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,

#14001

Andrew Steele

#165754
Overall Influence
Andrew Steele is an astrobiologist at the Geophysical Laboratory at Carnegie Institution for Science. He uses traditional and biotechnological approaches for the detection of microbial life in the field of astrobiology and Solar System exploration. His research has led to discoveries of new forms of carbon in meteorites, new mechanisms of organic synthesis on Earth and Mars, and the presence of water in lunar and Martian rocks. Steele has developed several instrument and mission concepts for future Mars missions and was involved in NASA’s 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission, as a member of the Sample Analysis at Mars team.
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#14002

Clair Francomano

#158837
Overall Influence
Clair A. Francomano is an American medical geneticist and academic specializing in Ehlers–Danlos syndromes. She is Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University. Early life, education and training Clair Ann Francomano was born to Mrs. and Charles J. Francomano, a general practitioner. She attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, New York and participated in programs at the National Institutes of Health and the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine as a high school student. She earned her undergraduate degree from Yale College in 1976, having returned as an undergraduate to the Jackson Laboratory to study cancer genetics on a National Science Foundation grant in 1973.
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#14003

Patricia Kern Holmgren

Patricia Kern Holmgren
#169759
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Patricia Holmgren is an American botanist. Holmgren's main botanical interests are the flora of the U.S. intermountain west and the genera Tiarella and Thlaspi. Holmgren was the director of the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden from 1981–2000, and editor of Index Herbariorum from 1974–2008.
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#14004

Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis

#123593
Overall Influence
Mackenzie W. Mathis, is an American neuroscientist and principal investigator at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her lab investigates adaptive mechanisms in biological and artificial intelligence to inform adaptive AI systems and translational research.
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#14005

Norman Robson

#128785
Overall Influence
1928 - 2021 (93 years)
Norman Keith Bonner Robson was a Scientific Associate in the Plants Division, Department of Life Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. He was a member of staff at the Museum from 1962 to 1988, retiring as Principal Scientific Officer with responsibility for General Herbarium Section I.
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#14006

Susan Lovett

#158391
Overall Influence
Susan Thomas Lovett is an American molecular biologist who is the Abraham S. and Gertrude Burg Professor of Microbiology at Brandeis University. She is interested in the mechanisms that allow the genetic material in cells to remain stable over time.
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#14007

Dena G. Hernandez

#78915
Overall Influence
Dena Michelle Godwin Hernandez is a neurogeneticist. She is head of the genomic technologies group in the laboratory of neurogenetics at the National Institute on Aging. Hernandez completed a Ph.D. at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in 2016. Her dissertation was titled Genetic variation and DNA methylation in the context of neurological disease. Hernandez's doctoral advisors were Andrew Singleton and John Hardy.
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#14008

Douglas Cavener

#155536
Overall Influence
Douglas R. Cavener is an American biologist, a Professor of Biology and the former Verne M. Willaman Dean Professor of Science at Eberly College of Science, Pennsylvania State University, and also a published author, being widely cited and widely held in libraries.
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#14009

Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello

#152151
Overall Influence
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello is a Venezuelan-American microbial ecologist that has worked on adaptations of gut fermentation organs in animals, gastric colonization by bacteria, assembly of the microbiota in early life, effect of practices that reduce microbiota transmission and colonization in humans, and effect of urbanization. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her lab at collaborates in multidisciplinary science, integrating microbiology, immunology, pediatrics, nutrition, anthropology, environmental engineering and architectu...
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#14010

Trevor McDougall

Trevor McDougall
#74091
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Trevor John McDougall FAGU is a physical oceanographer specialising in ocean mixing and the thermodynamics of seawater. He is Emeritus Scientia Professor of Ocean Physics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and is Past President of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.
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#14011

Andre Keyser

Andre Keyser
#115815
Overall Influence
1938 - 2010 (72 years)
André Werner Keyser , was a South African palaeontologist and geologist noted for his discovery of the Drimolen hominid site and of numerous hominid remains. In 1994 he discovered a female Paranthropus robustus skull, nicknamed Eurydice, the most complete australopithecine skull ever excavated.
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#14012

Julie Law

#152862
Overall Influence
Julie Law is an American molecular and cellular biologist. Law's pioneering work on DNA methylation patterns led to the discovery of the role of the CLASSY protein family in DNA methylation. Law is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
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#14013

Margaret Crofoot

#153366
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Margaret Chatham Crofoot is an American anthropologist who is a professor at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Her research considers the behavior and decision making of primates. She was appointed an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in 2019.
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#14014

