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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Biology,
#6401
Steven R. Goldberg
#113249
Overall Influence
#6402
David James Mcconkey
#113253
Overall Influence
#6403
Alan Meerow
#57284
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Alan W. Meerow is an American botanist, born in New York City in 1952. He specializes in the taxonomy of the family Amaryllidaceae and the horticulture of palms and tropical ornamental plants. He also works on the population genetics and molecular systematics of cycads and palmss.
Go to Profile#6404
J. Denis Summers-Smith
#51080
Overall Influence
1920 - 2020 (100 years)
James Denis Summers-Smith was a Scottish ornithologist and mechanical engineer, a specialist both in sparrowss and in industrial tribology. Early life Summers-Smith was raised in Glasgow, where he was born in 1920. He spent childhood holidays in County Donegal, in northwestern Ireland, where one of his uncles, a country parson and a naturalist, taught him about birds. For nearly six years of World War II, Summers-Smith was an intelligence officer in the British Army. He received his commission in 1940, and reached the rank of captain. He served with the 9th Battalion, The Cameronians, stationed on the east coast of England.
Go to Profile#6405
Kayla C. King
#79858
Overall Influence
Kayla C. King is Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at University of Oxford, specialising in how interactions between hosts and parasites show evolutionary change. Career Kayla Christina King studied B. Sc. Zoology at University of British Columbia, Canada from 2000 to 2004 followed by a master's degree in Biology at Concordia University, graduating in 2006. She then commenced study for her doctorate at Indiana University Bloomington, USA that was awarded in 2011. She then moved to University of Liverpool, UK, for 2 years, partly financed through a Royal Society Newton Fellowship, followed by m...
Go to Profile#6406
John K. Findlay
#113298
Overall Influence
#6407
Lydia Villa-Komaroff
#58232
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a molecular and cellular biologist who has been an academic laboratory scientist, a university administrator, and a business woman. She was the third Mexican-American woman in the United States to receive a doctorate degree in the sciences and is a co-founding member of The Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science . Her most notable discovery was in 1978 during her post-doctoral research, when she was part of a team that discovered how bacterial cells could be used to generate insulin.
Go to Profile#6408
Susan Y. Bookheimer
#109821
Overall Influence
Susan Y. Bookheimer is a professor of clinical neuroscience at UCLA School of Medicine. She is best known for her work developing brain imaging techniques to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, brain tumors, and epilepsy.
Go to Profile#6409
Frank Newhook
#91776
Overall Influence
1918 - 1999 (81 years)
Francis John Newhook was the head of the School of Plant Pathology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He was the first plant pathologist at the university, from 1966 as an Associate Professor, and from 1969 a personal chair. Previously he was a scientist at the DSIR.
Go to Profile#6410
Ryan J. Huxtable
#113322
Overall Influence
#6411
Lauren Meyers
#63264
Overall Influence
Lauren Ancel Meyers is an American integrative biologist who holds the Denton A. Cooley Centennial Professorship in Zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a member of the Santa Fe Institute External Faculty.
Go to Profile#6412
Lloyd D. Keigwin
#113341
Overall Influence
#6413
David Reid Cornblath
#113348
Overall Influence
#6414
Tom Stonier
#84097
Overall Influence
1927 - 1999 (72 years)
Tom "Ted" Stonier was a German biologist, philosopher, information theorist, educator and pacifist. His scientific studies centered on information provide a plausible explanation to the evolutionist concepts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He drafts the principle of the transformation of a primordial energetic soup towards a pure informational state . He places the current material world in this entropic, dynamical evolution of the energy-matter-information equilibrium.
Go to Profile#6415
John E. Fryer
#33044
Overall Influence
1938 - 2003 (65 years)
John Ercel Fryer, M.D. was an American psychiatrist and gay rights activist best known for his anonymous speech at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association annual conference, where he appeared in disguise and under the name Dr. Henry Anonymous. That event has been cited as a key factor in the decision to remove homosexuality as a mental illness from the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The APA "John E. Fryer, M.D., Award" is named in his honor.
