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,
#11401
Phyllis R. Brown
#151825
Overall Influence
#11402
Rosalind A. Segal
#129966
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Rosalind Anne Segal is an American neurobiologist. She is a Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and the Co-Chair of the Cancer Biology Department at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Segal's work employs modern methods of cell and molecular biology to study the development of the mammalian brain with the goal of understanding how disruption of this normal process leads to the formation of brain malignancies.
Go to Profile#11403
Pier Vincenzo Vincenzo Piazza
#151838
Overall Influence
#11404
Vicente Felipo
#151849
Overall Influence
#11405
Daniel Vaulot
#151851
Overall Influence
#11406
Hartmut H. Malluche
#151856
Overall Influence
#11407
Prof. P. Brissot
#151861
Overall Influence
#11408
Irwin A. Ungar
#151881
Overall Influence
#11409
Paul R. Krausman
#151932
Overall Influence
#11410
Avi Ma'ayan
#151936
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#11411
Masashi Kurimoto
#151937
Overall Influence
#11412
Hiroaki Kanehisa
#151941
Overall Influence
#11413
Leah E. Cowen
#140241
Overall Influence
Leah Elizabeth Cowen is a Canadian mycologist and the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto. Early life and education Cowen earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of British Columbia and her PhD from the University of Toronto . During this time, she received a postgraduate scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute. While at MIT, she also received the 2005 Genzyme Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Go to Profile#11414
Truett Allison
#151959
Overall Influence
#11415
Robert Russell Monteith Paterson
#151965
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#11416
Cassandra Quave
#113703
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Cassandra Leah Quave is an American ethnobotanist, herbarium curator, and associate professor at Emory University. Her research focuses on analyzing natural, plant-based medicine of indigenous cultures to help combat infectious disease and antibiotic resistance. In particular, she studies bacterial biofilm inhibition and quorum-sensing inhibition of botanical extracts for inflammatory skin conditions.
Go to Profile#11417
Gerhard Roth
#151970
Overall Influence
1942 - 2023 (81 years)
#11418
Olivier Cussenot
#151972
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
#11419
Robert R. Edelman
#151976
Overall Influence
#11420
Timothy J. Rink
#151979
Overall Influence
#11421
Patrick Niaudet
#151984
Overall Influence
#11422
Hazel Dockrell
#120895
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Hazel Marguerite Dockrell is an Irish-born microbiologist and immunologist whose research has focused on immunity to the human mycobacterial diseases, leprosy and tuberculosis. She has spent most of her career at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where as of 2020 she is a professor of immunology. She was the first female president of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Jimmy Whitworth of the Wellcome Trust describes her as "a marvellous ambassador for global health and research."
Go to Profile#11423
Richard G. W. Anderson
#151992
Overall Influence
#11424
Gregor Eichele
#152004
Overall Influence
#11425
David J. Hartshorne
#152006
Overall Influence
#11426
C. Daniel Salzman
#152013
Overall Influence
#11427
Thomas C. Hamilton
#152017
Overall Influence
#11428
Lawrence B. Smillie
#152021
Overall Influence
#11429
J. P. Adler Moore
#152038
Overall Influence
#11430
Annemarie Ohler
#141697
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Annemarie Ohler is an Austrian herpetologist and professor who concentrates on the taxonomy of amphibians. She has 3,602 citations and an h-index of 36. Life and work After graduating from the federal higher boarding school in Traunsee Castle, Upper Austria, Ohler studied zoology, botany and biochemistry at the University of Vienna, where she wrote a dissertation in 1987 on the larval development of the pond frog , a hybridogenetic hybrid from the complex of forms of water frogs and received her Ph.D. During her studies she had a one-year research stay at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, where she studied experimental embryology.
Go to Profile#11431
Richard D. Todd
#140616
Overall Influence
1951 - 2008 (57 years)
Richard D. Todd was an American psychiatrist who served as the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He specialized in the genetic and environmental causes of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. Born in Oklahoma, he was educated at Vanderbilt University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Texas at San Antonio. He died of leukemia on August 22, 2008. At the time of his...
Go to Profile#11432
Kanaka Rajan
#113574
Overall Influence
Kanaka Rajan is a computational neuroscientist in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and founding faculty in the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Rajan trained in engineering, biophysics, and neuroscience, and has pioneered novel methods and models to understand how the brain processes sensory information. Her research seeks to understand how important cognitive functions — such as learning, remembering, and deciding — emerge from the cooperative activity of multi-scale neural processes, and how those processes are affected by various neuropsychiatric disease states.
Go to Profile#11433
Jeffrey H. Duyn
#152051
Overall Influence
#11434
Bruno M. Péault
#152056
Overall Influence
#11435
Manuel Cuenca‐estrella
#152077
Overall Influence
#11436
Georg-wilhelm Bornkamm
#152079
Overall Influence
#11437
Anita Corbett
#137643
Overall Influence
Anita Hargrave Corbett is an American biochemist who is the Samuel C. Dobbs Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University. Her research investigates the molecular basis for disease, the regulation of protein import and mRNA export. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#11438
Steven R. Beissinger
#152090
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#11439
Jan Esper
#130998
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Jan Esper studied geography at the University of Bonn, where he later earned his doctorate. After a postdoc position at Columbia University in New York City, he continued his work on dendrochronology at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research , and qualified as a professor at the University of Bern. In 2018, Esper became a member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Since 2010, he has been a professor at the Department of Geography at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Go to Profile#11440
Jan E. Leach
#117095
Overall Influence
Jan Elnor Leach is an American plant pathologist. She is known for her research of the molecular biology of plant pathogens, particularly those affecting rice plants. She has been the co-editor of the Annual Review of Phytopathology since 2015 and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#11441
Adolfo Martínez‐palomo
#152123
Overall Influence
#11442
Guido Zacchi
#152129
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#11443
Mark Anthony Hixon
#152132
Overall Influence
#11444
Vance P. Lemmon
#152134
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#11445
Deborah Goldberg
#112664
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Deborah Esther Goldberg is an American ecologist and Margaret B. Davis Distinguished University Professor Emerita and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emerita in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#11446
Andrew h. Lichtman
#152148
Overall Influence
#11447
Martin H. Hofker
#152165
Overall Influence
#11448
Fredrik Jutfelt
#76756
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Fredrik Jutfelt is a Swedish scientist. His field of study is animal physiology, and his current research focus is on the effects of warming and ocean acidification on the physiology and behaviour of fish. He is a professor at the Department of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, where he is the leader of the animal physiology section. His research group is called the Jutfelt Fish Ecophysiology Lab, and they investigate how fish respond physiologically and behaviourally to changes in the environment. Much of the research is based on laboratory studies of zebrafish, and he has built a zebrafish research facility at NTNU.
Go to Profile#11449
Steven D'Hondt
#84435
Overall Influence
Steven D’Hondt is an American geomicrobiologist who studies microbial communities living beneath the seafloor. He is a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Career D’Hondt earned his BS in Geology at Stanford University in 1984 and his PhD in Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1990. He became an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island in 1989, where he remains today.
Go to Profile#11450
Valerie Speirs
#145373
Overall Influence
Valerie Speirs is a Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Aberdeen. Her research aims to identify biomarkers of breast cancer to inform diagnosis and treatment. Education Speirs studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Glasgow. She worked with Ian Freshney on cell culture and became interested in how cell culture systems can be used to model disease.
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