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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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#15451

Agnès Bernet

#87158

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Agnès Bernet, is a French cell biologist and professor of cancer biology at the University Claude Bernard Lyon I. A co-founder of NETRIS Pharma, she has led within the Laboratory of Apoptosis, Cancer and Development, the research team that validated the use of interference ligand/dependence receptors as novel targeted therapies for cancer.

#15452

Xiaobo Yu

#128185

Overall Influence

Dr. Xiaobo Yu is a Chinese palaeontologist and professor on biological sciences. Yu is credited with first describing the lobe-finned fish Psarolepis romeri, a transitional species between fish and amphibians. Yu is currently a professor at Kean University in Union, New Jersey.

#15453

Richard Cooke

#124229

Overall Influence

1946 - 2023 (77 years)

Richard G. Cooke was an archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of Panama and, more generally, the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Cooke was born in Guildford, Surrey, southern England. He studied at Bristol and got his doctorate from the University of London in 1972.

#15454

Diana Hargreaves

Diana Hargreaves

#177425

Overall Influence

Diana Hargreaves is an American biologist and assistant professor at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and member of The Salk Cancer Center. Her laboratory focuses on epigenetic regulation by the BAF chromatin remodeling complexes in diverse physiological processes including development, immunity, and diseases such as cancer.

#15455

Paula V. Welander

#170114

Overall Influence

Paula Veronica Welander is a microbiologist and professor at Stanford University who is known for her research using lipid biomarkers to investigate how life evolved on Earth. Early life and career Welander was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. Her mother and father immigrated from Mexico to Los Angeles in the early 1970’s. She received her undergraduate degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1998. She has a master's degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She went on to do postdoctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Departments of Biology and of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

#15456

Alon Friedman

#178754

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Alon Friedman is a professor of Neuroscience at both Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel, and in Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is best known for his discoveries of the link between blood–brain barrier disruption and Epileptogenesis and the mechanisms underlying it, and for the utilization of BBB imaging as a potential Biomarker of epilepsy and other brain diseases.

#15457

Christina Lochman-Balk

#181771

Overall Influence

1907 - 2006 (99 years)

Christina Lochman-Balk was an American geologist who specialized in the study of Paleozoic era fossils, formerly known as Cambrian Paleontology. Lochman specifically dealt with Cambrian trilobites and invertebrates. During her career, it was not very common for women to pursue degrees or careers in geology, which was studied mostly by men. Along with her research, she also served as a lecturer and professor at the universities Mount Holyoke, University of Chicago and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. She received two degrees from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in Geology, and her doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1933.

#15458

Susan Bailey

#20038

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dame Susan Mary Bailey, is a British psychiatrist and academic who specialises in children's mental health. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Child Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire. From 2011 to 2014, she was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Since January 2015, she has been Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

#15459

Christoph Stein

#184144

Overall Influence

#15460

David Zuberer

#184160

Overall Influence

David A. Zuberer is an American microbiologist, currently Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University.

#15461

Philip Szanto

#175240

Overall Influence

1935 - 2017 (82 years)

Philip Szanto was a Chicago pathologist, associate professor at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University and co-author of a review book, BRS Pathology, which became a standard review text for American medical students.

#15462

Lois Brako

#184178

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Lois Brako is an American botanist, mycologist and explorer. She has conducted botanical expeditions in Peru. Publications Articles -----------; AW Meerow; L. Brako. 1993. New combinations in Hippeastrum, Ismene, and Leptochiton for the flora of Peru. Novon 3: 28–30-----------. Inga , Plantaginaceae, Rosaceae, Sapindaceae. In: L. Brako & J. L. Zarucchi , Catalogue of the Flowering Plants & Gymnosperms of Peru. Monogr. Syst. Bot. Missouri Bot. Gard. 45: 481–486, 923–925, 1003–1010, 1059–1068. 1993

#15463

Moriel Zelikowsky

#173387

Overall Influence

Moriel Zelikowsky is a neuroscientist at University of Utah School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies the brain circuits and neural mechanisms underlying stress, fear, and social behavior. Her previous work includes fear and the hippocampus, and the role of neuropeptide Tac2 in social isolation.

#15464

Yaa Ntiamoah Badu

#116836

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu is a Ghanaian zoologist, environmental specialist, academic and management expert. In March 2017, she was appointed the Chair of the Board of Millennium Development Authority of Ghana. She served as a Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana until her retirement in 2011. She is a member of the New Patriotic Party of Ghana.

