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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School

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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#14301

Ivan Erill

#168746

Overall Influence

Ivan Erill is a Spanish computational biologist known for his research in comparative genomics and molecular microbiology. His work focuses primarily on bacterial comparative genomics, through the development of computational methods for analyzing regulatory networks and their evolution.

#14302

Natasha J. Caplen

#82442

Overall Influence

Natasha Jane Caplen is a British-American geneticist who discovered RNA interference in mammalian cells. She is a senior investigator and head of the functional genetics section at the National Cancer Institute.

#14303

Earyn McGee

#140909

Overall Influence

Earyn McGee is an American herpetologist and science communicator. She is an American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/THEN Ambassador and a 2020 AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellow. In response to the racism faced by Black birdwatcher Christian Cooper in the Central Park birdwatching incident, McGee co-organized Black Birders Week to celebrate Black birders.

#14304

Rani Hoff

#106170

Overall Influence

Rani A. Hoff is a professor of psychiatry and a director of a national center for Post-traumatic stress disorder at Yale University. Life and work Rani Hoff, daughter of Robert and Victoria Hoff, grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and first became a concertmaster of the Erie Philharmonic Youth orchestra at the age of 10. She graduated with a BS in mathematics and biology from Mercyhurst University in 1985 at the age of 16, and within the next two months she joined the Army and was reporting to basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, hoping to become a medical specialist.

#14305

Tom Browning

#121990

Overall Influence

1920 - 1998 (78 years)

Thomas Oakley Browning was an Australian zoologist and peace activist. He was a research scientist in the field of entomology. After his retirement in 1983, he had the title of Emeritus Professor of Entomology at the Waite campus of the University of Adelaide. He also wrote a number of biographies of former colleagues. He died in Adelaide in April 1998 at the age of 78.

#14306

Anne Schaefer

#140220

Overall Influence

Anne Schaefer is a neuroscientist, professor of Neuroscience, vice-chair of Neuroscience, and director of the Center for Glial Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Schaefer investigates the epigenetic mechanisms of cellular plasticity and their role in the regulation of microglia-neuron interactions. Her research is aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying various neuropsychiatric disorders and finding novel ways to target the epigenome therapeutically.

#14307

Sergei Mosyakin

#173221

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Sergei Leonidovich Mosyakin is a Ukrainian botanist. Biography Born on November 30, 1961, in Kyiv. From 1978 to 1983, he studied at the Kyiv State Pedagogical Institute , specializing in Biology and Foreign Languages.

#14308

Katherine A. Lathrop

#114826

Overall Influence

1915 - 2005 (90 years)

Katherine Austin Lathrop was an American nuclear medicine researcher, biochemist and member of the Manhattan Project. Lathrop conducted pioneer work on the effects of radiation exposure on animals and humans.

#14309

Warren Tate

#122581

Overall Influence

Warren Perry Tate is a New Zealand biochemist and professor of biochemistry at the University of Otago. Research Tate has been interested in protein synthesis for a long time. Particularly, the decoding and recoding of mechanisms on the ribosome at stop signals.

#14310

Mark Winey

#166012

Overall Influence

Mark Winey is an American biologist currently the Dean of the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences and formerly at University of Colorado.

#14311

Robert Josephs

#117918

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Robert A. Josephs is an American Professor of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin who has conducted research on the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive effects of acute alcohol intoxication. Currently, his primary area of research is on human behavioral endocrinology with an emphasis on hormone-gene interactions, and hormone-hormone interactions.

#14312

Melanie Greter

#168572

Overall Influence

Melanie Greter is a Swiss neuroimmunologist and a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor in the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich. Greter explores the ontogeny and function of microglia and border-associated macrophages of the central nervous system to understand how they maintain homeostasis and contribute to brain-related diseases.

#14313

Mark Lythgoe

#114271

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Mark Lythgoe is Professor of Biomedical Imaging and Founder and Director of the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, based at University College London . He has published over 300 papers including publications in Nature, Nature Photonics, Nature Medicine and The Lancet. His ongoing research is centred around a new device that combines both diagnosis and therapy into a single theranostic MRI system. Lythgoe's multidisciplinary approach bridges the domains of healthcare engineering and clinical medicine, yielding multiple imaging breakthroughs and securing £45 million for his collaborative research program.

