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,

#15501

Kimberly Hughes

#115379

Overall Influence

Kimberly A. Hughes is an American biologist. Hughes completed her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago in 1993. She is a professor of biological science at Florida State University. In 2018, Hughes was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#15502

William Beavis

#182372

Overall Influence

William D. Beavis is professor and GF Sprague Chair for Population Genetics in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University. His research focuses on statistical genetics and ways to optimize plant breeding. He is known for discovering what has since become known as the Beavis effect: namely, that the estimates of phenotypic variance associated with one of multiple quantitative trait loci, each of which has a small effect on the trait being studied, are typically significantly inflated if the sample size of organisms in the study is too low , but that these estimates are fairly accurate ...

#15503

T. Nakamura

#184557

Overall Influence

#15504

Nicole Boury-Esnault

#184264

Overall Influence

Nicole Boury-Esnault is a retired French researcher of sponges, formerly at Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, Aix-Marseille University. Research In 1995, Nicole Boury-Esnault and Jean Vacelet discovered a species of carnivorous sponges of the genus Asbestopluma, during an exploration of a shallow cave in the Mediterranean. Caves can recapitulate the environment of the deep sea-bed due to the darkness and lack of nutrient, permitting the study of deep-sea-like regions in shallow areas of water. Carnivorous sponges, lacking the normal filter feeding apparatus, had been previously discovered during deep-sea trawls and presumed to be damaged since they did not have a known feeding mechanism.

#15505

Karen Moxon

#176927

Overall Influence

Karen Anne Moxon is a Professor of Bioengineering at University of California, Davis and a specialist in brain-machine-interfaces. She is best known for her neural engineering work, and is responsible for the first demonstration of a closed-loop, real-time brain machine interface system in rodent subjects, which was later translated to both non-human primates and humans with neurological disorders. She currently runs the Moxon Neurorobotics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.

#15506

Meng Anming

#182997

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Meng Anming is a Chinese developmental biologist. In 1983 he graduated from Southwest Agricultural University , and in November 1990 he received his PhD from the genetics department of the University of Nottingham. From 1990 to 1998 he served as an associate professor of Beijing Agricultural University, and from 1998 a professor of Tsinghua University. In 2007 he was elected a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in 2008 a member of TWAS. In 2001 he was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and Technologic Progress.

#15507

Eirian Jones

#184581

Overall Influence

Elisabeth Eirian Jones is a New Zealand phytopathologist, and a full professor at Lincoln University, specialising in sustainable control strategies for cropping industries. Academic career After a BSc at the Manchester Metropolitan University, Jones completed a PhD titled Comparative behaviour of mycoparasitic Pythium species at the University of Edinburgh. Jones then moved to the University of Warwick, before being appointed to Lincoln University in New Zealand. She was promoted to full professor in 2022.

#15508

Kathleen Kelly

#183981

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Kathleen Jacobs Kelly is an American biologist specializing in genetic regulation of cell growth, cancer progression, and metastasis. She is chief of the laboratory of genitourinary cancer pathogenesis and deputy director of the National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research.

#15509

Barbara Mitcalfe

#100195

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Barbara Jean Mitcalfe née Fougère was a New Zealand conservationist, botanist and educator. She is best known for being an expert field botanist, for her conservation work in and around the Wellington region, and for helping to establish the first Māori preschool.

#15510

Robert Mesibov

#184605

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Robert 'Bob' Evan Mesibov is an American born and educated Australian myriapod specialist. He earned a B.A. from New York University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971.

#15511

Darla Zelenitsky

#175839

Overall Influence

Darla K. Zelenitsky is a Canadian paleontologist most notable for her research on dinosaur reproductive biology and fossils. She was a part of a team that first found evidence of feathered dinosaurs in North America, and since then has co-authored over 50 different publications. Her research primarily focuses on paleobiology and paleoenvironments, with a key look on dinosaurs using extinct taxa to detect and infer the changes seen over time.

