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.
List of the most influential people in Biology,
#11651
Julie Williams
#100334
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Julie Williams CBE FLSW FMedSci is Professor of Neuropsychological Genetics at Cardiff University and was Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales from 2013 to 2017. She is one of the world's leading contributors to Alzheimer's research.
Go to Profile#11652
Andre Wyss
#127916
Overall Influence
Andre Wyss is a professor of Paleontology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is best known for his contributions in the field of evolution, especially in small mammals of South America and Africa.
Go to Profile#11653
Trefor B. Reynoldson
#153492
Overall Influence
#11654
Nicola Saino
#153493
Overall Influence
#11655
Donald Heyneman
#153495
Overall Influence
#11656
Karsten Suhre
#153503
Overall Influence
#11657
Gunnel Biberfeld
#153506
Overall Influence
#11658
Emmanuel Paradis
#153518
Overall Influence
#11659
Kazuhiko Yamamoto
#153527
Overall Influence
#11660
Vincent C. Manganiello
#153568
Overall Influence
#11661
Frederick A. Schmitt
#153579
Overall Influence
#11662
Daniel j. Cua
#153589
Overall Influence
#11663
Richard Alan John. Knowles
#153592
Overall Influence
#11664
Helmut Haberl
#153606
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#11665
Anna Wang Roe
#108044
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Anna Wang Roe is an American neuroscientist, the director of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology , and full-time professor at the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. She is known for her studies on the functional organization and connectivity of cerebral cortex and for bringing interdisciplinary approaches to address questions in systems neuroscience.
Go to Profile#11666
Turan M. Itil
#153611
Overall Influence
#11667
Gabriel M. Makhlouf
#153613
Overall Influence
#11668
Koji Takio
#153621
Overall Influence
#11669
Robert C. Fleischer
#153624
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
#11670
R. Toby Pennington
#153628
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#11671
Raúl Rabadán
#123657
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Raúl Rabadán is a Spanish-American theoretical physicist and computational biologist. He is currently the Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor in the Department of Systems Biology, Biomedical Informatics and Surgery at Columbia University. He is the director of the Program for Mathematical Genomics at Columbia University and director of the Center for Topology of Cancer Evolution and Heterogeneity. At Columbia, he has put together a highly interdisciplinary lab with researchers from the fields of mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, and medicine, with the common goal of solving pressing biomedical problems through quantitative computational models.
Go to Profile#11672
Chantal Conand
#49617
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Chantal Conand is a French marine biologist and oceanographer. Biography Conand obtained her PhD in biological oceanography at University of Western Brittany in Brest in 1988. Her thesis focused on Aspidochirotida of the New Caledonia Barrier Reef . In January 1993, she joined the marine ecology laboratory at the University of La Réunion and eventually became its chief scientist. Her expertise extends to all echinoderms of the Indo-Pacific, but her work has focused on sea cucumbers, but also on other echinoderms of la Réunion. Her other work has included studies of the crown-of-thorns starfish, which preys upon hard, or stony, coral polyps .
Go to Profile#11673
G. David Roodman
#153650
Overall Influence
#11674
Francesca Gherardi
#134094
Overall Influence
1955 - 2013 (58 years)
Francesca Gherardi was an Italian zoologist, ethologist, and ecologist. Most of her work was performed at the Department of Biology of the University of Florence, Italy, where she was a researcher and an associate professor.
Go to Profile#11675
Martin Halle
#153652
Overall Influence
#11676
Gert U. Auer
#153660
Overall Influence
#11677
Helen Herrman
#91284
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Helen Edith Herrman AO is the President of the World Psychiatric Association. She is the second woman, and first Australian to be elected to the position. Educated at Monash University, Herrman received an MD for her 1981 thesis, "An Epidemiological Study of Patients Diagnosed as Schizophrenic : Use of record-linkage to examine mortality and general hospital admission".
