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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Biology,
#9651
Paul B. Mccray
#138529
Overall Influence
#9652
John F. Rawls
#129965
Overall Influence
John Franklin Rawls is an American developmental biologist. He is an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University and the director of the Duke Microbiome Center. Education John Franklin Rawls completed an undergraduate degree at Emory University between 1992 and 1996. He earned a doctor of philosophy in developmental biology at Washington University in St. Louis in 2001. His dissertation was titled Genetic dissection of kit-dependent melanocyte development in zebrafish, Danio rerio. He was mentored under Stephen L. Johnson. Rawls completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Jeffrey I.
Go to Profile#9653
Jacques M. Pasteels
#138537
Overall Influence
#9654
John George Haddad
#138554
Overall Influence
#9655
Alex Marson
#47006
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Alexander Marson is an American biologist and infectious disease doctor, specializing in genetics, human immunology, and CRISPR genome engineering. He is the Director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology, and a tenured Professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco .
Go to Profile#9656
James R. Wright
#138564
Overall Influence
#9657
Stella Catherine Knight
#138575
Overall Influence
#9658
Nian-zhi Jiao
#138583
Overall Influence
#9659
Klaus – Peter Hoffmann
#138586
Overall Influence
#9660
Jie‐shou Li
#138598
Overall Influence
#9661
Vanessa Sperandio
#131497
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Vanessa Sperandio is a professor at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in both the departments of microbiology and biochemistry. She will join the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health as the chair of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in spring 2022.
Go to Profile#9662
Abel Méndez
#68306
Overall Influence
Professor Abel Méndez is a planetary astrobiologist and Director, at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. His research focuses on the habitability of potentially habitable exoplanets. Méndez is also a NASA MIRS Fellow with research experience at NASA, and the Arecibo Observatory.
Go to Profile#9663
Friedrich Widdel
#138610
Overall Influence
#9664
Patrick Schrauwen
#138618
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
#9665
David. Mirelman
#138620
Overall Influence
#9666
Larry E. Kun
#138622
Overall Influence
#9667
Carlo H. R. Heip
#138627
Overall Influence
#9668
Helen Walden
#132150
Overall Influence
Helen Walden is an English structural biologist who received the Colworth medal from the Biochemical Society in 2015. She was awarded European Molecular Biology Organization membership in 2022. She is a Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Glasgow and has made significant contributions to the Ubiquitination field.
Go to Profile#9669
Rainerr Fischer
#138642
Overall Influence
#9670
Barbara Baehr
#108108
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Barbara Baehr is a German research scientist, entomologist, arachnologist, and spider taxonomist. She has described over 400 new spider species, mostly from Australia. She is originally from Pforzheim, Germany.
Go to Profile#9671
Daniel E. Sonenshine
#138644
Overall Influence
#9672
Sabine Dittmann
#53778
Overall Influence
Sabine Dittmann is an Australian-based marine biologist and expert on the ecology of tidal flats. She is Associate Professor of Marine Biology at Flinders University in Adelaide, and is President of the Australian Marine Sciences Association.
Go to Profile#9673
Margaret McCarthy
#97441
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Margaret M. "Peg" McCarthy is an American neuroscientist and pharmacologist. She is the James & Carolyn Frenkil Endowed Dean's Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she is also Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology. She is known for her research on the neuroscience of sex differences and their underlying mechanisms. In 2019, she received the Gill Transformative Investigator Award from the Gill Center for Biomolecular Science at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#9674
Henrique M. Pereira
#116318
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Henrique Miguel Leite de Freitas Pereira is a Portuguese conservation biologist. He is a professor at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, head of the Biodiversity Conservation research group at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research , and Chair of the Portugal Infrastructures Biodiversity Chair at CIBIO-InBIO, University of Porto. From 2014 to 2020 he was the Chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network GEO BON. He is an avid and vocal supporter of the Sporting Football Club.
Go to Profile#9675
Anne E. Giblin
#98353
Overall Influence
Anne E. Giblin is a marine biologist who researches the cycling of elements nitrogen, sulfur, iron and phosphorus. She is a Senior Scientist and Acting Director of the Ecosystem Center at the Marine Biological Lab.
Go to Profile#9676
Yoshiharu Yonekura
#138680
Overall Influence
#9677
Emanuel Lebenthal
#138683
Overall Influence
#9678
Alan D. Robson
#138700
Overall Influence
#9679
George Robert Siggins
#138702
Overall Influence
#9680
Giulio Jori
#138714
Overall Influence
#9681
Robert F. Garry
#138715
Overall Influence
#9682
Elizabeth D. Getzoff
#138716
Overall Influence
#9683
Menna Clatworthy
#119094
Overall Influence
Menna R. Clatworthy FRCP FMedSci FLSW is a British immunologist who is Professor of Translational Medicine at the University of Cambridge. She studies human tissue immunity. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2022.
Go to Profile#9684
Beat H. Gähwiler
#138727
Overall Influence
#9685
Sven Bölte
#138728
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#9686
Arthur Gottlieb
#86250
Overall Influence
1937 - 1998 (61 years)
Abraham Arthur Gottlieb was an American biologist and immunologist. Biography Gottlieb was born in Haifa under the British Mandate on December 14, 1937, to an American mother and a British father, who was then deputy minister of agriculture under the British Mandate. He grew up with his mother who returned to New York when he was 13 months old. Gottlieb attended the Bronx High School of Science with the class of 1954. He entered Columbia College in 1953 under the early admission scholarship program by Ford Foundation. He was a coxswain for Columbia's rowing team and graduated from Columbia in...
Go to Profile#9687
Pierre Drapeau
#138741
Overall Influence
#9688
Pierre Gönczy
#138747
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Pierre Gönczy is a Swiss and Italian cell and developmental biologist. His research focuses on centriole biology and asymmetric cell division. He is currently professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne , where he directs the Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Biology.
Go to Profile#9689
Paul David Brown
#138753
Overall Influence
#9690
Shin‐ichi Kohsaka
#138763
Overall Influence
#9691
Edward Bullmore
#63081
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
#9692
Joel D. Meyers
#138764
Overall Influence
#9693
William L. Klein
#138767
Overall Influence
#9694
Hans Foerstl
#138770
Overall Influence
#9695
Jack Denney Griffith
#138771
Overall Influence
#9696
Colin Espie
#60201
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Colin Espie PhD, DSc, FRSM, FBPsS FAASM is a Scottish Professor of Sleep Medicine in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Somerville College. He is closely involved with the development of the Sir Jules Thorn Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute where he is Founding Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine Research programme, and Clinical Director of the Oxford Online Programme in Sleep Medicine. His particular areas of research expertise are in the assessment and treatment of sleep disorders, most particularly the manag...
Go to Profile#9697
Sagar Sengupta
#56946
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sagar Sengupta is an Indian immunologist, cancer biologist and a scientist at the National Institute of Immunology, India. Known for his studies on tumor suppressor gene and oncogenes, Sengupta is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2011.
Go to Profile#9698
Yimtubezinash Woldeamanuel
#131062
Overall Influence
Yimtubezinash Woldeamanuel Mulate is an Ethiopian physician and microbiologist researching infectious diseases, hospital-acquired infections, and antimicrobial resistance. She is an associate professor of medical microbiology at Addis Ababa University.
Go to Profile#9699
Bernhard Hemmer
#138820
Overall Influence
#9700
Christian c. Haudenschild
#138851
Overall Influence