#14314

Julio Vallejo Ruiloba

Julio Vallejo Ruiloba

#142181

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Julio Vallejo Ruiloba was a Spanish psychiatrist, medical doctor, Chairman of the Psychiatry Department at the Universitat de Barcelona, ex-President of the Spanish Psychiatry Society, and Academician of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia. He wrote 56 books about psychiatry and more than 350 scientific papers.

#14315

Peter Dangerfield

#101909

Overall Influence

Peter Dangerfield FHEA is a clinical anatomist at the University of Liverpool and a professor at Staffordshire University. Biography Dangerfield is a member of the British Medical Association UK Council and co-chair of the Medical Academic Staff Committee. He is a past chair of the former Board of Medical Education and has made frequent contributions to meetings of the Association for the Study of Medical Education .

#14316

Sharon Emerson

#57551

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Sharon B. Emerson is an American biologist and was a research professor emeritus at the University of Utah. In 1993, she was chair of the Division of Vertebrate Morphology of the American Society of Zoologists. She taught at University of Illinois, Chicago.

#14317

Svein Valla

#173339

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Svein Valla was a Norwegian molecular biologist. He was a professor of microbial molecular biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#14318

Peter Crittenden

#137343

Overall Influence

Peter Crittenden is a British lichenologist. His research largely concerns the ecophysiology of lichens. Crittenden is known for using new techniques to study lichens, such as the use of 3D printing and X-ray computed tomography to study lichen structure and development. He served as the senior editor of the scientific journal The Lichenologist from the years 2000–2016; and still serves on the editorial board for the journal Fungal Ecology. Crittenden was the president of the British Lichen Society in 1998–1999, and president of the International Association for Lichenology from 2008 to 2012. ...

#14319

David Schlaepfer

#123489

Overall Influence

David Schlaepfer is a California-born scientist known for his studies on cell migration and cancer metastasis. His early research focused on signaling by protein kinases, with a subsequent focus on the proteins that regulate the turnover of cell contacts with the extracellular matrix. In particular, Schlaepfer is well known for his studies on focal adhesion kinase .

#14320

Laura Huenneke

#73653

Overall Influence

Dr. Laura Huenneke is an American ecologist and former President of the Ecological Society of America. She is known for her research in public health in Arizona's Native American community, focusing on cancer prevention, invasive species, and desert ecosystems. Huenneke is the former Vice President for Research at Northern Arizona University where she continues her research studying the impact of biological diversity on ecosystems and teaching classes in Environmental Sciences. She has served on a variety of boards and review panels for ecological research journals and has received a number of...

#14321

Tyra Wolfsberg

#170234

Overall Influence

Tyra Gwendolen Wolfsberg is an American bioinformatician. She is the associate director of the bioinformatics and scientific programming core at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Life Wolfsberg received a A.B. in molecular biology from Princeton University. She earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco. Her 1995 dissertation was titled Identification and characterization of ADAM, a novel gene family. Wolfsberg transitioned to computationally based research by performing a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at NIH.

#14322

Anne Goodenough

#93364

Overall Influence

Anne Goodenough is an ecologist in the United Kingdom. She is Professor of Applied Ecology at the University of Gloucestershire. Education and career Goodenough did a PhD on nest box choice and breeding success in woodland birds. She became Professor of Applied Ecology at the University of Gloucestershire in 2017 and is also course leader for Applied Ecology, prior to this she was a Senior Lecturer and course leader for Biosciences at the University.

#14323

Rolf Mathewes

#170029

Overall Influence

Rolf Walter Mathewes is a Canadian paleoecologist. He is a full professor and former associate dean of science at Simon Fraser University. Education Mathewes attended Princess Margaret Secondary School and was taught biology by Rene Savenye. He earned his Bachelor of Science from Simon Fraser University before achieving his PhD at the University of British Columbia.

#14324

Lauri Kaila

#92941

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lauri Kaila is a Finnish entomologist and researcher of biodiversity, specializing in Lepidoptera, at the Finnish Museum of Natural History of the University of Helsinki. As of 2018, Kaila authored 171 species within the family of Elachistidae.

