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,
#8151
Priya Davidar
#119028
Overall Influence
Priya Davidar is an Indian scientific researcher, conservation biologist, scholar, and author. She retired as a Professor at Pondicherry University and has conducted ecological research in different regions of India. She has authored a few books, including Whispers from the Wild, co-authored with E.R.C Davidar and published by Penguin India books. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012. She is actively involved with the conservation of forests and wildlife. She has published about 100 papers in scientific journals.
Go to Profile#8152
D. Bruce Wilson
#127361
Overall Influence
#8153
André Desrochers
#124941
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
André Desrochers is a Quebec scientist with expertise in ornithology and ecology. As of 2015, he has worked for almost thirty years in these research areas. Since the mid-1990s, he also worked to promote environmental conservation through various organizations.
Go to Profile#8154
Malcolm G. Parker
#127369
Overall Influence
#8155
Karl Kjer
#107226
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Karl M. Kjer is an American entomologist, taxonomist, and molecular biologist. Background In 1992, Kjer received his Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Minnesota. During his post-doctorate at BYU, he studied homology on ribosomal RNA. He started teaching at Rutgers University in 1996. In 2015, he accepted an endowed Chair in Insect Systematics at University of California, Davis, but resigned in 2016 citing "health and family reasons." In 2017, Kjer was convicted of one count of invasion of privacy after secretly recording a 19-year-old woman while she showered in his home. He retired f...
Go to Profile#8156
Rolla M. Tryon Jr.
#118486
Overall Influence
1916 - 2001 (85 years)
Rolla Milton Tryon Jr. was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics and evolution of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants . His particular focus and interest lay in two areas, historical biogeography of ferns and the taxonomy of tropical American ferns.
Go to Profile#8157
Wolfgang Gaebel
#127378
Overall Influence
#8158
Roland Berger
#127385
Overall Influence
#8159
Roland. Seifert
#127397
Overall Influence
#8160
Rosemary Tannock
#127402
Overall Influence
#8161
Donald J. Lisk
#127436
Overall Influence
#8162
Santiago Munné
#127448
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#8163
Kunitada Shimotohno
#127457
Overall Influence
#8164
Margaret A. Dix
#112358
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Margaret Ann Dix is a Jersey-born Guatemalan botanist. In 1972, she founded the Center for Environmental Studies and Biodiversity at the . Biography Born on Jersey in the Channel Islands, she attended London University where she graduated in biology in 1962. She received her masters in zoology from Mount Holyoke College, Massachchusetts, in 1964. From 1964 to 1968, she studied entomology, ecology and animal behaviour at Harvard University under E. O. Wilson. While studying at Harvard, she was required to spend two years abroad. At the end of 1972, together with her American husband, Michael W.
Go to Profile#8165
Laurence H. Kedes
#127470
Overall Influence
#8166
Michael D. Pierschbacher
#127475
Overall Influence
#8167
Heiner Westphal
#127479
Overall Influence
#8168
Barbara Wienecke
#62962
Overall Influence
Barbara Wienecke is a senior research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division. She is a seabird ecologist who uses satellite tracking to investigate seabird population dynamics and ecology. Wienecke has played a key role in enhancing the quality of, and overseeing the implementation of, a number of Antarctic Specially Protected Area management plans for wildlife concentrations in East Antarctica.
Go to Profile#8169
John A. Milner
#127495
Overall Influence
#8170
Angelo Antonini
#127498
Overall Influence
#8171
Peter J. Novick
#127512
Overall Influence
#8172
Glen Gabbard
#13064
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Glen Owens Gabbard is an American psychiatrist known for authoring professional teaching texts for the field. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and is also training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston.
Go to Profile#8173
Peter Anthony Larkin
#92504
Overall Influence
1924 - 1996 (72 years)
Peter Anthony Larkin, was a fisheries scientist who spent most of his career at the University of British Columbia. After his PhD at the Exeter College, Oxford, he moved to Canada as the Chief Fisheries Biologist of British Columbia, in a joint appointment between the provincial government and the University of British Columbia . At UBC, he later served as the Head of the Department of Zoology , as the Dean of Graduate Studies , and as the Vice President Research . He authored some 160 scientific papers. He was also an admired teacher who won UBC's Master Teacher Award in 1971. Outside UBC, ...
Go to Profile#8174
Joan Gardner
#86773
Overall Influence
1918 - 2013 (95 years)
Joan Forrest Gardner was an Australian microbiologist who had an extensive career researching and teaching in the areas of disinfection, infection control, and sterilisation. Early life and education Gardner was born in 1918 into a distinguished medical and scientific family. Her uncle was Nobel laureate Howard Florey; her mother, Hilda Josephine Gardner, was a leading bacteriologist, serologist and hematologist in Melbourne; and her father, Jack Gardner, was a physician and army medical officer during World War I.
