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,

#10651

Konstanze Krüger

Konstanze Krüger
#76802
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Konstanze Krüger-Farrouj is a German zoologist and behaviour researcher. She is Professor of Horse Management at Nürtingen-Geislingen University of Applied Science, and her special field of research is the social system of horses.
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#10652

Timothy J. Bralower

#146378
Overall Influence
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#10653

Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez

#108380
Overall Influence
1959 - 2021 (62 years)
Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez, also known as Rafael Navarro-González and Rafael Navarro, was a Mexican NASA astrobiologist who worked with the Curiosity rover on the planet Mars, and who helped lead researchers in the identification of ancient organic compounds on the planet. He was an internationally recognized scientist who merged laboratory simulations, field studies and modeling based on biology, chemistry and physics. Navarro-Gonzalez noted the significance of volcanic lightning in the origin of life on Earth. His professional work included the SAM component on the Mars Science Laboratory, and...
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#10654

Abdulmassih S. Iskandrian

#146387
Overall Influence
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#10655

Anthony Butterworth

#122948
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Anthony Butterworth FRS is a British immunologist. He worked for the Schistosomiasis Research Group at the University of Cambridge. His laboratory work is supplemented by field studies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, South America and the United States.
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#10656

Sally P. Stabler

#146400
Overall Influence
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#10657

Kate Watkins

#91251
Overall Influence
Kathryn Emma Watkins is an experimental psychologist in the Wellcome Trust centre for integrative neuroimaging at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her research investigates the brain processes that underlie speech, language and development.
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#10658

Claire C. Chenu

#146428
Overall Influence
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#10659

Jeremy N. McNeil

#131485
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jeremy Nichol McNeil is an English-Canadian biologist and zoologist. In 2004, he was named the Helen Battle Professor of Chemical Ecology in the Biology Department at the University of Western Ontario, having previously worked at Laval University.
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#10660

Melanie Bahlo

#129144
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Melanie Bahlo is an Australian statistical geneticist and bioinformatician. Biography Bahlo’s interest with science and biology developed at a very young age. Growing up in Germany, she used to record the birds that came and visited her bird feeder during winter. Bahlo attended secondary school at Albury High School in Albury, Australia. She received her PhD in population genetics from Monash University in 1998. Bahlo's research interests include statistics, genetics, bioinformatics, and population genetics. Her work has "led to the discovery of new genes involved in genetic diseases such as deafness and epilepsy".
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#10661

Jennifer A. Pietenpol

#146443
Overall Influence
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#10662

Cássio van den Berg

#137145
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Cássio van den Berg is a Brazilian botanist, noted for work in orchid classification and evolution, especially great changes in the generic circumscriptions of ornamental orchids in the genus Cattleya, based on DNA studies for the subtribe Laeliinae.
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#10663

Yasuo Kishimoto

#146454
Overall Influence
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#10664

Shigeyoshi Itohara

#146456
Overall Influence
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#10665

Mark Magnuson

#146458
Overall Influence
Mark A. Magnuson is an American biologist, currently the Louise B. McGavock Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Medicine, and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University.
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#10666

Thomas N. Chase

#146469
Overall Influence
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#10667

Andrew S. Wechsler

#146501
Overall Influence
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#10668

Philip E. Oyer

#146508
Overall Influence
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#10669

Ina Vandebroek

Ina Vandebroek
#137875
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ina Vandebroek is an ethnobotanist working in the areas of floristics, ethnobotany and community health. Since 2005, she has worked at the New York Botanical Garden in the Institute of Economic Botany. She has worked on ethnobotanical projects in North America, the Caribbean, and South America.
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#10670

Russell Jago

#146516
Overall Influence
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#10671

George F. Vande Woude

#146522
Overall Influence
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#10672

Susan J. Clark

#138090
Overall Influence
Professor Susan J. Clark is an Australian biomedical researcher in epigenetics of development and cancer. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015, and is a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow and Research Director and Head of Genomics and Epigenetics Division at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Clark developed the first method for bisulphite sequencing for DNA methylation analysis and used it to establish that the methylation machinery of mammalian cells is capable of both maintenance and de novo methylation at CpNpG sites and showed is inheritable.
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#10673

Michael A. Chirigos

#146589
Overall Influence
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#10674

Elisabetta Erba

#146601
Overall Influence
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#10675

Tadeusz P. Chorzelski

#146607
Overall Influence
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#10676

