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,
#8701
Victor Joseph Wilson
#131427
Overall Influence
#8702
Vivian de Buffrénil
#86765
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Vivian de Buffrénil is a French histologist and paleobiologist who has worked at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris from 1982 to 2021. His doctorate and his doctorat d'état , a diploma now replaced by the habilitation, were supervised by Armand de Ricqlès. His main fields of interest include basic histological descriptions, growth dynamics as recorded in bone growth marks, and adaptation of the tetrapod skeleton to a secondarily aquatic lifestyle. He is also interested in life history and population dynamics of exploited or threatened reptile taxa, especially among Varanidae and Crocodilia.
Go to Profile#8703
Karla Satchell
#69598
Overall Influence
Karla Satchell, born Karla Fullner, is an American microbiologist who is currently a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#8704
Rebecca Kilner
#107231
Overall Influence
Rebecca M. Kilner FRES is a British evolutionary biologist, and a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Cambridge. Education and career Kilner studied a BA in Zoology at the University of Oxford in 1992, and received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at the University of Cambridge in 1996. She worked as a Junior Research Fellow at Magdelene College, Cambridge, and in 1998 was a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow; she was appointed Lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 2005 and a Reader in 2009.
Go to Profile#8705
Susan Rosser
#98051
Overall Influence
Susan Rosser FRSB FLSW is a professor of Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Rosser’s research focuses on the development of synthetic biology approaches and tools for engineering pathways and genomes in cell systems. Her work has been applied in biologic therapeutics, developing genetic tools for engineering stem cells and bio-computation.
Go to Profile#8706
Gilbert M. Lenoir
#131457
Overall Influence
#8707
Howard Landy
#73513
Overall Influence
Howard Landy is a professor of neurosurgery in the Department of Neurological Surgery and Radiation Oncology at the University of Miami and serves as the director of quality and patient safety at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Go to Profile#8708
William Karl Sieber
#131482
Overall Influence
#8709
Isidró Ferrer
#131487
Overall Influence
#8710
Rosemary Gillespie
#110904
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Rosemary Gillespie is an evolutionary biologist and professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, Division of Insect Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the President of the American Genetics Association in 2018 and was previously President of the International Biogeography Society 2013–2015. From 2011 to 2013 she had served at the president of the American Arachnological Society. As of 2020 she is the faculty director of the Essig Museum of Entomology and a Professor and Schlinger Chair in systematic entomology at the University of California, Berkeley. Gill...
Go to Profile#8711
Jonathan E. Greenleaf
#131508
Overall Influence
#8712
Zsuzsanna Wiesenfeld‐hallin
#131511
Overall Influence
#8713
Angela M. Christiano
#131519
Overall Influence
#8714
Kin'ya Kuriyama
#131520
Overall Influence
#8715
Timothy James Kinsella
#131535
Overall Influence
#8716
Tanja Kortemme
#95772
Overall Influence
Tanja Kortemme is a bioengineering professor at University of California, San Francisco. She has been recognized for outstanding contributions in computational protein design, including energy functions, sampling algorithms, and molecules to rewire cellular control circuits. She was an inaugural Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and was inducted into American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.
Go to Profile#8717
Don M. Tucker
#131559
Overall Influence
#8718
Donald Talbot Downing
#131563
Overall Influence
#8719
Thomas Kilduff
#86449
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Thomas S. Kilduff is an American neuroscientist and the director of SRI International's Center for Neuroscience. He specializes in neurobiology related to sleep and wakefulness, and was involved in the discovery of hypocretin , a neuropeptide system that is highly involved in wakefulness regulation.
Go to Profile#8720
Hana Librová
#94707
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Hana Librová is a Czech biologist, sociologist and environmentalist. She founded the Department of Environmental Studies at Masaryk University. She has carried out research on environmental lifestyle and environmental values.
Go to Profile#8721
Lowell Paul Hager
#131593
Overall Influence
#8722
Ramzi Cotran
#113580
Overall Influence
1932 - 2000 (68 years)
Ramzi S. Cotran was a pathologist and former president of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology . He was chair of pathology at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital Medical Center, as well as the Frank B. Mallory Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and a member of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine. The Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award is presented each year by USCAP to a pathologist in recognition of a body of investigative work which has contributed significantly to the diagnosis and understanding of human disea...
Go to Profile#8723
Osvaldo P. Almeida
#131596
Overall Influence
#8724
Kunihiko Tamaki
#131600
Overall Influence
#8725
Jan Marc Orenstein,
#131602
Overall Influence
#8726
James Bernard Jensen
#131605
Overall Influence
#8727
Thomas J. Near
#119980
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Thomas J. Near is an American evolutionary ichthyologist who is currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University as well as the Bingham Oceanographic Curator of Ichthyology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Since 2015, Near has been Head of Saybrook College, one of Yale University's residential colleges.
