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,

#13951

Michael O. Dillon

#143660

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Michael Owen Dillon is an American botanist with the botanical abbreviation M.O.Dillon. He received his BA and MA from the University of Northern Iowa and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He acts as Emeritus Curator of the Field Museum of Natural History and is noted for research on Andean flora. He also contributed work for the Magnolia Society.

#13952

Harold Edwin Umbarger

#138024

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Harold Edwin Umbarger was an American bacteriologist and biochemist. Biography Umbarger grew up in Mansfield, Ohio and graduated from Mansfield Senior High School in 1939. At Ohio University he graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1943 and a master's degree in zoology in 1944. For two years from 1944 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman. In 1945 he served aboard the USS Rescue. In 1950 he received a Ph.D. in bacteriology from Harvard University. His doctoral thesis, supervised by J. Howard Mueller, is entitled Studies on the Interactions Involved in the Biosynthetic Mechanisms of Isoleucine and Valine in Escherichia Coli.

#13953

Paul Adams

#55712

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Paul Richard Adams, FRS is a neuroscientist currently serving as a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Stony Brook University in New York. He graduated from London University with a PhD, and did postdoctoral work with Bert Sakmann at the Max Planck Institute. He won the Novartis Memorial Prize in 1979 and the Gaddum Memorial Award in 1984, both from the British Pharmacological Society. He was made a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellow in 1986, and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1991. From 1987 to 1995 he was an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Instit...

#13954

Lois Ann Pfiester

#139429

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Lois Ann Pfiester was an American phycologist and protistologist, specializing in freshwater dinoflagellate species. Biography Pfiester received in 1965 her A.B. from Spalding University, in 1970 her M.A. from Murray State University, and in 1974 her Ph.D. in botany from Ohio State University. She joined in 1974 the faculty of the botany department of the University of Oklahoma as an assistant professor and was a full professor there in 1992 at the time of her death. She directed 4 doctoral dissertations and was the author or coauthor of over 75 journal articles.

#13955

Maria Jesús Uriz Lespe

#169356

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

María Jesús Uriz Lespe is a pioneer in taxonomy, biology and population genetics of marine sponges, with a wide international recognition. In recent years she has focused her research on evolutionary and functional aspects of the symbiotic relationships between sponges and microorganisms, interacting with the renowned American specialist Lynn Margulis. Her line of research in the biological activities of sponge secondary metabolites gave rise to a continued collaboration with pharmaceutical companies that have allowed the development of antitumor drugs.

#13956

Matthias Heinemann

#160120

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Matthias Heinemann is a professor of molecular systems biology at the University of Groningen. Heinemann leads an interdisciplinary lab of approximately 12 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars. Until 2019, he served as the chairman of the Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, was a board member of the Dutch Origins Center and the coordinator of EU ITN project MetaRNA. Heinemann is a member of the Faculty of 1000.

#13957

Agness Gidna

#55875

Overall Influence

Agness Gidna is a Tanzanian paleontologist and a former Senior Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Tanzania. She is currently working with Ngorongoro Conservation Area as a Principal Cultural Heritage Officer. She is the first Tanzanian woman to hold a doctorate in Physical Anthropology and she is the first Tanzanian female research director at Olduvai Gorge, where she has been a co-principal investigator of the Olduvai Palaeoanthropology and Paleoecology Project since 2017.

#13958

Wes Burgess

#118738

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Joseph Wesley "Wes" Burgess is an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author who has written books on animal behavior , nonverbal communication, and human consciousness. His main contribution has been to the understanding of the mind and social relationships.

#13959

C. V. Savitri Gunatilleke

#150373

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Malwattage Celestine Violet Savitri Gunatilleke is professor emeritus at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka's Central Province. She has had a long career in forest ecology and has been a leader in quantitative ecology and education. Most of her research has focused in the Sinharaja rain forest in Sri Lanka. She considers her main contribution to forest ecology to be spreading the idea that successful forest conservation depends on local conservationists. In line with this, she is proud of her students and their accomplishments in the field of conservation.

#13960

Aino Henssen

#135120

Overall Influence

1925 - 2011 (86 years)

Aino Marjatta Henssen , was a German lichenologist and systematist. Her father, Gottfried Henssen, was a folklorist and her mother was Finnish. Education and career Henssen began her studies in biology in Freiburg, Germany, before continuing in Marburg. She obtained her doctorate in 1953, which focused on the physiology of the aquatic plant Spirodela polyrhiza. In 1963, she became the curator of the Botanisches Institut at Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Following her habilitation in 1965, she was appointed in 1970 to the position of associate professor for thallophyte studies. She r...

