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,

#15901

Cornelis Hazevoet

#186711

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Cornelis Jan "Kees" Hazevoet is a Dutch ornithologist and former professional jazz musician. He played piano, clarinet, and sometimes trumpet during his musical career, during which he was among the leading figures in the introduction of free jazz to the Netherlands. He is now curator of birds at the University of Lisbon's natural history museum, and an expert on the birds and other fauna of Cape Verde.

#15902

Geraldine A. Allen

#187711

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Geraldine Anne Allen is a botanist, professor of biology, and herbarium curator at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She obtained formal education at the University of British Columbia and Oregon State University, earning a Doctor of Philosophy degree in botany and plant pathology from the latter in 1981. During her career, she has authored or co-authored over 50 publications, including genera chapters for Flora of North America and the Jepson Manual. She also has authored several species of the Erythronium genus.

#15903

W. E. C. Moore

#178182

Overall Influence

1927 - 1996 (69 years)

Walter Edward Cladek Moore was an American microbiologist who was instrumental in founding The Anaerobe Lab at Virginia Tech. The Anaerobe Lab was built in 1970 and was a world leader in developing techniques to grow anaerobic bacteria in culture. With other faculty members he co-wrote the Anaerobe Manual.

#15904

C. J. Stam

#188590

Overall Influence

#15905

David Thornalley

#183282

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

David John Robert Thornalley is a British paleoceanographer known for his work on North Atlantic circulation change during the Quaternary period. Thornalley holds masters and doctoral degrees from Churchill College, Cambridge. He is currently an associate professor in the department of Geography at University College London . Before working at UCL, he was a postdoctoral research scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a postdoctoral research associate at Cardiff University. Thornalley also holds a Professional Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher and Professional Educatio...

#15906

Nick Rhodes

#166631

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Nick Rhodes is a Reader in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Liverpool, in the U.K. Tissue Engineering can be described as the use of engineering techniques, including engineering materials and processes, in order to grow living tissues. Regenerative Medicine can be described as the treatment of defective tissues using the regenerative capacity of the body's healthy tissues. Rhodes describes the discipline as "aiming to repair tissue defects by driving regeneration of healthy tissues using engineered materials and processes."

#15907

Jennifer Li

#59966

Overall Influence

Jennifer M. Li is a Systems Neuroscience & Neuroengineering researcher who is a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the RoLi lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. She records and manipulates neural activity in larval zebra fish to research motivation and attention. and has been published in the journal Nature for her work on how the zebra fish brain switches between internal states when foraging for live prey. The RoLi lab has developed a revolutionary microscopy systems that enable whole-brain imaging of freely swimming larval zebra fish. With this technology, Li and Rob...

#15908

George Burgess

#184501

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

George H. Burgess is an ichthyologist and fisheries biologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida. He is the former director of the International Shark Attack File and author/coauthor of numerous books and papers on sharks and other fish.

#15909

Heidrun Hartmann

#101294

Overall Influence

1942 - 2016 (74 years)

Heidrun Hartmann, née Heidrun Elsbeth Klara Osterwald was a German botanist. She worked at the University of Hamburg and specialised in Aizoaceae, Crassulaceae, collected plants from Africa and South America.

#15910

Rafael Martínez Escarbassiere

Rafael Martínez Escarbassiere

#188410

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

#15911

Xiao‐jing Wang

#188658

Overall Influence

#15912

Brian Hanley

#181718

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Brian P. Hanley is an American microbiologist and founder of Butterfly Sciences. He is known for self-experimenting with gene therapy to try to improve health span. Biography Early in his research career, Hanley’s areas of study were biodefense and terrorism. He contributed chapters to two books about these subjects. Hanley obtained a PhD in Microbiology from University of California, Davis in 2009. The same year, he founded Butterfly Sciences in Davis, California to develop a gene therapy to treat HIV AIDS using a combination of GHRH and an intracellular vaccine.

#15913

Alana Alexander

#99099

Overall Influence

Alana Alexander is a New Zealand bioinformatician at the University of Otago. In 2021, she was awarded a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship to investigate the past impacts of fisheries on Hector's and Māui dolphins, and use genomics to inform models of the future effects of climate change on whales and dolphins.

