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,
#7701
Ronald D. G. Mckay
#123943
Overall Influence
#7702
Stuart T. Nichol
#123955
Overall Influence
#7703
Jochen Schacht
#123963
Overall Influence
#7704
Lorna Casselton
#81280
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Lorna Ann Casselton, was a British academic and biologist. She was Professor Emeritus of Fungal Genetics in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Oxford, and was known for her genetic and molecular analysis of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus and Coprinus lagopus.
Go to Profile#7705
Nicholas Gillham
#90407
Overall Influence
1932 - 2018 (86 years)
Nicholas Wright Gillham was an American geneticist who served as the James B. Duke Professor of Biology at Duke University. In addition to his scientific research, he is known for his 2001 biography of Francis Galton, A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics.
Go to Profile#7706
Roy Oliver Weller
#123976
Overall Influence
#7707
J. Martin Goldberg
#123989
Overall Influence
#7708
Julia Bailey-Serres
#114358
Overall Influence
Julia Bailey-Serres is professor of genetics, director of the Center for Plant Cell Biology, and a member of the Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California, Riverside. Her accomplishments include the pioneering of methods for profiling the "translatomes" of discrete cell-types of plants and identification of a homeostatic sensor of oxygen deprivation in plants.
Go to Profile#7709
Diane R. Gold
#124005
Overall Influence
#7710
M. Andre Mandel
#124009
Overall Influence
#7711
Alain Chédotal
#112268
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Alain Chédotal is a French researcher specialising in the development of neural circuits. He has been a member of the French Academy of sciences since 2017. Biography Alain Chédotal studied biology at the Lycée Clemenceau and joined the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in 1988. He is moving into Neuroscience research after an internship in Dr. Edith Hamel's laboratory at the Montreal Neurological Institute , where he will also spend a year as a cooperator. Back in France, he enrolled in a PhD thesis in the Inserm team of Dr Constantino Sotelo at the Salpêtrière Hospital and Pierre et Marie Curie University .
Go to Profile#7712
Herbert F. Oettgen
#124016
Overall Influence
#7713
Edwin Alfred Dawes
#124017
Overall Influence
#7714
Camille Parmesan
#119456
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Camille Parmesan is an ecologist and an expert in the effects of global climate change on biodiversity. She is the National Aquarium Chair in the Public Understanding of Oceans and Human Health at The University of Plymouth U.K., at SETE-Theoretical and Experimental Ecology Station, CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and is adjunct professor at The University of Texas at Austin U.S.A..
Go to Profile#7715
Doris Abele
#117857
Overall Influence
1901 - 2021 (120 years)
Doris Abele was an Antarctic marine biologist based at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. She led the research group working on stress physiology and aging in marine invertebrates and also the Ecology Polar regions And Coasts in the changing Earth System programme.
Go to Profile#7716
Axel Hauschild
#124048
Overall Influence
#7717
Desmond N. Carney
#124049
Overall Influence
#7718
Konrad Körding
#123285
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Konrad Paul Körding is a German neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Neuromatch. He is known for his contributions to the fields of motor control, neural data methods, and computational neuroscience, as well as his advocacy and contribution to open science and scientific rigor.
Go to Profile#7719
Laurent Degos
#124082
Overall Influence
#7720
Peter Vajkoczy
#124085
Overall Influence
#7721
Marilyn Anderson
#122860
Overall Influence
Marilyn Anderson is an Australian scientist and entrepreneur in the area of biochemistry and plant molecular biology. She is a professor at La Trobe University and co-founded Hexima, an agribiotechnology company, in 1998.
Go to Profile#7722
Roger K. Pitman
#124106
Overall Influence
#7723
William W. Beatty
#124107
Overall Influence
#7724
Joe G N Garcia
#124123
Overall Influence
#7725
Edwin Robert Morris
#124139
Overall Influence
#7726
Jean‐marc Bollag
#124141
Overall Influence
#7727
Ellen Baake
#77948
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Ellen Baake is a German mathematical biologist who works as a professor of biomathematics and theoretical bioinformatics at Bielefeld University. Her research uses probability theory and differential equations to study biological evolution; she has also studied mathematical immunobiology and the mathematical modeling of photosynthesis.
Go to Profile#7728
Hilda Tracy
#105762
Overall Influence
1927 - 2010 (83 years)
Hilda Tracy worked at University of Liverpool, UK, with Rod Gregory FRS to isolate and characterise the gastrointestinal hormone gastrin. She led the structure-function studies and had the first insight into gastrin's role in the clinical pathology of pancreatic Zollinger-Ellison tumours.