#13961

C. Davison Ankney

#134880

Overall Influence

1946 - 2013 (67 years)

Claude Davison Ankney was an American-Canadian zoologist and avian ecologist. He was a professor at the University of Western Ontario from 1974 until he retired from there in 2002. Academically, he was known for his work on the life history strategies of various birds, especially waterfowl. He was also known for his defense of, and activism for, environmental conservation.

#13962

Linda Restifo

#156332

Overall Influence

Linda L. Restifo graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an M.D. in 1984 and a Ph.D. in genetics in 1986. She is currently a professor at the University of Arizona of neuroscience, neurology, and cell biology, and she is a member of the BIO5 Institute. With her team, she works to understand normal brain development and the changes in that brain development that leads to cognitive disorders. She is known for her research into the brains of insects, particularly flies.

#13963

Kirsten Parris

#111514

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Kirsten M. Parris is an Australian urban ecologist, Professor of Urban Ecology in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne and an Honorary Associate of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. She also leads the National Environmental Science Program's Research Hub for Clean Air and Urban Landscapes .

#13964

John Kineman

#109049

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

John Jay Kineman is an American physical scientist and theoretical ecologist, affiliated with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, Past President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences , and Fellow of the Sri Sathya Sai Center for Human Values in Puttaparthi, India; known for his work in the fields of Geographical information systems, ecological characterization, ecological niche modeling, Complex Systems Theory, and Vedic Studies.

#13965

Dragana Rogulja

#147201

Overall Influence

Dragana Rogulja is a Serbian neuroscientist and circadian biologist who is an assistant professor in Neurobiology within the Harvard Medical School Blavatnik Institute of Neurobiology. Rogulja explores the molecular mechanisms governing sleep in Drosophila as well as probing how circadian mechanisms integrate sensory information to drive behavior. Rogulja uses mating behavior in Drosophila to explore the neural circuits linking internal states to motivated behaviors.

#13966

Laurent Susini

#128244

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Laurent Susini is a French molecular biologist; his research is in the area of cancer and the genetic basis of tumor reversion. Career Laurent Susini started at the Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain . He obtained his PhD in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology from University Paris VII - Denis Diderot.

#13967

Arnold Cooper

#68896

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

Arnold Cooper Cooper is known within the psychoanalytic community for his elaborations on the interrelatedness of narcissism and masochism. Between 1974 and 1994, he was the Vice Chair for Education and the Residency Training Director for the department of psychiatry at Cornell. He was a President of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He was a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Utah School of Medicine.

#13968

Vincent Cryns

#113542

Overall Influence

Vincent Cryns is the Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and holds the Marian A. and Rodney P. Burgenske Chair in Diabetes Research.

#13969

Alexander Huk

#100562

Overall Influence

Alexander C. Huk is an American neuroscientist. Prior to moving to UCLA in 2022, he was the Raymond Dickson Centennial Professor #2 of Neuroscience and Psychology, and the Director of the Center for Perceptual Systems at The University of Texas at Austin. His laboratory studies how the brain integrates information over space and time and how these neural signals guide behavior in the natural world. He has made contributions towards understanding how the brain represents 3D visual motion and how those representations are used to make perceptual judgments

#13970

Heather Williams

#59324

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Heather Williams is an American ornithologist, and professor at Williams College since 1988. She graduated from Bowdoin College with an A.B. in biology in 1977, from Rockefeller University with a Ph.D. in neuroscience in 1985, and was postdoctoral fellow, Field Research Center. She was a 1993 MacArthur Fellow. Williams' most notable work highlights bird song data gathered on Kent Island, also known as the "Bowdoin Science Station".

#13971

Lisa Staiano-Coico

Lisa Staiano-Coico

#62799

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Lisa Staiano-Coico or Lisa S. Coico is an American politician and academic. Coico was the twelfth president of City College of New York, from August 2010 until October 2016. A graduate of Brooklyn College 1976, Coico became the first City University of New York alumna appointed to head the City College of New York. Coico resigned on October 7, 2016, amidst federal and state investigations into her finances.

#13972

Marisela Morales

#170064

Overall Influence

Marisela Morales is a Mexican neuroscientist specializing in the neurobiology of drug addiction. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Education Morales completed a B.S. in biochemistry and microbiology at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. She earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology at Universidad de Guanajuato Institute of Experimental Biology. Morales was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder under Eva Fifková and Scripps Research under Floyd E. Bloom.

#13973

Charlotte Stagg

#132242

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Charlotte Stagg is a British neurophysiologist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. She leads the Physiological Neuroimaging Group. Early life and education Stagg studied physiology and medicine at the University of Bristol, graduating with pre-clinical and clinical honours and the Physiological Society prize. For her doctoral degree, she moved to the University of Oxford and worked at the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain under the supervision of Paul Matthews and Heidi Johansen-Berg. During her DPhil, she looked to understand how people acquire new motor skills.

