Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#13751

Kathryn Ayscough

#163458

Overall Influence

Kathryn Rachel Ayscough is a professor of molecular cell biology and head of the department of biomedical science at the University of Sheffield. She was awarded the 2002 Society for Experimental Biology President's Medal. Her research investigates the role of the actin cytoskeleton in membrane trafficking and cell organisation.

#13752

Verena Tunnicliffe

#168304

Overall Influence

Verena Julia Tunnicliffe is a Canadian Marine Biologist and Professor of the University of Victoria. Since 2002, she has held the position of Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research. Her research on hydrothermal systems helped establish Canada's first Endeavor Hot Vents Marine Protected Area. Her research has also led to the discovery of over 80 new species of marine life.

#13753

David M. Geiser

#164879

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

David M. Geiser is an American mycologist. He is Professor of Mycology and Director of the Fusarium Research Center at Pennsylvania State University. Education and career David Geiser received his B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Northwestern University in 1987. He then went on to complete his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Georgia in 1995 under the direction of William Timberlake and Michael L. Arnold. His thesis was entitled "Population genetic, chromosomal, and phylogenetic patterns associated with meiosis in Aspergillus. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship from 1995 to 1998 at the University of California, Berkeley.

#13754

Ludger Johannes

#167541

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Ludger Johannes is a French-German biochemist who has specialized in the field of endocytosis and intracellular trafficking. He and his team study how sugars attached to proteins or lipids influence the transport of biological material into eukaryotic cells.

#13755

Carlo Semenza

#165381

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Carlo Semenza is an Italian neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. Carlo Semenza’s research activity mostly contributed to the field of aphasiology, neuropsychology of language, and numerical cognition.

#13756

Catherine Margaret Shachaf

#135500

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Catherine Margaret Shachaf is an Indian cell biologist. She previously held an instructor position at Stanford University School of Medicine, and has made ground-breaking discoveries in cancer research. Shachaf has spoken at scientific conferences and has published more than 17 journal articles. Her leading work was published in Nature , "MYC Inactivation Uncovers Pluripotent Differentiation and Tumor Dormancy in Hepatocellular Cancer." Shachaf is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Green Nanotechnology.

#13757

Binil Aryal

#63122

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Binil Aryal is a Nepali physicist and the dean of Tribhuvan University 's Institute of Science and Technology. Previously, he served as the head of the Central Department of Physics, located in Kirtipur, Kathmandu. He was born in 1969 in Saptari District of eastern Nepal. He is also a senator of the TU assembly and a member of the TU academic council. Aryal served as the chairperson of a working committee that drafted TU's "structure of B.Sc. four year system".

#13758

John P. Morrissey

#156495

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

John Patrick Morrissey is an Irish microbiologist and biotechnologist. Since 2000 he has worked and taught as Professor of Microbiology at University College Cork , Ireland. Recently he works mainly on the optimisation of yeasts for industrial biotechnology, but is also involved in the works with several other organisms.

#13759

Maria Àngels Cardona i Florit

#146875

Overall Influence

1940 - 1991 (51 years)

Maria Àngels Cardona i Florit was a biologist, ecologist and botanist from Menorca, who worked mainly in Barcelona. Biography She lived during her early childhood in Ciutadella before moving to Barcelona to go to university.

#13760

Anna Gloyn

#78320

Overall Influence

Anna L Gloyn is a geneticist, who is Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at the Stanford University. She was the recipient of the Minkowski Prize in 2014 for her research into causal mechanisms of diabetes pathogenesis. Her work has contributed to improved treatment options for people with rare forms of diabetes and helped advance our understanding of type 2 diabetes.

#13761

Lewi Stone

#168371

Overall Influence

#13762

S Prakash Tiwari

#75102

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

S Prakash Tiwari is an Indian biotechnologist, geneticist, agriculturalist and a former Deputy Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research . He was Vice-Chancellor of Swami Keshwanand Rajasthan Agricultural University, Bikaner, and Director of National Academy of Agricultural Research Management , Hyderabad. He is also a former director of National Research Centre on Soybean, Indore.

#13763

Judith D. Zuk

#141459

Overall Influence

1951 - 2007 (56 years)

Judith Daria Zuk was an American horticulturist, author and conservationist who served as president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden from 1990 to 2005. Biography A native of Canandaigua, New York, Zuk attended Rutgers University, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in botany. Following graduate studies at the University of Delaware, she received a master's degree in public garden administration. Prior to accepting the Brooklyn position, she held the post of director of Swarthmore College's Scott Arboretum.

