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,
#13701
Osa O. Adachi
#167763
Overall Influence
#13702
Christel C. Herold‐mende
#167772
Overall Influence
#13703
Manyuan Long
#94020
Overall Influence
In this Chinese name, the family name is Long. Manyuan Long is a China-born American evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Long pioneered the studies of origination and evolution of new genes and received many awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US and Canada and the Ray Wu Award.
Go to Profile#13704
Bernard Claverie
#43951
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bernard Claverie is a French cognitive scientist. He is full professor at the Polytechnical Institute of Bordeaux. In 2003 he founded the Institut de Cognitique and directed it for six years. In 2009 he founded the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cognitique ENSC, a French national engineering school and research center in applied cognitive sciences and cognitive technology.
Go to Profile#13705
Dawn Sumner
#116405
Overall Influence
Dawn Yvonne Sumner is an American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Sumner's research includes evaluating microbial communities in Antarctic lakes, exploration of Mars via the Curiosity rover, and characterization of microbial communities in the lab and from ancient geologic samples. She is an investigator on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory and was Chair of the UC Davis Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences from 2014 to 2016. She is Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
Go to Profile#13706
Constance Tom Noguchi
#136504
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Constance Tom Noguchi is a research physicist, Chief of the Molecular Cell Biology Section, and Dean of the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences Graduate School at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health . Noguchi studies the underlying genetics, metabolism, and treatment of sickle cell disease and of erythropoietin and its effects on metabolism.
Go to Profile#13707
Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz
#52231
Overall Influence
1921 - 2006 (85 years)
Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz was a Mexican psychiatrist who chaired the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico , served as vice-president of World Psychiatric Association and founded the Mexican Institute of Psychiatry in 1979.
Go to Profile#13708
Sydney Kustu
#151290
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
Sydney Govons Kustu was an American biologist and a professor of biochemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her pioneering research on the regulation of Nitrogen metabolism in bacteria.
Go to Profile#13709
Bettine van Vuuren
#98485
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bettine van Vuuren is the Registrar and a Member of the Executive at the University of Johannesburg. She is also a Professor of Zoology and Director of the Centre for Ecological Genomics and Wildlife Conservation at the University of Johannesburg.
Go to Profile#13710
Manoj Majee
#106007
Overall Influence
Manoj Majee is an Indian plant molecular biologist, biochemist, inventor and a senior scientist at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research , New Delhi. He is known for his studies on the molecular and biochemical basis of seed vigor, longevity and seedling establishment.
Go to Profile#13711
Matthias Gromeier
#95755
Overall Influence
Dr. Matthias Gromeier is a Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Duke University Medical Center, who has developed a way to re-engineer a poliovirus to inspire the human immune system to kill cancer cells in a specific set of cancers. The re-engineered virus, called PVSRIPO, cannot replicate itself in normal cells, but can replicate itself in cancer cells that have an overabundance of the protein marker that the poliovirus targets.
Go to Profile#13712
William Frankland
#115489
Overall Influence
1912 - 2020 (108 years)
Alfred William Frankland MBE was a British allergist and immunologist whose achievements included the popularisation of the pollen count as a piece of weather-related information to the British public, speculation regarding the effects of overly sterile living environments, and the prediction of increased levels of allergy to penicillin. He continued to work for a number of years after turning 100.
Go to Profile#13713
Max Cardoso Langer
#154810
Overall Influence
#13714
Raphael K. Didham
#167883
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#13715
James Alexander MacDonald
#143275
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
James Alexander Macdonald FRSE FIB BSE was a 20th-century Scottish botanist and plant pathologist. Friends and family called him Jay Macdonald. Life He was born in Dingwall on 17 June 1908, one of five children, to Eliza Kelman and James Alexander Macdonald FRSE , HM Chief Inspector of Schools for the Scottish Highlands and a former rector of Leith Academy. He was home educated by his mother at Kilmacolm then at Inverness Royal Academy. He then went to the University of Edinburgh to study agriculture but then decided to also study botany as a joint degree. He continued as a postgraduate in botany, gaining his doctorate in 1935.
