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,

#15151

Jacqueline Gottlieb

#181137

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Gottlieb is an American neuroscientist who is a professor of neuroscience and the Principal Investigator at the Columbia University Zuckerman Institute. Her research considers the mechanisms that underlie cognitive function.

#15152

Véronique Miron

#176947

Overall Influence

Véronique E. Miron is the John David Eaton Chair in Multiple Sclerosis Research at the Barlo MS Centre and Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, Full Professor at the University of Toronto Department of Immunology, and Honorary Chair at the University of Edinburgh Dementia Research Institute.

#15153

Kathleen Campbell

#177859

Overall Influence

Kathleen Ann Campbell is an American-born New Zealand geology and astrobiology academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Her work is broadly centred in the topic of paleoecology and how ancient organisms interacted with their environment and whether they were capable of surviving under extremely hard conditions. Much of her research carries wide-ranged associations with questions about the origin of life and the possibility of life on Mars. She graduated from the University of Southern California and she is currently a full professor at the University of Auckla...

#15154

Elissa Cameron

#181238

Overall Influence

Elissa Zanna Cameron is a New Zealand wildlife biologist whose research includes animal behaviour, ecology and conservation biology. Academic career After graduating from Massey University with a PhD titled "Maternal investment in Kaimanawa horses" in 1999, Cameron moved to the University of Nevada, Reno from 2002 to 2006. She worked at the University of Pretoria from 2006 to 2010. She was promoted to full professor in November 2018 at the University of Canterbury.

#15155

Hidenori Suzuki

#181256

Overall Influence

#15156

Elspeth Smith

#177613

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Elspeth Bruce Smith FRSE , née Dunkerley, was a British academic and biochemist. Smith was educated at Cambridge, London and Aberdeen. During World War II she was employed by the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Afterwards, she was a research assistant at Cambridge University and at St Bartholomew's Hospital.

#15157

Joseph F. Fitzpatrick Jr.

#172042

Overall Influence

1932 - 2002 (70 years)

Joseph F. Fitzpatrick Jr. was an American carcinologist. He primarily studied crustaceans, in particular crayfish of which he described many new species. Career Fitzpatrick was born and grew up in New Orleans. In 1959, he graduated to B.S. and in 1961 to M.S. in zoology at the Tulane University. In 1964, he promoted to Ph.D. in biology at the University of Virginia. Subsequently, he became an assistant professor at the Mississippi State University and at the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Afterwards he moved to Mobile, Alabama where he taught as professor at the University of South Alabama for twenty-five years until his retirement in 1998.

#15158

Petra Ritter

#151840

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Petra Ritter is a German neuroscientist and medical doctor at Charité in Berlin. Her field is computational neuroscience and her focus is developing brain simulations for individual people with neurological conditions, combining EEG and neuroimaging data.

#15159

Stanislaw Adam Ślipiński

#181208

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

#15160

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo

#137404

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo is a French researcher of evolutionary biology and genetics. She is a director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research and head of the Drosophila Evolution Team at the Institut Jacques Monod.

#15161

Habib Davanloo

#65027

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Habib Davanloo is a psychoanalyst and psychiatric researcher and working in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, who developed Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. He was Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and founding editor of the International Journal of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy.

#15162

Rahul Desikan

#123757

Overall Influence

1978 - 2019 (41 years)

Rahul Desikan was an Indian-American neuroscientist and neuroradiologist. He was an Assistant Professor of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Neurology and Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-director of Laboratory for Precision Neuroimaging. Desikan's achievements became publicly known in a Washington Post article detailing his lifelong commitment to preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease and his continuing work as a scientist living with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis . Desikan was vocal about the need for increased awareness and research funding for ALS, and ...

#15163

Tatiana Rynearson

#178941

Overall Influence

Tatiana Rynearson is an American oceanographer who is a professor at the University of Rhode Island. Her research considers plankton diversity and abundance. Rynearson has been on several research cruises, including trips to the North Sea, Puget Sound, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic.

#15164

Maja Krzic

#141563

Overall Influence

Maja Krzic is a soil scientist and an associate professor in the Department of Forest & Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry with a joint appointment in the Applied Biology and Soil Sciences programs in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. She is a founder of the Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources Group, a collaborative teaching effort among scientists, students, and multimedia experts from seven universities and three research institutions in Canada that create open access soil science educational resources. She is also the president of ...

