Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Subdiscipline

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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#1101

Olivia Judson

#20288

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Olivia P. Judson is a British evolutionary biologist and science writer. She is a former journalist for The Economist, a former online columnist for The New York Times and has published in a number of other publications, including National Geographic, The Atlantic and the Financial Times. Judson was a fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study in 2010–2011, and a Guggenheim fellow in 2020.

#1102

Floyde E. Bloom

#39790

Overall Influence

#1103

Frank B. Salisbury

#28634

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Frank Boyer Salisbury was an American plant physiologist who served for a time as head of the Utah State University department of plant science. Career Salisbury held a B.S. and M.A. from the University of Utah. He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He taught for eleven years as a professor at Colorado State University before joining the faculty of USU.

#1104

Robert Poulin

#38708

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Robert Poulin is an evolutionary ecologist specialising in the ecology of parasitism. He is a professor of zoology at the University of Otago and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Biography Poulin grew up in Canada, taking his bachelor's degree in aquatic biology at McGill University, Montreal and gaining his doctorate at Université Laval, Quebec City. He became a researcher in Quebec. He moved to New Zealand in 1992, where he is a professor of zoology, leading a research group studying the ecology of parasites at the University of Otago.

#1105

Eugene P. Kennedy

Eugene P. Kennedy

#26146

Overall Influence

1919 - 2011 (92 years)

Eugene Patrick Kennedy was an American biochemist known for his work on lipid metabolism and membrane function. He attended DePaul University and then became a PhD student at the University of Chicago. From 1959 to 1993 he worked at Harvard Medical School.

#1106

Andrei Lupaș

#39761

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Andrei N. Lupaș is a German-Romanian biochemist, molecular biologist, and bioinformatician. Education and career Lupaș was born in Bucharest, Romania, he began his studies in biology at the Technical University of Munich in 1982 before continuing his studies in molecular biology at Princeton University, where he received his PhD in 1991 with Jeffry Stock on the mechanism of signal transduction in bacterial chemotaxis. He then worked at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in the Wolfgang Baumeister's department until 1997. From 1997 to 2001, he worked at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals in Collegeville.

#1107

Torbjörn Caspersson

#24770

Overall Influence

1910 - 1997 (87 years)

Torbjörn Oskar Caspersson was a Swedish cytologist and geneticist. He was born in Motala and attended the University of Stockholm, where he studied medicine and biophysics. Contributions Caspersson made several key contributions to biology.In the 1934 he and Einar Hammarsten showed that DNA was a polymer. Previous theories suggested that each molecule was only ten nucleotides long.He provided William Astbury with well prepared samples of DNA for Astbury's pioneering structural measurements.In 1936, in his doctoral thesis in chemistry, presented at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, he f...

#1108

Robert Webster

#33468

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Robert Gordon Webster is an avian influenza authority who correctly posited that pandemic strains of flu arise from genes in flu virus strains in nonhumans; for example, via a reassortment of genetic segments between viruses in humans and nonhumans rather than by mutations in annual human flu strains.

#1109

Ari Helenius

#35650

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Ari Helenius is a Finnish emeritus professor of biochemistry who is known for his research in virology. Personal life Helenius was born 3 September 1944 in Oulu, Finland. Career He did his PhD with Kai Simons at the University of Helsinki in 1973. From 1975 until 1981 he worked as a staff scientist at the newly-created European Molecular Biology Laboratory. From 1981 to 1997, he was a professor at Yale University, where he was chair of the department of cell biology from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, he joined the ETH Zurich as a founding member of the Institute of Biochemistry.

#1110

Nils Christian Stenseth

Nils Christian Stenseth

#29905

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nils Christian Stenseth is a Norwegian biologist with a focus on ecology and evolution. He is the director of the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis at the University of Oslo, CEES was given Centre of Excellence status by the Research Council of Norway in December 2006. He is also the Chief Scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research in Norway, and Honorary Professor of Tsinghua University.

#1111

Rupert E. Billingham

#26092

Overall Influence

1921 - 2002 (81 years)

Rupert Everett Billingham FRS was a British biologist who did significant research in the fields of reproductive immunology and organ transplantation. "He made numerous fundamental contributions to our modern knowledge of the mechanisms of graft rejection and how to prevent it, and he analysed some of the mechanisms responsible for the survival of the mammalian foetus in an immunologically hostile environment".

#1112

David M. Sabatini

#20379

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

David M. Sabatini is an American scientist and a former professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2002 to 2021, he was a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2008 to 2021 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. He is known for his contributions in the areas of cell signaling and cancer metabolism, most notably the co-discovery of mTOR.

