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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#14251

Karen A. Lillycrop

#140563

Overall Influence

Karen A. Lillycrop is a British geneticist. She is professor of Epigenetics at the University of Southampton. She is listed as a notable scientist in Thomson Reuters' Highly Cited Researchers 2014, ranking her among the top 1% most cited scientists.

#14252

Steven Pennings

#172686

Overall Influence

Steven C. Pennings is an American biologist and biochemist currently the John and Rebecca Moores Professor at University of Houston.

#14253

John Shanklin

#161853

Overall Influence

John Shanklin is a British American biologist, focusing in lipids, currently at Brookhaven National Laboratory and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Shanklin grew up near Manchester, studied for his BSc at Lancaster University and gained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. He was named Battelle 'Inventor of the Year' in 2017.

#14254

Sabine Landau

#116655

Overall Influence

Sabine Landau is Professor of Biostatistics at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Landau was acting and then head of the Biostatistics Department in 2005–2009 and during 2008–2009 was the head of the Mental Health and Neurosciences Clinical Trials Unit.

#14255

Laura Mackay

#151628

Overall Influence

Laura K. Mackay is an internationally-recognised immunologist and Professor of Immunology at the University of Melbourne. Mackay is the Theme Leader in Immunology and Laboratory Head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. In 2022, she was the youngest ever Fellow elected to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

#14256

Lisa Mosconi

#105030

Overall Influence

Lisa Mosconi is an Italian American neuroscientist, educator, and author known for her books The XX Brain and Brain Food. She is the Director of the Women’s Brain Initiative and Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, both at Weill Cornell Medical College where she is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in Neurology.

#14257

Michael Aaron Ivie

#171769

Overall Influence

#14258

Margaret Collinson

#168620

Overall Influence

Margaret E. Collinson is a paleobotanist at Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom. Career Her career has led her to leadership of the Plant Paleobiology Research Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and wide-ranging within plant Paleobotany as evidenced by her publications. They particularly include consideration of geochemical signatures of oxygen, biomolecules and other elements; the paleoclimate and floral assemblages; pollen and other tissues; and evolution in ancient plants.

#14259

David G. Nicholls

#60961

Overall Influence

David G. Nicholls is Professor Emeritus of Mitochondrial Physiology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. His research focuses on chemiosmosis proposed by Peter D. Mitchell to couple the electron transport chain to ATP synthase. His explanation of chemiosmotic theory in the textbook Bioenergetics has become the standard text in the field. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2019 for "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge".

#14260

Felicia Keesing

#126791

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Felicia Keesing is an ecologist and the David & Rosalie Rose Distinguished Chair of the Sciences, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Education Keesing received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University in 1987 and her Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997.

#14261

Stephen B. Levine

#123733

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Stephen Barrett Levine is an American psychiatrist known for his work in human sexuality, particularly sexual dysfunction and transsexualism. Education and career Levine earned his M.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1967 and serves as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry there. His clinical practice began in the mid-1970s as the University Hospitals of Cleveland Sexual Dysfunction Clinic. In 1993 the Clinic separated from University Hospitals, and is presently called The Center for Marital and Sexual Health in Beachwood, Ohio.

#14262

Orangel Antonio Aguilera

#168067

Overall Influence

#14263

Isabel Bäurle

#120258

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Isabel Bäurle is a German plant biologist who is a Professor of Plant Epigenetics at the University of Potsdam. She is on the editorial board of the Current Opinion in Plant Biology. Early life and education Bäurle was an undergraduate student at the University of Freiburg, where she studied biology and chemistry. She completed an undergraduate research internship at the University of Bologna. In 2000, Bäurle completed her doctoral research at the University of Freiburg. After graduating, she moved to the John Innes Centre, where she worked with Caroline Dean. Bäurle was awarded a Royal Societ...

#14264

David Marshall

#110515

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

David Marshall is Professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford. Career He was head of the sub-department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics from 2014-2018. From 2008 to 2012 he was co-director of the 21st Century Ocean Institute within the Oxford Martin School. He was awarded the 2014 Appleton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for "fundamental contributions to understanding the fluid dynamics of the global ocean circulation".

#14265

Kathryn McPherson

#160465

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Kathryn Margaret McPherson is a New Zealand medical researcher and administrator. As of 2018 she is a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology and chief executive of the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

#14266

Maddy Parsons

#170901

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Maddy Parsons is a British cell biologist who is a professor and Associate Dean for Impact & Innovation at King's College London. She is the Director of the Nikon Imaging Centre. Her research looks to understand the fundamental mechanisms that underpin cell adhesion and migration. She is Chair of the Medical Research Council Molecular & Cellular Medicine Board.

#14267

Brenda Bloodgood

Brenda Bloodgood

#156797

Overall Influence

Brenda Bloodgood is an American neuroscientist and associate professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. Bloodgood studies the molecular and cellular basis of brain circuitry changes in response to an animal's interactions with the environment.

