The Most Influential People Across History
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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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#15701
Catharina Boehme
#173842
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Catharina Boehme is the Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Governance of the World Health Organization. She previously served as WHO Chef de Cabinet, and is known for her work in developing diagnostic tests for diseases such as tuberculosis and for advocating for increased testing for the COVID-19 disease.
Go to Profile#15702
Eva Konrad Hawkins
#88671
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Eva Konrad Hawkins was a Hungarian-born American biologist and college professor. Early life Éva Konrád was raised in Berettyóújfalu, near Debrecen, Hungary, to Jewish parents József Konrád and Róza Klein. Her younger brother was writer György Konrád. The siblings lived in a safe house in Budapest during World War II; their parents survived the Strasshof concentration camp in Austria.
Go to Profile#15703
Margret Schleidt
#177853
Overall Influence
1928 - 2012 (84 years)
Margret Else Schleidt was a German human ethologist. She worked at the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie, which has now become the Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology. Margret Else Schleidt studied Biology at the Universities of Bonn, Zurich and Freiburg. She did her dissertation research in animal ethology at Konrad Lorenz’s research station in Buldern Westfalen. She then completed her PhD in animal ethology in 1955 under the supervision of Professor Otto Koehler in Freiburg i Br., before working as part of Konrad Lorenz’ research group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie in Seewiesen.
Go to Profile#15704
John Crowley
#180732
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
John Francis Crowley is an American biotechnology executive and entrepreneur and the chairman and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics. He co-founded Novazyme Pharmaceuticals with William Canfield, which was later acquired by Genzyme Corporation, and founded Orexigen Therapeutics. In 2006, he was profiled in the book The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million – And Bucked the Medical Establishment – In a Quest to Save His Children by Geeta Anand. In 2010, Crowley released his memoir, Chasing Miracles: The Crowley Family Journey of Strength, Hope, and Joy. Crowley and his family were the inspiration for...
Go to Profile#15705
Alison Buchan
#186485
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Alison Buchan is the Carolyn Fite Professor at the University of Tennessee. She is known for her work on bacteria in natural environments, especially bacteria within the Roseobacter group. In 2022 she was named as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#15706
Bianca Reinert
#176111
Overall Influence
1965 - 2018 (53 years)
Bianca Luiza Reinert was a Brazilian biologist and ornithologist. She was one of a group of ornithologists who discovered a previously undocumented species of swamp bird, Formicivora acutirostris. She also worked to create a nature reserve to preserve its habitat.
Go to Profile#15707
Kalle Achté
#111096
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Karl Aimo "Kalle" Achté was a Finnish psychiatrist. He was a physician and psychiatrist at Helsinki University Central Hospital from 1956 to 1961 and Hesperia Hospital 1961 to 1966, taking his doctoral degree in 1961. From 1968 to 1991 he was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Helsinki and concurrently chief physician at the Helsinki University Central Hospital. He also served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1978 to 1981. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1989.
Go to Profile#15708
Colleen Mouw
#176241
Overall Influence
Colleen Beckmann Mouw is an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island known for her work on phytoplankton ecology and increasing retention of women in oceanography. Education and career Mouw received a B.S. from Western Michigan University in 2000, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral investigator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, until she moved to Michigan Technological University in 2012. In 2016, she moved back to the University of Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#15709
Randall K. Kosaki
#166691
Overall Influence
Randall Kosaki is a research ecologist at the NOAA Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. His expertise is in the behavioral ecology, taxonomy, and biogeography of Pacific coral reef fishes. Early life Kosaki was adopted at birth by two university professors. In 2007, Kosaki reconnected with his biological mother, June Werner and learned he has a half-sister, Kimi Werner, also an avid and accomplished diver. A short film, "Three Hearts Home with Kimi Werner", highlights the three uniting.
Go to Profile#15710
Arthur J. Deikman
#17933
Overall Influence
1929 - 2013 (84 years)
Arthur J. Deikman was an American physician who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and Human Givens. He was also a contributor to The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
Go to Profile#15711
Lü Zhi
#174919
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Lü Zhi is a Chinese conservation biologist, panda expert and an expert on biodiversity. She is a professor at Peking University and also the executive director of the Peking University Center for Nature and Society. Lü is also the founder of the Shanshui Conservation Center which is dedicated to preserving the Three Rivers Headwater Region in Yushu, Qinghai.
