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,
#12701
Donald J. Massaro
#160659
Overall Influence
#12702
Margery L. Cook
#154109
Overall Influence
1925 - 2001 (76 years)
Margery Louise Cook was an American virologist. She was a researcher at University of California, Los Angeles in the field of herpes virology. Life Cook was born in Independence, Missouri in 1925. She completed a Ph.D. in medical microbiology and immunology from University of California, Los Angeles . For her 1968 dissertation, Cook researched varicella-zoster under mentor Jack G. Stevens.
Go to Profile#12703
Syed Zulfiqar Ali
#160675
Overall Influence
#12704
Ernest Naylor
#160698
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
#12705
Malden C. Nesheim
#160704
Overall Influence
#12706
Dean J. Tuma
#160708
Overall Influence
#12707
Robert A. Davidoff
#160709
Overall Influence
#12708
Shinji Yokoyama
#160711
Overall Influence
#12709
Vincent M. Moulton
#160726
Overall Influence
#12710
Lars Peter Ryder
#160732
Overall Influence
#12711
Elizabeth A. Musgrove
#160735
Overall Influence
#12712
J. Duncan Young
#160742
Overall Influence
#12713
Erik Essen-Möller
#121048
Overall Influence
1901 - 1992 (91 years)
Erik Essen-Möller was a Swedish psychiatrist who served as Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Lund. He was one of the pioneers of research in the field of psychiatric genetics, along with Ernst Rüdin in Munich, Germany, Franz Kallmann in New York City, New York, United States, and Eliot Slater in London, England. Irving Gottesman described him as one of the "founding fathers of modern, scientific psychiatric genetics".
Go to Profile#12714
Pierre Delanaye
#160760
Overall Influence
#12715
Jaap A. Wagenaar
#160764
Overall Influence
#12716
Thomas Wichmann
#160776
Overall Influence
#12717
Hitoshi Fujisawa
#160778
Overall Influence
#12718
Ladislas Robert
#160798
Overall Influence
#12719
Paul H. Crandall
#160800
Overall Influence
#12720
María Cristina Añón
#160814
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#12721
Hiroshi Naganawa
#160818
Overall Influence
#12722
Michel Millodot
#160827
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
#12723
Kazuhisa Taketa
#160833
Overall Influence
#12724
Gérard Feldmann
#160837
Overall Influence
#12725
Edward W. Kraegen
#160852
Overall Influence
#12726
Eberhard Fuchs
#160862
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
#12727
Michael R. B. Keighley
#160873
Overall Influence
#12728
Charles J. Flickinger
#160877
Overall Influence
#12729
Robin Alexander Emsley
#160878
Overall Influence
#12730
Richard Asofsky
#160883
Overall Influence
#12731
Gerald Lynis. Dohm
#160886
Overall Influence
#12732
Edward J. Feil
#160902
Overall Influence
#12733
Thomas H. Hintze
#160904
Overall Influence
#12734
J. Philip Thornber
#160911
Overall Influence
#12735
Elizabeth Haswell
#98976
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Haswell is an American biologist who is a professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute-Simons Faculty Scholar at the Washington University in St. Louis. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.
Go to Profile#12736
Bosco Tjan
#106455
Overall Influence
1966 - 2016 (50 years)
Siaufung "Bosco" Tjan was a Chinese-American psychologist and neuroscientist. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.
Go to Profile#12737
Michael J. Winterbourn
#160927
Overall Influence
#12738
Ramadan Issa Sha'afi
#160928
Overall Influence
#12739
Jennifer Jacquet
#112277
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Life Born in 1980, she grew up in Ohio. She graduated from Western Washington University, from Cornell University, and from University of British Columbia. Jacquet is Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami.
Go to Profile#12740
Paul A. Luciw
#160935
Overall Influence
#12741
Guang Rong Gao
#160938
Overall Influence
#12742
Eugene Willard Gerner
#160943
Overall Influence
#12743
Leonard Kaufman
#160948
Overall Influence
#12744
Edgardo Delfino Carosella
#160972
Overall Influence
#12745
Naomi Anne Fineberg
#160987
Overall Influence
#12746
Enric Ballesteros
#160990
Overall Influence
#12747
Irving A. Mendelssohn
#160992
Overall Influence
#12748
Vera L. Sutter
#160993
Overall Influence
#12749
John K. Spitznagel
#160998
Overall Influence
#12750
Loraine Obler
#119290
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Loraine Katherine Obler is an American linguist and neuroscientist, internationally recognized as a leading scholar in the field of neurolinguistics and multilingualism. Obler is known for her contributions to understanding how language-related behavior is controlled within the brain. Her research spans diverse sub-disciplines such as the neurolinguistics of bilingualism, language processing in aging and Alzheimer's disease, and the cross-language study of aphasia.
Go to Profile