#13974

H. Efsun Arda

#100398

Overall Influence

Hatice Efsun Arda is a Turkish developmental and systems biologist researching cell lineages that give rise to human pancreas using single cell sequencing. She is a Stadtman principal investigator and head of the developmental genomics group at the National Cancer Institute.

#13975

Lisa-ann Gershwin

#77028

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lisa-ann Gershwin, also known as Lisa Gershwin, is a biologist based in Launceston, Tasmania, who has described over 200 species of jellyfish, and written and co-authored several non-fiction books about Cnidaria including Stung! and Jellyfish – A Natural History . She provides independent advice related to jellyfish worldwide to the media, online and via The Jellyfish App. She was a candidate in the 2021 Tasmanian state election running as an independent in the electorate of Clark.

#13976

Helen Cooke

#108433

Overall Influence

Helen J. Cooke was an American gastroenterologist who was a professor at Ohio State University. She studied intestinal mucosa and pioneered the field of neurobiology. Throughout her career, Cooke campaigned to support women and early career researchers.

#13977

Jeffrey Wine

#170258

Overall Influence

Jeffrey J. Wine is an American biologist and professor. He is currently at Stanford University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research has focused on the genetic disease cystic fibrosis.

#13978

Bernd Weber

#150636

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Bernd Weber is a German professor and a clinical neuroscientist at the Center for Economics and Neuroscience CENs in Bonn. Since 2019, he has been serving as the Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Bonn.

#13979

Colin Bibby

#108476

Overall Influence

1948 - 2004 (56 years)

Colin Joseph Bibby was a British ornithologist and conservationist. Bibby was born in the Wirral, Cheshire, the son of a North Wales farmer. He was educated at Oundle School, Northamptonshire, and at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in natural sciences. He gained his PhD for a classic study on the ecology and conservation of Dartford warblers.

#13980

Maureen Murphy

#170009

Overall Influence

Maureen E. Murphy is an American cancer researcher who works at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on the tumor suppressor genes p53 and the cancer survivor protein HSP70. Previously, she was a faculty member at the Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1998 until moving to The Wistar Institute in 2011.

#13981

Hiroshi Mori

#170277

Overall Influence

#13982

Jonathan David Victor

#106804

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jonathan David Victor is an American neuroscientist and neurologist, the Fred Plum Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in research areas such as neurophysiology, psychophysics, computational neuroscience, and clinical neuroscience. He also published an article on Hermite polynomials.

#13983

Alan A. Stone

#5469

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Alan Abraham Stone was an American psychiatrist who was the Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard Law School. His writing and teaching has focused on professional medical ethics, issues at the intersection of law and psychiatry, and the topic of violence in both law and in psychiatry. Stone served as president of the American Psychiatric Association. He also served for a number of years as the film critic for the Boston Review.

#13984

Evdokia Anagnostou

#127706

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Evdokia Anagnostou is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and is cross-appointed as pediatric neurologist and a senior clinician scientist at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, Canada. She is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Translational Therapeutics in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

#13985

Abundio Sagástegui Alva

#115223

Overall Influence

1932 - 2012 (80 years)

Abundio Sagástegui Alva was a Peruvian plant taxonomist and specialist of Asteraceae and the flora of Peru, particularly that of Northern Peru. Biography Sagástegui was born to a modest family in Guzmango, Contumazá Province, in 1932. His father was Godofrego Sagástegui Chávez and his mother Otilia Alva. He went to the local school, where he finished first in his class. Thanks to this he was granted a scholarship and continued his studies at the Colegio Nacional San Ramón, in Cajamarca where again he excelled in his studies. This dedication allowed him to continue his studies at the Universid...

#13986

Usha Varanasi

#139426

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Usha Varanasi is an Indian-American marine scientist who in 1994 became the first woman to lead one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's major field laboratories for fisheries, until her retirement in 2010. she focuses on questions about how exposure to nature can improve people's health. She is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Washington State Academy of Sciences.

#13987

Catherine King

#81707

Overall Influence

Catherine K. King is an Australian ecotoxicologist who studies sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions, with a focus on climate change and the impacts of contaminants and environmental stressors in terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

#13988

James Solberg Henrickson

#170332

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

James Solberg Henrickson is an American botanist born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He was a Professor of Biology at California State University, Los Angeles. He is currently a research fellow at the Plant Resources Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

#13989

Emma J. Rosi

#164055

Overall Influence

Emma J. Rosi is an ecosystem ecologist and Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook NY, where she serves as the director of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. Early life and education Emma Rosi grew up near Lake Michigan and spent a great deal of time outdoors as a child. From a very young age she was interested in pursuing a career in biology with a focus on insects. Eventually her graduate studies at the University of Georgia steered her toward research on rivers and streams. In 1993, Rosi attended the Field School at the Rocky Mountain Biological Station, and in 1994 she took part in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates.

