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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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#14501

George F. Vande Woude

#175092

Overall Influence

#14502

Greta Binford

#94446

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Greta J. Binford is a United States arachnologist, specialising in studies of spider venom. She is a Professor of Biology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. As a child, Binford was raised on a small corn-and-soybean farm in west-central Indiana. From 1983 to 1985 she studied psychology at Purdue University, after an abortive attempt at a degree in veterinary medicine. While qualifying to be a science teacher at Miami University, she was offered the chance to study spiders in Peru's Amazon basin for the summer, and obtained a B.A. in Zoology at Miami in 1990. Afterwards, she undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Utah from 1991–1993, obtaining an M.S.

#14503

Urmas Kõljalg

#172584

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Urmas Kõljalg is an Estonian biologist, mycologist and university professor. He has recombined the following taxon:Amaurodon aeruginascens Kõljalg & K.H. Larss.

#14504

Helen K. Larson

#173785

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Helen K. Larson is an ichthyologist who specialises in the fishes of the Indo-Pacific. In the 1960s and 1970s, she attended the University of Guam to study for her Bachelor's and master's degrees and while there she also worked in the local Marine Laboratory. While there she collected and described a new species of the dwarf goby from the genus Eviota, Eviota pellucida, the description being published in 1976 in the journal Copeia. This was her first description of a new species. Her Masters was called Notes on the biology and comparative behaviour of Eviota zonura and Eviota smaragdus . She g...

#14505

Alexander Niculescu

#138395

Overall Influence

Alexander Bogdan Niculescu, III is a Romanian born, San Diego, California, educated and trained scientist and physician. He is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana, Director of the Laboratory of Neurophenomics, and an Attending Psychiatrist and R&D Investigator at the Indianapolis VA Medical Center. Considered the inventor of Convergent Functional Genomics , he is a prominent figure in the field of personalized medicine in psychiatry. His early contributions to the psychiatric genetics field include identification...

#14506

Alison Mercer

#153564

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Alison Ruth Mercer is a New Zealand zoologist based at the University of Otago, with a particular interest in the brain physiology of bees. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

#14507

Harry Shamoon

#170801

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Harry Shamoon is Professor Emeritus of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. Education Shamoon obtained B.A. with Magna cum laude from the Columbia College in 1970 and four years later got an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine. Following graduation, he became an intern and resident at the Jacobi Medical Center and from 1977 to 1979 worked at the Robert S. Sherwin's laboratory of Yale School of Medicine.

#14508

Don Henry

#110698

Overall Influence

Donald Hugh Henry is Enterprise Professor of Environmentalism at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. He is also an International Board member of Al Gore's ‘Climate Reality Project'.

#14509

Andrew George

#159829

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Andrew John Timothy George , is Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Brunel University London and Professor of Immunology. Education George was educated at Clifton College, Bristol. He studied Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge , before going to the Tenovus Laboratories, Southampton University, where he undertook his PhD under the supervision of Freda Stevenson .

#14510

Joan Bailey-Wilson

Joan Bailey-Wilson

#166299

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Joan Ellen Bailey-Wilson is an American statistical geneticist. She is a senior investigator and co-chief of the Computational and Statistical Genomic Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

#14511

Jennifer Shay

#130029

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Jennifer Mary Shay, , was a Canadian academic and ecologist. Born in Hull, England, the daughter of Frank and Kathleen Walker, she received a Bachelor of Science from the University of London in 1952. After moving to Canada in 1957, she completed her Master of Science in 1959 and her Doctor of Philosophy in Science in 1964 from the University of Manitoba. In 1965, she became an assistant professor, promoted to associate professor in 1967, and full professor in 1975. From 1966 to 1986, she was the founding director of the Delta Marsh Field Station, a research and teaching facility of the Faculty of Science located on the south shore of Lake Manitoba.

#14512

Jan Bystrek

#158615

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Jan Bystrek was a Polish botanist and professor of natural sciences. He was employed at the Department of Systematic and Geography of Plants at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University from 1956 until 2004. He published research in many fields, including botany, floristry, lichenology, systematics, environmental protection, biogeography, ecology, bioindication, and nature and landscape protection. He was involved in popularizing knowledge about nature and ecological education.

#14513

Harold Kaplan

#63442

Overall Influence

1927 - 1998 (71 years)

Harold Irwin Kaplan was a psychiatrist and founding editor of the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. Biography Kaplan received his BA degree from New York University. In 1949, at age 21, he received his Doctorate in Medicine from New York Medical College.

#14514

Jennifer Provencher

Jennifer Provencher

#167494

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Jennifer F. Provencher is a Canadian conservation biologist. She is an early-career researcher and a spokesperson for the awareness of plastic contaminants in marine wildlife, pollution and climate change. Many of her work focus on the impact of human activities on the health of Arctic seabirds and marine ecosystems.

#14515

Caroline C. Ummenhofer

#155713

Overall Influence

Caroline C. Ummenhofer is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studies extreme weather events with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. Ummenhofer makes an effort to connect her discoveries about predicting extreme weather events and precipitation to helping the nations affected.

#14516

Barry Conn

#109195

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Barry John Conn , is an Australian botanist. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Adelaide University in 1982 for work on Prostanthera. Career Conn's first appointment as a botanist was with the Lae Herbarium in 1974. He then became herbarium curator and a lecturer at the Papua New Guinea Forestry College, Bulolo . He is a scientific advisor to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In Australia, he has been senior botanist at the National Herbarium of Victoria , and botanist at the National Herbarium of New South Wales . In 1994-1995, he was Australian Botanical Liaison Officer at Kew. While wit...

#14517

Gregor W. Yeates

Gregor W. Yeates

#117718

Overall Influence

1944 - 2012 (68 years)

Gregor William Yeates, publishing as GW Yeates , was a New Zealand soil zoologist and ecologist. He was "considered the world's leading authority in soil nematode ecology, a subject of economic and ecological importance."

#14518

Susan Serjeantson

#124329

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Susan Wyber Serjeantson is an Australian geneticist and professor of genetics at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. Academic career Born Susan Wyber in 1946 in Riverstone, New South Wales, Serjeantson was educated at Caringbah High School. She was dux and school captain in 1963.

#14519

Prashant P. Sharma

#173897

Overall Influence

Prashant P. Sharma is an Indian-American invertebrate biologist and a professor of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Education Sharma attended Harvard University and completed his undergraduate training in 2006. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2012. He was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History.

#14520

Christine Figgener

#75833

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Christine Figgener is a German marine conservation biologist, author, science communicator, and ocean advocate recognized for her work in sea turtle conservation, the fight against plastic pollution, and the empowerment of women in STEM. She is best known for documenting the removal of a plastic straw from a sea turtle's nose in a YouTube video that went viral in 2015. This video, which was featured in popular media outlets such as National Geographic, HuffPost, The New York Times, ABC News, and CNN, highlighted the dangers of plastic pollution on marine wildlife and was a catalyst for the gl...

#14521

Isabel Lastres Becker

#164189

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Isabel Ballasts Becker is a German-Spanish scientist and chemist on the faculty of biochemistry in the medical department at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Life She graduated in chemical sciences, specialising in biochemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her work centres on the molecular basis of several neurodegenerative illnesses, like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. In her project, she studies the cause of neuron death in Parkinson's, and experiments with drugs to delay the advance of the illness.

#14522

Paul Ashwood

#172904

Overall Influence

Paul Ashwood is an associate professor of immunology at the MIND Institute at the University of California Davis. His lab conducts research regarding the potential role of immune system disorders in autism, as well as other neurodevelopmental disorders such as Fragile X syndrome, Tourette syndrome, schizophrenia and mood disorders.

#14523

Paula Jameson

#168558

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Paula Elizabeth Jameson is a New Zealand plant physiologist. Biography In1982 Jameson was awarded a PhD titled 'A study on the role of cytokinins in the development of starch accumulating structures from the University of Canterbury. After working at Otago University and serving as head of department at Massey University, Jameson moved to the University of Canterbury. Jameson is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science and a life member of the New Zealand Society of Plant Physiologists.

#14524

Mogens Engell Köie

#175259

Overall Influence

1911 - 2000 (89 years)

Mogens Engell Köie or Køie was a Danish ecologist and botanist. He was the first professor of botanical ecology at the University of Copenhagen. Some publications 1938. The soil vegetation of the Danish conifer plantations of its ecology. Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter – Naturvidenskabelig og Mathematisk Afdeling, 9.ª ed. vol. VII : 1-861943. Tøj fra yngre Bronzealder fremstillet af Stor Nælde . Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie. 1944. De jydske Egekrat og deres Flora. Biologiske Skrifter, Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 3 . 210 pp.. 1951. Relations of vegetation, soil and subsoil in Denmark.

#14525

Dorothea Fiedler

#120406

Overall Influence

Dorothea Fiedler is a chemical biologist and also the first female director of the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie in Berlin, Germany. Early life and education Fiedler grew up in Hamburg. She studied inorganic chemistry at the University of Würzburg, then carried out doctorate research on organometallic chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.

#14526

Leah Gerber

#123799

Overall Influence

Leah R. Gerber is a conservation biologist and environmental scientist most known for her contributions to the field of biodiversity conservation. She has conducted research on population ecology, conservation decision-making, and the application of innovative quantitative methods in conservation biology.

#14527

Richard W. Murray

#171172

Overall Influence

Richard W. Murray , a geologist and oceanographer, is the Deputy Director and Vice President for Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Murray was previously a professor of earth and environment at Boston University , where he served as Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences , and Director of Boston University's Marine Program .

#14528

Margaret Rioch

#116952

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Margaret Jeffrey Rioch was an American psychotherapist, internationally known for her critical work in the field of psychology. She is best known for her role in establishing a new method of training for mental health counselors. Rioch's publications and projects have directly led to the current systems of mental health care treatment. Notable methods that have stemmed from her work include crisis hotlines and the use of support groups. She died in 1996 at the age of 89.

#14529

Keiji Tanaka

#175269

Overall Influence

#14530

Karin Broberg

#171686

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Karin Broberg is a Swedish geneticist and toxicologist and professor at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University, Sweden, known for her work on human adaptation to challenging environments. Education and career Broberg became M.Sc. in Biology from Lund University in 1996 and MD in Experimental Clinical Genetics, Lund University in 2001. In 2015, she became Professor of Environmental Medicine with a special emphasis on genetics and epigenetics at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and since 2018 also holds a professorship in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Lund University.

#14531

Isobel Heyman

#171092

Overall Influence

Isobel Heyman is a British psychiatrist and consultant at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. She was named as the Royal College of Psychiatrists Psychiatrist of the Year in 2015. Early life and education Heyman first studied pharmacology, before training in medicine at the UCL Medical School. She trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. She earned a doctorate in developmental neurobiology at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, where she investigated rhombomere boundaries. In 1995 she returned to the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, where she specialised in ch...

#14532

Kristine Beate Walhovd

#91259

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Kristine Beate Walhovd is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Oslo. Together with fellow neuroscientist Anders Fjell, she established the Centre of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo, which was given the status of "world leading research environment" by the Government of Norway in 2015. She and Anders Fjell shared the Fridtjof Nansen Prize in 2007. She was elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2011. In 2017 she received a European Research Council consolidator grant. Acco...

#14533

William M. Fields

#93745

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

William M. Fields , also known by the lexigram , is an American qualitative investigator studying language, culture, and tools in non-human primates. He is best known for his collaboration with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh beginning in 1997 at the Language Research Center of Georgia State University. There he co-reared Nyota , a baby bonobo, with Panbanisha , Kanzi and Savage-Rumbaugh . Fields and Savage-Rumbaugh are the only scientists in the world carrying out language research with bonobos.

#14534

Bruce D. Perry

#175309

Overall Influence

#14535

Monita Chatterjee

#100590

Overall Influence

Monita Chatterjee is an auditory scientist and the Director of the Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory processing by cochlear implant listeners.

#14536

David Gadsby

#171366

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

David Christopher Gadsby FRS was a British physiologist, and Patrick A. Gerschel Family Professor Emeritus at The Rockefeller University. He was best known for his studies on the mechanisms by which ions move across cell membranes.

#14537

Charles Wood

#175325

Overall Influence

#14538

Tatjana Tchumatchenko

#119351

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Tatjana Tchumatchenko is a physicist in the field of theoretical neuroscience. She is an independent Max Planck Group Leader and, since November 2020, professor for Computational Neuroscience of Behavior at the Faculty of Medicine of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . In her research she investigates how neural networks compute and how particular activity patterns emerge from synaptic and neuronal features.

#14539

Harold Vokes

#112883

Overall Influence

1930 - 1998 (68 years)

Harold Ernest Vokes , was an American malacologist and paleontologist. He specialized in bivalves, especially fossils found along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast, and he taught at Johns Hopkins and Tulane universities. He often collaborated with his wife, the malacologist Emily H. Vokes.

#14540

Ovidiu Constantinescu

#168930

Overall Influence

1933 - 2012 (79 years)

Ovidiu Constantinescu was a Romanian mycologist known for his work on the taxonomy of the Peronosporales. Biography Constantinescu was born in Constanța in 1933. He first graduated military school before ultimately enrolling at the Biological Institute at the University of Bucharest in 1949. Traian Săvulescu, founder of the institute, and his wife Alice advised Constantinescu while he was a student. Constantinescu graduated in 1970 from the institute. Following his thesis defense, he remained at the Institute as an assistant as well as the curator of the Mycological Herbarium there. In 1974, ...

#14541

Hellmut R. Toelken

#168731

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Hellmut R. Toelken is a South Australian botanist. He retired in December 2008 from the position of senior biologist at the State Herbarium of South Australia, but remains an honorary research associate. Earlier he was with the Botanical Research Institute, Department of Agricultural Technical Services, Pretoria, S Africa.

#14542

Esmé Frances Hennessy

#125417

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Dr. Esmé Frances Franklin Hennessy was a South African professor of Botany, botanical illustrator, and author. She specialized in taxonomic botany. She wrote and illustrated South African Erythrinas , Orchids of Africa with Joyce Stewart, The Slipper Orchids with Tessa Hedge, and created many of the descriptions and plates in Flowering Plants of Africa as well as numerous private collections.

#14543

Saskia Hogenhout

#173466

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Saskia A. Hogenhout FRES , is a Dutch professor of entomology and ecology specialising in molecular plant, microbe and insect interactions. Education and career Hogenhout was educated at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with an MSc in Biology in 1994, her PhD looked at the molecular basis of luteovirus-aphid interactions and was awarded at Wageningen University in 1999. She moved to Ohio State University to be assistant and then associate professor and since 2007 has been Group Leader in plant health at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

#14544

Anubha Mahajan

#172493

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Anubha Mahajan is a human genetics researcher whose career has focused on genetic analysis of complex traits, with an emphasis on type 2 diabetes. Mahajan has co-led and led analysis of high-throughput genetic studies as part of large international consortia, such as DIAGRAM, GoT2D, T2D-GENES, and DIAMANTE, that explore the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes. More recently, she has moved from genetic discovery to utilizing human genetics research to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms that contribute to type 2 diabetes.

#14545

J. S. Kennedy

#110783

Overall Influence

1912 - 1993 (81 years)

John Stodart Kennedy FRS was an American-born British entomologist. Kennedy was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, USA, the only son of James John Stodart Kennedy, an Anglo-Scottish railway engineer, and his American wife, Edith Roberts Lammers. After a living in several parts of the world the family returned to the UK after World War I, where John was able to go to Westminster School and study entomology at Imperial College London, which he left in favour of University College, London.

#14546

Cyma Van Petten

#160269

Overall Influence

Cyma Kathryn Van Petten is an American cognitive neuroscientist known for electrophysiological studies of language, memory, and cognition. She is Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton where she directs the Event-Related Potential Lab. Van Petten was recipient of the Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research in 1994.

#14547

Olusoga Sofola

#175479

Overall Influence

Olusoga Sofola is a Nigerian Professor of Physiology and former Vice Chancellor of Olabisi Onabanjo University. He is currently the treasurer of Nigerian Academy of Science. He was formerly an academic staff at the University of Lagos, where he taught Physiology. He served as Provost of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos before he rose to the position of Deputy Vice Chancellor . In 2009, he was appointed as Vice Chancellor of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State, Nigeria.

#14548

Kate Wassum

#162839

Overall Influence

Kate Wassum is an American neuroscientist and professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wassum probes the neural circuits underlying appetitive associative learning the circuit dynamics that give rise to diverse motivated behaviors.

#14549

Kathryn Abel

#131295

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Kathryn M. Abel FRCP FRCPsych is co-Chair of the Office for Life Sciences and UK Govt's Mental Health Mission and NIHR National Lead for Mental Health Lead. She is an internationally recognised British psychiatrist specialising clinically in resistant schizophrenia and gender-specified service developments. She is a clinical academic, professor of Psychological Medicine and Director of both the Centre for Women's Mental Health and GM.Digital Research Unit at the University of Manchester.

#14550

Gennady Yakovlev

#140825

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Gennady Pavlovich Yakovlev Russian botanist, pharmacognosist, phytochemist. Former director of Saint-Petersburg State Chemical-Pharmaceutical Academy . Expert in Fabaceae taxonomy. Plants authored by G. P. Yakovlev Acosmium panamense YakovlevChamaecrista takhtajanii Barreto et YakovlevCalia conzatti Yakovlev Sophora gibbosa Yakovlev Sophora tomentosa subsp australis Yakovlev

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