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).
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#951
James Thomson
#8295
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
James Alexander Thomson is an American developmental biologist best known for deriving the first human embryonic stem cell line in 1998 and for deriving human induced pluripotent stem cells in 2007.
Go to Profile#952
Ulrike Beisiegel
#27032
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ulrike Beisiegel is a German biochemist and university professor who in 2011 became the first woman to serve as president of the University of Göttingen, founded in 1737. Her research on liver fats and disease was honored with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, the Rudolf Schönheimer Medal and an honorary doctorate. Intent on maintaining high levels of scholarship and diminishing scientific misconduct, she has served on many boards and committees, receiving the Ubbo-Emmius Medal for her commitment to good scientific practice and an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Go to Profile#953
Nigel Unwin
#20057
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Peter Nigel Tripp Unwin FRS is a British scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where he was Head of the Neurobiology Division from 1992 until 2008. He is currently also Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute.
Go to Profile#954
V. Narry Kim
#16668
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
V. Narry Kim is a South Korean biochemist and microbiologist, best known for her work on microRNA biogenesis. Her pioneering studies have laid the groundwork for the biology of microRNA and contributed to the improvement of RNA interference technologies.
Go to Profile#955
Mark Norell
#23186
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Mark Allen Norell is an American paleontologist, acknowledged as one of the most important living vertebrate paleontologists. He is currently the chairman of paleontology and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is best known as the discoverer of the first theropod embryo and for the description of feathered dinosaurs. Norell is credited with the naming of the genera Apsaravis, Byronosaurus, Citipati, Tsaagan, and Achillobator. His work regularly appears in major scientific journals and was listed by Time magazine as one of the ten most significant science stori...
Go to Profile#956
Giuseppe Sermonti
#31359
Overall Influence
1925 - 2018 (93 years)
Giuseppe Sermonti was an Italian professor of genetics. Sermonti is well known for his criticism of natural selection as the deciding factor of human biology. Biography Early life and career Born in Rome, graduated in agriculture and genetics, he entered the Superior Institute of Health in 1950, founding a department of Microbiological Genetics. He became professor of genetics at the University of Camerino, then at the University of Palermo in 1965, and finally moved to the University of Perugia in 1970, where he was emeritus professor and managed the Genetics Institute of the University from 1974.
Go to Profile#957
Ghillean Prance
#12775
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance is a prominent British botanist and ecologist who has published extensively on the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica. Prance is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Go to Profile#958
Donald I. Williamson
#25452
Overall Influence
1922 - 2016 (94 years)
Donald Irving Williamson was a British planktologist and carcinologist. Education Williamson gained his first degree from the Newcastle division of Durham University in 1942. He earned his PhD from the same university in 1948, and a DSc from Newcastle University in 1972. He worked at the Port Erin Marine Laboratory of the University of Liverpool from 1948 to 1997, and published on Irish Sea plankton, crustacean behaviour and taxonomy, and crustacean larvae.
Go to Profile#959
Chris Sander
#27579
Overall Influence
Chris Sander is a computational biologist based at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School. Previously he was chair of the Computational Biology Programme at the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In 2015, he moved his lab to the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the Cell Biology Department at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#960
Arthur Riggs
#15576
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Arthur Dale Riggs was an American geneticist who worked with Genentech to express the first artificial gene in bacteria. His work was critical to the modern biotechnology industry because it was the first use of molecular techniques in commercial production of drugs and enabled the large-scale manufacturing of protein drugs, including insulin. He was also a major factor in the origin of epigenetics.
Go to Profile#961
Sterling Nesbitt
#17103
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Sterling Nesbitt is an American paleontologist best known for his work on the origin and early evolutionary patterns of archosaurs. He is currently an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Geosciences.
Go to Profile#962
Stephen C. Stearns
#18157
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Stephen C. Stearns is an American biologist, and the Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Emeritus at Yale University. He is known for his work in life history theory and evolutionary medicine.
Go to Profile#963
Sandra Schmid
#31914
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Sandra Louise Schmid is the first Chief Scientific Officer of the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub. She is a Canadian cell biologist by training; prior to her move to CZI, she was Professor and Chair of the Cell Biology Department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Throughout her academic career, she has authored over 105 publications on the molecular mechanism and regulation of clathrin-mediated endocytosis and the structure and function of the GTPase dynamin and mechanisms governing membrane fission. She was the first to identify dynamin's key role in endocytosis. She is a co-f...