#1113

C. Sue Carter

#22290

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

C. Sue Carter is an American biologist and behavioral neurobiologist. She is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral neuroendocrinology. In 2014 she was appointed Director of The Kinsey Institute and Rudy Professor of Biology at Indiana University. Carter was the first person to identify the physiological mechanisms responsible for social monogamy.

#1114

Allan Snyder

#11254

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Allan Whitenack Snyder is the director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia where he also holds the 150th Anniversary Chair of Science and the Mind. He is a co-founder of Emotiv Systems and winner of the International Australia Prize in 1997 and the Marconi Prize in 2001 for his contributions to optical physics. Snyder is also the Creator and Chairman of the What Makes a Champion? forum, an official Olympic cultural event first held at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He is also the Chair of Research on the MindChamps World Research, Advisory and Education Team, wit...

#1115

Wendy Suzuki

#22954

Overall Influence

Wendy Suzuki is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the New York University Center for Neural Science and popular science communicator. She is the author of Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better. Since September 1, 2022, she has served as Dean of the New York University College of Arts & Science.

#1116

Robert M. Goodman

#32938

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Robert "Bob" M. Goodman is a prominent plant biologist and virologist, and served as the executive dean of agriculture and natural resources at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey since June 2005. He was the executive dean of Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and served as the executive director of Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

#1117

Frederic M. Richards

Frederic M. Richards

#22381

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

Frederic Middlebrook Richards , commonly referred to as Fred Richards, was an American biochemist and biophysicist known for solving the pioneering crystal structure of the ribonuclease S enzyme in 1967 and for defining the concept of solvent-accessible surface. He contributed many key experimental and theoretical results and developed new methods, garnering over 20,000 journal citations in several quite distinct research areas. In addition to the protein crystallography and biochemistry of ribonuclease S, these included solvent accessibility and internal packing of proteins, the first side-c...

#1118

Donald Jeffries

#22459

Overall Influence

1941 - 2011 (70 years)

Professor Donald Jeffries was a British virologist and academic. He was a leading expert on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes AIDS. Education Jeffries was educated at the William Ellis Grammar School in Highgate, North London, and then did medical training at the Royal Free Hospital School, from where he qualified in 1966.

#1119

Marvin H. Caruthers

#22017

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Marvin H. Caruthers is an American biochemist who is a distinguished professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Caruthers earned a B.S in chemistry at the Iowa State University in 1962 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry 1968 at Northwestern University with Robert Letsinger. He did his postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Har Gobind Khorana. From 1973 he was assistant professor and in 1980 professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

#1120

Peter J. Ratcliffe

Peter J. Ratcliffe

#12028

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sir Peter John Ratcliffe, FRS, FMedSci is a British Nobel Laureate physician-scientist who is trained as a nephrologist. He was a practising clinician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016. He has been a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford since 2004. In 2016 he became Clinical Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute, retaining a position at Oxford as a member of the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and director of the Target Discovery ...

#1121

Paul Stamets

#10845

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Paul Edward Stamets is an American mycologist and entrepreneur who sells various mushroom products through his company. He is an author and advocate of medicinal fungi and mycoremediation. Early and personal life Stamets was born in Salem, Ohio. He grew up in Columbiana, Ohio with an older brother, John, older brother, Bill, an older sister, Lilly, his twin brother North, and younger siblings. He graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington with a bachelor's degree in 1979. He worked as a logger. As of 2013, Stamets was married to Carolyn "Dusty" Yao. He has an honorary d...

#1122

Pauline Johnson

#35640

Overall Influence

Pauline Johnson is an English immunologist and microbiologist at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on innate and adaptive immune mechanisms — in particular, the mobility of proteins in membranes, lymphocyte cell surface molecules, T cell signalling, leukocyte adhesion, and macrophages in lung inflammation.

#1123

Marc Feldmann

#21549

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Sir Marc Feldmann, , is an Australian-educated British immunologist. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. Biography Feldmann was born 2 December 1944 in Lvov to a Jewish family who managed to get to France immediately postwar. He emigrated from France to Australia at age eight. After graduating with an MBBS degree from the University of Melbourne in 1967, he earned a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in 1972 with Sir Gustav Nossal.