Go to Profile#13716
Said Ghabrial
#160986
Overall Influence
1939 - 2018 (79 years)
Said Amin Ghabrial was an Egyptian-American plant pathologist, known for his work on mycoviruses – viruses of fungi – and particularly their effects on the virulence of plant-pathogenic fungi. He also researched bean pod mottle virus, an economically important soybean disease. He was professor of plant pathology at the University of Kentucky .
Go to Profile#13717
Ximena Vélez Liendo
#137644
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Ximena Vélez Liendo is a Bolivian conservation biologist whose work focus on the ecology of the Andean bear, known as jukumari in aymara language, and its conservation in Bolivia and the rest of South America.
Go to Profile#13718
Xuong Nguyen-Huu
#59995
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Xuong Nguyen-Huu is a pioneer of protein crystallography technology. His research focuses on the development of novel methods, such as protein crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy, for the determination of protein structures and biological macromolecules.
Go to Profile#13719
Ronald Nigh
#124130
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ronald Nigh is an American ecological anthropologist focusing on Caribbean areas and the Maya region in Mesoamerica. Nigh is a professor and researcher at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Anthropologia Social , where he continues his research on ecological anthropology.
Go to Profile#13720
Michelle Cailin Mack
#167815
Overall Influence
Michelle Cailin Mack is an ecologist working on the connections between plants and climate in polar regions. She is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. She currently holds the title of Regent's Professor at Northern Arizona University.
Go to Profile#13721
Alice S. Huang
#167991
Overall Influence
#13722
Helene Muller-Landau
#160305
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Helene Muller-Landau is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. Her research focuses on tropical forest diversity and climate interactions with tropical forests. Education Helene Muller-Landau received her bachelor's from the Swathmore College in Mathematics and Statistics. She received both her masters and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University.
Go to Profile#13723
Abraham Clifford Barger
#135799
Overall Influence
1917 - 1996 (79 years)
Abraham Clifford Barger was an American professor of physiology who spent his entire career at Harvard Medical School. His research focused on the pathophysiology of heart failure and on the role of the kidneys in hypertension. Barger served as the president of the American Physiological Society in 1970-71 and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1974.
Go to Profile#13724
Geoffrey Beale
#135532
Overall Influence
1913 - 2009 (96 years)
Geoffrey Herbert Beale MBE, FRS was a British geneticist. He founded the Protozoan Genetics Unit, at University of Edinburgh. Life He grew up in Wandsworth, London, and attended Sutton Grammar School. Influenced by The Science of Life edited by H. G. Wells, he took life sciences as a direction. He earned a first-class honours degree, from Imperial College London, in 1935, and PhD in 1938. He worked at the John Innes Institute, with J. B. S. Haldane.
Go to Profile#13725
Lars Thelander
#94021
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Lars Thelander, born 1942, is a Swedish biochemist. He was awarded a Ph.D. degree at the Karolinska Institutet in 1968. and is a professor of medical chemistry and biophysics at Umeå University. Thelander is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 1994, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry since 2006 and the Committees chairman since 2010.
Go to Profile#13726
Thomas Hartmann
#167914
Overall Influence
1937 - 2017 (80 years)
Thomas Hartmann, , was a German pharmaceutical biologist and ecologist who was professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Biology at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. His research focused on the biosynthesis, intracellular transport, and action of quinolizidine and pyrrolizidine alkaloids in fungi and plants and the sequestration of these secondary natural products by insects.
Go to Profile#13727
Déborah Bourc'his
#153086
Overall Influence
Déborah Bourc'his is a French researcher in Epigenetics. She is currently a team leader at the Curie Institute . Her research has been awarded the prize Liliane-Bettencourt for life sciences. Education and academic appointments In 1996., she joins the laboratory of Evani Viegas-Pequignot to do a PhD in Genetics in at the Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital. There, she identifies methylation mutations on DNMT3B.
