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,
#10401
Luciano Saso
#144442
Overall Influence
#10402
Dag Klaveness
#143089
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Dag Klaveness was a Norwegian limnologist. He was born in Sandefjord. After taking his cand.real. degree in marine botany at the University of Oslo in 1971, he was hired as a lecturer at the University of Oslo in 1974, and in 1992 promoted to professor. He died in October 2020 in Oslo.
Go to Profile#10403
Kenneth 0. Lloyd
#144454
Overall Influence
#10404
A˚ke Flock
#144455
Overall Influence
#10405
Haruhiko Akiyama
#144460
Overall Influence
#10406
Christian Wiencke
#144472
Overall Influence
#10407
Daniel Gianola
#105921
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Daniel Gianola is a geneticist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison , reputed for his contributions in quantitative genetics to the fields of animal and plant breeding. In the early 1980s, Gianola extended best linear unbiased prediction to the non-linear domain for analysis of categorical traits , using the classical threshold model of Sewall Wright. Subsequently, he pioneered the use of Bayesian methodologies and Monte Carlo Markov chain methods in quantitative genetics. He also revived early work by Sewall Wright on structural equation models and cast their application in the context of modern quantitative genetics and statistical methodology.
Go to Profile#10408
Yakov A. Pachepsky
#144496
Overall Influence
#10409
Principal Investigators
#144509
Overall Influence
#10410
Nereo Bresolin
#144510
Overall Influence
#10411
Patricia Burrowes
#140807
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Patricia A. Burrowes Gomez is an American herpetologist. She is a professor of biology at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus where she serves as principal investigator of the Amphibian Disease Ecology Lab. Burrowes specializes in amphibian population dynamics.
Go to Profile#10412
Park W. Waldroup
#144550
Overall Influence
#10413
Patsy Ann McLaughlin
#116938
Overall Influence
1932 - 2011 (79 years)
Patsy Ann "Pat" McLaughlin , was an American carcinologist and was regarded as being one of the most influential scientists in her field. The crab genus Patagurus was named in her honor in 2013. Early life and education McLaughlin was born in Seattle on May 27, 1932 to Edna Pearl Lessenger and Elmer Robert McLaughlin. She attended both Palo Alto Junior and Senior High School and graduated in 1946. She went on to attend both the University of Utah and the University of Washington, but did not obtain a degree. After serving in the United States Air Force, McLaughlin returned to tertiary educatio...
Go to Profile#10414
André Bouchard
#63056
Overall Influence
1946 - 2010 (64 years)
André Bouchard was a Canadian ecologist and environmentalist who spent most of his career at Université de Montréal and the Montreal Botanical Garden. His specialties included landscape ecology and plant community ecology, and he received several awards during his lifetime.
Go to Profile#10415
Katalin Susztak
#115671
Overall Influence
Katalin Susztak is a Hungarian American scientist and nephrologist at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a professor of medicine and genetics, and currently the codirector of the Complications Unit at the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. Her laboratory made major contributions to the current understanding of kidney disease development. She is also the founder of the Transformative Research In DiabEtic NephropaThy , a collaborative network of physicians and basic scientists, to find cures for diabetic kidney disease.
Go to Profile#10416
Gary J. Olsen
#144561
Overall Influence
#10417
Hagai Rottenberg
#144579
Overall Influence
#10418
Yvon Le Maho
#120852
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Yvon Le Maho is a French ecophysiologist and research director at the CNRS at the University of Strasbourg. Biography He was elected correspondent of the French Academy of sciences on 22 March 1993, then member on 28 October 1996. He was involved in the Grenelle de l'environnement and drafted a report on GMO maize in which he clearly expressed his opposition to GMOs, drawing in particular on the work of Gilles-Éric Séralini and Corinne Lepage of the CRII-GEN foundation.
Go to Profile#10419
Erik De Schutter
#144581
Overall Influence
#10420
Bernard L. Trumpower
#144583
Overall Influence
#10421
Ian Brockington
#93354
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Ian Brockington is a British psychiatrist. Education and career Ian Fraser Brockington was educated at Winchester College and Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. He received his medical training at Manchester University. His doctoral thesis was on 'Heart muscle disease'.
