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,
#9251
Dharmendra Modha
#46885
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Dharmendra S. Modha is an Indian American manager and lead researcher of the Cognitive Computing group at IBM Almaden Research Center. He is known for his pioneering works in Artificial Intelligence and Mind Simulation. In November 2009, Modha announced at a supercomputing conference that his team had written a program that simulated a cat brain. He is the recipient of multiple honors, including the Gordon Bell Prize, given each year to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing applications. In November 2012, Modha announced on his blog that using 96 Blue Gene/Q racks of ...
Go to Profile#9252
E. Dward Taub
#135529
Overall Influence
#9253
Harihara M. Mehendale
#135537
Overall Influence
#9254
Billie J. Swalla
#132991
Overall Influence
Billie J. Swalla is a professor of biology at the University of Washington. She was the first female director of Friday Harbor Laboratories, where she worked from 2012 to 2019. Her lab investigates the evolution of chordates by comparative genetic and phylogenetic analysis of animal taxa.
Go to Profile#9255
Susumu Ikehara
#135558
Overall Influence
#9256
Oliver A. Ryder
#135562
Overall Influence
#9257
Hilton c. Whittle
#135564
Overall Influence
#9258
H. Darriush Fahimi
#135575
Overall Influence
#9259
Chaim M. Hershko
#135578
Overall Influence
#9260
Margaret Torn
#114986
Overall Influence
Margaret Torn is an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory known for her research on carbon cycling, especially with respect to the interactions between soils and the atmosphere. Education and career Torn grew up in Marin county and worked in the family's food business, the Torn Ranch, where they handled nuts and dried fruits. She started college at the College of Marin before transferring to University of California, Berkeley. She earned a B.S. , an M.S. , and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1994 until 1998, Torn was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California Irvine and Stanford University.
Go to Profile#9261
Gerd Multhaup
#135581
Overall Influence
#9262
Michael G. Simic
#135583
Overall Influence
#9263
Paula Clayton
#119672
Overall Influence
1934 - 2021 (87 years)
Paula Jean Clayton was an American psychiatrist. She was the first female chairperson of a major psychiatric department in the United States. She is known for destigmatising mental illness, rigorous data driven research methods to study psychiatry, especially depression and bipolar disorder.
Go to Profile#9264
Robert William Doty
#135597
Overall Influence
#9265
James I. Morgan
#135601
Overall Influence
#9266
Graeme Caughley
#135607
Overall Influence
#9267
Mary B. Kennedy
#118937
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mary Bernadette Kennedy is an American biochemist and neuroscientist. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1981. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, the process underlying formation of memory in the central nervous system. Her lab uses biochemical and molecular biological methods to study the protein machinery within a structure called the postsynaptic density. Kennedy has published o...
Go to Profile#9268
Dennis B. Lubahn
#135627
Overall Influence
#9269
Jocelyn Faubert
#52829
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jocelyn Faubert is a psychophysicist best known for his work in the fields of visual perception, vision of the elderly, and neuropsychology. Professor Faubert holds the NSERC-Essilor Industrial Research Chair in Visual Perception and Presbyopia. He is the director of the Laboratory of Psychophysics and Visual Perception at the University of Montreal. Professor Faubert has also been involved in the award-winning transfer of research and developments from the laboratory into the commercial domain. He is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of CogniSens Inc.
Go to Profile#9270
Hugo E. C. Kesteloot
#135630
Overall Influence
#9271
Prof. P. Cerretelli
#135638
Overall Influence
#9272
Tanja Woyke
#135641
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#9273
Derek Thomas O'hagan
#135645
Overall Influence
#9274
Jeannine Cavender-Bares
#110193
Overall Influence
Jeannine Cavender-Bares is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior. Her research integrates evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology by studying the functional traits of plants, with a particular focus on oaks.
Go to Profile#9275
Fu‐sheng Wang
#135651
Overall Influence
#9276
Alan Clifford Aisenberg
#135653
Overall Influence
#9277
F. Merlin Bumpus
#135657
Overall Influence
#9278
Martin C. Rechsteiner
#135662
Overall Influence
#9279
Gordon N. Gill
#135670
Overall Influence
#9280
J. R. D. Mitchell
#135674
Overall Influence
#9281
Robert I. Levy
#10388
Overall Influence
1924 - 2003 (79 years)
Robert I. Levy was an American psychiatrist and anthropologist known for his fieldwork in Tahiti and Nepal and on the cross-cultural study of emotions. Though he did not receive a formal degree in anthropology, he spent most of his adult life conducting anthropological fieldwork or teaching in departments of anthropology. In developing his approach to anthropology, he credited his cousin, the anthropologist Roy Rappaport, and Gregory Bateson .
Go to Profile#9282
John Victor Small
#135691
Overall Influence
#9283
Merton R. Bernfield
#135695
Overall Influence
#9284
Suresh Subramani
#135702
Overall Influence
#9285
Kenneth S. Norris
#104541
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Kenneth Stafford Norris was an American marine mammal biologist, conservationist, and naturalist. Norris did pioneering work on dolphin echolocation. His conservation work included helping establish the University of California Natural Reserve System and work towards passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Norris was a professor at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.
Go to Profile#9286
Hubert. Ziegler
#135704
Overall Influence
#9287
Stephen M. Tenney
#135708
Overall Influence
#9288
Dietrich Mebs
#135712
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
#9289
Jørn Wetterslev
#135730
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#9290
Gábo. Jancsó
#135748
Overall Influence
#9291
Leonardo Fogassi
#135752
Overall Influence
#9292
Vincent Laudet
#135761
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#9293
Tengiz Beridze
#135762
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Tengiz Beridze is a Georgian biochemist. He was born on 26 October 1939 in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, USSR. Career In 1967 he discovered satellite DNA in plants. Through his research from 1972 to 1975, it was found that closely related species of one genus differ in satellite DNA content. In 1986 he published the monograph Satellite DNA in Springer Edition. In 2013 this monograph was edited as an eBOOK. In 2011-17 he established a complete nucleotide sequence of four Georgian grape varieties, nuclear, chloroplast and mitochondria. In 2015-21 he established a complete chloroplast DNA sequence of G...
Go to Profile#9294
Allan C. Collins
#135763
Overall Influence
#9295
Robert Killick‐kendrick
#135773
Overall Influence
#9296
Gregory Alex Grabowski
#135775
Overall Influence
#9297
Nicola Stonehouse
#123492
Overall Influence
Nicola Jane Stonehouse is a British virologist who is a professor in molecular virology at the University of Leeds. Her research investigates viral diseases and the use of RNA aptamers to study viral proteins. She has worked on the development of a novel poliovirus vaccine that makes use of virus-like particles.
Go to Profile#9298
Leslie M. Loew
#135791
Overall Influence
#9299
Françoise Clavel‐chapelon
#135797
Overall Influence
#9300
Diana Prata
#95651
Overall Influence
Diana Prata is a Portuguese neuroscientist who concentrates on identifying the biological basis of human behaviour. She reported the first evidence that schizophrenia-risk genes can also predispose to bipolar disorder and has also investigated reasons why people respond differently to antipsychotic medications. She is head of the Biomedical Neuroscience Lab at the University of Lisbon.
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