#15512

Lawson Wulsin

#121651

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Lawson Reed Wulsin is a professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and is a practicing psychiatrist for the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Wulsin specializes in psychosomatic medicine and from 1995-2019 was the training director for the University of Cincinnati Family Medicine Psychiatry Residency Program.

#15513

Sydney Selwyn

#129506

Overall Influence

1934 - 1996 (62 years)

Sydney Selwyn was a British physician, medical scientist, and professor. He was a medical microbiologist with an interest in bacteriology, authority on the history of medicine, avid collector, writer, lecturer, world traveller, and occasional radio and TV broadcaster.

#15514

Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson

#170842

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson is a molecular medical geneticist who conducts genetic and functional analyses downstream of genome-wide association studies for various human traits, including cancer, immune and infectious diseases. She is chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics at the National Cancer Institute.

#15515

Daniela Cristina Zappi

#184634

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Dr. Daniela Cristina Zappi is a Brazilian botanist, plant collector, and research scientist at the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew noted for studying and describing Neotropical flora, Rubiaceae, and Cactaceae. She has described over 90 species.

#15516

Shona M. Bell

#155392

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Shona Margaret Bell was a New Zealand palaeontologist. She studied the fossils of the Corbies Creek area of North Otago and the Benmore Dam area. The 1954 Directory of New Zealand Science records her as an assistant palaeontologist at the Geological Survey of New Zealand. She was employed by GSNZ from 1948 to 1950, but resigned on her marriage to Tom Grant-Taylor, as was expected at the time.

#15517

Rafael De Cabo

#184732

Overall Influence

#15518

Sarah Hook

#184747

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sarah M. Hook is a New Zealand immunology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 1995 PhD titled 'Cervine Interleukin-4' at the University of Otago, Hook joined the staff, rising to full professor.

#15519

Susan Perkins

#184404

Overall Influence

Susan L. Perkins is an American microbiologist and the Martin and Michele Cohen Dean of Science at The City College of New York . Her expertise includes the pathology and genetics of malaria parasites and other haemosporidians infecting myriad non-primate species.

#15520

Michael Fossel

#53796

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michael B. Fossel is a former professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University and is the author of several books on aging, who is best known for his views on telomerase therapy as a possible treatment for cellular senescence. Fossel has appeared on many major news programs to discuss aging and has appeared regularly on National Public Radio . He is also a respected lecturer, author, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine .

#15521

Christopher H. Evans

#184757

Overall Influence

#15522

Jeanne Spurlock

#90822

Overall Influence

1921 - 1999 (78 years)

Jeanne Marybeth Spurlock was an American psychiatrist, professor and author. She served as the deputy medical director of the American Psychiatric Association for seventeen years. She chaired the Department of Psychiatry at Meharry Medical College starting in 1968, and she taught at George Washington University and Howard University. She also operated her own private psychiatry practice, and she published several works.

#15523

Jennifer Smith

#120266

Overall Influence

Jennifer E. Smith is an American marine ecologist and coral reef expert who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research investigates how physical and biological processes impact the function of marine communities.

#15524

Amina Pollard

#180952

Overall Influence

Amina Pollard is an American limnologist and ecologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency . Pollard leads the U.S. EPA National Lakes Assessment, which seeks to provide information on the health of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs across the United States. She currently serves on the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography board of directors , chairs ASLO's annual awards committee, and is a scientific advisor to Canada's Lake Pulse research program.

#15525

David Crews

#179235

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David Pafford Crews is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Zoology and Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been a pioneer in several areas of reproductive biology, including evolution of sexual behavior and differentiation, neural and phenotypic plasticity, and the role of endocrine disruptors on brain and behavior.

#15526

Susan Geertshuis

#172520

Overall Influence

Susan A. Geertshuis is an English-New Zealand academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a PhD at the University of Nottingham, she worked at the University of Wales Bangor and the University of Northampton, before moving to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.

#15527

Gil McVean

#181742

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Gilean Alistair Tristram McVean is a professor of statistical genetics at the University of Oxford, fellow of Linacre College, Oxford and co-founder and director of Genomics plc. He also co-chaired the 1000 Genomes Project analysis group.