#13990

Anne George

#121379

Overall Influence

Dr. Anne George is a Professor of Oral Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry and holds the Allan G. Brodie Endowed Professorship, and she also is an adjunct professor in the Department of Cell and Anatomy and the Department of Engineering at the University of Illinois Medical School. She has been a faculty member at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she was given a Teaching Excellence Award in 1999.

#13991

Dorothea Sandars

#113714

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Dorothea Sandars was an Australian academic and parasitologist who specialised in fish parasites. Early life Dorothea Fanny Sandars was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1919. She attended Perth Modern School. Sandars graduated with a BSc with Honours in 1943, earning a Hackett scholarship. She investigated gill parasites of fish in West Australian waters. She continued her studies graduating with her MSc from the University of Western Australia in 1944 and earned a Hackett research studentship.

#13992

Garnett H. Kelsoe

#163126

Overall Influence

Garnett Herrel Kelsoe is an American immunologist and the James B. Duke Professor of Immunology at Duke University School of Medicine. Education and career Kelsoe completed his B.S and M.S. in 1974 from Southern Methodist University with a research focus on parasitology and development Spermatogenesis in H. diminuta, a rat tapeworm. He then went on to Harvard University where he studied basic and applied immunology and completed his Doctor of Science degree in 1979 with a thesis titled "Mechanisms of the Humoral Immune Response. Experimental and Applied Studies." From 1979 to 1982, Kelsoe was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Klaus Rajewsky at the University of Cologne.

#13993

Jill F. Johnstone

#163528

Overall Influence

Jill Johnstone was a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan, where she started the Northern Plant Ecology Lab which she still runs. She primarily conducts research on plant ecology and environmental biology with an emphasis on how boreal forest and tundra are responding to rapid rates of climate change.

#13994

Albert Ernest Radford

Albert Ernest Radford

#107862

Overall Influence

1918 - 2006 (88 years)

Albert Ernest Radford was an American botanist active in the Southeastern United States. He was best known for his work as senior author of Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas, the definitive flora for North Carolina and South Carolina.

#13995

Paul I. W. De Bakker

#170403

Overall Influence

#13996

Joseph Ewan

#105815

Overall Influence

1909 - 1999 (90 years)

Joseph Andorfer Ewan was an American botanist, naturalist, and historian of botany and natural history. Biography Joseph Ewan grew up in Los Angeles and developed an early interest in the study of nature. At the age of eighteen, he published an ornithological report in The Condor. He matriculated at UCLA and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley in 1933, graduating there with a B.A. in 1934. After graduating he remained at Berkeley until 1937 as a research assistant to Willis Jepson. In 1935 Ewan married a fellow botanical student, Ada Nesta Dunn , in Reno, Nevada. She often collaborated with him on their publications.

#13997

Geoff Baylis

#128357

Overall Influence

1913 - 2003 (90 years)

Geoffrey Thomas Sandford Baylis was a New Zealand botanist and Emeritus Professor specialising in plant pathology and mycorrhiza. He was employed at the University of Otago for 34 years undertaking research into plant and fungal ecology and symbiotic interactions, taxonomy and anatomy. He collected hundreds of plant specimens in the field and founded the Otago Regional Herbarium . He discovered the sole Pennantia baylisiana living on Three Kings Island in 1945, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1961.

#13998

James Adjaye

#91041

Overall Influence

James Affram Adjaye is a Ghanaian British Stem cell scientist. He is the Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine at the Heinrich Heine University's faculty of medicine. He also led the Molecular Embryology and Aging Group of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics situated in Berlin, Germany.

#13999

Robert J. Schmitz

#170051

Overall Influence

Robert J. Schmitz is an American plant biologist and epigenomicist at the University of Georgia where he studies the generation and phenotypic consequences of plant epialleles as well as developing new techniques to identify and study cis-regulatory sequences. He is an associate professor in the department of genetics and the UGA Foundation Endowed Pant Sciences Professor.

#14000

Janet E. Hall

#168333

Overall Influence

Janet Elizabeth Hall is a Canadian-American physician-scientist and neuroendocrinologist specialized in the human reproductive physiology and pathophysiology. Her research focuses on women's health and the neuroendocrine interactions governing normal reproduction and the impact of aging. She is the clinical director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Hall was previously a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

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