Sandra Witelson

#155679
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sandra Freedman Witelson is a Canadian neuroscientist best known for her analysis of specimens from Albert Einstein's brain, as well as exploring anatomic and functional differences regarding male and female brains, handedness, and sexual orientation. She and her colleagues maintain the world's largest collection of "cognitively normal" brains at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
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#14015

Steve Brooks

#95671
Overall Influence
Stephen John Brooks FRES is a British entomologist working at the Natural History Museum, London. He attended the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by whom he was awarded BSc in zoology and MSc in public health engineering . In 1979, he was appointed Assistant Scientific Officer in the Department of Entomology at the Natural History Museum. He was subsequently promoted to Scientific Officer , Higher Scientific Officer , Senior Scientific Officer , and to Research Entomologist in the Life Sciences Department .
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#14016

Krina Zondervan

#160158
Overall Influence
Krina Tynke Zondervan is a Dutch biomedical scientist who is a Professor of Genomic Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. She serves on the board of the World Endometriosis Society. Early life and education Zondervan was born in the Netherlands. She was a masters student in biomedical sciences at the Leiden University. She moved to the University of Oxford as an Erasmus Programme student in 1993, where she worked toward a doctorate in the epidemiology of chronic pelvic pain. She was awarded a Medical Research Council Research Fellowship to work on Genetic Epidemiology. She was part of the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics in genetic epidemiology.
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#14017

Peter Schantz

Peter Schantz
#87958
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Peter Gösta Schantz, born on 28 April 1954 in Stockholm, Sweden, graduated as doctor in medical sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 1986, became professor in human movement sciences at Mid-Sweden University in Östersund, Jämtland, in 2008, and professor in human biology, including the multidisciplinary field of movement, health and environment, at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH, in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2013.
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#14018

Maia Martcheva

#69173
Overall Influence
Maia Nenkova Martcheva-Drashanska is a Bulgarian-American mathematical biologist known for her books on population dynamics and epidemiology. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Florida, where she is also affiliated with the department of biology.
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#14019

Peter M. Schneider

#148649
Overall Influence
1955 - 2022 (67 years)
Peter Matthias Schneider was a German forensic geneticist. He was a full professor at the Institute of Legal Medicine of the University of Cologne. Biography Schneider studied biology at the University of Bonn until 1983. Between 1984 and 1986, he worked as visiting research fellow at the Children's Hospital Boston of Harvard Medical School on the genetic structure of the fourth component of the human complement system. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of Mainz and his habilitation in immunology in 1996, when he was promoted to assistant professor. In 2004, he became full profe...
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#14020

Brahm Shanker Srivastava

#109768
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Brahm Shanker Srivastava is an Indian microbiologist, inventor and a former deputy director and head of Microbiology division of the Central Drug Research Institute. He is the founder of Biotech Research, a non-profit non governmental institution promoting research in the field of biotechnology and is a director of Nextec Lifesciences Private Limited, a start up involved in biomedical products and research applications. He is known for his researches on microbial genetics and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India.
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#14021

Willy A. Flegel

Willy A. Flegel
#108897
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Willy Albert Flegel is a German-American medical researcher, geneticist, and physician who is best known for his work in the field of the Rh blood group. Flegel is the chief of the laboratory services section of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center .
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#14022

Darcy Kelley

#167617
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Darcy Brisbane Kelley , is an American neurobiologist and currently a Weintraub and HHMI Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. She is also Co-Director of Columbia’s Graduate Program in Neurobiology and Behavior and Editor of Developmental Neurobiology, and well known for her contributions to neuroethology, particularly the neural control of vocalization in Xenopus and the cellular and molecular mechanisms of sexually differentiated acoustic communication.
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#14023

Helmut Beckmann

#71694
Overall Influence
1940 - 2006 (66 years)
Professor Helmut Beckmann was a German psychiatrist. He was one of the founders of neurodevelopmental theory of schizophrenia and biologically-based psychiatry in Germany. Beckmann's major scientific interests were psychopharmacology, neuropathology of endogenous psychoses, and differentiated psychopathology, in the tradition of Carl Wernicke, Karl Kleist and Karl Leonhard.
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#14024

Norbert Pfennig

#123379
Overall Influence
1925 - 2008 (83 years)
Norbert Pfennig was a German microbiologist. Norbert Pfennig described with Bernhard Schink Pelobacter acidigallici, a bacterial species in the genus Pelobacter. P. acidigallici is able to degrade trihydroxybenzenes.
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#14025