#15465

Anne-Maria Laukkanen

#181188

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Anne-Maria Laukkanen is a Finnish researcher and a permanent full professor of speech technique and vocology at the University of Tampere. She has supervised 12 doctoral dissertations and 23 master theses and is now supervising 7 doctoral dissertations. She is a peer reviewer in 23 international scientific journals.

#15466

Jan G. J. Van De Winkel

#184225

Overall Influence

#15467

Alain Van Dorsselaer

#184228

Overall Influence

#15468

Daniel Offer

#92127

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

Daniel Offer was a psychiatrist and scholar who challenged prevailing beliefs that adolescence is inherently a time of storm and stress. His Offer Longitudinal Study was one of the first studies of typical youth over time and demonstrated that most pass through adolescence adequately happy and connected to families and others. This contribution shifted fundamentally how adolescent development was understood scientifically and provoked recognition that theory from patient populations was inadequate. He is also remembered for his scholarship on normality, the viability of memory, the Offer Self...

#15469

Amy Rowat

#124538

Overall Influence

Amy Rowat is an Associate Professor of biophysics at the University of California in Los Angeles and the first Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair in Food Studies. Her scientific research focuses on understanding the physical and mechanical properties of cells in diseases such as cancer. She also organizes public events on the science of cooking.

#15470

Osamu Ito

#184242

Overall Influence

#15471

Yara Haridy

#181959

Overall Influence

Yara Haridy is an Egyptian-Canadian paleontologist and scientific communicator who specializes in the use of advanced analytical methods to study the evolution of bone and related skeletal tissues. Biography Haridy was born in Morocco and lived in Egypt until her family moved to Canada when she was 12 years old. She obtained her B.Sc. in biology from the University of Toronto in 2016, where she originally intended to pursue the pre-medicine track en route to a medical career, followed by her M.Sc. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Toronto in 2018, where she studied the evolution of acrodonty in reptiles.

#15472

Akihiko Kikuchi

#184247

Overall Influence

#15473

Francis McGlone

#184253

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Professor Francis Philip McGlone is a neuroscientist at Liverpool John Moores University, where he is the head of the Somatosensory & Affective Neuroscience Group. Awards and honours In 2019, Professor McGlone & colleagues were awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for their work on measuring The Pleasurability of Scratching an Itch

#15474

Lauren O'Connell

#184174

Overall Influence

Lauren O'Connell is an American chemist who is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. Her research considers how animals handle challenges in their environment. She received a L'Oréal-USA For Women in Science fellowship in 2015.

#15475

Li Yang

#166323

Overall Influence

Li Yang is an American biologist researching how inflammation in the premetastatic environment modifies cancer cell colonization. She is a senior investigator and head of the tumor microenvironment section at the National Cancer Institute.

#15476

A. F. Millidge

#168449

Overall Influence

1914 - 2012 (98 years)

Alfred Frank Millidge was a British arachnologist who wrote several works on spiders. One of his best-known might be British Spiders, volumes I and II, which he co-wrote with G. H. Locket. In 1983, he became the first person to describe the spider species Walckenaeria crocea.

#15477

Petra Klinge

#179664

Overall Influence

Petra Klinge is a neurosurgeon and academic. She is professor of neurosurgery at Brown University. Education and training Klinge earned her medical degree from the University of Kiel in 1993. She conducted her neurosurgical residency at Hannover Medical School in Germany, completing it in 2002. The same year, she earned her habilitation and postdoctoral qualification "venia legendi".

#15478

Jason James Head

#183934

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

#15479

Callum Bell

#184324

Overall Influence

Callum James Bell is a biologist. He is the president of the National Center for Genome Resources. Bell completed a Ph.D. at University of Edinburgh where he researched the gravitational biology of Arabidopsis thaliana. His 1988 dissertation was titled Studies of mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana heynh with altered responses to gravity.

#15480

Hitoshi Takahashi

#184334

Overall Influence

#15481

Peter C. M. Van Zijl

#184349

Overall Influence

#15482

Robert Williamson

#178548

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Robert Williamson is a retired British-Australian molecular biologist who specialised in the mapping, gene identification, and diagnosis of human genetic disorders. Career Williamson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Scottish parents. He was educated at the Bronx High School of Science in New York and then Wandsworth School in South London after his parents returned to the UK, before studying at University College London. From 1963 he was lecturer, then senior lecturer, in developmental biology at the University of Glasgow. From 1976 he was Professor and head of Molecular Genetics and Biochemi...

#15483

Kendal Broadie

#179731

Overall Influence

Kendal Broadie is an American biologist specializing in genetic dissection of nervous system development, function and plasticity, currently the Eldon Stevenson, Jr. Professor at Vanderbilt University.