#15165

Hasegawa Yoshikazu

#148074

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

is a Japanese vertebrate palaeontologist and honorary museum director. The Pleistocene anatid Shiriyanetta hasegawai was named in his honour, in recognition of his "outstanding contributions" to the field.

#15166

Joshua Brickman

#179808

Overall Influence

Joshua Mark Brickman is an American/British biologist. He is a professor of stem cell and developmental biology at the University of Copenhagen. Brickman received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry and Philosophy from the University of Vermont in 1985 and a PhD in Molecular Cellular Biology from Harvard University in 1996

#15167

Seth C. Murray

#180428

Overall Influence

Seth C. Murray is the Eugene Butler Endowed Chair in Agricultural Biotechnology at Texas A&M University where he directs a corn research program focused on quantitative genetics, phenotyping, and new variety development. In 2018 he was elected a fellow of the Crop Science Society of America.

#15168

Matthias G. Von Herrath

#181448

Overall Influence

#15169

Maria Falkenberg

#180589

Overall Influence

Maria Falkenberg is a professor of medical biochemistry at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has made important contributions to understanding how the mitochondrial genome is maintained in health and disease.

#15170

Jacek Junosza Kisielewski

Jacek Junosza Kisielewski

#169659

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Jacek Marek Junosza Kisielewski is a Polish biologist and diplomat; ambassador to Brazil and Portugal . Life Jacek Junosza Kisielewski studied Biology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In 1978, he defended his doctoral thesis, and, in 1990, post-doctoral degree on Inland-water Gastrotricha from Brasil. He was working as a biologist at the University of Agriculture and Pedagogy in Siedle and at the Research Centre for Agricultural and Forest Environment of Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznań. He was a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo . He has also been carrying out research at the Amazon delta.

#15171

Michael Freilich

#107151

Overall Influence

1954 - 2020 (66 years)

Michael H. Freilich was an American oceanographer who served as director of the NASA Earth Science division from 2006–2019. In January 2020, NASA announced that the Sentinel-6A Oceanography mission was being renamed the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich in his honor. Freilich played a key role in establishing the international partnership behind this mission. Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate , paid tribute to him as follows:

#15172

William H. McClain

#180550

Overall Influence

William H. McClain is an American molecular biologist and academic. He is currently Halvorson Professor of Bacteriology and Molecular Biology, Emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McClain is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and, formerly, a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research Fellow. He was a Board Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Midwest Center. McClain is a pioneer in the biological sciences known for the dissection of RNA-protein recognition primarily through genetic and biochemical means in bacteria.

#15173

Elizabeth Kutter

#111109

Overall Influence

Dr. Elizabeth Kutter is a phage biologist based at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA, where she is a Professor Emeritus. She led the T4 Genome Sequencing project, and organized the biennial Evergreen International Phage Biology meetings that draw hundreds of phage researchers from all over the world.

#15174

Deng Hongkui

#116366

Overall Influence

Deng Hongkui is a Chinese immunologist and stem cell researcher. He is a Changjiang Professor, the Boya Chair Professor, and Director of the Institute of Stem Cell Research at Peking University. He was awarded US$1.9 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for his research on vaccines for HIV and hepatitis C. In 2017, he and Chen Hu engineered resistance to HIV in mice using CRISPR gene editing, and for the first time used the technique on an AIDS patient.

#15175

Steven Jacobs

#181501

Overall Influence

#15176

Kalle Åström

#181506

Overall Influence

#15177

Carola B. Eisenberg

Carola B. Eisenberg

#71789

Overall Influence

1923 - 2021 (98 years)

Carola Blitzman Eisenberg was an Argentine-American psychiatrist who became the first woman to hold the position of dean of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1990, she was the dean of student affairs at Harvard Medical School . She has for a long time been lecturer in the newly renamed Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at HMS . She was also both a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights and an honorary psychiatrist with the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a longstanding position there.