Go to Profile#11678
Francesco Benedetti
#153667
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#11679
Carolyn Slayman
#133494
Overall Influence
1937 - 2016 (79 years)
Carolyn Walch Slayman was an American geneticist. She was on the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine, where she was appointed Sterling Professor in 1991. On March 11, 1937, she was born in Portland, ME and would become the first scientist in her family. In 1958, she graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors in biology and chemistry and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She began graduate school at Johns Hopkins University to study biochemistry but transferred to Rockefeller University in 1959 where she was the only woman in her class. In 1963, she earned her doctorate in biochemical genetics.
Go to Profile#11680
Randall Keichi Rochmond California Us Saiki
#153689
Overall Influence
#11681
Derrick Baxby
#103374
Overall Influence
1940 - 2017 (77 years)
Derrick Baxby was a British microbiologist and authority on Orthopoxviruses. He was a senior lecturer in medical microbiology at the University of Liverpool. He proposed that a presumed horsepox virus could be the long-sought ancestor of vaccinia. In 1977, he reported 12 cases of cowpox occurring in England between 1965 and 1976.
Go to Profile#11682
Peter M. Bennett
#153710
Overall Influence
#11683
Giuseppe Citerio
#153721
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#11684
Edward k. Wakeland
#153730
Overall Influence
#11685
Peter Böhlen
#153734
Overall Influence
#11686
Alexander E. Drzezga
#153753
Overall Influence
#11687
Maria Nazareth F. da Silva
#115970
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Maria Nazareth Ferreira da Silva is a zoologist from Manaus, Brazil Da Silva has, for many years, specialised in the study of Amazonian mammals. She has described several new species of rodents:Proechimys echinothrix, the Tefe Spiny RatProechimys gardneri, the Gardner's Spiny RatProechimys pattoni, the Patton's spiny ratProechimys kulinae, the Kulina spiny rat.She has written, and contributed to, many papers and articles on the subject, and currently works for the National Institute of Amazonian Research.
Go to Profile#11688
William F. Balistreri
#153777
Overall Influence
#11689
Yau–huei Wei
#153786
Overall Influence
#11690
V. J. Desmet
#153789
Overall Influence
#11691
Tatsuya Yamasoba
#153793
Overall Influence
#11692
Günther Gerisch
#153799
Overall Influence
#11693
Adam Bogdanove
#126059
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Adam J. Bogdanove is a Professor of Plant Pathology at Cornell University. He is most notable for his central role in the development of TAL effector based DNA targeting reagents, following his discovery of TAL effector modularity with Matthew Moscou in 2009. Since, he has been a leader in the field, pioneering applications in genome editing and contributing one of the most widely used methods for designing custom TAL effectors using Golden Gate Cloning. Bogdanove is now widely recognized for revolutionizing the area of DNA targeting, along with scientists such as Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel...
Go to Profile#11694
Marcy E. Macdonald
#153823
Overall Influence
#11695
Gary Alton Dudley
#153831
Overall Influence
#11696
Lucien Duchateau
#153837
Overall Influence
#11697
S. Patricia Becerra
#147268
Overall Influence
S. Patricia Becerra is a biochemist specializing in the retina. She researches protein structure and function in relation to drug development for combating blindness. Becerra is a senior investigator at the National Eye Institute.
Go to Profile#11698
Liliana M. Dávalos
#100741
Overall Influence
Liliana M. Dávalos is a Colombian-born evolutionary and conservation biologist, who is currently living in the United States. Her career as a researcher and professor have focused on bats as model systems and on tropical deforestation.
Go to Profile#11699
Tsai-Fan Yu
#64112
Overall Influence
1911 - 2007 (96 years)
Tsai-Fan Yu was a Chinese-American physician, researcher, and the first woman to be appointed as a full professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She helped to develop an explanation for the cause of gout and experimented with early drugs to treat the disease which are still in use today.
Go to Profile#11700
Patricia G. Parker
#153864
Overall Influence
Patricia G. Parker is a North American evolutionary biologist who uses molecular techniques to assess social structures, particularly in avian populations. Her interests have shaped her research in disease transmission and population size, particularly in regard to bird conservation. She received her B.S. in Zoology in 1975 and her Ph.D. in Behavioral Ecology in 1984, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1991 to 2000, Parker was an Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University. Since 2000, she is the Des Lee Professor of Zoological Studies at the University of Missouri–St.
Go to Profile