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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#15101

Sherry Thornton

#166576

Overall Influence

Sherry L. Thornton is an American biologist. She is a field service associate professor at University of Cincinnati in the department of pediatrics. Thornton is the director of the Research Flow Cytometry Core.

#15102

Sally Le Page

#178610

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Sally Le Page is a British evolutionary biologist and science communicator. She is best known for making educational science content on YouTube, both for her own channel and for collaborations with groups such as General Electric and Rooster Teeth. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford researching sexual selection.

#15103

Lloyd M. Kozloff

#177736

Overall Influence

1923 - 2012 (89 years)

Lloyd M. Kozloff was an American microbiologist and virologist. He served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and University of California, San Francisco, where he became dean of the UCSF Graduate Division. Kozloff retired from UCSF in 1993. He died of heart failure in 2012.

#15104

Stefan Pasiakos

#179441

Overall Influence

Stefan M. Pasiakos is a U.S. physiologist specializing in diet and supplemental nutrition, muscle physiology, and human performance. He has served as the director of the National Institutes of Health office of dietary supplements since 2023. Pasiakos was previously chief of the military performance division at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine.

#15105

Ruth Hall

#127761

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ruth Milne Hall, OAM, FAA, FAAM is an Australian microbiologist whose research on mobile genetic elements in bacteria has provided deep insight into the transfer and evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

#15106

Larry Johnson

#180841

Overall Influence

#15107

Heiner Niemann

#180845

Overall Influence

#15108

Soekarja Somadikarta

#173543

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Soekarja Somadikarta is an Indonesian ornithologist and a professor emeritus at the University of Indonesia. He has been described as "the father of Indonesian Ornithology who also pioneered the forerunner of systematic bird observation research in Indonesia."

#15109

Andrew Brooks

#93157

Overall Influence

1969 - 2021 (52 years)

Andrew Ira Brooks was an American immunologist, academic, and businessman. He was an associate research professor at Rutgers University and the developer of the first FDA-approved rapid saliva test for COVID-19 diagnosis.

#15110

Pan Wenshi

#177393

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Pan Wenshi is a Chinese biologist and Peking University professor. His research works on Giant panda, White-headed langur and Chinese white dolphin in the last 36 years are internationally recognized contributions. Pan had authored and co-authored 40-50 treatises published on various domestic and international journals including National Geographic and Nature and he is renowned for his academic achievements on researching the 3 near-extinct contemporary species. He serves as the director of the Giant Panda and Wildlife Conservation Research Center at Peking University. His work proved that pa...

#15111

Mike Baillie

#72018

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Michael G. L. Baillie is Professor Emeritus of Palaeoecology at Queen's University of Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Baillie is a leading expert in dendrochronology, or dating by means of tree-rings. In the 1980s, he was instrumental in building a year-by-year chronology of tree-ring growth reaching 7,400 years into the past.

#15112

Hang Yin

#151277

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Hang Hubert Yin is a professor and deputy dean of pharmaceutical sciences at Tsinghua University, a recipient of several young scientist awards for his research in chemical biology and drug discovery.

#15113

Y. J. Liu

#180875

Overall Influence

#15114

H. Keith H. Brodie

#36728

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

Harlow Keith Hammond Brodie was an American psychiatrist, educator, and former president of Duke University. Life and education Born in New Canaan, Connecticut, Brodie attended the New Canaan Country School before studying chemistry at Princeton University and medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He and classmate Davida Coady tutored nurses in pharmacology and other subjects and assisted with basic medical care at the Firestone Hospital in Harbel, Liberia.

#15115

Paul Forster

#180913

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

#15116

Scott Woodward

#102277

Overall Influence

Scott Ray Woodward is a microbiologist and molecular biologist who specializes in genetic genealogy and ancient DNA studies. He was a professor at Brigham Young University from 1989 to 2003. He was the president and principal investigator for the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation between 2005 and 2012, and the chief scientific officer from 2007 to 2012 at Genetree. He was the executive director of Genomic Study at Ancestry.com from 2012 to 2015. He currently teaches at Utah Valley University. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .

#15117

Gene Abel

#138016

Overall Influence

Gene Gordon Abel is an American psychiatrist and controversial clinician. He is a couple's counselor and also works with men and boys suspected of sexual deviancy. He is the creator of the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest , a sex offender assessment tool that has been considered unreliable by independent studies and inadmissible in court in various jurisdictions. He also designed a screening test called the Diana Screen, to be used, e.g., to screen job applicants for deviant sexual tendencies – a test which has been similarly criticized as having dubious scientific value.

#15118

Kateryna Makova

#179697

Overall Influence

Kateryna D. Makova is an American biologist, currently the Francis R. and Helen M. Pentz professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Pennsylvania State University. She is also a published author, being widely cited by her peers and widely held in libraries.

#15119

Çağhan Kızıl

#178171

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Çağhan Kızıl is a Turkish/German neuroscientist and geneticist, and Associate Professor of Neurological Sciences at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

#15120

Chuan He

#180927

Overall Influence

#15121

Catherine Potenski

#179245

Overall Influence

Catherine J. Potenski is an American microbiologist and the former chief editor of Nature Genetics. Education Potenski obtained a PhD in microbiology from New York University Grossman School of Medicine for her research on Q/N-rich protein aggregates and prions in the yeast model system. At the university she worked in Irina Derkatch's laboratory.

#15122

Amnon Freidberg

#174305

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

Amnon Freidberg was an Israeli entomologist. In his career he described 257 new insect taxa, predominantly flies. Biography Freidberg was born in 1945 in Haifa. He studied biology in Tel Aviv University and worked with Professor Jehoshua Kugler in taxonomic and faunistic research. In 1971 he completed his MSc thesis on fruit flies of Israel and in 1978 his PhD dissertation on the reproductive behavior and reproductive isolation in fruit‑flies.

#15123

Alison Stewart

#180118

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Alison Stewart is a New Zealand biologist who specialises in plant pathology. she is the CEO of the Foundation for Arable Research, based in Christchurch. Early life and education Stewart was born in Scotland in 1957. She completed a BSc majoring in botany in 1980 at the University of Glasgow and graduated from the University of Stirling in 1983 with a PhD in plant pathology.

#15124

Marion Bamford

#162628

Overall Influence

Marion Kathaleen Bamford is a Zimbabwean paleobotanist, and is a professor at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Early life and education Marion was born in Zimbabwe. She received her PhD, MSc, and BSc at University of the Witwatersrand.

#15125

Sapna Sharma

#180955

Overall Influence

Sapna Sharma is a Canadian limnologist and associate professor of biology at York University. Sharma studies human-induced environmental stressors and holds the York University Research Chair in Global Change Biology. She obtained her PhD at the University of Toronto and held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Montreal and the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#15126

Susan E. Parks

#172095

Overall Influence

Susan Parks is an ecologist at Syracuse University known for her research on acoustic signaling and the impact of ambient noise on communication in marine mammals. Education and career Parks obtained a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Following her time in Woods Hole, Parks was a postdoctoral investigator at Cornell University before joining the faculty at Pennsylvania State University. Parks is currently an associate professor of Biology at Syracuse Universi...

#15127

Oleg Mamayev

#168071

Overall Influence

1925 - 1994 (69 years)

Oleg Ivanovich Mamayev was a Soviet oceanographer, professor, and head of the Oceanology Department at the Moscow State University. Personal life He was born to Ivan Kirillovich Mamayev and Raisa Moiseyevna Mamayeva and was married to Rimma Borisovna Mamayeva .

#15128

S. Samar Hasnain

#167764

Overall Influence

S. Samar Hasnain FInstP, FRSC, is the inaugural Max Perutz professor of Molecular Biophysics at the University of Liverpool. In 1991 he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and in 2002 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 1997 he became a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He became Foreign Fellows of Pakistan Academy of Sciences in 2017.

