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).

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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#13851

Rita Tewari

Rita Tewari
#164117
Overall Influence
Rita Tewari is an Indian parasitologist who studies the cell and molecular biology of malaria. She currently holds a post as professor at the University of Nottingham. Early life and education Tewari was born in Delhi, India, however she moved to the North-East of the country when she was growing up. Her father was a professor in social sciences. Tewari reports having contracted malaria seven times when she was young. She initially wanted to study medicine at university but had to read zoology instead due to a lack of choice in her local area. She returned to the city of her birth for her PhD,...
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#13852

Robert Joseph Bandoni

Robert Joseph Bandoni
#84952
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Robert Joseph Bandoni was a mycologist who specialized on the taxonomy and morphology of the heterobasidiomycetes . During his 50 years as professor at the University of British Columbia, he wrote over 80 scientific publications as well as several books. He was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus in 1989. In 1990 the Canadian Botanical Association awarded him the George Lawson Medal. Bandoni died on May 18, 2009, in Vancouver, British Columbia, after suffering a stroke.
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#13853

Wendy Havran

#149954
Overall Influence
1955 - 2020 (65 years)
Wendy Havran was an American immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute. She specialized in T cells, showing that they are scarce in certain areas of the body. Life Havran was born in Houston, Texas, and would visit science museums and natural parks with her family. She attended Duke University, where she learned about immunology and received a bachelor's degree in zoology. Havran attended the University of Chicago and worked in the laboratory of Dr.Frank Fitch for her doctorate degrees. Havran completed her post-doctoral training with Dr. James P. Allison at the University of California. This is where she earned the Lucille P.
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#13854

Hamish Kimmins

#160795
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
James Peter Kimmins . He earned his B.Sc. in forestry at the University of Wales Bangor , M.Sc. in Forest Entomology at the University of California at Berkeley , M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Forest Ecology with honours at Yale University . In 1969, he began at the Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia . where he served in various capacities and retired on December 31, 2007, as Professor of Forest Ecology. In 2007, he received the title of Professor Emeritus at UBC.
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#13855

Yusuke Nakamura

#169288
Overall Influence
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#13856

Jeremy James Bruhl

#133026
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jeremy James Bruhl is an Australian botanist. He is an emeritus professor in the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England and director of the N.C.W. Beadle Herbarium which holds c.110,000 plant specimens.
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#13857

Alessio Ciulli

#151882
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Alessio Ciulli is an Italian British biochemist. Currently, he is the Professor of Chemical & Structural Biology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, where he founded and directs Dundee' new Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation . He is also the scientific co-founder and advisor of Amphista Therapeutics.
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#13858

Margaret Hannah Fulford

#150813
Overall Influence
1904 - 1999 (95 years)
Margaret Hannah Fulford was an American bryologist who was active in identifying the flora of North and South America. Biography Fulford was born on June 14, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She subsequently attended the University of Cincinnati. She earned her BA in botany in 1926, BE in education in 1927, and returned for her MA in botany working under Emma Lucy Braun in 1928. She then attended Yale University to obtain her doctorate under Alexander William Evans, which she accomplished in 1935. Meanwhile, she worked at the University of Cincinnati as a botany instructor from 1927 to 1940. She b...
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#13859

Samara Reck-Peterson

#168946
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Samara Reck-Peterson is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. She is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her contributions to our understanding of how dynein, an exceptionally large motor protein that moves many intracellular cargos, works and is regulated. She developed one of the first systems to produce recombinant dynein and discovered that, unlike other cytoskeletal motors, dynein can take a wide variety of step sizes, forward and back and even sideways.
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#13860

Michael J. Reed

#104788
Overall Influence
1944 - 2009 (65 years)
Professor Michael J. Reed was a British chemist who held the position of professor of steroid biochemistry at Imperial College, London. Scientific career Reed obtained a BSc in zoology from the University of London in 1967 and an MSc in biochemistry from Imperial College in 1969. He then commenced research into the actions and metabolism of ethinyloestradiol with Ken Fotherby at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London, culminating in a PhD in 1973. He continued to work on the regulation of oestrogen synthesis in endometrial cancer before moving to St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1976, to join Vivian James in the Department of Chemical Pathology.
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#13861

Girardin Jean-Louis

#78117
Overall Influence
Girardin Jean-Louis is an American academic who is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. He serves as Director of the Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences Program and the "Program to Increase Diversity among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research" Institute. Dr. Jean-Louis’ translational behavioral sleep and circadian research was recently featured in Science and NPR. In 2020, he was named ‘Pioneer in Minority Health and Health Disparities’ and one of the Community of Scholars' most inspiring Black scientists in America.
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#13862