#15178

Sue Gardiner

#180951

Overall Influence

Susan Elizabeth Gardiner is a New Zealand horticultural scientist, who works on using genetics and genomics for fruit breeding. Gardiner has received multiple awards. Gardiner has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2020 and is a Fellow of the International Society for Horticultural Science. She is an Honorary Fellow of Plant & Food Research.

#15179

Hilary Godwin

#123753

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Hilary Joan Arnold Godwin is a professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington and the dean of the School of Public Health. Godwin studies the biochemistry of lead and how to diminish the impact of climate change on public health.

#15180

Karen Davis

#101899

Overall Influence

Karen D. Davis is a neuroscience professor at the University of Toronto, and is the head of Division of Brain, Imaging & Behaviour, Krembil Research Institute at the University Health Network. Davis was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2009, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2018 and the Royal Society of Canada in 2020 and is currently the president of the Canadian Pain Society.

#15181

Kirsty Penkman

#83320

Overall Influence

Kirsty Elizabeth Helena Penkman is a biochemist and geochemist known for her research in biomolecular archaeology, the use of ancient DNA, amino acid dating, and other biomolecules in order to date fossils and learn about the world as it was in prehistoric times. She is a reader in chemistry at the University of York.

#15182

Margaret Loutit

#171784

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Margaret Wyn Loutit was a New Zealand microbiologist. She was a full professor at the University of Otago from 1981, and was the inaugural director of the university's Research Office from 1988 to 1995

#15183

Dilip V. Jeste

#60452

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Dilip V. Jeste is an American geriatric neuropsychiatrist, who specializes in successful aging as well as schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders in older adults. He was senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care, distinguished professor of psychiatry and neurosciences, Estelle and Edgar Levi Memorial Chair in Aging, director of the Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging, and co-director of the IBM-UCSD Artificial Intelligence Center for Healthy Living at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. after serving for 36 years, he retired from UC San ...

#15184

Robert Lamar Rabb

#180116

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Robert Lamar Rabb was an American entomologist and a professor at North Carolina State University. He worked mainly on pest management and applied ecology of insects. Rabb was born in Lenoir where he was introduced to the wilderness by his timberman grandfather and his mother, who was interested in wildflowers. His education was interrupted by the war years during which he served in the 390th Bombardment Squadron of the US Air Force in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines. He went to North Carolina State University graduating in 1947 and working briefly in mills. He however returned to academics, and studied under B.B.

#15185

Ravishankar Ramachandran

#179876

Overall Influence

Ravishankar Ramachandran is an Indian molecular biologist and a senior principal scientist at the department of molecular and structural biology of the Central Drug Research Institute. Known for his studies on the molecular mechanisms of human pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Ramachandran is a DBT-nominated member of the Institutional Bio-Safety Committee of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 142 of them. The Department of Biotechnology of th...

#15186

Barbara Maria Patoleta

#112190

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Barbara Maria Patoleta is a Polish arachnologist who specialises in the taxonomy, evolution and zoogeography of jumping spiders in the Pacific Islands. Education Patoleta studied biology and chemistry at high school before studying biology at the Faculty of Agriculture at Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities between 1988 and 1993. She obtained her master's degree in the Department of Anatomy and Vertebrate Morphology in 1993, and subsequently her doctorate in 2002.

#15187

Lisa Boulanger

#175975

Overall Influence

Lisa Boulanger is an American neuroscientist and who is a professor at Princeton University. Her research considers immune proteins in the formation and function of neuronal connectivity. Early life and education Boulanger was a doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, where she worked under Mu-ming Poo. Her research considered regulation of the synaptic action of neurotrophin. Afterward she was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School with Carla J. Shatz.

#15188

Allan Abbass

#172016

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dr. Allan Abbass is professor, psychiatrist, and founding Director of the Centre for Emotions and Health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Career Dr. Abbass' clinical specialty and research focus is the use of Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy . Dr. Abbass' work has focused on the use of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy to diagnose and treat medically unexplained physical symptoms. Dr. Abbass has developed psychotherapy training programs in ISTDP. Dr. Abbass has published clinical trials on the effectiveness of ISTDP and meta-analyses on the effectiveness of...

