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,
#7901
C. Peter Downes
#125444
Overall Influence
#7902
Robert Slocum
#89781
Overall Influence
Robert Dale Slocum is an American biologist and botanist. He is a professor of biology in the Center for Natural Sciences at Goucher College. His research focuses on plant physiology, molecular biology, and biotechnology.
Go to Profile#7903
Timo Vesikari
#125459
Overall Influence
#7904
Tore Slagsvold
#124834
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Tore Slagsvold is a Norwegian zoologist. He took his dr.philos. degree in 1978 and became professor at the University of Oslo in 1991. He edited the Journal of Avian Biology from 1993 to 2001. As one of Norway's most cited scientists, he was one of 14 people in the country to rank as "highly cited" in the ISI Index in 2010.
Go to Profile#7905
Kenneth M. Halanych
#124589
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Kenneth M. Halanych is a professor in zoology at the Auburn University, Alabama. He was born in Baltimore in 1966. He received his B.S. from Wake Forest University and his PhD in zoology in 1994, from University of Texas. He works on higher level systematics of invertebrates, mainly marine. According to the Web of Knowledge he has published 123 peer reviewed scientific papers, 43 of them cited 10 or more times. The most widely referred to are:Halanych KM, Bacheller JD, Auginaldo AMA, Liva SM, Hillis DM, Lake JA. "Evidence from 18S ribosomal DNA that the Lophphorates are protostome animals "*Science 267: 1641-1643 1995 Times Cited: 286Halanych KM.
Go to Profile#7906
Daniel St Johnston
#125476
Overall Influence
#7907
Rashika El Ridi
#125484
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Rashika Ahmed Fathi El Ridi is a professor of Immunology at the Department of Zoology Faculty of Science, Cairo University. In October 2009, Professor Rashika El Ridi won L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science for the year 2010 within the five most achievable women in the continents of the world. The jury for the prize said in a statement that the winning of professor Rashika El Ridi for Africa Group and the Arab countries was based on her contribution to the development of a vaccine to eradicate the cycle of schistosomiasis, a tropical disease infecting more than 200 million people in the...
Go to Profile#7908
Pauline Harrison
#111087
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (100 years)
Pauline May Harrison is a British protein crystallographer and professor emeritus at the University of Sheffield. She gained her chemistry degree from Somerville College, Oxford in 1948, followed by a DPhil in X-ray crystallography in 1952 supervised by Dorothy Hodgkin. After 3 years at King's College London she moved to the University of Sheffield in 1955 as a demonstrator in the Biochemistry department , obtaining an MRC grant to study the iron storage protein Ferritin, publishing preliminary X-ray diffraction data in the 1st volume of the Journal of Molecular Biology in 1959. The molecule which became her life's work.
Go to Profile#7909
Yves A. Dauvilliers
#125496
Overall Influence
#7910
Burk A. Dehority
#125511
Overall Influence
#7911
Edward Henry Reynolds
#125521
Overall Influence
#7912
Jody Deming
#121244
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jody W. Deming is an American oceanographer. She is a professor of Oceanography and a marine microbiologist at the University of Washington . Her research interests include studies of cold adapted microbes in their relation to astrobiology, biotechnology, and bioremediation. She is known for her extensive field work, being involved in over 50 nautical research expeditions. Deming is also the cofounder of the UW Astrobiology Extremophile Laboratory.
Go to Profile#7913
Ian L. Boyd
#54549
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Sir Ian Lamont Boyd, is a Scottish zoologist, environmental and polar scientist, former Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and is a professor of biology at the University of St Andrews. He is Chair of the UK Research Integrity Office and President of the Royal Society of Biology.
Go to Profile#7914
Gennadij Raivich
#109415
Overall Influence
Gennadij Raivich is a professor of perinatal neuroscience, specialising in maternal and fetal medicine. He was born in New Zealand and is a qualified doctor in Germany; although he has taught in the UK he has never practised there.
Go to Profile#7915
Shoukat Dedhar
#125530
Overall Influence
#7916
Exequiel Ezcurra
#91767
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Exequiel Ezcurra is an Argentine-Mexican plant ecologist and conservationist. His highly interdisciplinary work spans desert plant ecology, mangroves, island biogeography, sea birds, fisheries, oceanography, and deep-sea ecosystems.
Go to Profile#7917
Elio Lugaresi
#125551
Overall Influence
#7918
Mikael Jondal
#125592
Overall Influence
#7919
Rudolph A. Raff
#125610
Overall Influence
#7920
John William Murray
#125615
Overall Influence
#7921
Ulrike Mathesius
#112818
Overall Influence
Ulrike Mathesius is a German–Australian plant microbiologist in the Division of Plant Sciences at Australian National University . She is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the ANU, National Tertiary Education Union member and Professor at the ANU in plant science, biotechnology and plant-microbe interactions. Her research focuses on root microbe interactions and symbionts to parasites. Mathesius won the 2013 Fenner Medal awarded by the ARC for research in biology for outstanding early-career researchers under the age of 40.
