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,
#12751
Suresh S. Tate
#161012
Overall Influence
#12752
Dale E. Hammerschmidt
#161023
Overall Influence
#12753
Susan A. Martinis
#128682
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Susan A. Martinis is an American biochemist. She has co-authored over 57 publications in peer reviewed journals and scientific book chapters. Her expertise is in protein:RNA interactions and aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. As of 2019, she is the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Go to Profile#12754
Luciano Rossetti
#161037
Overall Influence
#12755
Kiyoshi Miyai
#161038
Overall Influence
#12756
Roger J. Th. Jef. Uni. Div. Infec. Dis. Pomerantz
#161041
Overall Influence
#12757
Joanna Verran
#145048
Overall Influence
Joanna Verran is an Emeritus Professor of Microbiology and Head of Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University . She studies the interaction of microorganisms with inert surfaces. She was awarded the 2019 AAAS Award for Public Engagement with Science.
Go to Profile#12758
Richard K. Brummitt
#161058
Overall Influence
#12759
Armando Favazza
#84673
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Armando Favazza is an Americann author and psychiatrist best known for his studies of cultural psychiatry, deliberate self-harm, and religion. Favazza's Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry was an early psychiatric book on this topic. His 2004 work, PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book presents objective data regarding commonly held misconceptions about the Bible as a whole as well as its major passages. In Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry he has written the chapter on "Anthropology and Psychiatry" in the 3rd edition , the 4th ed...
Go to Profile#12760
Alexander Khoruts
#161059
Overall Influence
#12761
Michael C. Schotz
#161066
Overall Influence
#12762
Pascal Bovet
#161069
Overall Influence
#12763
James M. Vose
#161088
Overall Influence
#12764
Peter E. Palukaitis
#161093
Overall Influence
#12765
Esther Shohami,
#161097
Overall Influence
#12766
Edward C. Cox
#161108
Overall Influence
#12767
Arthur James Mcadams
#161117
Overall Influence
#12768
Patrick McNamara
#77826
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Patrick McNamara is an American neuroscientist. His work has centered on three major topics: sleep and dreams, religion, and mind/brain. Biography McNamara was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on January 4, 1956. McNamara’s father was a career U.S. Air Force officer, so the family lived all around the world until McNamara was seventeen years old. When the family returned to Massachusetts, he began to study philosophy part time at University of Massachusetts Boston. In his twenties he began a period of what he describes as a very fruitful period of in-depth personal exploration of differing sp...
Go to Profile#12769
Mary Dasso
#144219
Overall Influence
Mary C. Dasso is an American biochemist known for research on chromosome segregation and the discovery of Ran GTPase. She is the acting scientific director of the division of intramural research and a senior investigator in the section on cell cycle regulation at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Go to Profile#12770
John C. Wallace
#161127
Overall Influence
#12771
Nico Blüthgen
#161130
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#12772
Ralph Kingsley Iler
#161132
Overall Influence
#12773
Sebastian Suerbaum
#161142
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#12774
Taketoshi Ono
#161148
Overall Influence
#12775
Alain H. Rook
#161155
Overall Influence
#12776
Woon-ki Paik
#161166
Overall Influence
#12777
Barry David Cookson
#161170
Overall Influence
#12778
Hal Blumenfeld
#108356
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Hal Blumenfeld is a Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery at Yale University. He is an expert on brain mechanisms of consciousness and on altered consciousness in epilepsy. As director of the Yale Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center he leads multi-disciplinary research and is also well known for his teaching contributions in neuroanatomy and clinical neuroscience.