#14325

Paul W. Chun

#173409

Overall Influence

Paul W. Chun is a professor emeritus at the University of Florida. He is a researcher in the field of protein folding equilibria, in particular, he is known as the "leading proponent" of using the Planck-Benzinger thermal work function to understand protein folding thermodynamics and stability. As such Chun has written a number of papers relating to the thermodynamics of protein folding. He received his Ph.D. in 1965 from the University of Missouri for work on the interaction of casein molecules, and joined the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Florida soon thereafter.

#14326

Bob Wong

#173418

Overall Influence

Bob B.M. Wong is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Australia, and the Secretary of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology . He is a biologist and academic with his research focusing on the evolution of animal mating systems and behavior, and how investment in sex influences reproductive strategies and biological diversity. His current work focuses on the impacts of environmental change on animal behaviour and the evolutionary process. In 2019 he became a subject editor for Animal Behaviour and Oikos Journal. He was granted a Future Fellowship by t...

#14327

Martina Sester

#170681

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Martina Sester is a biologist, Professor of Transplantation and Infection Immunology and Head of Department of the Institute of Infection Medicine at Saarland University Hospital as well as former Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer at Saarland University.

#14328

Chen Zhu

#87688

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Chen Zhu is a Chinese hematologist and molecular biologist who has served as president of the Red Cross Society of China since 2015. He previously served as vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee from 2013 to 2023, chairman of the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party Central Committee from 2012 to 2022, president of the Chinese Medical Association from 2010 to 2015, Minister of Heath of China from 2007 to 2013, and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2000 to 2007.

#14329

Linda C. Samuelson

#121722

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Linda Carol Samuelson is an American physiologist who researches the role of stem cells in the gastrointestinal tract. She is the John A. Williams Collegiate Professor of Gastrointestinal Physiology at the University of Michigan, president of the American Physiological Society, and fellow of the American Physiological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#14330

Ganiyu Oboh

#146405

Overall Influence

Ganiyu Oboh is a Nigerian professor of Applied Biochemistry at the Federal University of Technology Akure. He is currently the head of Functional Food and Nutraceutical Laboratory Unit in the Department of Biochemistry and has recommended a cure to diabetes. In 2021, he was awarded the best researcher according to Alper-Doger Scientific Index.

#14331

Eleanor Feingold

#140120

Overall Influence

Eleanor Feingold is an American statistical geneticist. She is a professor of human genetics and of biostatistics, and executive associate dean, in the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

#14332

Catherine Jeandel

#109045

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Catherine Jeandel is a French geochemical oceanographer known for her research on isotope geochemistry and trace elements in the ocean. Education and career Jeandel grew up in northern Brittany wanting to be an ocean scientist, despite a lack of interest in mathematics. She was a student at the École normale supérieure de Sèvres from 1977 to 1982. Jeandel earned a B.S. and her Ph.D. at the University of Paris VII.

#14333

Phyllis McAlpine

#166428

Overall Influence

1941 - 1998 (57 years)

Phyllis Jean McAlpine was a Canadian geneticist. She was a pioneer in mapping the human genome and served as Chair of the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee. Education McAlpine was awarded an honours bachelor's degree at Western University where she won a gold medal in zoology. She received a master's degree from the University of Toronto in 1966. Her thesis was called An assessment of the creatine kinase test in the detection of carriers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. She went on to complete a PhD at University College London in 1970 with a thesis entitled Studies on the genetic variation of phosphoglucomutase in man.

#14334

Sharon R. Browning

#158720

Overall Influence

Sharon Ruth Browning is a statistical geneticist at the University of Washington, and a research professor with its Department of Biostatistics. Her research has various implications for the field of biogenetics.

#14335

Farkhanda Manzoor

#139184

Overall Influence

Farkhanda Manzoor is a zoologist and the former Vice-Chancellor of Lahore College for Women University. Her research most often focuses on termite control, mosquitoes, insecticides, and tropical diseases and virology.

#14336

Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér

#136182

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, born 1967, is a Swedish immunologist who is Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute. In 2013, she demonstrated that a simple antiviral could improve the life expectancy of glioblastoma disease. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, Söderberg-Nauclér on several occasions strongly criticized the Swedish response to SARS-CoV-2, claiming that they were leading the country into a catastrophe, and demanded that the Swedish state epidemiologist should resign.

