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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#13801

Jacqueline Rowarth

#114867

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Sara Rowarth is a New Zealand agronomist, dairy farmer and science administrator. Career Rowarth has an Agricultural Science degree with first class honours in Environmental Agriculture, and obtained a PhD in Soil science from Massey University, with a 1987 thesis titled 'Phosphate cycling in grazed hill-country pasture. Rowarth taught Plant Science at Lincoln University. She returned to New Zealand to Massey University as full professor.

#13802

Linda Richards

#150536

Overall Influence

Linda Richards is an Australian researcher at Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland. Early life and education Richards undertook undergraduate studies at Monash University, and at the University of Melbourne, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science in 1990. Her PhD, researching the determination of neuronal lineage of in the developing spinal cord, was conferred in 1995 from the laboratory of Perry Bartlett, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.

#13803

Sergey Koren

#147249

Overall Influence

Sergey Koren is an American bioinformatician who is an associate investigator in the genome informatics section at the National Human Genome Research Institute. After completing his M.S., Koren joined the J. Craig Venter Institute as a bioinformatics engineer under the supervision of Granger Sutton. During his three years at JCVI, he contributed to the development of the Celera Assembler, which has been used to assemble both the Drosophila melanogaster and human genomes. In parallel, Koren worked under the supervision Mihai Pop at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he developed s...

#13804

Kimryn Rathmell

#167832

Overall Influence

W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center , and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee. On Nov. 17, 2023, Rathmell was announced as the intended next Director of the National Cancer Institute.

#13805

Roy Emile Gereau

#133611

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Roy Emile Gereau is an American botanist and explorer. Career Educated at the University of Iowa and Michigan Technological University he graduated BA 1969 and taught at Michigan Technological University and Michigan State University , and at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri since 1983, where he has been Assistant Curator since April 2005.

#13806

Franca Ronchese

#163930

Overall Influence

Franca Ronchese is an Italian-New Zealand immunologist. She currently leads the immune cell biology programme at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, New Zealand and is a research professor at Victoria University of Wellington.

#13807

William H. Behle

William H. Behle

#118036

Overall Influence

1909 - 2009 (100 years)

William Harroun Behle was an American ornithologist from Utah. He published around 140 papers on the biogeography and taxonomy of birds, focusing largely on birds of the Great Basin. Behle was born in Salt Lake City, the second of three children of parents Augustus Calvin Behle, a surgeon, and Daisy May Behle. He studied at the University of Utah, earning a B.A. in 1932 and M.A. in 1933, then pursued doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, under Joseph Grinnell, earning a PhD in 1937. Aside from four summers as a naturalist at Grand Canyon National Park, Behle spent the major...

#13808

Anita H. Clayton

#157881

Overall Influence

Anita H. Clayton is the Chair of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and the David C. Wilson Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. From 2005 to 2007, she was the President of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health .

#13809

Rajini Rao

#61350

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Rajini Rao is an American physiologist who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Rao is also the director of the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and is the principal investigator of the Rao Lab. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Rao discovers novel ion channels and explores their roles in human health and disease. The Rao Lab identified the oncogenic role of SPCA2 in breast cancer through an aberrant method of signalling to calcium channels.

#13810

Qiao Jie

#58092

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Qiao Jie is a Chinese obstetrician, reproductive physician and biologist. She is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and currently president of Peking University Third Hospital. She is also director of the National Clinical Research Center on Obstetrics & Gynecology, president of China Women Doctors' Association and chair for the Reproductive Medical Society of Chinese Medical Doctor Association.

#13811

Barbara Hickey

#117648

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Barbara Mary Hickey is an Emeritus Professor of Oceanography at the University of Washington. Her research involves field measurements and computational models to understand coastal processes. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

#13812

Susan Williams

#135903

Overall Influence

1954 - 2018 (64 years)

Susan Lynn Williams was an American marine biologist and Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she directed the Bodega Marine Laboratory from 2000-2010. She researched marine coastal ecosystems and how they are affected by human activities. She was a strong advocate for environmental protection, credited with helping pass legislation expanding the boundaries of Northern California's Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national sanctuaries, increasing the area of federally-protected coastal waters.

