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,
#8851
Bruce W. Chesebro
#132579
Overall Influence
#8852
Carl, R. Alving
#132583
Overall Influence
#8853
David L. Peterson
#120975
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
David L. Peterson is an Emeritus Senior Scientist with the United States Forest Service and professor at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, at the University of Washington. He was also a co-founder and lead scientist for the Western Mountain Initiative, a consortium of researchers known world-wide for their work on the effects of climate change on mountain ecosystems.
Go to Profile#8854
Alan S. Rosenthal
#132602
Overall Influence
#8855
Jonathan P. Stoye
#112353
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jonathan Paul Stoye is a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, England. He has made substantial contributions to scientific understanding of the interactions of retroviruses with their hosts.
Go to Profile#8856
Thomas Eschenhagen
#132642
Overall Influence
#8857
Jennifer L. Martin
#95828
Overall Influence
Professor Jennifer Louise "Jenny" Martin is an Australian scientist, academic, and was recently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales. She is a former Director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery at Griffith University. and a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Her research expertise lies in the areas of structural biology, protein crystallography, protein interactions and their applications in drug design and discovery.
Go to Profile#8858
Bernard C. Portmann
#132656
Overall Influence
#8859
James L. Maller
#132664
Overall Influence
#8860
Gordon Awandare
#118999
Overall Influence
Gordon Akanzuwine Awandare is a Ghanaian parasitologist and the Pro-Vice Chancellor in charge of Academic and Student Affairs at the University of Ghana. Prior to his appointment in January 2022, He was the founding Director of the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens . He is the current chairman of the CKT-UTAS governing council and the Africa Global Editor of the Experimental Biology and Medicine journal.
Go to Profile#8861
Ruth Dayhoff
#85999
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ruth Dayhoff is an American physician and medical bioinformatician. Early life Dayhoff is the daughter of Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, an early bioinformatician, and Edward S Dayhoff, a distinguished Physicist in the area of Electro-optics. From a young age, Dayhoff was encouraged by her mother to pursue scientific interests. In Dayhoff's words:
Go to Profile#8862
Yasuo Uchiyama
#132701
Overall Influence
#8863
Robert Evans. Snodgrass
#132703
Overall Influence
#8864
Philippe Gaulard
#132723
Overall Influence
#8865
Vicky J. Meretsky
#76150
Overall Influence
Vicky J. Meretsky is an American professor and Director of Environmental Masters Programs at Indiana University Bloomington. Education Meretsky received a Bachelor of Sciences at Cornell University in 1980. In 1988, she completed her first Master's degree in Wildlife Ecology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California and pursued a second Master's degree in Statistics from the University of Arizona in 1993. She completed her Doctorate in 1995 at the University of Arizona, where she studied the foraging ecology of Egyptian vultures in the Negev Desert.
Go to Profile#8866
Kari Dunfield
#131881
Overall Influence
Kari Edith Dunfield is a Canadian microbiologist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology of Agro-ecosystems and Professor in Applied Soil Ecology in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph. , she is the co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#8867
Bruce S. Lieberman
#129861
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Bruce Smith Lieberman is an American paleontologist. Lieberman received his A.B 1988 summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and Stephen Jay Gould was his undergraduate advisor. He received a Master's in 1991 and a Doctorate in 1994 from Columbia University, and Niles Eldredge was his graduate advisor. During graduate school he was based at the American Museum of Natural History. He did a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship with Elisabeth Vrba at Yale University and a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship with Andrew Knoll at Harvard University. Since 1998 he has been on the faculty ...
Go to Profile#8868
Andy Dray
#132734
Overall Influence
#8869
Thomas J. Schall
#132744
Overall Influence
#8870
Gilles J. Guillemin
#129064
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Gilles J. Guillemin is an Australian neuroscientist. He received the Ordre national du Mérite in 2019 in recognition of his work in medical research. He was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in 2021.
