Search People Result | Academic Influence

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.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#6801

Matthew M. Lavail

#116704

Overall Influence

#6802

Ole Jensen

#114331

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Ole Jensen is a Danish neuroscientist and professor of translational neuroscience at the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. He is known for his research work on applying magnetoencephalography to study the functioning of human brain.

#6803

Peter John Lea

#116715

Overall Influence

#6804

David York Mason

#116718

Overall Influence

#6805

Moselio Schaechter

#108191

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Moselio "Elio" Schaechter is Distinguished professor emeritus at Tufts University, and adjunct professor at both San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego. His work focuses on microbiology.

#6806

Juan Lerma Gómez

#116723

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Juan Lerma Gómez is a Spanish neuroscientist and research professor at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante. Currently he is editor-in-chief of Neuroscience, the official journal of the International Brain Research Organization, and scientific director of the programme "Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence" .

#6807

Kazuhiko Tatemoto

#116748

Overall Influence

#6808

Friedrich Vogel

#79439

Overall Influence

1925 - 2006 (81 years)

Friedrich Otto Vogel was a German human geneticist. Together with Arno Motulsky he established the journal Human Genetics in 1964, of which he remained editor-in-chief for more than 25 years. He was a member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. In 1962, Vogel was named professor of human genetics and founding chair of the Institute of Anthropology and Human Genetics at Heidelberg University. Vogel became the leading German human geneticist and played a significant role in the rehabilitation of this field after the misuse of genetics by the Nazi regime .

#6809

Thomas N. Sherratt

#101236

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Thomas N. Sherratt, known as Tom, is a professor of evolutionary ecology at Carleton University, Canada. He is known for his research on camouflage, aposematism and mimicry. Life Sherratt earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Edinburgh, and gained his Ph.D. at the University of Dundee. He states that the two main themes in his research laboratory are the evolution of surprising traits in behaviour and morphology, including co-operation with unrelated individuals and the existence of conspicuous warning signals; and the way that individual behaviour shapes the spatio-temporal dynam...

#6810

Daphne Maurer

#56978

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Daphne Maurer is a Canadian developmental psychologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. She is known for her work on the development of visual perception in humans, starting in infancy.

#6811

Fátima Carneiro

#97951

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Fátima Carneiro is a Portuguese pathologist. Since 2001 she has been director of the Pathological Anatomy Service at the University Hospital Centre of São João in Porto. In September 2018 she was voted first in a list of the hundred "Best & Brightest" pathologists in the world, by the magazine, The Pathologist.

#6812

Roberto Danovaro

#116797

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

#6813

Danielle Posthuma

Danielle Posthuma

#116803

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Danielle Posthuma is a Dutch behavior and psychiatric geneticist who specializes in statistical genetics. She is a University Research Chair professor at VU University Amsterdam, where she is also head of the Department of Complex Trait Genetics. She has been a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences since 2005. She is known for studying the genetics of psychiatric and cognitive traits, including schizophrenia, neuroticism, Alzheimer's disease, insomnia, as well as genetics of intelligence, which she first became interested in researching in the 1990s. In 2019 Posth...

#6814

Ana Domingos

#78674

Overall Influence

Ana I. Domingos is a Portuguese neuroscientist specialising in the treatment of obesity independently of food intake. Domingos is a full Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Domingos is also a fellow, tutor and the director of studies in medicine at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

#6815

Robert T. Orr

#96155

Overall Influence

1908 - 1994 (86 years)

Robert Thomas Orr was an American biologist known for his work as a zoologist and natural historian. Early life and education Orr was born in San Francisco, California to Robert Harry Orr and Clara Cockburn Orr. He received his B.S. degree in biology from the University of San Francisco in 1929. His M.A. and Ph.D. degrees were earned at the University of California, Berkeley while studying in the laboratory of Joseph Grinnell.

#6816

Mar Tin Zimmermann

#116835

Overall Influence

#6817

Elizabeth W. Jones

#92375

Overall Influence

1939 - 2008 (69 years)

Elizabeth Winifred Jones was an American geneticist and professor at Carnegie Mellon University . Education Jones earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1960 and her Ph.D. in genetics in 1964, both from the University of Washington. She worked with Herschel L. Roman for her Ph.D., which was the first ever granted by the University of Washington in genetics. She went on to complete her postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#6818

Abdul Rashid

#75454

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Abdul Rashid, is a Pakistani agricultural scientist, who has served as a Member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission from 2008 to 2011 and Director General of Pakistan's National Agricultural Research Center from 2006 to 2008. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, in the United States.

#6819

Dr. D. Vergani

#116849

Overall Influence

#6820

Lauren Esposito

Lauren Esposito

#101218

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Lauren Esposito is the assistant curator and Schlinger chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. She is the co-founder of the network 500 Queer Scientists. Early life and education Esposito was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She kept a collection of insects in egg cartons, and her first grade science project looked at the Mendelian genetics of pigeon colours. Esposito earned her bachelor's degree in biology at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2003. She became interested in scorpions during a National Science Foundation placement at the American Museum of Natural History.

#6821

Maria Alma Solis

#95719

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Maria Alma Solis is a entomologist at the Systematic Entomology Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Early life Maria Alma Solis was born on February 9, 1956, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and raised in Brownsville, Texas. She graduated from Brownsville High School in 1974. Dr. Solis began her studies at Texas Southmost College, then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin and majored in science education. She earned her master's degree in biological sciences with Larry Gilbert at UT Austin and her PhD in insect systematics at the Departm...

