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,
#10101
Andries Kalsbeek
#141888
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#10102
Nigel E. Stork
#140489
Overall Influence
Nigel E. Stork is a scientist with special interest areas in entomology and biological diversity. He is Professor Emeritus at Griffith University in south east Queensland, Australia, and works as a Member of the Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security.
Go to Profile#10103
Kirk A. Frey
#141918
Overall Influence
#10104
Michael A. Geeves
#141922
Overall Influence
#10105
Janine Doly
#141927
Overall Influence
#10106
Marco Presta
#141932
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#10107
Rex Michael Tyrrell
#141957
Overall Influence
#10108
Lindy W. Cayzer
#101466
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Lindy Webster Cayzer CF is an Australian botanist. Early life and education Cayzer was born on 25 April 1952, daughter of Robert and Rita Webster. She graduated from the Australian National University with a PhD in 1997.
Go to Profile#10109
Charles Raymond Lake
#141960
Overall Influence
#10110
Masaki Furuya
#141983
Overall Influence
#10111
Seppo Kellomäki
#141985
Overall Influence
#10112
John Edwin Nestler
#141988
Overall Influence
#10113
Wolfgang Nentwig
#142000
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#10114
Thomas Walz
#142003
Overall Influence
#10115
Donald Chant
#119323
Overall Influence
1928 - 2007 (79 years)
Donald Alfred Chant was a Canadian entomologist, zoologist, and environmental advocate, known for his work using mites in biological control. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Entomological Society of Canada. Born in Toronto, he moved to Vancouver in 1945, where he earned a BA and MA from the University of British Columbia. He received his PhD from the University of London in 1956. He was chair of the Department of Biological Control at the University of California, Riverside from 1964 to 1967, then made chair of the University of Toronto Department of Zoology, w...
Go to Profile#10116
Lester William Clem
#142027
Overall Influence
#10117
Jonathan W. Friedberg
#142030
Overall Influence
#10118
Patricia G. Spear
#133479
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Patricia Gail Spear is an American virologist. She is a professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is best known for her pioneering work studying the herpes simplex virus. Spear is a past president of the American Society for Virology and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#10119
Evan H. Morgan
#142058
Overall Influence
#10120
Aida Habtezion
#104812
Overall Influence
Aida Habtezion is an Eritrean physician and immunologist. In 2021, Habtezion took a leave of absence from Stanford University to become the Chief Medical Officer of Pfizer and head of Worldwide Medical and Safety within Worldwide Research, Development, and Medicine.
Go to Profile#10121
Robert Endean
#101879
Overall Influence
1925 - 1997 (72 years)
Robert Endean was an Australian marine scientist and academic at the University of Queensland. Early life Robert Endean was born in December 1925 in Abermain, New South Wales, and was raised in Abernethy. He attended Cessnock High School and won a scholarship to study at the University of Sydney taking a B.Sc. with Honours in zoology in 1948 and a University Gold Medal. He took his M.Sc from the same university in 1949, supervised by the marine biologist, Professor William Dakin. He took his PhD at the University of Queensland in 1958.
Go to Profile#10122
David Allen Hovda
#142093
Overall Influence
#10123
Alberto Verrotti
#142113
Overall Influence
#10124
Tyge Ahrengot Christensen
#107997
Overall Influence
1918 - 1996 (78 years)
Tyge Ahrengot Christensen was a Danish botanist and phycologist.
Go to Profile#10125
William E. Rawls
#142141
Overall Influence
#10126
Marie-France Sagot
#82044
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Marie-France Sagot is director of research at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation and a member of staff at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 where she works on algorithms for computational biology and gene prediction and biological sequence analysis. She was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2019 for "outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics". Since 2002 she has been a visiting research fellow at King's College London.
Go to Profile#10127
Imogen Coe
#43095
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Imogen Ruth Coe is a British-born biochemist. Educated in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, Coe has taught at York University in Canada. She is a professor of biochemistry and founding dean of the Faculty of Science at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto.
Go to Profile#10128
Julian T. Hoff
#142164
Overall Influence
#10129
Ross C. Donehower
#142167
Overall Influence
#10130
Dr. David L. Wingate
#142174
Overall Influence
#10131
Anthony J. Martin
#103545
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Anthony J. Martin is a paleontologist who has taught at Emory University since the early 1990s. He is best known for his books, An Introduction to the Study of Dinosaurs, Life Traces of the Georgia Coast and Dinosaurs without Bones He is married to artist Ruth Schowalter.