#15528

Nicolas H. Thomä

#183322

Overall Influence

Nicolas H. Thomä is a German researcher, full professor at the EPFL School of Life Sciences and Director of the Paternot Chair for Cancer Research in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a biochemist and structural biologist and a leading researcher in the fields of ubiquitin ligase biology and DNA repair.

#15529

Julio Moizeszowicz

Julio Moizeszowicz

#132063

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Julio Moizeszowicz is an Argentine psychiatrist. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is the son of Polish immigrants who moved to Argentina before World War II. Moizeszowicz's research aims to treat mental disorders such as psychosis, neurosis and depression by rebalancing the relationship between the body and mind through psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and treatment with psychoactive drugs. He uses drugs to address imbalances of neurotransmitters in the brain, preventing the formation or reinforcement of traumatic memories via neuronal plasticity after psychological trauma.

#15530

Henry Andrew Imshaug

#184305

Overall Influence

1925 - 2010 (85 years)

Henry Andrew Imshaug was an American lichenologist notable for work on the genus Buellia and his "enormous and important collections from the Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes region, West Indies and subantarctic islands, together with his studies of those collections". He is also known for mentoring numerous notable lichenologists and bryologists. He was a professor at Michigan State University. Imshaug is honoured in the lichen genus name Imshaugia.

#15531

Mamiyil Sabu

#181655

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Mamiyil Sabu formerly Head of the Department of Botany, University of Calicut and currently working as CSIR-Emeritus Scientist at Malabar Botanical Garden and Institute for Plant Sciences, Kozhikode district, Kerala, India. He worked for over 37 years on the research of gingers, which include families such as Cannaceae, Marantaceae , Zingiberaceae , Heliconiaceae, Costaceae, Musaceae etc. A comprehensive work on these groups have been taken after a gap of 125 years, which resulted in the discovery of several new species and rediscovery of many species after 155 years.

#15532

Annette Byrne

#178506

Overall Influence

Annette Therese Byrne is an Irish physiologist, Professor and Head of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Precision Cancer Medicine group. Her research considers metastatic colorectal cancer and glioblastoma.

#15533

Irena Roterman-Konieczna

#180755

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Irena Roterman-Konieczna is a Polish biochemist and a professor at the Jagiellonian University Medical College. Biography Irena Roterman-Konieczna was born on 13 March 1950 in Kraków. She received a master's degree in chemistry in 1973 at the Jagiellonian University, her doctorate in 1985 at the Medical College there, and a postdoctoral degree there in 1996. In 2005 she received the title of professor. She has been the head of the Department of Bioinformatics and Telemedicine at the Jagiellonian University, and an editor in chief of the Bio-Algorithms and Med-Systems journal.

#15534

Kathryn Mary Murphy

Kathryn Mary Murphy

#180357

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Kathryn Mary Murphy is a Canadian neuroscientist and professor who studies development and plasticity of the brain. She has been a professor at McMaster University since 1994, where she founded the neuroscience program and prior to that was at McGill University where she won a University Research Fellowship from NSERC and a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

#15535

Jane El-Dahr

#174026

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jane Maroney El-Dahr is a clinical professor of pediatrics and the head of the division of pediatric allergy and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine, where she has worked since 1990. She is also the president of the Louisiana Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. She has expertise in allergy, immunology, and rheumatology.

#15536

Sherif El-Khamisy

#183254

Overall Influence

Sherif El- Khamisy is an Egyptian Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. He is the Director of Research and Innovation and co-founder of the Healthy Life Span Institute, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. He is also one of the 2022 winners of Obada Prize

#15537

David J. Galton

David J. Galton

#176840

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

David Jeremy Galton is a British physician and researcher in molecular genetics and metabolic disease, primarily the hyperlipidemias and diabetes mellitus. He is an authority figure in his field. Early life and education David Galton was educated at Highgate School London and graduated from University College London in 1957 with a BSc and MB.BS in 1960. After house-staff training he went to the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda Maryland, USA to study with Robert Scow and Martin Rodbell.