#13764

Hugues de Thé

#137253

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Hugues de Thé , is a French doctor and researcher. He is currently a hospital doctor and professor at the Collège de France, holder of the chair of cellular and molecular oncology , member of the French Academy of sciences since 2011. His work, at the interface between biology and medicine, has radically transformed the management of a rare form of leukaemia, which has become the paradigm for targeted cancer treatments.

#13765

Andrew Mattison

Andrew Mattison

#81990

Overall Influence

1948 - 2005 (57 years)

Andrew Michael Mattison was a medical psychologist and researcher. He performed influential research in both clinical and social aspects of sexology, as well as drug use. He spent the majority of his career as a professor, practicing psychotherapist, and research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

#13766

Brian M. Boom

#160807

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Brian Morey Boom is an American botanist who specializes in the flora of the Guianas and the Caribbean, the family Rubiaceae, ethnobotany, and economic botany. Biography At the University of Memphis he graduated in 1977 with a B.S. in biology and in 1979 with an M.S. in botany. At the Graduate Center of the City University of New York he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1983 with dissertation A Revision of Isertia . His doctoral advisor was Scott A. Mori.

#13767

Joellen Louise Russell

#105034

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Joellen Louise Russell is an American oceanographer and climate scientist. Russell is a professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. In Tucson, AZ, with joint appointments in the Departments of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, and in the Mathematics Department’s Program in Applied Mathematics. She was named as the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative Science in 2017. She was named as University Distinguish Professor in 2021.

#13768

Martha Gillette

#111317

Overall Influence

Martha Ulbrick Gillette is a chronobiologist and neurobiologist with research focusing on the effects of circadian clocks on integrative brain functions metabolism and the molecular mechanisms involved in signaling pathways. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#13769

Magdalena K. P. Smith Meyer

#106236

Overall Influence

1931 - 2004 (73 years)

Magdalena Kathrina Petronella Smith Meyer was a South African acarologist who was regarded as a world authority on plant-feeding mites of agricultural importance and was known as the "mother of red-spider mites of the world". She described more than 700 new species and 25 new genera, mostly of mites of agricultural importance. Meyer was involved in the promotion of biological control of mites using predatory mites, spiders and insects.

#13770

Rajani A. Bhisey

#84680

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Rajani A. Bhisey is an Indian scientist. She specializes in the field of environmental carcinogenesis and molecular epidemiology of cancer, occupational hazards. Education Bhisey completed her Bachelor of Science degree from University of Bombay and joined the Indian Cancer Research Centre , Mumbai, as a research fellow to work for her Master of Science by research degree. She worked on skin carcinogenesis using electron microscope as the main tool, which led to her PhD degree from the University of Bombay in 1974.

#13771

Lee Berger

#133156

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Lee Berger , is an Australian biologist and veterinarian, who discovered during her PhD that the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis was responsible for the decline and extinction of hundreds of amphibian species.

#13772

David Gray

#168491

Overall Influence

#13773

Christopher Amos

#60881

Overall Influence

Christopher Ian Amos is an American genetic epidemiologist and the director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the associate director for quantitative science at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is known for his research on the genetic basis of certain types of human cancer.

#13774

Joachim Lingner

#163476

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Joachim Lingner is a Swiss molecular biologist. He holds the professorship for life sciences and leads the Lingner Lab at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . Career Lingner obtained his PhD from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel in 1992. In 1993 he joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at University of Colorado at Boulder for postdoctoral studies under the supervision of Thomas Cech. He then joined Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne, Switzerland, first as a junior group leader in 1997 and became senior group leader in 2002. In 2005 he was appointed as associate professor at EPF Lausanne.

#13775

Raoul Mulder

#115151

Overall Influence

Raoul Alexander Mulder is an Australian ornithologist and evolutionary ecologist. Based at the University of Melbourne, he is an Associate Dean of Academic Innovation for the Faculty of Science and former head of the School of BioSciences.

#13776

Laurence Joseph Dorr

#132923

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Laurence "Larry" Joseph Dorr is an American botanist and plant collector. He specializes in the systematics of the order Malvales and the family Ericaceae. Biography In 1971 Dorr graduated from Roxbury Latin School and matriculated at Washington University in St. Louis. By his junior year, he took a break for a year, hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in five months, and then went plant collecting in British Columbia and Alaska. In 1976 he received a bachelor's degree in earth sciences and planetology from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1980 he received a master's degree in botany from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#13777

M. Amin Arnaout

#47130

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

M. Amin Arnaout is a Lebanese physician-scientist and nephrologist best known for seminal discoveries in the biology and structure of integrin receptors. He is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician, former Chief of Nephrology, and Director of the Leukocyte Biology and Inflammation Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital .

#13778

Katja Fennel

#113738

Overall Influence

Katja Fennel is an oceanographer studying the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. She is a full professor in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, a former Canada Research Chair in marine prediction, and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Biogeosciences.

#13779

William S. Pollitzer

#129962

Overall Influence

1923 - 2002 (79 years)

Dr. William Sprott Pollitzer was an American anatomist. He was a professor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists , and the Human Biology Council .

#13780

Benedita Barata da Rocha

#115756

Overall Influence

1949 - 2021 (72 years)

Benedita Barata da Rocha was a Portuguese immunologist. She earned her M.D. 1972 from the University of Lisbon, and her Ph.D. 1978 from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was "directeur de recherche classe exceptionel" of the CNRS and director of a research unit of the INSERM at the Necker Institute, Paris, France. Her major scientific contributions are in the areas of T cell immune tolerance, T cell memory and development of intraepithelial lymphocytes.

#13781

Chris Smith

#88584

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Chris Smith - "the Naked Scientist" - is a British consultant virologist and a lecturer based at Cambridge University. He is also a science radio broadcaster and writer, and presents the Naked Scientists, a programme which he founded in 2001, for BBC Radio and other networks internationally, as well as 5 live Science on BBC Radio 5 Live.

#13782

David Schiel

#168589

Overall Influence

David Schiel is a marine ecologist and biologist from New Zealand. He studied at the University of Auckland and was awarded a PhD in 1980. The title of his doctoral thesis was A demographic and experimental evaluation of plant and herbivore interactions in subtidal algal stands. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of University of Canterbury.

#13783

Norman Maclean

#125246

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Norman Maclean is an Emeritus Professor of Genetics at The University of Southampton. Besides genetics he has worked in wildlife conservation and river management. He has been a Director of the Test and Itchen Association, and a panel member of the European Food Safety Authority. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Linnaean Society. Served as the editor of the Molecular and Cell Science section of the Journal of Fish Biology, and also on editorial boards of other journals in the past. Norman was also a Trustee of Marwell Wildlife Park for many years, and served as i...

#13784

Karen Kidd

#58327

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Karen Ann Kidd is a Canadian aquatic ecotoxicologist. She is the Jarislowsky Chair in Environment and Health and Professor of Biology at McMaster University and member of the International Joint Commission.

#13785

Barry Gordon

#145008

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Barry J. Gordon is an American behavioral neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist. He is the inaugural holder of the therapeutic cognitive neuroscience endowed professorship and a professor of neurology with a joint appointment in cognitive science at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

#13786

Alan Kamil

#141205

Overall Influence

Alan C. Kamil is an American experimental psychologist. He is the Director, School of Biological Sciences and George Holmes Professor of Biological Sciences and Psychology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Kamil's work focusses on the evolution of memory and adaptive specializations of learning in many animal species, especially the Clark's nutcracker and other birds. Kamil has published peer reviewed articles on both theoretical aspects of comparative psychology and animal cognition, and on empirical studies of animal learning and memory. In 2013 Kamil was honoured by the Comparati...

#13787

Marco Rito-Palomares

#106449

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Marco Antonio Rito Palomares is a Mexican biochemist and chemical engineer. He graduated in 1987 with a BSc in Food-Biochemical Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico de La Paz, B.C.S. In 1989, he also earned an MSc in Chemical Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

#13788

Robert James Baker

#119610

Overall Influence

1942 - 2018 (76 years)

Robert James Baker was an American mammalogist. He studied bats, as well as the effects of radiation on animals. Early life and education Robert James Baker was born on 8 April 1942 in Warren, Arkansas to parents Laura Cooper and James Simeon Baker, who was killed during World War II. His mother subsequently remarried, and he grew up with six half-siblings. In 1959 he began attending college at Ouachita Baptist University, though he soon transferred, graduating from University of Arkansas at Monticello in 1963. He graduated from Oklahoma State University with his M.S. in 1965 and from Univers...

#13789

Katerina Akassoglou

#147834

Overall Influence

Katerina Akassoglou is a neuroimmunologist who is a Senior Investigator and Director of In Vivo Imaging Research at the Gladstone Institutes. Akassoglou holds faculty positions as a Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Akassoglou has pioneered investigations of blood-brain barrier integrity and development of neurological diseases. She found that compromised blood-brain barrier integrity leads to fibrinogen leakage into the brain inducing neurodegeneration. Akassoglou is internationally recognized for her scientific discoveries.

#13790

Alexander Carlton Hodson

#143586

Overall Influence

1906 - 1996 (90 years)

Alexander Carlton Hodson was an American entomologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota. He is known for his work on ecological approaches to applied entomology. Hodson was born in Reading, Massachusetts, where his father worked in a paint business into which he too joined. He then received a BS from the University of Massachusetts in 1928 and an MA in 1931 from the University of Minnesota, followed by a PhD in 1935. He worked under Victor E. Shelford at the Puget Sound Biological Station and became influenced in ecological entomology. Along with his student Huai C. Chiang, he also developed laboratory techniques such as for the rearing of Drosophila.

#13791

Camilla Bellone

#158975

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Camilla Bellone is an Italian neuroscientist and assistant professor in the Department of Basic Neuroscience at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland. Bellone's laboratory explores the molecular mechanisms and neural circuits underlying social behavior and probes how defects at the molecular and circuit level give rise to psychiatric disease states such as Autism Spectrum Disorders.

#13792

Duane Isely

#125185

Overall Influence

1918 - 2000 (82 years)

Duane Isely was an American professor of botany and an expert on seed technology and weeds. Biography Isely was born to Dwight Isely, a professor of entomology, and Blessie Elise, both of whom studied and worked at the University of Arkansas. He too graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor's degree in 1938 and a master's degree in 1939. In 1942 he received his PhD from Cornell University with thesis supervisor Walter Conrad Muenscher . From 1942 to 1944 Isely conducted studies on the herbaceous plants of the reservoirs being constructed for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In ...

#13793

Peter Klinken

#120195

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Svend Peter Klinken is an Australian medical researcher and academic. He is currently the Chief Scientist of Western Australia. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the June 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours.

#13794

Glaci Zancan

#116243

Overall Influence

1935 - 2007 (72 years)

Glaci Teresinha Zancan was a Brazilian biochemist, president of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of the Science from 1999 to 2003. She made her post doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires, when working with Luis Federico Leloir, Nobel prize of Medicine of 1970.

#13795

Arthur Whiteley

#157345

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Arthur Henry Whiteley was a zoologist who spent most of his research career at the University of Washington, where he studied developmental biology using sea urchins as a model organism. Early life and education Whiteley was born in 1916 in Michigan to English immigrants. He studied biology as an undergraduate at Kalamazoo College and then received a master's degree in zoology from the University of Wisconsin. He moved to the University of California, Berkeley for his Ph.D., which focused on early use of 32P radioisotope labeling in biology, supervised by Sumner Cushing Brooks. Whiteley then spent time at Princeton University on a war-related project on decompression sickness in aviation.

#13796

Helen A. Stafford

#168622

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Helen Adele Stafford was an American plant physiologist and phytochemist. She was from 1977 to 1978 the president of the Phytochemical Society of North America. Biography Helen A. Stafford attended Quaker schools in Philadelphia. She became interested in botany when tending her father's garden.

#13797

Karen Louise Wilson

#153877

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Karen Louise Wilson is an Australian botanist. Some of her research interests are: systematics, phylogenetic and biogeographic studies on Cyperaceae, Casuarinaceae, Juncaceae and Polygonaceae. Other professional interests include botanical nomenclature; botanical history, biodiversity, informatics and scientific editing.

#13798

John J. McGlone

#151375

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

John J. McGlone is an American animal scientist and a Frank Guggenheim Fellow, Institutional Official Director and professor of Animal Science at Texas Tech University. Early life and education McGlone grew up in the New York City area and on Long Island, New York. He graduated from Holy Family High School in Huntington, NY. He received his B.S. and his M.S. in 1977 and in 1979 in Animal Science with a minor in Neuroscience at Washington State University. He completed his Ph.D. in 1981 in Animal Science with a minor in Neural and Behavioral Biology from University of Illinois. He was a resear...

#13799

Yi Zhang

#160420

Overall Influence

Yi Zhang is a Chinese-American biochemist who specializes in the fields of epigenetics, chromatin, and developmental reprogramming. He is a Fred Rosen Professor of Pediatrics and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, a senior investigator of Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also an associate member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, as well as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is best known for his discovery of several classes of epigenetic enzymes and the identifica...

#13800

Judi Hewitt

#132665

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Judith Elaine Hewitt is a Finnish-New Zealand bio-statistician and soft-sediment benthic ecologist. She currently works at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and have with an association with the University of Auckland.

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