Go to Profile#15712
Joanne Lemieux
#186753
Overall Influence
M. Joanne Lemieux is a Canadian scientist who is a Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Alberta. She studies the structures of membrane proteins that are critical to disease in an effort to identify novel therapeutic strategies. During the COVID-19 pandemic Lemieux worked to develop an antiviral drug that could protect people from coronavirus disease.
Go to Profile#15713
Alisa Morss Clyne
#180947
Overall Influence
Alisa Morss Clyne is an American mechanobiologist. She is a Full Professor and Associate Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Clyne is an expert in endothelial cell biology, biomechanics, and metabolomics.
Go to Profile#15714
Mirna Kvajo
#184704
Overall Influence
Mirna Kvajo was a Croatian scientist and the chief editor of the academic journal BMC Biology. She died on May 16, 2023, in New York. Education Kvajo has a bachelor's degree from the University of Zagreb and a Ph.D. from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research and the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#15715
Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker
#186424
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker is an American-Canadian immunologist, currently a Canada Research Chair at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the signaling processes that occur during the differentiation of cells in the immune system.
Go to Profile#15716
Ikram Blilou
#186521
Overall Influence
Ikram Blilou is a Moroccan biologist who is a professor of plant sciences at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Her research investigates how plants develop resistance to extreme conditions of drought and salinity.
Go to Profile#15717
Anitra Ingalls
#186770
Overall Influence
Anitra Eiding Ingalls is an American biogeochemist and oceanographer. In 2017, she was named an American Geophysical Union Outstanding Reviewer. Life She graduated from Reed College and from Stony Brook University. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Pearson Lab. She was a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She teaches at University of Washington. She attended Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia. She did research at the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology.
Go to Profile#15718
David Leiser
#124373
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
David Leiser is an Israeli professor of psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, specializing in Economic psychology and Social psychology. Leiser has served as President of the Economic Psychology division of the International Association of Applied Psychology since 2014.
Go to Profile#15719
Stefan Schwarz
#186801
Overall Influence
#15720
Keiichi Matsuura
#186671
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#15721
Brooks A. Keel
#130729
Overall Influence
Dr. Brooks A. Keel is President of Augusta University and Chief Executive Officer of AU Health System. Background The University System of Georgia Board of Regents announced the selection of Brooks A. Keel, Ph.D. as President of Augusta University and CEO of AU Health on July 8, 2015, and he began serving on July 20.
Go to Profile#15722
Carol Blanchette
#186714
Overall Influence
Carol Anne Blanchette is research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who is known for her work on marine intertidal zones and the biomechanics of marine organisms. Education and career Blanchette grew up in New Jersey and describes her lifelong interest with biology and science as a result of early interactions with her grandparents about fish and fishing. Blanchette has a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and earned her Ph.D. in 1994 from Oregon State University. Following her Ph.D. she moved to California where she was first a postdoctoral scientist at Hopkins Ma...
Go to Profile#15723
Bert Boyer
#75679
Overall Influence
Bert Boyer is an American molecular biologist who is the Professor of Molecular Biology for the Department of Biology and Wildlife at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Bob and Charlee Moore Endowed Professor, Director of Alaska Native Health Research, and OHSU Knight for the Cardiovascular Institute School of Medicine. He was instrumental in forming the Center for Alaska Native Health Research. Boyer's research group specifically focuses on genetic and environmental risk and prevention initiatives related to obesity and diabetes in Yup'ik Eskimos from Southwest Alaska.
Go to Profile#15724
Anthony Seymour Laughton
#155303
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Sir Anthony Seymour Laughton FRS was a British oceanographer. He was educated at Marlborough College and King's College, Cambridge. He worked for the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences and served as director in 1978. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980 and received a knighthood for services to oceanography in the 1987 Birthday Honours.
Go to Profile#15725
Touati Benoukraf
#186296
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Touati Benoukraf is a computational and molecular biologist. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics for Personalized Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland since November 2018. His research focus is on computational genomics.
