Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#15051

Ian Cook

#119801

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Ian Ainsworth Cook is an American psychiatrist. He is an associate professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles's David Geffen School of Medicine. He is also a research scientist at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. He serves as director of the UCLA Depression Research Program and associate director of the UCLA Laboratory of Brain, Behavior, and Pharmacology. Cook holds the Joanne and George Miller & Family Chair in Depression Research.

#15052

Susan Ackerman

#172580

Overall Influence

Susan L. Ackerman is an American neuroscientist and geneticist. Her work has highlighted some of the genetic and biochemical factors that are involved in the development of the central nervous system and age-related neurodegeneration. Her research is aimed at helping scientists understand what causes several types of neurodegeneration in mammals. This research, and others' like it, may lead to cures for neurodegenerative diseases. Ackerman is a professor at University of California San Diego. She was formerly a professor at the Jackson Laboratory and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University.

#15053

Ma-Li Wong

#174482

Overall Influence

Ma-Li Wong is an Australian researcher in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacogenomics, with a particular focus on major depression. She is head of the Pharmacogenomics Research Program in the Mind and Brain Theme at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, as well as Strategic Professor of Psychiatry at Flinders University.

#15054

Lynne Opperman

#177641

Overall Influence

Lynne A. Opperman is an American researcher. Prior to the start of the 2021–22 academic year, Opperman was named interim dean of the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry. Early life and education Opperman was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. She attended the University of the Witwatersrand for her Bachelor of Science degree and Ph.D. before moving to the United States for her postdoctoral fellowships.

#15055

Celine Frere

#178914

Overall Influence

Celine Frere is a Swiss evolutionary biologist. In 2017, she was named one of Australia's first "Superstars of STEM" by Science & Technology Australia. She is known for co-founding USC's Detection Dogs for Conservation initiative, training sniffer dogs to aid in research and conversation efforts around endangered and protected species.

#15056

Kate Sanders

#135432

Overall Influence

Kate Laura Sanders is a researcher at the University of Adelaide, specialising in the study of sea snakes. She received a PhD from Bangor University in 2003 and was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow . Sanders has undertaken field work that has resulted in the identification of new species, including the sea snake Aipysurus mosaicus.

#15057

Maria do Carmo Estanislau do Amaral

#177550

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Maria do Carmo Estanislau do Amaral is a Brazilian botanist, biologist, curator, and academic., who has worked, since 2011, on teaching and research in the Department of Biology, Universidad Estatal de Campinas.

#15058

Raymond Arritt

#137127

Overall Influence

1957 - 2018 (61 years)

Raymond Ward Arritt was an American agronomist whose research focused on agricultural meteorology. He taught at Iowa State University from 1993 until his death in 2018. At Iowa State, he was responsible for operating the meteorological data repository Iowa Environmental Mesonet. He was one of three Iowa State faculty who contributed to the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report, which led to the IPCC sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

#15059

Joanna Groom

#178966

Overall Influence

Dr. Joanna Groom is an Australian Immunologist and Laboratory Head in the Immunology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and WEHI CSL Centenary fellow. Her research focuses on how the communication and positioning of immune cells influences the immune response using 3D imaging methods with transcriptional analysis.

#15060

John R. Reeder

#166125

Overall Influence

1914 - 2009 (95 years)

John Raymond Reeder was an American agrostologist who was active in identifying the grasses of New Guinea, Wyoming, and Arizona. Biography Reeder was born on a farm in Charlotte, Michigan on July 29, 1914. He went on to attend Oregon State University and met Charlotte Olive Goodding, whom he married in 1941. Reeder joined the military upon the involvement of America in World War II. He was stationed in a malaria unit in New Guinea. While on duty, he collected grasses for curation back in America.

#15061

Liza Makowski Hayes

#136850

Overall Influence

Liza Makowski Hayes is an American nutritional biochemist. As a professor at the University of Tennessee, her research focuses on how metabolic stress and inflammation alters the progression of diseases, specifically obesity and cancer.

#15062

Patrick F. Sullivan

#110207

Overall Influence

Patrick F. Sullivan FRANZCP is an American psychiatric geneticist. He is the Yeargen Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is also the director of the Center for Psychiatric Genomics and the lead principal investigator of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. He is also a professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the genetics of schizophrenia, major depressive disorders such as post-partum depression, eating disorders, and autism.

#15063

Jude Uzoma Ohaeri

#131321

Overall Influence

Jude Uzoma Ohaeri is a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science, elected into the Academy’s Fellowship at its Annual General Meeting held in January 2015.