Go to Profile#8871
James K. Agee
#132756
Overall Influence
#8872
William E. Sandine
#132761
Overall Influence
#8873
Serdar Ekrem Bulun
#132800
Overall Influence
#8874
Jason Swedlow
#117809
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Jason Swedlow is an American-born cell biologist and light microscopist who is Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland. He is a co-founder of the Open Microscopy Environment and Glencoe Software. In 2021, he joined Wellcome Leap as a Program Director.
Go to Profile#8875
Takashi Hashimoto
#132804
Overall Influence
#8876
Helmut L. Haas
#132805
Overall Influence
#8877
Velia Fowler
#124280
Overall Influence
Velia M. Fowler is an American cell biologist and biochemist specializing in the cytoskeleton. She is a professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware. Early life and education Fowler obtained her bachelor of arts from Oberlin College in 1974 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1980. While working on her PhD, she was named a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.
Go to Profile#8878
Dwayne C. Savage
#132821
Overall Influence
#8879
Patricia J. Mclaughlin
#132846
Overall Influence
#8880
Howard England Zalkin
#132851
Overall Influence
#8881
Martin Ingvar
#132863
Overall Influence
#8882
Sarah Louise Rowland-jones
#132866
Overall Influence
#8883
Sherie L. Morrison
#132869
Overall Influence
#8884
Wayne L. Hubbell
#93186
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Wayne L. Hubbell is an American biochemist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is Professor of Biochemistry and Jules Stein Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the visual system, and is primarily supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute.
Go to Profile#8885
Gertrud Dahlgren
#104740
Overall Influence
1931 - 2009 (78 years)
Life Gertrud Dahlgren was a Swedish botanist. She was born at Klippan in Scania, and after graduating from university at Helsingborg went to the University of Lund for graduate studies. There she obtained her M.Sc. in chemistry and biology. She was married to fellow botanist Rolf Dahlgren , who was killed in a car accident. Gertrud Dahlgren had three children, Elisabet, Karin and Anders. She died in February 2009 at the age of 78.
Go to Profile#8886
Charles Dean Stiles
#132881
Overall Influence
#8887
Erich‐bernd Ringelstein
#132891
Overall Influence
#8888
Thomas E. Eling
#132894
Overall Influence
#8889
Anders A. F. Sima
#132914
Overall Influence
#8890
Bryce K. A. Weir
#132917
Overall Influence
#8891
Janet Sinsheimer
#92653
Overall Influence
Janet Suzanne Sinsheimer was an American expert in statistical genetics who worked as a professor of human genetics, biomathematics and biostatistics in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Topics in her research included genome-wide association studies, epigenetics, and Bayesian methods for phylogenetics.
Go to Profile#8892
Lorenzo Alibardi
#132927
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#8893
Elizabeth Harper
#122449
Overall Influence
Elizabeth M. Harper is an evolutionary biologist known for her work on molluscs. She is an honorary fellow of the British Antarctic Survey and was accorded the title of Honorary Professor by the University of Cambridge in 2019.
Go to Profile#8894
Robert L. Hill
#102978
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Robert L. Hill was a biochemist who spent most of his career on the faculty at Duke University School of Medicine, from which he retired as the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus. Hill's research focused on the chemistry of enzymes, with particular specialization in glycosyltransferases and glycobiology.
Go to Profile#8895
Anne Wyllie
#44487
Overall Influence
Anne Louise Wyllie is a New Zealand microbiologist who was the lead author of a 2020 research article which led to the development of the SalivaDirect PCR method of testing saliva for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. She has also worked on community studies to better understand pneumococcal disease. She is a research scientist in epidemiology with the Public Health Modeling Unit at Yale University.
Go to Profile#8896
Donald L. Riddle
#132933
Overall Influence
#8897
Kurt Von Figura
#132937
Overall Influence
#8898
Martin Wilhelmus Antonius Verstegen
#132938
Overall Influence
#8899
J. P. Christophe
#132944
Overall Influence
#8900
Squire Booker
#74059
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Squire Booker is an American biochemist at Penn State University. Booker directs an interdisciplinary chemistry research program related to fields of biochemistry, enzymology, protein chemistry, natural product biosynthesis, and mechanisms of radical dependent enzymes. He is an associate editor for the American Chemical Society Biochemistry Journal, is a Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and an Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science at Penn State University.
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