Go to Profile#964
Mildred Cohn
#10729
Overall Influence
1913 - 2009 (96 years)
Mildred Cohn was an American biochemist who furthered understanding of biochemical processes through her study of chemical reactions within animal cells. She was a pioneer in the use of nuclear magnetic resonance for studying enzyme reactions, particularly reactions of adenosine triphosphate .
Go to Profile#965
Remy Chauvin
#18628
Overall Influence
1913 - 2009 (96 years)
Remy Chauvin at Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, Haut-Rhin, was a biologist and entomologist, and a French Honorary Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne, PhD, and a senior research fellow since 1946. Chauvin was also known for defending the rights of animals and for being interested in such topics as parapsychology, life after death, psychics, clairvoyance and UFOs. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Pierre Duval.
Go to Profile#966
Andres Metspalu
#32068
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Andres Metspalu is an Estonian geneticist and member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Biography Metspalu was born on 11 March 1951 in Lääne-Viru County. In 1969 he graduated from the Rakke High School. In 1976 he graduated from the University of Tartu, Faculty of Medicine, as a physician. In 1979 he obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Institute of Molecular Genetics at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev. His thesis was on the structure and function of the Eukaryotic ribosome.
Go to Profile#967
Michael R. Rose
#26672
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Michael R. Rose is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Michael Roberson Rose was born on July 25, 1955. He obtained his B.S. in 1975 from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In 1976 he obtained his M.S.. In 1978 he obtained his Ph.D from the University of Sussex.
Go to Profile#968
James D. Jamieson
#22202
Overall Influence
1934 - 2018 (84 years)
James Douglas Jamieson was an American cell biologist and professor at the Yale School of Medicine. His early research in cell biology of pancreatic acinar cells in the lab of George Palade established the function of the Golgi apparatus in secretory protein trafficking.
Go to Profile#969
Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat
#13812
Overall Influence
1910 - 1999 (89 years)
Heinz Ludwig Fraenkel-Conrat was a biochemist, famous for his research on viruses. Early life Fraenkel-Conrat was born in Breslau/Germany. He was the son of Lili Conrat and Professor Ludwig Fraenkel, director of the Women's Clinic of the University of Breslau, Germany. His father, Ludwig Fraenkel, was a prominent gynecologist and medical researcher who published regarding endocrine function, social gynecology, and sexology during the first decades of the 20th century, and was one of the legion of scientists summarily dismissed from their positions by the Nazis.
Go to Profile#970
Sen-itiroh Hakomori
#34095
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Sen-itiroh Hakomori was a Japanese-American biochemist. Hakomori was born in Sendai on 13 February 1929, and graduated from Tohoku University Medical College in 1951. He elected for further study in biochemistry under Hajime Masamune. As a Fulbright Scholar, Hakomori also worked with Roger W. Jeanloz. In 1959, Hakomori began teaching at the Tohoku College of Pharmaceutical Science.
Go to Profile#971
Hugh McDevitt
#25290
Overall Influence
1930 - 2022 (92 years)
Hugh O'Neill McDevitt ForMemRS was an immunologist and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Biography McDevitt was born in Ohio. His father was a surgeon and was Irish. After receiving his M.D. from Harvard University in 1955 and completing his residency in New York, McDevitt was a captain in the U.S. Army and a special fellow for the National Institutes of Medical Research in London.
Go to Profile#972
Sean Eddy
#25808
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sean Roberts Eddy is Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology and of Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. Previously he was based at the Janelia Research Campus from 2006 to 2015 in Virginia. His research interests are in bioinformatics, computational biology and biological sequence analysis. projects include the use of Hidden Markov models in HMMER, Infernal Pfam and Rfam.
Go to Profile#973
Kurt Benirschke
#23210
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Kurt Benirschke was a German-American pathologist, geneticist and expert on the placenta and reproduction in humans and myriad mammalian species. At the San Diego Zoo, he created the world's first frozen zoo for the cryopreservation of genetic material from endangered species.
Go to Profile#974
Heiko Braak
#32209
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Heiko Braak is a German anatomist. Braak was born in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, and studied medicine at the universities of Hamburg, Berlin, and Kiel. He was Professor at the Institute of Clinical Neuroanatomy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main. Currently he is based at the 'Clinical Neuroanatomy Section, Department of Neurology, Center for Biomedical Research, University of Ulm, Germany.