#15064

Sonia Garel

#177141

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sonia Garel is a French neurobiologist, professor at the Collège de France and head of a research team at the Institut de biologie de l'Ecole normale supérieure in Paris. Early life and education Garel was born in Paris. She studied engineering at the AgroParisTech as an undergraduate. She moved to the Paris-Sorbonne University for graduate research, where she specialised in molecular and cellular neurobiology. Her doctoral research considered developmental biology. She moved to the University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral researcher with John Rubenstein. In 2003, she returne...

#15065

Uraina Clark

#132344

Overall Influence

Uraina Simone Clark is an American neuroscientist and Director of the Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research makes use of functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand how stressors impact brain and behaviour. She has studied the impact of discrimination on brain function, and shown that social discrimination results in an increase in amygdala function.

#15066

D. Alex Johnson

#180531

Overall Influence

#15067

Phillip Newmark

#179869

Overall Influence

Philip A. Newmark is an American biologist, focusing in developmental biology and parasitology, currently at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Wisconsin and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#15068

Randy Wells

#180560

Overall Influence

#15069

Catherine Chesla

#118525

Overall Influence

Catherine "Kit" Ann Chesla is an American nurse who is Professor Emeritus and former Thelma Shobe Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her research has considered families and chronic illness.

#15070

Brian T. Cunningham

#122283

Overall Influence

Brian T. Cunningham is an American engineer, researcher and academic. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a professor of Bioengineering.

#15071

Xiao‐jing Wang

#180602

Overall Influence

#15072

Paula Cohen

#178933

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Paula Elaine Cohen is a British-American geneticist who is a professor and Associate Vice Provost for Life Sciences at Cornell University. Her research considers DNA repair mechanisms and the regulation of crossing over during mammalian meiosis. She was awarded the National Down Syndrome Society Charles J. Epstein Down Syndrome Research Award in 2004 and elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.

#15073

Jaime Bosch

#180607

Overall Influence

#15074

Richard D. Smith

#180614

Overall Influence

#15075

Elizabeth Tasker

#122307

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Elizabeth Mary Tasker is an Australian fire ecologist. She obtained a PhD in Science at the University of Sydney in 2002. She is a researcher at the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, and previously worked for the University of Wollongong and for The Australian Museum carrying out biological surveys in Melanesia. Her main area of expertise is the effects of fire and fire management on native animals and plants. She was a Vice-President, and subsequently Director, of the Ecological Society of Australia, the largest professional association of scientists in Australia, and a published wildl...

#15076

Peter Fischer

#180624

Overall Influence

#15077

Stephen W. Marshall

#180626

Overall Influence

#15078

Maria Bitner-Glindzicz

#173996

Overall Influence

1963 - 2018 (55 years)

Maria Bitner-Glindzicz was a British medical doctor, honorary consultant in clinical genetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and a professor of human and molecular genetics at the UCL Institute of Child Health. The hospital described her work as relating to the "genetic causes of deafness in children and therapies that she hoped would one day restore vision." She researched Norrie disease and Usher syndrome, working with charities including Sparks and the Norrie Disease Foundation, and was one of the first colleagues involved in the 100,000 Genomes Project at Genomics England.

#15079

Gertrudis de la Fuente

#140804

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Gertrudis de la Fuente Sánchez was a Spanish biochemist who specialised in enzymology. She was a professor in the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. She coordinated the Spanish government's commission to protect against the 1981 toxic oil syndrome. Her life and scientific career was partially chronicled in the short film, Gertrudis , which was released in 2016.

#15080

Liza Comita

#178379

Overall Influence

Liza Sheera Comita is an American ecologist and Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology in the School of the Environment at Yale University. Her research focuses on tropical tree species ecology and how spatial and temporal variation in early life-stages affects abundance and diversity of species in tropical forests.

#15081

J. Frederick Grassle

#180641

Overall Influence

#15082

Mahmoud Maina

#84449

Overall Influence

Mahmoud Bukar Maina is a British-Nigerian neuroscientist, educator, and researcher, based at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. His research is focused on the cellular and molecular pathogenesis in Alzheimer's disease. He performs outreach work to inspire young people in Africa to pursue science and to increase public understanding of science. He is the Honorary Special Adviser on Science, Research, and Innovation to Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State, Nigeria.

#15083

Lars von Haartman

#177503

Overall Influence

1919 - 1998 (79 years)

Baron Lars Arvid Axel von Haartman was a Finnish ornithologist, artist, poet and writer who came from a noble family of Swedish descent. He was best known for examining the population dynamics of birds through a long-term study of the pied flycatcher. He served as a professor of zoology at the University of Helsinki from 1968 to 1984.

#15084

Marta Bunster

#175494

Overall Influence

Marta Cecilia del Carmen Bunster Balocchi is a Chilean scientist, most noted for her work in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics and crystallography. She is also known as one of the main promoters of bioinformatics in her country.

