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,

#15001

Emma Allen-Vercoe

#178346

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Emma Allen-Vercoe is a British-Canadian Molecular biologist who is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Guelph. Her research considers the gut microbiome and microbial therapeutics to treat Escherichia coli.

#15002

A. H. J. Prins

#88260

Overall Influence

1921 - 2000 (79 years)

Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins was a Dutch Africanist and maritime anthropologist. He was a recipient of many research grants and fellowships , Prins was frequently consulted by the Dutch government and royal court, who valued his wealth of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of Africa and the Middle East.

#15003

Barbara Heslop

#137047

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Barbara Farnsworth Heslop was a New Zealand immunologist specialising in transplantation immunology and immunogenetics. Biography Born in Auckland, Heslop was educated at Epsom Girls' Grammar School from 1938 to 1941 and then attended the University of Otago, graduating MB ChB in 1949 and MD in 1954.

#15004

Bruce Bennett

#179874

Overall Influence

#15005

Alec Roy

#179879

Overall Influence

#15006

Mick Watson

#179892

Overall Influence

#15007

Tariq Butt

#179911

Overall Influence

Tariq Butt is an entomologist in the UK, he is Professor of Biosciences at Swansea University in Wales. Career and research Butt was educated at the University of Bristol where he graduated with a BSc in Botany and Zoology in 1980 and a PhD in the Fungal pathogens of aphids in 1983.

#15008

James K. Lowry

#153521

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

James Kenneth Lowry was a zoologist specialising in amphipods. He retired as a principal research scientist at the Australian Museum, where he worked from 1976 to 2011. He earned his first degree from the University of Richmond and his Ph. D. from the University of Canterbury in 1976 with the thesis, Studies on the macrobenthos of the Southern Ocean. In 1972, Lowry survived five days on Antarctic sea ice, with three fellow students, after a late-evening sail went wrong.

#15009

Andrew D. Hershey

#179922

Overall Influence

#15010

Tadashige Habe

#179695

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

#15011

Dennis M. Levi

#144328

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Dennis M. Levi is a South African optometrist. He is professor of optometry and vision science and a professor of neuroscience at the School of Optometry of the University of California at Berkeley, in California in the United States. He is a former dean of the same school, an appointment he took up in 2001. He was previously the Cullen Distinguished Professor of Optometry on the faculty of the University of Houston, in Houston, Texas, where he also did his PhD. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Optometry.

#15012

Maximilian Fischer

#162885

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Maximilian Fischer , was an Austrian entomologist and a specialist on parasitic wasps . He curated the Hymenoptera collections of the Natural History Museum Vienna from 1955 to 1994. He described more than 1000 new species of Braconidae flies in more than 300 publications.

#15013

Cecilie Mauritzen

Cecilie Mauritzen

#77543

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Cecilie Mauritzen is a Norwegian physical oceanographer who studies connections between ocean currents and climate change. Education and career Mauritzen works as a researcher in the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. She graduated from the University of Bergen in 1987, and earned a PhD in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center and for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she joined the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 2002, and eventually became director of the climate division there. She was also the director of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research from 2012 to 2013.

#15014

Jeanette Davis

#172942

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Jeanette Davis is a marine microbiologist, Policy Analyst for NOAA and children's book author. Early life and education Jeanette Davis was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1985. Davis discovered her passion for science at an early age. Unlike her siblings, who preferred video games and athletics, Davis loved spending time outside and experimenting. Her parents and school teachers encouraged her natural curiosity and inquisitiveness. By the time she got to high school, she knew that she wanted to pursue science and applied to colleges as pre-med as well as pre-law. However, when she began under...

#15015

Shuping Wang

#45752

Overall Influence

1959 - 2019 (60 years)

Shuping Wang was a Chinese-American medical researcher and public health whistleblower. She exposed the poor practices that led to the spread of hepatitis C and HIV in central China in the 1990s, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives. In 2001, following harassment by Chinese officials, she moved to the United States, where she worked until her death.