Virginia Matzek

#84728
Overall Influence
Virginia Alynn Matzek is an American restoration ecologist. She is an Associate Professor in Environmental Studies and Sciences at Santa Clara University. Education Matzek completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1998, Matzek was the recipient of the UC Berkely's Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor award. In 1999, Matzek was the recipient of the UC Berkely's Teaching Effectiveness award.
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#14026

Hartmut K. Lichtenthaler

#157640
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Hartmut K. Lichtenthaler is a German botanist, plant physiologist and university professor. Life Hartmut Lichtenthaler studied pharmacy, biology and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe . In 1958, he completed his studies with the pharmaceutical state examination in Germany . In 1961, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg with a dissertation about vitamin K1 in plants at the institute of Professor August Seybold. In the period 1962–1964, he was a research fellow at the laboratory of Nobel laureate Melvin Calvin at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1964, he became ...
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#14027

Teru Hayashi

#107763
Overall Influence
1914 - 2003 (89 years)
Teru "Tay" Hayashi was a Japanese-American cell biologist and physiologist known for his research on the biochemical mechanisms of muscle contraction. Hayashi was born in 1914 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he was raised by Japanese parents. In 1938, he received a physics degree from Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, followed by a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Missouri in 1943. At the University of Missouri, he studied under the supervision of Daniel Mazia.
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#14028

Robert Raven

#93475
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Robert John Raven is an Australian arachnologist, being the Head of Terrestrial Biodiversity and the Senior Curator at the Queensland Museum. Dr Raven has described many species of spider in Australia and elsewhere, and is spider bite consultant to the Royal Brisbane Hospital, leading to much work on spider toxins.
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#14029

Jerome Sarris

#137859
Overall Influence
Jerome Sarris is co-director of Psychae Institute, Professor of Integrative Mental Health at Western Sydney University, Australia, and a visiting scientist at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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#14030

Joel Baines

#161004
Overall Influence
Joel D. Baines is an American virologist who is serving as dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University since 2014. Dr. Joel Baines received a bachelor's degree in microbiology from Kansas State University in 1979, earned his VMD degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and PhD in molecular virology from Cornell University in 1988. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. Baines was a James Law Professor of Virology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Cornell. He was chosen as the sixth dean of LSU School of Veterinary Medicine in 2014 and holds the Dr.
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#14031

Mirko Vidaković

#114234
Overall Influence
1924 - 2002 (78 years)
Mirko pl. Vidaković was a Croatian botanist and dendrologist and the expert for the genetics of the forest trees. Biography Vidaković was born in Lemeš, Bačka. He attained a professional qualification of engineer of forestry before 1949, when he was first employed as a lecturer at the Faculty of Forestry of the University of Zagreb .
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#14032

David Krogmann

#170625
Overall Influence
1934 - 2016 (82 years)
David W. Krogmann was an American biologist and a professor of biochemistry at Purdue University. He is known for his work in photosynthesis in chloroplasts and cyanobacteria. He discovered the Orange Carotenoid Protein of cyanobacteria in 1981 and helped solve its crystal structure.
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#14033

Carmen Williams

#147059
Overall Influence
Carmen J. Williams is an American obstetrician-gynecologist and reproductive biologist. She has served as the deputy chief of the reproductive developmental biology laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences since 2017.
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#14034

Tang Chongti

#135339
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Tang Chongti is a Chinese parasitologist and professor of Xiamen University. In 1991, she was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is mainly engaged in research on pathogenic developmental biology, epidemiology, and prevention of zoonotic parasitic diseases.
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#14035

Victoria Sanz-Moreno

#164439
Overall Influence
Victoria Sanz Moreno is a Spanish scientist. She is professor of cancer cell and metastasis biology at The Institute of Cancer Research. Early life Sanz-Moreno was born in London, England to an analytical chemist father and English teacher mother. Following completion of her father's postdoctoral studies her family moved back to Spain.
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#14036

Hans Meidner

#146109
Overall Influence
1914 - 2001 (87 years)
Prof Hans Anton Meidner FRSE was a South African botanist and expert in stomata. He was affectionately known as Big H. Meidner also served as leader of the Liberal Party of South Africa for several years.
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#14037

Julie Jastrow

#111099
Overall Influence
Julie Dierstein Jastrow is an American terrestrial ecologist who works at the Argonne National Laboratory. Her research considers soil and ecosystems ecology. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.
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#14038