#14268

Mike Berners-Lee

#33023

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Mike Berners-Lee is an English researcher and writer on carbon footprinting. He is a professor and fellow of the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting, based in the Lancaster Environment Centre at the university. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question and There Is No Planet B. He is considered an expert on carbon footprints. He is the son of Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee; one of his brothers is computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

#14269

Gao Taiping

#172814

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Gao Taiping is a Chinese researcher on entomology and paleontology. He was trained at the Inner Mongolia University where in 2005 he received a B.S. in Biology, and at the Capital Normal University where in 2013 he obtained his Ph.D. in genetics. Dr. Gao focuses on the origin and evolution of the insects, especially the ectoparasitim and hymenopteran. Now he works for Capital Normal University.

#14270

Kathryn L. Cottingham

#108741

Overall Influence

Kathryn Linn Cottingham is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society in the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 2020 she will serve as editor-in-chief of the journal Ecology.

#14271

Michael Joyner

#74584

Overall Influence

Michael Joseph Joyner is an American anesthesiologist and physiologist who researches exercise physiology. Career Michael Joyner is the Frank R. and Shari Caywood Professor of Anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic, where his laboratory has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health since 1993. He was Deputy Director and Associate Dean for Research at the Mayo Clinic from 2005 to 2010. He was named a Distinguished Investigator by his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in 2010, and he received the American Physiological Society’s Walter B. Cannon Award in 2013. A fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine , he delivered the Joseph B.

#14272

Shelly Flagel

#115868

Overall Influence

Shelly B. Flagel is an American behavioral neuroscientist whose research focuses on the underlying brain mechanisms of reward and addiction. She is an associate professor of psychiatry in the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan.

#14273

Jenny Stauber

#168901

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Jennifer Lee Stauber is an Australian ecotoxicologist and chief research scientist at the CSIRO Land and Water. Education Stauber graduated from the University of Sydney in 1979 with a BSc in biochemistry and microbiology and MSc for her thesis titled "Photosynthetic pigments in marine diatoms" in 1984. In 1996, she completed a PhD titled "Toxicity of Metals in Biological Systems" at the University of Tasmania.

#14274

Barbara Almond

#86883

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Barbara Almond was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She authored books on psychiatry, including The Monster Within: The Hidden Side of Motherhood . Biography Almond was born Barbara Mary Rosenthal in The Bronx. Her father was an actuary, and her mother was a teacher. She attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan before graduating from Antioch College and Yale University Medical School. Almond had a private practice in Palo Alto, California, and taught at Stanford University and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

#14275

Heather Hendrickson

#153039

Overall Influence

Heather Hendrickson is a microbiologist and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. She previously worked at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. Her research is focussed on the evolution of bacterial cell shape, and the discovery of bacteriophages that can attack antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the bee disease American foulbrood.

#14276

Melina Hale

#160143

Overall Influence

Melina Elisabeth Hale is an American neuroscientist and biomechanist. She is the dean of the College and the William Rainey Harper Professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, at the University of Chicago.

#14277

Beatriz Morales-Nin

#172321

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Beatriz Morales-Nin is a marine ecologist and expert in fish and sustainable management of fishery resources. She is currently a research professor at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies . She is a leading Spanish expert in sclerochronology where her main field of research is fish otoliths.

#14278

Mikhail Mikhailovich Sholokhov

#148103

Overall Influence

1935 - 2013 (78 years)

Mikhail Mikhailovich Sholokhov was a Russian scientist. Candidate of Biological Sciences, Honorary Professor of Sholokhov Moscow State University for Humanities. Biography Mikhail Mikhailovich was born in the family of the famous writer Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov on 23 May 1935 in Moscow. In 1960 he graduated with honors from the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University, majoring in ichthyology. He worked in the Commission for Nature Protection at the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

#14279

David R. Brown

#99459

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Professor David Ronald Brown is an Australian-born research scientist notable for his work on prion diseases, which include bovine spongiform encephalopathy and vCJD. His most notable research relates to the metal binding of the protein central to these diseases, the prion protein, and its possible cellular role as an antioxidant.

#14280

Fucheng Zhang

#171957

Overall Influence

#14281

Kausik Chattopadhyay

#80860

Overall Influence

Kausik Chattopadhyay is an Indian structural biologist, protein biologist, and a professor at the Department of Biological Sciences. He was the Dean of R&D at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali until May 2021. He is known for his studies on the Pore-forming protein toxins and T-cell costimulatory molecules. 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 2014.

#14282

Michael Fasham

#139425

Overall Influence

1942 - 2008 (66 years)

Michael John Robert Fasham, FRS was a British oceanographer and ecosystem modeller. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of open ocean plankton ecosystem models. Early life and education Fasham was born in 1942 in Edgware in north London, and attended Kilburn Grammar School in Queen's Park. At the University of Birmingham he initially studied physics, obtaining his first degree in 1963, but moved to marine geology for his PhD, which was awarded in 1968.

#14283

Kåre Elgmork

#172766

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Kåre Elgmork was a Norwegian zoologist. He was born in Hønefoss. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1959, was appointed as a docent at the University of Oslo in 1964 and promoted to professor in 1985. His special fields were freshwater ecology, later the study of bears of Norway. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters since 1986 and was decorated as a Knight of the Order of St. Olav. He died in November 2011 in Bærum, having resided at Ringstabekk.

