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,
#7801
Lesley H. Rees
#124647
Overall Influence
#7802
Walter Alexander
#124656
Overall Influence
#7803
Stephen Bowen
#34973
Overall Influence
Stephen Bowen is an American biologist, educator, and educational administrator. From August 2005 until his retirement in May 2016 he served as the Dean and CEO of Oxford College of Emory University, located in Oxford, Georgia.
Go to Profile#7804
Naomichi Matsumoto
#39766
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
is a Japanese physician and medical geneticist who identified several causative genes for human diseases, including Sotos syndrome , Marfan syndrome type II , Ohtahara syndrome , West syndrome , Microphthalmia with limb anomalies , Autosomal-recessive cerebellar ataxias , Hypomyelination with cerebellar atrophy and hypoplasia of the corpus callosum , Porencephaly , and Coffin–Siris syndrome .
Go to Profile#7805
Jeremy B. Searle
#124680
Overall Influence
#7806
Sándor Szabó
#124689
Overall Influence
#7807
Wilhelm Barthlott
#124693
Overall Influence
#7808
Mary Ann Moran
#120996
Overall Influence
Mary Ann Moran is a distinguished research professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens. She studies the role of bacteria in Earth's marine nutrient cycles, and is a leader in the fields of marine sciences and biogeochemistry. Her work is focused on how microbes interact with dissolved organic matter and the impact of microbial diversity on the global carbon and sulfur cycles. By defining the roles of diverse bacteria in the carbon and sulfur cycles, she connects the biogeochemical and organismal approaches in marine science.
Go to Profile#7809
Tatsuhiko Kodama
#124707
Overall Influence
#7810
Jane E. Aubin
#124708
Overall Influence
#7811
Robert Livingston
#90375
Overall Influence
1918 - 2002 (84 years)
Robert Burr Livingston was an American physician, neuroscientist, and social activist. Early life Livingston was born on October 9, 1918, in Boston. He completed his undergraduate studies , medical degree , and residency at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#7812
Charles Auffray
#124727
Overall Influence
#7813
Marc H. V. van Regenmortel
#110247
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Marc Hubert Victor van Regenmortel is a Belgian virologist known for his work on virus classification. After living in Brussels for the first two decades of his life, he moved to South Africa, where he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town in 1961. He was Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique Immunochemistry Laboratory at the University of Strasbourg from 1978 to 2001. He was president of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses from 1996 to 2002. He was the editor-in-chief of the Archives of Virology for twenty years prior to retiring in 2018.
Go to Profile#7814
Donald Armstrong
#124737
Overall Influence
#7815
Kenji Soda
#124759
Overall Influence
#7816
John Z. Kiss
#52937
Overall Influence
John Z. Kiss is an American biologist known for his work on the gravitational and space biology of plants. Kiss is dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Previously, he was a professor of biology and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Mississippi. and distinguished professor and chair of the botany department at Miami University. He has worked with NASA since 1987 and served as principal investigator on eight spaceflight experiments on the Space Shuttle, the former Russian space station Mir, and on the International Space Station. His research focuses on the sensory physiology of plants in space.
Go to Profile#7817
Marcella D. C. Rietschel
#124781
Overall Influence
#7818
Tracey Gloster
#39546
Overall Influence
Tracey Maureen Gloster is a chemist at the University of St Andrews UK. Her research interests are in structural biology, chemical biology, glycobiology and carbohydrate processing enzymes. Education Gloster studied biochemistry at University of Warwick, graduating in 2002 and then moved to University of York where she was awarded a PhD in chemistry in 2005 for research supervised by Gideon Davies.
Go to Profile#7819
Miguel Ángel González‐gay
#124802
Overall Influence
#7820
Theodor Heinrich Schiebler
#113538
Overall Influence
1923 - 2022 (99 years)
Theodor Heinrich Schiebler was a German anatomist. Life and career Schiebler was born in Berlin on 3 February 1923, as the son of Theodor Schiebler and his wife Hedwig Schiebler, née Bombach. He graduated from high school in 1940 and subsequently took part in World War II as a Wehrmacht soldier. After being wounded, he began studying medicine at the University of Würzburg in 1942 and passed his medical preliminary examination in 1944. After redeployment and being briefly prisoner of war, he continued his studies in 1945 at the University of Göttingen and graduated there in 1948.
Go to Profile#7821
Raymond L. Hintz
#124818
Overall Influence
#7822
Thomas Helleday
#124840
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#7823
Bror Rexed
#98251
Overall Influence
1914 - 2002 (88 years)
Bror Anders Rexed was a Swedish neuroscientist and professor at Uppsala University. Internationally, he is best known today for his development of the system now known as Rexed laminae, but in Sweden, he is also known for his involvement in the "du-reformen" of the Swedish language during the late 1960s.
Go to Profile#7824
Joost Schymkowitz
#121207
Overall Influence
Joost Schymkowitz is a Belgian molecular biologist and researcher at the KU Leuven . Together with Frederic Rousseau he is group leader at the VIB Switch Laboratory, KU Leuven. His research interest is on essential cellular processes where functional regulation is governed by protein conformational switches that have to be actively controlled to ensure cell viability
Go to Profile#7825
Phyllis Coley
#119522
Overall Influence
Phyllis Dewing Coley is a Biology professor currently teaching at the University of Utah. In 1996 she received the University's Distinguished Research Award. She has been a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute since 1995. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#7826
Giorgio Racagni
#124855
Overall Influence
#7827
Christina Warinner
#73055
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Christina Warinner is an American anthropologist best known for her research on the evolution of ancient microbiomes. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and the Sally Starling Seaver Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. Warinner is also a Research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.