#1124

Andrew B. Newberg

#6691

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Andrew Newberg is an American neuroscientist who is a professor in the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences and the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, previously an adjunct professor of religious studies and a lecturer in psychology in the Biological Basis of Behavior Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

#1125

Frederic Vester

#12859

Overall Influence

1925 - 2003 (78 years)

Frederic Vester was a German biochemist, and an expert in the field of ecology. Biography Vester was born in Saarbrücken, and studied chemistry at the universities of Mainz, Paris and Hamburg. From 1955 to 1957, he was postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and Cambridge. From 1957 to 1966 he worked at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, and from 1969 he worked in Munich, first at the Max Planck Institute. In 1970 he founded the private Munich-based Frederic Vester Studiengruppe für Biologie und Umwelt GmbH , renamed Frederic Vester GmbH after his death.

#1126

Karin Mölling

#27303

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Karin Mölling is a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus . She was a full professor and director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich from 1993 to 2008. She is retired but retains affiliations with the University of Zurich and with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.

#1127

Guido Barbujani

Guido Barbujani

#19279

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Guido Barbujani is an Italian population geneticist, evolutionary biologist and literary author born in Adria, who has worked with the State University of New York at Stony Brook , University of Padua, and University of Bologna. He has taught at the University of Ferrara since 1996.

#1128

John Medina

#19618

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

John J. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist with special research interests in the isolation and characterization of genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. Medina has spent most of his professional life as an analytical research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research issues related to mental health.

#1129

Luke O'Neill

#33846

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Luke Anthony John O'Neill is an Irish biochemist. He has been a professor of biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin since 2009. Early life and education O'Neill was born on 17 June 1964 in Dublin, Ireland, to Kevin O'Neill and Carmel O'Neill . He was educated at St Peter's School and Presentation College in Bray, County Wicklow, and went to Trinity College Dublin, where he was awarded an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences in 1985. He completed his postgraduate study at the University of London, where he was awarded a PhD in pharmacology, fo...

#1130

David Sillence

#5988

Overall Influence

David Owen Sillence is an academic and medical geneticist. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, where he was the foundation chair of Medical Genetics. An honours graduate of the University of Sydney, he obtained his MD in Medical Genetics from the University of Melbourne 1978 in bone dysplasia.

#1131

Peter Piot

#5100

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS. After helping discover the Ebola virus in 1976 and leading efforts to contain the first-ever recorded Ebola epidemic that same year, Piot became a pioneering researcher into AIDS. He has held key positions in the United Nations and World Health Organization involving AIDS research and management. He has also served as a professor at several universities worldwide. He is the author of 16 books and over 600 scientific articles.

#1132

M. Scott Peck

#3232

Overall Influence

1936 - 2005 (69 years)

Morgan Scott Peck was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author who wrote the book The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978. Early life Peck was born on May 22, 1936, in New York City, the son of Zabeth and David Warner Peck, an attorney and judge. His parents were Quakers. Peck was raised a Protestant .

#1133

Richard L. Huganir

#22635

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Richard Lewis Huganir is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences, Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Brain Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has joint appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

#1134

Louise Fresco

#17744

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Louise Ottilie Fresco is a Dutch scientist and writer known for her work on globally sustainable food production. Career in academia Fresco has been the President of the Wageningen University & Research Executive Board since 1 July 2014. She is a professor at Wageningen University and a corresponding member of Belgium's Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences.

#1135

Alexander George Ogston

#27729

Overall Influence

1911 - 1996 (85 years)

Alexander George Ogston FAA FRS was a British biochemist who specialised in the thermodynamics of biological systems. He was a grandson of Sir Alexander Ogston, a Scottish surgeon who discovered Staphylococcus.

#1136

Frank W. Putnam

#31195

Overall Influence

1917 - 2006 (89 years)

Frank W. Putnam was an American biochemist and university professor. Early life and education Frank W. Putnam was born August 3, 1917, in New Britain, Connecticut. He attended Wesleyan University, where he received his B.A. in Chemistry in 1939 and an M.A. in Chemistry in 1940. In 1942, he received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota.

#1137

Huda Zoghbi

#12757

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Huda Yahya Zoghbi , born Huda El-Hibri, is a Lebanese-born American geneticist, and a professor at the Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Neuroscience and Neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine. She is the director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute. She became the editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience as of 2018.

#1138

Gaiti Hasan

#27873

Overall Influence

Gaiti Hasan is an Indian scientist who researches in the fields of molecular biology, genetics, neuroscience and cell signalling. Hasan is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy , the apex body of Indian scientists and technologists. From 2013 onwards she has been serving as a Senior Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences , Bangalore.