Go to Profile#15726
Wendy Foden
#131601
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Wendy Foden is a conservation biologist, best known for her work on climate change impacts on biodiversity. Education While completing her master's degree at the University of Cape Town , she discovered a latitudinal pattern of die-off of quiver trees suggesting that climate change could be to blame. She received funding to further the study, working with Guy Midgley at the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Cape Town. Foden spent much of 2001–2003 surveying Quiver Trees in Namibia and the arid regions of western South Africa and set up long term monitoring to track changes. Her...
Go to Profile#15727
Ying Ge
#179470
Overall Influence
Ying Ge is a Chinese-American chemist who is a Professor of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research considers the molecular mechanisms that underpin cardiac disease. She has previously served on the board of directors of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. In 2020 Ge was named on the Analytical Scientist Power List.
Go to Profile#15728
Ernesto Caffo
#145632
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ernesto Caffo is the founder and President of SOS Il Telefono Azzurro Onlus and Fondazione Child. He is a Chair Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, full-time Director of the Department of Paediatrics for the Hospital of University of Modena, and director of the 6th edition of the Master Assessment and Intervention in situations of child abuse and pedophilia at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Go to Profile#15729
Doreen Main
#185448
Overall Influence
Doreen S. Main is a Scottish bioinformatics researcher and plant scientist specializing in genomics and plant genetics. She is a professor of bioinformatics in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University.
Go to Profile#15730
Jasmin Graham
#181905
Overall Influence
Jasmin Graham is an American marine biologist known for her work in conservation and social justice, with a special focus on shark science. She is a co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences. Early life and education Graham grew up in South Carolina and was first introduced to marine science in high school and encountered shark research in college. Graham has a B.S. in Marine Biology and a B.A. in Spanish from the College of Charleston. Graham received a Masters of Science in 2020 working with Dean Grubbs at Florida State University with a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow...
Go to Profile#15731
Fadila Bouamr
#183778
Overall Influence
Fadila Bouamr is a French-American virologist researching the molecular mechanisms that govern the assembly and egress of an infectious HIV-1 and the proteins involved in these processes. She is chief of the viral budding unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Go to Profile#15732
Tracey Rogers
#109082
Overall Influence
Tracey Rogers is a marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales who studies how mammals survive changing environments. Early life and education As a child, Rogers was interested in deadly sea creatures. Rogers became interested in leopard seals whilst working as a seal trainer at Taronga Zoo. The call of Astrid, a giant female leopard seal, inspired Rogers to pursue a career in research. Rogers completed her PhD, "Acoustic behaviour of the leopard seal, Hydrurga leptonyx : physical characteristics and functional significance", in 1997 at the University of Sydney.
Go to Profile#15733
Christa L. Deeleman-Reinhold
#105685
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Christa Laetitia Deeleman-Reinhold is a Dutch arachnologist. She specializes in spiders from Southeast Asia and Southern Europe, particularly cave-dwelling and tropical spiders. She donated a collection of about 25,000 Southeast Asian spiders, the largest collection of Southeast Asian spiders in existence, to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden. In addition to numerous articles, she has written the book Forest Spiders of South East Asia .
Go to Profile#15734
Nadia Fröbisch
#177052
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Nadia Belinda Fröbisch is a German vertebrate paleontologist and developmental biologist who specializes in the evolution and development of amphibians. She is currently a professor at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in the Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity.
Go to Profile#15735
Louise Purton
#184246
Overall Influence
Louise E. Purton is an Australian biologist who is Professor of Medicine and head of the Stem Cell Regulation Laboratory at St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Her research considers the stem cells responsible for the production of blood cells and the regulations of haematopoietic diseases. She was awarded the International Society for Experimental Hematology McCulloch & Till Award in 2022. She has experienced profound bilateral hearing loss since the age of three and has been recognised for her work supporting Equity and Diversity, particularly amongst women and people w...
Go to Profile#15736
Pierrette Gaudreau
#152023
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Pierrette Gaudreau is a Canadian scientist specializing in aging studies. She received the 2016 Prix Acfas Adrien-Pouliot for her work establishing Canada-France research partnerships. Career Gaudreau is mostly known for her work on growth hormone–releasing hormone , but her research interests encompass all factors that play a role in human health and aging.