#15914

Jennifer Eigenbrode

#172895

Overall Influence

Jennifer Eigenbrode is an interdisciplinary astrobiologist who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. She specializes in organic chemistry, geology, and organic bio-geochemistry of martian and ocean-world environments.

#15915

Nigel Savery

#116229

Overall Influence

Prof. Nigel Savery is Professor of Molecular Biologist at the University of Bristol. During his time researching and lecturing at the University of Bristol, Dr Savery has made significant contributions to the field of transcription and DNA-damage recognition and repair.

#15916

Maxwell Sydney Moulds

#188229

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Maxwell Sydney Moulds is an Australian entomologist. The majority of his books are written about Cicadas. Maxwell Sydney Moulds led a morphological analysis of the genus and discovered the cicadas separation naturally into clades according to biogeographical area.

#15917

Peter Rodman

#130237

Overall Influence

Peter S. Rodman is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Anthropology. Rodman began teaching and conducting research at Davis in 1972, and continued until 2006. His specialty while a professor there was in the field of physical anthropology and paleontology, and the study of orangutans and their behavior and ecology in particular, although he has also authored or co-authored works on woolly monkeys, on bipedal locomotion in chimpanzeess, and reproduction in bonnet macaques . Among other positions while at UC Davis, Rodman held the Chair of the Exec...

#15918

Mansour F. Armaly

#113487

Overall Influence

1927 - 2005 (78 years)

Mansour F. Armaly was a Palestinian-American physician who researched the modern medical treatment of glaucoma. Early life and education Armaly was born in Shefa Amr, Palestine. He received his B.A. and M.D. from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. After completing his residency in Beirut at the American University Hospital, he left in 1955 to attend the University of Iowa, from which he received the M.Sc. in 1957. Armaly became an American citizen and joined the university's faculty, where he remained for thirteen years.

#15919

Julia Horsfield

#188756

Overall Influence

Julia Anne Horsfield is a New Zealand biochemist and developmental geneticist. She is professor of pathology at the University of Otago and director of Genetics Otago and the Otago Zebrafish Facility.

#15920

Mark Peifer

#176446

Overall Influence

Mark Peifer is an American biologist specializing in cell adhesion, cytoskeletal regulation, and Wnt signaling in development and cancer. He is currently the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina, and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#15921

Wendi Roe

#185984

Overall Influence

Wendi Dianne Roe is a New Zealand veterinary pathologist who specialises in researching marine mammals. She is Professor of Veterinary and Marine Mammal Pathology and Deputy Head of the School of Veterinary Science at Massey University.

#15922

Alexander Fleming

#188820

Overall Influence

#15923

Barbara Anderson

#187436

Overall Influence

Barbara Jane Anderson is a New Zealand ecologist. Education Anderson graduated with a PhD in botany from the University of Otago, Dunedin, in 2006. Research and career Beginning in 2015, Anderson co-ordinates a citizen science project, the Ahi Pepe MothNet project which encourages members of the public to engage with moths at Orokonui Ecosanctuary. The project brought public attention to the role of moths in the ecosystem and also provides schoolchildren and adults with an experience of "hands-on" science. As a result of the interest in the project, a bilingual Māori–English guide to New Zealand moths was published in 2018.

#15924

Lee Byung-heon

#187471

Overall Influence

Lee Byung-heon is a professor of biochemistry and cell biology in the school of medicine at Kyungpook National University , South Korea. He received his M.D. license from Korean Medical Association in 1989. He received his B.S. from the school of medicine, KNU, in 1989, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemistry from KNU in 1991 and 1995. He was an assistant professor in the school of medicine at Dongguk University in 1996–2001 and a visiting investigator in the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, United States, in 2001–2003. He joined KNU in 2003. He is currently a member of Ko...

#15925

Carlo Violani

#188868

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Carlo Violani, born 1946, Italian zoologist at the University of Pavia department of animal biology. A genus was named for the author, Violania, for a taxonomic treatment of the contentious genus Platycercus , recognised as a subgenus Platycercus Wells & Wellington, 1992 by later authorities.

