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.

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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,

#14101

John Dawson

#122777

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

John Wyndham Dawson was a New Zealand botanist. Early life and education Dawson was born in Eketāhuna on 1 February 1928. He was educated at Eketahuna District High School and Christchurch Boys' High School. He studied at Victoria University College from 1947 to 1952, graduating with a Master of Arts with second-class honours in 1953. He was then awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, and undertook doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, from where he gained a PhD in January 1958. The title of his thesis was A revision of the genus Anisotome Hook f. .

#14102

H. Frederik Nijhout

#169151

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Herman Frederik Nijhout is a Dutch-born American evolutionary biologist and the John Franklin Crowell Professor of Biology at Duke University. His research is focused on evolutionary developmental biology and entomology, with a particular focus on the hormonal control of growth, molting and metamorphosis in insects, including the mechanisms that control the development of alternative phenotypes. Much of his work has also been concerned with understanding the development and evolution of the wing patterns of butterflies. He received the ESA Founders' Memorial Award from the Entomological Society of America in 2006.

#14103

Eiichi Takahashi

#171402

Overall Influence

#14104

Helen Singer Kaplan

#81657

Overall Influence

1929 - 1995 (66 years)

Helen Singer Kaplan was an Austrian-American sex therapist and the founder of the first clinic in the United States for sexual disorderss established at a medical school. The New York Times described Kaplan as someone who was "considered a leader among scientific-oriented sex therapists. She was noted for her efforts to combine some of the insights and techniques of psychoanalysis with behavioral methods." She was also dubbed the "Sex Queen" because of her role as a pioneer in sex therapy during the sexual revolution in 1960s America, and because of her advocacy of the idea that people should enjoy sexual activity as much as possible, as opposed to seeing it as something dirty or harmful.

#14105

Caroline Lear

#129892

Overall Influence

Caroline "Carrie" Helen Lear is a Professor of Earth Science and the Head of the Changing Earth and Oceans Research Group at Cardiff University. She was awarded 2017 the Geological Society of London Bigsby Medal. She is the founding chair of the Changing Earth and Oceans Research Group and an editor of the journal Geology.

#14106

Russell Lindsay Barrett

#158510

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Russell Lindsay Barrett is an Australian botanist. Names published Typhonium peltandroides Nuytsia, 13: 243 Gahnia halmaturina R.L.Barrett & K.L.Wilson Journal Adelaide Botanical Garden Acacia anastomosa Maslin, M.D.Barrett & R.L.Barrett, Nuytsia 23: 545 .Anthelepis R.L.Barrett, K.L.Wilson & J.J.Bruhl, Austral. Syst. Bot. 32: 276 .

#14107

Margalith Galun

Margalith Galun

#157686

Overall Influence

1927 - 2012 (85 years)

Margalith Galun was an Israeli lichenologist. She was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and established the Israeli collection of lichens at Tel Aviv University. Founder of the academic journal Symbiosis, she served as its editor-in-chief between 1985 and 2006. In 1994, she was awarded the Acharius Medal and in 1996 won the Meitner-Humboldt Prize, for her contributions to the field. The International Association for Lichenology grants an award which bears her name to honor scholarship at their quadrennial symposium.

#14108

Fernando Aiuti

#135384

Overall Influence

1935 - 2019 (84 years)

Fernando Aiuti was an Italian immunologist and politician. He was the founder and first President of ANLAIDS Association. Biography Born in Urbino in 1935, he graduated with a degree in medicine from Sapienza University of Rome.

#14109

Anna-Bella Failloux

#142010

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Anna-Bella Failloux is a French Polynesian entomologist who is a professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute. Failloux was born on Raiatea and grew up on Tahiti. She studied plant physiology at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, before completing a thesis on the parasitic worms responsible for Lymphatic filariasis at Paris-Sud University. She then worked at the Malardé Institute before joining the Pasteur Institute in 1994. Since 2011 she has been director of research on arboviruses and insect vectors. Her work has covered Bancroft's filariasis, Dengue fever, and Chikungunya.

#14110

Kimberly G. Smith

#97646

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Kimberly Gray Smith was an American biologist. Smith was born to parents Robert and Janet in Manchester, Connecticut. He attended Kimball Union Academy then earned a bachelor's degree from Tufts University before pursuing graduate study at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and Utah State University. He joined the Fayetteville faculty in 1981, and was named University Professor of Biological Sciences in 2009, and Distinguished Professor six years later. From 2000 to 2004, Smith was editor in chief of The Auk.