Daniel Klem

Daniel Klem
#83902
Overall Influence
Daniel Klem Jr. is an American ornithologist, known for his pioneering research into the mortality of birds due to glass windows. He is a Sarkis Acopian Professor of Ornithology and Conservation Biology at Muhlenberg College. He has been teaching there since 1979.
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#13863

Melly Oitzl

#115765
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Melly S. Oitzl is an Austrian behavioral neuroscientist. She is associate professor of medical pharmacology at Leiden University and adjunct professor of cognitive neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam. Oitzl is mainly interested in the relationships between stress, cognition, and emotion. She obtained her Ph.D. with the mention magna cum laude in 1989 from the University of Düsseldorf. Oitzl is a member of the board of the Earth and Life Sciences division of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, from which she had received an "Aspasia" grant in 2008. She has been a member of the executive committee and a treasurer of the European Brain and Behaviour Society.
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#13864

Alison Cree

#71434
Overall Influence
Alison Marion Cree is a New Zealand herpetologist. She is currently a professor at Otago University. Academic career Cree graduated from the University of Waikato in 1986 with a D.Phil. for her thesis titled "Water relations of the endemic New Zealand frogs Leiopelma archeyi, L. Hamiltoni and L. Hochstetteri". Prior to this she had attained a diploma on environmental pollution in Christchurch, through the University of Canterbury.
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#13865

Vanesa Gottifredi

Vanesa Gottifredi
#144814
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Vanesa Gottifredi is an Argentine chemist and biologist. She works as a researcher in the Principal Investigator category of the Scientific and Technological Researcher Program of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council . She is also head of the Leloir Institute's Cell Cycle and Genomic Stability Laboratory. She specializes in the mechanisms of tumor cell response to chemotherapy, work for which she was awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and L'Oreal-UNESCO.
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#13866

Iroise Dumontheil

#168320
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Iroise Dumontheil is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London and Director of Masters courses in Educational Neuroscience. Dumontheil was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society in 2015, for her research in the social cognition and executive functions associated with the rostral prefrontal cortex, particularly in adulthood and their development during adolescence.
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#13867

Michael Clarke

#116413
Overall Influence
Michael Clarke is an Australian ornithologist. He is a professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Victoria, where he has worked since 1992. He is especially known for his research into the evolution of cooperative breeding in honeyeaters, particularly the genus Manorina and for his work on the response of fauna and flora to wildfire . In 2007 he was the recipient of the D. L. Serventy Medal, awarded by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union for outstanding published work on birds in the Australasian region.
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#13868

Sherilynn Black

#98532
Overall Influence
Sherilynn Black is an American neuroscientist, the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, as well as an assistant professor of the practice of medical education at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Black's research focuses on social neuroscience and developing interventions to promote diversity in academia. Black has been widely recognized for her commitment to faculty development and advancement and holds national appointments with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the American...
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#13869

Gabriel Victora

#60622
Overall Influence
Gabriel D. Victora is an immunologist who is a recipient of the 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant for his research on the adaptive immune system and the processes by which it adjusts its reactions to infections. He is the Laurie and Peter Grauer Associate Professor at Rockefeller University, where he heads the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Dynamics.
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#13870

Salvatore Turco

#169225
Overall Influence
Salvatore J. Turco is an American molecular and cellular biochemist, currently the Antonio S. Turco Endowed professor at University of Kentucky. Turco is also a published author.
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#13871

Walter C. Sweet

#143036
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Walter C. Sweet was an American paleontologist. He was a Chief Panderer of the Pander Society, an informal organisation founded in 1967 for the promotion of the study of conodont palaeontology. In 1984, he was president of the Paleontological Society, an international organisation devoted to the promotion of paleontology.
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#13872

Isabel Behncke

Isabel Behncke
#108617
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Isabel Behncke Izquierdo is a field ethologist who studies animal behaviour to understand other animals, as well as to understand humans and our place in nature. Originally from Chile, she is a primatologist, a pioneer adventurer-scientist and the first South American in following great apes in the wild. Behncke is currently director of the Centro de Estudios Públicos , and advisor to the Chilean government, working on long-term strategies in science, technology, innovation and knowledge as a member of the National Council of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation for Development , of t...
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#13873

