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,
#13401
Hugo Breed Fischer
#165574
Overall Influence
#13402
Patrick Jean Cozzone
#165580
Overall Influence
#13403
Ritsu Kamiya
#165584
Overall Influence
#13404
John D. Chodera
#165612
Overall Influence
#13405
Kinh Luan Phan
#165617
Overall Influence
#13406
John P. Lydon
#165619
Overall Influence
#13407
Alain Israël
#165621
Overall Influence
#13408
Jeffrey S. Bale
#165625
Overall Influence
#13409
Richard M. Murray
#66881
Overall Influence
Richard M. Murray is a synthetic biologist and Thomas E. and Doris Everhart Professor of Control & Dynamical Systems and Bioengineering at Caltech, California. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 for "contributions in control theory and networked control systems with applications to aerospace engineering, robotics, and autonomy". Murray is a co-author of several textbooks on feedback and control systems, and helped to develop the Python Control Systems Library to provide operations for use in feedback control systems. He was a founding member of the Department of D...
Go to Profile#13410
Benjamin Littenberg
#165631
Overall Influence
#13411
Khatijah Yusoff
#119804
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Khatijah Mohamad Yusoff is a Malaysian academician and a virologist. Her research on the Virulent Newcastle disease , a poultry virus has gained acknowledgement locally and globally. She received the UNESCO Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology in 2005.
Go to Profile#13412
Michele De Palma
#148165
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Michele 'Miki' De Palma is an Italian biologist and a professor at EPFL . He is known for his work on the role of macrophages in cancer progression and the discovery of Tie2-expressing angiogenic monocytes.
Go to Profile#13413
Nagwa Abdel Meguid
#121595
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nagwa Abdel Meguid is an Egyptian geneticist and 2002 winner of the L’Oreal UNESCO Award for Women in Science for Africa and the Middle East. Her research has "identified several genetic mutations that cause common syndromes such as the fragile X syndrome and Autism".
Go to Profile#13414
Alex Avdeef
#165684
Overall Influence
#13415
Youri Glupczynski
#165685
Overall Influence
#13416
Neil M. Hogg
#165703
Overall Influence
#13417
Alain Van Dorsselaer
#165704
Overall Influence
#13418
R. George Ratcliffe
#165709
Overall Influence
#13419
David L. Topping
#165715
Overall Influence
#13420
Daniel L. Rabosky
#165734
Overall Influence
#13421
Susan Morgello
#165736
Overall Influence
#13422
J. A. Papaconstantinou
#165737
Overall Influence
#13423
Björn Ákesson
#165740
Overall Influence
#13424
Wen‐xing Ding
#165749
Overall Influence
#13425
Ann Vanreusel
#165760
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#13426
Mercedes Bustamante
#136989
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Mercedes Bustamante is a biologist born in Chile. Most of her work takes place in the savannah regions in Brazil called the cerrado biome. Her area of interests are studying large scale impacts on the environment, land usage and biogeochemistry. Since 1994 she has been a professor at the University of Brasília , where she is currently the Graduate Coordinator of the Ecology Department. She is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group.
Go to Profile#13427
Ute Roessner
#150619
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Professor Ute Roessner is a biochemist who specialises in plant metabolomics. Until 2022, she has been professor and head of the School of Biosciences at the University of Melbourne. In 2022, she joined The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Go to Profile#13428
Heinrich Niemann
#165782
Overall Influence
#13429
Thomas Herdegen
#165788
Overall Influence
#13430
Eitan Friedman
#165790
Overall Influence
#13431
Jon C. Aster
#135814
Overall Influence
Jon Christopher Aster is an American pathologist who researches the role of the notch signaling pathway in leukemia. He is the Michael Gimbrone Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He has been a co-editor of the Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease since 2016.
Go to Profile#13432
Yariv Yogev
#165805
Overall Influence
#13433
Marianne Thoresen
#165820
Overall Influence
#13434
Douglas Lee Brutlag
#165828
Overall Influence
#13435
Yoshio Imai
#165834
Overall Influence
#13436
Larry B. Silver.
#165862
Overall Influence
#13437
Charles Chesters
#153653
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Charles Geddes Coull Chesters OBE FRSE FLS was a British botanist specialising in fungi and lichens. Life He was born in Glasgow on 9 March 1904, the son of Charles Geddes Chesters, a commercial traveller, and Margaret Geddes. He attended Hyndland School in Glasgow. He was awarded a place at Glasgow University in 1922 and graduated BSc in botany in 1926.
Go to Profile#13438
Norman P. Salzman
#165876
Overall Influence
#13439
Anker Lenard Johnson
#165884
Overall Influence
#13440
Hans Will
#165887
Overall Influence
#13441
Hans R. Gelderblom
#165909
Overall Influence
#13442
Otto Cars
#165914
Overall Influence
#13443
Richard C. Dodel
#165917
Overall Influence
#13444
Michael N. Gould
#165938
Overall Influence
#13445
François Goldwasser
#165940
Overall Influence
#13446
Herman G. M. Westenberg
#165945
Overall Influence
#13447
Albert J. Fornace Jr.
#110340
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Albert J. Fornace Jr. is a professor in the departments of Oncology, Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology, and Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University. He has also been awarded the Molecular Cancer Research Chair at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, joining Georgetown in 2006 from the Harvard School of Public Health. Earlier, he was chief of the Gene Response Section at the National Cancer Institute. He graduated from La Salle College High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , and received his B.S. and M.D. from the Jefferson-Penn State joint pre-medical/medical program.
Go to Profile#13448
Koichi Kawakami
#165951
Overall Influence
#13449
Dominique Stéhelin
#165958
Overall Influence
#13450
Ingrid Agartz
#165967
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