Hans A. Messner

#146608
Overall Influence
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#10677

Margaret Sabine

#125314
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Margaret Sabine was the pioneering virologist for Australian veterinary schools. She conducted studies on viruses in cats and horses, with her characterisation of different equine viruses being her most significant scientific contribution. Other achievements include becoming head of the department of veterinary pathology and bacteriology, being chairwoman of the NSW Animal Welfare Advisory Council, an honorary Veterinary Science degree at the University of Sydney, and being a co-discoverer of viral interference.
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#10678

Duanqing Pei

#109903
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Dr. Duanqing Pei is a research scientist who specializes in regenerative medicine. Originally from a small agricultural college in southern China, Dr. Pei went on to complete his graduate work at and obtained his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. He then became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan before becoming a faculty member at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine in 1996. He joined the medical faculty at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China in 2002 and became the head of the pharmacology department soon after. In 2004, Dr. Pei moved to the newly f...
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#10679

Nino Stocchetti

#146631
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
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#10680

Charles M. Deber

#146659
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
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#10681

Anton Gartner

#142107
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Anton Gartner is a geneticist and biologist utilizing the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system He is a distinguished professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Korea and is one of the two associate directors of the IBS Center for Genomic Integrity located on the UNIST campus.
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#10682

Harris Eyre

#67529
Overall Influence
Harris Eyre is an Australian neuroscientist, entrepreneur and author. He is focused on advancing the field of brain capital. It is believed the world is increasingly relying on brain capital, where a premium is put on brain skills and brain health , and that investing in building brain capital is fundamental to meet modern societal challenges and to drive innovation.
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#10683

Gordon W. Duff

#146685
Overall Influence
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#10684

Michael F. Seldin

#146690
Overall Influence
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#10685

Yaron Niv

#146692
Overall Influence
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#10686

Deneb Karentz

#110881
Overall Influence
Deneb Karentz is full-time faculty, professor, and chair of the Biology Department at University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on the ultraviolet photobiology of marine organisms and understanding their strategies for protection from UV exposure, particularly in relation to the ecological implications of Antarctic ozone depletion.
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#10687

Robert J. Jones

#119938
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert J. Jones is a crop physiology scientist and currently the tenth chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Jones is the first African-American to hold this office. He previously served as president of the University of Albany. In addition to his academic career, Jones was a tenor singer in Sounds of Blackness, a vocal ensemble from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota that sings gospel, soul, and R&B.
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#10688

Kenneth D Harris

#134113
Overall Influence
Kenneth D. Harris is a neuroscientist at University College London. He is most known for his contributions to the understanding of the neural code used by vast populations of neurons. Among his discoveries is the finding that populations in sensory areas of the brain also code for body movements. Harris has contributed to the development of silicon probes and most recently of Neuropixels probes. With these probes, he and his team discovered that engagement in a task activates neurons throughout the brain.
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#10689

Tao Pan

#146703
Overall Influence
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#10690

Mary Ellen Sanders

#146719
Overall Influence
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#10691

Lin He

#61420
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Lin He is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is an associate professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, where she leads a lab focusing on identifying non-coding RNA which may play a role in tumorigenesis and tumor maintenance.
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#10692

Helen Foot Buell

#117474
Overall Influence
1902 - 1995 (93 years)
Helen Foot Buell was an American botanist, algologist, ecologist, and editor. Early life and education Helen Foot was born in Kalispell, Montana, the daughter of Charles Henry Foot and Theresa M. Polley Foot. Both of her parents were born in Minnesota; her father was a lawyer. She graduated from Flathead County High School, and completed a Ph.D. in Phycology at the University of Minnesota in 1938, funded in part with a fellowship from the American Association of University Women.
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#10693

Ross John Solaro

#146735
Overall Influence
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#10694

Robert Herman Wagner

#146736
Overall Influence
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#10695

Howard M. Yonas

#146742
Overall Influence
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#10696

Ronald Peter Lesser

#146756
Overall Influence
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#10697

Heinrich Jasper

#122078
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Heinrich Jasper is a German-American biologist at Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He was formerly a professor of biology at The University of Rochester. He studies aging, stem cell function, and tissue regeneration.
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#10698

Yves Chilliard

#146777
Overall Influence
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#10699

Pere B. Puigserver

#146793
Overall Influence
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#10700

Christine D. Dijkstra

#146795
Overall Influence
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