#13813

Bernie May

#168544

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Bernie May is a geneticist, known for his work applying genetic tools to address questions in natural resource management and conservation, with a particular focus on aquatic species. He is director of the Genomic Variation Lab and was adjunct professor in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis from 1995 to 2014 and is now an Emeritus Research Professor. May has published over 200 papers in 65 journals on divergent taxa, including fish, crustaceans, insects, plants, fungi, and mammals, bringing simple Mendelian genetic data to answer a diverse array of biologi...

#13814

Carlos Brody

#117678

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Carlos D. Brody is a Mexican neuroscientist who is currently the Wilbur H. Gantz III '59 Professor in Neuroscience at Princeton University and is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A cited expert in his field, his interests include systems neuroscience.

#13815

Sonja-Verena Albers

#166556

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sonja-Verena Albers is a German microbiologist who is a professor at the University of Freiburg. Her research focuses on the cell biology of the archaea Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and Haloferax volcanii. She was elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology in 2023.

#13816

Willis J. Gertsch

#76649

Overall Influence

1906 - 1998 (92 years)

Willis John Gertsch was an American arachnologist. He described over 1,000 species of spiders, scorpions, and other arachnids, including the Brown recluse spider and the Tooth cave spider. Gertsch was born in Montpelier, Idaho, on October 4, 1906. He earned a M.S. from University of Utah in 1930, working under Ralph V. Chamberlin, and in 1935 a PhD from University of Minnesota, although he had by then taken on a job at the American Museum of Natural History, and so earned his doctorate in absentia.

#13817

Joshua Weitz

#97608

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Joshua S. Weitz is an American biologist. He is both a professor of biology and the Clark Leadership Chair in Data Analytics at the University of Maryland. Previously, he was a professor at Georgia Tech, where he was the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences. In 2017, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#13818

Mark A. Lever

#138393

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Mark Alexander Lever is a microbial ecologist who studies the role of microorganisms in the global carbon cycle. He is a professor of environmental microbiology in the Department of Environmental Systems Science in the Institute of Biogeochemical and Pollutant Dynamics at ETH Zurich.

#13819

Katherine McJunkin

Katherine McJunkin

#143407

Overall Influence

Katherine McJunkin is an American biologist. She is the Stadtman Investigator in the Section On Regulatory RNAs, Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

#13820

Charmane Eastman

#92658

Overall Influence

Charmane Eastman is an American academic research scientist whose career has focused on studying circadian rhythms and their relationships to sleep, jet lag, and shift work. She has also studied winter depression, more properly known as seasonal affective disorder . Of special focus are the effects of bright light and melatonin on circadian rhythms.

#13821

Elizabeth Sattely

#134152

Overall Influence

Elizabeth S. Sattely is an American scientist and biotechnology engineer. She is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, an HHMI investigator, and a ChEM-H Faculty Fellow at Stanford University.

#13822

Douglas Black

#69983

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

Sir Douglas Andrew Kilgour Black was a Scottish physician and medical scientist who played a key role in the development of the National Health Service. He conducted research in the field of public health and was famous as the author of the Black Report. He was also known for the Black Formula, a translation of the Pignet formula to British measurements.

#13823

Sammy Lee

#63487

Overall Influence

1958 - 2012 (54 years)

Sammy Lee was an expert on fertility and in vitro fertilisation He was a hospital scientific consultant and was the chief scientist at the Wellington IVF programme. His book Counselling in Male Infertility was published in 1996; he contributed to major newspaper articles and appeared on several current affairs television programmes. He was the "inspiration" for Anthony Ling, the character in the novel One Life by Rebecca Frayn , after the author herself sought Lee's help for IVF treatment.

#13824

Ola Heide

#120518

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Ola Mikal Heide is a Norwegian botanist. He was born in Trondenes. He graduated from the Norwegian College of Agriculture in 1961, and took the dr.agric. degree in 1967 with the thesis Studies on the Control of Regeneration in Begonia. He was appointed professor of plant physiology at the University of Tromsø in 1972, professor of botany at the Norwegian College of Agriculture in 1976. He served as rector there from 1978 to 1983. He is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#13825

Björn Kjerfve

#140777

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Björn Kjerfve is a Swedish-American oceanographer. He is serving as professor of environmental sciences, Kjerfve's expertise is in coastal and estuarine physical oceanography. He resigned from his position at the American University of Sharjah in March 2019.