Go to Profile#975
David Horrobin
#23769
Overall Influence
1939 - 2003 (64 years)
David Frederick Horrobin was a British-Canadian entrepreneur, medical researcher, author and editor. He is best known as the founder of the biotechnology company Scotia Holdings and as a promoter of evening primrose oil as a medical treatment, Horrobin was founder and editor of the journals Medical Hypotheses and Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, the latter journal co-founded with his then graduate student Morris Karmazyn.
Go to Profile#976
Eran Segal
#17158
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Eran Segal is a computational biologist professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He works on developing quantitative models for all levels of gene regulation, including transcription, chromatin, and translation. Segal also works as an epidemiologist.
Go to Profile#977
Gurdev Khush
#28417
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Gurdev Singh Khush is an Agronomist and Geneticist who, along with mentor Henry Beachell, received the 1996 World Food Prize for his achievements in enlarging and improving the global supply of rice during a time of exponential population growth.
Go to Profile#978
Gertrud Schüpbach
#29521
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Trudi Schüpbach is a Swiss-American molecular biologist. She is an Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, where her laboratory studies molecular and genetic mechanisms in fruit fly oogenesis.
Go to Profile#979
Emil R. Unanue
#28110
Overall Influence
1934 - 2022 (88 years)
Emil Raphael Unanue was a Cuban-American immunologist and Paul & Ellen Lacy Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He previously served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences Section of Microbiology and Immunology.
Go to Profile#980
Harland G. Wood
#31216
Overall Influence
1907 - 1991 (84 years)
Harland Goff Wood was an American biochemist notable for proving in 1935 that animals, humans and bacteria fixed carbon from carbon dioxide in the metabolic pathway to succinate. Awards and honours Wood was a recipient of the National Medal of Science. He was on the President's Science Advisory Committee under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Biochemical Society of Japan. He was also first director of the department of biochemistry at the School of Medic...
Go to Profile#981
Hans C. Clevers
#36369
Overall Influence
#982
Joachim Messing
#33985
Overall Influence
1946 - 2019 (73 years)
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. Upon his arrival at Rutgers in 1985, Jo Messing initiated research activity on computational and structural biology and further emphasis on molecular genetics of the regulation of gene expression and biomolecular interactions. In the eighties, he provided incubator space for two Biotechnology centers at Rutgers, one in Medicine and one in Agriculture. Subsequently, he also founded two new departments at Ru...
Go to Profile#983
Xiaole Shirley Liu
#24723
Overall Influence
Xiaole Shirley Liu is computational biologist, cancer researcher, and entrepreneur. She has been a Professor in the Department of Data Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is now the co-founder and CEO of GV20 Therapeutics.
Go to Profile#984
Teruko Ishizaka
#25086
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Teruko "Terry" Ishizaka was a Japanese scientist and immunologist who along with her husband Kimishige Ishizaka discovered the antibody class Immunoglobulin E in 1966. Their work was regarded as a major breakthrough in the understanding of allergy, and for this work she received the 1972 Passano Award and the 1973 Gairdner Foundation International Award. She was known in the science world for her generosity and collaborative spirit.
Go to Profile#985
Harald Rosenthal
#18895
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Harald Rosenthal is a German hydrobiologist and fisheries scientist known for his work in fish farming, ecology, and international cooperation. Life Rosenthal was born and raised in Berlin. From 1957 to 1962, he studied zoology, botany, chemistry, geography, and philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin . From 1963 to 1968, he studied hydrobiology and fishery science in Hamburg.
Go to Profile#986
Peter Gluckman
#18059
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Sir Peter David Gluckman is a New Zealand scientist. Originally trained as a paediatrician, he served as the inaugural Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister from 2009 to 2018. He is a founding member and was inaugural chair of the International Network for Government Science Advice, and is president of the International Science Council.
Go to Profile#987
David Goeddel
#20558
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
David V. Goeddel is an American molecular biologist who, employed at the time by Genentech, successfully used genetic engineering to coax bacteria into creating synthetic human insulin, human growth hormone, and human tissue plasminogen activator for use in therapeutic medicine.
Go to Profile#988
Leszek Borysiewicz
#11736
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Sir Leszek Krzysztof Borysiewicz is a British professor, immunologist and scientific administrator. He served as the 345th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, his term of office started on 1 October 2010 and ended on 1 October 2017. Borysiewicz also served as chief executive of the Medical Research Council of the UK from 2007-2010 and has held the role of chairman at Cancer Research UK since 2016.
Go to Profile#989
William E. Paul
#28598
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
William Erwin Paul was an American immunologist. He and Maureen Howard discovered interleukin 4, while an independent team led by Ellen Vitetta did the same in 1982. Paul worked on AIDS research for much of his career at the National Institutes of Health . He served as president of the American Association of Immunologists from 1986 to 1987.