Go to Profile#6416
Adolé Isabelle Glitho-Akueson
#43569
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Adolé Isabelle Glitho-Akueson is a Togolese entomologist who is Professor of Animal Biology at the University of Lomé. She is the chair of UNESCO's "Women, Science and Sustainable Water Management in West Africa and Central Africa" committee and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#6417
Israel Chanarin
#113385
Overall Influence
#6418
Melvin Stern
#55072
Overall Influence
1929 - 2010 (81 years)
Melvin Ernest Stern was a U.S. academic oceanographer who focused on fluid dynamics. He served as the Ekman Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University and was an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Stern was the first researcher in the world to mathematically describe salt fingering, a phenomenon produced by Double diffusive convection.
Go to Profile#6419
Melissa Hines
#71625
Overall Influence
Melissa Hines is a neuroscientist and Professor at the University of Cambridge. She studies the development of gender, with particular focus on how the interaction of prenatal and postnatal experience shape brain development and behavior.
Go to Profile#6420
Markus Rüegg
#100104
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Markus Rüegg is a Swiss neurobiologist and professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Life Markus Rüegg studied biochemistry at the University of Zurich and graduated with a PhD in the field of Neurobiology. In 1989 he went as a postdoctoral fellow to conduct research at the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. In 1992 he was appointed as Assistant Professor to the Biozentrum, University of Basel. Since 1998 he is a Professor of Neurobiology and teaches and conducts research at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Based on his research findin...
Go to Profile#6421
Martin Enserink
#113455
Overall Influence
#6422
Ilana B. Witten
#19664
Overall Influence
Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.
Go to Profile#6423
Athelstan Spilhaus
#30164
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Athelstan Frederick Spilhaus was a South African-Americann geophysicist and oceanographer. Among other accomplishments, Spilhaus is credited with proposing the establishment of Sea Grant Colleges at a meeting of the American Fisheries Society in 1963 as a parallel to the successful land-grant university system, which he claimed was "one of the best investments this nation ever made. The same kind of imagination and foresight should be applied to the exploration of the sea."
Go to Profile#6424
Edward Rebar
#56741
Overall Influence
Edward John Rebar is an American biologist, and is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Sana Biotechnology. Education Edward John Rebar earned a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Rutgers University. He completed a Doctor of Philosophy in biophysics and structural biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His 1997 dissertation was titled Selection studies of zinc finger-DNA recognition. His doctoral advisor was Carl Pabo. Rebar worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#6425
Tamara Galloway
#89102
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Tamara Susan Galloway is a British marine scientist and Professor of Ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.
Go to Profile#6426
Michael D. Guiry
#84718
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Dominic Richard Guiry , is an Irish botanist, who specialises in phycology . See for example the articles. He is the founder and director of the algal database, AlgaeBase. He is a graduate of both University College Cork and the University of London. In addition to his interest in the taxonomy and the databasing of algae, his algal site promotes the sustainable use of seaweed resources.
Go to Profile#6427
Claudio Sillero-Zubiri
#98904
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Claudio Sillero-Zubiri is an Argentine-born British zoologist. He is a Professor of Conservation Biology at Oxford University's WildCRU, the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, and Bill Travers Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. He is the Chair of the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group, and Chief Scientist of the Born Free Foundation. He is internationally recognized for his work with carnivore conservation, and in particular the endangered Ethiopian wolf .
Go to Profile#6428
Adrian P. Hunt
#83781
Overall Influence
#6429
Gordon Rowley
#88383
Overall Influence
1921 - 2019 (98 years)
Gordon Douglas Rowley was a British botanist and writer specialising in cacti and succulents. Personal life Rowley was born on 31 July 1921 in London, UK to Cecil and Florence Gladys Rowley. He went to The Lower School of John Lyon, Harrow-on-the Hill. In 1942 he graduated with a B.Sc. degree in botany from King's College, University of London.