#13826

Hossein Fatemi

#152532

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

S. Hossein Fatemi is an American-Iranian psychiatrist and neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. Education Fatemi completed a B.S. in biology at Baylor University. He completed a M.S. and a Ph.D. in Human Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 1976, and 1979 respectively. Subsequently, he did postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas School of Medicine at Houston, Department of Pharmacology; the University of Texas, Cyclic Nucleotide Labs; McGill University and the National Institutes of Health . He received his M.D. from Case Western Reserve University in 1991.

#13827

Judith Klein-Seetharaman

#116442

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Judith Klein-Seetharaman is an American-German biochemist who is a professor at the Arizona State University. Her research considers the structure-function properties of proteins using computational bio-linguistics. She was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify novel therapies to tackle HIV.

#13828

Gabriela Schlau-Cohen

#72141

Overall Influence

Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry. Education and career Schlau-Cohen received a BS with honors in chemical physics from Brown University in 2003. She completed her PhD in chemistry in 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with Professor Graham R. Fleming as an American Association of University Women fellow. From 2011 to 2014, Schlau-Cohen was a Center for Molecular Analysis and Design postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She worked with Professor W.E. Mo...

#13829

Susan Humphris

#167820

Overall Influence

Susan Humphris is a geologist known for her research on processes at mid-ocean ridges. She is an elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Education and career Humphris grew up in the United Kingdom, where she learned to sail and enjoyed hikes that incited her interest in the natural world. As a child, she was not fond of history classes, but enjoyed the other subjects. Humphris has an undergraduate degree from Lancaster University , and earned her Ph.D. in 1976 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Following her Ph.D., she spent time as a postdoc at Imperial College in London and a year at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.

#13830

Anne Dejean-Assémat

Anne Dejean-Assémat

#76830

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Anne Dejean-Assémat is a French molecular biologist working on the mechanisms leading to the development of human cancers. Professor at the Pasteur Institute and Research Director at Inserm, she heads the laboratory of Nuclear Organization and Oncogenesis at the Pasteur Institute.

#13831

Amarilis de Varennes

#166892

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Amarilis Paula Alberti de Varennes e Mendonça is a Portuguese academic who is currently a professor at the University of Lisbon and president of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia. She graduated from the Technical University of Lisbon in 1979 and completed her PhD entitled "Some aspects of the host involvement in cowpea mosaic virus replication" at the University of East Anglia in 1985.

#13832

Roel Ophoff

#169088

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Roel André Ophoff is a Dutch human geneticist who is Professor of Psychiatry and Human Genetics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD in human genetics from Leiden University with a dissertation titled "The molecular basis of familial hemiplegic migraine".

#13833

Daniel Janies

#151723

Overall Influence

Daniel Andrew Janies is an American scientist who has made significant contributions in the field of evolutionary biology and on the development of tools for the study of evolution and the spread of pathogens. He is involved with research for the United States Department of Defense and has advised multiple instances of the government on methods for disease surveillance.

#13834

Stephen G. Young

#153097

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Stephen G. Young is an American physician-scientist known for investigating the human genetics and molecular physiology of apolipoprotein B, the intravascular lipolytic processing of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins by the lipoprotein lipase–GPIHBP1 complex, and the role of nuclear lamin proteins in health and disease. Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Human Genetics at UCLA and works closely with two faculty colleagues . He studied history at Princeton University and obtained a medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis. He trained in internal medicine at UCSF and cardiovascular diseases at UCSD; he is board-certified in both disciplines.

#13835

Harry Ostrer

#169128

Overall Influence

#13836

Ruth Kiew

#136983

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Ruth Kiew is a British botanist. Kiew was awarded the David Fairchild Medal of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, recognising her as "world’s great experts on tropical begonias" in 2002. Authority abbreviation

#13837

Lewis Judd

#95896

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Lewis Lund Judd was an American neurobiologist and psychiatrist. He served as director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1988 to 1992, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego from 1977 to 2013, and as a vice president of the American Psychiatric Association. As NIMH director he helped develop the "Decade of the Brain", a research plan designed "to bring a precise and detailed understanding of all the elements of brain function within our own lifetime."