#15085

James Hamilton McLean

#89277

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

James Hamilton McLean was an American malacologist . He specialized in marine gastropods. He worked on many families of Eastern Pacific gastropods including the Fissurellidae, Trochidae, Turbinidae and Liotiidae, and also investigated deep sea gastropods from hydrothermal vents.

#15086

William J. L. Sladen

#125047

Overall Influence

1920 - 2017 (97 years)

William Joseph Lambart Sladen MBE was a Welsh American naturalist who was an Antarctic explorer and a specialist on polar bird life. He was professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He researched the mating of Antarctic birds and received the Polar Medal. Two mountains on the continent, Mount Sladen and Sladen Summit, are named in his honour. His discovery in the 1960s that DDT residues could be found in adelie penguins contributed to the banning of DDT in the U.S.

#15087

Harald Ahnelt

#180386

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#15088

Francis J. McMahon

#178078

Overall Influence

Francis J. McMahon is an American psychiatric geneticist and Chief of the Human Genetics Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. He is also a visiting professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a former president of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics. His research focuses on the genetic basis of mood and anxiety disorders, as well as the role of genetics in both positive and negative responses to antidepressant drugs. He is a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and he received the Colvin Mood Disorders Prize f...

#15089

Florence Signaigo Wagner

#83490

Overall Influence

1919 - 2019 (100 years)

Florence Signaigo Wagner was an American botanist who served as president of the American Fern Society. Biography Florence Signaigo was born in Birmingham, Michigan, on February 18, 1919 and grew up in Highland Park. Her first botanical interest focused on red algae.

#15090

Jan Raa

#175626

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Jan Raa is a Norwegian biologist. Raa was a professor at the University of Tromsø from 1972 to 1988, and has an honorary degree at the same university. After his tenure at the University of Tromsø he was a director at the Directorate of Fisheries Institute of Nutrition, research director at Fiskeriforskning and developer of the company Biotec Pharmacon.

#15091

Crystal Mackall

Crystal Mackall

#60369

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Crystal L. Mackall is an American physician and immunologist. She is currently the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy.

#15092

Brooke E. Flammang

#175684

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Brooke E. Flammang is an American biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She specializes in functional morphology, biomechanics, and bioinspired technology of fishes. Flammang is a discoverer of the radialis muscle in shark tails. She also studies the adhesive disc of the remora, and the walking cavefish, Cryptotora thamicola. Her work has been profiled by major news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, BBC Radio 5, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Wild. She was named one of the "best shark scientists to follow" by Scientific American in 20...

#15093

Mike Coffin

#174860

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mike Coffin is an American oceanographer who was born in 1955 in Maine. His research expertise encompasses massive volcanism on the seafloor, environmental effects of massive volcanism, plate tectonics, and rifted continental margins.

#15094

Erin Hotchkiss

#175577

Overall Influence

Erin Hotchkiss is an ecologist who studies climate change's specific impact on freshwater ecosystems . She researches the relationships between organisms and water quality in freshwater ecosystems, how processes on land influence water, and the sources and fate of carbon and nutrients in aquatic ecosystems. Hotchkiss is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

#15095

Yinling Hu

#96780

Overall Influence

Yinling Hu is a Chinese molecular biologist specialized in cancer immunometabolism, inflammation, and tumorigenesis. She is a senior investigator in the National Cancer Institute. She was an assistant professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

#15096

Sally Merry

#166623

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sally Nicola Merry is a New Zealand child psychiatry academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland and holds the Cure Kids Duke Family Chair in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

#15097

Jennifer Gommerman

#59545

Overall Influence

Jennifer Lynn Gommerman is a Canadian immunologist. She is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Tissue-Specific Immunity at the University of Toronto. Gommerman has been examining the role of B lymphocytes in Multiple Sclerosis patients and in animal models of MS. She also studies the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples from patients with COVID-19.

#15098

Karin Bryan

#179675

Overall Influence

Karin Roisin Bryan is a New Zealand oceanography academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. She is also the director of the Environmental Research Institute. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled Bar-trapped edge waves at Dalhousie University, Bryan moved to the University of Waikato, rising to full professor.

#15099

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

#90130

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a Ugandan veterinarian and founder of Conservation Through Public Health, an organisation dedicated to the coexistence of endangered mountain gorillas, other wildlife, humans, and livestock in Africa.

#15100

Katya Susana Romoleroux

#176326

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Katya Susana Romoleroux is an Ecuadorian botanist. In 2020, she was awarded the 29th Eugenio Espejo National Prize for her lifelong contribution to science in Ecuador. She was born in Quito in 1961. She did a fellowship in Tropical Biology at the University of Aarhus, and completed her PhD with funding from the Danish government. In 2002 she obtained a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. She has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador for more than 20 years, where she is also cura...

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