#14111

Y. Pierre Gobin

#61089

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Y. Pierre Gobin is a French-born American physician who specializes in interventional neuroradiology and endovascular treatment of cerebral aneurysms. He is one of the inventors of the Concentric MERCI Retriever, a device for removing blood clots in the brain that cause stroke.

#14112

Deborah Dunn-Walters

#112407

Overall Influence

Deborah Kay Dunn-Walters is a British immunologist who is Professor of Immunology at the University of Surrey. Her research considers B-cell development in healthy ageing and in disease, particularly from the viewpoint of antibody repertoires. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dunn-Walters focussed on mapping responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of single cell analyses of the immunological responses to a COVID-19 vaccine. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, and provided the government with scientific advice during the pandemic.

#14113

Amy T. Austin

#141130

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Amy Theresa Austin is an Argentine ecologist. She is a principal research scientist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina and a professor at the Faculty of Agronomy, University of Buenos Aires.

#14114

Balaji Prakash

#59261

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Balaji Prakash is an Indian structural biologist, biochemist and the Associate Dean of Sciences & Professor, Biological and Life Sciences, at the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, since July 2020. Prior to this he served as senior principal scientist and the head of the department of molecular nutrition of the Central Food Technological Research Institute. Known for elucidating the structure of a unique GTP-binding protein, Prakash is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India and was a senior research fellow of The Wellcome Trust, UK. The Department of Biot...

#14115

Susan Lea

#135780

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Susan Mary Lea is a British biologist who serves as chief of the center for structural biology at the National Cancer Institute. Her research investigates host-pathogen interactions and biomolecular pathways. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2022.

#14116

Masao Kitagawa

#171530

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

was a Japanese botanist and pteridologist. He spent most of his academic career at Yokohama National University. In 1986, a Russian botanist Michael Georgievich Pimenov published a genus of flowering plants, from central Asia, belonging to the family Apiaceae, as Kitagawia in his honour.

#14117

Andrew Murray

#170212

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Andrew James Murray is a British physiologist focused on mitochondria and the effects on their function of athletic condition, high altitude, disease, diet, and age. His work has included studies of the adaptations of the Sherpa people to high altitude, loss of appetite in mountain climbers, the negative cognitive effects of high-fat diets, and the development of ketone ester dietary supplements marketed by American company HVMN that have been claimed to enhance athletic performance.

#14118

George Dunnet

#159908

Overall Influence

1928 - 1995 (67 years)

George Mackenzie Dunnet CBE FRSE FIN FRSA was a Scottish ornithologist and ecologist. He acted as an official advisor to the British government on ecological issues relating to the North Sea oil industry, salmon farming and the link between badgers and bovine tuberculosis. The latter resulted in a government report generally called the Dunnet Report.

#14119

Julie Campbell

#107596

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Professor Julie Hazel Campbell AO FAA is an Australian vascular biologist from Sydney, Australia. Campbell is a professorial fellow at the Australian Academy of Science and is a world leader in the field of smooth muscle biology and, along with her husband, holds two patents for vascular implant material.

#14120

Richard Gardner

#91925

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Sir Richard Lavenham Gardner, FRSB, FRS is a British embryologist and geneticist. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at the University of York, and was previously a Royal Society Research Professor.

#14121

Viji Draviam

#161733

Overall Influence

Viji Mythily Draviam is a Professor of Quantitative Cell and Molecular Biology at Queen Mary University of London. Her research considers the molecular level mechanisms that underpin cell division. Whilst working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Draviam identified a process that caused the formation of tumours.

#14122

Emma Teeling

#115124

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Emma Caroline Teeling is an Irish zoologist, geneticist and genomicist, who specialises in the phylogenetics and genomics of bats. Her work includes understanding of the bat genome and study of how insights from other mammals such as bats might contribute to better understanding and management of ageing and a number of conditions, including deafness and blindness, in humans. She is the co-founder of the Bat1K project to map the genomes of all species of bat. She is also concerned with understanding of the places of bats in the environment and how to conserve their ecosystem.

#14123

Michael P. Snyder

#171587

Overall Influence

#14124

Susan Baker

#147573

Overall Influence

Susan C. Baker is an American molecular virologist and professor at Loyola University Chicago, Illinois. She teaches microbiology and immunology within the Loyola Medicine Health System. She received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Currently, she has 80 publications, dating back to 1987, within each of the following disciplines: microbiology, infectious disease, and infectious disease control to name a few. A list of her publications can be found here.