#15016

Anita Studer

#114048

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Anita Studer is a Swiss-born accountant, ornithologist, conservationist and ecologist. Ever since 1980, Anita has been actively engaged in saving a forest in northeastern Brazil. She was born in Brienz; at the age of 12, she moved with her family to Geneva. She first visited Brazil in 1976 to observe its rich variety of birds. On her return, she pursued a master's degree in ornithology at Nancy-Université. Five years later, in Brazil, she first saw a rare blackbird Forbes's blackbird , known locally as "anumará", in the Pedra Talhada forest in the state of Alagoas. Her academic supervisor to...

#15017

Jemma Geoghegan

#133732

Overall Influence

Jemma Louise Geoghegan is a Scottish-born evolutionary virologist, based at the University of Otago, New Zealand, who specialises in researching emerging infectious diseases and the use of metagenomics to trace the evolution of viruses. As a leader in several government-funded research projects, Geoghegan became the public face of genomic sequencing during New Zealand's response to COVID-19. Her research has contributed to the discussion about the likely cause of COVID-19 and the challenges around predicting pandemics. She was a recipient of the Young Tall Poppy Award in 2017, a Rutherford Di...

#15018

Nicole Gerardo

#179499

Overall Influence

Nicole M. Gerardo is an entomologist and Professor of Biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2021, she became editor of the Annual Review of Entomology. Early life and education Gerardo earned a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1997. She received her Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas in 2004.

#15019

James A. Knight

James A. Knight

#55645

Overall Influence

1918 - 1998 (80 years)

James A. Knight, MD was a psychiatrist, theologian, medical ethicist, and ordained Methodist minister. His principal contributions were in medical student development, the intersection of psychiatry and religion, ethical issues in medicine, and the understanding of conscience.

#15020

Robert S. Haltiwanger

#126435

Overall Influence

Robert S. Haltiwanger is professor of biochemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and chair of the department of biochemistry and cellular biology. Haltiwanger received his Bachelor of Science from Duke University and then his doctorate from the same institution. His primary field of interest is glycobiology with a focus on O-fucose modifications, NOTCH protein, and related projects.

#15021

David B. Richman

#176809

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

David B. Richman is an American arachnologist and curator of the Arthropod Museum at New Mexico State University. Richman has described many species of spiders in North America and elsewhere. Richman was born in New York State in 1942 and received his degrees at Arizona Western College , the University of Arizona and the University of Florida .

#15022

Paul de Bakker

#155836

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Paul I. Wen de Bakker is a Dutch bioinformatician who specializes in computational biology and genetic epidemiology. He has been Senior Director of Computational Genomics at Vertex Pharmaceuticals since 2015. He previously worked at Harvard Medical School from 2007 to 2012, and served as Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Bioinformatics at the University of Utrecht from 2012 to 2015. He is known for his research on the genetics of innate resistance to HIV.

#15023

Jennifer Juengel

#178984

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jennifer Lee Juengel is an animal health researcher in New Zealand. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2016. Early life and education Juengel grew up in Michigan, and attended Michigan State University. Juengel earned a PhD from the University of Missouri in 1992, with a thesis titled Mechanisms of luteal regression in cattle after which she completed a postdoctoral research post at Colorado State University.

#15024

Nilay Yapici

#176900

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Nilay Yapici is a Turkish neuroscientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she is the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences and Adelson Sesquicentennial Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Yapici studies the neural circuits underlying decision making and feeding behavior in fruit fly models.

#15025

François Jacob

#180074

Overall Influence

#15026

Mabel Hokin

#171239

Overall Influence

1924 - 2003 (79 years)

Mabel Ruth Hokin was a biochemist who spent most of her professional career conducting fundamental research in the University of Wisconsin Medical School. She is most well known for the work she did early in her career, along with then-husband Lowell Hokin, in the study of stimulated phosphoinositide turnover in secretory tissues, a key component of transmembrane signaling and many other cell regulatory processes which became known as the 'PI Effect'.