Ying E. Zhang

#119266
Overall Influence
Ying E. Zhang is a Chinese-American biochemist specialized in TGF-beta signaling and functions of ubiquitin E3 ligase Smurfs to better understand cancer cells and metastasis. She is a senior investigator in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute.
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#13874

Duncan D. Cameron

#162685
Overall Influence
Duncan Drummond Cameron is a British microbiologist and Professor of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Manchester. His research considers multiomics approaches to understand the interactions between soil microbes and plant nutrition. Alongside his research, Cameron works in science policy, and was involved with the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
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#13875

Jessica Melbourne-Thomas

Jessica Melbourne-Thomas
#108470
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jessica Melbourne-Thomas is a marine, Antarctic and climate change scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia. Her research focuses on climate change, its effects on the marine environment, and how to adapt and response to these changes.
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#13876

Barbara A. Baird

#154990
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Barbara Ann Baird is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. Baird's research investigates receptor-mediated cell signaling, including how cellular membranes are involved in targeting/regulating signaling pathways.
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#13877

Sean Nee

#169441
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sean Nee is an evolutionary biologist and theoretical ecologist. He has been a Lecturer at Oxford University and Professor at the University of Edinburgh. He has published scientific research papers with ecologist Robert May, theoretical biologist John Maynard Smith and epidemiologist and novelist Sunetra Gupta.
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#13878

Heather Whalley

#161562
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Heather Clare Whalley is a Scottish scientist. She is a senior research fellow in Neuroimaging at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh., and is an affiliate member of the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Her main focus of research is on the mechanisms underlying the development of major psychiatric disorders using the latest genomic and neuroimaging approaches .
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#13879

Prabhu B. Patil

#91066
Overall Influence
Prabhu B. Patil is an Indian bacterial geneticist and a senior scientist at the Institute of Microbial Technology. Known for his studies on bacterial genetics, genomics and metagenomics, Patil has published his research findings by way of a number of articles; ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 95 of them. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2017–18.
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#13880

Ken Campbell

#132977
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Kenton Stewart Wall Campbell , known as Ken Campbell, was an Australian palaeontologist and academic. Campbell was born in Ipswich, Queensland. He was the son of two store clerks who moved their family to Boonah during the Great Depression. He attended primary school in Ipswich, Boonah and Coorparoo. After winning a scholarship to attend Brisbane Grammar School in 1940, Campbell went on to university. In 1945, Campbell entered his second year of his study, attending lectures given by Dr Dorothy Hill, who had returned from World War II service in the WRANS. Her academic rigour inspired him. He took his B.Sc.
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#13881

Adam Geballe

#89710
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Adam P. Geballe is an American microbiologist and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Currently, he is a Professor at University of Washington, an investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and a physician at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.
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#13882

Claudia Clopath

#104897
Overall Influence
Claudia Clopath is a Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Imperial College London and research leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. She develops mathematical models to predict synaptic plasticity for both medical applications and the design of human-like machines.
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#13883

Barbara A. Horwitz

#169106
Overall Influence
Barbara A. Horwitz is an American cellular physiologist whose work focuses on metabolism. In particular, her research has centered on the neural and hormonal regulation of energy balance. Horwitz joined the University of California, Davis first as a postdoctoral scholar and then as an Assistant Professor. Her teaching, mentorship and leadership in supporting historically marginalized communities in academia have earned her numerous campus and national awards.
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#13884

Paul Luzio

#106050
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
J Paul Luzio FMedSci is a British biologist who is Professor of Molecular Membrane Biology, Department of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, and was Master of St Edmund's College, Cambridge until 2014, as well as Director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research.
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#13885

Wang Fengping

#169477
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Wang Fengping is a Chinese marine microbiologist who studies microbes that live in deep sea and subsurface environments, with a special focus on the physiology and geochemical roles of organisms that cannot yet be cultivated in the lab. She is a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
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#13886

Danièle Guinot

#93510
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Danièle Guinot is a French biologist, an emeritus professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in France, known for her research on crabs. Biography Guinot was born in eastern France and educated at the University of Montpellier and the University of Paris, finishing her studies in 1955. She then joined the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle as a research assistant; she remained there for the rest of her career. She earned a doctorate from Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1977.
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#13887

J. Michael Miller

#169482
Overall Influence
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#13888