#15926

Leslie Parent

#143035

Overall Influence

Leslie J. Parent is an American microbiologist and immunologist currently professor and vice dean of the College of Medicine at Pennsylvania State University. She is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Society for Microbiology.

#15927

Axel Schumacher

#187656

Overall Influence

Axel Schumacher , is a German epigenetics researcher. He invented the first microarray technologies for epigenetic biomarker discovery, developed the ‘epigenetic theory of aging’ with his research leading to the worldwide first proof of whole genome epigenetic abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease.

#15928

Shinsaku Kimoto

#182886

Overall Influence

1933 - 2009 (76 years)

Shinsaku Kimoto was a Japanese entomologist specialising in the Leaf beetle family . Publications Gressitt, J.L. & Kimoto S. . The Chrysomelidae of China and Korea. Part 1. Pacific Insects 1A: 1–299.Gressitt, J.L. & Kimoto S. . The Chrysomelidae of China and Korea. Part 2. Pacific Insects 1B: 301–1026.Gressitt, J.L. & Kimoto S. . Supplement to "The Chrysomelidae of China and Korea". Pacific Insects 5: 921–932; pdfKimoto, S. . Notes on the Chrysomelidae from Taiwan I. Kontyû 35: 368–374.Kimoto, S. . Notes on the Chrysomelidae from Taiwan II. Esakia 7: 1–68; pdfKimoto, S. . Notes on the Chrysomelidae from Taiwan VI.

#15929

Kyle Pruett

#47566

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Kyle D. Pruett is an author of books and columns on parenting, and is a professor of child psychiatry at Yale University. This researcher and practicing psychiatrist was the host of the TV series Your Child Six to Twelve with Dr. Kyle Pruett. He has contributed to Good Housekeeping, Child, and The New York Times. He has appeared as a guest on Good Morning America, Oprah, CBS This Morning, and National Public Radio.

#15930

Charalampos Tzoulis

#182101

Overall Influence

Charalampos Tzoulis is a Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics. He is a trained neurologist and co-director of the Neuro-SysMed Center for Clinical Trials Research in neurological diseases, at the University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital, funded amongst others by the Norwegian Research Council. In 2022, he established the K.G. Jebsen Center for Translational Research in Parkinson's Disease at the University of Bergen, with funding from the K.G. Jebsen Foundation, focusing on better diagnostics and identification of disease subtypes in order to offer personalized treatments.

#15931

Sarah Gabbott

#185132

Overall Influence

Sarah Gabbott is a palaeobiologist from the University of Leicester. She is known for her research on decomposition and fossilization. Her focus is soft-bodied animals, details of which are often lost during decay.

#15932

Deng Tao

#188606

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Deng Tao is a Chinese palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology , Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has made important fossil discoveries on Cenozoic mammals. He is a professor of vertebrate palaeontology, deputy director of the Academic Committee, and deputy director of Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates at IVPP.

#15933

Elizabeth Reitz

#180328

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Elizabeth Jean "Betsy" Reitz is a zooarchaeologist and Professor Emerita in the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. She was born in 1946 in Lake Alfred, Florida. She attended Florida Presbyterian College from 1966 to 1967. She received her BA , MA , and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Her dissertation was directed by Elizabeth Wing. In 2012, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2014, she was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was t...

#15934

Kenneth M. Rosen

#188929

Overall Influence

#15935

Yan Wong

#148172

Overall Influence

Yan Wong is an evolutionary biologist, the television presenter of Bang Goes the Theory and co-author of The Ancestor's Tale with Richard Dawkins.

#15936

Igor Grichanov

#188935

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Igor Yakovlevich Grichanov is a Russian entomologist and ecologist. As a taxonomist, he specialised on Diptera notably Dolichopodidae. He joined the staff of the All-Russian Institute of Plant Protection in 1981. From 1990 he is the Head of the Laboratory of Phytosanitary Diagnostics and Forecasts. He wrote over 470 scientific papers . Не has described 26 new genera and over 400 new species of flies.