#13838

Vincenzo Cerundolo

Vincenzo Cerundolo

#139158

Overall Influence

1959 - 2020 (61 years)

Vincenzo Cerundolo was the Director of the Medical Research Council Human Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford, at the John Radcliffe Hospital and a Professor of Immunology at the University of Oxford. He was also a Supernumerary Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He was known for his discoveries in processing and presentation of cancer and viral peptides to T cells and lipids to invariant NKT cells. Cerundolo died of lung cancer on 7 January 2020.

#13839

Yamini Dalal

#163288

Overall Influence

Yamini Dalal is an Indian American biochemist specialized in chromatin structure and epigenetic mechanisms. She is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Education Yamini Dalal became interested in chromosome structure and epigenetic gene regulation during her Baccalaureate years at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai where she earned a B.Sc. with a double major in Biochemistry and Life Sciences in 1995. She moved to the United States for her post-graduate work. In 's laboratory at Purdue University, she used classical chromatin biochemistry tools to understand how DNA sequence motifs and linker histones can shape the chromatin structure in silico, in vitro, and in vivo.

#13840

J. Sook Chung

#158854

Overall Influence

Jum Sook Chung is a South Korean carcinologist who researches the impact of neuroendocrine regulation on crustacean physiology, sex differentiation, and stress responses. She is a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology.

#13841

François M. M. Morel

#169156

Overall Influence

#13842

Jean Youatt

#119603

Overall Influence

1925 - 2017 (92 years)

Jean Beatrice Youatt was an Australian biochemist. Early life Jean Youatt was born in China in 1925 where her parents were missionaries. Her father was Australian and her mother was British. After visiting Australia several times, she and her family moved back to Australia from 1929 to 1937. Due to travels, she attended many different schools growing up. She began to be interested in science at the age of seven or eight when someone from the Victorian museum taught her about fossils, and her parents always encouraged her in her pursuit of science education. Her education was interrupted when...

#13843

James Russell

#77499

Overall Influence

James Charles Russell is a New Zealand conservation biologist and professor at the University of Auckland. Russell is most widely known for his research on Norway rats in New Zealand. One of the rats he studied swam over 400 metres between two Hauraki Gulf islands, breaking the swimming distance record for rats. The intentions of the rat are believed to have been amorous. The rat, known as Razza, was featured in Nature, and later in a children's book by Witi Ihimaera. Russell gained a PhD on the genetics and invasion ecology of rats, from the University of Auckland.

#13844

Mollie McGeown

#113445

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Mary Graham "Mollie" McGeown was a Northern Irish nephrologist and biochemist. She was a pioneer in dialysis and kidney transplantation, overseeing the first dialysis centre in Northern Ireland and designing the "Belfast recipe" for post-transplantation care.

#13845

Leland S. McClung

#167903

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Leland Swint McClung was an American bacteriologist with an international reputation for his research on anaerobic bacteria. McClung graduated from the University of Texas with a B.A. in 1931 and from the University of Wisconsin with an M.A. in 1932 and a Ph.D. in 1934. From 1936 to 1937 he was an instructor in bacteriology and a junior bacteriologist at the Experiment Station, University of California. From 1937 to 1940 he was an instructor in research medicine at the George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research, University of California. At Indiana University he was a full profess...

#13846

Laurie Boyer

#166027

Overall Influence

Laurie A. Boyer is an American biologist who is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the regulation of cell fate decisions and how faulty regulation leads to disease using human stem cells and uses mice as models.

#13847

Sheila Singh

#114472

Overall Influence

Sheila K. Singh MD, PhD, FRCSC is a chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children's Hospital in Ontario, Canada. She is also Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry, the Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, the Research Director for McMaster's Division of Neurosurgery, and a scientist/principal investigator appointed to the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University.

#13848

Arthur Lucas

#93455

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Arthur Maurice Lucas is an Australian academic who served as the 18th Principal of King's College London. He was educated at the University of Melbourne where he took BSc and BEd degrees, and subsequently earned his PhD from Ohio State University. He began his academic career at Flinders University where he was a senior demonstrator in biology, prior to a posting as a research associate at Ohio State University. Lucas then returned to Flinders University where he became a senior lecturer, before moving to King's College London where he became professor of science curriculum studies. At King'...

#13849

Ole Christian Lingjærde

#169232

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

#13850

Mindy Thompson Fullilove

#59540

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Mindy Thompson Fullilove is an American social psychiatrist who focuses on the ways social and environmental factors affect the mental health of communities. She is currently a professor of Urban Policy and Health at The New School.

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