Elizabeth Borer

#168509
Overall Influence
Elizabeth T. Borer is an American ecologist and a professor of ecology, Evolution and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Early life and education Born in Pennsylvania, Borer graduated from Oberlin College in 1991, spent several years working outside academia, then returned to earn her Ph.D. in ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002 . She went on to do postdoctoral training in the Integrative Biology Department at University of California, Berkeley with Cheryl Briggs, then a second postdoc at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
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#13889

Eurie Hong

#147189
Overall Influence
Eurie Lee Hong is an American geneticist. She is the Vice President of Genomics at AncestryDNA. Education Hong earned a bachelor of science in biological sciences from Stanford University. She completed a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and cell biology at University of Chicago. As a graduate student in Douglas K. Bishop's laboratory, Hong worked on the biochemical characterization of the yeast meiotic Dmc1 protein.
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#13890

Judi Allen

#169458
Overall Influence
Judith Elizabeth Allen is a British scientist who is Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Manchester. She is an expert on macrophages activated during helminthiasis and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023. She has also done extensive work into type 2 immunity and was awarded Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2016.
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#13891

Valentin Amrhein

Valentin Amrhein
#148848
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Valentin Amrhein is a German-Swiss professor of zoology at the University of Basel and science journalist. Together with Sander Greenland and others, he is a critic of significance thresholds in science and he draws attention to misunderstandings of p-values. He is author of a comment in the journal Nature on statistical significance that had the highest online attention score of all research outputs ever screened by Altmetric.
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#13892

Christine Loscher

#90227
Overall Influence
Christine E. Loscher is a Professor of Biotechnology and Associate Dean for Research at Dublin City University. Loscher is director of the Health Technologies Research and Enterprise Hub, and she works on bioactive molecules for autoimmune diseases.
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#13893

Harry Brailovsky Alperowits

#168297
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Harry Urad Brailovsky Alperowitz is a biologist. He earned his BA, MA and Ph.D. in biological sciences at the Faculty of Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico. His main academic interest is the taxonomy, biology, and biogeography of Coreidae, especially those found in Mexico . As an entomological authority he is cited as Brailovsky.
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#13894

Rudolf Arnold Maas Geesteranus

#135279
Overall Influence
1911 - 2003 (92 years)
Rudolf Arnold Maas Geesteranus , was a Dutch mycologist. See also :Category:Taxa named by Rudolf Arnold Maas Geesteranus
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#13895

Bryan R. Cullen

#163516
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bryan Richard Cullen is a James B. Duke Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Cullen was the Founding Director of the Duke University Center for Virology.
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#13896

Susanna Dunachie

#167808
Overall Influence
Susanna Jane Dunachie is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford. Her work considers microbiology and immunology to better understand bacterial infection and accelerate the development of vaccines. She has focused on melioidosis, scrub typhus and tuberculosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she studied T cell immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
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#13897

Steven M. Reppert

#80302
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Steven M. Reppert is an American neuroscientist known for his contributions to the fields of chronobiology and neuroethology. His research has focused primarily on the physiological, cellular, and molecular basis of circadian rhythms in mammals and more recently on the navigational mechanisms of migratory monarch butterflies. He was the Higgins Family Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Massachusetts Medical School from 2001 to 2017, and from 2001 to 2013 was the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology. Reppert stepped down as chair in 2014. He is currently distinguished p...
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#13898

Valerie Todd Davies

#117280
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Valerie Todd Davies was an arachnologist who described many species of spider. Early life Valerie Ethel Todd was born 29 September 1920 in Makirikiri, near Wanganui, in New Zealand. She attended Wanganui Girls' College and then studied her BSc at Victoria University in Wellington in 1939. She continued her studies toward a MSc at Otago University in Dunedin, graduating in 1943. Her thesis researched trap-door spiders. Upon graduation she worked as a research assistant and later an assistant lecturer in zoology at Otago University.
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#13899

Russell Van Gelder

#152612
Overall Influence
Russell Van Gelder is an American clinician-scientist and a board-certified ophthalmologist. He is most known for his work in the mechanisms of uveitis disease, his research on non-visual photoreception in the eye, and on vision-restoration methods for retinal degenerative disease.
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#13900

Linda M. Brzustowicz

#129349
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Linda M. Brzustowicz is a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and a member of the Motif BioSciences Scientific Advisory Board, whose main purpose is to develop technology that will benefit all laboratories using "biosamples," or samples of blood, DNA, stem cells, etc. that advance the field of human genetics. She has produced notable research in human gene functions in both the pathologic and normal states, contributing to the understanding of genetics of schizophrenia, autism, and specific language impairment . Because the diagnosed cases of childhood autism have experienced an unpre...
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