Go to Profile#6430
Walter Adolph Schroeder
#113525
Overall Influence
#6431
John H. Byrne
#99893
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John H. "Jack" Byrne is an American neuroscientist, is the Virgil and June Waggoner Chair of Neurobiology and Anatomy at McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas. Teaching John Byrne is the editor-in-chief for the Cold Spring Harbor Press journal Learning & Memory.
Go to Profile#6432
Magnus M. Höök
#113550
Overall Influence
#6433
Alicia Oshlack
#106296
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Alicia Yinema Kate Nungarai Oshlack is an Australian bioinformatician and is Co-Head of Computational Biology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is best known for her work developing methods for the analysis of transcriptome data as a measure of gene expression. She has characterized the role of gene expression in human evolution by comparisons of humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and rhesus macaques, and works collaboratively in data analysis to improve the use of clinical sequencing of RNA samples by RNAseq for human disease diagnosis.
Go to Profile#6434
Kuan‐teh Jeang
#113560
Overall Influence
#6435
John H. Vaughan
#113578
Overall Influence
#6436
Arnold B. Grobman
#39319
Overall Influence
1918 - 2012 (94 years)
Arnold B. Grobman was an American zoologist. Biography Grobman was born on April 28, 1918, in Newark, New Jersey as Morton Arnold Grobman, later changing his name to Arnold Brams Grobman, taking his mother's maiden name as his middle name. He received his education in the public school system in Newark, New Jersey and began his post-secondary education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, earning his bachelor's degree in 1939. In 1943, he received a PhD from University of Rochester, then became an instructor in the Department of Zoology, a position that he kept through 1944. From 1944 ...
Go to Profile#6437
John Diffley
#109887
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
John Francis Xavier Diffley is an American biochemist and Associate Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute. He is known for his contributions to the understanding of how DNA replication is initiated, and how it is subsequently regulated throughout the cell cycle and in response to DNA damage.
Go to Profile#6438
James Alexander Thomson
#113619
Overall Influence
#6439
Jakob Svensson
#113624
Overall Influence
#6440
Jerry R. Mendell
#113647
Overall Influence
#6441
John Foster
#84258
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
John Russell Foster is an American paleontologist. Foster has worked with dinosaur remains from the Late Jurassic of the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountains, Foster is also working on Cambrian age trilobite faunas in the southwest region of the American west. He named the crocodyliform trace fossil Hatcherichnus sanjuanensis in 1997 and identified the first known occurrence of the theropod trace fossil Hispanosauropus in North America in 2015.
Go to Profile#6442
Martin Lauritzen
#107945
Overall Influence
Martin Johannes Lauritzen is a Danish neuroscientist. He is Professor of Translational Neurobiology at the Department of Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology at the Department of Neurophysiology, Rigshospitalet .
Go to Profile#6443
Ron Milo
#113668
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
#6444
Masahiko Watanabe
#113681
Overall Influence
#6445
David A. Walker
#106401
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
David Alan Walker was a British scientist and professor of photosynthesis in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield. He authored over 200 scientific publications including several books during his lifetime.
Go to Profile#6446
Jean-guy Swings
#113695
Overall Influence
#6447
Robert J. Naylor
#113696
Overall Influence
#6448
Rosalind Eeles
#102335
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Rosalind Anne Eeles is a Professor of Oncogenetics at the Institute of Cancer Research and clinician at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. She is a leader in the field of genetic susceptibility to prostate cancer, and is known for the discovery of 14 genetic variants involved in prostate cancer predisposition. According to ResearchGate, Eeles has published more than 500 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with over 34,000 citations and an h-index of 92. Eeles was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science in 2012. She was awarded a National Institute for Health Research Senior Inv...
Go to Profile#6449
Michael N. Sawka
#113710
Overall Influence
#6450
Johan Paulsson
#94080
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Johan Paulsson is a Swedish mathematician and systems biologist at Harvard Medical School. He is a leading researcher in systems biology and stochastic processes, specializing in stochasticity in gene networks and plasmid reproduction.
Go to Profile