Jeremy Kerr

#166452
Overall Influence
Jeremy Kerr is a biology professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the University Research Chair in Macroecology and Conservation. Kerr is a member of the NSERC Council, including its executive committee, and the past president of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution . He is the Chair of NSERC's Committee on Discovery Research and a founding member of its EDI subcommittee. In 2021, Kerr was elected to be a member of Sigma Xi Society and is an elected lifetime Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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#14039

Shlomi Constantini

Shlomi Constantini
#69773
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Shlomi Constantini, M.D., M.Sc., is the head of the Department of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Dana Children's Hospital, Tel Aviv Medical Center, Israel. A full clinical professor at Tel Aviv University, he is also the director of the Gilbert International Neurofibromatosis Center. Constantini first trained in Hadassah Medial Center, Jerusalem and sub-specialized in pediatric neurosurgery in New York University with Fred Epstein.
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#14040

Zhan Qimin

#127666
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Zhan Qimin is a Chinese molecular oncologist currently serving as director of Peking University Medicine Department, executive vice-president of Peking University and dean of Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. He is a member of the Communist Party of China.
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#14041

Seyed Javad Mowla

#170798
Overall Influence
Seyed Javad Mowla is an Iranian neuroscientist and molecular biologist. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2001 in the field of Neuroscience from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is currently an associate professor and the head of the Department of Molecular Genetics at Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran. He has published more than 100 peer-review papers in international journals which cited more than 2500 times. His fields of study include Neural Cancer Biology, Cancer Stem Cells, and microRNAs.
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#14042

Laura M. Calvi

#131745
Overall Influence
Laura Maria Calvi is an American neuroendocrinologist and physician-scientist. She is the SKAWA Foundation Professor in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Rochester. Calvi researches the bone marrow microenvironment and the treatment of patients with pituitary tumors.
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#14043

Andrew E. Sloan

#150198
Overall Influence
Andrew Edward Sloan is an American neurosurgeon and physician-scientist. He is the Peter D. Cristal Chair of Neurosurgical Oncology at Case Western Reserve University. In June 2000, Sloan married biostatistician and data scientist Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
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#14044

Ramaswamy S

#135207
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ramaswamy S is an Indian-American structural biologist of Indian origin. He is currently professor of biological sciences, professor at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Bindley Bioscience Center at Purdue University. He was a senior professor at Institute of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine from 2009 to 2019. Ramaswamy S also abbreviated as "Rams" by his students and colleagues, held the founding dean's position at inStem from May 2009. He was also the founding CEO of Center for Cellular and molecular platforms , Bangalore-Biocluster from May 2009 to May 2016.
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#14045

David M. Watson

David M. Watson
#109193
Overall Influence
David M. Watson is an Australian ornithologist and ecologist who is also a scientific specialist on mistletoes. He served on the New South Wales Threatened Species Scientific Committee from 2015 until publicly resigning in June 2017 in protest after the NSW Berejiklian government passed a bill granting heritage status to feral horses in the Kosciuszko National Park.
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#14046

Adrienne Ruth Hardham

#170296
Overall Influence
Adrienne Hardham is a professor within the division of Plant Sciences of the Research School of Biology at the Australian National University. Education Adrienne Hardham completed a Bachelor of Science at Monash in 1973 and completed her Honours year at the Australian National University in 1974. She completed her PhD thesis entitled "Microtubules and morphogenesis in Azolla pinnata roots" in 1978 at the ANU, for which she received the Crawford Medal.
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#14047

Jacques Brodeur

#170855
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Jacques Brodeur is a Canadian biologist, currently a Canada Research Chair in Biocontrol at Université de Montréal.
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#14048

Elizabeth A. Buffalo

#130415
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Elizabeth A. Buffalo is professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and chief of the neuroscience division at the Washington National Primate Research Center. She is known for her research in the field of neurophysiology pertaining to the role of the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe structures in learning and memory and in spatial representation and navigation.
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#14049

Michael Travisano

#152083
Overall Influence
Michael Travisano is an American evolutionary biologist, and a Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. In 2020, he started his position as Head Department in Ecology, Evolution & Behavior Department at the College of Biological Sciences.
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#14050

Charles Fransen

#168988
Overall Influence
Charles Fransen is a zoologist from the Netherlands, specializing in shrimps. He is currently a permanent researcher and curator of Crustacea at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, as well as an examiner of the Biology Education at Leiden University, both in the Netherlands.
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