Go to Profile#8175
Andreas Wilhelm Unterberg
#127530
Overall Influence
#8176
Douglas Warrick
#98811
Overall Influence
Douglas Warrick is a professor in biophysics at the zoology department of Oregon State University, specializing in the study of functional/ecological morphology, aerodynamics, and the evolution of vertebrate flight, working with many bird species, including hummingbirds and seabirds.
Go to Profile#8177
Wendy Hoy
#124020
Overall Influence
Professor Wendy Elizabeth Hoy AO is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science , the Director of the Centre for Chronic Disease at the University of Queensland, Australia, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2010 and elected as a member of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015. Hoy's research has involved developing new types of kidney imaging and improving health and lives for indigenous populations, in Australia, Sri Lanka and the USA.
Go to Profile#8178
Victor L. L. Villemagne
#127544
Overall Influence
#8179
Hans Forssberg
#127558
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#8180
Andrea Crisanti
#99617
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Andrea Crisanti is an Italian full professor of microbiology at the University of Padua and politician. He previously was professor of Molecular Parasitology at Imperial College London. He is best known for the development of genetically manipulated mosquitoes with the objective to interfere with either their reproductive rate or the capability to transmit diseases such as malaria.
Go to Profile#8181
Tara Spires-Jones
#21281
Overall Influence
Tara Spires-Jones is professor of neurodegeneration and deputy director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She is also a group leader in the UK Dementia Research Institute.
Go to Profile#8182
Armin Fiechter
#127582
Overall Influence
#8183
Mounira Hmani Aifa
#113228
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Mounira Hmani Aifa is a Tunisian geneticist, best known for her work in mapping the PRSS56 gene. She has been a recipient of the "Sur les traces de Marie Curie" award from UNESCO and the L'Oreal Foundation in 2012, and a fellowship from them in 2002.
Go to Profile#8184
William U. Shipley
#127592
Overall Influence
#8185
Gregory Edgecombe
#109252
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gregory Donald Edgecombe is a merit researcher in the department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. He is a leading figure in understanding the evolution of arthropods, their position in animal evolution and the integration of fossil data into analyses of animal phylogeny. As a palaeontologist, he is also an authority on the systematics of centipedes – and a morphologist whose work contributes to the growth and methods of analysis of molecular datasets for inferring evolutionary relationships.
Go to Profile#8186
Knud h. Nierhaus
#127608
Overall Influence
#8187
Hans F. Stich
#127611
Overall Influence
#8188
John L. Rinn
#127632
Overall Influence
#8189
Anilkumar Malhotra.
#127640
Overall Influence
#8190
William T. Longstreth
#127645
Overall Influence
#8191
R. Heiner Schirmer
#112507
Overall Influence
1942 - 2016 (74 years)
Rolf Heiner Schirmer was a German physician and biochemist. From 1980 to 2007 he was a professor of biochemistry in the medical faculty of Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany, and became a professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#8192
Jeffrey Jon Shaw
#100834
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jeffrey Jon Shaw OBE, FLS, FASTMH is a British parasitologist who began working in Latin America in 1962. Although officially retired, he is presently Senior Professor at São Paulo University's Biomedical Sciences Institute where he continues his research in its Parasitology Department.
Go to Profile#8193
John Michael Cullen
#97855
Overall Influence
1927 - 2001 (74 years)
John Michael Cullen was an Australian ornithologist, of English origin. Mike Cullen began his academic career by studying mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, but later switched to zoology, spending time at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology while investigating the ecology of marsh tits. He subsequently achieved his PhD with Niko Tinbergen with a study of the behaviour of the common tern on the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland.
Go to Profile#8194
Joan Murrell Owens
#81117
Overall Influence
1933 - 2011 (78 years)
Joan Murrell Owens was an American educator and marine biologist specializing in corals. She received degrees in geology, fine art, and guidance counseling. She described a new genus, Rhombopsammia, and three new species of button corals, R. niphada, R. squiresi, and Letepsammia franki.
Go to Profile#8195
Trista Vick-Majors
#67990
Overall Influence
Trista Vick-Majors is an American Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at Michigan Tech. She is an Antarctic biogeochemist and microbial ecologist, best known for her work showing that microorganisms are present under the Antarctic ice sheet.
Go to Profile#8196
Tsutomu Chiba
#127683
Overall Influence
#8197
Andreas Fritsche
#127684
Overall Influence
#8198
Lawrence Lumeng
#127691
Overall Influence
#8199
David Ehrenfeld
#67304
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
David Ehrenfeld is an American professor of biology at Rutgers University and is the author of over a dozen publications, including The Arrogance of Humanism , Becoming Good Ancestors: How We Balance Nature, Community, and Technology , and Swimming Lessons: Keeping Afloat in the Age of Technology . He is often described as one of the forerunners of twentieth-century conservation biology. Ehrenfeld's work primarily deals with the inter-related topics of biodiversity, conservation, and sustainability. He is also the founding editor of Conservation Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that...
Go to Profile#8200
Roberts Williamson
#127698
Overall Influence