Go to Profile#10132
Amy B. Heimberger
#124875
Overall Influence
Amy B. Heimberger is an American neurosurgeon and physician-scientist. She is the Jean Malnati Miller Professor of Neurological Surgery, vice-chair for research in the department of neurological Surgery at Feinberg School of Medicine and scientific director of The Malnati Brain Tumor Institute at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Go to Profile#10133
Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz
#107987
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz is a French paediatrician, Professor and Director of the Developmental Neuroimaging Lab at CNRS. Her research uses non-invasive brain imaging to understand children's cognitive function. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#10134
Elizabeth A. Winzeler
#136555
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Elizabeth Ann Winzeler is an American microbiologist and geneticist. She is a professor in the Division of Host-Microbe Systems and Therapeutics of the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego. Although she works in a variety of different disease areas, most research focuses on developing better medicines for the treatment and eradication of malaria.
Go to Profile#10135
Dawn R. Bazely
#118605
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Dawn R. Bazely is a full professor in biology in the Faculty of Science, and the former Director of the Institute for Research Innovation in Sustainability , at York University in Canada. In 2015 she was awarded the title of University Professor for services to research, teaching, and the institution. Bazely has been a field biologist for forty years and her research specializes in plant-animal interactions in ecology. She has also been recognized for her science communication.
Go to Profile#10136
Li Ding
#127093
Overall Influence
Li Ding is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University. She is known for the development of multiple computational tools now commonly used in cancer biology research, including VarScan, HotSpot3D, and BreakDancer.
Go to Profile#10137
Thomas James Carew
#142297
Overall Influence
#10138
Arthur Shapiro
#134989
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Arthur "Art" Shapiro is an American vision scientist and creator of visual illusions. He is the co-editor of the Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions. He is currently a professor of psychology and computer science with the American University in Washington, D.C., and Director of the Collaborative for Applied Perceptual Research and Innovation .
Go to Profile#10139
Gareth Owen
#53096
Overall Influence
1922 - 2002 (80 years)
Gareth Owen, was a Welsh zoologist and academic. He was Principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth from 1979 to 1989 and additionally Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales from 1985 to 1987. He had served as a Royal Air Force pilot during the Second World War, and then lectured in zoology at the University of Glasgow and Queen's University Belfast.
Go to Profile#10140
Natasha Mhatre
#79008
Overall Influence
Natasha Mhatre is a researcher in Canada at Western University whose research focuses on animal communication. Focusing on insect biomechanics, she is an assistant professor and NSERC Canada Research Chair in invertebrate neurobiology.
Go to Profile#10141
Vito Quaranta
#142318
Overall Influence
#10142
Paola Picotti
#129660
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Paola Picotti is an Italian biologist who is Professor for Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zürich. She is Deputy Head of the Institute for Molecular Systems Biology. Her research investigates how the conformational changes of proteins impact cellular networks. She was awarded the 2020 ETH Zürich Rössler Prize and the 2019 EMBO Gold Medal.
Go to Profile#10143
Niel E. West
#142344
Overall Influence
#10144
María Domínguez Castellano
#140275
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
María Domínguez Castellano is a Spanish neuroscientist and director of the Department of Developmental Neurobiology in the Institute of Neurosciences, Alicante, Spain, which is a joint Miguel Hernández University of Elche and Spanish National Research Council institution.
Go to Profile#10145
Sherif R. Zaki
#142362
Overall Influence
#10146
Philip D. Whanger
#142379
Overall Influence
#10147
Hideaki Karaki
#142385
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
#10148
Jasbinder Singh Sanghera
#142388
Overall Influence
#10149
Dieter Mecke
#108864
Overall Influence
1933 - 2013 (80 years)
Dieter Mecke was a German biochemist and chemist. Life Dieter Mecke was the fourth of nine children of the physicist Reinhard Mecke, after whom Mecke's symbols have been named. He studied chemistry until 1959 in Freiburg. In his biochemical doctorate he was supervised by Kurt Wallenfels. He worked for one year for Fritz Kaudewitz at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and returned 1964 to the biochemical institute of the medical faculty, where he habilitated in 1969 in biochemistry. From 1970 to 1971 he was dean and from 1973 professor in Freiburg.
Go to Profile#10150
Evan. H. Delucia
#142410
Overall Influence