#14125

Jeff Ellis

#154847

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Jeffrey Graham Ellis is an Australian plant scientist, and Program Leader at CSIRO Plant Industry. Life He earned a BAgSc in 1976, and a PhD in 1981, from the University of Adelaide. In 1984, as a Research Scientist in CSIRO Plant Industry, he worked on the identification of transcriptional control elements in the promoters of the maize alcohol dehydrogenase gene and the Agrobacterium T-DNA gene octopine synthase. Ellis and his research team were among the first to clone and characterize plant disease resistance genes.

#14126

Sami Timimi

#40315

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Sami Timimi is a British psychiatrist. He is a consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry, Director of medical education at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and a visiting professor of child psychiatry at the University of Lincoln.

#14127

Mary-Louise Penrith

#170735

Overall Influence

#14128

Bette A. Loiselle

#170744

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Bette Ann Loiselle is an American neotropical ornithologist, neotropical ecologist, and conservation biologist. Education and career At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign she graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in biology and in 1981 with an M.S. in biology. In 1987 she received her Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her Ph.D. thesis in entitled Birds and plants in a neotropical rain forest: seasonality and interactions. From 1987 to 1990 she was a naturalist for Betchart Expeditions in Cupertino, California. From 1988 to 1990 she was an adjunct research associate at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

#14129

Christopher Shaw

#93101

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Christopher Ariel Shaw is a Canadian neuroscientist and professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia. Vaccine research Shaw has done controversial research on the adverse effects of vaccines, including publishing two 2011 reports about the effect of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. The World Health Organization's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety criticized the two 2011 reports, calling them "seriously flawed". The Committee wrote: "The core argument made in these studies is based on ecological comparisons of aluminium content in vaccines and rates of autism spectrum disorders in several countries.

#14130

Paul Hunter

#76384

Overall Influence

Paul Raymond Hunter is Professor in Medicine at the University of East Anglia. He was the first professor of health protection in the United Kingdom when he was appointed to the Norwich Medical School in 2001. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal Society of Biology, and of the Faculty of Public Health.

#14131

Hussein Naim

#139280

Overall Influence

Hussein Naim is a Lebanese-Swiss biochemist and molecular virologist, known for his research in cell biology and virology . He has held several leading positions at prominent universities and biotechnology centers.

#14132

David Phoenix

#129833

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

David Andrew Phoenix is an English biochemist and Chief Executive of London South Bank University. Academic background Phoenix read biochemistry at the University of Liverpool followed by completion of a doctorate on amphiphilic membrane protein anchors. He studied part-time to obtain a degree in mathematics from the Open University and moved into the field of molecular engineering. He has published widely on the structure-function relationship of amphiphilic biomolecules, obtaining a Chair in Biochemistry in 2000. His work is multidisciplinary and focuses on the understanding of the structure function relationships used by amphiphilic bioactive molecules.

#14133

Bridgette Barry

#128385

Overall Influence

Bridgette Anne Barry was an American biophysicist and biochemist. She was a professor and researcher of molecular biophysics and biochemistry in the Georgia Tech chemistry and biochemistry department from 2003 until her death. Her research focused on protein electron and oxygen evolution mechanisms.

#14134

Jean Vacelet

#169983

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Jean Vacelet is a French marine biologist who specialises in the underwater fauna of the Mediterranean. After earning his licence at the Faculté des Sciences de Marseille and learning to dive in 1954, he specialised in the study of sponges at the Marine station of Endoume, and there he has stayed faithful to both sponges and place for more than half a century. His research has included all aspects of sponges: taxonomy, habitat, biology, anatomy, their bacterial associations, and their place in the evolution of multi-celled animals. He has studied them not only in the Mediterranean but in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

#14135

Peter Bannister

#170456

Overall Influence

1939 - 2008 (69 years)

Peter Bannister was an English-born New Zealand botanist and academic. Academic career Peter Bannister completed a BSc in botany in 1960 at the University of Nottingham and a PhD in 1963 at the University of Aberdeen. Bannister was a lecturer at the University of Glasgow and senior lecturer University of Stirling, before being appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Botany at the University of Otago in 1979, succeeding Professor Geoff Baylis, who had retired the previous year. Bannister was Head of Department until 2002, and he was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor upon his r...

#14136

Brian Morris

#103012

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Brian James Morris is a professor emeritus of molecular medical sciences at the University of Sydney, Australia. Education and appointments Brian Morris grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where he graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1972. He then completed his PhD at Monash University and the University of Melbourne in 1975. From 1975–1978 he did postdoctoral research at the University of Missouri, and the University of California, San Francisco, first as a CJ Martin fellow, and then as an Advanced Fellow of the American Heart Association. He was then appointed as an academic at t...