Go to Profile#13728
Bernhard Kadenbach
#115461
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Bernhard Kadenbach was a German biochemist with main research in structure and function of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase, who worked as a professor in the chemistry department of Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Go to Profile#13729
Michael Wells
#138858
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Michael Wells is the president of the European Society of Pathology. Early life and education Michael Wells graduated in 1976 from the University of Manchester with a BSc and MB, ChB in medicine and surgery.
Go to Profile#13730
Flaminia Catteruccia
#139123
Overall Influence
Flaminia Catteruccia is an Italian professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, studying the interactions between malaria and the Anopheles mosquitoes that transmit the parasites.
Go to Profile#13731
Jim Coan
#21359
Overall Influence
James Arthur Coan, Jr. is an American affective neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, writer, podcast host, human rights activist, and psychology professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he serves as director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory.
Go to Profile#13732
Jean-Christophe Balouet
#84412
Overall Influence
1956 - 2021 (65 years)
Jean-Christophe Balouet was a French palaeontologist. He has collaborated extensively with Storrs Olson of the Smithsonian Institution on palaeornithological research on the extinct birds of New Caledonia in the south-west Pacific region.
Go to Profile#13733
Josef Dostál
#140264
Overall Influence
1903 - 1999 (96 years)
Josef Dostál was a Czech botanist, pteridologist, conservationist, climber, hiker and university teacher. He was professor of botany at the Charles University in Prague. He was the founder of the modern Czech scientific taxonomy of higher plants, working mainly with morphology of higher plants found in Czechoslovakia.
Go to Profile#13734
Martin Geoffrey Low
#158570
Overall Influence
1950 - 2013 (63 years)
Martin Low FRS was a molecular cell biologist who discovered GPI membrane anchors in eukaryotic cells. Low grew up in Southport, Lancashire, a seaside resort in northwest England. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996.
Go to Profile#13735
Siegfried Jost Casper
#94950
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Siegfried Jost Casper was a German biologist whose primary research was in limnology and the plant genus Pinguicula . Together with Heinz-Dieter Krausch he published a basic reference work on the freshwater flora of central Europe. For many years he studied the East German lake Stechlinsee as well as the river Saale. In 1966 he published a monograph of the genus Pinguicula, a work that is still in use today. He described at least 14 new species, most recently Pinguicula lippoldii and Pinguicula toldensis in 2007. He served as head of the Botanical Garden of the Friedrich Schiller University ...
Go to Profile#13736
Robert Henry Peters
#148305
Overall Influence
1946 - 1996 (50 years)
Robert Henry Peters was a Canadian ecologist and limnologist that championed a predictive approach to science in order to make quantitative models relevant to public needs. He proposed that predictive limnology could be an effective tool for producing empirical models about relevant processes and organisms in lakes. He was a Professor in the Biology Department of McGill University, Montreal, Canada from 1974 to his death in 1996.
Go to Profile#13737
B. R. Murty
#144929
Overall Influence
1928 - 2003 (75 years)
Bhyravabhotla Radhakrishna Murty was an Indian botanist, known for his contributions the fields of Conservation genetics and Radiation genetics. He was a professor of Biochemistry Division at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa and was an elected fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1973, for his contributions...
Go to Profile#13738
Nicholas Fraser
#134793
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Nicholas Campbell Fraser , known as Nicholas C. Fraser, is a British palaeontologist, academic, and museum curator. He specialises in the Triassic period and vertebrate palaeontology. Since 2007, he has been Keeper of Natural Sciences at the National Museums Scotland. He has been adjunct professor of geology at Virginia Tech since 1993 and at North Carolina State University since 2007.
Go to Profile#13739
Jonathan Green
#76465
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jonathan Green is a British professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Manchester. He is a specialist in autism spectrum disorderss. He co-led the first study in the United Kingdom into ICD Asperger syndrome and has written research studies about social and language development in Autism Spectrum Disorder, co-morbidity and treatment intervention.
