 for his efforts to protect the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Ituri Rainforest during the Congo Civil War. The reserve is home to the Mbuti people, and houses animals such as okapis , elephants and 13 primate species. Ewango has uncovered 270 species of lianas and 600 tree species in the area.
Go to Profile#6093
Dieter Korn
#99356
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Dr. Dieter Korn is a German scientist and paleontologist specializing in research on ammonites and goniatites. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Tübingen and is employed by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, in the Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity . Dr Korn has published or coauthored over 100 papers since 1979, including the description of numerous new species of cephalopods.
Go to Profile#6094
Giorgio Samorini
#28355
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Giorgio Samorini is a psychedelics researcher. He has published many essays and monographs regarding the use of psychoactive compounds and sacred plants. He was a frequent contributor to, and sometime editor of Eleusis the Journal of Psychoactive Plants & Compounds.
Go to Profile#6095
A. Etc. Pinchera
#110679
Overall Influence
#6096
Charles G. Gross
#110685
Overall Influence
#6097
Robert A. Floyd
#110689
Overall Influence
#6098
Julie F. Barcelona
#109179
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Julie F. Barcelona is a Filipina botanist and taxonomist working as Research Associate at University of Canterbury . She is mostly known for her research on the Philippine members of the genus Rafflesia.
Go to Profile#6099
Rosina Bierbaum
#59017
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Rosina M. Bierbaum is currently the Roy F. Westin Chair in Natural Economics and Research Professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy. She is also a professor and former dean at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment . She was hired in October 2001, by then-University of Michigan President, Lee Bollinger. She is also the current Chair of The Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel that provides independent scientific and technical advice to the GEF on its policies, strategies, programs, and projects.
Go to Profile#6100
William C. Koller
#110730
Overall Influence
