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,
#13251
Marc Haas
#164582
Overall Influence
#13252
Derek Van Der Kooy
#164587
Overall Influence
#13253
Hidehiko Kumagai
#164599
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
#13254
Mariano Agustín García-blanco
#164602
Overall Influence
#13255
Nanibaa' Garrison
#112082
Overall Influence
Náníbaaʼ Garrison is a bioethicist, geneticist, and associate professor in the Institute for Society and Genetics and Department of Internal Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a member of the Navajo Nation, and her career has focused on studies of health conditions prevalent in, and attitudes toward genetics research among, the Navajo community.
Go to Profile#13256
Ikuko Nagatsu
#164611
Overall Influence
#13257
Esther Stoeckli
#161112
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Esther Stoeckli is a Swiss neuroscientist at the University of Zurich and the director of the Institute of Molecular Life Sciences. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that underlie the establishment of neuronal circuits.
Go to Profile#13258
Cyriel Pennartz
#155527
Overall Influence
Cyriel Marie Antoine Pennartz is a Dutch neuroscientist serving as professor and head of the Department of Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is known for his research on memory, motivation, circadian rhythms, perception and consciousness. Pennartz’ work uses a multidisciplinary combination of techniques to understand the relationships between distributed neural activity and cognition, including in vivo electrophysiology and optical imaging, animal behavior and computational modelling.
Go to Profile#13259
Dennis A. Hansell
#164629
Overall Influence
#13260
Rick Brandenburg
#92068
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dr. Ricky Lynn Brandenburg is a William Neal Reynolds Professor of Distinction professor of entomology at North Carolina State University. He is a native of Indiana, and received his bachelor's degree in entomology from Purdue University in 1977 and his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 1981. He spent four years as a faculty member at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri before accepting his current position at N. C. State in 1985.
Go to Profile#13261
Rolf Kristian Berge
#164638
Overall Influence
#13262
Filippo Aureli
#164667
Overall Influence
#13263
Michael A. Mayo
#164673
Overall Influence
#13264
Akihiro Iwamatsu
#164675
Overall Influence
#13265
André Ménez
#164685
Overall Influence
#13266
Ervin Fodor
#153915
Overall Influence
Ervin Fodor is a British virologist of Hungarian origin born in Czechoslovakia. He is Professor of Virology holding the position of reader in experimental pathology in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. He is also a professorial fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#13267
Sylvain Doré
#164709
Overall Influence
#13268
Catherine A. Ledent
#164713
Overall Influence
#13269
Olof Leimar
#164720
Overall Influence
#13270
Marc Tardieu
#164728
Overall Influence
#13271
David Lewis Mitchell
#164730
Overall Influence
#13272
Orie Loucks
#161340
Overall Influence
1931 - 2016 (85 years)
Orie L. Loucks was a professor at Miami University Department of Zoology. He was a noted ecologist and environmentalist who worked to get DDT banned in Wisconsin in 1969. Honors George Mercer Award from Ecological Society of America Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science Distinguished Service Award from American Institute of Biological Sciences The Nature Conservancy Oak Leaf Award Elected Fellow, Ohio Academy of Science National Conservation Achievement Award in Science from National Wildlife Federation R. W. Lyons Scholarship, 1951Spruce Falls Pulp and Paper Com...
Go to Profile#13273
David J. Nisbet
#164737
Overall Influence
#13274
Corinne Houart
#152286
Overall Influence
Corinne Houart is a Belgian biomedical scientist who is Professor of Developmental Biology at King's College London. She also serves as editor of the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology. She was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2021.
Go to Profile#13275
Jane E. Freedman
#164752
Overall Influence
#13276
Ajit Lalvani
#164756
Overall Influence
#13277
Annick Wilmotte
#123050
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Annick Wilmotte is a Belgian Antarctic researcher, best known for her research on the diversity and ecology of Antarctic cyanobacterial microflora. A genus of Antarctic cyanobacteria, called Wilmottia was named after her in recognition of her work in this field.
Go to Profile#13278
Saverio Minucci
#164768
Overall Influence
#13279
Derya Akkaynak
#55268
Overall Influence
Derya Akkaynak is a Turkish mechanical engineer and oceanographer at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. She was a 2019 finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. Early life and education Akkaynak is from the Aegean coast of Turkey. After completing her primary and secondary education at TED Ankara College and graduating in 1998, she studied aerospace engineering at the Middle East Technical University, where she graduated top of her class in 2003. She moved to the United States after graduating, where she earned a master's degree in Aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005.
Go to Profile#13280
Erwin Sigel
#164769
Overall Influence
#13281
Soad Tabaqchali
#164779
Overall Influence
#13282
Richard L. Saunders
#164782
Overall Influence
#13283
Cladd E. Stevens
#164784
Overall Influence
#13284
Germaine Cohen-bazire
#164793
Overall Influence
#13285
Jing‐gung Chung
#164796
Overall Influence
#13286
John Allen Mccutchan
#164807
Overall Influence
#13287
Scott A. Thomson
#109658
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Scott A. Thomson is an Australian herpetologist, paleontologist, and taxonomist, specialising in turtles of the family Chelidae. Education Thomson attended the University of Canberra for both his bachelor's and master's degrees in applied sciences, studying zoology and mathematics.
Go to Profile#13288
P. G. M. Van Der Valk
#164813
Overall Influence
#13289
Frances M. Gotch
#164820
Overall Influence
#13290
Nigel K. Spurr
#164826
Overall Influence
#13291
Alexander D. Bershadsky
#164828
Overall Influence
#13292
Philippe A. Halban
#164830
Overall Influence
#13293
Kanchi Gandhi
#105154
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kancheepuram Natarajan Gandhi is Senior Nomenclature Registrar and Bibliographer at Harvard University in the Department of Botany in the Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries . He manages a botanical classification project to identify and classify all plants in the Western world through his role at Harvard, where Harvard's newly adopted “open-access digitization policy” assigns to the public domain most of the images of plants he and others have classified and preserved.
Go to Profile#13294
Jorge C. Escalante‐semerena
#164861
Overall Influence
#13295
Melissa Parisi
#121777
Overall Influence
Melissa A. Parisi is an American geneticist and physician. She is chief of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch at the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. Education Parisi earned medical and doctorate degrees in developmental biology from Stanford University, where her research focused on mitochondrial transcription. She completed a pediatric residency at the University of Washington, followed by fellowship training in medical genetics.
Go to Profile#13296
Jan A. Pechenik
#164865
Overall Influence
#13297
Gert Wörheide
#156767
Overall Influence
Gert Wörheide is a German marine biologist who works mainly on marine invertebrates. He earned his doctorate in geobiology from Georg-August-Universität, following this with a post-doctorate at Queensland Museum , where he worked with John Hooper on sponges, a collaboration which continues.
Go to Profile#13298
Erik F. Smets
#164866
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#13299
Philip Coffino
#164874
Overall Influence
#13300
Alireza Minagar
#164890
Overall Influence