#1139

Melvyn Greaves

#34645

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Sir Melvyn Francis Greaves FMedSci, FRS is a British cancer biologist, and Professor of Cell Biology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. He is noted for his research into childhood leukaemia and the roles of evolution in cancer, including important discoveries in the genetics and molecular biology underpinning leukaemia.

#1140

Carlos M. Duarte

Carlos M. Duarte

#31792

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Carlos Manuel Duarte is a marine ecologist conducting research on marine ecosystems globally, from polar to the tropical ocean and from near-shore to deep-sea ecosystems. His research addresses biodiversity in the oceans, the impacts of human activity on marine ecosystems, and the capacity of marine ecosystems to recover from these impacts. He is also interested in transdisciplinary research, collaborating with scientists and engineers across a broad range of fields to solve problems in the marine ecosystem and society. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the King Abdullah University ...

#1141

Eviatar Nevo

#27098

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Eviatar Nevo , is Professor Emeritus, founder and director of the Institute of Evolution at University of Haifa, Israel. Research Nevo received a M.Sc and PhD from Hebrew University. His Ph.D thesis was entitled "Population studies of Anurans from the lower Cretaceous of Makhtesh Ramon, Israel". He founded the Institute of Evolution at Haifa in 1973 and researches evolutionary biology, in particular, speciation processes, modifications of highly evolved traits , climatic and geographic effects in sympatric speciation in insects, bacteria, fungi, mammals and crops. He is a proponent of evolut...

#1142

Victor P. Whittaker

Victor P. Whittaker

#25218

Overall Influence

1919 - 2016 (97 years)

Victor Percy Whittaker was a British biochemist who pioneered studies on the subcellular fractionation of the brain. He did this by isolating synaptosomes and synaptic vesicles from the mammalian brain and demonstrating that synaptic vesicles store the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

#1143

R. John Collier

#30962

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

R. John Collier is an American microbiologist and biochemist. He is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School. Early life and education Collier was born in Wichita Falls, Texas on August 6, 1938. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University in 1959. He completed a Master of Science in 1961 and a Doctor of Philosophy in biology at Harvard University in 1964.

#1144

Toshio Murashige

#40756

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (94 years)

Toshio Murashige is a professor emeritus of University of California Riverside in plant biology. He is most widely known for his efforts in creating the plant tissue culture medium known as Murashige and Skoog medium.

#1145

Daniel Amen

#5249

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Daniel Gregory Amen is an American celebrity doctor who practices as a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist as director of the Amen Clinics. He is a five-time New York Times best-selling author as of 2012.

#1146

Rodolphe Barrangou

#18354

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Rodolphe Barrangou is the Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor in Probiotics Research in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences at North Carolina State University; Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CRISPR Biotechnologies; Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Ancilia Biosciences; Co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of TreeCo; and Co-Founder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Intellia Therapeutics. His research focuses on CRISPR-Cas9 in bacteria.

#1147

Nancy Rothwell

#11768

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Areas of Specialization: Physiology Nancy Rothwell is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, the director of AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceuticals company, and a physiologist. She is also a trustee of Cancer Research UK and chair of the Research Defence Society. She earned her first class degree in physiology and a PhD from Queen Elizabeth College. Her early research efforts were focused on obesity, cachexia, and energy balance regulation. She is a vocal supporter of women in science and has provided visionary leadership in her roles as the president of the Royal Society of Biology.

#1148

Ignacio Chapela

#18381

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Ignacio Chapela is a microbial ecologist and mycologist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for a 2001 paper in Nature on the flow of transgenes into wild maize populations, as an outspoken critic of the University of California's ties to the biotechnology industry, as well as a later dispute with the University over denial of tenure that Chapela argued was politically motivated. Chapela is also notable for his work with natural resources and indigenous rights.

#1149

Alan Feduccia

#26667

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

John Alan Feduccia is a paleornithologist specializing in the origins and phylogeny of birds. He is S. K. Heninger Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. Feduccia's authored works include three major books, The Age of Birds, The Origin and Evolution of Birds, Riddle of the Feathered Dragons, and many peer-reviewed papers in ornithological and biological journals.

#1150

Leonard Lerman

#20823

Overall Influence

1925 - 2012 (87 years)

Leonard Solomon Lerman was an American scientist most noted for his work on DNA. Life and career Lerman was born and raised in Pittsburgh, the son of Freamah and Meyer Lerman, Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. His father was a department store buyer. Lerman began attending the Carnegie Institute of Technology before graduating from high school and received his BS in five semesters. As a graduate student with Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology, Lerman discovered that antibodies have two binding sites. Later, perhaps his most important discovery was that certain molecules bind to DNA by intercalation.

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