#15484

Heather Berlin

#149251

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Heather A. Berlin is an American neuroscientist and licensed clinical psychologist noted for her work in science communication and science outreach. Her research focuses on brain-behavior relationships affecting the prevention and treatment of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric disorders. She is also interested in the neural basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Berlin is host of the PBS Nova series Your Brain, the PBS series Science Goes to the Movies, the Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown, and StarTalk All-Stars with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

#15485

Steven J. Fliesler

#181979

Overall Influence

Steven J. Fliesler is an American biochemist and cell biologist, whose research has focused on how lipid metabolism supports the normal structure and function of the vertebrate retina. He currently is the Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair Professor of Ophthalmology and vice-chair and director of research in the department of ophthalmology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. In 2014, he became a UB Distinguished Professor, and in 2018 was promoted to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor. He is the author or coauth...

#15486

Saul V. Levine

#49345

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Saul V. Levine is a Canadian psychiatrist and author, professor emeritus at various universities for psychiatry at University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine; Stanford University Medical School; and University of Toronto . He was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, from 1993–2011. He was department head of psychiatry at Sunnybrook Medical Center in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

#15487

Snake Shyam

#111693

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

M. S. Balasubramania , popularly known as Snake Shyam, is a snake enthusiast, wildlife conservationist and lecturer in Mysore, India. He was elected to the Mysore City Corporation in 2013, a role he served until 2018.

#15488

Marelyn Wintour-Coghlan

#183714

Overall Influence

Elvie Marelyn Wintour-Coghlan is an Australian physiologist who has focused her career on the endocrinology of the pregnant mother and foetus. She has developed techniques enabling her to follow development of foetal organs, showing that concentration of foetal urine can be used as an indicator of stress in the foetus. The important focus of her work was the discovery that foetal stressful conditions can be translated into adult health.

#15489

Susanne Menden-Deuer

#182448

Overall Influence

Susanne Menden-Deuer is an oceanographer and marine scientist known for her work on marine food webs, including their structure and function. As of 2022, she is president-elect of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

#15490

Jue Chen

#178510

Overall Influence

Jue Chen is a Chinese-born American structural biologist and biochemist. She is the William E. Ford professor of biochemistry and head of the Laboratory of Membrane Biology and Biophysics at the Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Her research focuses on elucidating the structure and function of ATP-binding cassette transporters.

#15491

Charlotte M. Taylor

Charlotte M. Taylor

#168084

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Dr. Charlotte M. Taylor is a botanist and professor specialising in taxonomy and conservation. She works with the large plant family Rubiaceae, particularly found in the American tropics and in the tribes Palicoureeae and Psychotrieae. This plant family is an economically important group, as it includes plant species used to make coffee and quinine. Taylor also conducts work related to the floristics of Rubiaceae and morphological radiations of the group. Taylor has collected plant samples from many countries across the globe, including Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, and the United States of America, and has named many new species known to science from these regions.

#15492

Kathrin Muegge

#99933

Overall Influence

Kathrin Muegge is a German physician and molecular biologist researching chromatin organization during embryonic development and in tumor progression. She is a senior investigator and head of the epigenetics section at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.

#15493

Eben Iii Alexander

#184410

Overall Influence

#15494

Stephen R. Bloom

#184446

Overall Influence

#15495

Steven L. Small

#160053

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Steven L. Small is the Aage and Margareta Møller Distinguished Professor in Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, and dean of its School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Small is a specialist in the neurobiology of language.

#15496

Ghassem Amoabediny

#175447

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Ghassem Amoabediny is an Iranian researcher and Professor of Nanobiotechnology at the University of Tehran. He is also Deputy of Education at Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. He is known for his works on bioengineering, nanobiotechnology, tissue engineering, novel drug delivery system, and nanobiosensors.

#15497

Thomas Hunt Morgan

#184500

Overall Influence

#15498

Peter Reed Morrison

#167486

Overall Influence

1919 - 2019 (100 years)

Peter Reed Morrison was a professor of animal physiology and a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1954–1955. Early life Morrison graduated in 1940 with a B.S. from Swarthmore College and graduated in 1947 with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He became a physiology and biology professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was also a professor of zoophysiology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks from 1963 to 1974. Since then he retired as professor emeritus. He was also the director of UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology from 1966 to 1974.

#15499

Irene Moon

#181467

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Irene Moon is an American entomologist, performance artist, musician, playwright, actor, and filmmaker. She has published in the field of entomology as Katja Seltmann, and is the current director of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#15500

Francine Cournos

#100247

Overall Influence

Francine Cournos is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Cournos is also Principal Investigator of the Northeast Caribbean AIDS Education and Training Center at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies.

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