Go to Profile#990
Allan Hobson
#6951
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
John Allan Hobson was an American psychiatrist and dream researcher. He was known for his research on rapid eye movement sleep. He was Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Go to Profile#991
Pietro De Camilli
#33053
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Pietro De Camilli NAS, AAA&S, NAM is an Italian-American biologist and John Klingenstein Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at Yale University School of Medicine. He is also an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. De Camilli completed his M.D. degree from the University of Milan in Italy in 1972. He then went to the United States and did his postdoctoral studies at Yale University with Paul Greengard.
Go to Profile#992
Trey Ideker
#23026
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Trey Ideker is a professor of medicine and bioengineering at UC San Diego. He is the Director of the National Resource for Network Biology, the San Diego Center for Systems Biology, and the Cancer Cell Map Initiative. He uses genome-scale measurements to construct network models of cellular processes and disease.
Go to Profile#993
Herbert G. Baker
#31757
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Herbert George Baker was a British-American botanist and evolutionary ecologist who was an authority on pollination biology and breeding systems of angiosperms. He described what became known as "Baker's rule," a theoretical proposal underpinning an empirical observation that the ability to self-fertilize improves colonization ability among plants by increasing the probability of successful establishment after long-distance dispersal. He collaborated with his wife, Irene Baker, studying the content and function of nectar, and undertaking research and publishing papers on its evolutionary and ...
Go to Profile#994
Robert Ricklefs
#35568
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Robert Eric Ricklefs is an American ornithologist and ecologist. He was the Curators' Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis from 1996 until August 2019. Education Born in 1943, he grew up near Monterey, California, where his interest in biology was fostered by a teacher. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University in 1963 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. His doctoral advisor was originally Robert H. MacArthur , but he finished his dissertation under W. John Smith. During his PhD, he studied avian growth and development, which he continued for much of his career.
Go to Profile#995
Mike Berridge
#35725
Overall Influence
Michael Vivian Berridge is a New Zealand cell biologist. Since 1976, he has led the cancer cell and molecular biology research group at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. He is also a professor at Victoria University of Wellington and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. He is best known for elucidating cellular mechanisms of reduction of tetrazolium dyes that are widely used in biology, and for the discovery of mitochondrial genome transfer from healthy cells to mitochondrial DNA-deficient cancer cells.
Go to Profile#996
Tom Fenchel
#22113
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Tom Michael Fenchel is a Danish marine ecologist and professor first at the University of Aarhus, later at the University of Copenhagen. He is a highly cited scientist and known for, among other things, Fenchel's Law.
Go to Profile#997
Jerker Porath
#16332
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Jerker Porath, was a Swedish biochemist who invented several separation methods for biomolecules. He was born in Sala. Porath studied at Uppsala University and initially did research in organic chemistry under Arne Fredga, where he got his licentiate degree. After a scholarship to an institute in Heidelberg he got an interest in biochemistry and switched to Arne Tiselius' department. Tiselius recommended Porath to make a research visit to Choh Hao Li and his Hormone Research Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley where Porath stayed 1951–1952. Back in Uppsala he developed methods for zone electrophoresis and ion exchange chromatography for hormone purification.
Go to Profile#998
Carlos Chagas Filho
#11923
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Carlos Chagas Filho was a Brazilian physician, biologist and scientist active in the field of neuroscience. He was internationally renowned for his investigations on the neural mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of electrogenesis by the electroplaques of electric fishes. He was also an important scientific leader, being one of the founders of the Biophysics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and was also a president for 16 years of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#999
David Lindenmayer
#25490
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Distinguished Professor David Lindenmayer, , is an Australian scientist and academic. His research focuses on the adoption of nature conservation practices in agricultural production areas, developing ways to improve integration of native forest harvesting and biodiversity conservation, new approaches to enhance biodiversity conservation in plantations, and improved fire management practices in Australia. He specialises in large-scale, long-term research monitoring programs in south-eastern Australia, primarily in forests, reserves, national parks, plantations, and on farm land.
Go to Profile#1000
Carel van Schaik
#16537
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Carolus Philippus "Carel" van Schaik is a Dutch primatologist who since 2004 is professor and director of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. Van Schaik studied biology at the University of Utrecht, graduating in 1979. He was a researcher for the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research until 1984 and finished his doctoral dissertation for the Utrecht University in 1985. After positions at this university and at Princeton University, he became Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy at Duke University in Durham in 1989.
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