#15129

Fan Wang

#168114

Overall Influence

Fan Wang is a neuroscientist and professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She is an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Wang is known for her work identifying neural circuits underlying touch, pain, and anesthesia; and the development of a technique for capturing activated neuronal ensembles to label and manipulate neurons activated by stimuli or behavioral paradigms.

#15130

Colin Hughes

#134454

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Colin Hughes PhD ScD FLSW is a British microbiologist who has worked in the areas of bacterial virulence, motility and antibiotic resistance. He is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

#15131

Angelicque White

#179511

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Angelicque E. White is an American oceanographer. She is an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and director of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program.

#15132

Alex James

#62859

Overall Influence

Alex James is a British and New Zealand applied mathematician and mathematical biologist whose research involves the mathematical modeling of wildlife behaviour, gender disparities in academia, and the epidemiology of COVID-19. She is a professor in the school of mathematics and statistics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and a researcher with the Te Pūnaha Matatini Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems, where she is Deputy Director for Industry and Stakeholder Engagement.

#15133

Beryl Brewin

#157537

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Beryl Iris Brewin was a New Zealand marine zoologist, specialising in ascidians . Academic career Brewin was born 10 September 1910 to parents Lucy and Frank Brewin. She graduated from Auckland University College in 1931 with a Bachelor of Science in botany and zoology. This was followed by an MSc in botany in 1933.

#15134

Salvador Moyà-Solà

#107117

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Salvador Moyà-Solà is a Spanish paleontologist. He works in the Institut Català de Paleontología Miquel Crusafont in Sabadell, Catalonia. From 1983 to 2006, he was affiliated with the Diputación Provincial de Barcelona. In 2006 he became investigator of the Physical Anthropology unit of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.

#15135

Silvia Bolland

#181042

Overall Influence

Silvia Bolland is an American biomedical scientist serving as chief of the autoimmunity and functional genomics section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cantabria and received postdoctoral training at Harvard and Rockefeller University. Her areas of research include the identification of new genetic modifiers of systemic autoimmune disease, dose effect of Toll-like receptor genes and its role in autoimmune pathologies, and inhibitory signaling pathways mediated by the IgG Fc receptor and the phosphoin...

#15136

Pierre Benveniste

#179198

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Pierre Benveniste, born on 22 December 1937 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, is a French researcher in plant biochemistry and professor at the University of Strasbourg. Biography Pierre Benveniste is a former student of the European School of Chemistry in Strasbourg . After a PhD carried out under the direction of Professors Léon Hirth and Guy Ourisson and obtained in 1967, he turned his attention to the study of sterol biosynthesis in plants. In charge of research at the CNRS until 1970, he was appointed lecturer in 1970 and then professor in 1975 at the University of Strasbourg. He first became direc...

#15137

Takayoshi Kano

#172581

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

is a Japanese primatologist, known for his pioneering work on the bonobo . He highlighted their peaceful communal lifestyle and the high frequency of sexual interactions. A student of Junichiro Itani, he was a professor at Ryukyu University and at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University. In 1973, he founded the first bonobo study center, at Wamba, Luo Reserve. It is the oldest bonobo research area and has survived a number of political upheavals in the region.

#15138

Howard Krein

#127652

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Howard David Krein is an American otolaryngologist, plastic surgeon, and business executive. He is the husband of Ashley Biden, the daughter of United States President Joe Biden. He is an assistant professor of otolaryngology at Thomas Jefferson University and is a founding partner and co-director of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's Facial Aesthetic and Reconstructive Center. Krein is the chief medical officer at StartUp Health, a venture capital and health technology firm. He served on the Biden Cancer Initiative's board of directors from 2017 to 2019. Krein advised the Joe Biden 2020 ...