#15937

Keith Tierney

#94173

Overall Influence

Keith B. Tierney is a Canadian fish scientist and academic. He is a full professor at the University of Alberta as well as editor of the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. He is interested in how water quality interacts aquatic vertebrates.

#15938

Brian Savage

#188958

Overall Influence

#15939

C. Harmon Brown

#132928

Overall Influence

1930 - 2008 (78 years)

C. Harmon Brown was an American endocrinologist who was a pioneer in the field of sports medicine. Brown's research studied the effects of rigorous exercise on women. Brown graduated from Lafayette College in 1952, where he had been the conference champion in hurdling on three occasions and had set two college records, in the 120-yard high hurdles and 220-yard low hurdles. He was awarded his medical degree in 1956 from George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. He was chief of the medical service at the Veterans Administration hospital in Livermore, California and dire...

#15940

Carolyn Lawrence-Dill

#188643

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Carolyn Joy Lawrence-Dill is an American plant biologist and academic administrator. She develops computational systems and tools to help plant science researchers use plant genetics and genomics data for basic biology applications that advance plant breeding.

#15941

Lyn Forster

#170275

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

Lyndsay McLaren Forster was a New Zealand arachnologist. Biography Forster was born in Upper Hutt and grew up on a small farm near Feilding. She enrolled at Victoria University College in Wellington but moved to Christchurch in 1948 without completing her degree. She moved again to Dunedin in 1957; in the late 1960s she returned to her university studies and eventually completed a PhD at the University of Otago in 1979.

#15942

Janusz Wojtusiak

#182162

Overall Influence

1942 - 2012 (70 years)

Janusz R. Wojtusiak was a Polish entomologist and son of the well-known Polish biologist, Roman Wojtusiak, Professor at the Jagiellonian University. He presented his Ph.D. thesis in 1971. It concerned the morphology of the family Adelidae.

#15943

Derek Lee

#188700

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Derek Lee is an American ecologist and wildlife biologist specializing in population biology and conservation biology. Lee was born in Lodi, California on March 15, 1971, and attended Tokay High School. Lee earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara, his master's degree from Humboldt State University, and his Ph.D. from Dartmouth College. For his MS degree he investigated the migratory behavior of black brant geese in Humboldt Bay using capture-recapture statistics to estimate stopover duration and space use. For his Ph.D., he studied the spatial demography of giraffes in the Tarangire ecosystem of Tanzania.

#15944

Thomas Baker

#94893

Overall Influence

Thomas C. Baker is an American entomologist, focusing in study of insect pheromones and odor-mediated behavior, neuroethological studies of olfaction, identification and development of insect attractants for IPM systems, and development of olfaction-based biosensors and chemical ecology, currently Distinguished Professor at Pennsylvania State University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#15945

Gregory M. Plunkett

#187955

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Gregory M. Plunkett is an American botanist.

#15946

Ursula Bettina Göhlich

#188961

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

#15947

Yuri Alexandrovich Popov

#175855

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

Yuri Alexandrovich Popov was a Soviet and Russian paleoentomologist, an authority on the taxonomy and evolution of fossil true bugs and Coleorrhyncha. He described more than 20 new families and subfamilies and 300 new genera and species from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. He also was one of the founders of the modern higher classification of true bugs: three of seven heteropteran infraorders have been established by him . He was the author of more than 170 publications, including a classic monograph on the evolution of water bugs.

#15948

John D. Dunne

#42340

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

John D. Dunne is the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities through the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds a co-appointment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature. Until January 2016, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University.

#15949

Arne Foldvik

#160375

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Arne Foldvik is a Norwegian oceanographer. He was born in Tromsø as a son of as a son of meteorologist Nils M. Foldvik and Helene Andresen. In 1956 he married teacher Ninja Schibbye Danifer, a daughter of painter Sigurd Danifer.

#15950

Michelle Samuel-Foo

#188851

Overall Influence

Michelle Susan Samuel-Foo is an American biologist and Assistant Professor of Biology at Alabama State University. She serves as President of the Southeastern Entomological Society of America. In 2020 Samuel-Foo became the first African-American person to win a major award for entomology when she was awarded the Entomological Society of America Founders' Memorial Recognition.

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