#14284

Katie Doores

#166366

Overall Influence

Katherine Jane Doores is a British biochemist who is a senior lecturer in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King's College London. During the COVID-19 pandemic Doores studied the levels of antibodies in patients who had suffered from COVID-19.

#14285

Sarah Garfinkel

Sarah Garfinkel

#121936

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Sarah Garfinkel is a British neuroscientist and Professor of neuroscience and psychiatry based at the University of Sussex and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Her research is focused on the link between interoception and emotion and memory. In 2018, she was selected as one of 11 researchers on the Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars.

#14286

Claudia Benitez-Nelson

#169576

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Claudia Benitez-Nelson is a Latinx American oceanographer whose research focuses on marine geochemistry and biogeochemistry. A Carolina Distinguished Professor, she serves as the Senior Associate Dean for College Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Programs at the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences.

#14287

Josefa Celsa Señaris

Josefa Celsa Señaris

#151560

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Josefa Celsa Señaris is a Venezuelan herpetologist. She has published information about frogs and she has identified new genera and species. Señaris is the director of the La Salle Foundation's Natural History Museum in Caracas.

#14288

David M. Reid

#173015

Overall Influence

#14289

Mariya Zerova

#122890

Overall Influence

1902 - 1994 (92 years)

Mariya Yakovlevna Zerova, alternately Marija Jakovlevna Zerova, was a Ukrainian biologist and taxonomist known for her work in mycology. Her research included work on ectrotrophic mycorrhiza and fungal diseases of the rubber tree and beet . She made a major contribution to the multi-volume books of the Determination of Mushrooms of Ukraine published between 1967 and 1979. Her collection of 12,000 specimens of fungi and plants is now held in the National Herbarium of Ukraine.

#14290

Cornelia M. Van Duijn

#173025

Overall Influence

#14291

Anna-Lise Williamson

#110269

Overall Influence

Anna-Lise Williamson MASSAf is a Professor of Virology at the University of Cape Town. Williamson obtained her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1985. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus, but is also known on an international level for her work in developing vaccines for HIV. These vaccines have been introduce in phase 1 of clinical trial. Williamson has published more than 120 papers.

#14292

Robert R. Rich

#169143

Overall Influence

Robert Regier Rich is professor of medicine, microbiology and medical education, and dean emeritus at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Immunology from 2003 to 2008, and was elected a Fellow of AAI in 2019.

#14293

Rutger Kopland

#81625

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Rutger Kopland was a Dutch poet who gained great popularity for his "accessible, thoughtful style, his mild irony, his sentimentality" and whose collections sold over 200,000 copies.

#14294

Houra Merrikh

#89216

Overall Influence

Houra Merrikh is an Iranian-American microbiologist. She is a full professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Biochemistry. Her field of work is antibiotic resistance and bacterial evolvability.

#14295

Serge Carrière

#109850

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Dr. Serge Carrière, OC is a Canadian physiologist, physician and educator. He was born on July 21, 1934, in Montreal, Quebec. He studied at the Université de Montréal, taking his B.A. in 1954 and his M.D. in 1959. In 1962, he joined the Harvard Medical School as an instructor in physiology from 1962 to 1964. He returned to Montreal to begin his own practice and began teaching at the Université de Montréal.

#14296

Maree Gleeson

#106616

Overall Influence

Emeritus Professor Maree Gleeson is an Australian immunologist. Her research has focused on respiratory immunology in children and elite athletes. She has held multiple leadership positions within the health sector in the Hunter Region in NSW.

#14297

James Lyons-Weiler

#140854

Overall Influence

James Lyons-Weiler is an American scientist and activist who operates the non-profit organization Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge. His doctorate is in Conservation biology. He was a University of Pittsburgh faculty member .

#14298

Laura Wegener Parfrey

#173133

Overall Influence

Laura Wegener Parfrey is a Canadian bioscientist, focusing on microbial ecology. , she is a Canada Research Chair in Protist Ecology at the University of British Columbia. Her work has two distinct strands: the microbial ecology of the mammalian gut and coastal microbial ecosystems.

#14299

Kenneth William Donald

#118884

Overall Influence

1911 - 1994 (83 years)

Kenneth William Donald was a British physician, surgeon, pulmonologist, cardiologist, professor of medicine, and leading expert on underwater physiology and exercise physiology. Biography After education at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and St Bartholomew's Hospital, he qualified MRCS, LRCP in 1936 and graduated MB BChir in 1938. After house appointments, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939. He was Surgeon Lieutenant aboard HMS Hotspur during the first naval Battle of Narvik in April 1940. He was awarded the DSC in June 1940.

#14300

Rohini Kuner

#123534

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Rohini Kuner is an Indian-born German pharmacologist and director of the Institute of Pharmacology at Heidelberg University. Vita After studying pharmacology in India she obtained her PhD from University of Iowa in the laboratory of Gerald Gebhart studying the role of spinal NMDA-receptors in nociception.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions