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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#14551

Nigel Grindley

#164167

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Nigel David Forster Grindley FRS is a British biochemist and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. He studied at the University of Cambridge and London University . He taught at University of Pittsburgh.

#14552

Björn Olsen

#175511

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

#14553

Jessica Barson

#102712

Overall Influence

Jessica Barson is an American neuroscientist and associate professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. Barson investigates neuropeptide signalling in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus as well as the nucleus accumbens to understand the neurobiological basis of addiction and elucidate targets for therapy.

#14554

Barry Pittendrigh

#148912

Overall Influence

Barry Robert Pittendrigh is a Canadian American molecular biologist, researcher and educator. He holds the John V. Osmun Endowed Chair and is the Director of the Center for Urban and Industrial Pest Management at Purdue University.

#14555

Isabelle Chuine

#172941

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Isabelle Chuine is a French ecologist. She is CEFE-CNRS Research Director in Functional and Evolutionary Ecology. Chuine was awarded a 2020 CNRS silver medal for her work. Life and career She is a professor at University Montpellier 2. In 1999, she presented at the 16th Botanical conference. At 2020 Science Day, she gave a lecture. She collected citizens science data, about plant flowering.

#14556

Günther C. Feigl

#117245

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Günther C. Feigl is an Austrian neurosurgeon. Feigl is an internationally renowned expert in minimally invasive neurosurgery. His main areas of expertise are skull base surgery and neurooncology. He specializes in the surgery of gliomas, minimally invasive endoscopy-assisted microvascular decompression in trigeminal neuralgia and facial hemispasm as well as the surgery of acoustic neuromas , tumors of the pineal gland and meningiomas of the skull base. Furthermore, his specialties comprise treatment of pituitary adenomas, spinal cord tumours and metastases as well as the area of pediatric ...

#14557

Wilma M. Blom

#175516

Overall Influence

Wilma M. Blom is a marine scientist. Since 2011 she has been Curator, Marine Invertebrates at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Biography Blom's work focuses on identifying marine fauna, such as molluscs. She also works in science communication, through projects such as Auckland Museum's New Zealand Marine Life app. She also organises a 2-yearly BioBlitz programme which places scientists alongside communities to help them document the biodiversity of their surrounding area, and has been involved in research projects involving The Noises. She has contributed to the collections of Auckland Museum an...

#14558

Catherine Tallon-Baudry

#116711

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Catherine Tallon-Baudry is a CNRS senior researcher and group leader working at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris. Biography Tallon-Baudry completed her PhD at the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 in 1997 working with Olivier Bertrand. In 1998 she started as a Marie Curie research fellow in the lab of Andreas Kreiter at the University of Bremen in Germany. In 2002 she won the young researcher award from the Fyssen foundation and started working at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. In 2012 she started her own group at the Cognitive Sciences department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and in 2014 was the recipient of a European Research Council advanced grant.

#14559

Eileen Lacey

#172178

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Eileen A. Lacey is an American biologist who specializes in the evolution of behavioral diversity among vertebrates. Lacey’s research focuses on identifying ecological causes of sociality and assessing the genetic consequences of sociality in subterranean rodents. She is most known for her research on the social structure of naked mole rats and her arguments regarding the eusociality continuum

#14560

Tina M. Widowski

#174641

Overall Influence

Tina M. Widowski is an American animal welfare scientist and a professor of applied animal behaviour and welfare at the University of Guelph. Education Widowski earned her bachelor’s degree in Ecology, Ethology and Evolution from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1983, a master’s degree in animal science from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1984, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1988.

#14561

Anirvan Ghosh

#175617

Overall Influence

#14562

Marion Robinson

#100344

Overall Influence

1923 - 2003 (80 years)

Marion Frances Robinson was a New Zealand nutritionist and physiologist. She was professor of nutrition at the University of Otago, and is particularly noted for her investigation of the importance of selenium in the human diet.

#14563

Sarah M. N. Woolley

#149842

Overall Influence

Sarah M. N. Woolley is a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute. Her work centers on the neuroscience of communication, using songbirds to understand how the brain learns and understands vocal communication.

#14564

Wolfgang A. Herrmann

#175642

Overall Influence

#14565

Ahmed Hassan Fahal

#140504

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Ahmed Hassan Fahal is a Sudanese Professor of Surgery at the University of Khartoum, who specialised in Mycetoma. Life and career Early life and education Fahal was born on 25 December 1956 in Khartoum, Sudan. Fahal obtained a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery with a Distinction from the University of Khartoum in 1979, a Master of Surgery in 1984, before becoming a Doctor of Medicine in 1996.

