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,
#9351
Eelco J. Rohling
#136113
Overall Influence
#9352
Angelo Garibaldi
#136119
Overall Influence
#9353
Gary M. King
#136128
Overall Influence
#9354
Douglass Hathaway Morse
#136132
Overall Influence
#9355
Katherine L. Knight
#126042
Overall Influence
Katherine L. Knight is an American immunologist. She is professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago whose research work has focused on the genetic basis of antibody formation and the interactions of the immune system with intestinal microbiota. Knight was president of The American Association of Immunologists from 1996 to 1997.
Go to Profile#9356
David Bukry
#136136
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
#9357
Måns Ehrenberg
#136143
Overall Influence
#9358
Alfred J. Lewy
#136149
Overall Influence
#9359
Martin Schrappe
#136161
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#9360
Johannes Petrus Maria Tommassen
#136164
Overall Influence
#9361
Steven Rasmussen
#127744
Overall Influence
Steven Rasmussen is an American psychiatrist, currently the Mary E. Zucker Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University, and is a major figure in his field. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and American Psychological Association.
Go to Profile#9362
Mark L. Winston
#128593
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Mark L. Winston is a Canadian biologist and writer. A professor of apiculture and social insects at Simon Fraser University, he spent much of his career studying bees until becoming founding director of the university's Centre for Dialogue in 2006.
Go to Profile#9363
Louis Kreel
#136207
Overall Influence
#9364
R. Lance Miller
#136212
Overall Influence
#9365
James McGraw
#126565
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
James B. McGraw is an American ecologist and Eberly Professor of Biology at West Virginia University. Education McGraw earned his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Botany at Duke University in 1982. He is a plant population biologist, with specific interests in ecological and evolutionary responses of natural plant populations to regional and global environmental change.
Go to Profile#9366
Walter G. Zumft
#136216
Overall Influence
#9367
Maija K. Leinonen
#136233
Overall Influence
#9368
Y. Van Lecrubier
#136237
Overall Influence
#9369
Tamar Flash
#91011
Overall Influence
Tamar Flash is an Israeli neuroscientist and control theorist whose research concerns biological motor control, including the motion of the human arm, the effects of neurological damage on motion, and the use of robotics to study biological motion. She holds the Dr. Hymie Moross Professorial Chair in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Go to Profile#9370
Klaus Eichmann
#136250
Overall Influence
#9371
Rafael Malach
#136251
Overall Influence
#9372
Edwin Chapman
#128531
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Edwin R. Chapman is an American biochemist known for his work on Ca2+-triggered exocytosis. He currently serves as the Ricardo Miledi Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute .
Go to Profile#9373
Colin J. Barnstable
#136286
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#9374
Rhondda Jones
#71922
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Rhondda Elizabeth Jones was the first Professor of Zoology and the first female professor at James Cook University, and served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1997 to 2000. Professor Jones was previously the Chair of the Academic Board of James Cook University. In 2019 she is Director, Research Development in the division of Tropical Health & Medicine at James Cook University.
Go to Profile#9375
David F. Paulson
#136289
Overall Influence
#9376
Enrico Mugnaini
#136293
Overall Influence
#9377
Robert R. Jackson
#136298
Overall Influence
#9378
Roger D. Weiss
#136299
Overall Influence
#9379
Gregory d. Cascino
#136302
Overall Influence
#9380
Christopher W. Turck
#136303
Overall Influence
#9381
Sven Hammarström
#136313
Overall Influence
#9382
Roberto Bassi
#136350
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#9383
Susan Halabi
#110911
Overall Influence
Susan Halabi is a professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Duke University, known for her research on prostate cancer. As a member of the data safety monitoring board for a study of the anti-prostate cancer effects of abiraterone acetate , she argued that stopping the study early had prevented the study from accurately determining the effectiveness of the drug, and possibly made it appear to be more effective than it actually was. She also took part in a study showing that, when prostate cancer has reached the point of spreading to other parts of the body, the parts that it spreads to ...
Go to Profile#9384
Anders Ehrenberg
#136372
Overall Influence
#9385
Eleazar Shafrir
#136382
Overall Influence
#9386
Karen Beemon
#136383
Overall Influence
Karen Beemon is an American molecular biologist and professor of biology at Johns Hopkins University known for her research on RNA viruses and viral oncogenesis. Career Beemon got her B.S. in 1969 from the University of Michigan, and then her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where she worked with Peter Duesberg in collaboration with Peter Vogt. As a graduate student, Beemon determined the size of retroviral genomes which led to the characterization of the Src oncogene of Rous sarcoma virus, the first tyrosine kinase, during her postdoctoral tenure with Tony Hunter at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego.
Go to Profile#9387
Alexander Murray Harper
#136397
Overall Influence
#9388
Norman H. Boke
#107179
Overall Influence
1913 - 1996 (83 years)
Norman Hill Boke was a plant anatomist who specialized in the anatomy of the Cactaceae. He spent the greater part of his career at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. Life He received his undergraduate degree from the University of South Dakota in 1934 and his master's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1936. He earned the Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1939, under the supervision of Adriance S. Foster.
Go to Profile#9389
Donald E. Mosier
#136404
Overall Influence
#9390
John Groopman
#117560
Overall Influence
John D. Groopman is an American cancer researcher. Groopman completed his bachelor's degree at Elmira College in 1974, then obtained a doctorate in toxicology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. He remained at MIT for postdoctoral research, and subsequently worked for the National Cancer Institute within the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis. Groopman served as the Anna M. Baetjer Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and later the Edyth H. Schoenrich Professorship in Preventive Medicine.
Go to Profile#9391
Michael Geschwind
#48235
Overall Influence
Michael D. Geschwind is a professor of neurology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center , specializing in neurodegenerative disorders. Geschwind has published highly-cited papers on rapidly progressive dementias, prion diseases , Alzheimer disease, and limbic and autoimmune encephalitis. He has served as the principal investigator on studies on human prion disease and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. He was guest editor for the American Academy of Neurology Continuum Dementia edition, and was on the AAN committee for dementia criteria. He has also published highly-cited papers on cognitive dysfunction...
Go to Profile#9392
Pushpa S. Kalra
#136445
Overall Influence
#9393
Kristin Baldwin
#115564
Overall Influence
Kristin K. Baldwin is an American scientist who is a professor at the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University. Her research focuses on using reprogrammed and induced pluripotent stem cells to identify mechanisms and therapies related to human genetic risk for neurologic and cardiovascular disease. Her lab also studies how disease and aging affect the genome; they have used cloning to produce the first complete genome sequence of a single neuron and helped assess the effect of aging on induced pluripotent stem cells that may be used for cell therapies. They also design bespoke neuronal cells in a dish to understand brain function and disease.
Go to Profile#9394
Klaus Lieb
#136455
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#9395
Peter James O'dwyer
#136463
Overall Influence
#9396
Frank Jessen
#136466
Overall Influence
#9397
Cornelis Murre
#136475
Overall Influence
#9398
Lowell L. Getz
#136484
Overall Influence
#9399
Domenico Coppola
#136486
Overall Influence
#9400
Pietro M. Gullino
#136490
Overall Influence