#15189

Patricia J. Johnson

#172084

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Patricia Jean Johnson is a Professor of Microbiology at University of California, Los Angeles . She works on the parasite Trichomonas vaginalis, which is responsible for the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections in the United States, Trichomoniasis. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

#15190

Margaret Mulholland

#179828

Overall Influence

Margaret Ruth Mulholland is professor at Old Dominion University known for her work on nutrients in marine and estuarine environments. Education and career Mulholland has a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame , and an M.S. in biological oceanography and an M.M. in marine affairs from the University of Washington. In 1998 she earned her Ph.D. in biological oceanography from the University of Maryland. As of 2022 she is a professor at Old Dominion University.

#15191

Hamutal Slovin

#179687

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Hamutal Slovin is an Israeli neuroscientist and neurophysiologist who studies the visual system using optical imaging techniques. Slovin, is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. Her research focuses on deciphering the cortical mechanisms underlying visual and perceptual processing and their relation to eye movements, as well as reconstruction of visual stimuli from brain activity and artificial vision.

#15192

Riccardo Levi-Setti

#157531

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Riccardo Levi-Setti was an Italian emeritus professor of physics and paleontology at the University of Chicago and a Holocaust survivor. Early life and education Riccardo was born in Milan in 1927 to Paolo and Gilda Levi, a decorated lieutenant colonel in the Italian army of World War I and a Venetian aristocrat. His family fled to Pavia after Benito Mussolini ordered a crackdown on Jews in his hometown. As a result of migration, he obtained his doctorate in physics from the University of Pavia in 1952 and then was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to go to the United States.

#15193

David Fajgenbaum

#123129

Overall Influence

David C. Fajgenbaum is an American immunologist and author who is currently an assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is most well known for his research into Castleman disease.

#15194

Chris Greening

#127573

Overall Influence

Chris Greening is a biochemist, microbiologist, and academic. He is a Professor of Microbiology and leads the One Health Microbiology group and Global Change Research Program of the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is most known for his work on the basis, role, and significance of the microbial metabolism of trace gases such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. He has held prestigious fellowships from the CSIRO , Australian Research Council , and National Health and Medical Research Council and was awarded the Fenner Medal 2022 from the Australian Academy of Science.

#15195

Klaus Von Der Mark

#181672

Overall Influence

#15196

Mary Louise Phillips

#102422

Overall Influence

Mary Louise Phillips is a Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders and Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. As the director of the Mood and Brain Laboratory, Phillips performs neuroimaging research designed to elucidate the neuropathophysiological basis of bipolar disorders and associated behavioral traits.

#15197

Ravi Allada

#180209

Overall Influence

Ravi Allada is an Indian-American chronobiologist studying the circadian and homeostatic regulation of sleep primarily in the fruit fly Drosophila. He is currently the Executive Director of the Michigan Neuroscience Institute , a collective which connects neuroscience investigators across the University of Michigan to probe the mysteries of the brain on a cellular, molecular, and behavioral level. Working with Michael Rosbash, he positionally cloned the Drosophila Clock gene. In his laboratory at Northwestern, he discovered a conserved mechanism for circadian control of sleep-wake cycle, as w...

#15198

Amal Bishara

#77958

Overall Influence

Amal Bishara is an Israeli Arab doctor, and the director of Bone Marrow Registry Outreach, Hadassah Medical Center, which is associated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. There she runs the only bone marrow transplant registry in the world for unrelated Arab donors. Dr. Amal has published and presented internationally on her research into immunogenetics. She serves on the Accreditation Committee of the European Federation for Immunogenetics.

#15199

Saak Ovsepian

#178162

Overall Influence

Saak Victor Ovsepian is an Armenian-Irish neuroscientist best known for his research in neurobiology, neurotherapeutics and translational biosciences. He is a professor in biosciences at the University of Greenwich.

#15200

Parker MacCready

#119544

Overall Influence

Parker MacCready is an American oceanographer. He is a professor at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. Early life and education MacCready was born and raised in Southern California to father Paul MacCready, an atmospheric scientist. Growing up in Pasadena, MacCready helped his father design the Bionic Bat and used it to break the world speed record for human-powered flight in 1984. MacCready completed his Bachelor of Science degre in architecture at Yale University and his Master of Science degree in engineering science at the California Institute of Technology. He finished his formal education with his PhD in physical oceanography from the University of Washington .

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