#15027

Daniel Morris Cohen

#103130

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Daniel Morris Cohen was an American ichthyologist who was known for his studies on the taxonomy of salmonid, gadid, and ophidiform fishes. Cohen mainly studied the taxonomy of deep-sea fishes in the orders Salmoniformes, Gadiformes, and Ophidiformes. He held the post of professor of biology at the University of Florida for one year. He then took an appointment at the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Ichthyological Laboratory in Washington, D.C. as a systematic zoologist. He stayed there for 23 years before moving to California to become the Chief Curator of Life Sciences at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

#15028

Susan Shaw

#50646

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Susan D. Shaw was an American environmental health scientist, marine toxicologist, explorer, ocean conservationist, and author. A Doctor of Public Health, she was a professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York at Albany, and Founder/President of the Shaw Institute, a nonprofit scientific institution with a mission to improve human and ecological health through innovative science and strategic partnerships. Shaw is globally recognized for pioneering high-impact environmental research on ocean pollution, climate change, oil spills, and plastics that has fueled public policy over three decades.

#15029

Robert Killick-Kendrick

Robert Killick-Kendrick

#158810

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

Robert Killick-Kendrick was a British parasitologist with interests in the vectors of infectious diseases, in particular phlebotomine sandflies. His work on malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis and other parasitological infections are numerous and diverse. He published more than 300 articles and scientific contributions.

#15030

Kathleen Anne Kron

#175476

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Kathleen Anne Kron is a retired biology professor from Wake Forest University. She is known for her research on Ericaceae, a family of flowering plants. Education Kron received her bachelor's degree and her master's degree from Michigan State University in 1979 and 1982 respectively. She received her doctorate from the University of Florida in 1987. In 2020, she retired as full professor from Wake Forest University.

#15031

John Lawrence Oncley

#77928

Overall Influence

1910 - 2004 (94 years)

John Lawrence Oncley was an American biochemist, and professor emeritus at University of Michigan. Life He graduated from Southwestern College, and University of Wisconsin with a Ph.D. in 1932. He taught at University of Michigan from 1962 to 1980.

#15032

Richard M.K. Saunders

#179900

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Richard M. K. Saunders is a botanist. Work Among other subjects, his work has focused on the systematics and evolution of Annonaceae, a family of flowering plants. Legacy He is the authority for the following taxa:Pseuduvaria bruneiensis

#15033

Anthony N. Van Den Pol

#180173

Overall Influence

#15034

Joana Palha

#176252

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Joana Palha is a neuroscientist and professor at the School of Health Sciences of the University of Minho, in Braga in the north of Portugal. Training Between 1988 and 1991, Joana Almeida Palha took an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Porto. This was followed by a PhD from the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute of the University of Porto between 1992 and 1995, with the work being carried out at Columbia University in New York City. Between 2014 and 2016 she took a master's in public health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

#15035

Giovanna Tinetti

Giovanna Tinetti

#85775

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Giovanna Tinetti is an Italian physicist based in London. She is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, who researches galactic planetary science, exoplanets and atmospheric science.

#15036

Caroline A. E. Strömberg

#179649

Overall Influence

Caroline A. E. Strömberg is a Swedish-American paleontologist whose primary research focuses on the deep time evolution and ecology of plants through the use of the fossil record and by comparison with modern analogues, more specifically how previous plant communities changed in response to climate change and how plant evolution affected animal evolution. She is currently the Estella B. Leopold Professor of Biology and an adjunct associate professor in Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington and the Curator of Paleobotany at the affiliated Burke Museum of Natural History and C...

#15037

Justine Shaw

#88085

Overall Influence

Justine Shaw is an Australian Antarctic researcher, best known for her conservation work on subantarctic islands, currently working at the Queensland University of Technology. She has a wide global research network, having worked in Australia, South Africa, sub-Antarctic/Antarctic and the Arctic.

#15038

D. Wade Clapp

#162835

Overall Influence

David Wade Clapp is an American pediatric physician-scientist. He is the chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Indiana University's School of Medicine and also the Physician-in-Chief at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.

#15039

Brenda Shore

#174006

Overall Influence

1922 - 1993 (71 years)

Brenda Faulkner Shore was a New Zealand botanist who attained the rank of Associate Professor before she retired in 1983. Early life and education Shore was born in Auckland on 30 November 1922 to parents the Reverend Dr William Slade and Mary Eizabeth Wilhemina Slade née Faulkner. She attended primary school in Napier, and was at school when the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake hit, and watched the school's buildings collapse. Shore attended Wellington East Girls' College from 1936–1938, and then Epsom Girls' Grammar School from 1938–1940. In 1940, Shore was awarded the Cheeseman Memorial Prize, ...