#14337

Sarah Dunlop

#171466

Overall Influence

Sarah Dunlop is an Australian researcher working in neuroplasticity, neuroscience and community programs for people with spinal cord injury. Dunlop is head of an integrated program of laboratory and clinical research at The University of Western Australia and Royal Perth Hospital promoting functional recovery after traumatic injury to the nervous system. Laboratory studies use rodent models and focus on preventing the spread of secondary degeneration to intact tissue.

#14338

Douglas Kinsella

Douglas Kinsella

#83077

Overall Influence

1932 - 2004 (72 years)

Thomas Douglas Kinsella, CM was a Canadian medical doctor and expert on medical ethics and founder of Canada's National Council on Ethics in Human Research. Career Kinsella is particularly noted for his research on ethical, legal and medical issues surrounding assisted suicide, euthanasia and genetics research. He is well known for championing research ethics, particularly as these apply to human experimentation, and was a founding member of the Tri-Council Working Group on Ethics.

#14339

Webster Cavenee

#128727

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Webster K. "Web" Cavenee is the Director of Strategic Alliances in Central Nervous System Cancers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego. He was the Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research until 2015 when it was taken over by Richard Kolodner. His laboratory studies gene mutations in cancer, most notably in EGFR and glioblastoma multiforme.

#14340

Park Dietz

#39875

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Park Elliot Dietz is a forensic psychiatrist who has consulted or testified in many of the highest profile US criminal cases, including spousal killer Betty Broderick, mass murderer Jared Lee Loughner, and serial killers Joel Rifkin, Arthur Shawcross, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Richard Kuklinski, the D.C. sniper attacks, and William Bonin.

#14341

Reinette Biggs

#168180

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Professor Reinette "Oonsie" Biggs is a South African sustainability scientist whose research focuses on food, water, and the benefits people receive from nature. Biggs is the co-director of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University, South Africa and a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden.

#14342

Barton Holland Warnock

#159396

Overall Influence

1911 - 1998 (87 years)

Barton Holland Warnock was an American botanist and leading authority on flora of the Trans-Pecos area and northern Chihuahua Desert. Biography Born in Christoval, Texas in July 1911, Warnock grew up at Fort Stockton, Texas and by 1937 graduated from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas. He received a master's degree from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in Austin.

#14343

Pablo Visconti

#102038

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Pablo E. Visconti is an Argentine professor of reproductive biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose papers on reproduction were recognized as Papers of the Week by both the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2013.

#14344

Kirk Bryan

#66321

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Kirk Bryan Jr. is an American oceanographer who is considered to be the founder of numerical ocean modeling. He is the son of Kirk Bryan, Sr. . Starting in the 1960s at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, then located in Washington, D.C., Bryan worked with a series of colleagues to develop numerical schemes for solving the equations of motion describing flow on a sphere. His work on these schemes led to the so-called "Bryan-Cox code" with which many early simulations were made, and which led to the Modular Ocean Model currently used by many numerical oceanographers and climate scientis...

#14345

Frank H. Guenther

#83591

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Frank H. Guenther is an American computational and cognitive neuroscientist whose research focuses on the neural computations underlying speech, including characterization of the neural bases of communication disorders and development of brain–computer interfaces for communication restoration. He is currently a professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences and biomedical engineering at Boston University.

#14346

Frano Kršinić

#173365

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Frano Kršinić is a Croatian marine biologist. Kršinić was born in Lumbarda, on the island of Korčula. He obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb.

#14347

Max Barclay

#113166

Overall Influence

Maxwell V L Barclay FRES is a British entomologist, and Curator and Collections Manager of Coleoptera and Hemiptera at the Natural History Museum in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and a member of the editorial board of The Coleopterist journal. He has been described as ‘one of Britain’s leading entomologists’.

#14348

Marius Romme

#37324

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Marius Anton Joannes Romme is a Dutch psychiatrist. He is best known for his work on hearing voices and regarded as the founder and principal theorist for the Hearing Voices Movement. Early life, family and education Romme studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam, where he also received his PhD in 1967.

#14349

Lauren B. Buckley

#133257

Overall Influence

Lauren B. Buckley is an evolutionary ecologist and professor of biology at the University of Washington. She researches the relationship between organismal physiological and life history features and response to global climate change.

#14350

Teresa Paiva

#99626

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Teresa Paiva is a Portuguese somnologist, neurologist, academic and author. She was head of neurology at the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon and is clinical director of the Sleep Medicine Center in Lisbon.

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