Go to Profile#15737
C. J. Chen
#186912
Overall Influence
#15738
Juliana Machado Ferreira
#114683
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Juliana Machado Ferreira is a Brazilian scientist, a conservation geneticist, and an activist against wildlife trafficking. She is a founding member and current executive director of Freeland Brasil , whose mission is "to conserve biodiversity by ending wildlife trafficking" through the combination of scientific research, education and awareness, and public policy. She is a TED Senior Fellow.
Go to Profile#15739
Elizabeth E. Hood
#184661
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Elizabeth E. Hood is a plant geneticist and the Lipscomb Distinguished Professor of Agriculture at Arkansas State University. In 2018 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#15740
Derek Russell Davis
#50955
Overall Influence
1914 - 1993 (79 years)
Derek Russell Davis FBPsS FRCPsych was a British psychiatrist who served as the Norah Cooke-Hurle Professor of Mental Health at Bristol University from 1962 to 1979. Career Davis attended the Stowe School before obtaining a medical degree at the School of Clinical Medicine of the University of Cambridge. He completed his residency at Middlesex Hospital, and returned to Cambridge to work at the university hospital. Davis was named reader of clinical psychology in 1950, and began teaching medical psychology in 1958, when he was appointed as director of the Medical Psychology Laboratory. He lef...
Go to Profile#15741
Beulah Garner
#184315
Overall Influence
Beulah Garner FRES is an entomologist in the United Kingdom. She is Senior Curator at the Natural History Museum, London and is an expert of beetles, in particular the ground beetles . Education and career Garner grew up in Norfolk and was educated at the University of East Anglia where she graduated with a BSc in ecology in 1998. She worked at Rothamsted Research as a Senior Scientific Officer, before studying an MA in Museology back at UEA, graduating in 2008. During her Masters she worked as Assistant Curator at Norfolk Museums Service and then moved to the Horniman Museum, in 2010 she m...
Go to Profile#15742
Arlette Lefebvre
#106636
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Arlette Marie-Laure Lefebvre, , known by her patients as "Dr. Froggie" is a child psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Born in Montreal, Quebec, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1964 from the Université de Caen and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1970 from the University of Toronto. Lefebvre is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#15743
Mary E. Clark
#112235
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Mary Eleanor Clark was an American biologist. She was named the first National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. In 1978, she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#15744
William R. Jordan III
#168900
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Bill Jordan , more formally William R. Jordan III, is an American botanist and journalist who has played a leading role in the development and critique of ecological restoration as a means of developing an environmentalism that is philosophically more coherent, psychologically more productive, politically more robust, and ecologically more effective. His critique has had a significant influence on environmentalism in the United States and abroad.
Go to Profile#15745
Janet Tobias
#80492
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Janet Tobias is a media executive specializing in healthcare as well as an Emmy Award-winning director, producer, and writer. She directed Fauci, and also No Place On Earth in 2012, a docudrama about two caves in the Ukraine in which three dozen Jews escaping the Holocaust successfully hid for a total of 511 days. Her screenplay, co-written with Paul Laikin, was a finalist for the 2014 Award for Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Go to Profile#15746
Henrik Hagberg
#127008
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Henrik Erik Gustav Hagberg is a Swedish physician and neuroscientist. His research focuses on experimental brain research, perinatal medicine and obstetrics. He holds the Research Chair in Fetal Medicine at the Centre for the Developing Brain at King's College London, and is one of the world's most highly cited researchers in the field of perinatal brain injury. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited over 33,000 times in scientific literature, and he has an h-index of 107.
Go to Profile#15747
Fred Holliday
#183496
Overall Influence
1935 - 2016 (81 years)
Sir Frederick George Thomas Holliday, was a British marine biologist, academic, academic administrator, and businessman. He was Acting Principal of the University of Stirling from 1973 to 1975, Vice-Chancellor and Warden of Durham University from 1980 to 1990, and Chair of Northumbrian Water from 1993 to 2006.
Go to Profile#15748
Tomoko Ohta
#187056
Overall Influence
#15749
Rafael Royo-Torres
#186637
Overall Influence
Dr. Rafael Royo-Torres is a Spanish Paleontologist. He works in Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis, in Teruel, Spain. He is one of the discoverers of Turiasaurus riodevensis, together with Luis Alcalá and Alberto Cobos.
Go to Profile#15750
Stefan Evers
#187080
Overall Influence
