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,
#11601
C. C. Wang
#153199
Overall Influence
#11602
Cecilia Linde
#153208
Overall Influence
#11603
Ryszard Przewłocki
#121222
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ryszard Przewłocki is a Polish neurobiologist and neuropharmacologist, professor of medical sciences, professor at the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Polish Academy of Learning and Academia Europaea, and one of the most frequently cited Polish scientists in the field of biomedicine after 1965, who in his youth was also an actor of experimental theatre Teatr 38 in Kraków, and episodically a film actor.
Go to Profile#11604
Masahiko Takada
#153215
Overall Influence
#11605
Helen Cassaday
#117497
Overall Influence
Helen Cassaday is Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Nottingham. Education Cassaday did her BA, MA in Experimental Psychology, at University College, University of Oxford ; her PhD was in Psychopharmacology, at Institute of Psychiatry, University of London
Go to Profile#11606
Christian Wey. Based On Contributions By Michel Berne
#153244
Overall Influence
#11607
Paul Marquis Quinton
#153247
Overall Influence
#11608
Manoj Samanta
#128318
Overall Influence
Manoj Pratim Samanta is an Indian-American scientist and engineer working in the field of bioinformatics. Samanta became interested in mathematics at a young age, and was a member of India's team in the 1989 International Mathematical Olympiad. He subsequently graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, where he received the institute silver medal. In 1998, he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University under the supervision of Supriyo Datta. He later conducted research on superconductors before becoming interested in biological systems. He is the founder of the Systemix Institute, a genomics research company based in Redmond, Washington.
Go to Profile#11609
Bernd R. Binder
#153258
Overall Influence
#11610
Matityahu M. Fridkin
#153260
Overall Influence
#11611
Lieve Maria Herman
#153274
Overall Influence
#11612
Pierre Dejours
#153279
Overall Influence
#11613
Henri Korn
#153281
Overall Influence
#11614
Naomi Datta
#153289
Overall Influence
#11615
C. Vernon Cole
#153295
Overall Influence
#11616
Nick Jardine
#77698
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nicholas Jardine FBA is a British mathematician, philosopher of science and its history, historian of astronomy and natural history, and amateur mycologist. He is Emeritus Professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#11617
Beat U. Steinmann
#153306
Overall Influence
#11618
Roberto Montesano
#153307
Overall Influence
#11619
Annika Scheynius
#153313
Overall Influence
#11620
Detlev Riesner
#153314
Overall Influence
#11621
David A. Thorley-lawson
#153324
Overall Influence
#11622
Linda Blackall
#151025
Overall Influence
Linda Louise Blackall is an Australian microbiologist who has studied microbial communities and their applications in water management. She is professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#11623
Shih-Chun Wang
#96802
Overall Influence
1910 - 1993 (83 years)
Shih-Chun Wang was a Chinese-American medical doctor, neuroscientist, and pharmacology professor. Early life and education Wang was born on January 25, 1910, in Tianjin, China. He attended Yenching University in Beijing where he received a bachelor of science in 1931 before going to Peking Union Medical College to earn his medical degree in 1935. In 1937, Wang received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to travel to the United States to study neurology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He worked under the direction of S.W. Ransom at the Institute of Neurology in the Northwestern University Medical School where he received his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#11624
John Martin
#102316
Overall Influence
1935 - 1993 (58 years)
John Holland Martin , was an American oceanographer, known for his research work at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Life and career Born in Old Lyme, Connecticut, he is known for his research on the role of iron as a phytoplankton micronutrient, and its significance for so-called "High-Nutrient, Low Chlorophyll" regions of the oceans. He further advocated the use of iron fertilization to enhance oceanic primary production to act as a sink for fossil fuel carbon dioxide. He is known also for the Martin curve, a power law which is widely used by oceanographers to describe the export to th...