Go to Profile#7828
Ernst Friedrich Pfeiffer
#124886
Overall Influence
#7829
Masaru Chiba-shi Taniguchi
#124889
Overall Influence
#7830
Bruno A. Olshausen
#124891
Overall Influence
#7831
Diana Six
#118656
Overall Influence
Diana L. Six is a forest entomologist and professor at the University of Montana. Her research focuses primarily on bark beetle ecology and forest adaptation to climate change. Six is the recipient of the 2018 Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award, has presented at TEDx, and has been featured in National Geographic among other nationally recognized media.
Go to Profile#7832
Noel Michele Holbrook
#121057
Overall Influence
Noel Michele Holbrook is the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Her work primarily focuses on the study of the physiology of vascular transport in plants, with the intent of understanding the impact of the movement of water and solutes on the ecological and evolutionary processes.
Go to Profile#7833
Kenan Christopher Garcia
#124932
Overall Influence
#7834
Egbert Frederik Smit
#124938
Overall Influence
#7835
R. Chris Miall
#124959
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#7836
Serge Rossignol
#124962
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#7837
Angela N. Brooks
#84882
Overall Influence
Angela Brooks is an Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a member of the Genomics Institute. Early life and education Brooks watched Gattaca in 1997 and was inspired to study genetics. Brooks studied biology at the University of California, San Diego, where she specialised in bioinformatics. She became interested in alternative splicing, and decided to focus on this for her doctoral studies. She moved to University of California, Berkeley for her graduate program, working with Steven E. Brenner. During her doctorate she worked on Moden...
Go to Profile#7838
John E. Repine
#124971
Overall Influence
#7839
Philip Froelich
#116644
Overall Influence
Dr. Philip 'Flip' Nissen Froelich, Jr. is an American academic oceanographic scientist, whose research uses biogeochemistry dynamics to address human impacts on the world's oceans. Early life and career Froelich graduated from Duke University in 1968. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island in 1979.
Go to Profile#7840
Perry Bartlett
#113783
Overall Influence
Perry Francis Bartlett is an Australian neuroscientist. He was awarded the Florey Medal in 2015. Bartlett first completed studies in dentistry. He later discovered he was more interested in research into the way the brain and immune system work. He went to Johns Hopkins University then University College London before returning to Melbourne.
Go to Profile#7841
Robert M. Sullivan
#106004
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Robert Michael "Bob" Sullivan is a vertebrate paleontologist, noted for his work on fossil lizards and dinosaurs. Sullivan discovered the second and most complete skull of the hadrosaurid dinosaur, Parasaurophus tubicen, and skulls of the ankylosaurids Nodocephalosaurus kirtlandensis and Ziapelta sanjuanensis. He also made contributions to Late Cretaceous vertebrate faunas from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, including establishing the Kirtlandian land vertebrate "age" for a time interval between the Judithian and younger Edmontonian "ages."
Go to Profile#7842
O. Spurgeon English
#42745
Overall Influence
1901 - 1993 (92 years)
Oliver Spurgeon English was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who taught at Temple University. He was also a founding member of the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society in 1937, in addition to working at both the Philadelphia General Hospital and Temple University Hospital. With Edward Weiss, he co-authored an influential textbook on psychosomatic medicine in 1943, among the first books on the topic. His work in this area led the Associated Press to describe him as "one of the first psychotherapists to write about the connections between mental and physical health". His numerous other...
Go to Profile#7843
J. Frederick Jr. Woessner
#124992
Overall Influence
#7844
Suzanne N. Haber
#125010
Overall Influence
#7845
Beverly L. Davidson
#125017
Overall Influence
#7846
Stephen Lisberger
#124169
Overall Influence
Stephen Gates Lisberger is an American neurobiologist. He is the George Barth Geller Distinguished Professor for Research and chair of Neurobiology at the Duke University School of Medicine. Early life and education Lisberger was born in New York City and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut and Ithaca, New York. While attending Ithaca High School, Lisberger participated in the 1967 Annual High School Mathematics Contest where he placed in the top one per cent of scorers than any other Upstate school. After graduating in 1967, Lisberger received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Cornell Uni...
Go to Profile#7847
James Eberwine
#108591
Overall Influence
James H. Eberwine is an American molecular neurobiologist. He is the Elmer Holmes Bobst Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. Early life and education Eberwine was born to parents Mary Jo and Paul Eberwine. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry and earned his graduate degrees in the same subject at Columbia University. Following graduation, Eberwine married Joan-Marie Kienlen, an administrative assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1993.
Go to Profile#7848
Dominique Labie
#125053
Overall Influence
#7849
Andrew Cockburn
#120896
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Andrew Cockburn FAA is an Australian evolutionary biologist who has been based at the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983. He has worked and published extensively on the breeding behaviour of antechinuses and superb fairy-wrens, and more generally on the biology of marsupials and cooperative breeding in birds. His work on fairy-wrens is based around a detailed long-term study of their curious mating and social system at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Go to Profile#7850
Dennis Chitty
#71027
Overall Influence
1912 - 2010 (98 years)
Dennis Hubert Chitty , was a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia. In 1969, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. The Chitty Hypothesis of Population Regulation states that population density is limited by spacing behaviour, which has genetic underpinnings and rapidly responds to natural selection. Because of the controversial nature of this idea at the time, David Lack attempted to veto Chitty's dissertation, though it was eventually accepted because of the intervention of Peter Medawar.
Go to Profile