Go to Profile#10422
Susan Henry
#144593
Overall Influence
Susan Henry is a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell University, and formerly the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is best known for her work in the genetic regulation of lipid metabolism in yeast.
Go to Profile#10423
Richard G. Ham
#144596
Overall Influence
#10424
Richard S. Farr
#144620
Overall Influence
#10425
Yaacov Okon
#144628
Overall Influence
#10426
Junichi Hatazawa
#144630
Overall Influence
#10427
Johannes Zacharias Groenewald
#144635
Overall Influence
#10428
Allan J. Fischman
#144641
Overall Influence
#10429
Michael J. Mumma
#117506
Overall Influence
Michael J. Mumma is an American astrobiologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center; he is best known for his investigation of the chemistry of comets. Education Mumma graduated Franklin and Marshall College in 1963, with an A.B. in physics. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1970, and joined NASA's GSFC thereafter.
Go to Profile#10430
Clements Ip
#144650
Overall Influence
#10431
Ellen Lumpkin
#93448
Overall Influence
Ellen Lumpkin is an American neuroscientist and professor of cell and developmental biology and neurobiology at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also co-director of the MBL Advanced Training Course in Neurobiology, and adjunct associate professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and co-director of the Thompson Family Foundation Initiative in CIPN and Sensory Neuroscience at Columbia University. Lumpkin's group studies genes, cells and signals that mediate the sensation of touch. Lumpkin is most interested in the somatosensory system and how it gives feedback to the brain on sensations such as pain or touch.
Go to Profile#10432
Lawrence Hadley Thompson
#144656
Overall Influence
#10433
Paul Babitzke
#143399
Overall Influence
Paul Babitzke is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and director of the Center for RNA Molecular Biology at Pennsylvania State University. Education Paul Babitzke obtained his B.A. in biomedical science from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota in 1994. He earned his Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Georgia in 1991.
Go to Profile#10434
Richard A. Lockshin
#144662
Overall Influence
#10435
Dale t. Umetsu
#144664
Overall Influence
#10436
Grethe Rytter Hasle
#72255
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Grethe Berit Rytter Hasle was a Norwegian planktologist. Among the first female professors of natural science at the University of Oslo, she specialized in the study of phytoplankton. Personal life Hasle was born in Borre as the daughter of shipmaster Johan Kristian Rytter and his wife Nicoline Olava Nielsen . She married Hans Martin Hasle and took his name; he died in 1971. She resided at Ekeberg in Norway and died in November 2013.
Go to Profile#10437
David S. Saunders
#144672
Overall Influence
#10438
Åke Bernhard Vallbo
#144674
Overall Influence
#10439
John Thomas Wei
#144678
Overall Influence
#10440
Bernhard Horsthemke
#144685
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#10441
Thomas Michael Smith
#144689
Overall Influence
#10442
Rose Leke
#100423
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Rose Gana Fomban Leke is a Cameroonian malariologist and Emeritus Professor of Immunology and Parasitology at the University of Yaounde I. Early life and education When Leke was growing up she suffered from malaria multiple times, it was a normal part of life. She was first interested in medicine due to treatment she received for lung abscess in Limbe when she was six years old. Her mother never went to school, however her father was a school teacher, and both encouraged her to pursue educational opportunities. She went to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Indiana, US in 1966 for her undergradu...
Go to Profile#10443
Mario Umberto Dianzani
#144722
Overall Influence
#10444
Ralph R. Schneider
#144731
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#10445
Alain Fournier
#144739
Overall Influence
#10446
Angus Silver
#123392
Overall Influence
Robin Angus Silver is Professor of Neuroscience and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at University College London. His laboratory studies neurotransmission and artificial neural networks by combining in vitro and in vivo experimental approaches with quantitative analysis and computational models developed in silico.
Go to Profile#10447
Danesh Moazed
#144751
Overall Influence
#10448
Katsumi Eguchi
#144755
Overall Influence
#10449
Ragnar Larsson
#144756
Overall Influence
#10450
Hermann Steller
#144762
Overall Influence