#14566

Edward Hallowell

#73878

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Edward McKey Hallowell is an American psychiatrist, speaker, New York Times best-selling author and podcast host. He specializes in ADHD and is the founder of the Hallowell ADHD Centers. Hallowell is the author of 20 books, including the Distraction series, co-authored with Dr. John Ratey.

#14567

Christina M. Hull

#157214

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Christina M. Hull is an American mycologist and Professor in the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Education and career Christina Hull completed her B.S. degree from the University of Utah in 1992. She then went on to complete a Ph.D. with Alexander D. Johnson at the University of California, San Francisco in 2000. Her thesis was titled "Identification and characterization of a mating type-like locus in the "asexual" pathogenic yeast Candida albicans". She then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship with Joseph Heitman at Duke University from 2000 to 2003.

#14568

Corey Harwell

#130454

Overall Influence

Corey C. Harwell is an American neuroscientist who is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Career Harwell initially planned on pursuing a career in medicine, an early research experience in Cori Bargmann's laboratory led Harwell instead to the basic sciences and in particular to neurobiology. As a graduate student, Harwell conducted his thesis research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under Elly Nedivi. He studied the role of the gene cpg15 and its protein product in neural development and plasticity. Cpg15 had been found to be a target of intracellular signaling pathways important for synaptic plasticity.

#14569

Mary Julia Wade

#125320

Overall Influence

1928 - 2005 (77 years)

Mary Julia Wade was an Australian palaeontologist, known for her role as the Deputy Director of the Queensland Museum. Some of her most renowned work was on the Precambrian Ediacaran Biota in South Australia.

#14570

Frederick Lowy

#56977

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Frederick Hans Lowy, is a Canadian medical educator and former President and Vice-Chancellor of Concordia University. Life and career Born in Großpetersdorf, Austria in 1933, Lowy moved to Montreal at age 13. After graduating from Baron Byng High School, Lowy studied medicine at McGill University, graduating in 1959. While at McGill University, he assisted Donald Ewan Cameron on Human subject research as part of Cameron's Project MKULTRA research for "KUBARK" manuals. As an undergraduate, he was managing editor of the McGill Daily student newspaper. He was a psychiatric consultant at the Ro...

#14571

Louis Fortier

#169316

Overall Influence

1953 - 2020 (67 years)

Louis Fortier was a biologist and oceanographer from Québec, Canada. Career Fortier studied at the Laval and McGill Universities. He was project manager for the Amundsen Arctic research project, and scientific Director of ArcticNet. In 2013 he held the Canada Research Chair on the Response of Arctic Marine Ecosystems to Climate Change at Laval University.

#14572

Lorraine Maltby

#169946

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Lorraine Lucy Maltby is a British biologist and who is a professor of environmental biology at the University of Sheffield. She serves as deputy Vice-President for research and innovation and chair of the board of trustees of the Freshwater Habitats Trust. Her research investigates interactions in the riparian zone and the environmental impacts of agri-plastics.

#14573

Linda Katherine Escobar

#169465

Overall Influence

1940 - 1993 (53 years)

Linda Katherine Albert de Escobar , was an American botanist, plant collector, and educator noted for her study of Passiflora as well as her work as a teacher and administrator at the University of Antioquia. She was director of the university's herbarium from 1981 to 1988, and served as President of the Herbariums Colombian Association. The species Passiflora linda was named in her honor. She identified over forty species, mostly in Passiflora.

#14574

Jennifer Byrne

#82672

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Jennifer Anne Byrne is a Professor of Molecular Oncology at University of Sydney, Australia. Byrne is notable for not only her cancer research, but the uncovering of academic fraud and junk science in cancer research.

#14575

Mary Kay Lobo

#151900

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Mary Kay Lobo is an American psychiatric neuroscientist who is a Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her research considers the molecular mechanisms that underpin drug addiction and depression. She was named a finalist in the 2011 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.

#14576

Kadri Põldmaa

#169605

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Kadri Põldmaa is an Estonian mycologist. Põldmaa is the daughter of mycologist Peeter Põldmaa . She graduated from Tartu Secondary School No. 2 in 1988. In 1992, she graduated from the University of Tartu's Department of Biology, receiving her master's degree from the institution in 1994, and her PhD in 1998 with the dissertation Studies in the Systematics of Hypomyces and Allied Genera . From 1999 until 2000, she was a postdoctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania and from 2002 to 2003 at the Estonian Biocentre.

#14577

Robert W. Porter

#120138

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (100 years)

Robert Porter was a neurosurgeon in California. Porter was a founding member of the Brain Research Institute. He became Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine in 1969, and was Professor Emeritus there.

#14578

David I. Gottlieb

#175720

Overall Influence

#14579

Bob Church

#170626

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Robert Bertram Church was a Canadian geneticist, rancher, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, noted for having helped modernize agriculture in Canada by transferring molecular biology and genetics techniques to the agricultural and biotechnology industries. He was also the director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Calgary Stampede, as well as a founding member of the University of Calgary's Faculty of Medicine and of Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. In 1969, he became the founding head of the Department of Biochemistry and...

#14580

Surjo R. Soekadar

#123203

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Surjo Raphael Soekadar is a German physician, neuroscientist and development aid worker. He studied medicine in Mainz, Heidelberg and Baltimore and graduated under Herta Flor, ZI Mannheim, with a doctorate in clinical neuropsychology. From 2005 to 2018, he worked as a physician at the University of Tübingen, where he became head of the Applied Neurotechnology Lab in 2011. In 2018, he was appointed Germany's first Professor of Clinical Neurotechnology at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. The professorship is supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

#14581

Catherine Freitag Clarke

#171491

Overall Influence

Catherine Clarke is an American biochemist who is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was the first woman to serve as Head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Her research considers the functional roles of Coenzyme Q.

#14582

Jeff Chanton

#172143

Overall Influence

Jeffrey Paul "Jeff" Chanton is the 2017-2018 Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor and John Widmer Winchester professor of oceanography at Florida State University. His research interests include Arctic methane release from the thawing of permafrost. Chanton co-created the Master of Science in aquatic environmental sciences at FSU with Nancy Marcus.

#14583

Michael Kanost

#171527

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Michael R. Kanost is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Kansas State University. Early life and education Kanost was born in 1956 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. His interest in general science started in grade school, in Cheyenne and continued in junior high and high school after his family moved to Broomfield, Colorado in 1968. In 1975 Kanost enrolled in Colorado State University from which he graduated in 1979 with a B.S. in zoology and entomology. In 1983 Kanost received his Ph.D. in entomology from Purdue University after being mentored by Peter Dunn there.

#14584

Jessica Cardin

#116563

Overall Influence

Jessica Cardin is an American neuroscientist who is an associate professor of neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine. Cardin's lab studies local circuits within the primary visual cortex to understand how cellular and synaptic interactions flexibly adapt to different behavioral states and contexts to give rise to visual perceptions and drive motivated behaviors. Cardin's lab applies their knowledge of adaptive cortical circuit regulation to probe how circuit dysfunction manifests in disease models.

#14585

Venigalla Rao

#143841

Overall Influence

Venigalla Basaveswara Rao is an Indian-American biochemist who is a professor of biology at the Catholic University of America. He serves as Director of the Bacteriophage Medical Research Center. In 2021, he was elected a Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology and the National Academy of Inventors.

#14586

Lidia Mannuzzu

#157453

Overall Influence

1958 - 2016 (58 years)

Lidia Mannuzzu was an Italian biologist, physiologist and academic. Biography Early years Lidia M. Mannuzzu was born in Sassari, Sardinia, Italy. She was the daughter of the writer Salvatore Mannuzzu; and she had a sister, Mary. Mannuzzu graduated with honors in Medicine from University of Sassari in 1984, with a thesis on favism. She continued her studies at the Max Planck Institute, at Brunel University in London, and Aachen Medical School in Westphalia.

#14587

David Robinson

#89130

Overall Influence

1928 - 2004 (76 years)

David Willis Robinson was a Northern Irish horticultural scientist who made contributions to the national and international fields of horticulture and agriculture, with more than 120 publications. After a working life in research, in retirement he became a journalist and television/radio presenter and a leader of gardening tours. He cultivated and managed the Earlscliffe Gardens at the Baily, Howth, County Dublin, Ireland.

#14588

Jane M. Carlton

#171903

Overall Influence

Jane M. Carlton is a biologist at New York University whose research centers on the genomics of two groups of single-celled parasites: those which cause malaria , and trichomonads, which include the common sexually transmitted parasite Trichomonas vaginalis.

#14589

Robert Bauer

#121775

Overall Influence

1950 - 2014 (64 years)

Robert Bauer was a German mycologist, specialising in rust and smut fungi. Bauer studied Biology at the University of Tübingen during the 1970s, and a particular interest in plants and fungi led to completing his PhD there in 1983, with a doctoral dissertation entitled . He went on to become chair of "Systematic Botany and Mycology" in the "Institute of Evolution and Ecology" at Tübingen.

#14590

Pontus Skoglund

#104791

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Pontus Skoglund is a Swedish population geneticist, currently at the Francis Crick Institute and formerly at Harvard Medical School. Skoglund studies ancient DNA to verify human history, mostly about how humans populated Earth. He found proof that the first Polynesians came from East Asia, along with another study that found genetic evidence of two founding populations of the Americas.

#14591

Phil Gilmartin

#132024

Overall Influence

Phil Gilmartin, is a British molecular biologist and botanist, who specialises in plant genetics. Since 2011, he has been Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of East Anglia . He had previously been Director of the Centre for Plant Sciences and Pro-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, and Principal of St Mary's College, Durham .

#14592

Walter Jaoko

#135941

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Walter Godfrey Jaoko is a Kenyan professor of medical microbiology and tropical medicine. He is the director of Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative and a professor at University of Nairobi, University of Alabama and Stellenbosch University.

#14593

Paul Kurdyak

#169249

Overall Influence

Paul Andrew Kurdyak is a Canadian psychiatrist and highly regarded expert in mental health. Early life and education Born as Paul Andrew Kurdyak he has a degree in medicine, and completed his psychiatry residency and his PhD in clinical epidemiology at the University of Toronto.

#14594

Ian Swingland

#161677

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Ian Richard Swingland is a British conservationist, convicted in 2017 of conspiring to commit fraud by false representation. He founded DICE at the University of Kent in 1989, recognised as one of the first interdisciplinary research and postgraduate training institutes in the world concentrating on biodiversity, communities and sustainable development. While at DICE he served as director and was elected to the first chair in Conservation Biology in the United Kingdom.

#14595

Bernardo Villa Ramírez

#174114

Overall Influence

1911 - 2006 (95 years)

Bernardo Villa Ramírez was a Mexican mammalogist. He published five books and over 100 articles: primarily on the biology of bats and rodents, but also on marine mammals. Born in Teloloapan, Guerrero, Villa Ramírez studied in Guerrero and then Mexico City, returning to his hometown to be a build a school and become a rural school teacher. He later attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico , receiving a master's degree in 1944, then received a second master's from the University of Kansas in 1947. He returned to UNAM as a researcher, professor, and doctoral student, completing his dissertation on the bats of Mexico in 1966.

#14596

Marie Jakus

#157125

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Marie Agnes Jakus was an American biologist and microscopist specialized in electron microscopic studies of the fine structure of eye tissues. She was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Retina Foundation, and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness before becoming a science administrator at the Center for Scientific Review.

#14597

Amy O. Charkowski

#175177

Overall Influence

Amy Olymbia Charkowski is an American plant pathologist and Professor of Plant Pathology at Colorado State University. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.

#14598

Wayne Fenton

#94947

Overall Influence

1953 - 2006 (53 years)

Wayne Fenton was an American psychiatrist, well known for his academic contributions to the study of schizophrenia including key contributions to the classification of subtypes. In 2006 he was killed at his office in Bethesda, Maryland, by a 19-year-old patient.

#14599

Alison Motsinger-Reif

#158151

Overall Influence

Alison Anne Motsinger-Reif is an American biostatistician and human geneticist specialized in association analyses, big data, and genomic analyses. In December 2018, she became the chief of the biostatistics and computational biology branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Montsinger-Reif was previously a professor of statistics at the North Carolina State University.

#14600

Niki Moutsopoulos

#170361

Overall Influence

Niki M. Moutsopoulos is a Greek periodontist and immunologist. She is a senior investigator in the oral immunity and infection section at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Moutsopoulos specializes in oral immunology and periodontitis. Her research program focuses on host-microbial interactions that can drive chronic inflammatory responses and tissue destruction in the oral cavity.

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