Go to Profile#12779
Dagmar Gerthsen
#161178
Overall Influence
#12780
Mikael Käll
#161189
Overall Influence
#12781
Thomas M. Shinnick
#161191
Overall Influence
#12782
Franciscus Maria Klis
#161192
Overall Influence
#12783
Henk W. Berendse
#161197
Overall Influence
#12784
Michael Falkenstein
#161206
Overall Influence
#12785
Robert Benezra
#161227
Overall Influence
#12786
George I. Papakostas
#161228
Overall Influence
#12787
Robert L. Ruberg
#161247
Overall Influence
#12788
Brian M. Salzberg
#122885
Overall Influence
Brian M. Salzberg is an American neuroscientist, biophysicist and professor. He is Professor of Neuroscience and of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Salzberg's research has been focused in the area of Neuroscience and Biophysics. Together with Lawrence B. Cohen, Salzberg has contributed significantly to the optical imaging revolution since the 1970s, prior to which electrophysiology was limited to direct impalement of neurons in the brain with blind probes. He pioneered the application of optical methods that he developed with Cohen to problems in cell...
Go to Profile#12789
Diva Amon
#68476
Overall Influence
Diva Joan Amon is a marine biologist from Trinidad. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a 2022 Pew Marine Fellow. Previously, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London.
Go to Profile#12790
Michael Jeltsch
#150528
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Michael Jeltsch is a German-Finnish researcher in the field of Biochemistry. He is an associate professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has more than 70 publications. Jeltsch was the first to show that VEGF-C and VEGF-D are the principal growth factors for the lymphatic vasculature and his research focuses on cancer drug targets and lymphangiogenesis. He has also contributed to other seminal publications in cell biology with transgenesis, protein engineering, recombinant production and purification. In 2006, he developed a synthetic super-VEGF, using a library of VEGF hybrid mole...
Go to Profile#12791
Kurt Zatloukal
#161259
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#12792
Yi–xin Zeng
#161261
Overall Influence
#12793
Marisa Roberto
#101200
Overall Influence
Marisa Roberto is an Italian-American neuroscientist and professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Neuroscience at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Roberto is recognized for her contributions to the understanding of alcohol addiction, specifically for her research on the effects of alcohol and neuromodulators on synaptic transmission in the central amygdala, a critical addiction-related brain region.
Go to Profile#12794
Clinton N. Woolsey
#132903
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Clinton Nathan Woolsey was an American neuroscientist notable for mapping the brain and exploring the location and inner workings of touch, hearing, and vision. Woolsey was the son of Joseph Woodhull and Mathilda Louise Aicholz Woolsey.
Go to Profile#12795
Pamela Raymond
#133678
Overall Influence
Pamela A. Raymond is an American biologist. She is the Stephen S. Easter Collegiate Professor Emerita at University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Education Raymond earned a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#12796
Nancy G. Klimas
#161287
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#12797
Andreas Dräger
#152198
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Andreas Dräger is a German bioinformatician who leads the research group for Computational Systems Biology of Infections and Antimicrobial-Resistant Pathogens at the University of Tübingen. Education In high school, Dräger was fascinated by computer science and recent advancements in genetics and biotechnology in the late 1990s. When he learned about a new degree program that allowed combining those technologies, he was immediately inspired. So, Dräger studied bioinformatics at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Halle from 2000 to 2006. He worked as an intern for genome sequencing at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin.
Go to Profile#12798
John Elliott Nafe
#85844
Overall Influence
1914 - 1996 (82 years)
John Elliott Nafe was an American oceanographer and geophysicist best known for his work on acoustic propagation in the oceans and solid earth. Born in Seattle, Nafe received his bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1938. He then served in the United States Merchant Marine, leaving to begin graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He obtained an MS degree in 1940 and then joined the Navy during World War II, during which he taught physics and engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Go to Profile#12799
Philippe Cuénoud
#155673
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Philippe Cuénoud is a Swiss entomologist and botanist living in Onex , who worked on the Psocoptera of Switzerland and Papua New Guinea, as well as on plant phylogeny. He found the only recently known population of Lachesilla rossica near Geneva and contributed further to the knowledge of the flora and fauna of the canton of Geneva with the first mention of a slender-billed gull and with the discovery of the first reported population of small-leaved helleborines. He also participated in a multidisciplinary study of the free-living fauna and flora of Basel's Zoo. In a 1999 trip to Brasil wi...
Go to Profile#12800
Estella Matutes
#161300
Overall Influence