#15139

Gebisa Ejeta

#181073

Overall Influence

#15140

Clodagh O'Shea

#179200

Overall Influence

Clodagh C. O'Shea is a professor of molecular and cell biology and current Wicklow Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and a scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is also an Adjunct Professor at UCSD and the Scientific Founder of IconOVir Bio.

#15141

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré

#86603

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré is a French paleontologist specializing in birds of the Eocene and the Oligocene. In her early career, she discovered with her husband the Laang Spean cave site of prehistoric humans in Cambodia.

#15142

Kristen DeAngelis

#84846

Overall Influence

Kristen M. DeAngelis is a professor in the department of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts where she studies soil microbes in relation to climate change. Early life and education DeAngelis is originally from Watertown, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard University within the Biology department in 1997. DeAngelis received her Ph. D. in Microbiology from the University of California Berkeley in 2006. She subsequently worked as a Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkley National Lab and in the Deconstruction Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute

#15143

Gillian Dianne Lewis

#181106

Overall Influence

Gillian Dianne Lewis is a New Zealand microbiologist. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland and on the board of Crown Research Institute NIWA. Academic career After a PhD from the University of Otago,"Enteric viruses in aquatic habitats", Lewis moved to the University of Auckland and rose to full professor.

#15144

Robin Carrell

#172694

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Robin Wayne Carrell is a New Zealand-born haematologist. Born in 1936, Carrell was educated at Christchurch Boys' High School from 1949 to 1953. He graduated MB ChB from the University of Otago in 1959, and BSc in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Canterbury and Lincoln College in 1965. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 1967 and in 1968 he was appointed head of clinical biochemistry at Christchurch Hospital, the department later becoming part of the University of Otago Christchurch School of Medicine. As a spin-off from his research he co-founded biotechnology company Canterbury Scientific in 1985.

#15145

James D. Murray

#181139

Overall Influence

#15146

María Dolores Soria Mayor

#175199

Overall Influence

1948 - 2004 (56 years)

María Dolores Soria Mayor , also known as Loli Soria, was a Spanish paleontologist. Biography María Dolores Soria Mayor earned a degree in Biological Sciences in 1971, and until 1973 she was a professor of Natural Sciences at the Corazón de María school in Ciudad Lineal. In 1973 and 1974 she studied and worked in Germany, and after her return she began her thesis on the canid Nyctereutes, found in the . At that time she also published about another species of that site, the rodent Blancomys neglectus.

#15147

Barry James Thompson

#180540

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Barry James Thompson is an Australian and British developmental biologist and cancer biologist. Thompson is known for identifying genes, proteins and mechanisms involved in epithelial polarity, morphogenesis and cell signaling via the Wnt and Hippo signaling pathways, which have key roles in human cancer.

#15148

Hinrich Bitter-Suermann

#132791

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Hinrich Bitter-Suermann is a German-Canadian pathologist and professor of surgery specialized in organ transplantation. Education Bitter-Suermann studied 1959-1965 medicine and sciences at Würzburg University, Göttingen University and Kiel University. In Würzburg he became a member of the German Student Corps Nassovia and in Göttingen he joined the Corps Hannovera . In 1965 he accomplished his studies and summa cum laude graduated Dr. med. in Göttingen.

#15149

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa

#180058

Overall Influence

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa is a Brazilian-American geneticist who is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers stem cell regulation.

#15150

Jodi Rowley

#176280

Overall Influence

Jodi J. L. Rowley is an Australian herpetologist and conservationist. Life and research Rowley received her bachelor's degree in environmental science at University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and her PhD from James Cook University. Her doctoral thesis was on the topic of amphibian decline caused by chytridiomycosis. After finishing her PhD, in 2006 she moved to Cambodia to work for Conservation International as a wildlife biologist. She returned to Australia in 2008, and began working at the Australian Museum. In 2016, she was appointed curator of Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology at the Australian Museum.

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