#15538

Christian A. Sander

#184926

Overall Influence

#15539

Stephen G. Sligar

#184951

Overall Influence

#15540

Kenneth B. Ain

#71401

Overall Influence

Kenneth B. Ain is an American endocrinologist and Carmen L. Buck Chair and Professorship of Cancer Research and Oncology at the University of Kentucky, and also currently a licensed doctor and published author, being collected by libraries worldwide.

#15541

Susan Rossell

#148423

Overall Influence

Professor Susan Rossell is a British researcher based at Swinburne University of Technology specialising in Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging. Originally from Nottingham, UK; she now resides in Melbourne, Australia. Her research on the neuropsychology of schizophrenia and body dysmorphic disorder is internationally recognised.

#15542

Carlos Pardo-Villamizar

#123466

Overall Influence

Carlos A. Pardo-Villamizar, also known simply as Carlos Pardo, is a professor of neurology and pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as the director of the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center. His area of expertise is immunopathology and the neuroimmune system. He is currently leading a project that investigates the role of neuroglial dysfunction in HIV infection and drug abuse, and has also published research concluding that the brains of autistic individuals exhibit neuroglial activation, loss of neurons in the Purkinje layer and neuroinflammation "in the sam...

#15543

Delia Abbiatti

#183403

Overall Influence

1918 - Present (108 years)

Delia Abbiatti is an Argentinian botanist and pteridologist, noted for studying Eriocaulaceae, Loranthaceae, Thelypteris, and Cyclosorus. The species Perezia abbiattii and Thelypteris abbiattii were named in her honor.

#15544

Sunil Bajpai

#184327

Overall Influence

Sunil Bajpai is the Chair Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He is in service as a professor at IIT Roorkee since 1st January 1996 till September 2026. He also served as the director of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences from January 2013 to July 2018.

#15545

Paul D. Williams

#185019

Overall Influence

#15546

Arang Rhie

#178915

Overall Influence

Arang Rhie is a South Korean bioinformatician serving as a staff scientist in the genome informatics section at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Rhie earned a B.S. in computer science and a M.S. in bioinformatics from the Ewha Womans University. She graduated with a Ph.D. at the Seoul National University College of Medicine in 2017. She conducted postdoctoral research at the National Human Genome Research Institute .

#15547

Wiesław Masłowski

#185026

Overall Influence

Wiesław Masłowski is a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California since 2009. He obtained his MS from the University of Gdańsk in 1987, and his PhD from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 1994, with a dissertation entitled Numerical modeling study of the circulation of the Greenland Sea. He became well known in 2007 for stating that the Arctic Ocean might be nearly ice free in the summer as early as 2013, based on projection of the declining ice volume trend. While later revised to 2016 +/- 3 years based on computer modeling, this prediction became controve...

#15548

Anne Buist

#39045

Overall Influence

Anne Buist is an Australian researcher and practising psychiatrist specializing in women's mental health, in particular postpartum psychiatric illnesses. She is also a novelist, author of the Natalie King crime fiction series, and co-author, with her husband Graeme Simsion, of the novels Two Steps Forward and Two Steps Onward .

#15549

J. Walter Woodbury

#180938

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

John Walter Woodbury was an American electrophysiologist and author of the first textbook explanation of the Hodgkin-Huxley_model studies of the action potential. He applied physical and mathematical techniques to experimentally elucidate the nature of electrical excitability in cells. He was also involved in the experimental and theoretical investigations of the mechanisms of ion penetration through the ion channels in muscle membranes, the regulation of cellular acid-base balance and the control of epileptic seizures by repetitive Vagus nerve stimulation.

#15550

Maria Paz Martin Esteban

#185055

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

María-Paz Martín Esteban is a Spanish mycologist. She has been a fellow of the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid since 1999, and a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council since 2019. She has authored more than 200 scientific articles on the biodiversity of fungi.

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