Go to Profile#13740
Trevor Williams
#104215
Overall Influence
1938 - 2015 (77 years)
John Trevor Williams was a British plant geneticist who was instrumental in the creation of plant gene banks. He was executive secretary and then first director at the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources in Rome and made major contributions towards conserving the genetic resources of the world's food crops. His work led to the setting up of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault known as the 'Doomsday Vault', part of the international network of gene banks.
Go to Profile#13741
Vanessa Barrs
#74352
Overall Influence
Vanessa Rosemary Duke Barrs is a veterinary researcher in feline infectious diseases. Barrs established clinical research and specialist veterinary services at the Valentine Charlton Cat Centre within the University of Sydney where she is also Professor of Feline Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Barrs discovered Aspergillus felis, an environmental fungus that causes invasive, intractable disease in cats, dogs and humans.
Go to Profile#13742
Barbara Howlett
#119020
Overall Influence
Barbara Jane Howlett is an Australian fungal plant pathologist. Biography Howlett grew up on a farm, which is a main reason for her interest in agriculture. Howlett received her BSc with honors from the University of Melbourne in 1970, her MSc from the Australian National University in 1973, and her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1981. She is currently a professor at the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#13743
Lois H. Tiffany
#108087
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Lois Hattery Tiffany was a mycologist who taught for over 50 years at Iowa State University and was known as "Iowa's mushroom lady". She won a number of awards, including becoming the first recipient of both the Mycological Society of America's Weston Award and the Iowa Governor’s Medal for Science Teaching. She published on many different aspects of fungal life, but her special area of research was Iowa's prairie fungi.
Go to Profile#13744
Marc Hollender
#158859
Overall Influence
1916 - 1998 (82 years)
Marc Hale Hollender was an American psychiatrist. Biography Hollender was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 19, 1916. He primarily grew up there, but also spent parts of his early life in Mineral Point and Linden, Wisconsin. He was educated at Loyola University, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He became a clinical assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1946, and was promoted to associate professor there in 1950. In 1956, he was named professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University.
Go to Profile#13745
Richard Strohman
#165441
Overall Influence
1927 - 2009 (82 years)
Richard Campbell Strohman was an American cell biologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his criticisms of genetic determinism and for his research on skeletal muscle development. His research on human muscle contributed to the scientific understanding of muscular dystrophy, and he served as the research director for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in 1990. While teaching at Berkeley, he supported the Free Speech Movement, and was a member of both the anti-Vietnam War Faculty Peace Committee and of the pro-nuclear disarmament Faculty for Social Responsibility.
Go to Profile#13746
Michelle Antoine
#87502
Overall Influence
Michelle Antoine is a Trinidadian neuroscientist. She is acting chief of the section on neural circuits in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism . Her research has redefined the classical notion of excitatory-inhibitory balance and its role in autism. She continues to study the synaptic and circuit pathways that contribute to nervous system disorders, autism spectrum disorder in particular.
Go to Profile#13747
Jozef Gécz
#139721
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dr Jozef Gécz is a senior researcher at The University of Adelaide studying the various mutations of a small part of the X chromosome that lead to mental retardation. Gécz was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2015 and SA Scientist of the Year for 2019.
Go to Profile#13748
Sabine Spijker
#155272
Overall Influence
Sabine Spijker is a Dutch neuroscientist who is a full professor and team leader at the Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology department of the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research at the VU University Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#13749
Ming T. Tsuang
#106292
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Ming Tso Tsuang is an American psychiatrist and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. He is considered a pioneering researcher in the genetic epidemiology of schizophrenia and other severe mental disorders. Tsuang has authored and co-authored more than 600 publications and serves as founding and senior editor of the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B.
Go to Profile#13750
Clete Kushida
#125978
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Clete Anthony Kushida is a sleep medicine clinician and sleep scientist, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University Medical Center, medical director of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, and Director of the Stanford University Center for Human Sleep Research.
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