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.

Search Influential People

Clear Form

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#11201

Kevin E. Behrns

#150352
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11202

Peter Ten Dijke

#150361
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11203

Uta Passow

#150363
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11204

Nina Wedell

#149425
Overall Influence
Nina Wedell is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. She was appointed as the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow in 2019. She will investigate the evolutionary dynamics of sexual conflict and insecticide resistance genes at the University of Melbourne. Professor Wedell has pioneered the field of sexual selection, and is best known for her research on female multiple mating, polyandry. Her work has encompassed many insect systems including butterflies, moths, and flies.
Go to Profile
#11205

Andrew Camilli

#150411
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11206

Kazuo Okanoya

#150419
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Go to Profile
#11207

Eva J. Neer

#150423
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11208

David Yarnitsky

#150431
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11209

Mahendra S. Rao

#150445
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11210

Marcel Borgers

#150456
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11211

William F. Blakemore

#150462
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11212

Ivar Roots

#150466
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11213

Vincent J. Cristofalo

#150482
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11214

Curtis J. Mettlin

#150484
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11215

Harry John Mersmann

#150507
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11216

Armin Moczek

#117074
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Armin Moczek is a German evolutionary biologist and full professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Biography Moczek studied biology at the University of Würzburg, where he graduated in 1996 with a master's degree in zoology. Joining Fred Nijhout’s lab at Duke University he developed a deep interest in Evolutionary developmental biology, receiving his PhD in 2002. From 2002 to 2004 he joined the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral fellow in the Postdoctoral Excellence in Research and Teaching program. In 2004, he assumed the position of assistant professor at the Department of Biology ...
Go to Profile
#11217

Francesco Bistoni

#150512
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11218

Eberhardt Weihe

#150513
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11219

Wolfgang Wiltschko

#150516
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11220

Brian Hemmings

#64878
Overall Influence
Brian Arthur Hemmings FRS is a British biochemist, and Senior Group Leader, at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. He is a member of the Faculty of 1000. Education He was educated at the University of Nottingham and the University of East Anglia .
Go to Profile
#11221

Fusao Hirata

#150529
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11222

Carol L. Boggs

#147151
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Carol Linda Boggs is an American biologist specializing in the reproductive biology, population biology, ecology, and evolution of butterflies. Boggs completed her BA in 1973 and her PhD in 1979 in zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 2013, she has been a professor in the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment and the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Boggs is the author of more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and has served on editorial boards for several journals. She has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of...
Go to Profile
#11223

Kimberly A. With

#117408
Overall Influence
Kimberly A. With is an American ecologist. She is a Full Professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University. Career Between 1988 and 1992, With served as Associate Editor for the journal Proceedings of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, published by the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. She simultaneously earned her PhD in Biology from Colorado State University.
Go to Profile
#11224

Fernando Azpiroz

#150569
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11225

Wolfgang Eugen Pfleiderer

#150576
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11226

Olga Hudlická

Olga Hudlická
#125618
Overall Influence
1926 - 2014 (88 years)
Olga Hudlická was a Czech-born physiologist, who fled the normalization of communism in her country and moved to England. Working at the University of Birmingham, she studied blood flow and restriction, as well as capillary growth in cardiac and skeletal muscles.
Go to Profile
#11227

Ruth Chiquet-Ehrismann

#119525
Overall Influence
1954 - 2015 (61 years)
Ruth Chiquet-Ehrismann was a Swiss biochemist and cell biologist working on interactions in the extracellular matrix. Life Ruth Chiquet-Ehrismann was born in Zürich. She received her Ph.D. from the ETH Zürich in 1981. Her mentors were Hans M. Eppenberger and David C. Turner. As a postdoctoral fellow she worked with Robert Dottin at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. In 1984 she joined the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel as a Junior group leader and was promoted to Senior group leader in 1993.
Go to Profile
#11228

Jonas Ranstam

#150592
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11229

Hiroshi Hamada

#150597
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Go to Profile
#11230

Arthur Bank

#150598
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11231

Luca Padua

#150600
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11232

Georg Reiser

#150612
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11233

Richard E. Tashian

#150613
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11234

Pierre Cochat

#150618
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11235

Robert R. L. Guillard

#150627
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11236

Fuad N. Ziyadeh

#150632
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11237

Masae Tatematsu

#150633
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11238

Frances James

#136242
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Frances Crews James is an American ecologist who served as a Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida State University. James studied geographic variation in the size and shape of birds, leading to transplant experiments with red-winged blackbirds and to tests of the theoretical assumptions underlying selection models. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. James, originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was immersed in the stream of biology at an early age being involved in the Academy of Natural Sciences Expeditions for Everyone.
Go to Profile
#11239

Ward C. Wheeler

#150649
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Go to Profile
#11240

Karen Teff

#113201
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Karen Teff is a biologist and geneticist. She received her education in Canada and has since been working in the United States. Teff has spent most of her career studying the effects of diabetes and other related diseases on humans.
Go to Profile
#11241

Bernard P. Boudreau

#150657
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Go to Profile
#11242

Werner Reichardt

#150660
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11243

Spencer George Sealy

#150661
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11244

Knute Sletten

#150662
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11245

Gustav E. Lienhard

#150675
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11246

Günter Dörner

#150677
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11247

Klaus Kühn

#150678
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11248

D. Stuart Letham

#150687
Overall Influence
Go to Profile
#11249

Boris Sokolov

#150701
Overall Influence
1914 - 2013 (99 years)
Boris Sergeyevich Sokolov was a Russian geologist and paleontologist. Sokolov authored reference works on the stratigraphy of Eastern Europe, in particular the fossil coral records, and created the concept of Vendian period, currently recognized as largely overlapping, but not fully equivalent to Ediacaran.
Go to Profile
#11250

Mark McPeek

#150706
Overall Influence
Mark Alan McPeek is an American biologist focusing in evolutionary biology, community ecology, sexual selection, phylogenetic studies, adaptation, and population biology. He is currently the David T. McLaughlin Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College.
Go to Profile