#15040

Hiroshi Okamoto

#180233

Overall Influence

#15041

Ann E. Kelley

#125984

Overall Influence

1954 - 2007 (53 years)

Ann Elizabeth Kelley was an American neuroscientist, who specialized in the neuroscience of reward and behavior. She was a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Biography Kelley was born in Milton, Massachusetts. She became interested in neuroscience during a field trip to Harvard. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was captain for both the field hockey and lacrosse teams. She then received a Thouron fellowship which allowed her to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge, England, under the supervision of Susan Iversen. She was among the first 13 women to be admitted to Trinity College in 1976.

#15042

Mimi R. Koehl

#178328

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Mimi A. R. Koehl is an American marine biologist, biomechanist, and professor at University of California, Berkeley, and head of the Koehl Lab. She was a MacArthur Fellow in 1990. Education M. A. R. Koehl graduated from Gettysburg College magna cum laude, with a B.A. in biology, and Duke University with a Ph.D. in zoology, where she studied with Stephen A. Wainwright. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, where she studied with Richard R. Strathmann, and at University of York, where she studied with John Currey.

#15043

Molly F. Mare

#168000

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Mary Florence "Molly" Mare , married name Spooner, was a British marine biologist who introduced the term meiobenthos in 1942. She was also an internationally recognized expert on oil spills. Significant research Mare's study of marine food cycle in sea mud led her to introduce the new term meiobenthos to join the terminology of macrobenthos and microbenthos. This has to allow improved understanding of marine organisms involved in these cycles through clearer reference to groupings by size. The importance of this approach is shown by the continuous reference to her work by other marine biolog...

#15044

Tomoyuki Takahashi

#180265

Overall Influence

#15045

Joaquim Veà Baró

Joaquim Veà Baró

#108163

Overall Influence

1958 - 2016 (58 years)

Joaquim Veà Baró was a Catalan primatologist. Baró was a student of Jordi Sabater Pi, as well as a biopsychology professor at the University of Barcelona and the director of the university's Primate Research Centre. His research in the jungles of Zaire and Veracruz focused on the relationship between the environment and behavior of primates, and changes in their relationships due to human activity.

#15046

Donald Kornfeld

#122275

Overall Influence

Donald S. Kornfeld is an American psychiatrist best known for his work on psychiatric issues associated with medical practice. This subspecialty is known as Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry or Psychosomatic Medicine.

#15047

Igor P. Kaidashev

#101176

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Igor Petrovych Kaidashev is a Ukrainian immunologist and allergist, MD, and Professor. Igor Kaidashev is President of the Ukrainian Society of Immunology, Allergy and Immunorehabilitation, Professor of the Department of Internal Medicine No. 3 with Phthisiology, and Vice-Rector for Research & Development at Poltava State Medical University since 2010.

#15048

Jannie Borst

#177342

Overall Influence

Jannie G. Keyser-Borst is a Dutch cancer immunologist. She became Professor at Leiden University on 16 January 2019 At the Leiden University Medical Center she currently runs a research group investigating the regulation of the T cell response

#15049

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir

#174603

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir is a biologist and a professor at the University of Iceland. Professional career Hrefna completed the national standard lower secondary school examination from Kvennaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1966 and a matriculation examination from the Mathematics Department of Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in the spring of 1970. She graduated from the University of Iceland with a BS in biology in the spring of 1973. Her final project was on the ecology of insects. A year later, she finished a graduate program from the same department , emphasising insects and other land arthropods. She investigated their abundance and distribution on the south side and top of Mt.

#15050

Pu Zhelong

#159136

Overall Influence

1912 - 1997 (85 years)

Pu Zhelong was a Chinese entomologist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biography Born in Yunnan, Pu's family was originally from Qinzhou, Guangxi. He graduated from Sun Yat-sen University College of Agriculture in 1935, earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1949. He became Professor and Dean of Life Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University. He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.

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