Go to Profile#11625
James Alger Fee
#153347
Overall Influence
#11626
Alex Parker Mowat
#153355
Overall Influence
#11627
J. Knox Jr. Jones
#153362
Overall Influence
#11628
Pierre Desnuelle
#153370
Overall Influence
#11629
Jadwiga Bryła
#142954
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jadwiga Bryła is a Polish biochemist. Since 1977 manager of Metabolism Regulation Department in Faculty of Biology in Warsaw University, and since 1983 professor in this faculty. Director of Biochemistry Institute. Since 1993 a member-correspondent of Polish Academy of Learning; she leads researches on regulations of intermediate transformations, especially on carbohydrates in animal tissues.
Go to Profile#11630
Daniel E. Casey
#153388
Overall Influence
#11631
Rochelle Buffenstein
#108721
Overall Influence
Rochelle Buffenstein is an American comparative biologist currently working as Research Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. Previously, she was a senior principal investigator at Calico Life Sciences, an Alphabet, Inc. funded research and development company investigating the biology that controls aging and lifespan where she used the extraordinarily long-lived cancer resistant naked mole-rat as an attractive counter-example to the inevitability of mammalian aging; for at ages greatly exceeding the expected maximum longevity for this mouse-sized rodent, they fail to exhibit meaningful changes in age-related risk of dying or physiological decline.
Go to Profile#11632
Ulrich Mrowietz
#153399
Overall Influence
#11633
Robert Ian Mclachlan
#153406
Overall Influence
#11634
Arlan G. Richardson
#153421
Overall Influence
#11635
Stephen Buratowski
#153429
Overall Influence
#11636
Robert I. Haddad
#153436
Overall Influence
#11637
Elizabeth L. Brainerd
#145329
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Elizabeth L. Brainerd is an American biologist who has contributed to our understanding of the evolution of breathing. and the biomechanics of vertebrates. She is one of the inventors of XROMM , a technique for making 3D movies of internal structure that combines CT scanning with biplanar x-ray movies. She is one of the authors of Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution.
Go to Profile#11638
Diane M. Citron
#153439
Overall Influence
#11639
Michael Monsigny
#153441
Overall Influence
#11640
Manfred Gerlach
#153442
Overall Influence
#11641
Tom H. Stevens
#153443
Overall Influence
#11642
Matthew John Wayner
#153444
Overall Influence
#11643
Jack Kevorkian
#34385
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Murad Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was an Armenian-American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death".
Go to Profile#11644
Gerald Batist
#153451
Overall Influence
#11645
R. Narayan Singh
#153454
Overall Influence
#11646
Eilika Weber-Ban
#135295
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Eilika Weber-Ban is a German biochemist. Her research considers protein degradation pathways. She was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2021. Early life and education Weber-Ban studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen. She then received a Fulbright Program scholarship and went to the University of California at Riverside. Here she studied the tryptophan sunthase bienzyme complex under the supervision of Michael Dunn. She completed her graduate studies in 1996, and was awarded a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research fellowship to join Arthur Ho...
Go to Profile#11647
Roderich Walter
#153466
Overall Influence
#11648
Holly Jones
#70319
Overall Influence
Holly P. Jones is an American restoration ecologist and conservation biologist. She is an associate professor at Northern Illinois University. Education Jones completed a bachelor of science in ecology, evolutionary biology, and marine biology from University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned a master of philosophy in forestry and environmental studies from Yale University in 2007. She completed a doctor of philosophy in 2010. Oswald Schmitz was her doctoral advisor. David M. Post, Peter A. Raymond, and David Towns served on Jones' dissertation committee.
Go to Profile#11649
Paolo Meda
#153476
Overall Influence
#11650
Amy Rosemond
#129307
Overall Influence
Amy D. Rosemond is an American aquatic ecosystem ecologist, biogeochemist, and Distinguished Research Professor at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. Rosemond studies how global change affects freshwater ecosystems, including effects of watershed urbanization, nutrient pollution, and changes in biodiversity on ecosystem function. She was elected an Ecological Society of America fellow in 2018, and served as president of the Society for Freshwater Science from 2019-2020.
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