Go to Profile#7729
Peter St George-Hyslop
#84805
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Peter Henry St George-Hyslop, OC, FRS, FRSC, FRCPC, is a British and Canadian medical scientist, neurologist and molecular geneticist who is known for his research into neurodegenerative diseases. St George-Hyslop is one of the most cited authors in the field of Alzheimer's disease research. He has identified a number of key genes that are responsible for nerve cell degeneration and early-onset forms of Alzheimer's disease. These include the discovery of the presenilins , Nicastrin, and SORL1 genes. Presenilin mutations are the most common cause of familial Alzheimer's disease. St George-Hysl...
Go to Profile#7730
Jørn Thiede
#124149
Overall Influence
#7731
Andrew J. Roger
#103990
Overall Influence
Andrew J. Roger is a Canadian-Australian molecular biologist and evolutionary bioinformatician. He is currently a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University and was the founding director of the inter-departmental Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics .
Go to Profile#7732
Pierre Hupé
#111376
Overall Influence
1907 - 2003 (96 years)
Pierre Hupé was a French paleontologist. Hupé studied sciences at the Universities of Strasbourg and Nancy, where he graduated in 1931 with the geneticist Lucien Cuénot. Hupé was an excellent draftsman, for which he also won prizes at the University. After that he was high school teacher of natural sciences. In the 1930s he made the first geological inventory of the Pyrenees on an assignment by Professor Charles Jacob. During World War II he was an artillery officer and received the Croix de Guerre. Between 1945 and 1949 he worked for the CNRS and in 1951 at started at the Laboratory of Geology of the Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#7733
James E. Cloern
#124212
Overall Influence
#7734
Johann Lutjeharms
#94976
Overall Influence
1944 - 2011 (67 years)
Johann Reinder Erlers Lutjeharms , was a leading South African marine scientist and an authority in the oceanography of the Agulhas Current, who authored a definitive work on the subject, The Agulhas Current . His main field of investigation was the large-scale circulation patterns of the oceans adjacent to southern Africa and their influence on weather and climate, and he participated in 17 research cruises and was responsible for a further 48 projects undertaken on such cruises.
Go to Profile#7735
Raul J. Busto
#124220
Overall Influence
#7736
James E. K. Hildreth
#77223
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
James Earl King Hildreth is an American immunologist and academic administrator. Hildreth is the 12th president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College. He is known for his work on HIV/AIDS and was the first African American to hold a full tenured professorship in basic research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Edward D. Miller calls Hildreth "one of the most influential HIV researchers in the world".
Go to Profile#7737
James McCarthy
#100663
Overall Influence
1944 - 2019 (75 years)
James J. McCarthy was a Professor of Biological Oceanography at Harvard and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from February 2008 to February 2009. McCarthy was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and former Master of Pforzheimer House. He was also Acting Curator of the Malacology Department in the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Go to Profile#7738
Lennart Wetterberg
#124234
Overall Influence
#7739
Peter Norman Russell Usherwood
#124256
Overall Influence
#7740
Bruce Pike
#124274
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#7741
H. Ronald Pulliam
#124278
Overall Influence
#7742
Jonathan Himmelfarb
#124282
Overall Influence
#7743
Matt Ritter
#103923
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Matt Ritter is an author, editor and botany professor at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. He specializes in cultivated trees, and is an expert of the genus Eucalyptus. Ritter is a former Editor-in-Chief of Madroño, the journal of the California Botanical Society. He is the California coordinator of the Official National Register of Big Trees and a contributing author to the second edition of the Jepson Manual of California native plants, and to the Flora of North America projects.
Go to Profile#7744
Irwin Lucki
#124299
Overall Influence
#7745
Janet Jansson
#114735
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Janet Knutson Jansson is an American biological scientist who is the Chief Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She investigates complex microbial communities, including those found in soil and the human gut. Jansson is part of the Phenotypic Response of the Soil Microbiome to Environmental Perturbations Science Focus Area, and is a Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology.
Go to Profile#7746
Iva Greenwald
#118014
Overall Influence
Iva Susan Greenwald is an American biologist who is Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Columbia University. She studies cell-cell interactions and cell fate specification in C. elegans. She is particularly interested in LIN-12/Notch proteins, which is the receptor of one of the major signalling systems that determines the fate of cells.
Go to Profile#7747
Harry T. Orr
#124304
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#7748
Konrad Beyreuther
#92497
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Konrad Beyreuther is a German molecular biologist and chemist known for his work on neurodegenerative diseases. Life Konrad Bayreuther was the son of an evangelical pastor. He studied chemistry at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He wrote his PhD Thesis at the Max-Planck Institut für Biochemie in Munich. Until 1978 he was a scientific employee at the Institut for genetics at the university of Cologne.
Go to Profile#7749
Ronald. Bentley
#124310
Overall Influence
#7750
Dorothee Kern
#87261
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Dorothee Kern, is a professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University and former player for the East German national basketball team. In 2016, she cofounded Relay Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based drug research company studying the motion of proteins using genomic data and computational biology. In 2020, she cofounded MOMA Therapeutics, a company working on drug discovery.
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