#14137

Diane Bassham

#168103

Overall Influence

Diane C. Bassham is a plant pathologist and professor at Iowa State University. Bassham earned a bachelor's of science degree in biochemistry at the University of Birmingham, followed by a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of Warwick. She joined the Iowa State University faculty in 2001, where she was promoted from assistant to associate professor. In 2013, Bassham became the first holder of the Walter E. and Helen Parke Loomis Professorship of Plant Physiology. She was invited to join Faculty 1000 in 2017. Bassham was elected a fellow of the American Society of Plant Biolog...

#14138

Wanderley De Souza

#171745

Overall Influence

#14139

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

#49386

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian public health official, researcher, and the Director-General of the World Health Organization since 2017. Tedros is the first African to become WHO Director-General, receiving an endorsement for the role by the African Union. He played a role in the response to the Ebola virus epidemic, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022–2023 mpox outbreak.

#14140

Rudi Putra

#114893

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Rudi Putra is an Indonesian biologist who received a Goldman Environmental Prize in 2014 for his efforts to combat illegal logging, forest encroachment for palm oil production, and policies that open endangered ecosystems to mining and plantation industries.

#14141

Linda Nedbalová

Linda Nedbalová

#169980

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Linda Nedbalová is a Czech Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on snow algae. Early life and education Nedbalová was born in 1976 in Prague . She received her MSc. degree in biology in 2000 at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. She then received a Ph.D. at the same faculty in 2007. The title of her thesis was Phytoplankton in acidified lakes: structure, function and response to ecosystem recovery'.

#14142

Polina V. Lishko

#85343

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Polina V. Lishko is an American cellular and developmental biologist. She was a 2015 Pew biomedical scholar. She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. She is currently an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley as well as an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

#14143

Alan Kim Johnson

#171792

Overall Influence

#14144

Robert E. Gross

#171796

Overall Influence

#14145

Paola Malanotte Rizzoli

#168763

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Paola Malanotte Rizzoli is a physical oceanographer known for her research on ocean circulation and sea level rise, especially with respect to flooding conditions in Venice. Education and career As a child growing up in Venice, Malanotte Rizzoli had a passion for music and by age eleven learned La Traviata while considering a future as an opera singer. However, math prevailed and she earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Lyceum “Benedetti” Italy. In 1968 she completed a Ph.D. at the University of Padua with a dissertation titled “Quantum-mechanical structure of biologically important molecules.

#14146

Barbara Mawer

#89705

Overall Influence

1936 - 2006 (70 years)

Elizabeth Barbara Mawer was a British biochemist and medical researcher. She was regarded as a "highly influential figure in the calcium homoeostasis field". Early life and education Barbara Entwistle was born on 6 March 1939 in Blackburn to Thomas Entwistle, a teacher, and Gladys Mary Entwistle . She attended Blackburn High School and Queen Mary School in Lytham St Annes. She received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1957. She stayed there to conduct research, supervised by Guy Marrian, and in 1961 received a PhD for her thesis entitled The metabolism of cholesterol in the animal body.

#14147

David Happold

#129428

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

David Christopher Dawber Happold, , in publications often D. C. D. Happold, is a British-Australian mammalogist. His main research interests are the small mammals of Africa and Australia. Career David Happold is the son of Frederick Crossfield and his wife Dorothy Vectis Happold, née Halbach. From 1947 to 1955, he attended Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury, where his father was a headmaster from 1928 to 1960. In 1957, he matriculated at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960 . In 1960 he went to Canada, where he attended the University...

#14148

T. Nakamura

#171821

Overall Influence

#14149

Simone Vigod

#157320

Overall Influence

Simone Natalie Vigod is a Canadian scientist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Women's College Hospital and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She focuses her research on perinatal mood disorders and has conducted some of the largest studies worldwide on maternal mental illness around the time of pregnancy.

#14150

Olle Hagnell

#80138

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Eric Olof "Olle" Hagnell was a Swedish psychiatrist and epidemiologist. Hagnell was born in Halmstad, Sweden on July 29, 1924 to Eric Hagnell, an editor-in-chief, and Ruth Hagnell. During his doctoral studies, he worked as an assistant physician in Lund and as a research assistant at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Cornell University in New York. In 1966, he received a doctoral degree in psychiatry from Lund University. After completing his doctoral program, Hagnell became a docent and worked as a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. In 1974, he was promoted ...

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