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,
#11501
Kevin Mcgarigal
#152507
Overall Influence
#11502
Douglas J. Levey
#152511
Overall Influence
#11503
Penelope Boston
#53319
Overall Influence
Penelope J. Boston is a speleologist. She was associate director of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute in Carlsbad, New Mexico, along with founding and directing the Cave and Karst Studies Program at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. Among her research interests are geomicrobiology of caves and mines, extraterrestrial speleogenesis, and space exploration and astrobiology generally.
Go to Profile#11504
Ariel Y. Deutch
#152526
Overall Influence
#11505
René a. w. Van Lier
#152529
Overall Influence
#11506
Naoyuki Takahata
#152537
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#11507
Wanda Phipatanakul
#152538
Overall Influence
#11508
Masahiko Fujino
#152542
Overall Influence
#11509
Bert N. La Du
#152544
Overall Influence
#11510
Ronald A. Morse
#152554
Overall Influence
#11511
Shoichi Kusumoto
#152558
Overall Influence
#11512
Anthony Robin Poole
#152568
Overall Influence
#11513
Sylvie Belleville
#152577
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#11514
Panos Vostanis
#152585
Overall Influence
#11515
Otto G. Berg
#152587
Overall Influence
#11516
Cecilia Moens
#99100
Overall Influence
Cecilia Moens is a Canadian developmental biologist. Moens is part of the faculty at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, where she researches the vertebrate brain using zebrafish as a model organism.
Go to Profile#11517
Gérard Bricogne
#152595
Overall Influence
#11518
Andrew Haines
#66218
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Sir Andrew Paul Haines, FMedSci is a British epidemiologist and academic. He was the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001 to 2010. Early life and education Haines was educated at Latymer Upper School on a state funded scholarship, and at King's College London where he qualified in Medicine in 1969 with honours in pathology, surgery and pharmacology and therapeutics. He gained an MD in Epidemiology in the University of London in 1985.
Go to Profile#11519
Tobias Egner
#152596
Overall Influence
#11520
Walter Prof Dr Med Knapp
#152597
Overall Influence
#11521
Walborg Thorsell
#124820
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Walborg Susanna Thorsell was a Swedish scientist who performed research mainly on mosquitoes and mosquito repellents. Education Thorsell defended her thesis for her doctorate in veterinary medicine at the Swedish Veterinarian Institute in 1967, and was a docent in experimental parasitology.
Go to Profile#11522
Arthur M. Jr. Dannenberg
#152608
Overall Influence
#11523
Norbert Becker
#122477
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Norbert Becker is a biologist, university lecturer at the University of Heidelberg, scientific-technical director of KABS, and managing director and vice-president of the European Mosquito Control Association . He is also president of the World Mosquito Control Association .
Go to Profile#11524
Hendrika Bootsma
#152619
Overall Influence
#11525
David B. Roy
#152621
Overall Influence
#11526
Walter Sebald
#152628
Overall Influence
#11527
Douglass L. Fraker
#152637
Overall Influence
#11528
Charles N. Ellis
#152645
Overall Influence
#11529
Monique Simmonds
#100343
Overall Influence
Monique Sheelagh Jacquard Simmonds is a botanist who is deputy keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Simmonds earned her BSc at the University of Leeds and her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Go to Profile#11530
Thomas Leisinger
#152654
Overall Influence
#11531
Adrian Liston
#152655
Overall Influence
#11532
William G. Thilly
#152659
Overall Influence
#11533
Bo Qiu
#152669
Overall Influence
#11534
Tierney Thys
#107303
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Tierney Thys is an American marine biologist, science educator, and National Geographic explorer. In 1988 she earned a degree in biology from Brown University, and in 1998 she earned a doctorate in biomechanics. She was formerly the director of research at the Sea Studios Foundation. She was also the science editor for The Shape of Life and director for Strange Days on Planet Earth. She has also written, narrated and produced short films. Since 2000 she and her colleagues have been studying the giant ocean sunfish . In 2004 she was named a National Geographic "Emerging Explorer". She has sinc...
Go to Profile#11535
Michale Fee
#99637
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Michale Sean Fee is an American neuroscientist who works on the neural mechanisms of sequence generation and learning. Michale Fee is faculty in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. His laboratory studies how songbirds generate and learn complex vocal sequences.
Go to Profile#11536
Thorsten B. H. Reusch
#152679
Overall Influence
#11537
Attila Losonczy
#114190
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Attila Losonczy is a Hungarian neuroscientist, Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University Medical Center. Losonczy's main area of research is on the relationship between neural networks and behavior, specifically with regard to learning in the hippocampus.
Go to Profile#11538
Nancy J. Brown
#152686
Overall Influence
#11539
Yurii A. Ovchinnikov
#152693
Overall Influence
#11540
Charles Lawrence
#101919
Overall Influence
Charles "Chip" Lawrence is an American bioinformatician and mathematician, who is the pioneer in developing novel statistical approaches to biological sequence analysis. After his PhD graduation, Lawrence became the assistant professor in Systems Engineering and Operations Research and Statistics, in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the same time period of time , Lawrence worked as the consultant to the Ministry of Maternal and Child Health in Dominican Republic. From 1975 to 1981, he worked in the New York State Department of Health as the Director of Operations Research and Statistics, i...
Go to Profile#11541
Robert Andrew Robergs
#152713
Overall Influence
#11542
Sukhdev Singh. Malhi
#152721
Overall Influence
#11543
David Arthur Kendall
#152730
Overall Influence
#11544
Hanchuan Peng
#152751
Overall Influence
#11545
David Rolland Piwnica-worms
#152752
Overall Influence
#11546
Serge Payette
#152757
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
#11547
Meir Djaldetti
#152766
Overall Influence
#11548
Victor E. Gould
#152784
Overall Influence
#11549
Alexander V. Nichols
#152788
Overall Influence
#11550
Qifang Zhang
#152790
Overall Influence
