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,
#7601
Oscar Kuipers
#116334
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Oscar Paul Kuipers is a Dutch professor of molecular genetics at the University of Groningen. His areas of expertise include microbiology, biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, and biotechnology.
Go to Profile#7602
Bradford Barr Lowell
#123261
Overall Influence
#7603
Irina Dryagina
#91122
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Irina Viktorovna Dryagina was botanist and veteran of the Second World War. During the conflict, she served as a squadron commissar in the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment until the post of squadron commissar was abolished, after which she transferred to the post of assistant chief of the political department for the Komsomol of the 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Division, commanded by Alexander Pokryshkin.
Go to Profile#7604
Gordon Douglas Brown
#123265
Overall Influence
#7605
J. M. Taylor
#123270
Overall Influence
#7606
Eric Halgren
#123271
Overall Influence
#7607
Edoardo Pozio
#123275
Overall Influence
#7608
Jeffrey H. Meyer
#123288
Overall Influence
Jeffrey H. Meyer is a scientist and professor working with mood and anxiety disorders using neuroimaging at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto. He is currently the head of the Neurochemical Imaging Program in Mood and Anxiety Disorders in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and is working as a Senior Scientist in the General and Health Systems Psychiatry Division at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He has also been awarded with the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Major Depression.
Go to Profile#7609
Fabrizio Benedetti
#69194
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Fabrizio Benedetti is professor of physiology and neuroscience at the University of Turin Medical School in Turin, Italy and a researcher in the field of placebo studies. He is known for his research into the placebo and nocebo effects.
Go to Profile#7610
Tore Midtvedt
#123293
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
#7611
Jane Glazebrook
#102214
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Jane Glazebrook is an American botanist known for her work on understanding plant defenses against pathogens and increasing crop yields. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and is now a professor of Plant Biology at the University of Minnesota. She was the editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. She is married to Fumiaki Katagiri, who also works at the University of Minnesota as a professor of Plant Biology.
Go to Profile#7612
Paul Frederic. Cranefield
#123327
Overall Influence
#7613
Qu Dongyu
#90443
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Qu Dongyu is a Chinese diplomat who took up office as the ninth Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 1 August 2019. He is the first Chinese national to head the Organization. Qu won the nomination on the first round of voting at the 41st FAO Conference on 23 June 2019, obtaining 108 of the 191 votes cast by the 194 member countries. He is married, with one daughter.
Go to Profile#7614
Robert H. Abeles
#123330
Overall Influence
#7615
Paulina Kernberg
#68156
Overall Influence
1935 - 2006 (71 years)
Paulina F. Kernberg was a Chilean American child psychiatrist, an authority on personality disorders, and a professor at Cornell University. Early life Kernberg was born in Santiago, Chile. She was married to Otto F. Kernberg, a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University. She earned a Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine from the University of Chile.
Go to Profile#7616
J. Michael Wilson
#123335
Overall Influence
#7617
Lee E. Eiden
#123345
Overall Influence
#7618
Alejandro Aballay
#106873
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Alejandro Aballay is an American biologist, currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at Oregon Health & Science University. Aballay was Professor and the Director of the Center for Host-Microbial Interactions at Duke University School of Medicine until 2017. In 2013, he was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#7619
Nuno Sousa
#123351
Overall Influence
#7620
Adina Paytan
#111350
Overall Influence
Adina Paytan is a research professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. known for research into biogeochemical cycling in the present and the past. She has over 270 scientific publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Geophysical Research Letters.
Go to Profile#7621
Steven S. Gallinger
#123374
Overall Influence
#7622
Alice Tsang Shaw
#123382
Overall Influence
#7623
Robert W. Doms
#123389
Overall Influence
#7624
Robert S. Zucker
#123395
Overall Influence
#7625
Dafna Bar‐sagi
#123407
Overall Influence
#7626
Linda Koch
#122226
Overall Influence
Linda Koch is a German-French geneticist, and the chief editor of academic journal Nature Reviews Genetics. She is a specialist in mouse genetics. Education Koch has a PhD in genetics from the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#7627
Murray Stewart
#123413
Overall Influence
#7628
Takashi Aoki
#123421
Overall Influence
#7629
Mathew Alexander Vadas
#123442
Overall Influence
#7630
Derek Wakelin
#123453
Overall Influence
#7631
Gustavo Caetano-Anolles
#121763
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gustavo Caetano-Anollés is Professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an expert in the field of evolutionary and comparative genomics.