Go to Profile#8728
Marcel Kuntz
#72718
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marcel Kuntz is a French plant biotechnologist who is a Research Director in the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire Végétale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Grenoble, France. He is known for his criticisms of the ways that the French government and popular media have exaggerated the risks associated with genetically modified foods. He has documented how public perception of the risks of such foods has diverged significantly from the conclusions that scientists have reached on the topic. He was a recipient of the Médaille d'Or from the Académie d'Agriculture in 201...
Go to Profile#8729
Catherine Lovelock
#130070
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Catherine Ellen Lovelock is an Australian marine ecologist, whose research focuses on coastal ecosystems. She is a professor in the School of Biological Science at the University of Queensland and 2020 Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellow.
Go to Profile#8730
Kenneth R. Barker
#131635
Overall Influence
#8731
Patrick Aebischer
#131642
Overall Influence
#8732
Fred Ramsdell
#130636
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Frederick J. "Fred" Ramsdell is an American immunologist. Ramsdell graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in biology and from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987 with a Ph.D. in immunology. As a postdoc he worked at the National Institutes of Health and subsequently in biotech companies in the Seattle area. He has served as a senior executive at several biotech companies Darwin Molecular/Celltech, ZymoGenetics, Novo Nordisk, and aTyr Pharma. Since the beginning of 2016, he has been Research Director at the Parker Institute for Ca...
Go to Profile#8733
Roland Lill
#131652
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#8734
René Pomerleau
#108101
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
René Pomerleau, OC was a mycologist and plant pathologist whose specialty was fungi and lichens. He received a Bachelor of Agricultural Science from Laval University before an MS at the McGill University and later study at the Sorbonne. In 1972, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University. He has been called the "Father of mycology in Canada" and seen as a pioneering plant pathologist. The film La mycolade also had him as the main character.
Go to Profile#8735
Peter N. Thoren
#131661
Overall Influence
#8736
Herman Vanden Berghe
#101663
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
Herman, Baron Vanden Berghe was a Belgian pioneer in human genetics. He founded the Centrum voor Menselijke Erfelijkheid at the medical faculty of the Catholic University of Leuven in Leuven , Belgium. He was a cytogeneticist and applied cytogenetics to oncology. Among other findings, he discovered the deletion 5q syndrome in myelodysplasia. A native Flemish-speaker, he was also fluent in a number of other languages, including French and English, which facilitated his international role in medical genetics.
Go to Profile#8737
Ulysses S. Seal
#131672
Overall Influence
#8738
Frederic Rousseau
#72871
Overall Influence
See Frédéric Rousseau for the French historian of World War I Frederic Rousseau is a Flemish Belgian molecular biologist and researcher at the KU Leuven . Together with Joost Schymkowitz 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#8739
Johnp P. Donoghue
#131680
Overall Influence
#8740
Thomas S. Bianchi
#70287
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Thomas S. Bianchi is an oceanographer and biogeochemist. He is currently the Jon and Beverly Thompson Endowed Chair of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida and Editor-in-chief of the journal Marine Chemistry.
Go to Profile#8741
Dale Hadley Vitt
#131709
Overall Influence
#8742
Kendall Clements
#96703
Overall Influence
Kendall David Clements is a New Zealand academic and as of 2021 is a full professor at the University of Auckland specialising in the ecology and evolution of fish. Career After a PhD titled 'Gut microorganisms of surgeonfishes ' at the James Cook University, Clements moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#8743
Frank Werblin
#127636
Overall Influence
Frank Werblin is Professor of the Graduate School, Division of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. Education Werblin earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University studying with Professor John Dowling. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, and is noted for discovering the functional and morphological properties of the main retinal neural cell types underlying visual information processing in the retina and for developing the retina slice preparation that is now used universally by retinal researchers.
Go to Profile#8744
David Reiss
#131722
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
David Reiss is a psychiatrist and researcher. He is a clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center. His most notable contribution to the field came in 1981, when he published his book, The Family's Construction of Reality.
Go to Profile#8745
Angela R. Laird
#131726
Overall Influence
#8746
Lance Baumgard
#120721
Overall Influence
Lance Baumgard is an American physiologist, currently the Norman L. Jacobson Endowed Professor in Nutritional Physiology at Iowa State University. Education Doctor of Philosophy, Cornell University: 2002 Master of Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul: 1998 Bachelor of Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul: 1995
Go to Profile#8747
Barbara Nowak
#131729
Overall Influence
Barbara F. Nowak is a Polish-born Australian ichthyologist who specialises in sustainable aquaculture and aquatic animal health. As of 2021 she is Professor and Associate Dean Research Training at the University of Tasmania.
Go to Profile#8748
L. Barth Reller
#131730
Overall Influence
#8749
Philip Feigelson
#131731
Overall Influence
#8750
Mark W. Woolrich
#131738
Overall Influence