Go to Profile#7922
Martin I. Sereno
#125637
Overall Influence
#7923
Antoine Gessain
#125638
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7924
Henri A. Verbrugh
#125644
Overall Influence
#7925
Patrick Connor O'brien
#125653
Overall Influence
#7926
Pierre Flor-Henry
#84329
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Pierre Flor-Henry is a Canadian psychiatrist, researcher, lecturer, and professor. His most important initial contribution was the demonstration in the study of epileptic psychosis, that schizophrenia relates to left and manic-depressive states relate to right hemisphere epilepsies .
Go to Profile#7927
Michael Jörg Mihatsch
#125662
Overall Influence
#7928
Walter D. Koenig
#125670
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#7929
Peter Timms
#123681
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Peter Timms is an Australian koala conservationist. He is best known for his scientific contributions relating to infectious disease threats to koalas such as chlamydia and koala retrovirus. After attending Wavell State High School, Timms studied at the University of Queensland where he graduated with a PhD in molecular microbiology in 1989.
Go to Profile#7930
Charles Grisham
#106737
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Charles M. Grisham is a biochemist and a professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. He received his B.S. from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota. Grisham is a Research Career Development Awardee of the National Institutes of Health and is a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#7931
James Kadonaga
#118870
Overall Influence
James T. Kadonaga is an American biologist, currently the Amylin Endowed Chair in Lifesciences at University of California, San Diego. Education Kadonga has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT, where he received the Alpha Chi Sigma Prize and the American Institute of Chemists Certificate. His graduate studies was at Harvard University under Jeremy R. Knowles. He was a DuPont Fellow.
Go to Profile#7932
David D. Ackerly
#125697
Overall Influence
#7933
Kenneth V. Honn
#125709
Overall Influence
#7934
Jeremy Greenwood
#58746
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Jeremy John Denis Greenwood CBE is a British ornithologist and was Director of the British Trust for Ornithology from 1988 until he retired in September 2007. Greenwood was educated at Royal Grammar School Worcester and St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#7935
Christof Niehrs
#125728
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#7936
Leah Krubitzer
#51413
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Leah Krubitzer is an American neuroscientist, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Davis, and head of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology. Her research interests center on how complex brains in mammals evolve from simpler forms. To do this, she focuses on anatomical connections and electrophysiological characteristics of neurons in the neocortex . Using comparative studies, she determines which features of the neocortex are shared by all mammals and how new features of the neocortex have evolved. This allows her to reconstruct evolutionary phylogenies of the neocortex together with their relationship to functional changes.
Go to Profile#7937
Jerry Young Niederkorn
#125741
Overall Influence
#7938
Gerhard Sandmann
#125745
Overall Influence
#7939
Theodore William Berger
#125747
Overall Influence
#7940
David M. Harper
#113784
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
David M. Harper is an English zoologist specialising in limnology. Harper was born in Sussex, England, in 1950. He is a zoologist who graduated from the University of Oxford in 1972. He studied for a PhD in limnology in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Dundee, submitting in 1978. He was appointed the first biologist to the Welland & Nene River Division of the Anglian Water Authority in order to develop a monitoring programme for their large new reservoir, now called Rutland Water. He moved to the University of Leicester in 1979, initially as tutor in science for the Adult...
Go to Profile#7941
Shubha Sathyendranath
#121677
Overall Influence
Shubha Platt , known professionally as Shubha Sathyendranath, is a marine scientist known for her work on marine optics and remote sensing of ocean colour. She is the 2021 recipient of the A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in the Marine Sciences.
Go to Profile#7942
Sterling C. Johnson
#125774
Overall Influence
#7943
Marie T. Ruel
#125786
Overall Influence
#7944
David Orville Toft
#125803
Overall Influence
#7945
Sue Black, Baroness Black of Strome
#61215
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Susan Margaret Black, Baroness Black of Strome, is a Scottish forensic anthropologist, anatomist and academic. She was the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University and is past President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. From 2003 to 2018 she was Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee. She is President of St John's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#7946
Ellen Kandeler
#110704
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Ellen Kandeler is a German biologist and agricultural scientist specialising in soil biology at University of Hohenheim. She also heads the Soil Biology area in the EU Biofector project. Life and work After leaving school in Vienna in 1975 Kandeler studied biology at the University of Vienna and obtained a diploma in 1979. She then attained a doctorate in chemical plant physiology in 1983 at the same university, and afterwards worked as a scientific assistant at the State Institute of Soil Science in Vienna and as a university lecturer at the Institute of Soil Science and Engineering Geology at the Zoological Institute at Vienna University .
Go to Profile#7947
John Theodore Povlishock
#125840
Overall Influence
#7948
Sorin Draghici
#78370
Overall Influence
Sorin Drăghici is a Romanian-American computer scientist and a program director in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation . Previous positions include: Associate Dean for Entrepreneurship and Innovation of Wayne State University's College of Engineering, the Director of the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core at Karmanos Cancer Institute, and the Director of the James and Patricia Anderson Engineering Ventures Institute. Draghici was elected a Fellow of the Institute of...
Go to Profile#7949
Hans‐lukas Teuber
#125845
Overall Influence
#7950
Dena Grayson
#98362
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dena Minning Grayson is an American medical doctor and researcher. In 2016, she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for the United States House of Representatives for Florida's 9th congressional district.
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