Go to Profile#7632
Christopher James Mathias
#123484
Overall Influence
#7633
Robert W. Malone
#19188
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robert Wallace Malone is an American physician and biochemist. His early work focused on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Malone promoted misinformation about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.
Go to Profile#7634
Frederick Bieber
#80461
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Frederick Robert Bieber is Senior Medical Geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a member of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, and a Consultant at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Children's Hospital Boston.
Go to Profile#7635
Liane Brauch Russell
#123500
Overall Influence
#7636
William R. Fair
#123513
Overall Influence
#7637
Maria Concetta Morrone
#123525
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#7638
Kenneth E. Wolf
#123554
Overall Influence
#7639
Gary Barrett
#95480
Overall Influence
1940 - 2022 (82 years)
Gary Barrett was an American ecologist. Barrett held the Eugene P. Odum chair of Odum School of Ecology at University of Georgia; previously he taught at Miami University and Drake University. He was the Deputy Director for Research for the Institute of Environmental Sciences from 1977 to 1981, and was the recipient of the US Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology's Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award in 2001.
Go to Profile#7640
John S. Parkinson
#93185
Overall Influence
John Stansfield "Sandy" Parkinson is an American biologist, currently a Distinguished Professor at University of Utah. He was the chairman of the Department of Biology at University of Utah. Research Parkinson studies bacterial chemotaxis, particularly the chemotactic behavior of E. coli to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that cells use to detect and process information about their chemical environment. Parkinson began mutational analysis of E. coli chemotaxis as a postdoctoral student with Julius Adler in 1970. As an independent investigator, Parkinson became the primary source of mutant...
Go to Profile#7641
Teresa Lambe
#82215
Overall Influence
Teresa "Tess" Lambe OBE is an Irish scientist working at Oxford University's Oxford Vaccine Group. She is one of the co-developers of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine against the new coronavirus causing COVID-19.
Go to Profile#7642
Volker Dr Ullrich
#123595
Overall Influence
#7643
Mark S. Mooseker
#123604
Overall Influence
#7644
Athena Aktipis
#98834
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (45 years)
Christina Athena Aktipis is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She is the director of the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative and the co-director of the Human Generosity Project. She is also the director of the Cooperation and Conflict lab at Arizona State University, vice president of the International Society for Evolution, Ecology and Cancer , and was the director of human and social evolution and co-founder of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF. She is a cooperation theorist, an evolutionary biologist, an evolutionary psychologist, and a cancer biologist who works at the intersection of those fields.
Go to Profile#7645
Elena Bennett
#113084
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Elena M. Bennett is an American ecosystem ecologist specializing in studying the interactions of ecosystem services on landscape. She is currently a Professor and the Canada Research Chair in Sustainability Science at McGill University. She was inducted to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2017. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022 and became a Guggenheim Fellow in the same year.
Go to Profile#7646
Rik Leemans
#123626
Overall Influence
#7647
Cristina Sánchez
#117885
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dr. Cristina Sánchez is a Spanish molecular biologist. She was born in Madrid, Spain in 1971. She graduated from biology at the Complutense University of Madrid in 1994. She obtained her PhD with Honors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Complutense University in 2000 and went into postdoc studying the antitumoral and other properties of medical cannabis, especially cancer and the therapeutic qualities of cannabinoids.
Go to Profile#7648
Yasmin Hurd
#107220
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Yasmin Hurd is the Ward-Coleman Chair of Translational Neuroscience and the Director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai. Hurd holds appointments as faculty of Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and is globally recognized for her translational research on the underlying neurobiology of substance use disorders and comorbid psychiatric disorders. Hurd's research on the transgenerational effects of early cannabis exposure on the developing brain and behavior and on the therapeutic properties of cannabidiol has garnered substantial media attention.
Go to Profile#7649
Dean Buonomano
#85317
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Dean Vincent Buonomano is an American neuroscientist and author. He is a professor at UCLA whose research focuses on neurocomputation and how the brain tells time. Buonomano has been described as one of the "first neuroscientists to begin to ask how the human brain encodes time" and has been published in various scientific journals. He is the author of two books, Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape our Lives and Your Brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time. Buonomano's first book Brain Bugs examines the human brain's functional strengths and weaknesses, ultimately a...
Go to Profile#7650
Wolfgang Dr Wurst
#123635
Overall Influence
