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,
#12151
Craig R. Pringle
#156993
Overall Influence
#12152
Beatrix Tugendhut Gardner
#93902
Overall Influence
1933 - 1995 (62 years)
Beatrix Tugendhut Gardner was an Austrian zoologist who became well known for the research that she conducted in the United States. She is most well known for her sign language studies with Washoe the chimpanzee, who was the first ape to learn sign language.
Go to Profile#12153
Gail Petuna Risbridger
#157011
Overall Influence
#12154
Bruno Pot
#157015
Overall Influence
#12155
Dennis Alfred Bazylinski
#157032
Overall Influence
#12156
Anthony Smith
#78686
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Anthony Smith is a British sculptor who works in bronze. He is known for his wildlife sculptures as well as his depictions of well-known figures, including Charles Darwin, Ian Fleming, and Alfred Russel Wallace. He has been awarded major public commissions including the design of a new £2 coin for the Royal Mint, the first new statue for London's Natural History Museum in more than eighty years, and a life-sized statue of Charles Darwin for Christ's College, Cambridge. In addition, he is a wildlife photographer.
Go to Profile#12157
Martin E. Feder
#157047
Overall Influence
#12158
Barry Ganetzky
#157048
Overall Influence
#12159
David E. L. Wilcken
#157052
Overall Influence
#12160
Jennifer Couzin
#157057
Overall Influence
#12161
Alan J. Kohn
#157069
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
#12162
William P. Weiss
#157070
Overall Influence
#12163
William Maxham Edwards
#157077
Overall Influence
#12164
Bhavanath Jha
#157095
Overall Influence
#12165
Vincent Bretagnolle
#157099
Overall Influence
#12166
William Russell Ferrell
#157111
Overall Influence
#12167
Margot Forde
#119437
Overall Influence
1935 - 1992 (57 years)
Margot Bernice Forde was a New Zealand botanist, curator, and taxonomist. Biography Forde was educated at Wellington Girls' College, and graduated from Victoria University College where she studied natural history and botany. She was married to fellow New Zealand botanist Bernard Forde, and they both received their PhD degrees from the Botany Department of the University of California, Davis in the early 1960s.
Go to Profile#12168
Jill S. Baron
#143338
Overall Influence
Jill S. Baron is an American ecosystem ecologist specializing in studying the effects of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in mountain ecosystems. She is a senior scientist at the United States Geological Survey and a senior research ecologist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University.
Go to Profile#12169
Karl Elwood Nestor
#157126
Overall Influence
#12170
José María Cantú Garza
#99819
Overall Influence
1938 - 2007 (69 years)
José María Cantú Garza was a Mexican genetics researcher. Cantú was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León in 1938 and moved to Reynosa, Tamaulipas. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Medicine from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and received a doctorate degree in Human Genetics from the University of Paris I.
Go to Profile#12171
Norio Nakatsuji
#157144
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#12172
Thomas Owen Beidelman
#157150
Overall Influence
#12173
Marshall Conring Johnston
#144352
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Marshall Conring Johnston is an American botanist who made several explorations in Mexico and specialized in plants in the family Gesneriaceae. Johnston was born in San Antonio in the family of Theodore Harris Johnston and Lucile Mary Conring. He went on his first botanical expeditions to Mexico while still in high school during 1945-1947. On those trips he visited the northern Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Durango, and Zacatecas. From 1972-1974 he made trips to Chihuahua, concentrating on desert flora. These early 1970s trips resulted in the bulk of his botanic collection.
Go to Profile#12174
Lubomir S. Hnilica
#157158
Overall Influence
#12175
Edison Tak‐bun Liu
#157173
Overall Influence
#12176
Ian Meinertzhagen
#156562
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Ian Anthony Meinertzhagen is a Canadian neurobiologist, a University Research Professor at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Senior Fellow at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia. He is a graduate of the Universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrews and undertook postdoctoral work at the Australian National University and Harvard University. His research has pioneered studies on simple nervous systems of invertebrate species, especially the Drosophila visual system and the diminutive chordate nervous system of the ascidian tad...
Go to Profile#12177
Igor V. Grigoriev
#157189
Overall Influence
#12178
André Olivier
#157202
Overall Influence
#12179
Bert W. Hoeksema
#157203
Overall Influence
#12180
Daniel Gerlich
#138255
Overall Influence
Daniel Wolfram Gerlich is a cell biologist. Since 2012 he has been a Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Education and career Daniel Gerlich studied biology at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Following his graduation in 1998, he worked at German Cancer Research Center and Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg, Germany, to obtain a PhD in 2002. That year, he started postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Jan Ellenberg at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 2005 he was appointed Assi...
Go to Profile#12181
Michael Graham Gelder
#157237
Overall Influence
#12182
Naoki Yamamoto
#157240
Overall Influence
#12183
Jian‐fang Gui
#157244
Overall Influence
#12184
R. Obert L. Dressler
#157245
Overall Influence
#12185
R. Oss Jakes
#157273
Overall Influence
#12186
Stephen K. Burley
#83793
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Stephen Kevin Burley is a British-born scientist, naturalized in both Canada and the United States, specializing in oncology and structural biology. He is a University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Burley directs the RCSB Protein Data Bank , the Center for Integrative Proteomics Research, and the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine.
Go to Profile#12187
Duane Mitchell
#105633
Overall Influence
Duane A. Mitchell is an American physician-scientist and university professor. He is currently employed at the University of Florida College of Medicine, in Gainesville, Florida as the Assistant Vice President for Research, Associate Dean for Translational Science and Clinical Research, and Director of the University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute. He is the Phyllis Kottler Friedman Professor in the Lillian S. Wells Department of Neurosurgery. and co-director of the Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy. Mitchell is also the founder, President, and Chair...
Go to Profile#12188
Min Zhuo
#111037
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Min Zhuo is a pain neuroscientist at the University of Toronto in Canada. He is the Michael Smith Chair in Neuroscience and Mental Health as well as the Canada Research Chair in Pain and Cognition and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Zhou was hosted in 2017-2018 as a guest professor at the pharmacology institute at Heidelberg University, Heidelberg.
Go to Profile#12189
Richard L. Kempson
#157292
Overall Influence
#12190
Jonathan Karn
#157299
Overall Influence
#12191
Geoffrey William Tregear
#157305
Overall Influence
#12192
Mark Gordon Swain
#157306
Overall Influence
#12193
Thomas Schmitt
#157310
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
#12194
Derek S. Bendall
#157318
Overall Influence
#12195
Michael John Gasson
#157321
Overall Influence
#12196
Andrew R. Cossins
#157327
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#12197
John L. Vandeberg
#157340
Overall Influence
#12198
Barry R. Zirkin
#157371
Overall Influence
#12199
Shinsaku Imashuku
#157372
Overall Influence
#12200
Rajendra Badgaiyan
#119133
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Professor Rajendra D Badgaiyan is an Indian-American psychiatrist and cognitive neuroscientist. He is best known for developing a new neuroimaging technique for detection of acute changes in concentration of dopamine released in the live human brain during performance of a cognitive. behavioral or emotional task.
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