#6822

Peter H. Quail

#116874

Overall Influence

#6823

Paul Mischel

#113246

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Paul S. Mischel is an American physician-scientist whose laboratory has made pioneering discoveries in the pathogenesis of human cancer. He is currently a Professor and Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Pathology and Institute Scholar of ChEM-H, Stanford University. Mischel was elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation , serving as ASCI president in 2010/11. He was inducted into the Association of American Physicians, and was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#6824

Anastasios Melis

#63784

Overall Influence

Anastasios Melis is a Greek-American biologist at the University of California, Berkeley who elucidated the possibility of creating hydrogen from algae. He is currently Professor of Plant & Microbial Biology in the institution and Editor-in-Chief of the Planta journal.

#6825

John O. Jr Whitaker

#116890

Overall Influence

#6826

Michael B. Mathews

#116914

Overall Influence

#6827

Ian R. Creese

#116917

Overall Influence

#6828

Mary Gillham

#96036

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Mary Eleanor Gillham MBE was a British naturalist, university lecturer, and writer, who was resident for many years in Gwaelod y Garth and then Radyr, in Cardiff, Wales until her death. Although born in a London suburb, and serving five wartime years in the Women's Land Army working on multiple farms, Mary Gillham spent much of her time in Wales. As a post-war student in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and Bangor, she gained a degree in agriculture, a first-class honours in botany, and a PhD in island ecology. She lectured in the universities of Exeter , Massey , Melbourne , Kano , and...

#6829

Laura Guzmán Dávalos

#106912

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Laura Guzmán Dávalos is a Mexican mycologist, biologist and lichenologist. She has been the head of the Botany and Zoology Department at the University of Guadalajara from 1994–1998. From 2007 to 2014, she served as the general coordinator of the UdeG doctoral program in ecology, biosystematics, and natural and agricultural resources management.

#6830

Richard P. Korf

#85102

Overall Influence

1925 - 2016 (91 years)

Richard Paul "Dick" Korf was an American mycologist and founding co-editor of the journal Mycotaxon. He was a preeminent figure in the study of discomycetes and made significant contributions to the field of fungal nomenclature and taxonomy. Korf was professor emeritus of mycology at Cornell University and director emeritus of Cornell University's Plant Pathology Herbarium.

#6831

Robert T. Sauer

#93563

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Robert Thomas Sauer is an American biochemist who is the Salvador E. Luria Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early life and education Bob Sauer was born in Cornwall, New York, in the Hudson Valley area of New York. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts as an undergraduate and earned his bachelor's degree in biophysics in 1972. He received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University in 1979.

#6832

Franklin M. Harold

#116951

Overall Influence

#6833

Per‐anders Mårdh

#116966

Overall Influence

#6834

Christopher Voigt

Christopher Voigt

#95919

Overall Influence

Christopher Voigt is an American synthetic biologist, molecular biophysicist, and engineer. Career Voigt is the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor of Advanced Biotechnology in the Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He works in the developing field of synthetic biology. He is the co-director of the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT and the co-founder of the MIT-Broad Foundry.

#6835

Constantin E. Orfanos

#116980

Overall Influence

#6836

Carden Wallace

#96741

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Carden Crea Wallace is an Australian scientist who was the curator/director of the Museum of Tropical Queensland from 1987 to 2003. She is an expert on corals having written a "revision of the Genus Acropora". Wallace was part of a team that discovered mass spawning of coral in 1984.

#6837

Christopher Haslett

#116992

Overall Influence

#6838

Bruce W. Stallsmith

#116993

Overall Influence

Bruce W. Stallsmith is a professor of biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Huntsville, Alabama and served as the 2000–2008 president of the North American Native Fishes Association . He now serves as the Research Grant Chair for NANFA.

#6839

Harel Weinstein

#116998

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

#6840

Julius Brennecke

#113278

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Julius Brennecke is a German molecular biologist and geneticist. He is a Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology. of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Education and career Julius Brennecke studied biology at Heidelberg University. During his diploma thesis he focused on the tandem affinity purification of protein complexes in Drosophila. In his PhD-thesis , he specialized on microRNAs and their regulatory targets in Drosophila.

#6841

Catherine E. Costello

#115482

Overall Influence

Catherine E. Costello is the William Fairfield Warren distinguished professor in the department of biochemistry, Cell Biology and Genomics, and the director of the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry at the Boston University School of Medicine.

#6842

Howard Ochman

#117005

Overall Influence

#6843

Timothy John Chambers

#117008

Overall Influence

#6844

Dan Binkley

#117019

Overall Influence

#6845

Erving G. Erdös

#117024

Overall Influence

#6846

Brian G. Gardiner

#92324

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Brian George Gardiner PPLS was a British palaeontologist and zoologist, specialising in the study of fossil fish . Early life and education Gardiner was born on 30 October 1932 in Cashes Green, Gloucestershire. He was educated at Marling School, Stroud and then took a first degree in zoology at Imperial College London, where he specialised in entomology. This was followed by a PhD in palaeontology at University College London at which time he was a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London.

#6847

Per Artursson

#117028

Overall Influence

#6848

J. Thomas Parsons

#117032

Overall Influence

#6849

Moshe Bar

#34151

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Moshe Bar is an Israeli cognitive neuroscientist. He is a professor at Bar-Ilan University. He was previously head of the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University and before that director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

#6850

Olga Stein

#117034

Overall Influence

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions