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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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#14751

Gail Anderson

#131718

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Gail S. Anderson is a forensic entomologist, academic, and associate director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. She is an instructor at the Canadian Police College, a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, as well as a member of the Canadian Identification Society and the International Association for Identification.

#14752

Carla V. Rothlin

#174327

Overall Influence

Carla V. Rothlin is an Argentinian immunologist and Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Pharmacology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Rothlin is also the co-leader of the Cancer Immunology Program at Yale Cancer Center as well as an Howard Hughes Medical Investigator faculty scholar. Rothlin studies the mechanisms that regulate immune homeostasis and wound repair, with specific interests in cell death recognition, immune checkpoints, and cellular crosstalk in the context of injury and cell turnover. She has made fundamental discoveries about the roles of TAM receptors tyrosine kinase and their ligands in the regulation of inflammation.

#14753

Joseph H. Wales

#134667

Overall Influence

1907 - 2002 (95 years)

Joseph Howe Wales was an American ichthyologist. Career Joseph Howe Wales was born on 27 November 1907 in Iowa City, Iowa. At the age of 10 he moved with his parents Robert W. and Laverne Sorter Wales to Pasadena, California. In 1926, before his graduation at high school he contributed to the journal Condor where he published articles about the band-tailed pigeon and gulls.

#14754

Anya Waite

#176325

Overall Influence

Anya Waite is a biological oceanographer working at the Ocean Frontier Institute in Dalhousie University's Faculty of Science in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she was born and raised. She studies nitrogen fluxes in polar oceans and particle dynamics in mesoscale eddies as an Appointed Associate Vice-President Research of Dalhousie University and Chief Executive Officer of Ocean Frontier Institute. She was previously Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia's Oceans Institute, the Section Head of Polar Biological Oceanography at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, and a professor of oceanography in the biology department at the University of Bremen.

#14755

Anantanarayanan Raman

#140182

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Anantanarayanan Raman is a Professor of Ecology with Charles Sturt University, NSW and a scientist with CSIRO, Australia. Education Raman received his bachelor's degree in biology from Loyola College, Madras followed by a master's degree in biology from Presidency College, Madras, and PhD & DSc degrees in ecology from Madras University. As a graduate student, he researched at the Université Louis Pasteur, France, on the nutritional physiology of gall-inducing Tubulifera.

#14756

Andrew J. Gerber

Andrew J. Gerber

#74529

Overall Influence

Andrew J. Gerber is an American psychoanalyst and the current president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. His principal interests and research lie in studying the neurobiological bases of social cognition, particularly in relation to autism spectrum disorders and change in response to psychotherapy. He is a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychoanalytic Association and the Psychoanalytic Psychodynamic Research Society.

#14757

Deborah Tolman

#85942

Overall Influence

Deborah L. Tolman is a developmental psychologist and the co-founder of SPARK: Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge. She is the author of Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality, which was awarded the 2003 Distinguished Book Award from the Association for Women in Psychology.

#14758

Malcolm Winkler

#177422

Overall Influence

Malcolm Winkler is an American biologist currently at Indiana University, Bloomington and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His work has been important on Streptococcus pneumoniae in studying cell structure, metabolism, pathogenesis and stress responses mediated by regulatory mechanisms, signal transduction and supramolecular complexes. His research has been driven by advanced molecular genetics, cell biology, physiology, tissue culture and biochemistry, leading his papers to be highly cited in consecutive years with highs of 719, 369 and 292.

#14759

Jadwiga Złotorzycka

#175616

Overall Influence

1926 - 2002 (76 years)

Jadwiga Zlotorzycka was a Polish entomologist specialising in Mallophaga. She worked in the Parasitology Department of the University of Wroclaw. Life and career Zlotorzycka was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1926 and grew up in Lviv, Ukraine. She began studying at the University of Wroclaw in 1945, and worked at the Museum of Natural History there while a student. She later pursued doctoral studies there. Zlotorzycka became head of the University's Department of General Parasitology in 1972.

#14760

Sharon J. Hall

#172355

Overall Influence

Sharon J. Hall is an ecosystem ecologist and associate professor at the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on ecosystem ecology and the ways that human activity interacts with the environment.

#14761

Kelly Benoit-Bird

Kelly Benoit-Bird

#79986

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Kelly Benoit-Bird is a marine scientist and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Benoit-Bird uses acoustics to study marine organisms and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010.

#14762

Grant Robert Sutherland

#140670

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Grant Robert Sutherland is a retired Australian human geneticist and celebrated cytogeneticist. He was the Director, Department of Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics, Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital for 27 years , then became the Foundation Research Fellow there until 2007. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Genetics at the University of Adelaide.

#14763

Peter De Jonghe

#177481

Overall Influence

#14764

Anne Villeneuve

Anne Villeneuve

#176149

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Anne Villeneuve is an American geneticist. She is known for her work on the mechanisms governing chromosome inheritance during sexual reproduction. Her work focuses on meiosis, the process by which a diploid organism, having two sets of chromosomes, produces gametes with only one set of chromosomes. She is a Professor of Developmental Biology and of Genetics at Stanford University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

#14765

Wendy Yang

#169141

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Wendy Yang is an associate professor of Plant Biology and Geology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she works on soil biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology. Early life and education Yang is from Indialantic, Florida. She became interested in environmental science from an early age when she spent time at an environmental summer camp called Earth Corps at the Brevard Community College following 5th grade. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2003, with a degree in Environmental Science and Public Policy. She then moved to the University of California Berkeley, where she earned her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in 2010.

#14766

Anil Potti

#121765

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Anil Potti is a physician and former Duke University associate professor and cancer researcher, focusing on oncogenomics. He, along with Joseph Nevins, are at the center of a research fabrication scandal at Duke University. On 9 November 2015, the Office of Research Integrity found that Potti had engaged in research misconduct. According to Potti's voluntary settlement agreement with ORI, Potti can continue to perform research with the requirement of supervision until year 2020, while he "neither admits nor denies ORI's findings of research misconduct." As of 2020 Potti, who is employed at th...

#14767

Teresa Wood

#171128

Overall Influence

Teresa L. Wood is an American neuroscientist. In November 2019, Wood was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "her research on growth factors and their signaling pathways as they pertain to stem cell differentiation, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases."

#14768

Wen Shengchang

#148590

Overall Influence

1921 - 2022 (101 years)

Wen Shengchang was a Chinese oceanographer and academic who was a professor at the Ocean University of China, a former president of Shandong Institute of Oceanology, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the Jiusan Society and the Chinese Communist Party.

#14769

Sara Brownell

#175971

Overall Influence

Sara Elaine Brownell is an American biology education researcher who is a President's Professor at Arizona State University. Her research looks to make undergraduate science teaching more inclusive. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.

#14770

Henry Metzger

#122192

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

Henry Peter Metzger was an American immunologist. Metzger was born to a Jewish family in Mainz on March 23, 1932, to a hardware store owner and a homemaker. Some of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. At the suggestion of his sisters, Metzger's father moved to the United States in 1937, followed by his wife and sons in January 1938. Henry Metzger attended the Bronx High School of Science, as did his brother, then earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1953, followed by a medical degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1957. Met...

#14771

Chinyere Ukaga

#170401

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Chinyere Ukaga is a professor of public health parasitology in the department of Animal and Environmental Biology, Imo State University, Owerri. Education Ukaga completed her O'level at Federal Government Girls Secondary school, Onitsha before proceeding to University of Nigeria, Nsukka where she attained a bachelor's degree in Zoology , a master's degree in Medical Parasitology and a doctorate degree in the same field . Her Ph.D. program which was supported by a grant from the Tropical Diseases Research / World Health Organization . Ukaga won the University of Nigeria Nsukka Vice chancellor Chancellor's post graduate prize and Faculty post graduate prize as the best graduating Ph.D.

#14772

Mark C. Udey

#125945

Overall Influence

Mark C. Udey is an American biologist, focusing in epidermal Langerhans cells, dendritic cells, EpCAM , distal-less and skin immunology, currently at National Cancer Institute and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Udey is a professor of dermatology at Washington University School of Medicine, where he was also an graduate of the medical scientist training program.

#14773

Henry A. Lester

#169291

Overall Influence

Henry A. Lester is an American biologist, currently the Bren Professor at California Institute of Technology. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1966 and a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1971.

#14774

Donald Edward White

#177654

Overall Influence

#14775

Ana Crespo

#154235

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Ana María Crespo de las Casas is a Spanish lichenologist noted for studying the phytosociology, taxonomy and floristics of Mediterranean lichens. She was awarded the 2012 Acharius Medal from the International Association for Lichenology for lifetime achievements in lichenology, and the genera Crespoa, Cresponea and Cresporhaphis were named in her honor.

#14776

Immaculata De Vivo

#168926

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Immaculata De Vivo is a molecular epidemiologist and professor at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Cancer Causes & Control. Background Immaculata De Vivo was born in Sarno, Italy and migrated to United States in 1970 She earned her bachelor's degree at St. John's University in 1986, then proceeded for her MPH and PhD degrees at Columbia University New York in 1991 and 1993 respectively. De Vivo was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley from 1993-1995 and at Stanford University from 1995 to 1998.

#14777

Rosie Hails

#144787

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Rosemary S. Hails is a British population ecologist and entomologist and the current Director of Science and Nature at the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. Prior to this appointment she was the Director of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Science for UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, managing and directing the science of 350 ecologists and hydrologists, in collaboration with the Science Director for Water and Pollution Science. Professor Hails successfully led the development of UKCEH's national capability research programme delivered by the Research Centre, which cuts across the complete portfolio of expertise.

#14778

William Brooks Drew

#153056

Overall Influence

1908 - 1997 (89 years)

William Brooks Drew was an American botanist and professor. Career Drew received his B.S. degree from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1930. He pursued an M.A. from Harvard University, which he received in 1931. He returned to Harvard and earned his Ph.D. in 1934.

#14779

Mary J. O'Connell

Mary J. O'Connell

#175169

Overall Influence

Mary J. O'Connell is an evolutionary genomicist and Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. She is the Principal Investigator of the Computational & Molecular Evolutionary Biology Group in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham.

#14780

Roberto Cazzolla Gatti

Roberto Cazzolla Gatti

#168979

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Roberto Cazzolla Gatti is an Italian ecologist, conservation biologist and evolutionist with a Ph.D. in forest ecology. His research deals with Biological Diversity and Conservation, and Global Environmental Protection occurring, therefore, at the interface between macroecology, evolutionary biology, and behavioural ecology.

#14781

Leroy Liu

#98320

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Leroy Fong Liu is a Taiwanese molecular biologist. Education and career Liu earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from National Taiwan University in 1971, and pursued doctoral study in the subject at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1977. He conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard College until 1978, and moved to the University of California, San Francisco to continue postdoctoral studies. Between 1980 and 1992, Liu taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He subsequently joined the faculty of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. ...

#14782

Marie Taylor

#177497

Overall Influence

1930 - 1999 (69 years)

Grace Marie Taylor Bulmer was a New Zealand mycologist and botanist as well as a scientific illustrator. She described several new species of fungi and published and illustrated books on New Zealand fungi and plants.

#14783

Caroline Quach-Thanh

#135873

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Caroline Quach-Thanh is a Canadian pediatric microbiologist, epidemiologist and infectious diseases specialist. She is a professor in the Université de Montréal Faculty of Medicine and Medical Lead in the Infection Prevention and Control Unit at CHU Sainte-Justine. She served as the Chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and oversaw the approval process of COVID-19 vaccines in Canada.

#14784

D. Lansing Taylor

#171964

Overall Influence

D. Lansing Taylor is the Director at the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute , Pennsylvania and a faculty member in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology. Early life and education Lansing Taylor was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his B.S. in zoology from the University of Maryland, followed by his Ph.D. in the field of cell biology from the State University of New York at Albany. He spent a postdoctoral fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole in the field of cellular biophysics.

#14785

Alan McHughen

#176337

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Alan G. McHughen is a Canadian-American molecular biologist known for his scholarship in DNA technologies and work developing United States and Canadian regulations governing the safety of genetically engineered crops and foods.

#14786

David A. Newsome

#177796

Overall Influence

#14787

Michael Barmada

#171916

Overall Influence

1969 - 2016 (47 years)

Mahmud Barmada, known as Michael Barmada, was an American geneticist. He was a Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Career Barmada worked at the Institute for Personalized Medicine as associate director and co-director of the Center for Simulation and Modeling. He held a secondary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Informatics.

#14788

Katherine Samaras

#139394

Overall Influence

Katherine Samaras is the laboratory head at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. She holds positions at St Vincent's Clinic, and University of New South Wales, as well as the University of Notre Dame.

#14789

Carol Collier

#145521

Overall Influence

Carol Collier is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and Fellow in the American Water Resources Association. She practices and teaches in the Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, United States. A Certified Senior Ecologist, she specializes in watershed management and resilient systems design. She is a faculty member in the Department of Biodiversity, Earth & Environmental Science at Drexel University. Professionally, she serves as an educator, planner, and advocate.

#14790

Laura A. Katz

#150064

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Laura Aline Katz is an American biologist who is the Elsie Damon Simonds Professor of Biological Sciences at Smith College. Early life and education Katz was born to Phyllis Beck Katz and Arnold Martin Katz. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College and her PhD from Cornell University.

#14791

Michael Peters

#177856

Overall Influence

#14792

Beverly Mock

#144824

Overall Influence

Beverly Anne Mock is an American geneticist who is a deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research. Life Mock obtained a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1983. Her dissertation was titled, The population biology of Trypanosoma diemyctyli. She continued her studies on the genetics of susceptibility to parasitic diseases in the department of immunology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

#14793

Pavel Štys

#177872

Overall Influence

1933 - 2018 (85 years)

Pavel Štys was a Czech entomologist who specialized mainly on the Heteroptera and a professor of zoology at the Charles University, Prague. Štys was born to Ludmila and Jaroslav Štys in a farming family in South Bohemia. His uncle was a co-owner of an optical instrument manufacturer Srb & Štys. He was educated at Vančurovo Reálné Gymnasium before joining the Charles University, Prague, graduating in 1957. He received a C.Sc. degree in 1966 and joined the faculty at the university. He became a professor of entomology in 1993 and became a head of the zoology department in 1995. He was also a...

#14794

Eric Sorscher

#94243

Overall Influence

Eric Sorscher is an American medical researcher whose primary focus is cystic fibrosis. Some of his research interests include understanding the function of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator and its associated gene, as well as understanding mutations in the CFTR gene.

#14795

Andrea Alfaro

#175833

Overall Influence

Andrea Casandra Alfaro is an American-New Zealand aquaculture and marine ecology academic. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career After a 2001 PhD at the University of Auckland titled 'Ecological dynamics of the green-lipped mussel, Perna canaliculus, at Ninety Mile Beach, northern New Zealand,' Alfaro moved to Auckland University of Technology, rising to full professor. Much of her research is related to the Perna canaliculus New Zealand green-lipped mussel, an important species in New Zealand aquaculture industry, but she has projects th...

#14796

Joel Salinas

#81695

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Joel Salinas is an American-born Nicaraguan neurologist, writer, and researcher, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He practices general neurology, with subspecialty in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a clinician-scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Framingham Study at the Boston University School of Medicine.

#14797

Laura Busse

#168674

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Laura Busse is a German neuroscientist and professor of Systemic Neuroscience within the Division of Neurobiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Busse's lab studies context-dependent visual processing in mouse models by performing large scale in vivo electrophysiological recordings in the thalamic and cortical circuits of awake and behaving mice.

#14798

Farah Lubin

#174600

Overall Influence

Farah D. Lubin is an American neuroscientist and Professor of Neurobiology and Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham within the Heersink School of Medicine. Lubin is the Principal Investigator of the Lubin Lab which explores the epigenetic mechanisms underlying cognition and how these mechanisms are altered in disease states such as epilepsy and neurodegeneration. Lubin discovered the role of NF-κB in fear memory reconsolidation and also uncovered a novel role for epigenetic regulation of BDNF during long-term memory formation and in epilepsy leading to memory loss.

#14799

Wendy Boss

#175451

Overall Influence

Wendy Farmer Boss is an American botanist and the current William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on plant physiology and phosphoinositide mediated signalling in plants. Phosphoinositols are derived from the phospholipids found in plasma membrane of the cell. Phosphoinositols are known to be key molecules in signal transduction pathways. The role of this chemical in plants is however not well understood and Dr. Boss' research has contributed significantly towards understanding this topic.

#14800

Debra Titone

#130603

Overall Influence

Debra Titone is a cognitive psychologist known for her research on bilingualism and multilingualism. She is currently a Professor of Psychology and a chair holder of Canada Research in Language & Multilingualism at McGill University. Titone is a founding member and officer of the professional society, Women in Cognitive Science. She and her colleagues have written about gender disparities in opportunities, along with the advancement of women the field of cognitive science, with specific reference to Canada.

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